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December 3

How to prevent automatic re-directing on a website?

A website was created using a service, Moodle. However, the service provider was later switched to WetPaint. But, whenever the administrator tries to view the new website on their laptop they are unable to, and all that shows up is a generic 'demo page' for Moodle. The new website works fine on all other computers. Deleting cookies and setting firefox to alert you when re-directs take place haven't fixed this. The same thing happens with IE. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.234.239.245 (talk) 00:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean "view the new website" that you are going to yourwebsite.com and it is going to the wrong place? If so, and you have set up the DNS correctly, then it probably means that whatever local DNS server your computer is connecting to is just not updated, and probably will in a day or two. Sometimes this kind of thing takes a day or so to percolate through the system. But how long has it been? --Mr.98 (talk) 03:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

On the laptop, go to Start --> Run... --> cmd --> ipconfig /flushdns. Then, try again. The DNS Helper Service caches DNS resolutions, which can become out of date. If that doesn't work, then try typing net stop "DNS Client".--Drknkn (talk) 03:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Maximized embedded flash video minimizes when I click elsewhere

I have a dual-screen setup (Windows 7, GeForce 9600 GT with 2 BenQ 16:9 monitors if that matters...) and I like to use the right screen for video.

Unfortunately, when I go full-screen on many embedded video clips (like ones on CNBC.com - which uses Adobe Flash Player 10 in Google Chrome)on one monitor, then click anywhere on the other monitor, the video goes back to it's original size.

It would be nice if I could watch a video like that full-screen on one monitor, while surfing the internet on the other. Any ideas?NByz (talk) 02:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a solution, but can offer a work-around. I had a similar problem using full-screen mode on one screen of a two-screen setup. My solution was to simulate full-screen mode by dragging the corner of the window off the edge of the screen. This is easiest if the screen layout is offset, like so:

+-----+
|     |+-----+
|     ||     |
+-----+|     |
       +-----+

I have CRT monitors, so I can also adjust the horizontal and vertical scaling and panning, so that I don't see the window edges. With most LCD monitors you lose this ability, unfortunately, so you might have to settle for leaving two adjacent sides of the window still showing. StuRat (talk) 06:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Try this — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 11:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

How people look up information

I am trying to find statistics on how people look up information - by library, internet, buying books etc. In other words how people try to find information to answer something. I can't think of a way to phrase the search query or find to find any relevant statistics. I am writing a paper and need to substantiate the claim that people prefer to use Wikipedia, search engines, google, online databases etc as opposed to going to a library for their information retrieval needs. I know this is true.. but I need statistics to back it up. And don't know how to find them. Thanks for any help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Baalhammon (talk • contribs) 03:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You can search for prior research using Google Scholar. Surely somebody has collected statistics on exactly what you are working on. Some helpful search terms might include "information retrieval" or "information systems". I found Interaction with Texts: Information Retrieval as Information-Seeking Behavior, which has some helpful conceptual overviews and may lead you to exactly what you're looking for. Nimur (talk) 04:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate the heads up - but I already have a conceptual understanding of the topic, I need hard statistics. I wouldn't be posting here unless I already looked using those keywords - what comes up is exactly what you linked to, theoretical papers. I need statistics that demonstrate how many users use Wikipedia, search engines, online databases, other web 2.0 technologies versus library visits. I think its obvious to most people that this is true.. but without the data I can't make the claim in good conscience. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Baalhammon (talk • contribs) 05:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The reason people don't go to the library is that it requires a trip. However, there are other sources of info at home that might offer more competition for the internet; like dictionaries, the Bible, medical texts, and even asking a family member. Are you including these ways to "find stuff out" ? StuRat (talk) 06:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Remastering an MP3

OK, so I have a Shirley Temple song on my playlist. Since it was a bit messed up (i.e. audio levels, static, etc.), up to how much extent can it be restored or remastered using software? Blake Gripling (talk) 06:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

There's a lot of audio editing software that can remove static and let you adjust levels. Audacity is free and may do the job, but for more demanding work there are many commercial packages too, such as Adobe Audition. See also List of free software for audio, Category:Digital audio workstation software. You'll have to experiment to see how well it can be fixed, as this will depend on the type of noise and how badly it is degraded. --Pleasantman (talk) 13:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that this is a non-trivial task... it will probably not be easy unless there is a uniformly wrong thing (e.g. total song wrong volume, or wrong pitch). Otherwise it will take a lot of careful manipulation, and even then might not sound much improved (I find trying to improve audio often leads to it getting pretty swampy, even if it is something that should theoretically be easy, like removing a constant humming noise). --Mr.98 (talk) 22:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Removing an unknown noise signal is a theoretically hard statistical signal processing problem. The trouble with these sorts of interfering sounds is that they come from real noise sources - so the sort of theoretical approximations like constant frequency hum, or gaussian distribution noise, or smoothly varying amplitude, are all out the window. From the standpoint of looking at a waveform, the conventional assumption that it is a mere "superposition" of the desired music with an additive noise source becomes less useful in practice, (since the noise source has virtually no useful descriptive parameters). Approximating the noise so it can be subtracted out requires many assumptions about the noise shape; alternatively, you can work on a few seconds of the audio at a time and tune your parameters manually. As has been noted above, this kind of manual remastering will require a lot of time and effort tweaking parameters, even if you have very sophisticated tools. The end result may still be noisy. Conversely, sometime a simple equalizer or level adjustment is all you need to improve the quality - and those operations are fairly straightforward one-shot processes. Nimur (talk) 15:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It is pretty much so, although I often wonder on how Legend Films pulled off such a restoration job on Shirley's films audio-wise. They did a good job at the deep bass tones and stuff when I watched Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, but like what you said earlier, it won't be of trivial matter considering the age of the film and how degraded the footage was. Blake Gripling (talk) 02:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

return

In a function in C, one uses return value to return a value back to main. What happens when there is no value following return? Does it return nothing or all the values?

for example:

main()
 ...
void printfunction(char file[])
 ...
  printf("\n\nThe file reversed:\n");
  for(count2=0;count2<=count;count2++)
    printf("%c",original[count-count2]);

  return;
}

-- penubag  (talk) 09:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

As the declaration of the function says, it returns a void - i.e. nothing. If you were to try to use the return value:

    retval = printfunction(filname);

then you would get a compile error. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If the return type of a function is void, it does not return a value, and the only valid return-statement is on the form return;. Otherwise, the return-statement must contain an expression convertible to the function's return type. In any case, the function main shall have a return type of int. If your program does not match these requirements, anything can happen. decltype (talk) 09:43, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, I see. So it has the same effect as return void or not having anything?-- penubag  (talk) 10:08, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Well yes, except that "return void;" is not valid. So for a function with void return type, "return;" simply ends execution of that function and returns to the calling function. decltype (talk) 10:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It may be worth saying that you don't need to put a return at the end of a void function; if you simply hit the end of the function body (the last }) you'll exit the function just fine. You use return in a void function when you want to exit it other than at the end (which some, but not all, programmers think is a bad thing: see for example [1]). (You can also return early from a function that returns a value; you must supply each return statement with a value, though they need not be the same.) --Tardis (talk) 16:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, if you follow the Single-Entry Single Exit methodology, you are unlikely to have any return statements at all in your void functions. There could still be one at the very end, but I believe most people would consider it redundant. decltype (talk) 15:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

From what I can remember, main() is legal in pre-ANSI C, but not necessarily in ANSI C. int main() is legal in both, void main() is illegal in both. ("Illegal" meaning "causes undefined behaviour", meaning it might work all perfectly under some particular operating system, but there's nothing whatsoever guaranteeing it won't make the entire computer explode under another operating system.) main() has three standard return values: 0, EXIT_SUCCESS and EXIT_FAILURE, of which the first two mean the same thing. Any other return value is implementation-dependent. Falling off main() without returning anything counts as returning 0, but main() is the only function guaranteed to do that. For any other function returning anything other than void, falling off the function without returning anything causes undefined behaviour. JIP | Talk 20:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

What does "all the values" mean? Also, it's not at all the question you were asking, but it's probably important: your array original probably has length count. Yet the first time through the loop what you try to print is original[count], which is a bad thing. --Tardis (talk) 16:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this! -- penubag  (talk) 20:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Symbols, colors, fonts won't copy into email

I'm reposting this question from Vchimpanzee, who asked some follow-up questions after the thread was archived. I've added a question to VChimpanzee for more detailed info. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Referring back to this question:[2]

I now find myself unable to copy and paste this information into emails. Is this something new in Internet Explorer 8?

I do recall warnings that I was telling the computer to do something unsafe and that was stopped, but I hardly see where just the symbols would cause a problem. I do remember video or something else moving and I was told don't use Explorer. I stay away from Firefox and use plain text when possible, but copying the symbols manually is such a pain. Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:43, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

No. The problem is not IE8. Probably, your email client is set to using just plain text. If you switch to using html, it should work (at least sort-of-work). See E-mail#Plain_text_and_HTML. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 21:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what that means. I just go to the web site of the email service and sign in (#Webmail in the above article). It doesn't seem to matter what computer or what address, but there is a problem with this now.

I'd rather do plain text but sometimes don't because copying the symbols is a pain.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Update: while I couldn't see the text with the symbols and fonts, it did go through.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:47, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

To get a more specific answer, it would be helpful if you stated which email client you use, or, if you use a webmail service, which service you use (gmail, yahoo etc). It would also be helpful if you provided a link to a web page with contents that you want to copy and paste into your email. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Fun Ti 83 Calculator programs

What are some cool TI 83 calculator programs?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 18:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• [3]. --Michael White^T·C 18:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

ticalc.org is the most comprehensive site to find programs. I remember playing a multiplayer Bomberman type game back in high school. I think it required MirageOS which can be a little tricky to work with. Caltsar (talk) 18:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Wonderful Special Effects on Wordpress

Just have a look at this wordpress blog. See the wonderful "snowfall". How can I do same on my own wordpress ?

 Jon Ascton  (talk) 18:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The first google hit for "wordpress snowflakes" answers the question, but unless your blog is about falling snowflakes I'd file this under "blink tag". --Sean 18:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Like this http://www.sjbaker.org ? Well, go to [4] - copy the javascript from that paste into your own web page right below the BODY tag at the top of the file. Then find the place where it says "var snowsrc=" ...and delete the URL and change it to just "snow.gif". Then make a small GIF image of a snowflake (or just a white circle - like I did) with a transparent background and place that into a file in the same directory as your web page...and you're done! (If you're feeling super-lazy, you can steal http://www.sjbaker.org/snow.gif - which I hereby release under the GFDL and Creative commons yadda yadda yadda (yes, it's a 16x16 pixel white circle, created with all of my very best, professional graphics skills so it's a valuable contribution to society...enjoy!) SteveBaker (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

(Revised: I made a spinning snowflake - it's even more annoying than the circles!) SteveBaker (talk) 20:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Function templates with Microsoft cl.exe compiler

With the following lines of code:

template <class T>
T max(T x, T y)
{
    return (x > y) ? x : y;
};

For the line T max(T x, T y), I get the error c2027 stating "use of undefined type 'T'." I've tried putting "typename" in front of all possible permutations of the Ts on that line, but to no avail. What format does the Microsoft compiler require for function templates? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 19:52, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm guessing a little here, but they are probably guarding against pathological cases. Declared in the manner you describe, the size of the return type (and the parameter type, which needs to be copied) could be near infinite, which could cause problems. If you declare it to return a T&, it should work per this KB article, assuming I'm reading it right. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 21:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That KB article is about code like template<class T> foo() {...}, which is not legal C++, not template<class T> T foo() {...}, which is legal. -- BenRG (talk) 23:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I know, but as it happens, it documents a perfectly legal version of the function they are trying to write. As such, I was speculating that the difference involved might be the source of the problem. Seeing your post below, I'm guessing that the problem is completely different (possibly related to an error in the code using it, as opposed to the code declaring it), but the C++ compiler is doing its usual thing of providing useless error messages. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 23:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The code is legal C++ and should work. And it does for me (Microsoft C++ version 15.00.21022.08 for x86). Is this part of a larger program? The error might be caused by an instantiation of the template rather than the template itself.

Incidentally, the semicolon after the close brace is not necessary and most people would consider it unidiomatic. It is legal, though. -- BenRG (talk) 23:15, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to make pclaf.obj using pclaf.cpp and pclaf.h at http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~budd/Books/oopintro2e/info/slides/chap19/slide1.htm by typing C:\>cl /c pclaf.cpp when I get the error. 71.161.61.41 (talk) 00:16, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The problem (and I feel silly for not guessing this earlier) is that min and max are already defined as macros in an included header, so the compiler is seeing something like template <class T> T (T x > T y ? T x : T y) { return ... }. You can work around this by #undefing them before defining the templates. This is very old code, predating the ISO C++ standard, and would need a fair amount of cleanup to compile under recent versions of Microsoft C++ (which, unlike earlier versions, adhere pretty closely to the standard). -- BenRG (talk) 00:55, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! 71.161.61.41 (talk) 00:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the stray semicolon makes the program ill-formed, assuming that max is in the global namespace, and not a class member function template. A few compilers actually do diagnose it (most don't). decltype (talk) 15:26, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

An aside: you only need to stick "typename" in when the compiler might guess wrong about whether a template-parameter-qualified name is a value or a type. "T::foo" could require "typename" because the compiler doesn't know if foo is like "typedef int foo;" or "static void foo() {}" in class T. It defaults to interpreting as a value, so if it's a type you'll need to say so with "typename T::foo". Since your example doesn't contain any scope resolution operators (double colons) at all, you would never need "typename". --Sean 16:08, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I was surprised to see we didn't have a typename article, so I added one. --Sean 18:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Why School and Library Computers Don't Suffer Often from Viruses

Why do the computers at schools and libraries don't suffer from viruses and malware as much as personal computers despite their high traffic? All of these public computers I have used erase everything stored on the computer when rebooted; could this be one of the reasons? Would setting up a personal computer like this (one that erases everything when shutdown) effectively eliminate all malware/viruses? 128.84.178.36 (talk) 20:04, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Not all, no. If you get infected while logged in and then create some documents which also become infected, and send them via e-mail, or whatever, you'd still be propagating the malware. The hard disk wipe does help a lot, though. When the hard disk gets wiped at the end of a session, the malware gets wiped, too. Trouble with doing this on your home PC would be that you could no longer change its configurations, add programs, store any documents locally. Tempshill (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Most malware these days isn't viruses, and mostly gets onto machines because someone let them (they fell for a scam and downloaded and ran something they shouldn't, or ran some program emailed to them under a deceptive guise). Machines set up as kiosks generally take some simple security measures with this in mind:

• the ordinary user is an unprivileged account (and not an admin), and that account has its abilities heavily curtailed using the system security policy
• the administrator is a professional, and is hopefully either very experienced or pretty well qualified
• anti-virus and anti-spyware software are kept up to date
• there usually isn't an email client (or it's disabled); users use webmail (which is generally less likely to transmit malware effectively to the machine).

So, for the merely incompetent users such a machine mostly gets, these sensible security measures are mostly sufficient. They do the blank-and-restore thing as an additional protection, and for protection against local users with malicious intent. For a single-user home machine, blank-and-restore is overkill, and if you're technical enough to set that up properly, you're technical enough not to get malware in the first place. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Another major reason they are probably not often infected is their rigorous policy that users do not log in with accounts that have administrator rights, so system files can't get infected. Most home and small business users just blindly use admin accounts all the time. Tempshill (talk) 20:15, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

This is the crux of the difference between almost all home run computers, and computers that follow basic security guidelines. A current version of Windows with the latest security patches and a properly restricted user account is resistant to almost all viruses/malware. Antivirus tools are little more than a safety net for haphazard users with too much privilege on the system. It cannot be stressed enough, if you want to stop problems before they start, give users only enough privilege to log in and do exactly what they need to do. Also, one more comment about the flush-at-reboot approach, this is obviously more final (especially if you boot up from unwritable CD or DVD and the hard drive is completely wiped) and it doesn't have to be impractical. There are "live CD" boot images for many major operating systems that are easy to obtain, can be customized, and include a lot of features. If the original question was asked with the intention of building a more robust computer for, say, a less computer fluent family member that won't require constant support to remove malware and correct configuration mixups, this may be a good approach to take. --Jmeden2000 (talk) 21:18, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It's likely that most schools and libraries enjoy the services of one or several professional computer experts in a dedicated I.T. Department who are specifically employed to set up the computers and the network they're on securely, to install the best available security programs, to keep those programs fully up to date, and to actively monitor the network for problems, external attacks, etc: certainly that's the case in the commmercial companies with comparable equipment that I've worked at. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 00:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

When I was in college, my school's computer lab was staffed by students. They weren't the most knowledgeable people in the world.

Anyway, one of the lab computers we'd remote-desktop into got a really bad virus. We weren't administrators, and the system ran a fully-patched version of Windows Server 2003. It spread to three other computers. Removal of adminship will stop many viruses, but some will still be able to infect the computer using buffer overflows or by running under the system account at startup. I read about an exploit the other day that allows you to give yourself administrative privilages in a Vista machine. In later years, the lab used machines with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and I never saw those machines become infected.--Drknkn (talk) 04:40, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Some hints for using library and other restricted (so called "kiosk mode") setups:

(1) Use web-mail. (Duh.)

(2) Save favorites by copy/pasting them in a draft e-mail in your web-mail account.

(2b) You can then shift-click on the draft e-mail to get a full page of favorites. This works about as well as the normal favorites of the browser, and saves a lot of typing. Also you can mail your favorites to your other/backup e-mail accounts.

(3) Save image files you want to keep to a temp directory, and then attach them to a draft e-mail.

(3b) If saving temp files is not allowed, copy paste the whole page in a draft e-mail. This creates large e-mails, so use a web-mail service with lots of room. E.g. GMail.

I am actually writing this from a library computer. 195.35.160.133 (talk) 11:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC) Martin.

How can I tell what Bluetooth profile a USB dongle supports

I found a USB Bluetooth adapter behind my desk. How can I tell what class and profile it supports? There's no manufacturer name. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If you plug it into a Linux machine and type lsusb it will show you the device's manufacturer and model number, give you something to put into Google to find info on the device. I think in Windows there's something similar in the DeviceManager (I'll get back to you on that). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, the Windows Device Manager (on 7 at least) has lots of USB properties for installed devices, but none reports the useful info that lsusb does. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:29, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Right-click any device and select properties. From this page select the details tab and then just scroll through the "Property" choices to find the information you want. The most useful ones are "Hardware Ids", "Bus relations" and "Device Instance Path" (which between them will tell you the manufacturer/model (if it's actually saved in the USB hardware) and Googling the Device ID will usually give you more information. ZX81 ^talk 20:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

So yeah, I'm using a Mac, so none of those options are available. Looking through Wikipedia, I found a photo of it. It's the exact one listed in the Bluetooth entry here [5] --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:57, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

CSS "tabs"/indents

So I'm trying to make a page that looks something like this:

January 1	Something Exciting Goes Here. Here is some more information.
February 5	Something Exciting Goes Here. Here is some more information.
May 3	Something Exciting Goes Here. Here is some more information.

...and so on. Except, I'd like (for a variety of reasons), to do it without tables. Is there any way to get this kind of tab-like behavior? Indents don't seem to help much, because I can't separate the date and first line. Putting a margin-right on the date doesn't work because the lengths of any individual date can vary (e.g. "May 5" is fewer characters than "February 5" and so it looks incorrect). In Microsoft Word, this would be accomplished with tabs, but I don't see any obvious CSS equivalents.

Any thoughts? --Mr.98 (talk) 21:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Make each date block a float:left div, each of the right "column" another float:left div, and do a clear:left between the row. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:08, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Like this:

January 1

Here is some
information.

January 2

Here is some
more information.

January 3

Here is yet
more information.

Of course in practice you'd use CSS classes and a stylesheet (which I can't readily do on Wikipedia), making your html very simple.-- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:12, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That's clever, but it doesn't quite work for what I'm doing. One of the reasons I'm trying to avoid using a table is because I'm floating an image to the right of all this text (I know, how complicated can I make this? I swear it's not really that complex a layout visually!), and doing that with all of these other floats makes some weird things happen if the "some information" text is long (which it is in some cases)—it'll float the DIVs near the image in weird ways, like this:

January 1

Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information.

January 1

Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information.

January 1

Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information. Here is some information.

Bleh. Any other ideas? :-/ --Mr.98 (talk) 21:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

OK! I figured it out. If I don't make the info floating, and instead just give it a margin-left of the right size, then the above works OK. Great! Thanks. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:04, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I figured out a way with floating: http://mcwalter.org/unlinked/css_table/index.html (with stylesheet at http://mcwalter.org/unlinked/css_table/fin.css). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

A definition list is good for data pairings. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

domain cloaking, etc.

I run a page at a URL like http://myuniversity.edu/dept/ . It is hosted by the university in question. Unfortunately the university's IT department is pretty backwards and the web options are pretty artificially constrained. I would like to have the hosting provided by a commercial host, like bluehost.com or dreamhost.com or whatever. The problem is, I need the URL to look the same (it still needs to be http://myuniversity.edu/dept/) and it needs to be seamless (that is, if you go to myuniversity.edu/dept/aspecificpage.html, it would have to work correctly and still appear to be at myuniversity.edu).

What specifically would the university IT people have to do in order to make the .edu domain point to the commercial host servers? How technically difficult would this be (especially considering that ONLY the "/dept/" directory would point to these servers—the rest of the university's pages would obviously still be hosted on university servers)? This is normally consider "domain cloaking", I believe, but I don't really know how it works on the back-end, or how it would work in the case of a single directory on a domain (and not the whole domain).

Does anyone know what this would involve? Goofy half-solutions (e.g. loading all the pages via AJAX or something) are not really acceptable possibilities. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I can almost guarantee that your university will not change their DNS records for you which is required to do what you ask. The only other options are to do half-solutions that can be quite a pain and aren't really adequate. Framing a site is a popular one in this case. The cleanest way I can think of to show the other URL is legit is to have a link on your .edu page that says something like "due to technical restrictions, this department's homepage is located at x.url." Of course, University policy can be pretty backwards even when this is taken into account so ask about this first. You could also possibly get funds to set up your own server for the department where your options are less constrained by the normal IT department. I am, of course, assuming that this is a site for a full department at the university. Caltsar (talk) 21:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Framing and linking offsite won't work, no... it will look pretty cheesy and the whole goal is to not look cheesy. ;-)

If I know exactly what the DNS requirements are (e.g., what exactly they will need to do), I have a good chance of getting them to do it (not because they care a wit about me, but because the person I work for is pretty close with the head of their IT department and can get things pushed through if need be), but I will need to know exactly what is to be done (because the IT people will not know how to do it and won't want to bother with it otherwise). (Oh, if only the IT department didn't see the need to do everything in-house in the first place...) --Mr.98 (talk) 21:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

DNS doesn't have anything to do with directories, and can't be used to make just one directory appear on a different server. A Reverse proxy, if supported by the webserver on myuniversity.edu, can forward requests to /dept/ to a third server, making it seemless from the browser's point of view.82.75.185.247 (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

OK... blah. Reverse proxies look like a lot of work. Hmm. Dang. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Another option is to actually host your own server at something like "yourserver.yourschool.edu", which is a lot easier than getting a subdirectory of another web host to point to your machine. Would that be an acceptable solution? Nimur (talk) 22:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Copying URLs to clipboard

I am using WinXP and IE8.

I would like to be able to highlight some text on a webpage (or just indicate the whole page) and have all the explicit URLs there copied to my clipboard while the rest of the text is ignored: is there any quick way to do this please rather than copying each URL individually? I only want to copy the visible URLs, I do not want to copy any weblinks where the text of the URL is not visible to the eye.

Second question, is there any quicker way to copy a visible URL to the clipboard other than highlighting it, right clicking, and choosing 'copy' from the menu? 89.242.105.246 (talk) 21:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

2nd question: You don't have to highlight the URL; just right-click it. Tempshill (talk) 21:41, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

2nd question: Alt+D, Ctrl+C. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, 89.242.105.246 seems interested in gathering addresses spelled out in text, but not interested in clickable links on the page. The only solutions I can think of involve writing a script or program.

Here's an AutoHotkey script that lets you select text, then press F12 to put just the URLs on the clipboard. (In this script, a URL is considered to be text that begins with http:// or https:// )

F12::

  Send ^c
  ClipWait
  cb := Clipboard . " "

  out := ""
  currentpos := 1

  Loop
  {

    matchpos := RegExMatch(cb, "(https?://.+?)\s", url, currentpos)

    if (matchpos = 0)
      break

    out .= url1 . "`r`n"
    currentpos := matchpos + StrLen(url1)

  }

  Clipboard := out

return

For example, with this script loaded, I clicked on this page, pressed Ctrl+A, F12, and the clipboard contained

http://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/)
http://192.168.1.1/
http://www.sjbaker.org
http://www.sjbaker.org/snow.gif
http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~budd/Books/oopintro2e/info/slides/chap19/slide1.htm
http://mcwalter.org/unlinked/css_table/index.html
http://mcwalter.org/unlinked/css_table/fin.css).
http://myuniversity.edu/dept/
http://myuniversity.edu/dept/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing"

--Bavi H (talk) 04:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I've installed AutoHotKey and run the script. However unfortunately on closer inspection many of the URLs I want to copy only make visible a shortened version of themselves on the webpage, putting in dots where parts of the URL has been skipped, while the underlying URL that I want to copy is complete. Is there any quick and easy way to mass-copy these URLs into the clipboard please? Thanks. 92.29.42.147 (talk) 13:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I misunderstood and thought you wanted to gather mainly plain text addresses that aren't clickable links. But it sounds like you're interested in the addresses of clickable links, but only certain kinds.

Here's a way you can see the addresses of all the links on a page in Internet Explorer 8: Click on the Tools button, then click on Developer Tools. In the Developer Tools window, click on the View menu, then click Link Report. This will open a new tab that shows the address of every link on the page. This might make it easier to copy the addresses you want normally or with the AutoHotkey script above. --Bavi H (talk) 04:07, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I tried that, Unfortunately that produces lots of URLs, and it is difficult to identify the ones I want. Perhaps I should have a go at extending your script myself. Is there any way to identify the underlying URL (in the source code) that the visible URL refers to please? Or to filter all the URLs in the source code and only copy those that include a particular text string? Thabks again. 92.27.148.85 (talk) 12:55, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

AutoHotkey uses the plain-text version of the clipboard, so it can't access the addresses of links you select on a normal webpage. However, if you select text on the Link Report list, then the text of the link (which AutoHotkey can access) is the same as the address of the link. So you can select all the text on the Link Report, then run the script to get a list of all the addresses on to the clipboard. Here are some ideas to make that list more useful:

• If you sort the list, that might make it easier to identify the addresses you want. Add the line Sort, out right before Clipboard := out
• Read the AutoHotkey help file pages "RegExMatch()" and "RegEx Quick Reference" to learn how to change the filter in the script.

--Bavi H (talk) 17:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, here's a completely different idea. I know installing another web browser is a large step to take. But in Opera, you can go to Tools, Links to see a list of links on the page. (It looks like this: opera links.gif.) You can click on the column headers to sort (or unsort) the list by name or address, and you can type in the little search box to filter the list. Then you can Shift+click or Ctrl+click to select multiple links you want, then use Copy (Ctrl+C; Edit, Copy; or right-click, Copy) to copy just the addresses. --Bavi H (talk) 18:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Sensitive Data What to do ?

Well, is there some way I can hide my important .doc, .txt and picture files. Of course I know about "hide" command but anyone can tick the "show hidden files" option and see them. I mean no one can see them no matter how hard they try. Or a part of my harddisk becomes inacessible to anyone but me...?

 Jon Ascton  (talk) 22:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You could create a TrueCrypt volume on your disk. To anyone else, this will just be a single file containing data that appear to be random. If you click on the file, you will be prompted for a password to mount the disk. After having given the password, the volume looks just like a second hard disk for the remainder of the session. You could save and edit your sensitive data there. The safety of the data, will of course depend on the strength of the password you choose. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:36, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Bruce Schneier's advice in this regard is here. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Sony 16GB S Series Walkman Video MP3 Player -- Windows 2000 support

I may soon get a "Sony 16GB S Series Walkman Video MP3 Player" (model NWZ-S545). However, my operating system is Windows 2000, which Sony's "Content Transfer" program claims to not support. I'd personally prefer not to use Content Transfer anyway, but I want to be able to use the player. A review online says that when you use a different operating system, it accesses the player as a USB mass storage device, which I assume I'd greatly prefer over having to use Sony's middle-man program on my old, slow computer.

Does anyone have this player, and use or have access to Windows 2000? If so, can you tell me whether I'll be able to properly get my files onto it (hopefully just as a regular removable storage device)? For the record, I have nothing that is DRM-protected, so that's no issue. Also, if I have to use MediaMonkey to transfer, I can do so. ---4.251.126.53 (talk) 22:39, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If the MP3 player is USB Mass storage device compliant then it means that when you plug it into a Windows 2000 computer (or newer) then it will operate like a USB pen drive, so you will we able to simply copy over music files in the same way you would copy over other files to a USB pen drive. Depending on the player's configuration you may have to copy them to a specific folder on the player, but otherwise you won't need any software to copy of your files at all. Rjwilmsi 20:17, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The review that I read said that when using Windows, you have to access the device in MTP mode. I'm not too familiar with that, as I've never gone above Windows 2000. One of their complaints in the end summary was that they were forced to use MTP. However, they said that in other operating systems it uses UMS. The reason I'm confused is because W2K doesn't even have an MTP mode, so I'd assume that the computer would just treat it as mass storage by default... but I don't know. --4.251.126.205 (talk) 21:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

December 4

Funny shapes in scanned images

Like many other scanned images I've seen, this picture (taken from a Google Books scan of an 1890s book) has funny shapes that presumably comes from the scanning process. Not all Google Books images have these shapes uniformly, as you can see at this image, but most seem to have them to some extent. What causes these shapes to appear? Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's Moiré fringing - cause by the beat frequency between the halftoning grid in the original image and the pixels in the camera/scanner. Scanning the image at much higher resolution - and using appropriate filtering to down-size the image can get rid of this - but sadly, it's a common artifact in amateur scanning. SteveBaker (talk) 02:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Some scanning software has an option called "Descreening" which is designed to reduce this effect. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous

I don't know if this is the right sort of question for the reference desk, but what are your views on the internet group Anonymous, are they a serious threat, or are they like a little brother whining for attention? Thank you for your time.

Americanfreedom (talk) 05:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I would say that your suspicions are correct - it's not the right sort of question for the Reference Desk as any answer other than linking the Wikipedia article would be a forum discussion. And since you linked the relevant article yourself, you imply that you've already read it, meaning there's probably nothing else to do or say here, so let's just move along shall we? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 09:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous is a joke. A bunch of fake hackers pretending to exist in an unstructured collective, which is actually highly structured. Anonymous never was an never will be a part of the hacking scene. The war on Scientology is naive and immature —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

@88.44.55.75 Anon: I have scored your comment out to avoid a debate, according to the guidelines, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines#What_the_reference_desk_is_not. We're here to answer factual questions, not discuss. --81.101.121.181 (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Spell check in MS Word

I am proof checking a document of about 250 pages, created by someone else in Word 2003. I can see with the naked eye that it contains many spelling errors (not just matters of style such as labour/labor, but things like advnatage instead of advantage). Yet when I run spell check none of these errors are picked up. I get a message telling me that spell check is complete, but that text marked in some particular way (I forget the detail) has not been checked. How can I force Word to check ALL the document? I have spent ages with the online help routine and can't find any clue about this.

Thanks for any help. Maid Marion (talk) 08:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Try Tools, Language, Set Language and check that "Do not check spelling or grammar" isn't checked. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Phil, but this made no difference - I still get the same result. Having done it again, I can now tell you all what the exact message is: Text marked with 'Do not check spelling or grammar' was skipped. But presumably there should not be any such text now that I have followed Phil's suggestion? Maid Marion (talk) 11:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you need to look for Tools, Spelling & Grammar, Options, Recheck Document ... this forces a recheck of words previously marked to be ignored - which may be your issue. It's worth double-checking all the options on the Options list, lest any of them have silly configurations. Also check the the language of the document is set appropriately - CTRL-A, Tools, Language, Set Language. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Should have said - select all the document before you set the checking options. --Phil Holmes (talk) 12:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you, but none of this seems to solve the problem. Not to worry - I guess I'll just have to rely on old-fashioned 'manual' proofreading. 86.146.15.100 (talk) 16:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hey - don't give up! I think there are some "features" in the way Word allows you to change the language. On my system, either selecting all, or selecting more than about 5 pages mean that the change doesn't "stick". (You can check by selecting the "undo" down-arrow and see that you can't undo the change, since it hasn't been made). Try selecting less text (including some you know is wrong) and change the setting. I think this will work. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you could create a new Microsoft Word document and copy/paste the entire contents of the first one into it? That might enable you to bypass oddities in the old document that are causing this problem. Do you have significant formatting in the document? If you simply have text, or if text formatting isn't used very much, you could copy the text into Notepad and then into a new Word document; while that would get rid of good formatting, it would guarantee that there was no odd formatting in the text itself. Nyttend (talk) 18:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

... and you might just check that the mis-spelt words have not been accidentally included in a user dictionary (e.g. Custom.dic). Go to Tools --> Options --> Spelling & Grammar ... and tick the box "Suggest from main dictionary only". Dbfirs 13:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Isn't the 'Do not check spelling or grammar' setting a per-paragraph style setting? You might need to select all the text and flick that setting back and forth a few times to make it propogate the change across all the styles. However, copying it all to a new document is a good idea and will let you impose a consistant set of styles across the whole document; and it might reduce the size of the .doc file as well. Astronaut (talk) 16:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Apologies if this is obvious to you, but don't rely just on Spellcheck; it won't flag words that have been misspelled as another valid word, or some grammar mistakes - you really need to read the whole thing yourself line by line, paying attention to meaning, and possibly also to consistency of punctuation and layout (parts of what are sometimes called "house style"). As a former professional editor and proofreader, I can confirm that proof checking requires much more concentration and mental effort than ordinary reading. Checking on screen is strangely harder than on paper, so consider printing the material out if you haven't already. You may find it helps to hold a ruler under each line to deliberately slow your reading speed down and thus avoid accidentally skimming over mistakes without noticing them. Watch out for errors in larger-print, like chapter titles - they're easy to miss. Proof checking a 250-page document is not a trivial task - I'd guesstimate it to be at least 30 hours or so of hard work. Good luck! 87.81.230.195 (talk) 00:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Animation

To make an animation, I used Photoshop CS4 on a Macbook and created pictures frame by frame. Is there any software that can link all these images together to make a gif animation?--153.20.24.68 (talk) 09:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Photoshop CS4 can make animated GIFs: File --> Save for Web. That's assuming you used the animation palette to make the frames -- which you did, right?--Drknkn (talk) 09:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Put in a more helpful way: in CS4, go to Window > Animation. In the lower-right corner of the window created will be a button that, when you hover your mouse over it, says "Convert to Frame Animation." If you click that, it'll make a frame of animation with whatever you have visible, labeled "1". If you create a new frame (labeled "2"), whatever layers you enable in that will be the second frame. And so on. Once you have all of these frames set up (and the timings between the frames what you want them to be), then you can Save as Web, and save it as an Animated GIF. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

convert *.gif w00tpie.gif ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Google Search

Suppose there is a url as: "www.somesite.com\someDir1\someFile.jar". Now, suppose I need to find all the links from the web that point to the files located under someDir1. How do I do that (using google or any other engine)? 218.248.80.113 (talk) 12:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

First of all, the directory separator in Internet URLs is "/", not "\" as in Windows. To answer your question, I think that you can use "search terms link:www.somesite.com/someDir1" in Google, but I am not sure. Perhaps it will only find links to the exact page "www.somesite.com/someDir1". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The "link:<URL>" method appears not to be working very well in Google, I must say, though. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Font ID request

In this picture the font used for "THE 50 BEST Ice-cream parlours", as well as the bolded names of the winners below. A heavier weight can be seen here... I tried WhatTheFont to no avail! Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►senator─╢ 17:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks at first glance like something in the Myriad family. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Very close, but not quite: the tops of the 'y' slope differently, and the horizontal stroke of the 'n'... :( ╟─TreasuryTag►directorate─╢ 17:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It is very similar to both Congress Sans Light and PTL Maurea, although there are subtle differences (in at least the 'a' and 'e' and slightly in 'r'). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, they're exactly the same two that MyFonts suggested for the first image :P ╟─TreasuryTag►UK EYES ONLY─╢ 17:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Closer still is Agilita Light. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Or Linotype Trade Gothic Roman. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Whitney ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

so, my laptop is completely destroyed, again.

The screen comes up as just lots of strange coloured lines, I think I can sort of see the desktop through them, and still open files on it, but in a strange blured and barely visible way, and many times over across the screen space. Is there any way of getting everything off? Can I plug it into another screen somehow and still use that, can I plug something in and copy all my files over onto that, and would I have to select everything on the desktop to copy over, as I can't see which is which, would that even work? Is there anything I can do to make it look better and easier to work with?

my sister's laptop, which is the same, had a grafics problem a few days ago, though I am not sure mine has the same problem, if it is, if the grafics driver has broken down, what do I do then? Would I have to send it to the mechanics, or can I fix it myself?

148.197.114.158 (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that's its the connections between the body of the laptop and the screen. It'll probably work if you get a screen from a desktop and plug it into the VGA plug on your laptop.

I tried that, there doesn't seem to be anywhere the right shape for the plug though. I think my laptop is too new. Or the screen too old. 148.197.114.158 (talk) 19:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

If you told us the type of laptop it was, we could probably tell you what kind of plug it would be. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's... one of those ones that fold in half. It says Medion on the top, beyond that i don't know though. Whichever plug it might be though, it seems I don't have one, and if I did I'm not sure the other end of the wire would plug in anywhere. It seems incompatible for any wire from any screen I have ever seen. Perhaps there is some other way?148.197.114.158 (talk) 22:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Should be a model number on the bottom or someplace. You should have a Video Graphics Array or a Digital Visual Interface connector. If your display uses VGA, you can get an adapter from DVI. In the worst case, the hard drive can be removed and an adapter cable for USB attached to connect it to another PC so you can recover the data. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:54, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem could be a problem with the screen, a problem with the graphics card, or a problem with the graphics drivers. If you can see the BIOS screen before any sign of the operating system, then it is graphics drivers which are faulty (to test that theory further, try booting from a CD - perhaps a Linux Live CD - which will use a different graphics driver). Assuming you are using Windows, you can press F8 to force the computer to bring up a menu where you can select "safe mode" which will let you delete the existing graphics driver and install a new one.

The other two possibilities will require a repair. If you connect an external monitor (there is usually an external VGA interface on laptops) and the problem is gone it means the screen is faulty. If the problem is still there then graphics card is faulty. You can visit Medion Support if you click here, which provides various options including emailing them and calling their hotline (open 7 days a week). This page describes how to find your laptop (or notebook) ID number which you will need. If it is out of warranty, you will have to pay for a repair which could be very expensive.

One thing to note is that laptop repair usually make no guarantees about keeping your data, especially if sending it away. Ask their advice about whether you can simply remove the hard drive before sending it for repair, or whether you should back up your stuff. Btter still, try to get them to do a "on-site" repair (I had a similar sounding problem with my laptop about a year ago; the on-site repair was quick and efficient, and free because it was under warranty). Astronaut (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like good advice, only trouble is I have no idea what a BIOS or a Linux live is, and I can't actually get into safe mode or back anything up, because I can't see the screen well enough to know what I am doing on it. And my laptop doesn't have a VGA interface. It seems to have one of those DVI things, though I have never seen a plug for one of those anywhere. I think I will take it back home, see what my parents think, we should be able to work something out, and at least everything on it seems to still be there, somewhere. It was a lot worse last time. 148.197.114.158 (talk) 13:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The BIOS screen is the first thing the computer displays. Before windows starts, so if the problem exists from the moment you turn on your computer then it's likely that it's not the drivers that are at fault. [6] for a the live CD, you will also need a program for burning bootable CD's and a computer from which to burn CD's. DVI to VGA adaptors are availiable, ask at your local computer store. Taemyr (talk) 10:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If anyone still cares, it suddenly started working properly again after a few days, but still no sign exactly what was wrong. 80.47.153.175 (talk) 19:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Excel Formula Help

 Done

I’m looking for some help with an Excel formula. I think I’m pretty savy with Excel, but just cannot seem to figure this one out. THANKS for any solutions.

In Column A, I have text in each row that’s one of: TR, Plunge, SW, Central, or KCM.

In Column B, I have a dollar amount in each row (i.e. $15.00). The amount varies.

I want a formula that does this:

If Column A contains TR or Plunge, then sum the amount for that row, found in Column B.

Example:

A	B
TR	$50
Plunge	$45
SW	$25
Central	$90
TR	$35

So with the formula, it would automatically scan Column A, see the Plunge and TR, then add the $50, $45 and $35 and show the total of $130.

Thanks for any suggestions! Rangermike (talk) 20:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think SumIf is probably what you want. It only takes one criteria (annoying, of course), but since your criteria is so simple you could easily use two of them. e.g. =SumIf(A1:A5, "Plunge", B1:B5)+SumIf(A1:A5, "TR", B1:B5). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

An alternative would be to use column C and enter the formula =IF(OR(A2="TR",A2="Plunge"),B2,0) and then sum the resulting figures. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for both suggestions! 64.85.199.27 (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

December 5

HP Laserjet M1120 vs Linux - CLOSED

 Done

Short and sweet ('s 2 am here and I'm dying): does anyone have any experience with HP's all-in-one M1120 on Linux (I'm running Zenwalk Linux specifically). Broader: which all-in-one, if any, would you guys/gals recommend? I know I will prefer a laser printer over an ink jet printer, and I'd like to have a scanner. Xeros machine functionality would be nice, but I'll live without it. No networking/fax/misc magical powers are really necessary. Thanks for your input, friends. Cheers, Ouro (blah blah) 00:35, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The open printing database quotes one person who says printing and scanning work (on Ubuntu at least) out of the box. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 02:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm gonna close this because I did some searching and I found that it's supposed to work thanks to the libraries hplip and foo2xqx. Thanks, Finlay, for your contribution! --Ouro (blah blah) 16:37, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

C

Two questions about C programming:

1. When I run a compiled C program from the terminal using the "exec" command, the terminal closes when the program finishes. How can I get it to stay open?

2. Consider the following code:

void main(void)
{
  // some lines of code
  check();         // Line A
  // some lines not calling check()
  check();         // Line B
  // more code
}

If no key was pressed between lines A and B, check() returns a one-item list containing 0. If a key was pressed, check() returns a list of values corresponding to the keys pressed, in the order that they were pressed. Furthermore, check() does not cause any break/pause/etc in the execution of the program.

Are there any functions that can be used to create check()?

If it's pertinent, I use Code::Blocks and GCC. 72.197.202.36 (talk) 00:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Don't use exec, or exec a command followed by a pause command of some sort (which really means you've spawned a new shell anywasy, so you may as well skip exec and just do program && pause && exit. Exec means the program replaces the shell, and when the program goes, so will the shell.
2. A non-blocking single character read would work, but real input handling is OS dependent. You'd need to give more details. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 00:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

For question 2, consider using keyboard hooks for a Windows system.--TParis00ap (talk) 04:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you want to use keyboard hooks, since that will capture all key activity even when your window doesn't have the input focus. For a Windows console application, ReadConsoleInput is the function you want (or just ReadFile if you don't care about mouse clicks and non-ASCII keys and such). To avoid blocking, you should first call WaitForSingleObject with a timeout of 0 to check whether there's anything available to read. To get keypresses immediately, instead of line by line, you need to use GetConsoleMode/SetConsoleMode to disable line input. The Linux equivalents are read, select/poll, and tcgetattr/tcsetattr. -- BenRG (talk) 02:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Can I use a RAID controller without any RAID?

I am trying to buy a cheap older computer to work as a data server in my house, and I already have a couple of large SATA drives already filled with data. I am looking at a Dell Dimension 8400 because the specs say it can take four SATA drives, and I think I'll buy another someday. When reading the manual it talks about RAID configurations 0 and 1, which both sound very nice, but if I understand them correctly neither is what I want. I want to keep the data on the drives (neither will have the OS), and I'd like to be able to a) remove them easily with everything working fine and b) take them to another computer, possibly as an external drive. So can I use a RAID controller in this manner? Thanks for your help. mislih 00:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

What you describe is called a JBOD ("just a bunch of disks"). That page you linked doesn't seem to mention RAID, so I guess that the machine doesn't come with one, and that you intend to install a PCI RAID (from someone like Adaptec), right? Every RAID controller I've ever used had a JBOD mode; but I'd check the specs of the specific RAID controller you're thinking about before buying one. Note that you can get a PCI SATA expansion card (that doesn't do hardware RAID) for a bit less than a RAID card (and, perhaps confusingly, you can still do RAID anyway, just with the OS and the CPU doing the work). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I picked this machine because it has four SATA ports on the motherboard as shown in the page I linked to above. When I read the manual is where it talks about RAID (the pdf I linked to is a pretty big). From other reading, I think it means the motherboard has 'fakeRAID' built in. Are you saying I can I run it in JBOD mode and get seperate disks? mislih 02:22, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

p22 talks about turning "RAID On", and talks about machines being delivered without that configuration. So that seems to me to be a pretty strong implication that, with RAID off, it's just a JBOD. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 02:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! mislih 04:19, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Be careful with the JBOD mode, in some cases it refers to a series of disks that the controller stitches together to form one logical disk. If you use the disks in this manner they will *not* be independently removable or transportable. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 17:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

adding Wikipedia search engine to my page

I would like to add Wikipedia search engine to http://sovietdream.com/researches/ , so that client would be taken to Wikipedia separate result page after entering search words to, that engine in my page. Could I get html code of such search engine? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.58.207.25 (talk) 08:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

my email - [redacted] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.58.207.25 (talk) 08:54, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

email removed to avoid questioner suffering spam. Question reformatted. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Here is the basic template used on most Wikipedia pages. It is pretty straightforward to modify; all I did was all the full en.wikipedia URL to the "action" value to make it portable.

<form action="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php" id="searchform">
	<input type='hidden' name="title" value="Special:Search"/>
	<input id="searchInput" title="Search Wikipedia" accesskey="f" value="" name="search" />
	<input type='submit' name="go" class="searchButton" id="searchGoButton"	value="Go" title="Go to a page with this exact name if one exists" />&nbsp;
	<input type='submit' name="fulltext" class="searchButton" id="mw-searchButton" value="Search" title="Search Wikipedia for this text" />
</form>

Enjoy. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Problem with MediaWiki code which I copied over to swfanon.wikia.com

Hey,

I copied {{Article issues}} over to the Star Wars Fanon Wiki: http://swfanon.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Mult_issues. I also copied over any other needed templates: {{DatedAI}}, {{Ambox}}, {{Ambox/core}} and {{ns0}}. Now, on Mult_issues/test, I cannot seem to get any of the parameters (which are all new, replaced ones, and no originals) to show up. Have I deleted a crucial bit of code? Or am I still lacking a certain template? Neither the Sysop nor I can figure out what's wrong with it. I hope you guys can do a better job ;-)

Thanks in advance, :-),--213.168.119.120 (talk) 09:30, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a lot of MediaWiki Extensions. Often, the more complicated templates on Wikipedia are deeply interwoven into these kinds of software modifications. All of them are freely available, and you can compare which sets are installed on Wikipedia's MediaWiki Version Information and the corresponding page on your wiki. I can't see any of the obvious ones missing (ParserFunctions is often missing on third-party wikis). All this is still hinging on the hunch that the trouble is based on a missing extension, which may not be the case, but it's what I would check first. Nimur (talk) 14:50, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

And they are often dependent on markup in MediaWiki:Common.css and code in MediaWiki:Common.css. See m:Help:Transwiki. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The last link should probably be MediaWiki:Common.js. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Find the center of a triangle in Blender

In Blender, I want to add a vertex at (I think) the circumcenter of a triangle. That is, a location equidistant to the three other points. Selecting the three points and choosing snap->cursor to selection doesn't do the job: it moves the cursor to (I think) the centroid, the average of the three points, instead. Any idea how to get my desired kind of center? This would be useful for constructing polyhedrons and probably for other things. 93.97.21.17 (talk) 11:19, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't use Blender, but the circumcenter is indeed equidistant from the three vertices, and can be constructed by drawing the perpendicular bisectors of the three sides. Does Blender have a routine for this? Dbfirs 13:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

If it does not, Blender supports Python scripting, so you can write your own routine. The math would be fairly simple to compute the circumcenter; the hardest part would be locating the API to access the current vertices and get their coordinates. That would be the list() routine to get your object name, followed by the getData() routine to get its mesh and vertices. We have a WikiBook on Blender Scripting which walks through an example of getting vertex information. In addition, the official manuals and tutorials are available from the Blender website. Nimur (talk) 14:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a most useful-looking wikibook, thanks for the link. 213.122.21.216 (talk) 15:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Force no redirects when searching

Hello all. I have attempted to solve this myself but I am not very good at these things. When I type a URL into my address bar (I use Firefox) and I make a typo, I get automatically redirected to Bing search for the typoed URL. 99.99% of the time what I want is to simply go back to the address bar and fix the letter I omitted or typed wrong and hit enter and I have no use for the search results. However, I can't do this since the URL has been changed to Bing's search URL. Is there a way to only go to exactly where I typed without being redirected (in the case of typos, I guess to nowhere with my browser saying the page cannot be found) so that the address in the URL is never changed for me. Thanks in advance.--68.160.242.48 (talk) 15:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

There are several things which might redirect you. Your ISP may redirect bad DNS lookups to a search URL - there's not much that can be done about this (though you can override the default DNS with an alternate public service). More likely problems which might be causing this are due to your browser - I find these "fixups" very irritating. (I am often on a private network with valid URLs like http://nimur. When I type "nimur" into my URL bar, I do not want a "keyword search," I want Firefox to go to the correct server). You can disable these irritating "auto-fixup" features by disabling "search from the address bar" and other "url fixup" options in Firefox. You can also download ClumsyFingers addon, which disables several shortcuts (like "ctrl-enter" to automatically append ".net" and other DNS changes). There may be some other specific tweaks for your browser to make sure that you get a true "Server not found" error message, rather than a redirect to a different computer, when you mistype a DNS name or URL. Note the important distinction between a typo that results in a host not found, and a 404 error.Nimur (talk) 19:22, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Assigning a string to a variable in C

With out doing it when I declare the variable, how can I assign a string to a variable?

For example:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#define STRSIZ 20

typedef struct inventory{
      char product_cat,    /* Catergory of each product */
           depart_name[STRSIZ],  /*Name of department*/
	  product_name[STRSIZ],   /* Name of the product */
      meat_type,              /* type of meat */
	  plants,	  /* fruit or veggie */
	  aisle_side,  /* side of asile */
	  nonfood_cat; /*category of nonfood item*/
      int cost_item;    /* Cost of item in cents */
      int packaging_date,  /* Date of packaging */
	  expiration_date, /* Date of expiration */
	  aisle_number;
} any_product;

int main (void)
{
  struct inventory any_product;
  char pad; /*absorbs stray \n from buffer */

  printf("Enter product category (M,P,D,C,N,Q): ");
  scanf("%c", &any_product.product_cat);
  printf("%c\n", any_product.product_cat);
  scanf("%c", &pad); /*absorbs stray \n from buffer */

  switch (any_product.product_cat)
     {
     case 'm':
     case 'M':
          printf("Meats\n");
          any_product.depart_name = "Meat department";
   ...

The last assignment doesn't work. How can I make it so it does? -- penubag  (talk) 20:41, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Use strcpy, like this:

         strcpy(any_product.depart_name, "Meat department");

of course, you want to be sure the text never exceeds 19 characters in length.

I can see several improvements that could be made, but I assume this is something in an early stage of development so I'll leave it to you to learn. Astronaut (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you much! Please tell me what can be improved. -- penubag  (talk) 21:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Here are three recommendations. First, never use scanf() unless you absolutely need to process freeform input. The fact that it does not distinguish between space and newlines for most purposes can be very confusing when you use it interactively. Instead, use fgets() to read in one line (of convenient size; allow for several hundred characters) and then use sscanf() to examine that line and see if it has the form you expect.

Second, when you #define the maximum size of something, make it the maximum size of the string and add 1 to get the array size. So instead of

 #define STRSIZ 20
 char depart_name[STRSIZ];

write

 #define STRSIZ 19
 char depart_name[STRSIZ+1];

Then STRSIZ tells you the actual maximum size of the string, which is more self-documenting and may also be useful if you find yourself needing to do arithmetic on it.

Third, learn the difference between declaring a struct template and typedeffing the type. Your first declaration did both at once. If you are going to refer to your struct types in the style "struct inventory", then you don't need to use typedefs. Typedef defines an alternate name for a type, which allows you to not use the keyword "struct" all the time. Personally I think that is a bad approach when working with structs, but some programmers prefer it. In this case you have (presuambly accidentally) typedeffed the name "any_product" to be a synonym for "struct inventory". This would have allowed you, when you wanted to declare the variable "any_product", to write "any_product any_product;"! In practice, most programmers who use typedefs for structs use the same name as the struct tag, so they write "typedef struct inventory inventory;" or "typedef struct inventory { (template here) } inventory", and then declare "inventory any_product;".

Hope this helps. --Anonymous, 09:26 UTC, December 6, 2009.

Thanks you very much. It does help! -- penubag  (talk) 23:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

How do I play a movie DVD in my computer?

I cannot get a movie DVD in my DVD drive to play, neither with Windows Media Player nor with VLC. What do I need to do to view the movie please? I have WinXP. 92.27.148.85 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

In order to play a DVD you need a DVD drive and the computer has to have the necessary software to interpret the DVD drive. Without those, VLC and Windows Media Player will not be of any use for playing a DVD. To start with the obvious, do you have a DVD player, rather than a standard CD player? Usually it tells you that it is a DVD player on the front of the drive. Falconus^{p t c} 21:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Try reading the top bit again please - it says "in my DVD drive". 92.27.148.85 (talk) 22:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

VLC contains the necessary software; it does not need an external codec to decode a DVD. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:42, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I tried trying to start it with VLC but nothing happened. 92.27.148.85 (talk) 22:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

VLC has a menu option (it's in "tools" on my machine) called "messages". Open that and retry to open the disk (using VLC's Media->open_disk option). The messages screen should display whatever VLC thinks is the error. Also try to play one of the (large) .VOB files on the disk by opening it in VLC. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, did that. The message box says "main error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called main error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called libmpeg2 error: invalid picture encountered" 78.146.29.54 (talk) 23:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It thinks the DVD files are corrupt (that they don't contain proper MPEG streams). Does this happen with all DVDs? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:59, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I've tried another DVD, and this time it plays, in a manner of speaking, but the image is very very very corrupted, nearly all garbage. The message box says: "main error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called main error: ES_OUT_RESET_PCR called libmpeg2 error: invalid picture encountered spudec error: overflow in SPU next command sequence libmpeg2 error: invalid picture encountered libmpeg2 error: invalid picture encountered libmpeg2 error: invalid picture encountered" with the last comments repeated many times. I am in the UK where PAL is used rather than NTSC. I do not know if that makes any difference to the DVD encoding. The previous DVD was "widescreen" according to the box. The other more recent DVD that I tried gives more information on the box: PAL 16:9, DVD-5, Region 2. I suppose the 16:9 proprtion means that was wide-screen as well.

When I tried to run the DVDs with Windows Media Player I got an error message saying "Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer." This lead to a webpage which said (edited): DVD Playback Options for Windows......install a compatible DVD decoder (also known as a MPEG-2 decoder) before continuing with......Playing a DVD......Playing video files that were encoded with the MPEG-2 codec (.mpeg, .mpg, and some .avi files) To purchase a compatible DVD decoder, visit Plug-ins for Windows Media Player."

Update: I've tried another DVD, this time 4:3 format. It will not play in Windows Media Player, giving the same error message as above. It does play imperfectly in VLC, with some garbage on screen, very choppy sound, and I have not figured out how to get past the opening menu. Thanks Update 2: Despite uninstalling VLC and re-installing the latest version, I still get the same problems. 89.243.153.124 (talk) 13:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

You may have to clean your laser lens in the drive, it may have dirt or fluff on it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

To test this, I put a non-movie DVD and a CD into the drive, and they both read perfectly with no problems. So probably the lens is clean. 78.146.231.126 (talk) 12:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

huawei

i'm posting this questions after 7 hours of thorough googling. i received a modem from my bro that had been locked. he's in another country and i'm in Kenya and i would want to unlock it so as to use the networks available in my country. It's a Huawei E160 3g modem and here guys are charging heavily for unlocking modems yet they've downloaded the software from the net for free. Anyway anyone who knows a site i can download the unlocker preferrably for free ,i've already changed it's dashboard but i need the unlock code. The one at nextgenserver.com is givin a mscoree.dll or something error message when i run it. please assist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.88.34 (talk) 22:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Two idle google clicks of my own make me think it's asking you to install .NET, as per [7]... 81.131.30.94 (talk) 04:52, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

December 6

Why ALU division is slow

I'm making slides about why integer division in an ALU is slow. To be complete, I've been Googling to see if there are any reasons I haven't included and I see many websites/papers that claim that one of the reasons for the slowness is that you have to check in each iteration to see if you are done. In addition/multiplication, the number of iterations is known from the start. I find that a bit strange. How can it take more iterations than bits in the dividend? -- kainaw™ 01:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Could it be because of the added complexity of calculating fractions or remainders? I don't know that much about how the logic systems keep track of things, but if you were dividing 12 (1100) by 8 (1000), the answer would be 1.5 (0001.01). Any other odd divisions would end up with more bits. Maybe that's not how it works, I don't know for sure since my digital logic education didn't get that far (I'm more of an RF guy). —Akrabbim^talk 04:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

For integer division, 12/8=1. Each step of the process, be it restoring or non-restoring, produces at least 1 bit of the answer. Since the maximum answer for 4-bit division is 4 bits, it will iterate a maximum of 4 times. By your answer, I wonder if a lot of sites are confusing integer with float division. -- kainaw™ 04:24, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

After I shut down my computer last night, I realized that even floating point division has a distinct number of iterations. For example, SRT division begins with k padded zeros. The number of zeros (k) is how many shifts will be needed to complete the division. So, even if there is confusion between integer and float division, the number of iterations is still known before the iterations begin. Therefore, I think it is just nonsense being copied and pasted throughout the Internet that one reason for division to be slow is that you don't know the number of iterations before you begin. -- kainaw™ 16:24, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Division isn't important so why bother spending a lot on it? The division algorithms that are used are fast enough so it isn't a bottleneck and that's good enough. Just a little extra speed on addition or multiplication is more worthwhile. I don't see any great problems about making it almost as fast as a multiplication if it really was important. Dmcq (talk) 18:56, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a horrifying over-simplification. Some computer graphics algorithms such as texture-mapping have to compute at least a couple of divide operations for every single pixel that's drawn. The speed of division can be a critical bottleneck and computer graphics people spend a lot of effort to minimize the number of them. SteveBaker (talk) 03:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

(It's been a long time since I thought about this!) Isn't it because multiplication can be done in parallel? For a 16x16 bit multiplier:

• Take 16 differently wired multiplexers - each one selects between a zero and the first operand shifted up 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 and 15 times (that's just wiring up the inputs of the mux'es - no actual math is required).
• Use the 16 bits of the second operand to switch the 16 multiplexers (a 0 selects the 0 input of the mux - a 1 selects the shifted version of the first operand.
• Add the 16 outputs using a cascaded 16-way adder.

I don't think there is a similar algorithm for division - you have to know the result of each bit before you can calculate the next bit - so a 16 bit division requires anything up to 16 steps. SteveBaker (talk) 00:46, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Floating point is a lot like integer math - remember, you can simply add or subtract the exponents then multiply the mantissae using integer math. There is a bit more messing around for the corner cases (denormalised numbers, etc) - but it's not that hard. SteveBaker (talk) 00:49, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

First, no-one seems to have provided the seemingly obvious wikilink to division (digital) yet, so let me do that. Anyway, I think SteveBaker's answer hits the core of the matter: binary multiplication can be effectively parallelized in hardware using Wallace trees or similar methods, while no such simple parallelization method is known for division. In particular, one of the "fast division" methods described in the article, Newton–Raphson division, basically works by reducing the division to multiplication by the reciprocal of the divisor, which must first be computed iteratively. Therefore it will always be slower than the corresponding multiplication operation. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't link to the article because it is pretty much worthless. It completely fails on the "how" because it assumes the user knows how everything works and makes very vague references to restoring and non-restoring techniques. I considered rewriting it, but it looks to me like it used to be a good article and then a group of hardheaded editors came along and took ownership of it, forcing it to be useless. -- kainaw™ 13:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I was searching for answers to a question below, and came across this: New Radix-16 Divider in Intel Technology Journal. There's a sort of implementation overview, but no diagrams. Maybe this can point you to some other leads to follow. Nimur (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Non-linear stretching for HDTVs

Some widescreen televisions offer a non-linear stretch mode for displaying 4:3 images on the entirety of the 16:9 display without losing any (or at most very few) lines at the top and bottom edges and without the unpleasant effect of uniform stretching (especially on people). Unfortunately, there seems to be no standard name for this technique. Widescreen display modes calls it "wide zoom", but I suspect that name may instead refer to a stretch that differs in x and y (say, 16/12=133% in x and 120% in y, losing 1/12=8.3% of the lines in the image and distorting an on-screen square to an aspect ratio of only 110.8%). Other names seem to be Just, Horizon, Smart Stretch (which seems to be Sharp's name for it), Panorama, or TheaterWide — but I've seen written elsewhere that TheaterWide is another non-uniform x-y stretch. So:

1. Do all of those names really refer to non-linear stretches?
2. What is the name of the non-linear stretch mode (if any) for Samsung, Sony, and LG televisions?
3. What other brands support an equivalent option (and under what names)?
4. Do Blu-Ray players exist that can apply such a stretch if the TV can't? Can they apply it to upconverted DVDs and for BDs?
5. Are there any significant quality differences between implementations?
6. How does the notional aspect ratio of a DVD play into this? Some movies, like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, were actually shot in 4:3, but their DVDs were released early enough that (I believe) they are expanded (linearly, surely) on the disc to 16:9, with the expectation that a DVD player connected to a 4:3 TV will undo the stretch. Having that movie stretched non-linearly and then recompressed linearly to 4:3 would obviously lose.

Thanks in advance for responses even to a few of these many questions! --Tardis (talk) 04:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Having owned a Sharp TV I know that their term of "smart stretch" is for a non-linear zoom where the left and right edges get stretched more heavily than the middle and a 4:3 image is converted fully to a 16:9 one. Most DVD players I have seen are more concerned with fitting a 16:9 image onto a 4:3 display instead of the other way around since (in the US anyway) there are more TVs with 4:3 than there are DVDs at *only* 4:3 (many of which are multisided offering 16:9 as well). Hope this helps! --66.195.232.121 (talk) 17:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Re Willy Wonka, according to the article it was shot open matte and released with both 4:3 and widescreen crops on the DVD. The widescreen crop was the intended one (the one the cinematographer shot for). If you play the 16:9 version on a 16:9 TV, you'll see the movie as intended. If you play the 4:3 version with nonlinear stretching to 16:9, marvelous things will happen. -- BenRG (talk) 22:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Make apps running outside a VM visible within it?

In Windows, is it possible to set up a virtual machine so that selected apps running outside the VM have their memory mapped into the VM and are visible to apps running within it? (The only practical use for doing so that comes readily to mind is a future-proof way to defeat Warden -- run Warden in a VM, and let it see only Blizzard games and Windows system processes. Running the games themselves inside the VM would probably slow them down.) NeonMerlin 08:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Surely not. I don't think it violates the rules of thermodynamics, but trying to get the guest OS to imagine it has a process running when it really doesn't sounds far too complicated to be feasible. --Tardis (talk) 16:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Your best bet is to forget that one machine is "virtual" and make the applications visible to each other via a network service. Both the host and the virtual PC can operate as either server or client, and can communicate to eachother via an IP or TCP/IP-based protocol. Depending on your needs, you might find OpenMPI very helpful for dealing with such tasks, especially if you are writing the software. In general, though, this categorically excludes shared memory programming, which is what you are seeking (mapping the memory space of one computer across a different computer). You could switch to a different operating system like Altix, which makes network-based shared-memory "transparent", but this is not possible on Windows or most linuxes. Further, it has huge performance obstacles - and since you're already virtualizing the system... well, why would you virtualize and then attempt to share memory? Anyway, re-reading your post, it sounds like your goals are very specific, and I think this approach is not going to work. You stand a better chance at running a proxy server and intercepting the network traffic, modifying it, and re-transmitting "clean" network traffic - but this has its own set of challenges. Nimur (talk) 20:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes it's possible, see Windows_Virtual_PC#Windows_XP_Mode —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 20:43, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Warden examines other processes, and mmaps their memory (our article says it only mmaps the wow process itself, now at least). You can subvert this without a VM (indeed, a VM seems like an unnecessary burden). It's generally possible to intercept kernel calls, and to give Warden fake (i.e. okay) copies of pages (ones you've patched) when it tries to mmap. Or you could just patch warden yourself. Of course warden will have some protections against that, but that can only go so far. With a bit of work you'll succeed in being able to change the Wow process without warden noticing. But when Blizzard figure it out (which they will if you post the program onto some public forum, or when they change warden to be more devious, which I guess they do very often) they'll break your hack (they'll look for your hack, they'll run extra checks). So starts a war of randomly-named polymorphic code (much like the war between virus checkers and polymorphic viruses that seek to disable them). Eventually they gain an advantage because they can persuade (i.e. pay) Microsoft to sign a Vista/win7 kernel module, which you can't, and which you can't patch. You can still subvert that by rootkitting the entire machine, to overcome Windows' signed-kernel-code restrictions. That works unless a given machine will not boot a patched kernel, verified using the Trusted Computing infrastructure. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course Blizzard have another trick up their sleeve. Warden doesn't (or need not) disable WoW even if it sees a given cheat. They can just keep a log of all the accounts that uses one, and then every six months or so close all those accounts for a TOS breach. That will piss off the regular users of the cheat no end (because even with the cheat they've spent/wasted countless hours on their character); it won't inconvenience the goldfarmers (who you'd expect would be the biggest users of cheatware) as they're smart and will roll accounts over quickly regardless (in part because of Blizzard's existing anti-goldfarming measures). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Web

What was the very first Web site? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 10:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

According to this page by Tim Berners-Lee it was http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. That page is no longer active but there is an archived version. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 10:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the World Wide Web is only a small part of the overall Internet. Tim Berners-Lee started serving HTML pages in around 1989, and so earns the claim as the first "Web Site", but there are other internet and non-internet events which predate that. History of the Internet is a good overview. Nimur (talk) 15:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Also note... "Web page" implies that you are looking for an HTML document that is accessible through the Internet via a webserver. Long before there were web pages, there were HTML documents. You just couldn't access them via a webserver. The first ones I saw were only available via FTP - just to show what HTML syntax looked like. Then, by 1993, webservers were popular enough that you could access a lot of HTML through them. If memory serves, it wasn't until around 1995 that the web succeeded in completely supplanting gopher. -- kainaw™ 13:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

OOP/philosophy terminology concordance?

Do any dictionaries exist for translating between object-oriented programming terms and their equivalents in philosophical ontology? NeonMerlin 13:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably not. And if there was, would it be very long, or very interesting? I doubt it. Which is probably why there isn't one. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Does The Jargon File help? (I'm not sure I'd describe it as 'philosophical ontology' - but it's a dictionary that's full of the terms that OpenSource programmer use - explained in more-or-less plain english. SteveBaker (talk) 04:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

ip address

A while ago I asked what the technical risks of someone knowing your ip address were, like hacking etc. Now I'm wondering what other issues might come from someone malicious knowing and wanting to cause trouble, for example someone randomly harvesting ips from Wikipedia recent changes and reporting them to the respective ISPs as having violated their TOS, hosting / posting illegal material, violating copyrights etc. All of the accusations are baseless, but would an ISP terminate a customer if someone were to go around reporting random ips? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 18:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably not. ISPs themselves have very limited liability for things like that. As a consequence, they don't get much out of enforcing requests other than hassles. They will comply with legitimate legal requests (e.g. a subpoena for info on the real human behind an IP address) but I doubt most would do anything just because some company asked them to—the ISPs themselves have very little to gain in doing so. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Simply complaining to an ISP is not sufficient for them to take action against anyone. Usually, a subpoena or court order is required before the ISP will do anything; the barrier to obtaining one of these is sufficiently high that it is nearly impossible to get one frivolously, let alone to get them in bulk for many IPs without any actual cause. Nimur (talk) 20:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. @ Mr.98, I wasn't even thinking of something as large as a company making reports, I was thinking of just a random person with nothing better to do collecting ip addresses and reporting them to a page like this, out of spite or boredom or something. Anyway, thank you for the helpful answers :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 20:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Again, the ISPs have basically no liability for user activity (at least in the U.S.A.), and get their money by keeping users, not kicking them off. They would have to be extraordinarily stupid to actually pay attention to random letters alleging bad behavior and actually act on them in a way that hurts their own economic interests. It doesn't mean it's not possible, but I doubt it could be a serious problem in any way. It would be an extremely unproductive way of trying to make trouble. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

While this doesn't really answer the question, we do have Wikipedia:Abuse response which handles legitimate long term abuse providing evidence in the form of 'diffs'. It isn't particularly active and responses aren't that great and indeed primarily chases cases of educational institutions who are more likely to respond but they do sometimes deal with normal ISPs. For privacy reasons, many ISPs are not going to report if they did anything so if the behaviour stops, it's possibile it's because the ISP did something, it's possible the vandal just gave up. Many ISPs do of course have TOS which would allow them to cut off users although I would expect a warning is more likely (and probably enough to scare off most vandals). Abuse reports coming from random people may work if strong evidence is provided, and wikipedia diffs may be accepted as good enough evidence. Of course abuse reports coming from wikimedia system admins would likely be even more effective at getting a response but the foundation doesn't have the resources and I'm not sure about the interest. (I see some discussion of getting some official sanction and an appropriate @wikipedia or @wikimedia address, it would be interesting so how much this helps if it does happen. I expect a lot.) Abuse reports without any real evidence are almost definitely going to be completely ignored Nil Einne (talk) 13:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I added the citation needed tags myself since I'm not entirely sure how correct they are. It was my impression but some things I've read particularly here Wikipedia:Abuse response/2009 Revamp make me question it. Volunteers there will be able to give you a better idea. Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Synching two computers

I have a desktop with Windows Vista and a laptop with Windows 7 and I would like to set it up so that if I change/add/delete a file on one computer, that the change will be made on the other computer as well so I don't have to use a flash drive to move files back and forth all the time. Is there an easy way to do this? I would be willing to spend a small amount of money if I need some sort of hardware to do this. In case this info is helpful/necessary, my network is an unsecured wireless network as my apartment provides this for free. And, I have a Seagate external hard drive which automatically backs up my desktop computer, but I believe it can only be hooked up to one computer at a time. Thanks. StatisticsMan (talk) 20:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

A one way sync (just changes on one machine to the other) is quite easy - rsync is easy and very good. Personally I'd tunnel that over ssh (particularly because you're on an insecure connection); you can get easy to setup ssh client and server from OpenSSH. A two way sync (where a change on either machine is propagated to its counterpart) is more challenging - rsync's counterpart Unison (file synchronizer) will do that. For any two-way scheme (including those from Microsoft) you'll run into "conflicts", where the same file has been changed on two different machines - it's just the same problem as a MediaWiki edit conflict, and like those you're left to resolve the conflict manually (usually you end up with two versions of the conflicted file). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

You can try something like Jungle Disk. For US$4 a month, you get 10 GB (you can purchase additional space at a rate of US$0.16 per GB). You can install the Jungle Disk clients on both your machines, and it will keep them in sync in real time. This may not be ideal if you have a lot of data because it will sync it via the Internet. It has the added benefit of letting you access the data from anywhere that you have internet access, and keeps an offsite backup. - Akamad (talk) 02:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Similar service is Dropbox where you get 2GB for free. You can find some other services and informations on Comparison of online backup services. Lukipuk (talk) 15:46, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

December 7

What is the Pipeline Depth of Intel Core and Nehalem CPUs?

I've scoured Google for the answer to this, but can't find any info. The closest I've found is the instruction pipleine depth for the fastest Pentium IV (30?). Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.8.105.96 (talk) 11:37, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

p258 of Inside the Machine by Jon Stokes says Core has a 14 stage pipeline (up from 12 in P6). As of its writing (its copyright 2007) he says Intel hadn't released a full breakdown of the Core pipeline. That book predates Nehalem. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's the number of stages per instruction, right? I'm looking for the number of stages executed per clock cycle (the depth). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.8.105.96 (talk) 13:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Intel Core 2 Microarchitecture Whitepaper] doesn't seem to have a solid number. The real answer probably varies based on current instruction, because new processor architectures are very effective at shutting down unneeded logic circuits and activating them as needed. Actual numbers might be proprietary, which is why it's hard to find an answer. Nimur (talk) 16:36, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Would it be two per core? I'm talking about superscalar architectures and instruction pipelining. I read today about Intel's hyper threading technology, which executes two threads per core, although I read somewhere else that the Pentium (586) processor introduced superscalar execution with two per clock cycle. Then, the book said that the Pentium II (686) executed three per clock cycle, which really confused me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.8.105.96 (talk) 00:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

No - "two per core" is roughly the number of pipelines, not the depth of each pipeline. Each core is a separate pipeline, in a handwavey approximate explanation. In fact, each core contains multiple "semi"-pipelines (execution pipelines or "data flow graphs"), with a different pipeline used for different instruction logic execution. These "semi-pipelines" are partially what make out of order execution possible - i.e. allowing a later instruction to progress through its logic before a prior instruction has returned its result. But these logic circuits are really just separate functional units and do not actually independently have the capacity for a single, arbitrary instruction to complete. The set of all logic pathways necessary to execute all possible next instructions is a "core." The number of stages of logic is the depth of that core's pipeline. The ambiguity in pipeline depth is because (as I mentioned above), different instructions have different logic complexities (e.g. an add instruction is simpler than an SSE 4 instruction, and so it has a shallower pipeline). So if you want the depth of the pipe for the entire core, the best answer is to give you the deepest possible pipeline - almost certainly, this would be on one of the recent SSE or x86-64 extensions. But most of the time, when simpler instructions are executed, an instruction does not have this long latency and does not traverse through that "worst-case" number of pipeline stages. So, as always, it depends on your particular program and the exact assembly code that it compiles down to. Nimur (talk) 05:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

VGA & SCART connections for monitor & PS2

Not exactly a computer question, though it is related. I've just got a playstation 2, which has a SCART connection for plugging into a tv (male scart into which the 3 audio & video plugs from ps2 plug). I don't have a tv with a scart or individual audio/video plugs, just a 15 pin VGA connector, which is plugged into the computer. I want to ask what type of adaptor connector I need to get to run my ps2 through the computor monitor. I was thinking of a VGA splitter though they only seem ot display a computer signal on 2 monitors rather than allowing you to choose which feed displays on 1 monitor. Any ideas? AllanHainey (talk) 13:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If all the PS2 has is a SCART output or other component, composite or S-video outputs for TVs this isn't going to work with any passive connector. You're going to need some sort of active box cable of inputing a component/composite/S-video signal and converting it into a VGA signal. I came across this site from a search [8] but can't vouch for their reliability, but that is the sort of thing you'll need. Alternatively if you have a computer you could use a video in card (including many TV tuners) but this is likely to introduce a fair amount of lag depending on the setup. Nil Einne (talk) 14:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The PS2 has a Euro-AV connector plug with a scart socket (labelled VMC 91), this connector has 3 plugs going into it - red yellow & white 1 video & 2 audio. I've got a computer but I don't know how to run the PS2 through it. AllanHainey (talk) 18:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Did you read Nil Einne's response? You need to get a converter box with a composite video input and which somehow outputs VGA video; or you need to get a video card for your PC that has composite video input. Both options are probably more expensive than buying a used PS2. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I did read the response, but wanted to clarify as its not just only a scart output. I see what's meant now though, I'd misunderstood as I'd focussed on the scart reference. I've got a video card in my pc, how would I go about checking to see if I can run the ps2 through it? Thanks AllanHainey (talk) 20:01, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If the PC has a female RCA connector meant for video on the back of it, then you're in business. Some video cards have a weird proprietary connector on it, which you're supposed to plug another weird proprietary octopus-like splitter cable into, and that cable has the female RCA video connector you need. If you have none of these, you'll need a video capture card — either a dedicated PCI card whose only function is to input video; or, more likely, a graphics card that also has a composite video-in connector. The All-in-Wonder is the first that comes to mind but there are hundreds of other choices. You should attempt to verify you like the quality of the end setup before you purchase, if possible. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't reckon it has, there's a socket coloured yellow (and one white & red which my speakers are plugged into) but the plug is too loose in it & it doesn't have the raised ring of metal around the hole for the plug's ring to fit over. It doesn't work either when I plug into it so I don't think its an option. I've done a wee search and found this product which looks like it may do the trick. Do you agree or am I missing something? AllanHainey (talk) 21:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

dropbox

Does dropbox ever delete files, say if you're not using the acount for ages? This is on the free option —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

According to policies on their website: "Dropbox reserves the right to terminate Free Accounts at any time, with or without notice. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, and without further notice, Dropbox may choose to delete and/or reduce: (i) any or all of Your Files if your Free Account is inactive for 90 days; and (ii) previous versions and/or prior backups of Your Files." Lukipuk (talk) 18:32, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Your files will still be safe on any computers synced with dropbox. As long as the dropbox application is running, your account is active. They will only delete files off their server and not your computer. Additionally, dropbox also keeps backups of deleted files while your account is active. If you are looking to permanently delete these files, this help page may be relevant. Caltsar (talk) 18:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If the DVD Video specification is only licensed with a non-disclosure agreement...

Then how do we have open source DVD authoring software? 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:16, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The DVD spec isn't licensed with an NDA. You can create menus and encode to MPEG-2 using open source software. However, the use of CSS to "protect" the DVD is where open-source software falls apart. It's actually much harder to play commercial DVDs using open source software than to make a DVD for personal use. This is assuming the software isn't using deCSS or a similar library. This is why there is no DVD player included with Ubuntu and other high profile Linux distros. That said, if you want to author commercial DVDs with encryption using open source software, I believe you are out of luck due to the CSS problem. Caltsar (talk) 19:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that the secret parts of the DVD-Video standard all became public through legal reverse engineering. Once a trade secret becomes public, it's not a trade secret any more. Even if it was disclosed in breach of an NDA (which wasn't the case here), there are no legal restrictions on using the now-public information. Patents and the circumvention clause of the DMCA are bigger problems for open sourcefree software, since they place restrictions on how you can use already-public algorithms. -- BenRG (talk) 21:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

So the statement "The specification is not publicly available, because every subscriber must sign a non-disclosure agreement." at DVD-Video is false? 71.161.40.220 (talk) 01:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Phrased properly, "The official specification is not available..." may be accurate. A specification, which was the result of a now-infamous reverse engineering effort, is available and is the basis for some software. The legal status of this now open-source code is disputed. Nimur (talk) 05:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There's a lot more to DVD-Video than CSS. It also includes the IFO file format, the navigation sectors in the VOB files, the subtitle and menu and closed-caption formats, alternate-angle interleaving, the disk file layout, and so forth, and of course the public parts (MPEG-2, AC3, UDF, DVD-ROM). As far as I know no part of the official NDA'd specification has ever been leaked. If it had, it couldn't be freely distributed anyway because it's covered by copyright. -- BenRG (talk) 07:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Accessing files from a digital voice recorder

I have an old (pre-Vista) USB digital voice recorder that requires proprietary software to access the files on the drive. It isn't set up to be accessed like an external drive, but there aren't any drivers for the device for any OS after XP. There is only one computer using XP in the house left, and it's on its way out. Is there a way to "hack" into the device to get the files off of it, without having the appropriate drivers for Vista (which I have now) or 7 (which I will likely have soon)? Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 18:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

What make and model is it? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 19:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Olympus, VN-480PC. Their website has an update for the software that claims to make it compatible with 32bit Vista, but the driver installation has always failed with locating the .inf file or something. And even if that did work, I would still like to find a solution for my 64bit lappy. —Akrabbim^talk 19:18, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered installing a virtual machine like VirtualBox, installing Windows XP and the device's XP drivers on the VM, and using the VM every time you want to access the device? Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:36, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think 7 has a "XP Mode" that would let you do that. Thanks, 174.114.4.18 (talk) 20:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Windows Virtual PC#Windows XP Mode is our article on Windows XP Mode. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:34, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I might just have to resort to that. Thanks. —Akrabbim^talk 23:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Turning off one of two monitors?

I've been assigned to work with a Windows XP desktop computer that is equipped with two monitors, set to work as one wide one. Because my tasks are unrelated to the purposes for which the double-monitor setup was put in, I only need one monitor, and having the second is distracting. Is there any way to have the computer go to one monitor in such a way so that it stays that way until I turn it off, but so that it defaults to having both monitors whenever the computer is turned on? I've tried turning off the power button for one monitor, but that doesn't help at all. Nyttend backup (talk) 19:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Control Panel -> Display, then click the Settings tab. You'll see a drawing showing the two monitors. There is some setting where the computer will "Extend the desktop onto this monitor" — at least, that's what it's called in Vista (sorry, that's what I'm using at the moment, no XP machine with 2 monitors in front of me right now) and you should be able to turn that setting off. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Monitor #2 is disabled, just as I hoped it would be. Now we'll have to see if it comes on automatically when the computer is restarted. Thanks! Nyttend backup (talk) 20:20, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Restarted, but the monitor is still off :-( I guess I'll have to leave a note on how to turn it back on. Thanks again! Nyttend backup (talk) 20:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think monitor and screen resolution are a "per-user" setting. Consequently, it's probably impossible to set automatic resolution changes or disable monitors based on the login. You might be able to get third-party software to do this, but I would just allow users to change settings per their individual needs. This tutorial and this knowledge-base article from Microsoft are good tutorials - you can send those to whoever might need to change settings. Nimur (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

While this isn't an ideal solution, you could set the desktop image to be solid black on the secondary monitor. It won't be off, but you also shouldn't have much to distract you as long as you keep in mind that your workspace extends further to one side than you want it to. This will have the benefit of not messing with system settings, and it requires no real tinkering. Caltsar (talk) 21:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I'm just volunteering at my local historical society, and I know that they don't have money to spend just for this (definitely minor) purpose. Somehow, a maximized window only fills the default left screen (although it can be dragged into the right), so filling the right screen with black wouldn't help me any more than turning it off — the main thing is that I generally close a window by moving the mouse up and right, and that obviously doesn't work when the little X is effectively in the middle of the top. Nyttend (talk) 03:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Try training your fingers to use alt-f4 to close things. Or, try making the right monitor your main one, the ignore the left one. (And I fixed your unindent template.) Ariel. (talk) 10:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

December 8

Check this code

Not homework, just asking for some suggestions in this test case.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

struct name{
    int x;
    char a[4];
};

int add(struct name newname)
{
    newname.x = newname.x+1;
    return newname.x;
}

int main(void)
{
    struct name newname;

    newname.x = 1;
    strcpy(newname.a,"hi");
    add(newname);
    printf("%d" , newname.x);
    printf("%s" , newname.a);
return 0;
}

-- penubag  (talk) 00:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't help you directly, but I can tell you that any code-related questions posted to Stackoverflow.com get answered in less than 10 minutes on average, and sometimes in under a minute. Much, much more handy than using the Wikipedia Computing RefDesk (not meant as a slight to the fine folks here at all!) 218.25.32.210 (talk) 01:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you expect it to print "1hi" - then it's working! If you expected "2hi" then you have a bug. The problem is that 'add' is being passed a copy of the structure - is incrementing that copy - then throwing it away. So it's a copy of newname.x that is incremented - not the 'original' that you're printing out. If you need to fix that - then you need to pass the address of the structure rather than the structure itself.

 int add(struct name *newname)
 {
   newname->x = newname->x+1;
   return newname->x;
 }

(and you'd call it with "add(&newname);")

Most C programmers would probably have saved a line of code and written your version of "add" like this:

 int add(struct name newname)
 {
   return ++newname.x;
 }

SteveBaker (talk) 04:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Another option, only requiring the addition of a single character, is to make the add function pass-by-reference instead of pass-by-value. Change it to int add(struct name &newname). Then, the struct passed in won't be copied. -- kainaw™ 05:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it's C, not C++. -- BenRG (talk) 07:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I copied/pasted into an editor and I can see it now. The highlighting here makes #include statements very light green on a white background, so I can't actually read it. I can only see that it is an #include or a #define. I have to move it to an editor to get rid of the colors to make it visible - or work on figuring out what CSS I need to beat up to get rid of those colors in code. -- kainaw™ 13:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(The clue that made me think it was old-school C was saying "struct name" rather than just "name" in the parameter declaration for the 'add' function - nobody in their right mind does that in C++!) SteveBaker (talk) 19:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You obviously don't teach C++ classes. It is rather amazing what students put in so-called C++ code. Ever seen a class defined inside a struct inside main? What is amazing is that some students actually get this stuff to compile without errors or warnings. I, then, have to pick through the code to try and figure out what they are doing and explain why it doesn't work. -- kainaw™ 21:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Issue with website: Javascript/OS detection needed?

So i made this script to pop open a new window with a fixed size in javascript. It works fine except im finding that in Windows XP its not opening the window "wide enough". It was tested on a Vista pc which the size is appropriate for. I have one of two options in my mind.

1) Find out why on these particular XP machines its not opening as wide, so all the content can be seen.

2) Put in some OS detection, and if the user has WinXP, open the window wider.

For #2, i have this: JavaScript OS Detection

Can someone tell me why WinXP opens the window differently? or help me modify the javascript i linked so that it detects specifically windows XP?

Thanks!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 06:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If it helps, this is the kind of code I am using:

<a href="#" onclick="javascript:window.open('Help.html','popup','width=200,height=600');">Emote-Icons</a>

137.81.112.176 (talk) 06:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it has anything to do with the operating system -- just the browser. Windows Vista comes with Internet Explorer 7 and Windows XP comes with Internet Explorer 6. My XP computer has Internet Explorer 8 installed and when it tries to open a window 200 pixels wide, it enlarges the window automatically to 250 px. I tested the same code in an XP virtual machine with IE 6 and it opens with a width of 200 px. So, the XP machine is performing the operation correctly. It is the Vista machine that is performing it incorrectly. So, I would not try to detect the operating system -- just the browser. Firefox 3.5 also opens the window with the correct width. You can measure the width of a window using the free Screen Calipers tool. If 200 px is too narrow, then increase the width.

<html>
	<head>
		<script type='text/javascript'>
			function openWindow(url)
			{
				var nav = navigator.appVersion;
				if (nav.indexOf('MSIE 7.0') != -1 || nav.indexOf('MSIE 8.0') != -1)
				{
					window.open(url, '_blank','width=200,height=600');
				}

				else
				{
					window.open(url, '_blank','width=250,height=600');
				}
			}
		</script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<a href="#" onclick="openWindow('Help.html')">Emote-Icons</a>
	</body>
</html>

--Drknkn (talk) 07:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The size difference is probably because the specified "width" parameter represents the renderable area, but does not include window decorations like borders and toolbars. Between Windows 2000, Windows XP's Luna (theme), and Windows Vista's Aero, the exterior border style and size have significantly changed. Is this the root cause of the different apparent window sizes? Nimur (talk) 08:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It's a browser issue, not an OS issue.--Drknkn (talk) 08:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Nimur:

I don't think so. Looking at a screenshot from a friend of the window opened in windows XP, there is no major difference in width of the "decorations" of the borders etc. However, i was reading something about the java window.open method, and it says that varying versions of IE in different operating systems have different required minimum widths and heights. Maybe this causes the difference, but im not sure... as I am more a "see and mimic" java-script user, i dont understand the more complicated issues such as this.

Regardless of the cause, perhaps the code provided by Drknkn will help.

If it makes any difference, i will note that on my Vista, i have the old classic look set up (not aero), and it came like this out of the box i believe. However the XP screenshots i have show XP with their standard giant blue titlebars and the red X's and whatnot. However, as i already stated, i can see how this would affect the height, but not the width.

Drknkn:

If this is browser related, please clarify what the issue is? and should i have the script look for the "funny acting browser" instead (likely the xp related versions of IE)?

To all:

Any further thoughts? Thanks!!

137.81.112.176 (talk) 08:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I changed the code above to look for the browser instead of the OS. Try it now.--Drknkn (talk) 08:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If its of help i found that XP seems to open the window 50 pixels "too thin". Drknkn, question. I use IE7 here on vista, so should the exclusion really be for my browser? Im just curious and again i state that i dont know a ton about this issue, but it would seem to me that XP would use an earlier version than i have? it displays fine in my browser. Do we need a browser/OS combo? Sorry if my knowledge is limited! :)

137.81.112.176 (talk) 08:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You're fine. :) I also added some comments above the code. It looks like Internet Explorer 6 (the version that comes with Windows XP) opens a narrower window than IE 7 or 8. Thus, if you're using IE 6, and the window is sized to 200 px, you will see a 200 px window. If you're using IE 7 or 8, you will see a 250 px window. So, the code above compensates by opening a narrower window if it detects IE 7 or 8. If it detects any other browser (e.g., IE 6, Firefox, etc.) it opens a wider window. To find out which version of IE you're using, press ALT + H and select "About Internet Explorer."--Drknkn (talk) 08:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think i am beginning to understand the situation. There are a couple pages where i have this code implimented (different pages/widths), so i will have a look at this on an XP pc and try implementing your code. Hopefully ill get back soon to mark this as resolved if it works out. Hopefully i can continue with you if it doesnt work Drknkn? Thanks alot for your patience and skillful explaination of the problem! :)

137.81.112.176 (talk) 08:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not a problem. Sounds great! Keep me posted.--Drknkn (talk) 09:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to all that posted to help on this problem. I am happy to let you know that i found a laptop with IE6 which had the issue. I used the code supplied by Drknkn and it solved the issue completely! Thanks a ton!

Resolved

137.81.112.176 (talk) 09:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

For this kind of testing, you can get free Virtual PC images of various versions of IE here. --Sean 13:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

IRC save

Is there a way I can log or save the chat in an IRC channel for the times I'm offline? For example, I need to reinstall my operating system but I don't want to miss any of the conversation in an IRC channel. How could I do this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 11:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

With the clients I use such as Template:MIRC I cant copy and paste so I dont think so.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

mIRC does allow you to copy and paste - you need to hold down the mouse button to keep the selection highlighted as you hit the CTRL-C combination. Nimur (talk) 17:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Its possible in a variety of ways. You could load an irc client onto a server and use a shell account and have that connect to irc 24/7, you can then tunnel in yourself to control the client or read the logs. You could also use a BNC or put an eggdrop bot onto a server and have it log 24/7. Nanonic (talk) 14:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the normal approach to logging an IRC channel is to set up a bot, e.g. an Eggdrop. If you don't operate the channel, you may want to get permission to log it; different communities are more sensitive to these sorts of things. Nimur (talk) 17:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm! I actually have a bot hosted 24/7 that i could use to help this person log their room, but is it possible to exchange information safely here, and within standards? Sorry if this post is too far off topic, but im just trying to help! :)137.81.112.176 (talk) 19:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Cookies

How did they come up with that name? Its not like their similar to real cookies!Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Magic cookie says "The name "cookie" comes from a comparison to an unopened fortune cookie, because of the hidden information inside" (although I'd prefer a more reliable source than the one it cites for that fact). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I would have thought that a webpage takes a bite out of a cookie on your hard drive and leaves a bit of its saliva (think DNA) behind, but then again, I've had too much wine tonight...Sandman30s (talk) 19:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I buy the fortune cookie explanation - although it is one that you hear a lot. The Jargon File (which is an ancient and revered source for software slang) says that some of the very early hackers were obsessed with watching the Andy Williams show and liked the "Cookie Bear" sketch. A guy in a bear suit tried all sorts of tricks to get a cookie out of Williams. The sketches would always end with Williams shrieking: ‘No cookies! Not now, not ever...NEVER!!!’ And the bear would fall down. So "getting a cookie" became a kind of meme for getting something back from a piece of software that you had to pursuade to give it to you. So, for example if you open a file in C/C++, the 'fopen' routine gives you back a "cookie" only if you give it a proper filename and a legal read/write mode flag and the file has the right permissions and the drive is mounted, etc - otherwise you don't get a cookie, you get nothing - and (if you aren't very careful) your program crashes, just like the bear falling down. Other kinds of cookie-dispensers might make it very hard indeed for you to get your cookie - requiring you to go to the same lengths as the guy in the bear suit. A cookie in the context of the 'fopen' function is a pointer to a 'FILE' structure that you really don't do anything with - except to give it back to the I/O library. This connotation - of a small chunk of data that you have to hold on to - but can gain no useful information from looking inside - gradually became the more common meaning for the word. That's pretty much the definition of an internet "cookie". "Magic cookie" likely comes from the idea that anything that you can't readily understand must be "Magic". So the cookie that Wikipedia gives you to let you access the site without having to keep logging in every time is "magic" because nobody really ever looks inside to see what it actually says. SteveBaker (talk) 19:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that etymology in the Jargon File's entries for "cookie" or "magic cookie"—there is an entry for "cookie bear" but it seems to be unrelated. And that etymology seem implausible because the defining feature of a magic cookie is that it's opaque, not that it's hard to get. A token is hard to get. -- BenRG (talk) 21:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

In my mind, i always imagined the server as an actual server, and with regards to cookies, this little conversation plays out my head:

Server: Greetings, and welcome to [random web site], what can I do for you?

Client: Hmm, let me see... Just give me index.html

Server: Certainly, sir

Server walks away and comes back

Server: Here is your index.html.

Client: Thanks!

Server: And would you like a little cookie with that?

Client: Don't mind if I do!

So, ok, it's not a perfect metaphor, but that's how I always imagined it. The main piece of content flying back and forth is the webpage itself, but on top of that there is a little something extra, a little cookie with your main meal. Belisarius (talk) 19:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

php ip logger

I have the following script which logs ip addresses, but it will repeat the same ip over and over. How can I make it check to see if the ip is already listed, and not make a new entry if it is?

$logfile= 'log.html';
$IP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$logdetails=  ''.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'';
$fp = fopen($logfile, "a"); 
fwrite($fp, $logdetails);
fwrite($fp, "<br>");
fclose($fp);

I dont know coding, but you need to put something in their that stops the cycle.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 15:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Easiest (but not necessarily the best or the fastest) way would be to load the entire log file into an array with file, then use array_search to see if the IP already exists, and if so, not record anything, and if not, write to the file.

If you are interested in PHP-based browsing statistics, I might also point you in the direction of BBClone, which is pretty easy to use. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, but I have absolutely no grasp of arrays or php beyond the very most basic level. I have no idea how to write an array. Could you explain how to make one? Thank you :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 18:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The official PHP.net array documentation is the place to start. If you really have no direction at all, the Getting Started Tutorial will point you along the right path. Be aware that storing huge volumes of data in memory (i.e. storing your entire log in a PHP array) is likely to function only for very small websites. If you get large volumes of traffic, you may need a more advanced system, like a relational database or even a simple flat file log. These are scalability and performance issues, though - for "testing purposes" of a prototype logging tool, an array will work. Nimur (talk) 18:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Here is what I meant before. As Nimur points out, it is really pretty inadequate unless you are just playing around, because as the data set grows, it will take more and more effort to check it for existing data. (A clever and abstract programming problem for you, if you are learning, would be to try and figure out ways you could avoid that problem—it is not inherent to the problem of growing data, just the method of looking it up.) If you want something more serious, I would recommend using existing logging software (like BBClone), rather than trying to do it yourself from scratch... (or looking into how to write to a database).

$logfile= 'log.html';
$IP = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$logdetails=  ''.$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'].'';
$existing = file($logfile);
if(!array_search($logdetails."<br>",$existing)) {
	$fp = fopen($logfile, "a"); 
	fwrite($fp, $logdetails);
	fwrite($fp, "<br>\n");
	fclose($fp);
}

I had to rewrite the other code slightly, adding a newline after each IP (that's the \n), as otherwise it won't get split into separate likes by file. I have not tested the above code. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Are 30 frames per second of interlaced fields and "60i" the same thing?

From 24p: "At standard analog NTSC video rates (30/1.001 frames per second) a full "interlaced" frame, unlike a progressive frame, is nearly 1/30th of a second and is composed of two separate "fields," each field nearly 1/60 second."

I have an older Sony Handycam which I'm pretty sure is NTSC, as I've read that that's standard in North America, but I can't find documentation that comes out and says what the frame rate is for my model. The above referenced article has information about converting 60i to 24p using VirtualDub, which I'm interested in trying to give my video a film-like aesthetic. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 15:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think "60i" is a term anyone uses commonly used term, because it isn't the name of a video format (including the mention specification of screen resolution, for example). If your older Handycam was sold in North America, then it's surely an NTSC handicam, yes; for all the discussion of frames and fields and the frame rate, see the "Technical Details" section of NTSC if you haven't read it already. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the video format names that you typically read about, like 720p and 1080i, are named for the number of vertical scan lines and then an "i" for "interlaced" and a "p" for "progressive". Hence my disappointment that "24p" is being used as a name of a video format; "24p" refers to 24 full frames per second, progressive; but calling it "480p/24fps" or something would be much easier to read. "24p" itself doesn't tell me enough about the format - is this 1080? 720? 480p? Mr. Name Maker Upper Guy was sloppy when he came up with "24p". Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

In the context of the question does the resolution really matter one bit? While it is naive to reduce the terminology so far that a video format is simply the FPS rate and the scan mode, if you are having a discussion about converting between 60 frame/sec interlaced video and 24 frame/sec noninterlaced video, who cares if it's 480 lines or 10,000 lines? Anyway, about the question at hand, the issue of utmost importance is using a good deinterlacer since the reverse pulldown (pull up?) only stands a chance at improving the "aesthetic" of your film if you can avoid interlacing artifacts. What your NTSC handycam has recorded are 60 fields a second, each field being on opposite scan lines from the one before it, and hence each field being only half the number of scan lines as the total screen. It's a nightmare if your video has any great deal of motion, the interlacing is very hard to reconcile. Also remember that storage and display systems that natively support 24p aren't all too common, so you may want to consider stopping when you get to 30 frame/sec deinterlaced video. --66.195.232.121 (talk) 20:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Free tool to convert HTML forms to database queries?

I have html forms with 20 or more fields in each pages and I gotta design database for that so that people can store information using it. Got to use plain PHP and MySQL for that. It would be nice if there is a free tool that generates creates tables based on these forms. The tables and datatypes need not be perfect as there is room for improvement and i can later manually tweak it . It is just for quick and dirty work.If the tool generates update and select queries, that would be a plus too. May be iam expecting too much... please tell me, such a tool or script is available anywhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.95.28 (talk) 17:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about a one-stop-shop that can do what you want (only because it sounds rather vague, yet very specific to your project), but there are plenty of free PHP MySQL classes that make life a lot easier in taking POST data and putting it into an appropriate table. (I will, because you don't seem to be planning to make this too open, forgo emphasizing how dangerous this kind of thing can be for your database, if not done very carefully.) --Mr.98 (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

mac programs on windows

Will mac programs work on a windows os?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 17:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: No.

Long answer: see Hackintosh. Which is not the same thing as a "Windows OS", really, but is really a question of "Can you install a Mac OS on non-Mac hardware?"

Sideways answer: Some programs that are on a Mac also exist in Windows forms. But programs compiled for the Mac will not work in Windows. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec) No. The Mac has a range of proprietary APIs that are unique to it. Someone could implement them on Windows (contingent on patents) but no-one has. There is some software that can be compiled on Windows, Mac, and Linux, but that's a source level (rather than binary level) compatibility. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Having spent some time during the last year to make one of my research tools "cross-platform" to work on Mac, Windows, and Linux, I have to say that in my opinion, the Mac OS device driver model, programming style, and general contract between applications and operating systems is very different (despite claims that it is "Unix-like.") Though the APIs are different between Windows and Linux, there's usually a suitable equivalent replacement for every particular feature. Trying to port code between Windows and Linux is often a matter of swapping out those GUI APIs and tweaking slight file-system details. But trying to port to Mac OSX (from an originally "for Linux" code) was extraordinarily painful because of the fundamentally different way that OSX treats applications, shared libraries, and access to device drivers. Take a look at "frameworks" - they're sort of a wacky combination of shared library, kernel module, device driver, and application. For users, they are "great", "transparent," and nobody even knows they exist. Installation procedures typically involve "Double click the Framework Icon." When I saw this for the first time as a developer, and realized that I had to port code into a Mac Framework, I realized that this is absolutely not a Unix or a Linux (no matter what people claim about a "BSD kernel") - and it's certainly no Windows. Moving the reverse direction, I think that the first question a Mac developer would have on seeing the Windows API might be, "where's Xcode"? The challenges of porting source in this direction (from Mac to Windows) are huge - both technically and culturally, for the developer, who will need to learn entirely new programming paradigms. Nimur (talk) 18:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That very much depends. If you stick to POSIX or even supported UNIX calls, or if you are willing to use X11 instead of Aqua/CoreWhatever, most programs port from Linux and MacOS-X without any trouble. I've moved my theorem prover from Solaris to Linux to MacOS-X with minimal pain, and that little pain coming from non-compliant code in the first place. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

New code can be standards-compliant, but inherited code is whatever it is... anyway, the main trouble I had was with a hardware peripheral (an accelerator), so it's almost expected to be non-standard code. Nimur (talk) 19:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Help with an SQL Query

It has been a while since I queried a database and that's why i am having some trouble. So help will be appreciated!

Suppose I have the following table, which has a list of people with the sports they play. Let's call the table 'Sports', e.g:

UniqueId	Name	Sport
10	Bob	Soccer
10	Bob	Basketball
11	Mary	Soccer
11	Mary	Basketball
11	Mary	Hockey
10	Bob	Hockey
12	John	Basketball
12	John	Soccer
11	Mary	Golf

I wish to write a query that tells who are the people who play 'Soccer', 'Basketball', and 'Hockey' in the same time. For the above example,the query result should look like this:

UniqueId	Name
10	Bob
11	Mary

As you can see, Bob and Mary show up in the results because they play the 3 sports simultaneously, while John doesn't because he only plays 2 sports out of the required 3. So how would the SQL query look like?

Thanks! Hia10 (talk) 19:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

SELECT  DISTINCT UniqueId, Name FROM Sports WHERE UniqueId IN
(SELECT UniqueId FROM Sports WHERE Sport = 'Basketball') AND UniqueId IN
(SELECT UniqueId FROM Sports WHERE Sport = 'Soccer') AND UniqueId IN
(SELECT UniqueId FROM Sports WHERE Sport = 'Hockey');

--Drknkn (talk) 19:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Nested queries are always tricky. Just one small clarification: What is PLAYER_T?

Hia10 (talk) 19:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Whoops. That's short for "Player Table." Just replace all those with "Sports."--Drknkn (talk) 19:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Reinstalling trial version

If you install one trial version in a separate partition and format this partition (including the OS), can you install it again and again? Or can the installation save a kind of cookie somewhere outside the partition?--Quest09 (talk) 20:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Even trial software you have to register lets you do that (provided you use a different e-mail address each time). I use VMWare Workstation to install the software inside virtual machines, so I don't have to reboot into a new partition.--Drknkn (talk) 20:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There's no way for the trial software to save information outside of the partition, other than, say, information on a web server (you could, for example, force a phone home, and check the IP address, or something like that). --Mr.98 (talk) 21:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: Maybe. Long answer: Depending on the method used to secure the trial software (or lack of one), you could install it on any number of machines, or only one. Some trial software phones to a server, some software puts a file or key on your computer, and some software just lets you use the trial as much as you want. Without knowing the specifics of the software, this question can't be definitively answered. In my experience though, most trial software can be installed on as many machines as you want (or as many partitions as you want). Caltsar (talk) 21:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Travel + laptop purchase

Where can you buy a cheap laptop? I mean one of mainstream manufacturers - IBM, ASUS, Sony, Toshiba. I know that it is economically not worth it. However, if you want to travel anyway, you could travel to a place where you can buy a cheap laptop. if you are flexible, you'll also find a cheap flight. So, what is the place with the cheapest laptops? -81.47.159.223 (talk) 21:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you limiting this to a specific country or are you willing to go to a curb-side cart in Thailand to buy a Soney or I8M laptop? -- kainaw™ 21:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Identifying or opening a mysterious file

I have a file, ebook.rar, that 7-zip cannot open. According to what I read on the .rar article, this might be because the format is older than what 7Zip can cope with. I have checked the file with the DROID file checker and it says it is a rar file - perhaps it is merely checking the file extension. I have tried to use trid, a freeware file identifer, but it just briefly opens a DOS box and then immediately closes it again. Anyone know what I should do next please? 78.149.206.42 (talk) 21:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)