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July 25

Laptop not booting every time

I have a HP dv5 laptop that's seen about one year of use now and for quite a while I have been having a problem booting up. It will usually take a couple of tries, when turned on, the splash screen appears, after this, sometimes the grub menu will load if is booting correctly, otherwise the screen just stays blank and it hangs there (no beep sequence). I don't know if it's just wishfull thinking but it does seem to boot more easily when it has only been hibernated as opposed to turning it off completely, and loading the BIOS and simply going to Exit>Saving changes seems to yield better results. As I said, thats probably just wishfull thinking. Especially since some googling suggested that it's probably a hardware related problem.. Any ideas? Benjamint 01:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

You didn't mention what OS(s) you're running.--mboverload@ 01:32, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Vista Benjamint 06:24, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Use the Vista CD to repair the startup procedure. Any particular reason you're using Grub? --mboverload@ 05:47, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

My first ever computer was a Windows 3.1 portable "lunchbox" computer (similar to the one in this pic but bigger, less advanced and with a garish orange monochrome screen) which I bough for £1 at a jumble sale. At first I thought it didn't work because when I turned it on always froze at the start of the boot sequence, exactly like the problem you're having. Presumably the sellers thought this too which is why they sold it so cheep (although it was way outdated even then and wasn't worth more then £1 anyway). Long story short, I discovered that quickly turning it on then off before turning it on for a second time made it boot normally. I have no idea why it did this, I only know that unless you did the special on then off then on again trick, the thing simply would not boot. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 10:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Free spreadsheet with nameable cells

I'm looking for a spreadsheet where the columns are easily sortable. This means that the normal convention of refering to cells by their row and column position will not work. Therefore, are there any free spreadsheets where the cells are named instead? Thanks 92.29.122.159 (talk) 12:35, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

The usual way of creating a spreadsheet where the columns are easily sortable is to give each column the name you want in its first row; so A1 contains the word "First Name", B1 contains "Middle Name", C1 contains "Last Name", etc.. When you sort the columns, you do so by row 1; and you make sure not to include row 1 in any other sorting or manipulation you perform. A spreadsheet without row and column position notation sounds like an awful idea, to be honest. If you could describe what exactly it is you are looking to do, we might be able to help further within the constraints of Excel and OpenOffice Calc. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:16, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

A spreadsheet without numbers sounds a lot like a functional programming language to me. From what I understand, finance institutions are known for growing huge, unwieldy spreadsheets, and then (sometimes) switching to doing everything in a language like ML instead, so it's not an unknown connection. Paul (Stansifer) 04:49, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

"A spreadsheet without numbers sounds a lot like a functional programming language to me" More simply, I would think of it as a hashtable or a relational database (but by "spreadsheet" , people generally mean a certain type of MS Excel-like interface, rather than the underlying data structure). Apokrif (talk) 11:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I think Quantrix and the other spreadsheets linked from that article do not use the row/column naming convention. I would like to be able to sort any column, not just the first one. 92.15.0.178 (talk) 20:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Reducing file size of PDFs

Can anyone recommend some free software to reduce the file size of PDFs please? Including changing from colour to monochrome. Thanks 92.29.122.159 (talk) 12:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried just compressing them? WinRAR, 7zip can do this 82.43.90.93 (talk) 13:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

If you don't want to compress them, you could just recreate them by printing the page to something like Cute PDF Writer (free), but this isn't an elegant solution, especially if there are many pages. (ADOBE have editing software but you probably have to pay for it.) Dbfirs 16:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Question (Quick Response Code)

Resolved

What is this and what is one meant to do with it? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 13:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a QR Code. It encodes some information, and what you'd use it for depends on the information. I don't know the Google chart API very well, but in this case it looks like its encoding a URL (in this specific case, the URL of an executable file) as a QR Code. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:37, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

And indeed you can paste the URL of a QR Code (or upload the image of one) into this online app and it decodes it for you. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:39, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks 82.43.90.93 (talk) 13:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Here's the QR code on the Google Code download page it came from. If you hover over the image it explains it's a "File download URL". Presumably, the QR codes seen on Google Code download pages are meant to be photographed and decoded by mobile phones to download files. --Bavi H (talk) 00:46, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I've changed the title of your post from "Question" to "Question (Quick Response Code)", so that it is more meaningful.

wget

Is there a way to make wget download all the html files first when mirroring a site, before downloading the images? 82.43.90.93 (talk) 17:04, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd run it twice: the first time using --reject gif,png,jpg,jpeg so that it doesn't download files with these extensions, and the second time using --no-clobber so it doesn't redownload files it got the first time. —Korath (Talk) 17:31, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

"Joining" graphic files

Seems simple in concept: say I have 8 JPEGs and want to join 1.jpg through 4.jpg horizontally, then "add a new row" by joining 5-8 below them. I have searched for software (preferably command-line) that will perform this, without luck so far. I'm not looking for fancy algorithms involving stitching, but simply want to produce one large graphic canvas by joining a variety of smaller files horizontally. Any recommendations? I prefer command-line because ideally I'll be automating this as much as possible. Thanks, Riggr Mortis (talk) 21:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm almost certain that ImageMagick's "montage" feature will do this (although it might need three calls) from the command line. I'll check the exact syntax momentarily. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:46, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Ha, I just landed on ImageMagick as well.[1] Seems my Google-Fu was not up to snuff last time around. There's a bit of a learning curve there so if there are any other (single-purpose) options around I'm still ears. Riggr Mortis (talk) 21:55, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

ImageMagick is very powerful, but the documentation for it can be a bit daunting. I didn't find the main doc very useful, but that pointed me at this which is just the ticket. Accordingly I think you need to say:

             montage -tile 4x -geometry +1+1 *.jpg OUTPUT.jpg

or

             montage -tile 4x -geometry +1+1 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg 4.jpg 5.jpg 6.jpg 7.jpg 8.jpg OUTPUT.jpg

The tile option puts them into rows of 4, the geometry option puts a single pixel between them horizontally and vertically (I think if they're all the same size, and you give +0+0 as the geometry, then you'll get a perfect tile). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:01, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Works perfectly. I was wondering about the simplest way to avoid specifying every file name. Wildcards work; "tile*.jpg", but I'm not clear yet if that will "sort" them in the proper numerical sequence (likely not; perhaps if the filename numbers are zero-padded it might). I don't see anything yet in the page you linked that provides for this sort of logic. With potentially a few hundred small files, I wonder if I would have to create the command line in Excel... :-) Hopefully not. Thanks, Riggr Mortis (talk) 22:13, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

If you were using Linux (etc.) you'd just say montage -tile 4x -geometry +1+1 `ls *.jpg | sort` OUTPUT.jpg (and specify whatever arguments you needed to to sort to get the ordering you wanted). I don't know what you'd do on the CMD.EXE command line to get the same (and last time I did serious scripting on Windows, which was a long time ago, there were horrible limitations as to the maximum length of command line arguments, even if you built them with a script). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually ls has its own sort options, which are probably better than using an external sort, but as it seems you're using Windows, that's probably cold comfort, so I'll not rub in any further salt. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Made it this far, but stumped by the file input order. I have 180 images named sequentially, "000.jpg". It processed the first half of them in order, apparently by coincidence, because the bottom half runs into trouble. There's got to be a way... yes, in "DOS", or in the program itself. You can pipe input on the command line I believe, but I'm not sure if it would work in this context. Riggr Mortis (talk) 23:47, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Never mind, it may just work. My file numbering (dealing with a jig-saw puzzle) appears to be the problem. Riggr Mortis (talk) 00:06, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

For the record, the wildcard "*.jpg" works fine regarding sort order. My preferred naming convention was "00-00.jpg" (row, column), and that worked. Either Windows provides the filenames to the program in standard sort order, or the program sorts them. Thanks for your help. Riggr Mortis (talk) 00:28, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

For the (same?) record, Windows does have rudimentary shell scripting these days; the for command should be able to help you with sorting if the default doesn't work. Type "help for" at the command line to see the options. (Writing this on Vista but it should be in WinXP as well. Probably not in pre-NT, though.) Jørgen (talk) 15:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

July 26

Rackmount Voltage Transformer

   I am seeking a voltage transformer with the following characteristics. Does anyone know of a suitable product?

1. Converts voltage from 110V-120V to 220V-240V and vice versa.
   The option of stepping-up or stepping-down should ideally be selectable via a switch, lever or button, and the output-voltage should be selectable by using a knob.
2. Is rackmountable, and preferably consumes no more than six units of rackspace.

   Thank you to everyone in advance.

It is more common to buy individual power supplies for each rack-mountable system that can accept either 110 or 220 V. Some require flipping a switch, while others automatically detect and compensate. Alternately, you could buy a rack-mount UPS. See, for example, this KIN-1000APRM that can accept either 110 or 220 input and can output either. Nimur (talk) 04:31, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I currently live in Singapore (which is a high-line country), and I have three machines/appliances in my rack with their own individual 230V Power Supply Units, as well as one Uninterruptible Power System. My specific intent is to be able to continue using my rack equipment without replacing the individual PSUs or the UPS when moving to a low-line country such as the United States or Canada. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rocketshiporion (talk • contribs) 04:43, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Check the nameplates on your other equipment; a LOT of gear from the past 10 years or so is compatible with either 240 or 120 (if you are talking about computer gear the odds are VERY good). --144.191.148.3 (talk) 14:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

0db level

http://i26.tinypic.com/vp956a.jpg where is the volume knob position for the 0db level here? on my knob its not marked what db levels it represents so its not quite obvious to me how much to turn it up to get to the 0db level thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.26.241.251 (talk) 10:07, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't say exactly but it should be just below +4dB (anticlockwise), however volume controls (which are usually rotary potentiometers - at least this one almost certainly is) - can be either:

• Potentiometer#Linear_taper_potentiometer "linear pots"
• Potentiometer#Logarithmic_potentiometer "log pots"

It's more likely to be a log pot for an audio thing. I would guess somewhere between 3 and 4 O'clock.

If you have the instructions for the device it might give more clues in the tech specs.

Often 0dB is the maximum (unattenuated) volume - as an analogy +4dB is volume 11 , when volume 10 = 0dB . 87.102.43.171 (talk) 21:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

turn off wireless

If I got a laptop with wireless inside it, can I completely disable all wireless signals from it without physically opening the machine up and removing the wireless component? Does simply "disable hardware" in control panel shut it off (I mean absolutely fully shut off, as in cut all power to the wireless component, not just saying it's off but it still might transmitting random signals) 82.43.90.93 (talk) 10:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Many laptops have a manual switch that turns off all wireless communication. If yours has, then this is the simple way, but if not then "disable hardware" should work (though I haven't tested this). Dbfirs 12:22, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in the question, I know there are switches to turn it off, but does it actually really turn it off? Because every laptop I've seen will still report the status of the wireless component when disabled, it's version numbers, manufacturer name etc so there must be communication between the computer and the wireless component, thus the wireless component must still be receiving power, so might still be emitting signals even if they're gibberish and not accessible by other computers. 82.43.90.93 (talk) 12:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Such a manual "kill-switch" could shut power off to the radio, or to the entire wireless controller peripheral unit (including the radio and its controller). It's more likely that it shuts off power to the RF circuit, rather than the entire peripheral, so your computer can still talk to the wireless card (though it will not be possible to send data, or even to override the analog kill-switch and turn the RF circuit back on, in most cases). So, a laptop with one of these "external" switches is probably safer if you need to guarantee the radio is actually, physically off (and not just in in a "no-data" software mode). Even if that is the case, your laptop may be transmitting RF power at other bands, in the form of EMI noise - so if you really want to be technical, you need to specify an acceptable power-level at all frequencies below which you consider the device to be "silent". If you were to plot the spectrum of a laptop's emissions, you would typically see some noise at around 60Hz from its power supply unit; some noise at around 20 to 100 MHz from its display; more noise around 300 - 1000 MHz from its digital interconnects, disk drive, memory bus; noise at the memory- and CPU- speed, and a big burst of power (probably much more power than any of the previous noise) at the 2.4GHz band (or other bands) if you are using wireless radios like 802.11, BlueTooth, or a wireless mobile broadband system. Most of those components are not intentionally transmitting RF power; and for the most part, the signal levels are very low; but if you need to guarantee that your laptop is not transmitting anything, be sure to consider non-WiFi interference. Nimur (talk) 16:31, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

'any' and 'in' keywords in sql

what's the difference? t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 13:50, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

This explains it. --Sean 14:08, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

According to this in practical terms they differ primarily in how they work with negation (e.g. NOT IN vs. <>ANY return different results). --Mr.98 (talk) 14:09, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Exporting Java Project so it can run without eclipse

I've tried exporting it as a runnable jar file, and it runs fine except for one thing. I have some images in the src folder that, when the project is run in eclipse, appear on screen correctly, but when it's from the jar, they don't display at all. Am i supposed to export as a jar, and if not, what do i export it as? KyuubiSeal (talk) 20:02, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Try putting the resources outside of the JAR. Unfortunately, this is a widely-known problem with few desireable workarounds. In general, it is not possible to deploy your resources inside the JAR unless you use some programmatic trickery. The Java ClassLoader that the JAR execution environment uses is not able to load anything except Java classes from the JAR it is in. There are ways to overcome this: IBM Java's OneJAR is (in my opinion, a hack-y) workaround that actually replaces the Java Classloader with a more sophisticated one that can parse JAR files for resources. Or, you can use an "install script" to unpack the JAR resources to regular files (or perform this action manually). If you are worried about tearing out your JVM's classloader and using the OneJAR classloader, (this can do some very strange things to your Java program...), then your alternative is to deploy your application as a JAR file for the program, and unpack a separate resource directory (or JAR file) for the resources. Here is a good tutorial: How to extract Java resources from JAR and zip archives, from JavaWorld. Nimur (talk) 20:24, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Ok, i tried making a second jar in the same directory as the first, but it didn't work. If i put it in just a normal folder, it seems to work fine though. Can i just leave it as a normal folder then? KyuubiSeal (talk) 21:02, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes you may, unless you want to go to great lengths to prevent users from accessing or changing your resources. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with deploying your Java program with a resources folder in this way - in fact, it makes it easier to modify, if your users want to modify icons and images. Many commercial softwares try to make such modification difficult or impossible, by managing the resource directory in a more complicated way. If you want to stuff those resources (images, audio, and so on) inside a JAR (or encrypted JAR), you would need to modify your code. Every place you are using a java.io.File (including implicitly, when you use many of the default Swing or AWT functions to load an image), you would need to replace that with a more generic "Resource Loading" function that chooses to load either as files out of a folder-tree, or as Resources out of a JAR or other resource deployment scheme. If your code is not already managed this way, such a modification might get ugly; the IBM loader I linked above "streamlines" the code modification process, but it is not seamless and can require a lot of effort to handle corner-cases. Nimur (talk) 21:14, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh good, since the images i'm using are just placeholders till i find something not that pixel-y, it's convenient i can modify them easily. Thanks for the help! KyuubiSeal (talk) 21:20, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I don't understand the problem you and Nimur are discussing, but surely one can load resources using java.lang.Class.getResourceAsStream()? The following works fine for me (loading foo.jpg which is stored inside the JAR).

Loader.java
example of how to load resources from JAR, example of how not to write nice AWT programs
package fin; import java.awt.*; import javax.imageio.*; import java.io.*; public class Loader extends Frame { static Image image; public static final void main(String [] args){ InputStream s = Loader.class.getResourceAsStream("foo.jpg"); try { Loader.image = ImageIO.read(s); Loader me = new Loader(); me.setBounds(100,100,600,600); me.show(); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e); } } public void paint(Graphics g){ g.drawImage(Loader.image,0,0,null); } public void update(Graphics g){ paint(g); } }

or am I missing the point entirely? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:34, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes exactly - that is the correct way to obtain the resource out of a JAR. But if the original code did not use that method, (i.e. if it loaded File objects), then the OP needs to go in and manually modify every single resource load. Finlay's code will work whether the resources are in a directory tree inside- or outside- the JAR (as long as it is on the class-loader's path). But if the designer want to package a resource-JAR inside of an executable JAR, they need a more sophisticated ClassLoader that understands how to handle that, like the IBM solution. (I didn't explain that point very well before - most applications will not need that alternate class-loader approach). Nimur (talk) 22:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

If the designer wants to put JARs inside JARs (and bashing them over the head with something doesn't dissuade them) we can get the resource by calling getResourceAsStream() for that inner JAR, using that to construct a ZipInputStream, searching for the desired entry within that, and then loading from there. So the main() of above becomes:

JARs within JARs
this is like Inception, only less predicable
public static final void main(String [] args){ InputStream s = Loader.class.getResourceAsStream("resources.jar"); ZipInputStream zip = new ZipInputStream(s); try { do{ ZipEntry z_entry = zip.getNextEntry(); if (z_entry==null) break; // resource not found if (z_entry.getName().equals("stuff/foo.jpg")){ Loader.image = ImageIO.read(zip); Loader me = new Loader(); me.setBounds(100,100,600,600); me.show(); break; // we found what we came for } } while (true); } catch (IOException e) { System.out.println(e); } }

This sucks a bit, as we mostly need to transit the list for resource each load (unless we're clever). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:16, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree - in a perfect world, you would never need to put a JAR inside another JAR. Strictly from the technical viewpoint, you can unpack the JAR and place its contents in the root of the top-level JAR container. However, there is at least one use-case I can think of: when licensing of a third-party library forbids un-JAR'ing or repackaging its contents. Your options are to deploy it as a separate file or not to use it. But this doesn't preclude storing the unmodified JAR inside your own JAR - giving the seamless appearance of a single file to the end-user, without violating any license about unpacking or modifying the third-party code. Finlay's second example-code is essentially performing 95% of the functionality of the OneJAR library (using much less code of course) for loading resources. However, I think there can be trouble with his approach if trying to execute code loaded from any Java Classes that were loaded by his internal me loader. (There are now two ClassLoader environments - one at the top level of the JVM, and one as an instantiated object). This is why the OneJAR tool is sort of messy and clunky (and much longer than Finlay's sample code). If only loading images and resources, and NOT classes, this is a non-issue. Nimur (talk) 20:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

July 27

Data Lost After Restore?

I am running Windows XP and recently restored my C: drive from a Norton Ghost backup image. Unfortunately I forgot to backup several important files on the C: drive which were created after the backup image. Are they now irrevocably lost, or is there some way to retrieve them? Any help appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Callerman (talk • contribs) 01:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

They are probably gone, gone, gone. You can try an undelete utility but I would not expect it to work, given the way disk imaging works. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:16, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

A typical undelete utility (such as Recuva) won't work because there will be no record of the files in the restored filesystem metadata. But I think Norton Ghost only copies used clusters, in which case it's just possible that some or all of the file data survives in the unused clusters. PhotoRec might turn something up. If these are text files or word processing files and you can remember key phrases, you might have some luck searching the raw disk contents for those phrases. One program that can search raw disks is HxD (not that it's necessarily the best, I just happen to have used it for this purpose in the past). Finally, there are various computer forensics tools that might help, but I don't know anything about them. I think they're rather expensive. -- BenRG (talk) 04:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I would immediately cease use of the drive to maximize the chances that the information is still in existence. There are advanced techniques that can be applied at the magnetic parity level for non-filesystem recovery. At that point, though, it is a question of how valuable the data is --- as such recovery services can run in the thousands of dollars (US). I have had much success with Drive Savers --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 09:38, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

If you pay professionals, they will just run the software that I already mentioned and charge you ~$1000 for it. No professional data recovery lab can recover overwritten data. See Data recovery#Overwritten data. It's true that you should stop booting from the disk, since the boot drive is frequently written to and every write has a chance of overwriting the data you want to recover. Ideally you should make a raw image of the drive and use the image for further recovery attempts. Norton Ghost can probably do this, but it would need to be configured to copy all clusters, not just used clusters (since you only care about the unused clusters in this case), and ideally you would want it to make a raw image rather than using its proprietary image format (all the tools I mentioned will work with a raw image, but I don't know how many support Ghost images). Your next best option would be to install the drive as a non-boot drive in another computer and do the recovery there. You could use a USB external enclosure for this; they cost $10–$40. -- BenRG (talk) 20:37, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

How to remove a hacker from an iphone 3GS

How do i remove a hacker from my iphine 3GS and keep them out? Ladeyangl (talk) 03:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC) someone is hacking my iphone editting my pictures posting them my msms emails ims diary online. It is awful and vety embarrassing. I hv no computer and i am on disability so i need to be able to use this. Please find what specific steps i need to take what product to buy or who i should contact. Apple att and the police havent been helpful. Thank you. You are very welcome to email me. Ladeyangl (talk) 03:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Apple doesn't have to help you. They might've sold the device, but if it's out of warranty they don't have to help you at all. I would say consider backing up your data and resetting the phone. Chevymontecarlo - alt 05:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Changing your password to the online diary might do the trick. Or possibly disabling mobile uploads/downloads on that service. If you can provide the service's name, we could look into it. To clarify, is the phone in your possession? --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 09:35, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Spaceward SuperNova

Is it a program like Photoshop or is it a program on Supernova, a 16-bit minicomputer formerly made by the Data General Corporation? Or is it a chromokey used by television stations?
119.12.117.103 (talk) 04:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

You'll have to be a bit more specific in your question but this may be of use. --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 09:33, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Problems reading CDs

For some time now the my PC has had occasional problems reading CDs. The CD drive doesn't have a drawer, but instead has a slot in which you poke the CD. Usually the CD spins a few times and Windows Vista pops up a window asking what you want done with the music/data/blank disk. However, with some disks the drive just hunts around for a minute or so before ejecting it without explanation. Usually, I find that rotating the disk and trying again solves the problem, though there is the odd disk which just refuses to play at all. The problem appears to be restricted to this PC (ie. the disks play quite OK in other devices). One interesting thing is I have noticed the problem is more common with newer CDs. So, is my CD drive at fault and is there some way I can see an error message to help me find out what the actual problem is? Is my CD drive more sensitive than usual, perhaps due to its slot design? Or has there been some changes in CD manufacturing in the last few years that might reduce the quality of CDs (particularly music CDs)? Astronaut (talk) 06:24, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Is this a new problem? In other words, did it read CDs fine in the past but now has problems? If so, it's obvious to me that the CD drive is dusty inside. It's very common. CD drives are very unreliable. Try blowing into the slot with compressed air. There are also cleaning CDs (i.e., CDs you put into the drive that supposedly clean it, although I have never tried them and I doubt that they work). If those solutions don't work, then you should replace the drive. The cheapest new drives cost about $20.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 07:35, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

CD/DVD readers/writers don't last, I've never had one working like new for over 3 years. Luckily, they're so cheap that you should rather just replace yours for a DVD writer which you can probably find for $20. These things are as cheap and common as kettles and toasters, and last just as long (probably designed like that on purpose). Sandman30s (talk) 11:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm surprised you both say CD/DVD drives are unreliable and don't last. Every other drive I've has has lasted at least as long as the PC. Anyway, it is just an annoyance at the moment. The problem would be getting a replacement slot-loading drive to fit inside my Dell laptop. I would have to get it from Dell and I bet they're not $20 now it is out of warranty. Astronaut (talk) 12:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I agree with them too. The fact you can put them back in again and it might work does suggest it's the drive that's having the problem. Although it's possible to get a bad batch of CDs, that'd be limited to just the pack you bought, another pack should work without any issues and from what you've described it suggests to me it's multiple CDs by multiple manufacturers? Optical drives don't last forever though and largely this is because they have fast moving components and the lifespan of objects with moving components is largely defined by however long those components work. Because you have a slot I assume it's not really covered and therefore more dust could get in? Because it can read the CDs after a few tries I'd go with what Best Dog Ever said about trying to clean the drive, but if that fails I can't see any option except for replacement. It's unfortunate that it uses non standard parts, although Dell should be still able to give you a price. Sadly I doubt it'll be anywhere near $20 though. ZX81 ^talk 13:29, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

About a decade ago, I stopped taking CD drives apart because they became so cheap and it's such a pain. Here is what is involved: [2]. What model of Dell is this? I doubt that you have to buy a slot-loading drive. I'll have to look up pictures of the case to know for sure, though.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 16:21, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

OK you didn't say it was for a Dell laptop, you said PC. AFAIK you don't have to buy a Dell specific one, you can buy anything and slot it in there. But you're right, laptop components do cost more than PC components. If it's really that big a problem to replace, it might be worthwhile to investigate making (ISO) images from your disks on another computer, then mounting them on your laptop. Sometimes, and this is weird, I find that copying all the files from a DVD works rather than trying to install directly from the drive, which spins up and spins down all the time during installation and this tends to get less reliable as the drive gets older. So weirdly enough, you might be able to make images from that same 'faulty' drive (some software uses more reliable DMA methods to read disks) but have a problem installing from it. Sandman30s (talk) 19:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Very Serious Virues Problem

I am just hit with a terrible virues/malware problem. Almost any program I run, I get a awakard popup saying this or this .dll or .exe or is trying to sent your credit-card info to remote host etc. What should I do ? 12:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)-- Jon Ascton  (talk) 12:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure this is actually a virus? Perhaps it is scareware encouraging you to buy a (fake) virus/malware scanner for $$$. Astronaut (talk) 12:57, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, Astro. That's just what it is. I was almost going to add this. I wish I could show you screenshot etc. but even mspaint isn't working due to it. Almsot every program I hit, I get a window saying this .dll etc is trying to steal info, and then a so-called security tool shows up (a sort of adv. as you said). It also shows as a red and blue shield icons in status bar (tool-tip shows only "7486986564"). What's the solution ? -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 13:10, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Can you download and run Malwarebytes? Exxolon (talk) 13:51, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure that will help and not increase the trouble ! Because sometime back I tried something called STOPZILLA that I now doubt is the root of all evil !

Malwarebytes is a reputable program that is designed to eradicate bogus and harmful software - I've used it myself. Exxolon (talk) 14:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Make sure to download Malwarebytes from its official site, malwarebytes.org. If this fails, I advise saving your important data to another drive (and planning to gingerly treat those documents like poison in the future) and reformatting your hard disk and starting from scratch; see this FAQ. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:58, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

To be on the safe side you might consider reinstalling Windows from the original CDs (or the recovery partition on your computer if they didn't give you CDs). Make sure, of course, to backup everything, and don't run anything that you've backed up until you've reinstalled the new computer, updated, and installed an anti-virus program. Rather than fighting hidden infections, it's sometimes quicker to just reinstall the OS. Shadowjams (talk) 18:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

How could he be sure that the malware will not be just copied to and from the backup onto his HD again? 92.29.116.34 (talk) 22:36, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

You could never be 100% certain, but since most of what he'd backup would presumably be videos, pictures, sounds, and other non-executables, there would be little to worry about. If the backup disc was found to have some unexpected .BAT or .EXE file, however, he would be unwise to run/install said file. :) Matt Deres (talk) 16:53, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

My HD has got thousands of freeware exe files on it, all neatly categorised. So your assumption is wrong, and doing what you suggest would be bad advice. You must be the person who wrote the so-called "virus faq". 92.29.119.4 (talk) 22:48, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Excel "Find" function in VBA oddness

I'm trying to write a small code snippet to find the column number of a cell which corresponds to a date. I'm using the "Cells.Find" function and feeding it a formatted string to find.

Private Function pFindColPos(sText As Variant) As Long

Dim lResult As Range, oRg As Range

Set oRg = Cells.Find(What:=sText, _
                     LookIn:=xlFormulas, _
                     LookAt:=xlWhole, _ 
                     SearchOrder:=xlByRows, _ 
                     SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
                     MatchCase:=False)

If Not oRg Is Nothing Then lResult = oRg

pFindColPos = lResult

Set oRg = Nothing

End Function

Public Function NextMonday() As Date

Dim D As Integer
Dim N As Date

D = Weekday(Now)
N = Now() + (9 - D)

NextMonday = N

End Function

Private Sub Worksheet_Activate()

RelevantDate = CStr(Format(NextMonday, "dd/mm/yyyy"))

Col = pFindColPos(RelevantDate)

Application.Goto Range(Col), True

End Sub

"pFindColPos" is trying to find the cell matching the input string, and return the range. "NextMonday" returns the date of the next Monday as of today. The final idea is simply to Goto that cell.

Now, the worksheet column headers appear to have values like "29-Dec-08" but clicking on the cell and looking at the formula bar shows the real value is "08/12/2008", i.e. they are formatted. I don't think it matters, but the dates are text aligned vertically.

01-Dec-08	08-Dec-08	15-Dec-08	22-Dec-08	29-Dec-08

Now here's the weird thing. If I run a Find on "08/12/2008", it works. If I then record a macro whilst running the same Find, and use the code from the resulting macro (which I did, it's used in "pFindColPos") it doesn't find anything. Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? Rixxin (talk) 16:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

This is probably not the right thing, but it sounds like the cell's format type is Date type (hence the 29-Dec-08 autoformatting), and you are searching for a string. I suspect that is confusing Excel in one of the situations (Excel is very persnickety about date fields). Have you tried it after explicitly saying that those columns/rows are String fields? --Mr.98 (talk) 21:38, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I know what you mean because it was the first (and obvious) thing I considered. The fact remains that the actual value "underneath" the formatting is DD/MM/YYYY, and searching for a string like "20/01/2008" using Ctrl-F Find works, but the same operation when recorded as a macro and run doesn't work! Something is getting lost in translation here, and I suspect it's to do with what Excel interprets my input to be when I use Ctrl-F to be somehow not just a string. I hate Excel sometimes.--Rixxin (talk) 09:21, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Excel drives me batty regarding dates, because there are *very* specific custom formats I want to use (YYYY-MM-DD, which is sortable in a simple way), and it always decides that it knows better than me, despite me going back and pleading with it not to treat it as a date, but as a string. I suppose the easy way to test whether this is what is happening is to have your macro make the data something like "xx-08/12/2008" and see if it searches correctly then in both instances, with Excel presumably treating it like a string all the way through. This would just be a diagnosing exercise, not a long-term fix, but it would at least help isolate the problem? --Mr.98 (talk) 12:29, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how relevant it is to the problems you're having, but the line

If Not oRg Is Nothing Then lResult = oRg

should be

If Not oRg Is Nothing Then Set lResult = oRg

because you've said Dim lResult as Range, so lResult is an object type. With Set the assignment will set the Value property of whatever lResult points to (probably Nothing) to the Value or oRg. Actually I don't know why you use lResult at all (and I'm not sure why the line above doesn't cause an error when lResult is Nothing) - why not just use pFindColPos = oRg.Value ? AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:30, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

AndrewWTaylor, you are correct. It's because I was still fiddling with it while I was posting this. That wouldn't work. Mr.98, I gave up on this and used a more convoluted method involving formulae to give me a flag on which was the "next Monday" date. Thanks for trying though!--Rixxin (talk) 12:45, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Screensize

I have a 15" monitor. Sometimes when I view sites like this the text gives me problem. You see the body of text is wider than my screen and inorder to read the complete line I have to move the mouse to-and-fro on the horizontal bar, which is rather troublesome. Is there any setting in my browser itself (IE) that can fit the text-body to my screen's physical width so that I could read it without much botheration ? -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 19:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

In IE8 you can go to Page, Text Size and set it to smaller or snmallest, but seriously, why squint and struggle with that monitor when (second hand) 17" is so cheap? Sandman30s (talk) 19:15, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Folk can always make a web page wider than your monitor. IE does automatically reformat text to fit the window width available UNLESS the web page itself says not to. I don't think that there is a "ignore the web page formatting" option, though on wikipedia you may be able to do something with style sheets. One think I do occasionally is copy the text and paste it into notepad with word wrap on. -- SGBailey (talk) 19:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Glancing at the page, the width is set to a minimum because of the image bar at the top. By not loading images, it is possible to only see text and get word-wrapping to work. -- kainaw™ 19:58, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this is available in IE6, but in many browsers (and some other applications), you can expand and shrink the presentation by holding down the Ctrl key and rolling the scroll wheel on the mouse. There are likely menu options to do the same. The layout stays the same, but you might be able to shrink the presentation to fit the screen with it still being readable. Press Ctrl-0 (Ctrl-zero) to restore the normal size. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 20:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

"I don't think that there is a "ignore the web page formatting" option" — in Firefox you can have stylesheets either be ignored or have custom stylesheets that override existing settings. Presumably a Greasemonkey script could also be devised that checked for maximum widths? I don't really know. I suspect anything one does here will be a bit clunky if ones minimum resolution is 800x600 or whatever this seems to be (that particular site is only 900 pixels wide, which is pretty moderate by web standards).--Mr.98 (talk) 21:57, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Here are some ideas:

• If you have Internet Explorer 8, you might dig into the Developer Tools, find the problematic page element and set it its width to "auto" or something like that. But you might have to learn about CSS and HTML to be able to usefully explore the web page elements.

• You might look for bookmarklets that solve formatting problems or annoyances. For example, Bookmarklets for Zapping Annoyances has a bookmarklet called "zap style sheets" that removes style sheets. However, on the page Jon provided as an example, the page elements have inline style attributes that specify the width, so it doesn't solve the problem for that page.

• Internet Explorer lets you specify a user style sheet. This will add to the existing page style, it doesn't completely turn it off. (Unless you use a style sheet with a lot of !important rules -- a special override flag -- for everything you want to override.) However, to use this option, you have to make your own CSS style sheet or find one that solves your problem. If you want to try it out, save the following text into a block.css file:

 * { display: block !important; width: 100% !important; }
 img, td, th { width: auto !important; }

Then go to Tools, Internet Options, click the Accessibility button, check the "Format documents using my style sheet" box and browse to the block.css file you made.

You can search for user style sheet to find other possible style sheets you can use. Or you can learn more about CSS and HTML to try making your own.

• (I know another web browser isn't a solution you asked for, but Opera has a Fit-to-Width option that forces text to fit into the browser width so you don't have to scroll horizontally. Opera also has some user style sheets to choose from, instead of forcing you make or find your own user style sheet. If you ever want to play around with another web browser in the future, you might consider trying those features out.)

--Bavi H (talk) 03:39, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

July 28

2D or 3D Animation software for AVCHD high definition partially simulated rock video?

I have three questions regarding Sony's AVCHD software that comes with their HDD based high definition video camera,recording in the AVCHD format. The first one is that the Sony PMB software plays O.K. on my dual core computer, a few years old now and with a very average graphics card for the time-maybe a bit of motion blur occasionally-but perfect on a stand alone Blu-Ray player, which I do not own yet, (and won't until an HD television comes out with the dynamic range and colour gamut of CRT) but the only player that works independently of PMB, which will not recognise Blu-Ray (apparently windows XP knows nothing about Blu-ray drives) is AVS4YOU but this is jerky even when played on the main internal hard drive of my computer, from the old DVD drive (before it was replaced) or anything else. The PMB software has a "convert to AVCHD" option, but seems to only allow a write to disk-and I can only write to the Blu-Ray using Cyberlink. Cyberlink recommends an upgrade to my graphics card. I suppose I could write to a AVCHD to DVD and then copy back to Blu-Ray, but the whole point of a Blu-Ray drive was not to have to break up HD files to fit on the limited space on DVD. So why can PMB (even with an average graphics card) do what stand-alone players can't? My second question is are there any programs that would let me electronically paint in fine detail individual frames lifted from original footage from my camera for 2D animation/alteration and then create a full HD animation in AVCHD format, also are there any reasonably priced photo-realistic 3D animation programs that could do the same, and by photo-realistic I mean good enough to render human faces convincingly given multi-angle photographs or possibly even laser scans? Also, if I bought an array of cheap web-cams and plugged them into my computer, or a cluster of computers, lets say a ten by ten 2D matrix, effectively creating a synthetic aperture with vertical and horizontal parallax, would future technology allow these images to be turned into moving HD holographic films? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.80.1 (talk) 05:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Banner

I am using AppleMac Snow Leopard and want to send a photo by e-mail but need a banner across the photo with "Copyright" Can anyone tell me how to do this please; many thanks in anticipation.--Artjo (talk) 09:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

What you need is some kind of image editor. GIMP is one free one, though it can sometimes take a little work to install if you don't already have X11 installed. (X11 is on your OS X DVD under the "optional installers," I believe, or you can get it from here, apparently.) With GIMP, you can add text to an image pretty easily, or put it on a semi-transparent layer over the original image, etc. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:24, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

If you have ImageMagick installed, you can do this from the command line (which is particularly handy if you need to automate this process, such as tagging a bunch of images). You'd just say convert in.jpg -pointsize 30 -draw "text 40,40 'COPYRIGHT'" out.jpg or whatever. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ImageMagick is a pain and a half to install and get working on a Mac, unfortunately, even for someone who is tech savvy. It requires all sorts of installing of a ports handler and compiling from binary and setting system variables and other nasty Unix things. It's not like on a PC where you can just download the precompiled "convert" binary and drop it in and have it work. (I find this exceptionally lame, as you might have picked up.) It took me about three tries to get it working, and maybe about 15 hours of dorking around with it, because I'm not very Unix-savvy (even though I am very Mac and PC savvy). A very frustrating experience! --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear, That's very disappointing. I'll certainly bear that in mind before recommending IM to another Mac user. Tell me, is GraphicsMagick any easier (a quick check of its download page suggests it's much the same)? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think installing ImageMagic is much harder than typing "sudo fink install ImageMagic" (which is how I got it). You need to set up Fink, of course, but you want that (or MacPorts), anyways - for (proper) Emacs, LaTeX, gawk, and all the other indispensable UNIX tools. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:50, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, well...thanks for this, but it all seems too complicated for this ageing non-techie,( I'm still trying to understand FM radio!). Any more simpler solutions out there please?--Artjo (talk) 13:00, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe this program? It seems like a pretty straightforward, easy image editor. Download it, install it, open the image, click the "text" tool (the "T"), click where you want it to say "copyright," type out "copyright." --Mr.98 (talk) 14:06, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all these ideas, but I have decided on the idiot proof idea of taking the photo, printing out the banner, sticking it across the photo, re-photoing it and mailing that, real 'Blue Peter' approach!--Artjo (talk) 07

57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(e/c)If it's just the one (or a few) photo(s), I would consider using an online photo editor such a Picnik which allows to to upload photos, make alterations to them, and save the altered photo to your computer, from whence you could send it by email the normal way. There are a number of online photo editors, but Picnik was the one off the top of my head, and it's fairly intuitive. However, there are some instructions which do what I think you want under the cut.

Extended content

Start at http://www.picnik.com/app#/home/welcome Click Upload a photo When the photo is displayed, click the Create tab, then choose Text Type the text you require in the box on the left hand side, choose a font. Click the Add button. The text should be displayed over the image in a box with circles at the corners (it may not be in right position/right size) On the right hand side, choose a text colour, text size and alter any other settings you require. The change the size of the text box (if all the text is not visible), click and drag the circles at the corners of the box. Click and drag the centre of the box to move it to a different position in the image. When you're happy with the image, click the Save and Share tab at the top. Change the file name so you don't overwrite your original image (eg. picture_edited). Click Save Photo. In the boxe that appears, choose where you want to save the photo. You can now attach the photo to an email.

If the image is very large, you would probably be better using a downloadable program as Mr. 98 suggests. I'm not sure what the limit on file size is at Picnik, and it could take a long time to upload a large photo. The techniques to edit the photo will be much the same as described above. I tested this on a Windows PC - this shouldn't make a difference to the website, but the process of saving the image might be slightly different than described; it's been ages since I used a Mac. Apologies if I have simplified too much (it's my day job!) --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:22, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks Kateshortforbob, that works a treat and even this idiot managed to do exactly what I wanted. Thanks again.--Artjo (talk) 14:45, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Wget with cookies

I'm trying (under Windows XP) to download a document from an Intranet site with Wget. When I type the URL into the Internet Explorer address bar, I get the page I want, but with wget I only get a small file which says "the application has been idle for too much time". I assume this is because this application could not read the cookie it expected, so I exported cookies from IE (this gave me a file containing an entry with the relevant domain name) and then I called wget with --load-cookies as explained here. However, I still get the same error message. Any idea? Perhaps the exported cookies file from IE doesn't contain the session cookies the above-mentioned wget man page mentions? If so, how can I get the relevant cookie in the exported cookies file? Apokrif (talk) 10:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You might just need one cookie name and value. In Internet Explorer you can enter javascript:alert(document.cookie); into the address box to display an alert box with the current page's cookie values. When the alert box is on the screen, you can press Ctrl+C to copy the text of the alert box. You can then paste the text into Notepad to look at it further. Once you find a cookie name and value that looks like what you need, here are two ways you might be able to use it with wget.

• As suggested on the wget manual page, you can try using --no-cookies --header "Cookie: name=value" to manually send a specific cookie on every request.

• Alternatively, the cookie.txt file is plain text, so you may be able to manually insert a cookie into the cookie.txt file and use the --load-cookies option. Per the wget manual page, wget uses the non-standard expiration value of 0 for session cookies.

--Bavi H (talk) 00:58, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Hiding a Windows taskbar button

In Windows XP, I'd like to be able to hide individual taskbar buttons that appear in the Windows Taskbar as I launch applications or open folders. (I'll switch back to those apps by alt-tabbing with the Task Manager.) Is there a way to do this? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

From memory, in WXP you can "auto-hide" the Taskbar, so that it disappears until you hover over its location with the mouse pointer. To do this, place the pointer on the Taskbar, right click and look for the auto-hide option. This might suit your purposes. Dolphin (t) 06:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

How easy to program? Geotagged images overlayed on OpenStreetMap

How easy (in relative terms) would it be to program software that would place images on a map like with the Flickr Map feature or Google's Panoramio layer?

This is for a kiosk concept. The photos would be stored on the display computer, and the system could be fully connected to the Internet to access the most current OpenStreetMap information, or the geostuff could be on the system as well.

Ultimately, I'm hoping for something that could be added upon, when more pictures are available to be geotagged and included. -- Zanimum (talk) 16:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That is a feature of the combination of using Google's Google Earth and Picasa programs. If you have both running, geotagging a photo in Picasa makes it show up on Google Earth as a thumbnail that you can enlarge. -- kainaw™ 16:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose that would work. But would I be able to lock it down, being a public access terminal, so people couldn't delete and rotate stuff? -- Zanimum (talk) 17:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure I fully understand what you are trying to do, but I would encourage you to look into using the Javascript Google Maps API. It is very powerful and quite easy to use, as far as geotagging goes, overlaying images, syncing with a database, etc. If it were me (assuming I kind of understand what you are doing), I would program some kind of AJAX-y machine that would be locally hosted (but have internet access), and then make the kiosk computer lock to that particular locally-hosted page. It would take a bit of work, but it is well-within the abilities of your average scripter (that is, it doesn't require knowing how to do things with maps very specifically or with images very specifically — just a little nosing around with the Google Maps API, your server-side scripting language of choice, and a database). --Mr.98 (talk) 18:53, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Wget batch files

On Windows, if I run a .bat file with:

wget -mk http://example.com
wget -mk http://elpmaxe.com 

only the first job (http://example.com) is done, and once its finished the second job is ignored. Why is this, and what do I need to do to make it do both jobs? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Would the wget you're calling happen to be a batch file too? What happens if you put 'start' (or maybe even 'start /wait', but can't check right now if that's a valid option) in fron of the wget command ? Unilynx (talk) 22:49, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You want the call command for that trick. --Tardis (talk) 15:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Wireless routers

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good one? Thanks. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 17:55, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what you plan to do with it. How many computers will you use (including wifi devices and consoles)? What is the distance between the devices and the router? What kind of security do you want? Do you have a favorite color for the case? Do you plan on calling tech support for the router? -- kainaw™ 17:59, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Two laptops, one printer/scanner (that I plan on buying in the future), my router would be in my room, which is where I mostly use it, although I do move around my apartment a bit, but it's very small. A dual-band router would be nice. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 18:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing special about those requirements. Any router will work fine. -- kainaw™ 13:44, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Any new router should work, assuming the laptops aren't really old. All of the new routers use either 802.11g or 802.11n. Both standards are compliant with the older 802.11b standard -- but not 802.11a. 802.11n offers greater range and speed than 802.11g, but the range and speed won't matter since you'll be connecting everything in an apartment and to a home Internet connection.

I don't like Belkin routers very much because they are unreliable and Belkin support isn't very good. Belkin is one of the cheapest brands. I've had better experiences with Linksys and Netgear routers. This is the router I use at home.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

ASbot ?

I just got an email saying ASbot on the Ukranian wikipedia has created a user page for me... see http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:Sf5xeplus and http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:ASbot

I don't speak ukranian, what's going on? Am I a spy now? Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:43, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

This is a phishing message and you should permanently delete the message and move on. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:02, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ASbot appears to be a bot that welcomes new users. If you've got the unified login thing enabled when you visited the Ukranian wikipedia it would have automatically made you an account. You can safely ignore it, although personally I think you should complain to Wikimedia because it's rather dumb to have accounts being automatically made just because you visited a page there when you have no intention of ever editing that wiki 82.43.88.151 (talk) 20:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

This has happened to me on several of the foreign-language Wikipedias. They detect your account via Wikipedia's Unified Login system - one user-account is valid on all language wikipedias. Some of the foreign-language bots do not realize that your primary usage is English Wikipedia and will send you welcome-messages in the robot's native language. It is probably not a phishing-message (unless the email directs you to a non-Wikipedia.org website); it's just an overly-friendly robot that doesn't speak very good English. Nimur (talk) 20:09, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Check the actual targets of the links in the email; they probably don't point to wikipedia urls (something any half-decent email client should have noticed and warned you about). If so, see Wikipedia:Phishing e-mails. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:27, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I think I copied the links above - they appear to link to http://uk.wikipedia.org - is there something hidden I should be looking for?87.102.76.166 (talk) 21:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at how the links in Wikipedia:Phishing e-mails appear when you mouse-over them - the plain text of the link is to wikipedia.org (that's what you'll get if you cut-and-paste) but the real link goes (in that case) to www.fbi.gov (in most web-browsers, and the mini-web browsers inside modern email clients) that destination URL will appear in the status bar at the bottom, or in a little popup. The phishing emails likewise appear to go to wikipedia.org, but mouseing over them shows they really go to some site like en.wikipedia.org.abcedfh.d0000000000000.evil.cn -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:42, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ok . In this case it looks like they are from uk:wikipedia - the status bar text matches the display text.Sf5xeplus (talk) 22:03, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

GUIdebook

One of my favourite websites is GUIdebook. Unfortunately, however, it seems no longer to be active; the last update appears to be from 2006. Is there any other site of this kind, that is actively maintained? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Desktop environment#Gallery? Nimur (talk) 20:18, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Not quite comparable, I'm afraid. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:02, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Maybe ToastyTech GUIs will do (even if the author has a few strange misconceptions about things). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 00:38, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Cyrillic

Actually I've got another question relating to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#ASbot ? - obviously (?) the long bit of the URLs are hex codes for 8bit values

eg http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B0:Sf5xeplus

.. They don't display as cyrillic on wikipedia, or in the email, yet in the browser status bar they do appear as cyrillic - I guess it's one of the 8 bit types described at Cyrillic_alphabet#Computer_encoding

Which encoding is used, and how does the browser know (sometimes) that it's cyrillic, (or is the text editors that are failing) - I'm not seeing cyrillic in the main window - but when I hover on the link I do ? Sf5xeplus (talk) 22:03, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It's utf-8. To verify, consider the Ukranian Wikipedia's page for Ukraine, http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Україна (which will show as http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B0). We can encode and decode unicode to UTF8 using Python ('cos I'm too lazy to do it by hand), with a line like

   u'Україна'.encode('utf-8')

which returns

   '\xd0\xa3\xd0\xba\xd1\x80\xd0\xb0\xd1\x97\xd0\xbd\xd0\xb0'

(the same hex chars, just escaped using Python's way rather than the web way). See this page for Cyrillic chars, showing their UTF-8 codes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:31, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

percent encoding says "The generic URI syntax mandates that new URI schemes that provide for the representation of character data in a URI must, in effect, represent characters from the unreserved set without translation, and should convert all other characters to bytes according to UTF-8" -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

ok thanks I think I understand now - it's percent encoded UTF8, and from the 'percent encoding' article I gather the reason plain UTF8 is not used is to give a method to distinguish between "/" as a separator, and a "/" that doesn't have any special meaning ie just 'text'. (as well as preventing crazy newlines etc when sending raw binary).

Somebody tell me if I got that wrong..Sf5xeplus (talk) 23:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Plain utf-8 isn't used because it's still a binary code, and URLs have to be rendered finally in ASCII (well, strictly don't have to, but you run into compatibility hell, as there isn't a standard means to state what encoding non-ASCII chars in a URL have). That 'У' character, which has unicode codepoint 0x0423, is utf-8 encoded as 0xD0A3. Neither 0xD0 nor 0xA3 are valid ASCII (they're > 0x7F), so they need to be percentage encoded. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

If you're thinking that all of this is rather elaborate and inefficient, you're right. The percentage encoding explodes the size of non-ascii chars and obviates much of the good the clever variable-length encoding of utf8. If you were designing urls now, from scratch, you'd probably just specify utf8 and nothing else. But they had to bolt this on years after the fact, when percentage encoding was already used for reserved ascii characters, when those reserved characters already had meaning, and when the use of non ascii chars was a variable, badly-specified minefield. Tim Berners-Lee once said the only thing he regrets is the 2nd slash in http:// but I rather think he'd regret this stuff too. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

To compound the complexity, in addition to the URI's suffix, the actual DNS names can also be non-ASCII-fied now. Internationalized domain names are already permitted; it used to be just a special markup "xn--(character encoding)", but now any valid Unicode character can be used in a DNS name. This of course represents a very serious phishing hazard, and I'm a little woried that there are not good solutions to prevent such attacks in the future. Maybe browsers can color-code Unicode symbols if they are out of the locale's normal character set? Nimur (talk) 04:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the punycode solution, which the article you linked mentions (and which itself seems very flawed), I've seen proposals for browsers to colour-code chars based on their alphabet, to illustrate when (perhaps malicious) changes - so a fake Ebay url (where the e and a have been substituted for Cyrillic homoglyphs) might look like: http://www.еbаy.com   . I guess jokers will deliberately register multi-coloured domains just for the heck of it, but serious sites won't. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 09:52, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Testing for non-standard characters mixed into the alphabet seems like something a email filter could do fairly easily, and perhaps a browser could at least perform a similar test, and give a warning screen to the user before proceeding. No comment on the utility of punycode - but it does sound dreadful: why not base64 at the very least instead of base 36 . Awful. (opinion)

Thanks for the responses.Sf5xeplus (talk) 12:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean to defend the gobbledygook punycode, but it does seem to be a bit more compact than utf8+base64. Again in python:

                                  u'Україна'.encode('punycode') →  'v0a0aa2bqq6n'
                                  base64.b64encode(u'Україна'.encode('utf-8')) → '0KPQutGA0LDRl9C90LA='

Both are, of course, entirely unintelligible to humans. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Speak for yourself, N00B! ;-) I still know that C9=201=ret in Z80 assembler, and I bet there are people who read Hex-encoded UTF-8 as well as I read Shakespeare. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:09, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately you have failed a routine scheduled Turing test. Please report to the factory at which you were constructed for remanufacturing. You will find GPS coordinates for that facility printed on the lower rear of your casing. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:47, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

July 29

c#

I know the meaning of access modifiers applied to methods and variables, but what's the purpose of applying them to an entire class or struct? T.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:34, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Doing so affects the accessibility level of the class/struct. As class definitions can contain internal class definitions, you can control whether the inner classes are accessible from outside (and by means of "protected", whether they're accessible to subclasses of the outer class). Likewise class definitions can be made accessible, or inaccessible, to code outside the same assembly. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 10:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

It's just another level of information hiding, which reduces complexity and makes dependencies easier to manage. --Sean 14:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Buying a new inxepensive Laptop to run windows xp

I dont play 3d games, I run things like eclipse or watch DVDs and can spend around 275 euros. Iam eyeing on new Low end laptops such as Acer Extensa 5235. Low end laptops like this come without operating system or with linux. It seems like drivers for windows xp can be found on the internet. Im not sure about the windows key (the one between alt and ctrl keys). Can you please how one can find out (online) if a particular model has windows key?. I am assuming that windows xp drivers are not a problem here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 11:07, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Most laptops, even those that ship with Linux, still have a Windows key (because they're just shipping a standard keyboard). The Acer Extensa 5235 you cite is a good example - these photos show it does have one (the key is useful in Linux too). You can probably get XP drivers for all existing laptop hardware, but I wouldn't count on it (you'd need to select a specific laptop and check on support forums for it, to verify that someone has succeeded in getting XP working on it). Your chief problem may be getting a Windows XP licence to use - they don't sell XP retail any more. You can downgrade a Windows 7 licence (but that's rather an expensive and convoluted process, for the simple needs you have), but mostly people buying XP now are getting a small footprint OEM XP licence preinstalled on their netbook. If I really wanted a small cheap XP laptop, I wouldn't buy a non-XP laptop and go through the bother and risk of somehow XP-ing it; I'd stick with one that shipped with XP. An aside: given that you don't care about games, have you considered just sticking with the Linux install? If all you need is email/chat/web/media/office then it should be just fine. I'd dump the dumbed-down linux they tend to put on these things and put Ununtu Netbook edition on instead - if you're technical enough of a person to even know what a driver is, you're technical enough to install and use that fine. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:33, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Can't say I would recommend Ununtu Netbook edition myself. Never heard of anyone with positive experience of it. Nil Einne (talk) 11:37, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Iam happy to use "old" versions of windows such as XP, 2000 or even 95 because i hate newer versions and hate linux even more. For me, only the old windows versions are intuitive to use. Nice to know about the keys though —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 11:56, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I feel the same way but using old versions of Windows really isn't practical anymore (especially Windows 95!). What I do is set the theme to "Windows Classic" which give new versions of Windows the old classic intuitive GUI instead of whatever fancy nonsense they've come up with and decided to force on the end user 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:11, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you considered getting a used laptop? I was recently given three supposedly dead laptops and refurbished all of them, but the small ads are full of used kit and for €275 you could get something pretty good complete with Windows XP. As for my three free laptops, all had a Windows XP Certificate of Authenticity on the bottom, so with the help of an OEM installation disk I repaired the Windows installations on all of them. One also came with a full installation of Office Professional. They're not fantastic performance, but certainly good enough for some internet surfing, general office stuff, and developing with Eclipse, though I haven't tested DVD playing on any of these laptops. On one of the laptops (the one I'm using right now), I've since installed Fedora and Eclipse and that all works well. Total outlay so far is just £5 for the OEM installation disk, but I could spend a little more: they could all do with more memory, one needs a new keyboard (~£15 from eBay), and none of the batteries is in top condition. Astronaut (talk) 15:15, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

ok, I will also consider buying dead laptops. Iam not an hardware expert and my knowledge is small, especially when it comes to laptops. what do I look for when buying a dead one?. I assume graphic card should work properly and there should be no boxes or bands on screen. How do I ensure that motherboard is not dead?. Buying used laptops is also a good idea, im thinking anything above 1,2 Ghz would be sufficient. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 08:21, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

With completely dead laptops you take your chances, but if its free, then nothing is lost except your time. As a general rule, a surprising amount can be replaced/repaired. Exceptions are major chassis damage, broken screen or video "card" (usually on the motherboard and therefore non-replaceable), and other stuff well buried in the case or built in to the case's shape (such as the motherboard itself). Cracked hinges can sometimes be tightened up; battery, keyboard, hard disk, battery and power supply can usually be replaced; replacement manuals and drivers can be download from the manufacturer's website. With used but still working machines, it is reasonable to have higher expectations, but you might prefer to see it working before you buy. Astronaut (talk) 17:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Starcraft 2 not working

I really seem to be hung up more in unpacking and playing computer games than editing, but I decided to utilize the Ref Desk to fix my own problems. Does anyone here (hopefully a Starcraft fan) know how to authorize your Battle.net account for Starcraft 2? It's the one thing that's stopping me from playing it. Thank you, Buggie111 (talk) 14:41, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

You need to type the authentication key that came with the game into battle.net. You should've been prompted to do this in the installation process, but if not just log in and go to manage games/add or upgrade a game. Algebraist 14:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a very aggravating and confusing process, but not difficult. When the program tells you about the issue it will offer to pop up a web-browser and take you to authorizing web page.

Then it'll force you to make a battlenet account. Be sure to give your real email address, because now you have to 'activate' the battlenet account by checking your email and clicking the link they send you. Then you have to "Add a game" to your battle net account, and type in the magic number printed on the sleeve the disk was in. (I dunno how it works with a download copy.)

Then ... it should work. Go back to he game and log into your battlenet account.

Frankly, this is the sort of thing that makes me root for the bootleggers, pirates, and crackers. They may be the bad guys, butThey never make their "users" jump through these many hoops. APL (talk) 19:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

For the record, they never make Starcraft 2, either. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:02, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

There are free and open-source strategy games, like those listed in our list of open-source video games. This way, you don't have to rely on commercial services and put up with their licensing and DRM trouble; but you're also not violating any legal or ethical rules about piracy. Nimur (talk) 21:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Relying on the open source community for ones entertainment is, though, a fairly losing proposition on the whole, in my opinion. Better to lobby the commercial companies to not rely on DRM, especially since it is ineffective for the most part anyway. But we are getting quite off topic. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Whiteboard missing from Windows Live Messenger version 2009

Dear Wikipedians:

Windows Live Messenger 2009 says it comes with whiteboard. However, when I launch a conversation with one of my MSN body, I go to "Activities" on the menu bar and I see only "Request Remote Assistance" under it, there is no mention of "Whiteboard" or "Application Sharing". I am wondering what is going on? Why is whiteboard missing from the menu even though it comes with Messenger 2009?

Thanks for all your help.

70.31.153.123 (talk) 17:16, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you use Windows 7? According to this post, the whiteboard is not available on that operating system. --Kateshortforbob _talk 09:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Bingo, that is exactly what I figured out yesterday. It seems that whiteboard is not compatible with Vista or 7. Whiteboard will only run between XP systems. What a #@!*! Thanks for all your help Kateshortforbob. 174.88.34.147 (talk) 16:22, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Virtual office

How do I create a virtual office? Dr. Gervasse Soma Pillay PHD —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gervsomp (talk • contribs) 17:57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

We have an article, virtual office, that probably answers your question. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:23, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

"Virtual office" is sort of a buzz-word for an interactive website. You can spend as much or as little effort as you like making your web presence. Some companies provide voice conferencing, live chat, and other interactive features accessible through the web. The more features you have, the more expensive it will be. You can create an efficient and effective web presence for little or no money, though, and if you want, you can call it your "virtual office." Nimur (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Google quirk

Why might a Google search give a Wikipedia article as the first hit when a) the article does not contain one of the search terms and b) some lower ranked hits contain all five of them?

The search was for: little night music dvorak sondheim

The top article was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Little_Night_Music

When I use Dvorák (with the accent) in the search instead of Dvorak, the Wikipedia article is no longer at the top.

Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 19:40, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Google favors Wikipedia and your query contained the searchable title "little night music" specifically in that order and at the beginning of your query. -- kainaw™ 19:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that if you definitely want a word in the search results, you should use the + in front. e.g. try 'little night music +dvorak sondheim' Nil Einne (talk) 20:15, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Google Syntax Cheat-Sheet, from google.com. Other web-search engines may use similar syntax. Keep in mind that Google's search queries are processed in a complicated and heuristic way to take into account things like "trending", context-, location- or user-specific assumptions about desired results. So, it is never really possible to guarantee exactly how Google's technology will parse your keywords. Loosely speaking, their proprietary algorithm will first categorize your query; and then it will run one or more context-specific searches. For example, Google may determine that your query is related to music; so it runs the "music search subroutine". It may also decide that your query might be about Czech or even in the Czech language (espcially if you use a non-ASCII character like á, so it may run a location-specific search subroutine that prioritizes content from or about Czech Republic or in the Czech language. Google may make any number of unstated assumptions based on your keywords, and thus submit your query to unexpected content-specific algorithms that can all return different results; these results are aggregated, sorted, and merged into what appears to you as a single "result page". Take a look, for example, at "Context-Aware Query Classification" out of Microsoft Research (Microsoft Bing researchers are more willing to publish research than Google search engineers... but it's fundamentally the same technology in both companies). Nimur (talk) 20:38, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Google has a very clever algorithm for finding results that does far more than just see if the keywords are in the article. In particular, it looks at what pages people link to using those words. It also looks at how often sites are linked to and Wikipedia is linked to ridiculously often. The idea is that if lots of people found the site useful enough to link to it then you'll probably find it useful too. --Tango (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to all. It's amazing just how much is going on in one search. Wanderer57 (talk) 16:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, most of the work is already done before you run the search. They have a giant index of sites with all the pagerank (that's what the cleverness is called) information stored in it and just look your search up in the index. --Tango (talk) 18:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

According to Google's cached result page, the word "dvorak" appears only on links to the the Wikipedia article. Words on links to a page counts for a great deal in Google's eyes. (Which may be why the Wikipedia article on X is so often the top result for X; people like to make a word or phrase in the sentence they're writing link to the Wikipedia article on the subject, rather than interrupt the flow to explain it.) Paul (Stansifer) 19:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

July 30

How to transfer files between two computers using command prompt?

--75.185.120.28 (talk) 05:33, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

On Windows, if the two computers can reach each other over windows networking (SMB), you can use standard copy commands and refer to files on other computers using UNC paths (\\computer\share\path...). In other cases, you will probably need to mount part of the filesystem somewhere on the other computer's filesystem before you can copy files. Unilynx (talk) 06:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

SSHFS is a great way to mount remote computer file systems, resilient to cross-platform issues, network idiosyncrasies, firewalls, and so on. It only requires an ssh server, which can run on any operating system. If you can SSH to it, you can mount it as a file system. With SSHFS on the client, you can use command-line tools or graphical tools exactly as if the file system were local. Nimur (talk) 06:59, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

FreeBSD guest in Xen

Hi, is it possible to run an unmodified (i.e. no special Xen-aware kernel) FreeBSD guest in Xen, when the host contains a VT-enabled Intel CPU? --78.43.71.155 (talk) 09:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Security using webcam

Is there a freeware / opensoft program that allows you to use your webcam like security camera? For example timed recording, and discreet operation (for example if someone were to steal your laptop). I'm using Windows. Also, there is a light on my webcam that I would like to turn off, is there any software that might help me do that? Thanks. Freshofftheufo (talk) 10:08, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

See here for an example of a successful use of such techniques. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that helped me find a couple of applications that even let me record simple avis from the camera. I'm hoping to find one that can record sound on top of the motion-detected video as well, but no luck yet. Freshofftheufo (talk) 15:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

wget timestamps

With the "-p" command you can make wget download to a specific folder, say "-P downloads" for example. I was wondering if there is a way to make it dynamically generate a new foldername, for example giving the folder name a unix time code so that whenever wget is run it downloads to a new unix time code named folder 82.43.88.151 (talk) 13:20, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

You can have the shell run date to generate such a name, and pass it thus: wget YOURPARAMS -P `date | tr " " "_"` -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:28, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by the "shell"? I'm running wget from Windows 7 command prompt and .bat file. Will this still work? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

No. The Windows command prompt is similar to the Unix shell Finlay McWalter refers to, but unfortunately it's in the same way that a Yugo is similar to a Formula One racing car. I suggest you download a simple programming language like Python or Perl, which would allow you to do these kinds of things easily. --Sean 16:45, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I love to bash Windows as much as the next guy, but on a Windows 7 cmd, echo %DATE%_%TIME% displays the current date and time, so it should be possible to use wget YOURPARAMS -P %DATE%_%TIME% -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:54, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

That sort of works, but produces folders inside folders (30 -> 7 -> 2010). Above Sean suggested a programming language; would php work? I have some very limited knowledge of php, but I don't know how to start programs from php 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

PHP: Command line usage, from the official PHP manual, instructs you how to run PHP as a standalone program. If you want to run your program from a PHP-enabled web-server, you can use exec(). That will run the program on the web server. Be aware of the implications and security-risks of running exec() from a publically-viewable web page. Nimur (talk) 17:34, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if the %TIME% thing works, as windows time prints with colons, and colons can't be used in file or folder names. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Both issues can be fixed like this:

FOR /F "tokens=1-5 delims=/_:" %%G IN ('echo %DATE%_%TIME%') DO wget YOURPARAMS -P %%I-%%H-%%G_%%J-%%K

-- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:40, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

wget download html first

I ask here how to make wget download html files first before downloading images when mirroring a site. The answer given was the run it twice with "--no-clobber", however --no-clobber does not work with the "-N" command, which is automatically invoked when mirroring a site. So this solution is impossible to use. Are there any other ways? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 13:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve, so it's difficult to know what to do. Do you intend to download the htmls first so you can abort the image mirror, or just so you have a navigable but image-less copy soon while the image mirror runs. I guess you could just do the html-only wget to directory A followed by the main mirror to directory B, and if the second procedure succeeds you could delete A and rename B to A (if you need total continuity, meaning that the folder is being accessed while you do this, have a symlink that you swap from point to A to B and access via the symlink). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:36, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah this is bizarre; if you are mirroring a site by spidering it you *need* to download the HTML first. Only if you are counting on directory list to work can you even know about the images beforehand. The first use case I thought of for this was for mirroring an image hosting service that typically doesn't like just the image being loaded (since it thinks you are viewing it from an embedded link) but those I really doubt would be susceptible to dirlist anyway (most sites aren't). --144.191.148.3 (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to explain; when mirroring a site with say 300 html pages, wget downloads one html page at a time and then downloads all the images on that page before moving to the next html page. This means that it takes longer to download of all the html pages, because it's downloading images as well, and while it is taking this time the html pages could change, be removed etc. For static sites it doesn't matter, but I want to mirror a fast moving site. So I want it to download all the html files first, so that eve if they are removed I still have a copy, then download all the images on those pages after the html pages have all been safely downloaded. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 15:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

You could perform your initial download with these options:

wget --html-extension -k -P unique_temporary_directory YOUR_OTHER_PARAMETERS_AND_THE_DESTINATION_URL_GO_HERE

That will turn all links not pointing to already downloaded files into absolute links.

After that, you will have to sift through the HTML files and extract all URLs from there and pass those to wget again:

wget -P %DATE%_%TIME% --input-file=filename_goes_here.html --force-html --page-requisites --no-host-directories

Since this can be rather tedious, you might employ a for loop to do the grunt work for you:

REM set timestamp variable
FOR /F "tokens=1-5 delims=/_:" %%G IN ('echo %DATE%_%TIME%') DO SET mytimestamp=%%I-%%H-%%G_%%J-%%K
REM run actual command
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%file IN ('dir /b /s unique_temporary_directory\*.html') DO wget -P %mytimestamp% --input-file=%%file --force-html --page-requisites --no-host-directories

Note that this is from my memory, so you should test it in a small scale before aiming it at 4chan's image boards. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

link

Ages ago I saw a url which looked like somewebsite.com/something.php?google.com and it would redirect you to google.com. I think it was called referer.php or relinker.php or something beginnign with an r. Anyway, was is the name for this called? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.93 (talk) 13:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Referer.php is the name of the PHP script used to perform the forwarding. The name itself is not significant - it could be called polarbearseatme.php, and it would still would work the same way, providing the contents was the same. The ? is used to denote a Variable being passed - in this case, google.com. The script takes the variable and performs an operation on it. Here the operation is to redirect the user to the web address passed in the variable. --Kateshortforbob _talk 15:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I know all that, I'm asking if there's a specific name for the operation it was performing (ie bouncing you to another url). I've seen the same thing on deviantart and facebook and I want to know what the term for it is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.78.188.93 (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

"Redirecting", I suppose. They send you through a redirect page so they can track where you went, so you could call it "link follow tracking" or something like that. --Tango (talk) 16:10, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I've seen "deferer.php" on several websites in the past, although none of them use it anymore, preferring to link directly to whatever it is they're linking to. Rebmetpes27 (talk) 16:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Firewall Question

Hi guys, my google-fu fails me on this one: I'm looking for a firewall concept where the firewall acts like a bridge (i.e. there's no IP assigned to the production-side network interfaces, and the production-side network interfaces share the same subnet), yet still inspects (and, if necessary, blocks) packets. What is the name of such a beast? I'd be interested in doing this in Linux, however, if there's a way to make pfsense or m0n0wall do that, that would be fine, too.

I remember reading about such a concept a while ago, but I forgot the name. I keep thinking "filtering bridge", but that's something different, apparently.

The reason I need this feature is that I would like to grab packets targeted at a specific port (9100) of a certain group of IPs (a bunch of network printers), mangle the data with s small perl/php/bash scrippt, and pass it on to the destination IP. → I'm trying to work around a few brain-dead printer drivers that keep messing with PJL headers. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 16:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Instead of trying to sniff this out at the transport layer, why don't you install a software print server, and configure it to pre-process the print requests? This will be more maintainable in the long-run than a mysterious packet-sniffing, print-job-intercepting script. Have your users print to the print-server, which can run CUPS, pre-process jobs using your custom script ("filter"), and then forward the properly formatted request(s) to the hardware (printer). Here's the CUPS manual, and a description of how to set up custom "filters" to preprocess your print jobs. Nimur (talk) 16:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm aware of CUPS, and using a print server would indeed be my preferred way of solving it, if it wasn't for the so-called support contract. It does not cover changes to the network architecture, so I need a device that is invisible to external support, and that can be unplugged and replaced by a regular CAT5 cable without having to change settings on clients and/or printers. That's what you get for outsourcing parts of IT *sigh*.

IMO, they should come up with a new printer driver, pronto, given the $$$, or rather, €€€ that they're getting paid. Since they don't, and I don't want to spend all day running around resetting printers and manually sorting copies that end up in the wrong outbins, I'm looking for a way out of this mess that doesn't void the support contract, or can at least be reverted easily enough in case of further problems.

Funnily enough, I had the same issue almost 10 years ago while running OS/2 on the clients, and I've kept a copy of the PCL-clean-up script I used back then, so re-implementing it would be a matter of minutes - only back then, the network was still "mine", so I didn't have to worry about "hiding" the print server. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 17:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

How about a Squid Interceptor? Squids are usually used for HTTP and similar protocols, but you can intercept any traffic on any TCP or UDP port. You may have to recompile, because I think this is not a default option; but there are very good detailed instructions. Nimur (talk) 23:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not Squid that does the interception (so no need to get it just for that) but the local firewall. On Linux iptables, it would be the REDIRECT target which can do this. Unilynx (talk) 06:21, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Forward button problem, continued

Referring back to [3]:

The steps I have followed so far were similar to those when I asked the first question. I clicked on the e after turning on the computer, clicked on the mail button, signed into Yahoo (no one else uses this computer so I decided to check the "stay signed in"), and went to my inbox, clicked on an email with links, and clicked on three links, two of which were Wikipedia Help Desk archive pages. One was REALLY long and possibly susceptible to the problem, which was why I posted a link to it last week, just in case I decided to experiment with it. I changed the URL because the link was a week behind and clicked on three "next day" links in case the Internet goes out, and on my contributions from there, followed by "next 50" until I found the link to the Computing Reference Desk, and I clicked on the new topic button. More than likely, none of the above has any influence, so what I'm doing from here may cause the forward button problems. I have not had the problem with just the back button lately.

On the Microsoft forum I was told to disable add-ons, but I said I was eventually going to post a list of steps that led to the problems, and THEN maybe somoene would get the message about what was going on. I added the advice I've gotten here (scrolling down by the computer causes the forward button to disappear, which didn't always happen, and ALT-left might cause the problem but actually clicking on "back" wouldn't) and my theories that IE8 as a bug and there is a limit on how much you can have to go forward to or back to, which is why the problem happens on big pages.

At this point, I will save this and go forward to my contributions from the link in this post, and I will click on a Yahoo email that has information on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which I may need to add to that article.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:56, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Steps (not that it would affect anything, but Norton PC checkup has been downloading updates):

Thorough list of steps

Click on Deepwater Horizon oil spill in my contributions

Click on section "Other economic consequences"

Click on "Edit"

Click on "Save page"

Click on "edit" for same section so I can copy reference elsewhere

ALT-left

Click on BP link in article

Click on section "21st century"

Click on "Edit"

Click on "Show preview"

Clicked on "my contributions"

Came back here

Clicked on link to Deepwater article because I need to fix a source in the BP article

Clicked on Robert Dudley because I don't think his elevation to BP head is even mentioned in the article

Clicked on "Edit" to copy source

ALT-left

ALT-left

ALT-left

ALT-left

Clicked on "Save page"

Discovered better place to put part of my edit, so clicked on "Edit"

Clicked on "Save page"

Clicked on "Edit"

Clicked on "Save page"

ALT-left until I was back on Deepwater page

Clicked on "History"

Clicked on "Compare selected revisions" to look at vandalism, forgot I went too far and looked at it after the vandalism

ALT-left

Tried again

ALT-left

Repeated for other vandalism by same IP

Clicked on vandal's talk page

Clicked on "History"

Clicked on talk page of person who warned vandal

Clicked on "New Section"

Clicked on "Save page"

ALT-left until I was back on Deepwater page

Clicked on "Edit"

Scan cancelled; no items to scan (from old Norton software; updated Norton will scan)

Clicked on "Save page"

Having been reminded by one Norton product, clicked on other for checkup (I've also been working on another site and saving these steps there, and previewing them, but this probably did not affect anything either)

Clicked on "History" to see who added insufficient source

Clicked on that person's talk page

Clicked on "New section"

Clicked "Save page"

Clicked on "Edit"

Clicked on "Save page"

Clicked on contributions

Returned here

ALT-left

Revisited talk page of person who warned vandal

ALT-left until I was back on Deepwater page

Clicked on "Edit" when I saw something that bothered me

Clicked on "Save page"

ALT-left because I was on a pending changes page with apparent vandalism

Clicked on "History" to investigate

Clicked on "Compare selected revisions"

Clicked on "Submit changes" after reverting

Clicked on red link to vandal's talk page, the link to which showed up because I was still on a pending changes page

Clicked on "my contributions" so I could look at message template

Clicked on talk page I just posted on

Clicked on "User contributions"

Clicked on other vandal's talk page

Clicked on "Edit" to see template

ALT-left until I ended up back on talk page of person who warned vandal, but shouldn't have; ALT-right takes me back to MY contributions page but no further

ALT-left to vandal's talk page

Clicked on "Show preview" to make sure it's right

ALT-left until I end up back on the pending changes page

Clicked on Accept" because I was told I'm authorized to accept my own

ALT-left until I returned to the real Deepwater page

ALT-left until I ended up here

Clicked on "Save page"

Clicked on "Edit" because I forgot to signVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

This isn't particularly useful now since I didn't count the ALT-lefts:

ALT-left until I end up back at the top of the Computing reference desk, at which time the forward button disappears

ALT-left and I'm on an edit screen

ALT-left and I'm on the screen where I start a new topic

ALT-left to my contributions

ALT-left until I reach Help Desk archive (clicked on my last post here first, then ALT-left)

Returned here through "my contributions" and posted this

Clicked on edit again to fix something

Clicked on "Save page"

And repeated the above two stepsVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:58, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

ALT-left until the computer scrolled down to this section and the forward button disappeared again

And edited again when I messed something upVchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

ALT-left until I ended up on an edit screen and the forward button disappeared again.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I quit keeping up but I edited Caterpillar Inc. twice and lost the forward button when I backed up to the disambiguation page.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi VChimpanzee. Over the last weeks, we have exhausted our ability to provide you references to assist you with your technical trouble. Your continuous posting of extremely long and elaborate sequences of steps is not going to help us (or anybody) answer your question. As I have mentioned many times before, try to state your problem concisely. We have already linked you to the necessary support web pages; provided information on ways to disable Javascript; offered you alternative web-browsers; and suggested alternative browsing habits. At this point, what do you hope to gain by describing every click of your browsing experience? This is the Computing Reference Desk. If you need help finding something, we can direct you to the appropriate article or resource. If you just wish to complain about your esoteric browser behavior, this is not the appropriate venue to do so. Nimur (talk) 00:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

What I hope to accomplish by listing steps is for someone to take the same steps and see the problem. I haven't posted the steps on another forum yet because I'm not clear on what I can post that they won't have a problem with. I can't state the problem concisely because I don't know what it is. I've done my best to explain it and I'm sorry that's not good enough for you.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:43, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I know the history problem has to be IE8 related because it was introduced with IE8. However, when I started a separate topic on the Microsoft forum I was told that was a duplicate of my other topic. It was not, because that's a separate issue. which makes it hard for me to explain things there. I went to that topic again later and got an error message, so I have only the one topic where I'm trying to address all these different problems, and so far all anyone has done is say reinstall IE8. That's too complicated for me. Then there was something about enabling and disabling add-ons. There aren't any that would cause this, and again, I worry about messing things up. I can't put these long lists of steps there because I don't know how people will react to them. Here, I at least got some guidance, but I have yet to really know what I can put on the Microsoft forums that will make the problem clear. I can't explain it here any better than I have.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC).

Let me try again. "The history problem" is this, and User:Comet Tuttle has seen it. When I am clicking on "Back" (or in my case pressing ALT-left), sometimes the forward button disappears, but clicking on "Back (or pressing ALT-left) gives me the page that would show up if I clicked on "Forward" (or pressed ALT-right).

The other problem is that at some point, especially with long pages, I click on "Back" a certain number of times and the Forward button will no longer function, as if a limit has been reached on the number of pages that the software can handle. I used to have this happen with the back button; it wouldn't go back further, apparently because the pages it would go back to were too large (this precedes IE8 and also happened at libraries). Possible causes suggested have been the computer scrolling down (but that doesn't always make the forward button disappear) and using ALT, which I haven't tested.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:16, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

A very wide and rather long webpage

This Tuesday, I saw on a computer a site matching the following characteristics:

• A dark gray background (something like #222222)
• The page were very large, requiring scrolling in wide and in long
• The design where organized in blocks, with spaces between them
• One of this block were an image, with links at the left, trying to round this corner of image

Have you an idea of which site it could be?

If not, have you an idea of another site using this scrolling "wide, very wide" design, requesting the user to scroll horizontally? --Dereckson (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Someone hacking together a site (badly) by directly writing it in HTML or using a bad WYSIWYG editor could do something like this. The internet is a big place, and there's lots of amatuerish crap out there. --Jayron32 02:37, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

It were here volunteer, with a clean design.

As it's from an hackerspace, it should more than very probably be IT related. --Dereckson (talk) 19:55, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Here is a Web magazine from Sussex, where every issue is one side-scrolling Web page, enjoy. Sussexonian (talk) 20:28, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Contrast Ratios

I have several questions about the recent improvement in contrast ratios in PC monitors and TV sets. Not too long ago, 10,000:1 seemed cutting-edge. Now, however, contrast ratios as high as 9,000,000:1 are commonplace.

First of all, how much higher are they expected to go in near future? And second, is there an "upper limit" beyond which the human eye cannot perceive? Pine (talk) 21:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't have an answer, but can note that our Contrast ratio article implies that the quoted contrast number is mostly a marketing number to try to win you over, rather than a scientific measurement; and that because of different methods of measuring it, you can't use these numbers to compare a Sony vs. a Samsung. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:29, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Android language help

How can I get my droid to display languages other than Latin-based script and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean? E.g. Arabic shows up as squares. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.111.119.237 (talk) 22:50, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be a known bug. This forum and this forum both seem to indicate that the UTF-8 encoding rendering engine does not include support for glyphs in many languages. You can wait for a system-update, or download one of the various third-party browser applications that can properly render Arabic text. Nimur (talk) 23:54, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

July 31

The Amazon Kindle's web browser

Can the current Kindle support a web browser interface for entering URLs and seeing web page content? - Bevo (talk) 01:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at our our article. Chevymontecarlo - alt 07:27, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I did and it does not say specifically if the Kindle's "experimental" web browser is limited to what webpages it can access. - Bevo (talk) 12:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Peer-assisted networking

Hi, I am struggling to understand in very basic terms the section "What are peer-assisted networking settings?" here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html#117802

Does this mean, if this feature is utilised, that my PC could be serving video content to somebody else's computer? Could anyone explain in very basic language what this is all about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.136.165 (talk) 01:25, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly correct. If you enable "peer-assisted network settings", your computer will host, serve, and send video and other content to other internet users. This is a form of peer to peer networking. It could also be described as "crowd-sourcing" - outsourcing the costs of providing network content to the general public. The Adobe.com article doesn't explain the specific technology involved, but I interpret their description to mean that your computer will always be running the Adobe Flash environment in the background. That software will regularly log in to an Adobe command server, who will tell your computer what content it should host, and who it should share that content with. Your computer will then start delivering video or other Flash content to random other people on the internet (presumably prioritizing this behavior according to whatever scheme is most efficient for Adobe and its partners - and not what is most efficient for you and your computer). This decreases costs for content-providers like Youtube, (because they're "borrowing" your network connection, your CPU, and your hard-disks). I would be very suspicious of enabling this feature - it has absolutely no benefit to your own browsing experience, and may seriously hog your computer's resources (memory, disk, network, and CPU). Serving video is resource-intensive. Nimur (talk) 02:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, on further reading, the Adobe website says that any application that wants to function as a server must ask your permission. So, this feature is a bit less insidious than my alarmist response above - it will only do that if you permit it to. However, I would still be wary - this still seems like a no-gain scenario for the end-user. Nimur (talk) 03:06, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Nimur, thanks for your very informative response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.171.144 (talk) 14:01, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Have cognitive scientists explained why it's tedious to not use pronouns?

Please see thread at

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Have_cognitive_scientists_explained_why_it.27s_tedious_to_not_use_pronouns.3F

thanks

Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 01:46, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Blu-Ray video files?

I have Sony PMB software, and average graphics card which my Cyberlink video software tells me needs upgrading on a dual core computer running Windows XP. The Cyberlink software is needed to write to my new Blu-Ray drive, because unless there is some sort of upgrade for XP(?) it only "knows" about DVD/CD. This means I cannot use the Sony PMB to convert mts to MPEG because it tries to write to the blu-ray, but windows xp cannot recognise it. It could write to a DVD, but the limited capacity would be a problem, which is why I got the blu-ray drive. My question is, using AVS software to play the mts files with the stand alone player results in a perfectly good HD movie but it hangs every couple of seconds, weather it is on the hard drive or playing from a Blu-Ray or DVD disk. However, when I use the AVS software to convert to an HD mpeg file (AVS shows a special blue icon for mts and a red one for mpeg) the HD picture and sound not only plays perfectly, but is even smoother than the PMB software. The mpeg definitely is still HD, the detail is far greater than normal video. My question is, if I were to put the disk into a Blu-Ray player, which files would it play? mts, mpeg or both? And if I copied the AVS player and a short HD mpeg file on to DVD or Blu-Ray disk, would it play on a different computer without any HD software installed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.80.10 (talk) 06:21, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Moved from RD/Science by CS Miller (talk) 09:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Maximum privacy in Facebook

I don't really use Facebook, but I find it useful to have an account to send people messages (it's basically email...but...inferior. But no-one checks their actual emails any more...) Anyway, it seems that Facebook becomes involved in some kind of newsworthy privacy-related scandal on a yearly basis. Now, I've done everything I can find to cripple my Facebook account; as far as I'm aware, no-one can post anything on my page, and I've made all of my details as private as possible to my knowledge. But, I don't know Facebook well. Could anyone tell me what to do in order to, for all intents and purposes, disable everything that can be disabled, except for messages? Perhaps there's a website somewhere that already has this covered... Vimescarrot (talk) 13:22, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Reclaim privacy has a good solution. Chris M. (talk) 18:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Ooh. Thanks. Vimescarrot (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

portable app that corrupts/erases the drive after password entry failure?

I use (and love) Portable Apps, and a few weeks ago saw mention in an article of a security app that gave you X tries to enter your password to access the USB, and at X+1 would hose the entire disk, thereby neutralizing the risk from loss or theft of the USB drive. I thought I had saved the link but it seems I did not. I've searched around and have found password organizers and secure file deleters, but nothing quite matching that app's description. Can anyone help? 61.189.63.171 (talk) 15:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't see how you can do that through an application alone because there's no way of guarenteeing that it'll execute on the client machine, it will need some sort of hardware awareness. A U3 device sort of does what you're asking (When accessing my U3 Titanium drive if I get the password wrong twice it warns me that I only have 3 tries left before it'll be locked out with format being the only option), however the U3 drives aren't hardware encrypted so I suspect that simply formatting them would allow for data to be recovered using normal disk recovery methods. The other way that I know of is the much more secure IronKey drives which are hardware encrypted and upon sufficient password failures will erase the encryption keys, effectively destroying all the data (it'll technically still be there, but encrypted with no way to recover it). Sadly the IronKey's aren't cheap though. ZX81 ^talk 16:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Compress

I save 10,000 html files (with images, css, etc) a week, usually totaling around 12GB for a months worth. I compress them to save space, and with solid compression I can get 12GB down to 900mb. However, I was wondering if there a more efficient way to do this? Should I compress the files weekly instead? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You can probably have it occupy zero space on your PC by just leaving it all on the internet. I know that's not really the kind of answer you were looking for, but I'm puzzled why you need to save 10,000 html files a week. Astronaut (talk) 00:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Does it matter why? The question is about the most efficient way to compress them. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 00:19, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

12:1 ratio is really pretty good, particularly considering that images are involved (is that lossless or lossy compression for the pics?) The efficiency of compression should not vary much with frequency; if anything, compressing larger units of data should produce better compression ratios (you lose edge effects, and depending on the complexity of the algorithm, more data should produce more regularities, for deeper compression). You're more likely to suffer from redundancy waste than compression waste in this situation (where you compress slightly different versions of the same website separately). --Ludwigs2 07:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose what I was suggesting is, if you reconsidered the need to save such a huge amount of data on such a rapid frequency, you wouldn't need to try to find even better compression. But Ludwigs is right, a 12:1 ratio is already pretty good considering you include images. We have extensive information on data compression, with links to articles about many different algorithms. In particular, you might find Lossless data compression#Lossless compression benchmarks and Lossy compression interesting. Another thing to consider if this is your own website and you have access to the uncompressed images in (perhaps RAW format), you could choose a greater compression when converting to a lossy format like JPEG, before uploading them to your site. Of course that would produce more compression artifacts which users of your site might not appreciate. Astronaut (talk) 07:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Is the output of Google Translate copyrighted?

I know that professional translations of public domain texts tend to be copyrighted (i.e. new translations of Shakespeare by academics). Does this extend to the output of a Google Translate translation? I want to pass a public domain text through GT, correct it for fluency, and ideally post it on Wikisource. I'm not looking for legal advice, the interpretation of an educated layman or Wikipedia copyright ninja would be fine (assume US or UK for jurisdiction). Thanks, Skomorokh 19:00, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that the point about the translations of PD stuff is that the translator has added creative effort. For example the English translation of the Rubiyat is a distinct work from the original. I kind of doubt the courts are ready to declare that Google Translate is a creative entity. But of course this is all guesswork on my part and I offer no warranty. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

"(Trovatore) kind of doubt(s) the courts are ready to declare that Google Translate is a creative entity." But how could they say otherwise? If asked specifically, "did creative effort go into the creation of the translation", it would be appropriate to answer directly, "absolutely yes - the algorithm designs, the statistical translation database, and the creation of the translation user-interface all constituted original creative design by Google and its researchers." This is exactly why it is so hard to apply conventional legal norms to IP and technology issues; and it's why any information we offer here shouldn't be construed as legal advice. Courts can decide what they like. But your baseline should be the Terms of Service for Google Translate: among other things, "By submitting your content through the Service, you grant Google the permission to use your content permanently to promote, improve or offer the Service." At all times, they refer to the content (including the outputted translated data) as your content. They also specifically state that by submitting, that you have granted Google permission to use your content for technical, business, promotional, or other purposes. Compare, if you want, Microsoft's Bing Translator legal information and service agreement. Microsoft covers this issue with a very specific agreement: "You may be able to submit content for use in connection with the service. You understand that Microsoft does not control or endorse the content that you and others post or provide on the service. Except for material that we license to you, we do not claim ownership of the content you post or provide on the service."

As always, we can link you to relevant articles and information about the legal implications of these terms of service, but information about the applicability of these Terms of Service agreements, and the legal enforceability of them in a copyright dispute, would constitute "legal advice" that we can not provide. However, in my opinion, Microsoft has gone farther in guaranteeing your ownership by specifically stating that they make no claim of ownership to your data. At the same time, they leave some leeway by not explicitly telling you whether your translated output is "your content" or "content that Microsoft is licensing to you."

The moral of this is that copyright status of machine-processed versions of your data is still a legal gray area. The specifics could be debated in a court battle. What we know, though, is that:

• Google (and Microsoft, and other translater services) expressly state that they will store copies of your translation input and output, and use it for their own purposes
• Google (and Microsoft, and other translater services) will share your input and output with 3rd parties, so if you have proprietary, confidential, or classified information, do not submit it for machine translation to such services.
• Because the details of machine translation, (specifically, statistics-based translations), your document's content might "percolate" through the translation algorithm, in the form of machine-representations of natural-language mappings. This will make it technically impossible to "remove" your content from a state-of-the-art system - so even if a copyright dispute is legally ruled in your favor, it will be practically impossible to "un-do" the leaking of your content. (This doesn't even take into the account the issue that, once publicized, n-number of copies of your data may be held by 3rd-party viewers).
• Finally, it's worth stating that Google (and Microsoft) provide you with a Terms of Service agreement, that does go to some effort to assure you that your data remains yours; but that these agreements don't really seal every possible interpretation. Seek legal advice from a qualified attorney if you need a more concrete answer.

Hopefully this helps you evaluate the status-quo for the copyright status of machine translation. Read the Terms of Use carefully. As with Trovatore, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and I offer no warranty for my interpretation. Nimur (talk) 19:48, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Nimur, no doubt creative effort went into the design of Google Translate. If that were the standard, you can just sign over the copyright to everything you write to Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, assuming you're writing on a computer. The point is that Google Translate itself exercises no creativity. It's just a dumb algorithm. --Trovatore (talk) 20:34, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The US Copyright Office has the opinion that no mechanical process whereby the outputs follow invariably from the inputs can give rise to copyright, irregardless of how complicated the process might be. As Nimur highlights, there is undoubtedly creativity involved in the design of any piece of software, but the current US legal position is that this creativity protects only the software itself and has no impact on works that might flow through it. Hence mechanical translations have only the copyright status they inherit from the original work. So if the original is public domain, so is the output. Dragons flight (talk) 20:47, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

An eminently sensible opinion for them to hold. Of course strictly speaking it doesn't answer what happens if it doesn't follow invariably from the inputs; if, for example, some source of true randomness is used. My very strong guess is that the courts would hold that that doesn't matter, and that they would decline to find "creativity" in any process not performed by natural persons. --Trovatore (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

True randomness is not creative, either. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Right, that was kind of my point. --Trovatore (talk) 02:56, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Let's not forget that irregardless is a perfectly cromulent word. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 20:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

SSRN-Rebuilding Babel: Copyright and the Future of Machine Translation Online by Erik Ketzan -- Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The legal question is that this comes at the intersection of two different sets of regulations in US copyright law. One is on translation, which is defined as an inherently creative act which creates derivative works. The other is on "purely mechanical" manipulations of information, which do not create new copyrights. I am not sure we can really say how a court would rule on this, in the end. They could say that machine translation is "purely mechanical" and thus has no authorship. Or they could say that the mechanical process is sufficiently "creative" as to have some authorship within its output, though who would get the credit for that (e.g., Google Translate, not you), is not obvious. It's not clear whether you can claim copyright on algorithmic output at all, though. Wolfram Research claims copyright on all of the output of Wolfram Alpha, for example, but it's not clear that would hold up in court. Anyway, the bottom line is, I believe, that the likelihood is rather low that it would be interpreted as creating a new copyright, and in any case you the copy-paster probably wouldn't be the author in any case. But this ain't legal advice, to say the last... --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I feel rather confident that no court is going to find that any copyright belongs to Google Translate. Data is a toaster. Algorithms and machines have no personhood before the law. --Trovatore (talk) 03:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Suppose Google Translate always produced a paragraph from Harry Potter when the output language was set to English, ignoring the input text. In that case the output would clearly be copyrighted material, despite being "produced by" a deterministic algorithm. Now suppose it chose several words and phrases from Harry Potter and strung them together—still copyrighted material? One could at least make a case that it would be. This is pretty much what machine translators do in reality: they string together words and phrases from a potentially copyrightable phrasebook, guided (one hopes) by the input text. Does the author of the input text have a copyright claim on the output? Probably. Does the author of the phrasebook? Maybe. Does the computer? No, but that was never the issue. -- BenRG (talk) 04:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the copyright inheres in the original authors of the bits of text that Google Translate is putting together to make a translation, then it follows that, in offering Translate, Google is engaged in mass copyright violation. But I don't believe that will be the conclusion. In general the shorter a piece of text, the harder it is to assert copyright on it, and I gather that Translate uses only rather short pieces. It's not like it's going to copy in the Gettysburg Address. --Trovatore (talk) 04:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Google gone weird - malware?

Whenever I search for images on Google, I get this irritating and difficult to control scrolling page of hundreds of images. If this is not due to a malware infection, is there any way to fix it and return to normal non-scrolling pages? Thanks (There must be an internet programmer's motto: "If it ain't broke, then break it"). 92.15.12.218 (talk) 19:35, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not malware, google changed the layout recently. You can revert back to the old style by scrolling to the very bottom of the page and click "Switch to basic version" 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 19:44, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using Excel/Access for Neopets shop inventory

Here's the situation: I have an account on Neopets.com and currently have a virtual shop there. Usually, when I have a new item I want to sell, I would look it up in the Shop Wizard (item search engine) and just take the lowest price on the list (always the first result that comes back). That's what I would normally do for a few items.

Now the difficult part. I have a lot of items (over 1000) I'd like to sell. To save time, I was thinking of putting all of the item names into an Excel spreadsheet or Access database (which would work best in this situation?) where I would have the item name, its current Shop Wizard price, and the category it belongs to. That way, if I ever need to sell the same thing again, I don't have to go back to the Shop Wizard every time and can just refer to the sheet.

So let's say I have a list of items in a spreadsheet or database. Can I get Excel/Access to automatically import the SW prices, or would I have to do that manually? If the latter, I can't go over every single item, plug it into SW, search, and then copy and paste the price back into the spreadsheet; that would be too tedious and take too long.

Any Excel/Access geniuses out there that can help? 141.153.215.18 (talk) 20:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I have a friend who used ImportHtml() in Google Spreadsheets for something similar. You'd need to construct a URL that retrieves the information (which needs to be public), and then use the Index() function to retrieve the appropriate information. I don't know much about the specifics, though, and I think that desktop spreadsheet software tends not to have that feature. Paul (Stansifer) 21:03, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You could definitely do this in Access, and probably Excel, but it would take some work. It's not too hard to get Access to retrieve web pages using VBScript, but it would not be the easiest "starter project." Excel would be a bit trickier, because everything regarding VBScript in Excel is a bit trickier (it is not quite as naturally integrated with the data as Access is). --Mr.98 (talk) 22:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using iPhone at a WiFi hotspot

If one selects the free WiFi network available there, does the following browsing and data transfer you do while there rack up against the quota of the standard data plan they offer? I wouldn't think so, since if you're using the WiFi of the establishment, you're not using AT&T's 3G network. Thanks. 71.161.56.247 (talk) 20:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using a wifi network doesn't count toward your data plan as you are not using AT&T's network. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 22:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're connecting to the Internet through the WiFi of wherever you are, not through AT&T's network, so it doesn't count towards your data plan. Chevymontecarlo - alt —Preceding undated comment added 17:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC).

Forcible Setting

Why does sometimes my default home page (Internet Explorer) automatically set to : http://searchdnet.googlepages.com/index.html ? -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 21:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Malware (again?). I suggest you sweep your PC for malware using a tool like Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Astronaut (talk) 23:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Concur, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't some kind of nasty malicious software. Good luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 06:07, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that definitely sounds like something Malware would do. Chevymontecarlo - alt 17:32, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista ReadyBoost

Any idea why Vista recommends I use 870MB for readyboost when the max space on my drive is 960MB? Would it run slower if it were completely full or something? Thanks StatisticsMan (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I woudn't think so, but then you would have no space left to store extra documents if you used the entire capacity.Sir Stupidity (talk) 23:57, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I am using the flash drive exclusively for ReadyBoost so I'm not worried about that. I have another flash drive I use to move files around. This one is hooked up in the back and I will probably not take it out for a long time. StatisticsMan (talk) 02:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a line from the Readyboost Article:

Microsoft recommends the amount of flash memory for ReadyBoost acceleration be one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) in your computer. This recommendation should not be confused with the message that is displayed in the “ReadyBoost” tab of drive properties dialog: for example, for a flash drive of 16 GB capacity formatted as FAT32 it will display a message that “Windows recommends reserving 4094 MB for optimal performance” even if RAM size is 10 GB, just because 4094 MB is the maximum file size on a FAT32 volume; after reformatting it as NTFS or exFAT, the message changes to “Windows recommends 15180 MB”.

However I have no real idea why... Can someone help me out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sir Stupidity (talk • contribs) 04:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Fonts are weird

I lost power to my computer, probably due to a faulty PSU, and when I started it back up most fonts on my computer were stuck in italics. Now, I've started it up and everything is stuck in bold mode. Anyone have any information? 68.69.69.9 (talk) 23:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The fonts where are stuck in bold? The windows interface (the writing on the task bar buttons, title bars of windows, etc.) or the fonts in a particular program or programs? I can't see why a power loss would do anything to fonts. I would suggest running a virus scanner. --Tango (talk) 00:16, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The fonts within some websites (Wikipedia, CNN, MSNBC, likely many more) are in bold on Firefox. Everything in Winamp is stuck in italics. 68.69.69.9 (talk) 00:32, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

These are extremely unusual symptoms. If you are describing them accurately, they probably are unrelated to the power-outage. Winamp has a font setting in the options; you might want to check it. You might also want to edit your operating-system-wide Appearance Settings.b This tutorial from Microsoft guides you through the process to configure OS-wide font settings. Check if the settings there are out of order. Nimur (talk) 00:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

So I put more effort into it and it turns out the font registry entries were corrupted. It's all good now, thanks Wikipedia! 68.69.69.9 (talk) 01:10, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Lifetime of a laser printer

I tend to run my cars and computers until they rust in place, so am familiar with their end-of-life symptoms; but I've not used a laser printer, so am not sure how they die.

The HP printer (2200 I think) assigned to me at work is now 6-8 years old, and over the past month just won't print really black copies any more. It's still even (not streaking), and taking the cartridge out and shaking it in every direction does not help. Is it nearing the end of its life, or is the symptom of somethine else? Might there be one easy thing to repair or replace, that would reinvigorate it?

Thanks, DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:33, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

In my experience if it is still printing light print even after shaking the cartridge, it is probably time to get a new cartridge. I doubt you would have difficulty getting a cartridge for that printer - I can still get cartridges for my 10+ years old HP laserjet 6L. In fact, a Google search reveals lots of places ready to sell you a cartridge for your printer (of course, in the workplace you probably have a purchasing dept that deals with that kind of thing). Astronaut (talk) 23:45, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You probably have a purchasing dept... Yes, that would be me :-), and getting new carts is not yet an issue. Guess I'll do that.

I'm still skeptical, though, because I have NONE of the other standard symptoms of "empty cartridge": no streaking, no spotting, and this cart is only 2-3 months old when 6 is the typical minimum.

DaHorsesMouth (talk) 00:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean that it only prints grey? Have you printed a test page from the printer's control panel? Those usually have color bars and bypass the operating system's printing programs. It could be an issue with the settings for the printer.

From what I've heard, a laser printer can last forever, so long as you clean it every few months. When you clean it, use toner cloth and a toner vacuum. Don't wipe off the drum or you might scratch it. Having said that, some models are better than others. Some break after a few years. Others last much longer.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Most cartridges have an estimated number of pages worth of toner in them, usually expressed as a number assuming something like 5% coverage. Whether 2-3 months is a reasonable length of time for the number of pages that have been printed with that cartridge is something you need to consider, but maybe the cartridge is faulty. Astronaut (talk) 08:08, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If there is still toner left, the drum may be approaching its end, it has a long but finite lifetime. Check your printer's manual (or search the web) for replacement interval information. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 09:46, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a HP LaserJet 5 which was apparently made in 1995 and it works great. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 12:01, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Unless you have a printer from hell, you probably need to change the cartridge, clean the drum, or otherwise update the printer's firmware/software. Make sure you check the printer's control panel to see if something is amiss. Laser printers made by HP ussually tend to last a while...I have an HP LaserJet 4 that still works...(though I never use it). (On a side note, its interesting to see that the 2200 series supported Windows 3.1).Smallman12q (talk) 21:35, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

August 1

History data

Where in my computer's hard drive (Drive C) is all the data for the History section stored in? Which folders do I have to go to? 64.75.158.195 (talk) 10:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The history data for what? Your web browser? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 11:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Web browser history data is stored in difference places depending on the browser. IE stores it in "Documents and Settings\%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\History" (where %USERPROFILE% is your Windows login name). Firefox keeps it in "Documents and Settings\%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%PROFILE%" (where %PROFILE% is a random string). --Mr.98 (talk) 14:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

LaTeX and Flashcards

Hi all,

Hopefully this is an appropriate place for this question! Basically, I'm studying mathematics at university and I'm trying to find a way to put flashcards on my iPhone, for revising long proofs of theorems etc. However, since most of the things I'll need to revise will be partly symbolic, I was wondering if there was any way to put LaTeX (or some kind of TeX) in flashcard form on the phone, since the majority of the apps I've looked at don't seem to have much in the way of special character support (logic symbols etc) - if there is such an app I've failed to spot it, but either way a nudge in the right direction, if this is feasible, would be much appreciated! Incidentally my phone isn't jailbroken, so if at all possible I'd need solutions which keep things that way.

Thanks very much, 82.26.0.194 (talk) 12:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean to read latex on your iphone...or to edit/make latex flashcards on it? If you want to read it...you might consider converting it to a format that can be read on a non-jailbroken iphone such as pdf.Smallman12q (talk) 21:26, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Programs

Resolved

I'm sure this is a question which has been done to death, so forgive me for asking. Will 64 bit Windows run programs designed for 32 bit systems? I have many programs, some very old, which don't and will never have 64 bit versions. Will they continue to work, or will I have to run them in a virtual machine or something laborious like that? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:55, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, 64-bit Windows is perfectly able to run 32-bit Windows applications, thanks to the WOW64 subsystem. In fact, most programs on a 64-bit Windows system are likely 32-bit applications, as of today. (However, although 32-bit Windows is able to run 16-bit applications, 64-bit Windows is only able to run 64-bit and 32-bit applications, not the ancient 16-bit apps.) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, so my old Windows 3.1 and DOS programs won't work, without an emulator like DOSBOX anyway? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

That's correct...virtually all of your Windows 3.11/DOS/16-bit apps won't work without an emulator.Smallman12q (talk) 21:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Trendnet router Status blinking slowly, WLAN blinking rapidly

Dear Wikipedians:

I'm currently using a Trendnet TEW-652BRP router. I have opted to connect my DSL modem directly to the router as one of its nodes, instead of connecting it to the Internet port, because I would like my DSL modem to directly assign DHCP address to all of my computers so that my computers may take advantage of my DSL modem's UPnP capabilities for automatic port forwarding. Therefore, the WAN light of my router remains off.

After I have set up everything. I found that all the wired connection to my Trendnet router works fine. However, when I attempt to use the wireless connection provided by my Trendnet router with my laptop, I find that it does not work (the laptop is able to latch on to the wireless connection fine, but it could not detect any Internet connection through the wireless connection). I also noticed that the "Status" light on the router blinks slowly and the "WLAN" light on the Trendnet router blinks rapidly, I think this might be a sign of trouble.

I also have a Linksys WTR router that is configured in the same way as my Trendnet router. On that router I am able to get on to the Internet through the wireless connection just fine. So I am wondering what is going on?

Thanks for all your help,

174.88.33.187 (talk) 17:03, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...this afternoon after I came back from the computer store, the wireless connection on the Trendnet TEW-652BRP router all of a sudden started working. I didn't do anything to it. The indicator lights are still blinking at their respective paces but the wireless network on Trendnet just all of a sudden worked, what a pleasant surprised, problem resolved!

174.88.33.187 (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Resolved