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September 17

Copying pictures between camera and PC

Hello ,I am asking this question again ,-I inserted my SD card from my camera into the port on my PC but after removing it when returned to the camera it says no images ! I am on Windows 7 home premium , and if I insert the card back into my PC I can see the files of pictures ,and I tried to send them to the card but that wont work because the capacity of the card is occupied .How can I recover these pictures to the card ? AlanwrigAlanwrig (talk) 06:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Did you look at the answers to your original question? --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:21, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have special software to copy or move the files. Just inserting the SD card or even copying the files to your PC would not affect the readability on your camera unless something else was written back to the card by your PC, or some control files were deleted. If you didn't do this, then there are two possibilities: 1) Malware could have written something nasty to your SD card. 2) There is a fault on your SD card. Is it important that you have the pictures in your camera rather than on your computer? Many cameras are very fussy about having anything written back to the card. Even rotating an image can make it unreadable by the camera software. If you have a copy of the pictures, I suggest that you just reformat the card on your camera and start again. You will need to do this eventually unless you have an unlimited supply of SD cards. Dbfirs 12:08, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously the SD card is formatted in a way win7 doesn't read Quadrupedaldiprotodont (talk) 15:15, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly a bad answer. Quadrupedaldiprotodont, please read the question more carefully before posting. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:33, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, Windows will read all camera card formatting, and thus will be able to copy any camera files. There might be some file extensions used by some cameras (raw formats?) that you will need special software to convert to a format that your Windows software can display, but this is completely separate from the formatting of the card itself. Cards used in cameras should always be formatted by the camera, not by the computer (though they usually work with a standard format by the computer). We need more details of the exact camera, and the exact problem if further help is requested. Dbfirs 07:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that isn't entirely true. ExFAT is the recommended format for SDXC and Memory Stick XC and while these haven't exactly taken off, there are camera which use them which I would guess can use exFAT. While Windows XP can support exFAT with an update, from what I can tell it's not installed with Windows update under normal circumstances so it's not that unlikely someone may have Windows XP without exFAT support. Windows Vista doesn't support exFAT from a RTM install but support is added with SP1 so it's less likely someone would have Windows Vista without exFAT. It's of course theoretically possible a camera may use UDF 2.5 or 2.6 (not supported on Windows XP), UFS2, ext4, HFS+ or whatever but not perhaps a great example since I'm not aware of any like that. In any case, I agree with CT this all seems irrelevant including the RAW bit since from the information provided so far, it appears the OP has copied the files to their computer fine and I presume is able to read them, but is unable to transfer them back to the camera which they wish to do. Nil Einne (talk) 10:31, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link to ExFAT. I didn't know about that format. Dbfirs 09:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

kindle dx graphith

is there going to be an software update for it that will make him support all the kinddle 3 featers?when? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 8.18.145.238 (talk) 12:25, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

solitaire games

Transferred from the Help Desk Rojomoke (talk) 13:35, 17 September 2010 (UTC) [reply]

I have upgraded to Window 7 and I would like to know if there is a computer game of solitaire that can be downloaded and played on Window 7 ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.98.82.84 (talk) 12:49, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't find your games on Windows 7, Microsoft have an answer to the question "Where are my games?" here -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 13:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can also play online http://www.freeplaysolitaire.com/FreePlaySpider.php Quadrupedaldiprotodont (talk) 15:14, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Getting rid of background tasks

When I look at the processes running in the background of my computer, using the Task manager, I find several tasks that I don't see the need to be running all of the time. In fact, they seem to run my computer slowly sometimes. So I go in and delete them with Task manager. But is there a way to make sure they stop running automatically when my PC boots? There are several, but these are the ones I can identify that I don't need running: DivXUpdate.exe Yahoo.AUService.exe AppleMobileDeviceService.exe FreezeScreenSaver.exe realplay.exe realsched.exe GoogleCrashHandler.exe

Everard Proudfoot (talk) 17:24, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AutoRuns will let you decide what starts and what doesn't. Of those you list, the Apple one might stop inserting an iPod from automatically bringing up iTunes. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 17:29, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They may be listed at msconfig. Go to start->run and type msconfig (this will also work in command prompt). See if the programs are listed there.Smallman12q (talk) 17:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Background processes don't necessarily have a material affect on computer speed. If they don't take up more than a few thousand kilobytes of memory and mostly sit at 0% CPU usage, their presence is probably doing you no harm (though useless background tasks on Windows do seem inordinately fond of having useless annoying taskbar icons), and it's probably not worth the trouble to get rid of them, even if there are no negative consequences. Paul (Stansifer) 19:16, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you are using Windows, then Ccleaner or StartUp Control Panel by Mike Lin can help. 92.29.118.215 (talk) 19:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Command prompt

I want to run a few, say 10, command line programs 24/7 on windows 7. Each program takes up a command prompt window, and these are cluttering the task bar and generally being in the way. Is there a way to hide them? I want them gone completely from the task bar, but still working in the background. It is also important that I can bring them back into view at any time; some of the solutions I've already tested hid the programs completely and the only way to view them was to terminate the program at task manager and restart it. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps something which can minimise the command prompt to the notification area (sometimes called the system tray)? On Windows 7 this means you can hide them so they only show up when you click the arrow to view hidden icons Nil Einne (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You could write a simple AutoIt script making use of the @SW_HIDE and @SW_SHOW macros.Smallman12q (talk) 20:19, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is an option to make group similar programs when they are on the task bar. After you have opened a few other things, they will stack up so eventually there will be just one spot on the task bar (see this example). (edit) Actually just noticed the OP said Windows 7, so I'm not sure it still does this with Win 7's thicker task bar. Astronaut (talk) 15:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to get my tv tuner to work

Resolved

– Installed a Different Tuner Card. 220.101 talk^\Contribs 11:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hope someone might be able to help me. I've just installed a new tv tuner card to my pc. It's an analogue pci tuner, branded media-tech and the model number is MT4155. I tried inserting it into both free PCI slots but when I boot up there is no new hardware detected. The packaging only mentions compatibility with Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2 & Vista, whereas I'm running 7, could this be the issue? This was the first time I plugged something into a motherboard for over ten years and I'm a bit bummed out it didn't work. I've done a bit of googling various combinations of the product & os names but haven't been able to find anything useful. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could offer some guidance. I'm far from savvy. Thanks, Stanstaple (talk) 20:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 7 should be fine if it supports Vista although it's not clear if it supports x64 or if your using Windows 7 x64. If it's a recent card I would suspect it does support x64 however. More to the point, if there is no new hardware detected and you're not seeing anything related to it in the device manager, then OS compatibility issues aren't a concern at the moment. Try taking it out and putting it back in perhaps. Does your bios list resource usage at bootup and if so, is there any sign of it there? Nil Einne (talk) 20:13, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using 32 bit (?) Windows 7 if that's what you're wondering Nil. Again, I'm not tech savvy but I had had a look in device manager and the only thing I could find that seemed in any way relevant was under system devices; and that was only because 'pci' was mentioned, nothing that seemed to relate to a tuner. I tried switching it between the two slots that I have available (one white, the other blue) but no cigar. I'm afraid the bios thing you mentioned is over my head. Is it likely that the tuner itself is broken or that my PCI slots don't work? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanstaple (talk • contribs) 20:33, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My second point was perhaps poorly explained. Do you see a screen similar to File:POST2.jpg while booting up? If you do, do you notice anything related to the TV tuner? It may be multimedia device or something. A simple test would be to see if it changes at all when you add the TV tuner. If you're having trouble viewing the screen, you can try changing the boot devices in the bios so it tries to boot from an optical drive (if you have any) or otherwise a drive it won't boot from. Nil Einne (talk) 20:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

After booting I get a relatively low res Intel logo, followed by a couple of seconds of dos like cursor in the upper left of a black screen (no text) and then a 'windows is starting' message over a typical windows wallpaper. Is this one of those times that you need to hit shift or something? Stanstaple (talk) 21:11, 17 September 2010(UTC)

& thanks for your help thus far.

You usually only need to hit a key during boot-up if you want to look at or alter the BIOS settings, the on-board real-time clock for example. This varies between manufacturer and maybe BIOS versions, but DEL or Delete is a common one. It usually says "Press [key] to enter setup" or similar during the boot sequence, (see File:POST P5KPL.jpg. Name brand PCs (Compaq, Dell) tend to have different keys, F10, F2 (BIOS Keys for Popular Systems). The picture Nil links to above (or similar) should appear, but might go so fast you may barely see it. Try Pause/Break to pause it. - 220.101 talk^\Contribs 10:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm open to any other ideas. Stanstaple (talk) 22:06, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little surprised that a "new tv tuner card" would be analogue only, as I have one a few years old and it includes Digital TV.

• This seems to be the official web-site www.media-tech.eu, and the "User’s Guide" is "HERE" (PDF). (no mention of Windows 7)

- The date on the manual file is 30 January 2008, which possibly explains the lack of Digital TV and Windows 7.

- See "User’s Guide" page 16 for "Troubleshooting"

• This link (on the official website) is for downloading the Drivers (Might be later version than what came with the TV card)

- The Manual (p.3) mentions needing "Vista 32bit", also 500MB HDD free, 256MB memory etc. Any of these may cause problems.

• I assume that you followed the instructions (p.3-4) in installing the hardware and drivers/software? 1) "Install DirectX 9.0c...(you can skip this step in Windows Vista)" 2) "Turn off computer and disconnect power supply cable from computer" 3) "insert card into PCI slot"

- Turning the PC off at the front power button, or via the on-screen Windows start button('Soft-off)', does not turn it completely off.

- Installing a card in this state may damage it or the motherboard(M'Board).

• When you say PCI slot do you actually mean PCI Express? (PCI is what you want!)

- The white slot is very likely a PCI slot and PCI is where your card should go, I'm not sure about the "purple one"! Putting the card in the wrong slot is bad! (should not be physically possible actually) some AGP slots are brown, is that the one you are thinking of? On my current motherboard the AGP is lime green, but the memory slots are orange and... purple! wp:OR but I think there is no set standard for slot colours. However, I looked at four M'Boards, and all PCI were white (though apparently may be beige and in pic. at right is yellow! (This WebPage discussing the issue may interest.)

• Ensure the card is properly seated in the slot.

• Static electricity needs to be avoided when installing new cards, did you use an Anti-static wrist strap for example, not essential but highly recommended! (See "Avoid Static Damage to Your PC" from PC World for more advice)

• Can you tell us what the M'Board manufacturer and Model No is? Then we may be able to find an on-line manual & help work the slots out. See BIOS for explanation of 'Basic Input/Output System' or 'System BIOS'.

Hope this helps. Sorry if I've waffled on too much or mentioned basic things that you know well, like static precautions! - 220.101 talk^\Contribs 07:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some manufacturers have different coloured PCI slots e.g. [1]. It may sometimes mean something, e.g. the slot is some sort of special bus mastering one. I would hope this is what's being referred to here. THe motherboard manufacturer sounds like it's probably Intel but the model number would definitely be helpful, other then what's already been said, it's possible there's a boot logo in the OPs setup that can be turned off and it would be easier to work out how to do this with the model number Nil Einne (talk) 07:37, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When I said the card was new, I meant that I had just bought it & that it wasn't second hand. I opted for an analogue tuner because Ireland still doesn't have broadcast digital tv & this card was just meant to be a cheap (€20) replacement for the tv in my bedroom. I had checked out the website and the user guide was identical to the printed version that came with the product. I followed the instructions with the exception of the part about installing DirectX 9; I've 10 installed already and assume that I shouldn't downgrade (if that's even possible). My system meets the storage and memory requirements. I opened the rear power switch in addition to unplugging the a/c power cable before opening the machine. I'm 99.9% that the slots I tried were PCI. I'd googled the blue PCI slot and learned it was somehow different but still PCI compliant. The card seemed to be securely in the slot on both occasions, and there was no difficulty in inserting the fastening screw. I'm pretty sure static wasn't an issue as I think I grounded myself by touching the central heating radiator in my room before inserting the card. I'm not sure what model my motherboard is, but the whole system is [[2]]. How will viewing the BIOS help? And nearly lastly, Nil & 220, I very much apprectiate the time you've taken to try to help an anonymous person on the internet. I'm kinda hoping at this stage that's safe enough to safe that the card is a dud & that if I just go into town & exchange it, everything will be dandy. I was looking forward to this little project but it's ended up a bit frustrating :) Stanstaple (talk) 11:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome Stanstaple. It seems like you did everything right! Good that it's new and you should just be able to exchange it. I've had odd problems with a few cards. It's very annoying when 'compatible' components don't work, but apparently sometimes that's what happens even if they aren't faulty!. - 220.101 talk^\Contribs 12:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Media-Tech MT4155 TV Tuner Card requires an SVGA graphics-card to be installed in the same computer system. As the Medion Akoya E7330 D has an nVidia GeForce GT220 Graphics Card (which has only VGA, DVI and HDMI), I figure that the MT4155 will not work on your computer. As for the MT4155 not detected, after you installed it in the PCI slot, did you remember to connect it to the computer's Power Supply Unit? AFAIK, no computer can detect an expansion card to which power is not being supplied. Rocketshiporion♫ 22:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Very few PCI cards require external/extra power. (DVB-S cards sometimes do because they may need it to power the LNB, I would guess some PCI graphics cards may as well. Although actually in both these cases I would guess they would still be detected.) The chance an analog tuner card would require external power is close to zero. [3] doesn't show any signs of a molex or FDD connector.

Also you appear to be describing the output ports of the GT220 card. The SVGA graphics card requirement, whatever it really means (likely referring to the output colour and resolution requirement rather then output ports), is almost definitely met by the GT220 card. I actually doubt the tuner really has a graphics card requirement in that you could use a headless system and record and playback the media elsewhere with the right setup and software.

Nil Einne (talk) 23:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

* Stanstaple (talk · contribs) changed the TV card and it still didn't work. They got another brand and have installed it without problem. See Talk Page diff. - 220.101 talk^\Contribs 11:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your input. Twas a big help. 212.129.76.9 (talk) 17:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Twitter

I've never used Twitter before, and I just made a twitter account. Seconds after making it, some nut is "following" me. wtf? I deleted the account and made a new one, and AGAIN some nut (different username, looked like random gibberish to me) is "following" me. Are these lonely morons adding new users, or is it some stupid automatic system on Twitter where they assign a random person to follow you so you don't feel like such a looser for having no friends? It's more insidious than the weirdos who monitor wikipedia new user log "welcoming" every new user with bizarre and overly flamboyant custom welcome templates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.207.98.196 (talk) 20:54, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know the answer to this question, but I strongly suspect, based on your description, that it's some kind of robot. Probably some 3rd party site skimming tweets to monitor trends.

However, I don't know why they'd do it like that and not use the Twitter API. APL (talk) 22:41, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Random incomprehensible strangers are usually some kind of automated spammers. I believe that Twitter provides the option of blocking those people (and optionally, marking them as spammers), so deleting your account is unnecessary. Note that followers don't see anything that isn't visible to the general public anyways. Paul (Stansifer) 23:24, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not uncommon on Twitter. You can make your tweets private. Shadowjams (talk) 09:18, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

September 18

Controlled (Fixed) Bandwidth Allocation

Is it possible (via a hardware device or some software) to allocate fixed/unchangeable amounts of uplink and downlink bandwidth from a single cable internet connection to multiple computers?

(Example Scenario: From a 50Mbps-Downlink/10Mbps-Uplink cable internet connection, allocate as follows; 5Mbps-Uplink/5Mbps-Downlink bandwidth to a workstation, and 9Mbps-Downlink/1Mbps-uplink bandwidth each to five desktops.)

Thanks as always. Rocketshiporion♫ 01:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Traffic shaping can do that. I know Linux can do that in software using the tc utility, other systems probably offer something similar. Unilynx (talk) 07:37, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think any decent router or firewall should have support for traffic shaping. I use m0n0wall which does although I don't use this sort of traffic shaping but I'm pretty sure it's possible if you have fixed IPs for each system (whether assigned via DHCP based on MAC address or assigned on the computer). Nil Einne (talk) 13:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Removed repetition of next question Rojomoke (talk) 13:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would traffic-shaping still work if the computers are virtual-machines, and they are using Network Address Translation via a router? Rocketshiporion♫ 22:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If setup properly, I don't see why not Nil Einne (talk) 23:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can I get rid of the 'My Videos' folder?

I am running Windows 7 64bit on my PC. As usual, Windows creates a 'My Documents' folder and the similar folders for music and videos. I have moved the 'My Videos' folder to an external hard drive and renamed it (I never did like the childish-sounding "My xxx"). My question is, is there any way I can permanently delete the new 'My Videos' folder that Windows keeps recreating on my 'C' drive? Gurumaister (talk) 09:57, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Use regedit to remove the data value for each shell folder you don't want any more. This will stop Windows recreating them each time you startup. The shell folder values are in HKEY_Current_User/software/Microsoft/currentversion/explorer/shellfolders --Canley (talk) 12:44, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is always wise to backup the registry (or at least the part that you edit) before making any changes. The "File, Export" menu item of Regedit will do this. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:36, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you - I appreciate your help. Gurumaister (talk) 15:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aaahhhh . . . I checked the registry but got lost when I found that there is no 'currentversion' folder in the 'microsoft' folder mentioned above. I then did a search of the whole registry for 'shellfolders' and got no response. Has anyone any idea where I do need to go in the registry to find them? Gurumaister (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC).[reply]

I think Canley want to direct you to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" Nil Einne (talk) 10:00, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nil Einne, Thank you but unless I am misreading your post, you have not understood me. What I am saying is that there IS NOT a folder called "currentVersion" anywhere in my registry - I did a search for it and got no response. Am I doing something wrong? Gurumaister (talk) 15:30, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

USB Ports on a universal travel adaptor

I have a family member who will be travelling in Europe and was thinking of taking their Ipod to use in WI-FI spots. However we were wondering about charging it. The world travel adaptor we purchased has a USB adaptor that connects to it. My concern is how safe is this. Obviously we do not want to fry the Ipod. The makers of the adaptor claim it fine to use but they are trying to sell the product. What happens when it does not work and the unit that is plugged in burns out —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hughesfam (talk • contribs) 15:30, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As long as the adapter is rated for the countries your relative is visiting, then you can expect it to work fine. If it doesn't, and particularly if it damages anything connected to it, then it's defective. Note that some hotels (usually more expensive ones) have iPod docking stations, which charge iPods. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As long the AC prongs conform to the Europlug specifications and it has the CE mark it will work anywhere in the EU. If you have any doubts about the adapter it may be safest to simply buy an iPod charger on arrival in Europe. Roger (talk) 09:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is not true. They will not work in the UK or in other places where BS 1363 is standard. By the way we use 220 volts in the UK. And reading the Schuko article suggests there are three or four different plug standards in the EU. Switzerland, which is in Europe but not in the EU, apparantly uses another different standard. 92.15.12.54 (talk) 21:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Show me a UK house that doesn't have at least one Europlug adaptor and I will prove that Elvis lives there. Europlug is perfectly compatible with Schuko. The whole of Europe uses 220V, not only the UK. Roger (talk) 21:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've lived in the UK all my life, and I have lived in or been involved with a large number of different houses and I've never ever seen any Europlug adapters ever. We use BS 1363. 92.15.12.54 (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Well that's my house, my parents house and although not a home, the entire building I work at. The very article you linked to says in the opening line It was designed such that it can safely be used in the domestic power sockets of all European countries, except for the BS 1363 system found in Britain, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Ireland and Malta. Sorry Roger, but do you live in the UK? We really don't have those plugs at all. There's a similar shaving plug in the bathroom of some homes (similar in appearance only), but that's all. ZX81 ^talk 21:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The voltage in the UK used to be 240v years ago, but then it got changed to comply with Europe. I thought it had been changed to 220v, but Wikipedia articles suggest its actually 230v. 92.15.12.54 (talk) 21:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The voltage in the UK is still 240v. The UK agreed to the European standard but didn't make any change in their actual supply of 240v which is still within the EU tolerance levels. They did change the nominal voltage to 230v but this just allows for the voltage drop at a large distance from the nearest step-down transformer (local sub-station). If you stay in a UK building that does not have a convenient Europlug adaptor, then you could purchase a cheap USB charger with a BS 1363 plug (they cost about £5). Our article on AC power plugs and sockets is very comprehensive for world-wide travel, but doesn't make easy reading. Our Mains power around the world article gives standard voltages, and you must ensure that your charger is running from the voltage that it was designed for. Dbfirs 08:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good advice, although the chances of finding a europlug socket or existing adaptor in any building or home in the UK are practically zero. 92.24.182.151 (talk) 10:45, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Really? My impression, supported by Europlug#Incompatibility with British sockets and BS 1363#Compatibility is that it isn't that uncommon for manufacturers to use some sort of adaptor like File:EuroPlug with UK adapter.jpg and File:Euro converter plug2.jpg rather then bother to manufacture special variants for the UK and those other countries that use BS 1363 like plugs (in Malaysia it wasn't/isn't? that uncommon to get a device with a Europlug and no adaptor), particularly if the plug is molded. In fact our article claims, albeit unsourced that all Sony devices with moulded plugs use an adaptor. Note that I'm not necessarily agreeing with Roger Nil Einne (talk) 10:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, really. The BS 1363 article says "Trading standards legislation in both the UK[1] and Ireland requires that all domestic electrical goods sold in either country should be fitted with a BS 1363 or IS 401 (as applicable) plug." I've noticed that when I've bought something like a laptop here in the UK, they often come with some weird plug, as well as the BS 1363 plug. I assumed that the weird plug was an American plug, as many computer power units are switchable between 230v and 110v. The weird plug is unusable as any socket for it would be illegal. I expect a europlug socket would be illegal as well. Only BS 1363 plugs and sockets are legal. I've never seen any of the adaptors illustrated in the links above. Even though it says that Sony has started supplying them with its products, its very unlikely that you would find one, as Sony are just a small proportion of the market. 92.24.182.151 (talk) 11:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry you seem to be missing the point. Nothing you've said addresses the fact there's nothing stopping a manufacurer using an adaptor rather then moulding a plug in the factory (or fitting on later), which what I was trying to say. Have you actually looked and made sure that there isn't actually an adaptor used in every device in your home? [4] includes a bunch of Chinese manufacturers claiming their adaptors are used by a variety of companies including Sony, Philips, Aiwa, Whirlpool, Black and Decker and others... I'm not saying all their products use adaptors, this is unlikely, but I find it hard to believe that with all the evidence presented so far that manufacturers do sometimes use adaptors, as well as the simple common sense that it's likely to be cheaper in some cases to use an adaptor, it's rarely as completely unheard of as you claim. (As I've said, I'm not agreeing with Roger that all UK houses probably have an adaptor, but even if only 5% of houses have at least on device which uses an adaptor, that wouldn't agree with your claim "chances of finding a europlug socket or existing adaptor in any building or home in the UK are practically zero" IMHO.) Given the legal requirements, it's likely the adaptor will be fitted before the device is packaged, and a number of them are designed in such a way that it may not be obvious the device is using an adaptor if you don't look carefully, so it wouldn't be surprising if most people didn't notice the adaptors were in use Nil Einne (talk) 11:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the fact that its illegal. Most electrical things come with "kettle leads" (which seem to be IEC connectors) and apparantly they do not / must not have an adapter. Things like TVs or toasters do not have kettle leads, but I've never seen an adapter on them. Why would a manufactuer go to the expense of fitting an adapter when it would be cheaper just to fit the correct plug in the first place? Maybe it is in theory possible to get an electrical appliance with an adapter plug in the UK, but in practice you'd be extremely unlikely to find any, and the locals here would not know what you were talking about. I assume you do not live in the UK. What you are saying is like someone trying to prove that we drive on the right in the UK, despite everyday experience here making it obvious that we drive on the left. 92.24.182.151 (talk) 11:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nil Einne is correct that occasionally one can purchase a low-power device manufactured abroad with a 13A plug adaptor fitted to the foreign 2-pin plug. I suspect that these are illegal for higher-power appliances and for any unit that is not double-insulated, but I have one manufactured in China for a "Netgear" router. It requires a screwdriver to remove the 13A plug adaptor. Many travel adaptors have the required conversion, but these are more likely to be carried by the traveller than available in a building (though some helpful hotels and B & B establishments might be able to lend one). Dbfirs 12:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen any. I'm sure it would be cheaper for the manufacturer to just put the right plug on rather than paying for an adapter as well as a plug. 92.28.255.243 (talk) 22:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess that they cost about 20p each to produce in China, so they are cheaper than manufacturing a separate unit when the EU plug is part of the power supply. They will probably become more common for cheap power supplies, but only for small low-power devices. By the way, the adaptor is the plug. Dbfirs 06:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Normally for computer stuff you get a "kettle lead" with the correct BS 1363 plug on it, and sometimes another kettle lead with a weird unusable plug on it. The UK is a large market, so it is cheaper to provide the right kettle lead. 92.28.253.68 (talk) 08:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the "kettle lead" with a 13A moulded plug is standard for larger equipment. The adaptor is fitted only to low-power switch-mode power supplies which are manufactured with an integrated euro-plug. Dbfirs 19:44, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Guidebook Gallery

What has happened to guidebookgallery.org? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:06, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's working here. Could you be more specific as to what you're referring to? Perhaps it was a temporary down time 82.44.55.25 (talk) 16:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now it is back again! It was down for a few days. (It looked like the domain name had expired or something. If I recall correctly, a web hosting service template was shown.) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I took a screenshot. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Greasemonkey script

Resolved

I want to make a simple greasemonkey script that detects if you're http://example.com and directs you to https://example.com. I know the following script is wrong and doesn't work, but it's the best I could do as I know nothing about javascript. Any help would be greatly appreciated 82.44.55.25 (talk) 16:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

var url=https://example.com
if (location.href != url)
location.href = url;

Well, I don't know Greasemonkey, but if you wanted this to be valid Javascript, you'd have to properly incase the strings in quotation marks, and properly indicate the terminal line endings. Like so:

var url="https://example.com";
if (location.href != url) {
  location.href = url;
};

However, that will only redirect you, again and again. It's probably not ideal. If all you're trying to do is make sure you at https://, maybe this is what you want:

var badurl="http://example.com"; // the one to watch out for
var goodurl = "https://example.com"; //what to replace it with
var currenturl = location.href; //current url
if(currenturl.substr(0,badurl.length)==badurl) { //if our current url starts with the badurl
  location.href = goodurl+currenturl.substr(badurl.length,currenturl.length); //make the new url the good url plus the rest of the current url
};

This seems like it works: if you go to http://example.com, it'll try to always make it https. It won't dump the rest of the URL (unlike the first one, where if went to http://example.com/test/, you'd lose the /test/ part). It also won't try to make every site redirect you to http://example.com. But again, this is just JS, not specially done for Greasemonkey or anything. Hope it helps. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! :) 82.44.55.25 (talk) 18:59, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally the Electronic Freedom Foundation produces a Firefox add-on called HTTPS everywhere, which rewrites URLs for a range of sites (including wikipedia) from http to that site's equivalent https (sometimes it's just the same url with an S added in there, but for others it's a different URL). If the site you care about isn't covered in its standard set, the extension allows you to add custom rulesets. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 20:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a lost browser

I am looking for a browser which I used 3 to 4 years ago. That browser somehow related to Mozilla Firefox. Its icon looks like a round shaped bomb and the color was blue. Can anyone help me to find that browser? thanks--180.234.0.174 (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A place to start looking would be List of web browsers Mo ainm~Talk 17:06, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Minefield? 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 17:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Netscape Navigator? That was used as a basis for Firefox. If I recall correctly. - 220.101 talk^\Contribs 18:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe Minefield is what you're looking for. It's like a beta (or alpha, or pre-alpha) version or Firefox, "for testing purposes only". The version you were using may or may not have been explicitly called "Minefield," since after they become official betas they get codenames like "Shiretoko" or "Namaroka" or "Gran Paradiso" but they keep the bomb logo. [flaming lawyer] 19:35, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keyboard: "Dead keys" quit working for no apparent reason

I'm using the English keyboard "US International," which uses dead keys. I'm running into problems with a new PC (Windows 7, 64-bit), on which the dead keys quit working for no apparent reason. [So the keyboard seems to be working like a regular American keyboard.] As far as I can see, the keys work again after rebooting... and once, when I simply continued working without them, I suddenly discovered that they were working again (i.e. again for no apparent reason).

What's going on? How can I stop them from not functioning in the first place? And how can I make them work again if they quit? Rebooting all the time is obviously not a viable solution.

For the Windows 7-PC, I've chosen "US International" as primary keyboard during installation (for the Windows XP-PC, it was a regular US keyboard, and I've only later added "US International" and deleted the regular keyboard)... not sure though why that should cause any problems!?

BTW, I've also installed two non-Western keyboards, on both PCs. I assume they're irrelevant for the question because they're not causing problems for the XP system, they're not accidentally switched on on the problematic PC either before or after the problems start [as they're non-Western keyboards, I would notice at once], nor does it help to switch to these keyboards and back to get the dead keys going again.

Thanks a lot for any and all suggestions!! --Ibn Battuta (talk) 17:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Enable the language bar (right click on task bar/toolbars/language bar) and see what's the current selected keyboard. You can change the keyboard layout by Ctrl+Space and change the language by Left Alt+Shift so perhaps you were accidentally pressing those keys and changing the settings. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Contacting people on Panoramio

Hi! I'm trying to contact the author of the following pictures:

I want to ask if he is willing to relicense them for the commons.

How do I contact him on Panoramio? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 18:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps try simply commenting on the photos? That seems to be the only method of contacting the photographer, since there is no email address given, and there's no "message this user" action. [flaming lawyer] 19:51, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I'll comment on the photos. WhisperToMe (talk) 21:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Left a message at http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21922908 WhisperToMe (talk) 21:20, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

e-mail addresses in Excel

Hello. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I use as a database for business contacts. One column includes e-mail addresess. I don't want the e-mail addresses to be hyperlinks, but when I enter them in, they automatically become hyperlinks. I know I can manually remove the hyperlink from each one, but is there a way to prevent the hyperlinking in the first place, even when I enter something in the format xxxxx@xxx.com? Something such as a default format to "don't hyperlink anything in this column." Thank you. — Michael J 19:37, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Under Preferences, under AutoCorrect, disable "replace internet and network paths with hyperlinks," or whatever it is labeled on your version. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. That did it. — Michael J 23:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Question about my Pc system/Graphics capability

Given that i have this:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668232.php

Is there any way to hook a Nintendo 64/PlayStation 2 into my pc and have software to view it on my screen? (i don't know that windows media center would read it through the tuner card, but maybe that's possible too?)

Any thoughts on this are welcome. Thanks. :)

137.81.118.126 (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you looking for an emulator or do you actually want to direct the output through your computer?Smallman12q (talk) 22:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A video capture device is what you want. Most tuner cards will do it for you if you have an RF adapter for your playstation, so if you already have one of those, I'd check out that route first.

Something like this would probably do nicely. APL (talk) 00:27, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have an RF adaptor, but i dont think windows media center will pick it up through my tuner card because it looks for tv channels only.137.81.118.126 (talk) 01:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried it? That should "Just Work". It should show up as channel 2 or 3, just the same as if you'd attached it to a television set. APL (talk) 05:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ill give it a go. For now ill consider this issue "resolved". Thanks guys!

Resolved

137.81.118.126 (talk) 21:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

September 19

Remoting into Ubuntu Desktop VM from Ubuntu Desktop Computer - Automation

I refer to my earlier question; Remoting into Ubuntu Desktop VM from Ubuntu Desktop Computer; is there a way to automate this process such that the Ubuntu Desktop Computer will, upon booting, immediately remote into the Ubuntu Desktop VM and then start the X-windows manager and make it display the graphical-desktop on the Ubuntu Desktop Computer, all without manual intervention? Thanks again. Rocketshiporion♫ 05:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you want to turn your desktop computer into a thin client, or at least something similar. You might want to read up on the subject before re-inventing the wheel. :-) As previously suggested, Nomachine NX is a rather nice way of handling this. There are distributions like Thinstation that allow you to automatically fire up the X server and the NX client software straight after booting. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 09:38, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that ThinStation is just what I need for this project. Thank you! Rocketshiporion♫ 03:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Locked" Micro SD Card

Greetings RD. I'm having an issue with my Micro SD card that I use in my phone to listen to music. The card and adapter are shown here. My issue is this: I downloaded new music I wish to listen to. However, whenever I insert the adapter/microSD into my PC's SD card drive and attempt to copy the files, it informs me that the disc is write-protected. How might I convince my computer that it is not?

FTR: Yes, there is a "Lock" switch on the adapter. Yes, it is in the "Unlocked" position. Yes, these files are totally legal. Yes, I am too lazy to log into my archaic WP account just to post this question.

Thanks for any help you can offer. 76.120.156.206 (talk) 02:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Did you try changing the lock switch into the lock position? It could be mislabelled. Also have you tried fiddling around with the switch? It may be it wasn't properly engaged in the unlock position. Or the adapter could also be broken.Can you at least read files on he card (e.g. copy them to your HD)? It would likely also help to specify your OS. And what you're using to copy the files. I presume you're copying to the right location. And you mounted the card read-write (if that's relevant) Nil Einne (talk) 06:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clean off the microsdhc card contacts with a pencil eraser. They get crap on them all the time. 67.119.14.196 (talk) 09:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Nill Einne: Yes, I have tried it in both positions, no luck. I can read/copy files from the card, just not to. I am on Windows Vista, and I have no idea what you mean by "mounting the card read-write."

RE: 67.119: The contacts are squeaky-clean. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.156.206 (talk) 10:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At some point you might just want to get a new SD card. They're like, what, 10-20 USD? If the new one won't let you write to it, then obviously something's up with the computer. If it does let you write to it, then you copy the contents of your old card over, copy the new material to it, and throw away the old card. Buddy431 (talk) 22:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some times it's the card reader not the card that's the problem. Try another SD card in the same card reader and see if you have the same problem. I had a similar problem with mine, where it would sometimes (which progressed to always) detecting an unlocked SD card as locked. In the end I took the card reader apart and soldered the detection mechanism so that it'll always detect it as unlocked. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:44, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe local policies? Check that your account allows you to copy files to it, under the Security section of the Properties dialog of the SD card. If not, change your account to allow it. Sir Stupidity (talk) 08:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a cheap card reader that will always allow reads but often refuses to write to some cards. Do check the reader before you buy a new card. Do you have access to a different computer and a different reader to try writing to the card? Dbfirs 08:38, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can anybody convert this Flash 8 file into a Flash 7 file?

It's very urgent. Damn incompatibilities. The file is at http://uploading.com/files/a9c5952c/Daylighting.fla/. Thanks, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 05:05, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That site is giving me errors "Sorry, you have reached your daily download limit. Please try again tomorrow or acquire a premium membership.". Upload it to http://www.mediafire.com/ 82.44.55.25 (talk) 11:06, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I downloaded it and uploaded to mediafire [5]. I don't know how easy it would be to convert it to Flash 7. Flash CS4 can only save as CS3. It can publish the file as a Flash 7 but I guess that isn't what the OP wants. I don't know how far back you'll need to go to save to Flash 7 (I presume 8 can) Nil Einne (talk) 14:07, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Based on CS3, you can go back one version. Presumably Adobe did this on purpose as yet another blatently dickish commercialization technique. My assumption is that only someone with Flash 8 can do this. Thanks Adobe! - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:18, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Real-time shared comments on videos?

There are many video streaming sites on the web, and many players. But has anyone made a player or site where you can "heckle" the video - where there would be, for example, a screen directly under the video where comments can be placed so that they scroll on from the right at the exact moment in the action you choose to heckle, and steadily move off to the left afterward? I'm not talking about real-time chat (though that would be nice too), but chat precisely timed to the movie so you can suggest amusing alternative interpretations. Ideally there should be much vertical space to allow multiple heckles, and the heckles should be clickable to get links, or to "favorite" the poster so he appears when there are too many heckles to show, or to "ignore" him and yank him off stage with the cane. I think it'd be loads of fun to watch a movie that way. Wnt (talk) 05:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You'd be wrong. 92.229.13.140 (talk) 10:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Omnisio, a small Silicon Valley startup, provided this feature. It was purchased by Google, who merged them into Youtube and promptly disabled the feature (because it was incredibly irritating). The technology lives on, in limited form, as YouTube Annotations. Nimur (talk) 13:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of a stream of comments outside the screen space. Though I suppose there's no idea too obvious to patent and no patent too trivial for someone to buy and suppress... Wnt (talk) 22:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Computer code

I want to do exercise,can u tell me about computer code.But i don't know that. How i to do exercise... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.15.92.234 (talk) 07:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean tutorials so you can computer program?Sir Stupidity (talk) 09:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article on computer programming. And, because your IP locates in Cambodia and your English seems a bit shakey, you might find our article in the Khmer language, computer programming in Khmer, useful. Nimur (talk) 13:42, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Or to be more precise, Phnom Penh,Phnum Penh, CambodiaSir Stupidity (talk) 07:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Installing Ubuntu (dual boot) on a Windows machine with minimal disruption of Master Boot Record

I'd like to install Ubuntu (dual boot) on a windows PC (xp), which currently has one partition that spans the whole disk. I would like to do so without touching the MBR (or doing so only minimally, to reflect the repartitioning). This implies that I would have to install grub somewhere else. Is this possible? If so, I'd be grateful for advice on how to proceed. For starters, what is the safest tool for resizing the windows partition? Thanks, --NorwegianBlue^talk 11:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This page is a helpful reference. I've used qtparted before and it's part of the ubuntu repositories (I think that's the right one). Backup everything because things can go badly, of course. Depending on how your drive's laid out, you might be able to get enough space to put everything on the one disk. You could create a /boot directory on your first drive. You only need a few hundred mb (if that) for /boot. I don't think it's possible for you to not modify the boot-code of your MBR; it has to know where to point to bootstrap the rest of the OS. Right now windows is doing that on its own; there's no native way to make windows boot linux (unless you wanted to use a different boot medium for Linux startup). Shadowjams (talk) 19:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! After doing a maximum paranoia backup (partimage+full dd-clone, sfdisk etc), I did the repartitioning with the ubuntu installer, and put the /boot directory on an SD-card. The repartitioning tool has an "advanced" button, which allowed me to put the grub-stuff that usually resides on the MBR of the first hard disk on the MBR of the SD-card (which I formatted as ext4). The laptop has a startup menu, reached by pressing esc during boot, which permits booting from the SD-card. So it seems that all the requirements are met. The only hiccup is that linux cfdisk complains (aborts) because of the third (swap) partition ending in the middle of a cylinder. However, both the Ubuntu disk manager and windows diskmgmt.msc agree that all partitions are healthy, so leave it as it is.

Resolved

--NorwegianBlue^talk 20:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you got it working. That cylinder warning is related to old dos-compatible partitions that had to end on a cylinder boundary, which modern OSes don't care about. Shadowjams (talk) 21:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another option would be to use Windows' boot manager as initial boot manager and let it pass control to GRUB when you want to boot linux. That way you don't need an SD card or other external media. This requires the use of GRUB4DOS / GRLDR, as previously suggested here on the reference desk (by me ;-)), so you should be able to find my earlier suggestion by typing "GRUB4DOS" into the search box :-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 09:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to copy all the mails in a Gmail account to another account?

Or at least the inbox? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.216.70 (talk) 14:45, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you are using an email program, such as Thunderbird, to view your email. You can drag email from one account and drop it in another account easily. Just select the emails that you want to move and drag them to the folder you want them to be moved to. -- kainaw ™ 15:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another gmail account, or another email account on some other email service? I believe gmx mail has a feature for logging into gmail and copying all your emails 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at the gmail data liberation front.Smallman12q (talk) 02:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From one Gmail account to another and all the emails at one go. Anyone have any idea how? Thanks in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.216.78 (talk) 08:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Enable POP for all mail (Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > POP Download) for the account you want to copy from. In the account you want to copy TO, under Settings > Accounts and Import > Check Mail using POP3, click Add POP3 Email account. Enter the account and password etc. as directed. It takes some time to download all the messages, last time I did it. 209.89.177.187 (talk) 22:13, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As stated above... Open both GMail accounts in an email program like Thunderbird. Select the email from one account. Drag them and drop them into the other account. Done. -- kainaw ™ 15:31, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Computer security certification

A friend of mine here in Ireland has a Bsc(Hons) in Computer Science but is finding it difficult to find work in the security field, I recommended getting additional certification and said a good starting point would be the Comptia Security+ but he feels this is a step down in certification. He inquired about CISSP but is getting told he needs 4 years experience to get this, has any editors any ideas what he can do to further his career in the computer security field, thanks Mo ainm~Talk 18:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My favorite is the Certified Ethical Hacker (C|EH) test. The rest of the certifications are horrible, if you ask me. Bizarrely, CISSP is indeed the most prestigious, even though half of the material tested is meaningless strategy. And yes, Security+ is less prestigious than CISSP or C|EH, although it does test some important conceptual (not applied) material. Cisco security certifications emphasize router security, making them useless to 99% of security professionals.

He could also just learn a lot of real-world techniques on his own and then impress the manager in the interview. It's not as if the hiring manager will simply hire him because he has a certification. He will definitely ask him questions about computer security to test his knowledge. This course and this course would teach him far more applied material than he would learn to earn a certification. There are also quite a few books out there on the subject that are sold on Amazon.com. Read the reviews there and check some of them out, too.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 08:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

web archiving

If one were to take up web archiving, downloading entire sites and such, what is the best way to store the thousands and thousands of downloaded files (html and jpgs mostly)? Simply compressing them with WinRAR / 7zip? Or are there special archive compressing tools and formats which would be better to use? Also, is mhtml an acceptable format? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 19:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll find MHTML will not yield particularly authentic copies. Compressing is a decent enough idea, but 7z or xz will be a much better idea than rar. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How so? Does it change the html / compression of images or something? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 11:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you're doing something serious, consider this:

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000236.shtml

For personal use, tarballs or the like suffice. 75.62.108.42 (talk) 08:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. What programs use the arc format? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 11:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Java

How can I check if a given BigInteger is a perfect square? --71.153.45.75 (talk) 19:45, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By verifying that its square root is an integer. I don't think the standard Java library has much in the way of math functions for java.lang.Number and its descendants (java.lang.math works only for elemental number types), so you may have to either find an implementation of sqrt that works with BigInteger, or code one yourself - see methods of computing square roots. If this is classwork, I'd be pretty sure that what the examiner really wants is "implement sqrt for biginteger". -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 19:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not for classwork. I was trying to create a program that highlights all the squares in Pascal's triangle, but I had to use BigInteger because the entries get large very quickly. --71.153.45.75 (talk) 00:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If all you need to know is if the BigInteger is a perfect square, not what its square root is, then one very simple algorithm is to keep squaring successive integers until you reach or pass your original BigInteger. If you reach its exact value, it's a perfect square, but if you pass it without exactly reaching it, it's not. This algorithm is very inefficient with large numbers though. JIP | Talk 12:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can trivially make that more efficient (though surely not optimal) by doubling (or even squaring) the candidate square root until you pass the original value, then applying binary search:

def is_square(n):
  l,h,next=0,2,4
  while next<n: l,h=h,next; next**=2
  while l<h:
    m=(l+h)/2
    if m**2<n: l=m+1
    else: h=m
  return l**2==n

Written in Python (with its built-in bignum support) for brevity. --Tardis (talk) 13:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a more efficient version that uses only shifts and adds. It uses bit_length() to compute the initial upper bound. The Java equivalent is called bitLength(). I think that a base-10 version of this algorithm was once taught to grade-school students before the era of electronic calculators.

def is_square(n):
  shift = (n.bit_length() - 1) >> 1
  a = 0
  a_squared = 0
  while shift >= 0:
    b_squared = a_squared + (a << (shift + 1)) + (1 << (shift * 2))
    if n >= b_squared:
      a_squared = b_squared
      a += 1 << shift
    shift -= 1
  return a_squared == n

-- BenRG (talk) 20:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

September 20

Open-Source Nature of Linux

Hi.

This is a licensing question regarding LInux, and so may not actually belong on the Computing RefDesk, but I couldn't find any more suitable RefDesk to put it on. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Linux was released under the GPL license, and requires anyone who modifies the source code makes the modified available to everyone else - this is the concept of free and open-source software? So my question is this:

Why are Red Hat and Novell allowed to keep their Linux products; Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux respectively; closed-source, and charge people money for copies of their software? It seems to me that both of these companies are in violation of the license under which they received Linux. Hopefully, someone here can explain how it all works to me.

Thanks again. Rocketshiporion♫ 01:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

a) Red Hat and SUSE are not closed-source;

b) there is nothing in the GPL which forbids charging a fee for copies of the software.

Marnanel (talk) 01:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is answered at [[6]] but I'll reproduce it below.

"Red Hat partly operates on a professional open-source business model based on open code, development within a community, professional quality assurance, and subscription-based customer support. They produce open-source code, so more programmers can make further adaptations and improvements. Red Hat sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using open-source software. Customers pay one set price for unlimited access to services such as Red Hat Network and up to 24/7 support." - so you are not paying for the software, you pay for their expertise in getting it working and ongoing lifetime tech support. Exxolon (talk) 01:34, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So if I were to ask Red Hat, for example, to give me a copy of their Red Hat Linux software (without the subscription) for free, would they be legally obliged to do so (under the terms of the GPL)? Rocketshiporion♫ 01:40, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This really needs a Linux expert to answer (which I'm not). Exxolon (talk) 02:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is Free software, so Red Hat is obliged to provide the source code for free. It can be found here. You'll have to compile it yourself though, or use one of the distributions based on RHEL, such as CentOS. See Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives for other options. It is a similar story with Novell and SUSE. Winston365 (talk) 02:18, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Two small corrections. Red Hat is not obliged to provide the source for free, but only to provide it "for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution". And this requirement is because Linux is Free Software (so is FreeBSD), but specifically, because Linux is Free Software under the GPL. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 02:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A technicality: I don't believe (though I'm not a lawyer) that RedHat is required to give the source code to just anyone to who asks, even if they have no relationship with RedHat. If you have received the software from RedHat, then they must provide the source code to you, and they cannot prevent you from redistributing it. Therefore there is no particular advantage to RedHat in not distributing it to anyone who asks (it would be all over the net anyway). --Trovatore (talk) 03:07, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's correct. This is not just a technical detail, this is of huge significance to the operating nature of the GPL. Free software licensed under the GPL is not "obligatory" to hand over to the entire world: but if you distribute it in any form, you are required by the license terms to provide the source code (or otherwise make the source code available) to whomever you gave the binaries to. Nimur (talk) 04:35, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's certainly an important distinction in principle, yes. How many people would accept a license that potentially exposed them to a claim against them by anyone in the world?

But in the case of something like Red Hat, I think it comes to the same thing in practice. In theory Red Hat could require you to prove you had acquired the binaries from them before serving you the source code. Or they could distribute the software in such a way that you couldn't get the binaries without the source, and then have no further liability to provide source (I think that works, anyway). Either of these choices would come with costs, and neither would provide any particular benefit. Much easier and cleaner to just put the source on their website, with no restrictions. --Trovatore (talk) 05:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are various notable examples where the GPL gives a strategic advantage to a different party, i.e. the software author, the software customer, or the software vendor. The party who benefits most from the protections that the GPL provides (specifically, the right to redistribute) will depend on circumstances and market conditions. You can read all kinds of expert legal interpretations at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society, part of the Stanford Law School that advocates free software and investigates its legal implications. For example, in regard to the OP's question about Linux: here is an analysis of a case litigated against the Free Software Foundation on the premise that licensing Linux as free software gave a competitive, monopolistic advantage to large corporations. (The case was ruled in favor of FSF). These issues are complex; this site hosts many additional expert opinions about Linux and its license. Nimur (talk) 06:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically GPL is a strongly copyleft license while the BSD license is not. This is why companies like Microsoft and Apple are able to use code from BSD without release the source (in the case of Microsoft) or releasing it under their own terms (in the case of Apple) Nil Einne (talk) 14:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you're looking for a free RedHat, get CentOS. No guaranteed support or services, of course. Unilynx (talk) 06:55, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

need a information for project

Hello, my self sanchit patil. I need some information about new windows 8 operating system. I search information in your search section but there is no information about this keyword. Can you help me? I want this information. Please give me the link for information of windows 8 in wikipedia. Thak You, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Patil.sanchit50 (talk • contribs) 03:14, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To the best of my knowledge, the latest version of Windows is Microsoft Windows 7. Are you sure that you don't mean Microsoft Windows Server 2008? Rocketshiporion♫ 04:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They might be looking for info on Windows 8 though that isn't expected to be released until 2012. Dismas|^(talk) 04:31, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lost images on SD card

Hi , I asked this question earlier and Dbfirs posed a couple of points such as couldnt I just format the card -but as its capacity is still on the card I cant format it as you need to delete using the camera .If I could return these images on to the card then I can do whatever I like . DBfirs I tried to send you the message direct but couldnt see how to contact you . AlanwrigAlanwrig (talk) 06:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need to delete anything to format the card. Formatting does the deleting automatically, but, before you format, make sure that you have a copy (and preferably a backup) of the images. When a card is to be used in a camera, it is always better to use the camera to format the card (though it usually works if you use the computer, provided that you choose the correct format). Dbfirs 08:28, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure but it sounds like you may be having problems because even though you think you deleted the photos from the card, the camera is still registering them as taking capacity therefore you want to return the photos to the camera to regain the capacity? This is a strange problem but I would recommend you clear out all photos from the camera, making sure you keep a copy of everything you want to keep, then format the card with the camera as Dbfirs suggests. It may be helpful if you tell us the model number of your camera. Nil Einne (talk) 14:45, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nil Einne , Yes you see my problem ,I cant see how I can format my SD card when the camera is saying " no images " normaly one deletes photos one by one . Is there no way i can retrieve the images back to the card ? I dont know what I ve done wrong as I ve used this card reader on my PC ,Windows & 7 before ,no problem . MY camera is a Samsung Digimax V800 .AlanwrigAlanwrig (talk) 16:40, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting does not delete the photos one by one, and you do not need to delete before you format. Does the Samsung Digimax V800 not have a format function? Perhaps someone who has this model can explain what buttons to press to achieve a format? It is not the same as deleting. You can format a card that the camera thinks has no images. The problem is probably in one of the control files, and this will be re-written after a format. Dbfirs 06:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to page 96 of PDF/DJVU (same file different format) of the international? 1.0 manual and page 91 of PDF/DJVU of the 1.2 US? manual (again same file different format) there should be a format option in the camera setup menu. I recommend the 1.0 manual instead of the 1.2 since at least for this it seems better as it shows a picture and is otherwise clearer.

If those links don't work or you would prefer the manual in a different language try the international download site for the 1.0 manuals or the US download site for the 1.2 manuals (only English, Spanish and Korea). The US site lists 3 model numbers for your camera but the manual is the same for each.

As has already been said, you don't have to do anything before you format. However and let me emphasise this, it will remove any and all content on the card so if there are any files you want on the card, however they got there and no matter whether they are 'protected' or not please make sure you copy them elsewhere first. To avoid mistakes, you may also want to check they are copied properly.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for finding the manual for the OP. Sorry I didn't have time to search for it. Dbfirs 19:51, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OO Calc formula question - DONE

Done

Hello, Refdeskers. I couldn't find help through Googling, so I will need to ask here directly. In Calc, I need to select a value from a table based on entries from two drop-down lists (say, the row and column). There probably is a simpler way to do this than constructing a mile-long IF statement... is there? Any hint will do. Cheers! --Ouro (blah blah) 10:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to ensure that I understand this correctly... You normally select a value with something like "=F2". But, you are storing the F and 2 in other fields (pretend they are A1 and A2). So, you want something like "={A1}{A2}". I tried that and it doesn't work. If that is what you are trying to do, I will look further. There should be some sort of eval function to evaluate a text string as a function. -- kainaw ™ 12:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I will write this out then. I have an array, rows are colours and columns are objects (for simplicity). And to that I have two drop down lists, one to select the colours and the other to select objects. Now, I need a field which will return the stored in the array for the selected object and colour. I'm searching, but I cannot come to the solution. Any ideas, Kainaw? --Ouro (blah blah) 12:40, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Found it! I've uploaded the spreadsheet for you to see here. You can select the options in fields B3 and B4, and the formula is in B9. Found it online finally. The function handles translate into Polish, and I didn't know the English handles so I chose to upload the file for you to see. Thanks for the will to help! --Ouro (blah blah) 13:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding one million record

Hi friends, I need to add one million records in my table. May I know how to create a script to add the records. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Appvivek (talk • contribs) 11:34, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You don't say what software your table is set up in, or what format your million records are in at present. Comma-separated values or a similar format can often be imported without writing a script, but a million is a large number of records! (If this is software that you have written yourself, then the script should be no problem for you.) Dbfirs 12:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Most SQL databases have an import function that can read CSV files. But, you need to ensure that the CSV file is valid. So, I usually make a new table and import into that to ensure there are no errors. Then, I move the data from the temp table to the real table when it all looks good. If you state what database you are using, we can provide better advice. -- kainaw ™ 12:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How much does an IBM server (mainframe) with 4 TB of RAM cost?

How much does an IBM server with 4 TB of RAM cost (approximately)? How about a Sun one?

Reference to these two lines supporting 4 TB of RAM

Thank you. 84.153.216.33 (talk) 12:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's a blogpost of what 1 TB of 4GB DIMM ram looks like...at about $150 for 1000 4GB DIMM DD3 ram would be $USD 150,000 + tax. Still not sure what you would do with 4TB of ram 0.o (some extensive database cataloging?).Smallman12q (talk) 13:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ouch. Does it go down if you pick two thousand 2 GB pieces, or four thousand one gigabyte pieces? What about if you pick DDR2, or simple DDR? What is the CHEAPEST way to populate a server from IBM or from Sun with 4 TB of RAM? How about if you lower the requirement to only 1 TB? Thank you. 84.153.216.33 (talk) 13:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't you need registered memory for something like that? Perhaps even Fully Buffered DIMM. And I suspect most people would want ECC too (although it may not be a requirement) Nil Einne (talk) 13:27, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Original poster, you used the word "mainframe" in the section header of this question. Really? What computer are you actually looking at for this RAM splurge? Identifying the actual model number would help us. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't care. I just want to know what price range we're talking about, for any kind of commodity server or mainframe. Namely, the cheapest one that meets my requirements (and is currently produced). I am not considering clusters at this time. RThe data point already received, $150k, seems too steep for me however. Does anyone have a cheaper solution? 84.153.242.136 (talk) 16:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't even been able to find a price for a server at this scale, let alone the memory to fill it up. The information online never comes with a price, which suggests the old saying "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." But this promotion suggests that E25K servers usually cost more than half a million dollars (at least, back in 2007, when they were still made). Making effective use of 4TB of RAM is going to require some expensive other components... Paul (Stansifer) 19:31, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not long ago I priced a system from HP with a 1 TB of RAM and 4 quad-core CPUs at ~$120,000. To the original poster, it might be helpful if you described your intended use. Depending on your goals, it might be possible to use much less RAM and take advantage of the inexpensive (albeit slow) nature of hard drives. Dragons flight (talk) 19:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For only US$50,000, I'll teach you how to use a linked list instead of an array, and you won't need 4TB of RAM anymore. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:04, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ha-ha (OP here). That's actually very funny :) 92.229.14.140 (talk) 21:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Hewlett-Packard ProLiant DL980 G7 Server costs atleast $266,000.00 when configured with its maximum capacity of 2 terabytes of RAM. I cannot call myself an expert on the subject of server pricing (I'm generally more concerned with the technical capacities of the server), but if you could state your intended applications, perhaps someone could figure out whether you really need 4 terabytes of RAM. The Hewlett-Packard ProLiant DL980 G7 Server, which supports up to eight oct-core processors and 2TB of RAM, is the highest-capacity single server (i.e. not a cluster) I have come across to date. Rocketshiporion♫ 03:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My own computer has twelve 3.33GHz processing-cores and just a total of 168GB of RAM (144GB of DDR3 1333MHz ECC RAM and 24GB of GDDR5 1566MHz ECC RAM), and it suffices for most purposes. Rocketshiporion♫ 03:30, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 7

Can I install Windows 7 64-bit on a 32-bit computer
Can I install Windows 7 32-bit on a 64-bit computer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.190.202.148 (talk) 13:38, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No and yes.[7] ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm doing a bit of housecleaning on my installation, as Ubuntu is starting to get dangerously bloated. One of the things I want to get rid of are the 1,942 folder containing 9,798 files (!) under /usr/share/doc.

They're all just changelogs, copyright texts, readmes and example files/folders. Do they serve any practical purpose, or can they be safely purged? Asav (talk) 14:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you require to read or analyse them, then they do serve a practical purpose :) but can be easily deleted, your system's day-to-day operation will not be harmed. --Ouro (blah blah) 14:43, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Ouro! My greed for knowledge does not extend to changelogs. Wikipedia and Google still that hunger. Asav (talk) 15:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Under my /usr/share/doc I find a significant number of PDF files, especially in the TeX-related directories. I wouldn't get rid of those, personally. There do seem to be an awful lot of changelogs, though. --Trovatore (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't get rid of these if I could avoid it as they are installed by the package manager and will be reinstalled when you upgrade packages. Debian Policy does guarantee that it won't affect the functioning of the system, though. Amoe (talk) 20:03, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My knowledge is also not broad, however I am learning. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:56, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hotmail will not word wrap

In the last one or two weeks I've started getting emails which are not word-wrapped - the text just disapears to the right. How can I make Hotmail display them word wrapped? I have not found any Option which does this. I'm using Firefox and WinXP. Thanks 92.24.182.151 (talk) 14:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Certifications by Technology

Hello there, I have visited Microsoft's Learning website for their prfofessional certifications. I want one of these certificates. But I am bit confused about which certificates suit me best as the requirements of these cerficates are mostly limited to IT Professionals. I have just completed Bachelor degree in Business studies.Being a regular desktop user, I am capable of performing windows tasks and tweaking browsers (beginner to intermediate level). So, for which exam I should prepare myself? Thank--180.234.0.174 (talk) 18:14, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, you need to give us a little more information. What is your objective? Is there a particular job you are trying to qualify for, and you feel that you won't be taken seriously without a particular certificate? What certificate does the employer say they want you to have? Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:02, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My objective is to become expert on W7 OS and MS office 2010.--180.234.57.72 (talk) 16:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For Office, see Office Specialist Certification, for W7, you're probably looking at Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS).Smallman12q (talk) 01:56, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Javascript

In javascript, how do you put the contents of a page, say http://example.com/test.php, into

var test=????????????????

82.44.55.25 (talk) 18:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You will want to use AJAX. Even a simple AJAX fetch is a lot of code. I suggest googling for something like "simple ajax example". -- kainaw ™ 18:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So there's no way to do this in javascript? I want it for greasemonkey, I don't know anything about "ajax" 82.44.55.25 (talk) 00:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See AJAX: it is Javascript. But if you mean that you're operating with a script that's effectively on the page in question (as I think Greasemonkey does), then you can probably use something like document.body.innerHTML. --Tardis (talk) 01:25, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Err, AJAX is more than just Javascript. It's Javascript plus server-side languages. Not really what the OP wants it for. I'm a bit confused about how this script in question is meant to work. If you're just trying to have it be able to look at the HTML of the same page it is on, the body.innerHTML bit that Tardis mentions should work. --Mr.98 (talk) 03:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is not entirely correct... AJAX is just Javascript. To make "proper" use of it, you need scripts on the server to respond to requests. However, you can use AJAX to ask for an entire page from any old web server. In the end, it is nothing more than a query-response capability for Javascript. The reason I mentioned it is because the questioner did not state that he wants the contents of the page he is currently viewing. If he wants the contents of the page he is vieweing, he can look at the innerHTML. If he wants the contents of another page, he needs to fetch it. -- kainaw ™ 03:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can't request a page from any server. It has to be from the same server the page is hosted on, for security reasons.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know, but it is as close as you can get with Javascript. You can't even view the source of an iframe to another server in Javascript. If that is what the user is trying to do, I thought it would be fine to let him muck around for a while before deciding he has to learn a different programming language. -- kainaw ™ 04:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's true you can't request page from any server, but it doesn't have to be on the same server. The server just needs to support cross-domain requests. --62.142.167.85 (talk) 07:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're making a muddle of what AJAX is to someone who is asking for something else. It's not "just Javascript," it's using specific types of Javascript in specific ways with specific servers and so forth. They don't need AJAX for what they are trying to do and it's not clear that AJAX would even help them. I think it's quite a long rabbit hole to send someone who is a Javascript newbie on, and saying it is "just Javascript" is going to be terribly confusing to someone who doesn't know much about Javascript, I have to say. I think the fact that you're happy to let them "muck around" with it before "deciding he has to learn a different programming language" is not exactly a great sign of a great answer. "Oh good, I'll give you an answer that will eventually lead to your frustration and deciding that you have to learn something from the ground up." If you think the OP needs to really learn Javascript I guess you should just say so, but that's not what the OP asked about and it's a horrible answer for that reason. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As stated above... You appear to be under the assumption that the user wants to view the HTML of the page he is currently viewing. If so, why doesn't the question state: "I want to view the HTML of the page I am viewing." instead of "I want to view the HTML of http://example.com/test.php". If the user is working on PHP and wants to view the source code - he can simply use the browser to view the source code. If the user is looking at someone else's website and wants to view the source code, he can simply view the source code in the browser. If the user wants to muck around with the HTML of his own page that he is currently viewing, he would have states "the page I'm viewing" instead of "http://example.com". Now, what is left... If the user is trying to dynamically load up the source code of another website all together so he can use it in his own website, he would have asked how to view the HTML of another website - which is what he asked for. Why would he need to dynamically (as opposed to statically) load the source code of another website? There must be something on that website that changes, such as login images or captchas. He needs to pass them through on his own website to convince the user that it is actually another website. In other words, he is phishing. Do I feel bad about sending a wannabe phisher down a dead-end trail? Nope. Not at all. -- kainaw ™ 12:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you accusing me of phishing? I want to load http://example.com/test.php into a var in greasemonkey which I clearly stated above. I don't know how you think I'm going to be phishing with greasemonkey running on my own browser. The point of this which perhaps I should have included in the original question is to load http://example.com/test.php into a var which will either say "up" or not load. Then I'd do something like:

if (test.php = up)
Server is up
if (test.php != up)
Server is down

or whatever. It's a status script to let me know if a server is up or not. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I was accusing you of phishing because you wanted the HTML of another website. You didn't mention greasemonkey in any way until AFTER the suggestion to use AJAX was given. You didn't state that you didn't need the HTML at all until just now. What you want is a status of another website, not the HTML. That is completely different. Because, as mentioned above, you cannot access a remote site through javascript, you must perform a trick. There are two options: Use a browser that allows cross-site scripting or place an iframe on your page. Set the location of the iframe. Your browser might allow you to see the status (ie: 404 or 500) which you can use to detect if the page was available. -- kainaw ™ 15:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well I mentioned greasemonkey in the second reply to this thread in direct response to your suggestion of ajax, so I'm still not seeing why you thought I was phishing and continued to talk about ajax after that. Anyway never mind it's cleared up now. 82.44.55.25 (talk) 16:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let's cut short the debate by explaining this in clear-text: Kainaw is suggesting that the OP learns how to use XMLHttpRequest, which ~~is part of JavaScript~~ a very common API provided by most JavaScript environment implementations, and also represents the "X" part of AJAX - "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML." XMLHttpRequest will make a request to the server to deliver anything - an HTML web page, or a generic XML document, or anything else - and return it to the JavaScript context. This javascript function is usually used in AJAX programs, but it can be used to simply read a full HTML document. However, the OP will quickly learn that XMLHttpRequest is limited in most browsers, to prevent a security vulnerability called "Cross-site scripting." What this means in practice is that you can not use JavaScript to request a page from any arbitrary server - only from the one you loaded the current page from. You can learn more details at the same origin policy article, explaining that scripts can only perform transactions with the server they originate from. Strictly speaking, this is not a limitation of javascript the programming language: it is a security enhancement provided (and enforced) by the browser's javascript environment. If you run JavaScript in a hosted platform such as Mozilla Rhino (which is a lot less sandboxy than your browser's implementation), you can write JavaScript to interact with any server that you want. Nimur (talk) 12:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the informative answer. Would javascript be able to request a page from a subdomain of the server you're on, like http://123.example.com? 82.44.55.25 (talk) 16:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now that you've stated what you want to do, you can probably adapt this page to your needs. View the source code and you will see that it checks the ability to load an image from a remote site and reports if the site is up or down. -- kainaw ™ 17:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked and iframe supports onerror, so you can use iframe to load URLs and get the same functionality as loading images. -- kainaw ™ 17:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That works, thanks! 82.44.55.25 (talk) 18:58, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

photo negative to positive

I have coloured negatives of photoes and I have a scanner+printer (ink jet ) .I want to scanned these negatives and then want to get clear(positive) images on computer. I m searching for free software.can u help me.I have ttried invert command on paint but result was very poor. mks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.154.117.168 (talk) 20:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While I can't recommend a particular piece of software to do this, maybe I can still help you a bit: Negatives aren't an exact "invert" of your regular picture, so you need a different setting to "flip" it into a regular picture. Sometimes, especially with more expensive scanners that come with additional hardware made for scanning negatives (usually a V-shaped mirror that will use the scanner's light source to act as a backlight), there's a setting directly in the scan software. Though I'd expect that there are photo-editing programs which provide such an option as well. -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 20:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Irfanview has a "Negative" menu item, under the "Image" menu, which may be what you want. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In ImageMagick, convert input.jpg -negate output.jpg

In GIMP, colours->invert

I tested both with image:Pozytyw i negatyw.jpg -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 21:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All of these will of course be mathematically identical to Paint's algorithm for RGB: x=255-x. Scanning a negative will in the best (that is, easiest to recover from) case involve measuring the square of its transmittance because the scanner's light has to be reflected by its (presumably white) backing pad back through the negative to be detected. (Any space between the negative and the pad will contribute blur to the image, too, so squash them together tightly.) So maybe the negative was

255-x

and now you have

{\frac {(255-x)^{2}}{255}}

; you might be able to play with the Levels tool in GIMP (or other similar software) to apply the inverse function

255-{\sqrt {255y}}

. Further manual tweaking (with the same tool) will probably be required. --Tardis (talk) 21:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's a lot more complicated than that. The absorption curves of the three dye layers overlap with each other and with the spectral sensitivity curves of the scanner's color sensors in all combinations, and the conversion from the scanner's raw output to sRGB is nontrivial and in this case will probably lose important information, since it's based on wrong assumptions about the intended use of the result. What you would need to do is try to recover the raw scanner outputs from the sRGB, figure out the dye levels in the negative from that, and then convert that to sRGB (correctly this time). Aside from the sRGB information loss problem this is probably possible in principle if you had technical specs of the film and the scanner, but each of the output channels will be a complicated nonlinear function of all three input channels. It would be better to work from the scanner-raw data instead of sRGB. Either way, you need special-purpose software, not MSPaint or the GIMP. Practically speaking, I think you need to scan negatives with a negative scanner. -- BenRG (talk) 22:34, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In general, this process is called Color mapping and involves an arbitrary mapping of input color value(s) to output color value(s). That function can be as simple as the per-channel inversion, out = (255 - in), used by MS Paint and simple "invert" tools; or it can be an arbitrarily complex mathematical function based on empirically measured color targets. According to the official Gimp Mailing List, scanning and converting photo-negatives is "not implemented" in Gimp; (validated by similar requests on other forums). Several sources suggest switching to CMYK color format, "de-oranging," and then applying a simple inversion, followed by a manual color-tuning stage. I found some zero-cost software, "FilmEasyDevelop 2.0", but I've never used it, so I can't vouch for it. Xsane, a free scanning program, has documentation on scanning negatives - again, it is not as simple as "just inverting the pixel-value;" but they say you can use XSANE to rescale the individual color-channels. (I would be inclined to write my own tool in GNU Octave so I could tweak the color-mapping functions myself, but this may not be a suitable solution for general users). Nimur (talk) 12:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some scanners come with software with setting for scanning negatives but from the time I've used it the quality was horrible (although that WAS a few years ago). If you want prints you should give it to a professional and ask them to scan them for you. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:44, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

what's faster on a modern computer: reading more bytes of raw text from ram, or fewer bytes (compressed) and uncompressing it in the CPU

in this modern era of 3 GHz very able cores (which do a lot in a cycle, on average!) with 8 MB of extremely fast cache atached, I wonder: does memory keep up? Viz. what is faster, reading 1 KB of HTML from RAM (which is highly redundant, with all its <'s and >'s and matched closing tags, not to mention word repetition (names of tags) and the low-hanging fruit of Huffman coding the English in the document, to name just the fastest-compressing characteristics), or reading a smaller, lightly compressed version and then spending cycles and some trips back and forth to your megabytes of fast cache uncompressing it? If you just care about the uncompression speed, it would seem to me HTML compresses very well indeed - if we are talking about 1000 byte document, I think if you are willing to spend a few thousand clock cycles on it, you can get that document in a much smaller form. Now: is that few thousand clock cycles still faster than waiting for the raw document to come from RAM? Or, on the contrary, is having the uncompressed text in RAM, so all you need to do to get it is to dereference a pointer and start reading, the fastest way to go? Thank you for any information or thoughts you may have on this subject. 92.229.14.140 (talk) 21:55, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how decompressing memory compares to uncompressed cache-heavy memory, but a browser is unlikely to actually use a text HTML representation of a document - it will Parse a document while reading it, removing a lot of the redundancy you mention. Also, a lot of actions (taking the length of a string, substring matching, random array access) would become a lot slower if the memory is compressed. However, a similar approach is being worked on linux - zcache tries to compress memory pages instead of having to write them to swap. Unilynx (talk) 22:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also think about how many additional cache misses you will incur. Seeking to a known (uncompressed) offset will require seeking to an unknown compressed offset - so you'll have to transfer and decompress lots of unnecessary data, and/or use a sub-optimal compression scheme with "tagged" offsets. In some special case applications, you are absolutely correct: transferring compressed data and decompressing in cache is possible, and probably saves nanoseconds on a modern CPU. However, for a general purpose process like text viewing, it will be hard to cover all possible scenarios such that your system beats the average execution time of a straightforward, uncompressed system. Furthermore, to work on more than one specific CPU/cache size, your transfer, decompression and seek programs must be cache-oblivious algorithms; that will be a challenging implementation "detail." The case of HTML is a bit of a straw-man scenario - CPU and memory-transfer of the source-text is almost never the bottleneck during the rendering of HTML. You might want to read about layout engines to see the kinds of data-structures that HTML source gets converted into - and think about whether those data structures are easily-compressible. (Remember, that when rendering text, you're converting a single character into a glyph with a font, color, an on-screen location, a set of rendering-hints, and so on...). It's not just 8-bit ASCII (or UTF-8) residing in the cache! How does your CPU actually represent every pixel in the rendered Document Object Model that eventually writes out to a graphics device? Is that internal structure a compressible data-format? Will you save time, on average? Nimur (talk) 13:17, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Order of Files

Why is that when I copy a list of files from my computer HD to mp3 player they are never in same order as they are shown on HD (Windows XP) Jon Ascton (talk) 22:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is impossible for us to know WHAT order they are shown on your computer or on your MP3 player. They could be in alphabetical order. They could be in ASCII order. They could be in date creation order. They could be in date updated order. They could be in inode order. There are so many possible ways to order files that it should be a surprise if they are in the same order on two different devices. -- kainaw ™ 23:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yeah, they are in alphabetical order, or rather I should say they are shown to me in alphabetical order by Windows Explorer when I want to see them, I wonder are they in same order on HD ? Jon Ascton (talk) 14:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same problem that whatever ordering I use on my PC, when I copy to any MP3 player, the order seems to be reverse date order (newest first). I haven't found a way to change this. Has anyone else? Dbfirs 06:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on how you perform a copy, too. Windows Explorer uses a graphical interface; when you select multiple files with a "click-drag-highlight" mouse-stroke, Explorer creates a new ordered-list that is loosely based on the graphical layout you just highlighted (but there are corner-cases - the list is not necessarily in the particular order that it rendered on screen, nor in the order they are stored on-disk. Windows' shell API doesn't actually specify the order of a list of GUI objects that got selected by highlighting/click/dragging). When you proceed to "copy", this list of files is fed into a Windows copy program, which serially executes on the list of input. This is the order that files are copied to the other medium. (You can manually specify the order you want files to be copied by writing a script, instead of using a graphical program). Whether the MP3 player's internal file-system enforces in-order file placement depends on its file-system implementation details. Finally, when you "view" the files on the mp3 player (whether you use the device's file browser, play-order, or Windows Explorer), again there is no guarantee that the file-order will exactly match the internal file-system representation. Some file systems do not even have a fully-designed concept of file ordering. Your viewer may read the files in any particular order, and then sort them for graphical presentation. Nimur (talk) 13:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sony IC recorder ICD-B26. How to connect and transfer recordings

Hi all. I have a "Sony IC recorder ICD-B26" and are wondering if I can transfer recordings to my PC or laptop. The next generation game with the option to buy a transfer devise but first,. I don't want or spend that money for my old recorder that still works fine as of now and secondly I'm wondering if there is a simple solution to it. Soldering the correct plugs to a self-made wire wouldn't be the problem (going from stereo to mono for example) if that would do part of the trick. But would it work w/o some software and special transfer devise/cable?

As I have some emergency in this matter quick replies would be much appreciated and I'll check back for answers as much as my time permits.

Thanks, TMCk (talk) 22:47, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(e/c)Add on: I guess the simplest way would be to get a mono plug for the device, wire and connect it to to my (also old) home entertaining system's micro inlet and put it on old fashioned tape. That should work but then I still don't have it on my PC to transfer it to CD or send it by e-mail when necessary (besides that the quality would e bad and even suffer over time. To summarize it, it wouldn't be a longterm solution what I seem to be in need of.TMCk (talk) 23:15, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What happened when you tried running a cable from the recorder's earphone jack into your PC's audio-in port, and captured the audio thusly? Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:11, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing as my tiny little recorder is mono and I don't have the right plug (I've tried the stereo plug that I have and wasn't much surprised not to get any result. Does this answer your question? Thanks for trying to help, BTW ;) TMCk (talk) 23:21, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One question would be which program would work if any once I change the wiring by starting from a mono plug (attached to my little recorder) and solder a stereo plug going into my PC.TMCk (talk) 23:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It shouldn't matter if it's mono as mono TRS connectors are compatible with stereo ones. You will get the mono signal in the left channel, that's it. You should make sure that your line in is configured properly by say connecting a (stereo) music player to your line in port and see if you get anything on your computer. If you don't know what program to use, Audacity is a good start. You probably shouldn't connect it to the microphone jack though, as it provides power to the microphone in addition to carrying the signal, so it might damage your recorder (although I haven't heard of anything like it happening). --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make it clear, that's what I have and would like it to connect to my PC so I can save any recordings there ,TMCk (talk) 23:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Again, any help would be much appreciated and I would let you know when my problem is solved.TMCk (talk) 00:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Now I have to prepare late dinner but I'll try to check in later or for sure tomorow.TMCk (talk) 00:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Technical specifications of your device says no pc link capability, and only earphone and microphone connectors. That means the only way you can make digital copies of your recordings is to output using a cable via the earphone jack to your PC's microphone jack and record it with another program. The Masked Booby (talk) 01:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My response was just eaten by some malfunction but fortunately I usually keep a backup when writing. So here it is:

Done. I tried user:antilived's advise, downloaded the program s/he recommended ~~and the only thing I really had to figure out by myself (by trying) was to keep the volume of my ICD-B26 at zero when recording to my laptop through the micro inlet~~ Correction: I meant to full (silly me). You don't hear (as the software page told me) anything while recording but you can see the peaks which confirm something is working and after you're done and hit the play button (at the software panel) you know you did right. If you ever have the same problem I'd be happy to help. It should work with any kind of "sound source' if you believe Audacity. And yes, the stereo plug does work. You just have to adjust the software to mono (which was somehow the default at mine; Maybe it's adjusting by itself depending on the plugs it might find). Anyway, thanks a lot for solving my problem which is no problem anymore.TMCk (talk) 23:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

September 21

Windows Firewall Blocks Google Earth

I've just started Google Earth, and a notification popped up from Windows Firewall, saying that "To protect your computer" it had "blocked some features of this program". Why would it suddenly do this? I've been using it for ever with no problems. Windows XP, SP3. Rojomoke (talk) 04:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Consider trying the official Google Earth Connection Issues Troubleshooter. Google Earth uses many active network connections; Windows Firewall does not know a priori that you want to allow the program to communicate to the outside world (specifically, to Google's servers). Why this warning has just started recently, and never showed up before, I can only speculate: you might have changed or re-set your Windows firewall settings; Google Earth might have changed or increased the number of network ports that it is communicating over (theoretically, Google Earth only uses Port 80); or (unlikely, but possible), a malicious program is running on your system and piggy-backing on Google Earth's network communication, and Windows Firewall detected this "funny" behavior. Nimur (talk) 07:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Faster wget

wget is very slow because it only uses one connection to the server. Is there any way to make wget use more than one connection, or any similar programs to wget that use multiple connections? The computer is Windows 7. I like wget because it can be scheduled from .bat files, which is important 82.44.55.25 (talk) 14:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried lynx (web browser). I know you can save preformatted text. I also know you can save all files/links from a page. I don't know if it can completely mimic wget. -- kainaw ™ 14:49, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you considered running multiple copies of wget in parallel? Marnanel (talk) 14:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

HTTrack can hit the server with many connections. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Need Proxy

I need a read only proxy, ie one that DOES NOT support "HTTP POST". I only want to view pages on a site, but every proxy I have tried as been abused and the site has blocked it entirely so I can't view pages. I want a proxy where people can't have abused it because "HTTP POST" is not available

just find a very small proxy no one has used yet, the more you search, the more likely no one else has abused that service with that proxy yet. (since they probably didnt search as long, and deep, and hard as you). 84.153.251.213 (talk) 17:11, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Creating/modifying a keyboard layout on Windows 7 with very limited rights

I'm a user of "programmer dvorak", on top of which I have switched capslock <-> backspace, mapped ctrl to altgr, and esc to the extra key right of left shift on Finnish keyboards ("<>|" key). Now my university only has Windows 7 machines for non-CS students, and they don't let you to run/install any programs that aren't already installed. I don't have access to windows computers at home. How can I get my layout to work at the university? --62.142.167.85 (talk) 15:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What did the system administrator, or computer help desk, tell you when you asked them specifically about this issue? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An amazing point. I'm mailing them now. --62.142.167.85 (talk) 15:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why does Google chrome have have a totally different window from any other Windows applications.

I'd appreciate if you could answer this in one paragraph less than 4 lines long and not by simply saying "See Google chrome." Thanks. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:15, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On some platforms, particularly Windows, Chrome paints into the nonclient area (that's its window's title bar and the window frame). It does that so it can push the tab bar up there (to save a little space); and Chrome doesn't have a menu bar (it just has a drop down menu). Chrome also doesn't have a status bar at the bottom, which a lot of browsers do. I guess they made all three decisions so the web page would get the most screen space. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 17:31, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So the "regular" looking blue title bar, minimize, maximize, and kill graphics is there underneath and the chrome application just painted over it with its own graphics? I wasn't sure if the Chrome code had its own widget code that could override the Windows windowing code. I'd like to make my own apps have unique "skins." 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On Windows there are several ways to paint into the "title bar"; I've not raked around in Chrome's source to see which it uses. Options include:

Create an undecorated window (off the top of my head I think that's WS_POPUP style), on which you then have to paint your own stuff. Getting this to have much the same colour scheme etc. as the rest of the windows involves interrogating the system colours interface.
Create a regular window, intercept or steal the non-client paint message, and paint just your own special stuff beside the system's stuff
Create a regular window, intercept or steal the non-client paint message, erase the non-client area and paint everything yourself

Various GUI platforms work slightly differently. I don't think the X Window System allows you to (sanely) paint on window frames. Looking at Chrome on Linux, it doesn't quite mimic the GTK UI perfectly, so I think it's doing option 1. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:14, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note that in general option 3 is kinda daft (you'd have been easier just doing option 1) and option 2 makes sense only for programs that either display some status in their title bar or ones that add non-standard controls beside the min/max/close buttons (such programs sometimes draw slightly wrong buttons, so you can tell which one the system drew and which the app did - programs with an "iconify me to the notification area" button often do this). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to link to google searches

Which domain name should one use when posting a link to a google search in reply to a question at the desks? My google is set to .ch, and I always used to change the posted link to .com. Recently, however, I've noticed that when I myself hit that link, it somehow redirects me to google.ch's start site without any search specifications. Latest example: I googled "Trace Adkins" + "This Ain't No Love Song" + "Jamie Edmondson" and got this on google.ch. I changed the link to google.com (by only replacing "ch" with "com"), but the result redirects me to the start site of google.ch, which is useless to the OP. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it gets redirected to the region you are in it goes to .ie when I follow the link. Mo ainm~Talk 17:47, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah ok, then I'll stop changing stuff from google.ch to google.com. Thanks! ---Sluzzelin talk 17:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is the link you changed to .com that gets redirected to .ie the .ch remains at .ch Mo ainm~Talk 17:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. I now also received a reply at WT:RD. Sorry for cross-posting. I wasn't thinking much. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tried the link, and it stayed at .ch, with 572 results. I tried substituting several other country codes (.fr, .hu, .es, .ru), and they all stayed at what I chose, with either 572 or 507 results. For .cn (China) and .jp (Japan), I was redirected to the main Google page for Hong Kong and Japan, respectively.

—Wavelength (talk) 19:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I use the advanced search page [8] by default, and it doesn't force me back to .pl, as does going straight to google.com. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, everyone, for sharing your test results and insights! ---Sluzzelin talk 16:32, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Website capture software working with a cached version

Hello. My favorite websites seem to be dropping like flies. A couple of weeks ago, my favorite quiz site dropped off the face of the earth and now one of my favorite blogs appears to be gone. Is there any webpage capture software that easily allows to capture the google cache of the links I provide? It would also help if I have the option to not download images. - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 18:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if such a site exists (especially given the massive amount of data Google caches), but there's the Internet Archive site, archive.org. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 19:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

September 22

Physical Address Extension motherboards

According to the Physical Address Extension article, the Linux kernel first supported PAE in version 2.3.23, which, according to a source, was released on October 22, 1999. Can you show me a motherboard that can accept x86 processor AND more than 4 GB of RAM, in 1999? As far as I can tell, I've never seen such a motherboard in any computer magazine (much less in the real world). However, there must be one such motherboard, since at least the kernel developers must use it to test the feature. Many thanks. 118.96.154.134 (talk) 08:00, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit EC with below) From this quick search [9] - [10] and [11]. Searching for those chipsets should find more info. E.g. [12] & [13] (from 1997!) Whether it was possible to populate these motherboards with 8GB of RAM I don't know but clearly motherboards supporting 8GB of RAM did exist. If you look in the search results, there are discussions in 1999 of 8GB or more systems in the real world, e.g. [14] [15] [16] (16GB with support of up to 32GB) so whether with those chipsets or others, it was clearly possible. Of course Intel and other manufacturers do commonly provide early samples and reference boards to developers even before those products become available. BTW, what sort of "computer magazines" are you referring to? From my experience consumer computer magazine don't give much coverage to such high end stuff that is so way beyond what their audience can afford that it's of little interest, for example the stuff Rocketshiporion keeps asking us about. I guess there are probably some HPC magazines which may discuss these. Nil Einne (talk) 08:20, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Many kernel developers have access to proprietary hardware and software systems long before it reaches the open consumer market (and the free software community at large). For example, IBM has invested heavily in Linux development and maintains an active team of kernel developers called the IBM Linux Technology Center. As such, they might have had access to internal hardware projects long before it ever reached the open consumer market. Similar large companies and hardware developers also maintain teams of kernel programmers; much of this development work becomes the GPL-licensed Linux kernel material we see at kernel.org. Nimur (talk) 08:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the answers. After searching the Internet for more information, it appears that such a motherboard did indeed exist back then. Although quite different from typical motherboards at the time, it still accepts Pentium II Xeon processor (which is x86 processor) and, most importantly, more than 4 GB (i.e., up to 8 GB) of EDO DRAM.

As to what kind of computer magazines do I read, it is precisely what you stated: general computer magazines. However, because I don't know that general computer magazines don't usually carry news about such an expensive motherboard (and because I don't know of any "HPC computer magazine"), I incorrectly assumed, until I asked this question that is, that such a motherboard don't really exist in physical form, but is instead "emulated", complete with its "x86 processor", by a mainframe's "virtual machine system" when configured to run an x86 operating system!

118.96.154.134 (talk) 12:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Computer program illegal operation

I was using my computer today when everything crashed and it said I had performed an "illegal operation". I was just writing an email, how is that illegal? Am I in trouble with the police? —Preceding unsigned comment added by K. R. Freeman (talk • contribs) 09:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In computing, an illegal operation refers to an operation which is not permitted by the application which is being run. It has nothing to do with the police and/or law of any country. So relax, you are not in trouble with the law. Rocketshiporion♫ 09:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Read "illegal" as "incorrect." Your computer had a technical error - it performed an "incorrect" operation. We might be able to help you identify exactly what broke if you tell us more specifically what the error-message said. Nimur (talk) 09:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) "Illegal Operation" has nothing to do with the law of your country. Instead, much as an illegal pass in football is against the laws of the game, your computer's operating system places rules on what programs can and can not do, normally to stop a program from interfering with another program, or the operating system itself.. The program tried to something that the operating system forbade. If you can repeatedly reproduce the crash, then the program has a bug in it, and you might want to report it to the program's authors. CS Miller (talk) 09:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently this error message confuses a lot of people. This is the danger of displaying jargon to the user in a way that expects them to understand it. Paul (Stansifer) 13:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If that causes such confusion, I sure hope all those internal debug messages about dying and killing (processes, that is) never make it to end users' eyes. JIP | Talk 16:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You must be using a very old version of Windows. As mentioned at General protection fault#Behaviour in specific operating systems, that error message was last used in Windows 98. -- BenRG (talk) 20:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed the title as "computer" isn't really distinguishing on a computing & IT board. CS Miller (talk) 09:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that contradicts the no changing names unless there is no section title. Sir Stupidity (talk) 10:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As per Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines#Don't_edit_others'_questions_or_answers You may also add to a non-descriptive title (such as "question"), but it is best to keep the riginal title as a portion of the new one, as it may be used by the questioner to find the question, I thought that the OP's original title was not descriptive, thus I clarified the title. CS Miller (talk) 10:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC) [reply]

Your point has been taken, Sir Stupidity (talk) 10:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

most bang-for-buck RAM in a hard-drive case?

so obviously the interconnect between ram banks and cpu will be much faster than through the SATA or whatever (PATA, SAS, SCSI, FC, USB) hard-drive interface. So it seems to me it is much cheaper for a company to build a hard-drive case that just has to support these slower standards and has a ton of memory banks in it (like 48 of them). So, my two-fold question: do such CHEAP hard-drive enclosures supporting memory banks exist? And, if so, and if you don't really care about the kind of RAM/perforamce (just as long as it's not down to hard-drive latencies!), then what is the cheapest such solution? Is it competitive with the same number of gigabytes in a flash hard-drive? Thank you. 92.230.232.68 (talk) 12:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what problem such a device would solve. Taking RAM (which is always expensive) and deliberately making it slow like this doesn't seem to serve any purpose. If you want lots of RAM, you'd run a 64 bit OS on a motherboard with support for lots of RAM, and just install it there. If you want lots of storage, you'd use flash or real hard disks, which are much cheaper. The only circumstances where you generally get external RAM is where it's serving as a cache for a something else; NetApp boxes have tons of RAM, but it's all cache for their disk arrays. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 12:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OP here. I priced a server with 192 GB of RAM (above, actually) and it was $150k. If I just need it for fast cache, surely I could buy some hard drive cases that take RAM, make an array of them, and fill them with better bang for the buck dimms than the 8 gb modules required for the aforementioned server? Or can't I? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.186.23.237 (talk) 14:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is the bandwidth of the bus. Consider SATA 2 (the numbers are all in the same ballpark for different current busses); neglecting issues of encoding, that's a 3Gbit/sec bus, or about 300Mbytes/sec. The cheap, year old Seagate Barracuda in my machine here gets conservatively 100Mbytes/sec of read throughput. So three such disks are enough to saturate the SATA-2 bus. Looking at Tiger Direct, I can get a single 2TB disk for $110, so three will come to $330. So that's 6000 GB for $330, or 5 cents per GB. Now consider RAM - 1 GB costs around $25 - ~~50000~~ [500] times more expensive. The hard disk version is just a fast, as the choke point is the bus bandwidth. Now maybe you can find components a bit cheaper than I have, and for writes you'd need a couple more disks to saturate the bus (as hard disks tend to be a bit slower at writing), but the fundamental point is the same - RAM is expensive because it's fast ; putting it at the end of a slow bus makes it slow, but doesn't make it cheap. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Strictly, the RAM solution will have quite a bit less latency than the hard disks, but you'd really have to care a lot about latency, and have a particularly random-y access pattern, to accept a solution tens of thousands of times more expensive than the disks. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(EC with above) DRAM based SSDs do exist, and have for quite a while. They are described briefly at Solid-state drive#DRAM based drive (although that section is rather brief, for example it includes a picture of a RamSan device [17] but no mention or discussion). Before flash RAM SSDs took off they were the only option, but I think flash SSDs are now generally the better option in most areas. Likely to be even more true if your talking about SATA let alone PATA etc given the interface limitations.

I have heard of some devices with a small number of slots 4-8, the article mentions some. And you can get things like the RamSan which support lots of RAM (up to 512GB). But if you look in the whitepaper for the RamSan 440 (seems to be broken on their server but still available [18]) it appears to use special memory boards. I also note the RamSan 440 is from either 2008 or early 2009, I wonder if they too are abanding DRAM. Sun have their high performance flash devices [19].

As per my earlier comment, you may notice most of these devices use often several fibre channels, or PCI-express or something rather then SATA (let alone PATA).

BTW, I don't think making a device capable of supporting 96 random commodity/off the shelf non registered RAM DIMMS is easy as you seem to think. And for most people interested in such devices, having something which is reliable and stabile is likely important, for example ECC which you don't seem to care about is something many probably do care about. Space and power usage may also matter.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, if all you want is a big chunk of "memory", that you don't care much about its speed, but you like the convenience of a programming model where everything appears to be in RAM, then you'd do the following: you'd get a modestly priced external storage array (say SCSI or ESATA) with say 4 or 8 disks in it). You'd configure that for RAID 0 (because you don't care about data integrity or uptime), you'd install a 64 bit OS (which will give you an address space far far greater than the RAID), and you'd memory map the disk into your OS's address space. If you really wanted you could wrap that with a specific malloc call (or the equivalent for the internals of a dynamic language like C# or Java); it'd sure be wise to have a special slow_malloc() call rather than overriding the main system malloc, but that's up to you. With that, you can treat that disk array as if it was a big, hugely-expensive chunk of RAM, and only the slow performance will give it away. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's economical to do, due to the following reasons:

older (and slower) memory modules are actually more expensive than newer (and faster) modules, and
the cheapest (newer) modules are still expensive and you'll waste a lot of bandwidth by communicating with it using the SATA interface.

118.96.154.134 (talk) 16:02, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, $25 per gigabyte is 500 (five hundred) times as expensive as 5 cents per gigabyte, not 50000 (fifty thousand) times as expensive. JIP | Talk 16:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh, silly me. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:33, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I corrected the original, I hope you don't mind. Also I'm the OP here. You said: now consider RAM - 1 GB costs around $25. That's $250 for 10 GB, $2,500 for 100 GB. (Or 25k for a terabyte). Let's stick with 100 GB for now. The reason I want that at the end of a hard-drive bus is PRECISELY for random reads of any part of the data set, orders of magnitude faster than waiting for the hard-drive head to move there, and random enough that it doesn't help to cache. Now, the question is: How much do I have to pay to put that $2500 worth of 1 GB ram into the end of a SATA connection. Anyone? 92.230.232.68 (talk) 16:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You would have to pay well over $2500 for the hardware that would convert that RAM into a storage medium. I have seen PCI-express cards that use RAM as a cache for stuff like photoshop, but they are usually over $1000 and only support a few DIMMs. Try to imagine having 100 slots for RAM inside your computer (or in a box outside it more likely), and then imagine the ~250 volts that RAM would use, and the massive amount of cooling that would require. A high end SSD would already nearly saturate the bandwidth available on SATA and can be found for under $1000. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 18:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Correction: a SATA "drive" supporting up to 64GB of RAM costs about $350. You would have to consider the cost of eight 8GB DIMMs on top of that though. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 19:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Products like the OCZ Vertex 2 [20] solid state drive, offer 120 GB for about $300, and effectively saturate the 3 Gbit/s bus during sustained reads and writes. [21] You are unlikely to do any better than that with a custom DRAM solution if it is limited to an SATA interface. You can do incrementally better by moving to 6 GBit/s SATA or a PCI-e interface, but only by a factor of a few in speed. The current generation of solid state drives are already (relatively) affordable and have basically reached the limits of what a single 3 Gbit SATA channel can support. Dragons flight (talk) 21:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Spaces in a path variable in a shell script on OS X

I'm attempting to write a shell script, but running into a problem with spaces in a variable name. The code:

path="/Users/grey/oh\ no\ there\ are\ spaces/"

grep -ilr "lorem" $path | echo

returns an error because of the spaces. I thought that \ was the appropriate way to mark out spaces, but apparently not. Any ideas? --CGPGrey (talk) 16:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

grep -ilr "lorem" "$path" | echo should work -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 16:32, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly it does not. This is the output:

grep: /Users/grey/oh\: No such file or directory

grep: no\: No such file or directory

grep: there\: No such file or directory

grep: are\: No such file or directory

grep: spaces/: No such file or directory

--CGPGrey (talk) 16:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(First, don't pipe to echo. That loses your output!) There are two separate issues here:

Spaces separate words. There are three ways to suppress that: "", '', and \. All of these are equivalent:

grep -ilr lorem "/Users/grey/oh no there are spaces/"
grep -ilr lorem '/Users/grey/oh no there are spaces/'
grep -ilr lorem /Users/grey/oh\ no\ there\ are\ spaces/

As you might guess, "its and it's" and 'a "valuable" opportunity' are valid: each kind of quotes can contain the other. (They interact oddly and differently with ! and \, so be careful and/or read the manual.)

Separately, you need "" (specifically) when you use a variable that might contain spaces because variable substitution happens before word splitting (look for "seven"):

$ file=with\ space
$ touch "$file"
$ ls "$file" # you can also use things like "$file.bak" or "new/$file"
with space
$ ls '$file' # single quotes don't expand variables
ls: cannot access $file: No such file or directory
$ ls $file
ls: cannot access with: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access space: No such file or directory

The bash man page (that I linked) is really quite good, if long. I recommend it as a reference. See also variable interpolation. --Tardis (talk) 16:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much. The "$path" trick worked perfectly, but now that raises one more spaces-related problem that I can't quite work out. Here is the code that the above is getting worked in to:

path="/Users/grey/oh no there are spaces/"

for file in $(grep -ilr "lorem" "$path")
do
echo "$file"
done

But the file names that I'm trying to echo also have spaces in them -- thus screwing up the output like so:

$ /Users/grey/oh no there are spaces/
some
folder/file.txt

Any more help would be appreciated. --CGPGrey 17:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by CGPGrey (talk • contribs)

Quote the grep result:

path="/Users/grey/oh no there are spaces/"

for file in "$(grep -ilr lorem "$path")"
do
echo "$file"
done

—Emil J. 17:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This can't handle more than one file, because the "" suppresses all separation of the output from grep. If you're willing to assume that your filenames contain no newlines, you can do something like

grep -l ... | while read; do
  echo "$REPLY"
done

but the real answer is to not use the shell at all for this part and use grep -lZ ... | xargs -0 ....

It's also worth noting that this is why to use $() rather than `` for command substitution. Handling the nested "" or `` inside backticks is tricky. --Tardis (talk) 18:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Landing page

I would like to know that a landing page for a membership website is a good idea for SEO or not.Can you please give reasons for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.1.36.10 (talk) 18:14, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

UHDTV - 8k resolution

I wanted to know why in UHDTV, although we call it 8k, the resolution is 7680 X 4320 which is Horizontally only 7.5 times 1k (1024) and why it isn't 8192 X 4320. While that of 4k is 4096 X 2160. I understand that 7680 is 4 times (horizontally and vertically) the HDTV standard of 1920 X 1080. -Ananth (talk)

um, for resolution if someone told me "k", I would understand thousand, not 1024. Only if you were talking about bandwidth would that thought even come up. Did you think "megapixel" means 1024x1024 pixels or one million pixels? 92.230.232.68 (talk) 20:32, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Digital broadcast TV in Ireland

After resolving my tv tuner problem from above, I've a new question. The tuner I ended up with was a dual analogue/digital hybrid. I live in Dublin. I had been led to believe that there wasn't yet digital tv broadcast in Ireland. I also learned that part of the standard that was going to be used in Ireland was Mpeg4 as opposed to the UK's Mpeg2. As far as I can tell (from the box & googling) my card only supports Mpeg2 (WinTV-HVR-1100 (model 1103)). Can anyone explain how come I'm picking up digital Irish channels on my pc via my aerial? Stanstaple (talk) 19:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's no such thing as a DVB-T card only supporting MPEG2, since the card doesn't care what codec is used (well unless it has hardware decoding, although even then you could still likely use software decoding and I'm not aware of any DVB-T card with hardware decoding). If Ireland is going to use DVB-T, then any DVB-T card should work if the software supports it. Here in NZ, as in a number of other countries we use H264 and AAC, both of these caused problems at first (the video particularly the interlaced variant, the audio because we were using LATM I believe), but quite a few software solutions now work fine. A number of European countries had similar problems I believe. Of course even if the software doesn't support it, you still should be able to record the any mux or parts thereof, it's just that you can't play it back. In the UK, I believe they plan to use DVB-T2 with H264 for their HD terrestrial, if they use DVB-T2 in Ireland as well then a DVB-T card obviously won't work. Nil Einne (talk) 23:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

cannot access ExtendedReader, duplicate class: extra.ExtendedReader

Could you please help me solve these java errors?

TextEdit.java, line 38, "cannot access ExtendedReader":

import java.util.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import extra.*;

class TextEdit extends Frame implements ActionListener{
	Panel p = new Panel();
	TextField name = new TextField();
	Button open = new Button("Open");
	Button save = new Button("Save");
	Button exit = new Button("Exit");
	TextArea area = new TextArea(10,60);
    TextEdit()
	{
		p.setFont(new Font("SansSerif", Font.PLAIN, 12));
		area.setFont(new Font("Monospaced", Font.PLAIN, 12));
		p.setLayout(new GridLayout(1,5));
		p.add(name);p.add(open);p.add(save);p.add(exit);
		name.addActionListener(this);
		open.addActionListener(this);
		save.addActionListener(this);
		exit.addActionListener(this);
		setLayout(new BorderLayout());
		add("North", p);
		add("Center", area);
		pack();
		setVisible(true);
	}
	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
	{
		if(e.getSource()==name  ||e.getSource()==open) readFile(name.getText());
		else if (e.getSource()==save) saveFile(name.getText());
		else if (e.getSource()==exit) System.exit(0);
	}
	void readFile(String name)
	{
		area.setText("");
		ExtendedReader inFile = ExtendedReader.getFileReader(name);
		if(inFile==null)
		{
			Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().beep();
			return;
		}
		String s;
		while((s=inFile.readLine())!=null) area.append(s+"\n");
		inFile.close();
	}
	void saveFile(String name)
	{
		ExtendedWriter outFile = ExtendedWriter.getFileWriter(name);
		outFile.print(area.getText());
		outFile.close();
	}
	public static void main(String[] arg)
	{
		TextEdit t = new TextEdit();
	}
}

ExtendedReader.java, line 6, "duplicate class: extra.ExtendedReader":

package extra;
import java.io.*;
import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;

public class ExtendedReader extends BufferedReader {
  // texts for error messages
  private String illegalInt;
  private String illegalNum;
  private String eofText;
 
  private NumberFormat nf; 

  // constructors
  public ExtendedReader (Reader  r) {
    super(r);
    setFormat(NumberFormat.getInstance());
    setLang(Locale.getDefault().getLanguage());
  }

  public ExtendedReader (Reader  r, int bufferSize) {
    super(r, bufferSize);
    setFormat(NumberFormat.getInstance());
    setLang(Locale.getDefault().getLanguage());  }

  // private instance methods
  private void flush() {
    if (this == Std.in)
      Std.out.flush();
  }

  private static void abort(String message) {
    Std.err.println(); Std.err.println();
    Std.err.println(message);
    System.exit(1);
  }

  // public static methods
  public static ExtendedReader getFileReader(String fileName) {
    try {
      return new ExtendedReader(new FileReader(fileName));
    }
    catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
      return null;
    }
  }  
  
  // public instance methods
  public int readChar() {
    try {
      flush();
      return read();  // returns -1 at end of file
    }  
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      System.exit(1);
    }
    return 0; // will never get here
  }

  public int lookAhead() {
    try {
      flush();
      mark(2);
      int i = read();
      if (i != -1) 
        reset();  
      return i;  // returns -1 at end of file
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      System.exit(1);
    }
    return 0;  // will never get here
  }

  public long skip(long n) {  // returns the number of skipped characters
    flush();
    try {
      return super.skip(n);
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      System.exit(1);
    }
    return 0;  // will never get here
  }

  public void skipLine() {
    flush();
    try {  
      int c;
      while ((c = read()) != -1 && c != '\r' && c != '\n')
        ;
      if (c == '\r' && lookAhead() == '\n')  // MS-DOS 
        skip(1);
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      System.exit(1);
    }
  }

  public boolean more() { // skips blanks, gives false at end of file
    int c;
    while ((c = lookAhead()) == ' ' || 
           c == '\t' || c == '\r' || c == '\n')
      skip(1);
    return c != -1;
  }

  public String readLine() {
    try {  
      flush();
      return super.readLine();  // returns null at end of file
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      System.exit(1);
    }
    return null;  // will never get here
  }

  public String readWord() {
    if (more()) {
      String s = "";
      int c;
      while ((c = lookAhead()) != -1 && c != ' ' && 
              c != '\t' && c != '\r' && c != '\n')
        s = s + (char) readChar();
       return s;
    }
     return null;      
  }
                    
  public Number readNumber(String errMess) { 
    // returns null at end of file
    while (true) {         
      String s = readWord();
      if (s == null)   // end of file
        return null;
      ParsePosition pos = new ParsePosition(0);
      Number n = nf.parse(s, pos);
      if (n != null && pos.getIndex() == s.length())
        return n;
      else {
        skipLine();
        Std.err.println(errMess);
      }
    }
  }                       

  public int readInt() {
    nf.setParseIntegerOnly(true);
    Number n = readNumber(illegalInt);
    nf.setParseIntegerOnly(false);
    if (n == null)      
      abort(eofText+"readInt");
    return n.intValue();
  }

  public long readLong() {
    nf.setParseIntegerOnly(true);
    Number n = readNumber(illegalInt);
    nf.setParseIntegerOnly(false);
    if (n == null)      
      abort(eofText+"readLong");
    return n.longValue();
  }
    
  public double readDouble() {
    Number n = readNumber(illegalNum);
    if (n == null)      
      abort(eofText+"readDouble");
    return n.doubleValue();  
  }

  public void close() {
    try {
      super.close();
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
      System.exit(1);
    }
  }

  public void setFormat(NumberFormat f) {
    nf = (NumberFormat) f.clone();
    nf.setGroupingUsed(false);
  }
    
  public NumberFormat getFormat() {
    return nf;
  }

  public void setLang(String lang) {
    // initilize texts for error messages      
    if (lang.equals("sv")) { // Swedish
      illegalInt = "Felaktigt heltal. Fˆrsˆk igen";
      illegalNum = "Felaktigt tal. Fˆrsˆk igen";
      eofText    = "Filslut i metoden ";
    }
    // or whatever language you wish ...
    else { // English default
      illegalInt = "Illegal whole number. Try again";
      illegalNum = "Illegal number. Try again";
      eofText    = "End of file in ";
    }
  } 
}

115.178.29.142 (talk) 23:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

September 23

September 17

Copying pictures between camera and PC

kindle dx graphith

solitaire games

Getting rid of background tasks

Command prompt

How to get my tv tuner to work

Twitter

September 18

Controlled (Fixed) Bandwidth Allocation

Can I get rid of the 'My Videos' folder?

USB Ports on a universal travel adaptor

The Guidebook Gallery

Greasemonkey script

Looking for a lost browser

Keyboard: "Dead keys" quit working for no apparent reason

Contacting people on Panoramio

e-mail addresses in Excel

Question about my Pc system/Graphics capability

September 19

Remoting into Ubuntu Desktop VM from Ubuntu Desktop Computer - Automation

"Locked" Micro SD Card

Can anybody convert this Flash 8 file into a Flash 7 file?

Real-time shared comments on videos?

Computer code

Installing Ubuntu (dual boot) on a Windows machine with minimal disruption of Master Boot Record

Is it possible to copy all the mails in a Gmail account to another account?

Computer security certification

web archiving

Java

September 20

Open-Source Nature of Linux

need a information for project

Lost images on SD card

OO Calc formula question - DONE

Adding one million record

How much does an IBM server (mainframe) with 4 TB of RAM cost?

Windows 7

Ubuntu/Linux delete /usr/share/doc?

Hotmail will not word wrap

Microsoft Certifications by Technology

Javascript

photo negative to positive

what's faster on a modern computer: reading more bytes of raw text from ram, or fewer bytes (compressed) and uncompressing it in the CPU

Order of Files

Sony IC recorder ICD-B26. How to connect and transfer recordings

September 21

Windows Firewall Blocks Google Earth

Faster wget

Need Proxy

Creating/modifying a keyboard layout on Windows 7 with very limited rights

Why does Google chrome have have a totally different window from any other Windows applications.

How to link to google searches

Website capture software working with a cached version

September 22

Physical Address Extension motherboards

Computer program illegal operation

most bang-for-buck RAM in a hard-drive case?

Spaces in a path variable in a shell script on OS X

Landing page

UHDTV - 8k resolution

Digital broadcast TV in Ireland

cannot access ExtendedReader, duplicate class: extra.ExtendedReader

September 23