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September 9

did will wright design sim city on his own?

I was reading about Will Wright's Sim City, and the article made it seem like he designed and programmed it on his own, not least because it appears he had no backing for the game. Is this true, and how long did he take? Are there any books or articles describing how he did it, and what obstacles he faced? It's been emotional (talk) 02:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

You might want to look into this book, which I found on a Google books search for '"Will Wright" Simcity'. Nevard (talk) 03:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, in fact I did some more googling, and came across this: [1], which answers the question. If others are interested, yes, he basically did it all himself over 2 years, although it mentions a team of helpers, external to the programming and design, whose contribution is not made clear. It's been emotional (talk) 03:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Aglets - Installation

Aglets is the new technology of Mobile Agents...but it's installation is quite a bit complex, can anyone specify the installation procedure of aglets?Rajesh Voleti (talk) 03:16, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

No updates to Aglets in ten years means you probably shouldn't bother with it. Heck, Java Web Start's had more recent updates and noone uses that, despite the fact that it's actually pretty useful. Nevard (talk) 05:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

HTML Code cleanup

Please suggest a program to do HTML code cleanup. The code I need to work with is very simple HTML but it is highly redundant. E.g., there are numerous <FONT....> and </FONT> codes cancelling each other. This makes it very hard to read & edit. Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 06:56, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a web based version of the HTML Tidy utility originally developed by W3C Fellow Dave Raggett available here. Nevard (talk) 07:44, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

HTML Tidy rarely removes redundancy. It fixes missing end tags. There was talk a while back to add redundancy reduction to it. I believe the consensus was to make it an add-on option. That wasn't good enough for me, so I wrote my own script to remove redundancy - which isn't very user friendly, but I thought someone may want it so I put it here. -- kainaw™ 12:46, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

VirtualBox

I'm trying to run the latest version of VirtualBox via Remote Desktop Connection on a Windows 7 64-bit computer, controlled from a Windows 7 32-bit computer. VirtualBox has no operating system on it yet but I am trying to install Windows XP. Whenever I start VirtualBox it either crashes or freezes. This problem didn't happen in the last version of VirtualBox. I have 4GB of ram with no other programs running. What could be causing the problem? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 12:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Use the last version. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:37, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't really answer the question. I'd like to use the new version if possible 82.43.90.142 (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

What happened when you tried launching VirtualBox while sitting at the 64-bit machine instead of using Remove Desktop Connection? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:36, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Firefox/Gmail log-in oddness

1. On most log-in pages, Firefox will autocomplete the username and password when I type the first character of the username. On Gmail, though, it has always filled them in just in reaction to visiting the page. Why is that - does Firefox treat Gmail differently?
2. Today, I had to fill them in again because Firefox had apparently forgotten, after months or years of remembering them for me. Why is that - does its memory of passwords expire after a while, or did something else happen? Update: now after I entered my username and password, it's remembering them again, despite my having told Firefox "not now" when it asked whether to remember or not. I always have cookies set to delete when I close the browser. Is this something to do with zombie cookies perhaps?  Card Zero  (talk) 12:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

This is speculation, but it may not be Firefox that's entering the username and password on the GMail site. It may be GMail doing it with JavaScript based on a GMail cookie that's unique to your system but which doesn't actually contain the username and password. But I am guessing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:51, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Since then, I've had one more occasion where the details didn't appear automatically, and now they're appearing again. I think you must be right, it must be Google tinkering with their log-in page in some way. I wonder what form the cookie takes, since it can't be a proper one.  Card Zero  (talk) 17:01, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

MemoriesOnTV

Hi, I live in the UK and hope you can help me. Back in January of 2004 I purchased the above Online Software that quite simply allowed me to create a "video" of still digital pics on my computer and add different photo effects and music, that once completed to my satisfaction could be archived on my PC and/or copied onto a DVD for future use either in a DVD Drive or DVD Player. So far so good. But yesterday when I went to play one of my movies on my PC for a friend, it would not play. Instead, I am being "offered" a new download for around $59 plus an optional Clipshow for a further $19. I am no lawyer but I feel angry that the product I thought I had purchased now lived on my PC and would always be available for my personal use, unless I should wish to purchase any future upgrades in which case the upgrade charge would be reasonable. But clearly that is not what is happening here. I am being denied access to material I have created using software I purchased in good faith. Or am I missing something here? Maybe someone here can clarify what has happened or even, suggest a free site that allows the same facility. Many thanks in anticipation. 94.172.117.205 (talk) 17:27, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed that there does seem to be a steady erosion from the idea of "buying" digital programs and media more to the idea that you are "renting" it. What's even worse, the period of the rental seems to be at the discretion of the company, and not mentioned at time of purchase. Some examples:

1) If you bought a music CD, they don't seem to feel you have the right to move the same piece of music into other digital forms, say for use on your MP3 player. So, in this case, the CD "expires" once CD players pass out of use. I suppose the same was true of vinyl records, but they lasted a century, while CDs only seem to have a few decades. MP3s, for all we know, may only last a few years. Note that this philosophy gives the manufacturers an incentive to constantly change the formats, so everyone will need to re-purchase the same songs (or movies) again and again.

2) Windows operating systems are only supported for few years. After that, you will no longer get new drivers or fixes or anti-virus patches. So, you use it at your own risk, or do as Microsoft suggests and shell out money for the upgrade to the new version. Again, this provides them with an incentive to develop new operating systems solely to cause people to repurchase essentially the same product.

Also notice that if you were promised a "modest upgrade fee", that is meaningless, legally. About the only legally enforceable part of that is that the upgrade be less than a new purchase, but I suppose 1 cent less would qualify.

As for the solution to your problem, you need to avoid using a proprietary format. When you do so, the company basically owns anything you create, and can do as they please with it, including denying you access unless you pay regularly. Perhaps others can recommend a good open format for your videos. StuRat (talk) 17:50, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

(1) Is expected to change soon in the UK as a result of the Hargreaves review, which supports the freedom of format shifting. (The article seems to say it is already allowed under EU law? I didn't know that.)  Card Zero  (talk) 01:08, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

There is an online forum for this product at http://motvforum.com/forum/ -- your best chance at resolving the problem would probably be to ask about it there. Looie496 (talk) 18:10, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I realise that I am suggesting shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but if you'd only saved to CD or DVD, then this format would not require the upgrade. A more useful suggestion: have a look at the file extension of your video. It is just possible that the format can be converted or played by alternative software available free. I assume you've tried right-clicking the file and choosing "open with ..." -> Windows Media Player (for example). Dbfirs 08:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Turning T9 off on a Nokia 1800

How do I turn T9 texting off on a Nokia 1800? --147.32.97.252 (talk) 23:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Use your favourite search engine to search for "nokia 1800 user manual". Here's one I found, that says (top of page 7) "Deactivate predictive text input: Select Options > Dictionary > Dictionary off.". Mitch Ames (talk) 07:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I found out the dictionary was set to a different language than the phone. Solved.--147.32.97.252 (talk) 21:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

September 10

Game Programmed in Ruby Over the Internet/Network

Hi, I'm making a game in Ruby (kind of like chess meets a scaled down final fantasy tactics, nothing to fancy) that I want to play with my friends, each having their own game running on their own computer. Unfortunately, I am an absolute idiot with networking. Essentially, I was thinking that one computer would host the game and that the other computers would connect into this one. More specifically, somebody would take their turn, their comp would send data describing their turn to the host, the host would update the game, then send the data out to all the players comps that would be needed to update the board and other such. The problem is, I don't know how to do this part. Thus, would this basic setup work? How would you go about setting it up (really, if somebody could give a good explanation of how to send info of any type between computers in Ruby, I could do the rest.)? And, is there any difference in doing this over the internet -vs- a home network? Thank you for any and all help, I apologize if this is poorly explained, I can give any extra details. Thanks again 209.252.235.206 (talk) 07:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't use Ruby, but here's a suggestion: You might search for something like Ruby chat server client to find examples of a simple chat server and chat client programs. You could use the same ideas in your game, where the "chat" is actually the game data being sent back and forth.

When you host a server on your computer, you'll have to set up your computer's firewall to allow incoming connections to your server program. If the client programs are on the internet, you'll also have to set up your router to send incoming internet connections for the port you choose to your computer (port forwarding). --Bavi H (talk) 16:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

ram-backed ssd

hi, is there a ram-backed ssd option to be even faster than flash (though much smaller)? I'm thinking like 32-gb "drive", all ram adn when power is pulled it uses an onboard battery to quickly dump to ssd.... thanks... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.234.207.120 (talk) 12:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Faster in what way? I believe a number of flash based SSDS can saturate a 300mbps SATA link so unless you have a better interface you're not going to get higher transfer speed. You may get better access/seek times/latency but I'm not sure that will be much of a benefit over a SATA link as I mentioned in a answer you can find in the archives. In any case, IIRC last time I looked (for the answer I referred to), modern RAM based SSDs only seemed to be made in the very expensive, very high speed, and far larger then 32GB devices Nil Einne (talk) 13:59, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

What you are describing is a hardware RAM disk (though that article is 95% about virtual RAM disks) with an option to write its contents to an SSD. Here is a cool looking hardware RAM disk ... though I don't know of any RAM disk that has the option you describe. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:50, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

A 'hardware RAM disk' is an SSD so are discussed in that article as the headers in both articles note. I didn't mentioned above, but there are some older lower capacity (often not even 32GB) DRAM based SSD which may still be available e.g. I came across [2] (which is 4GB and has flash storage but I'm not sure it has a battery backup or expects the user to provide power via a UPS) while looking at our SSD article. I didn't mention these because even if they are still available, I'm not sure their performance is still then better something solely based on flash nowadays. Even then, most of them don't use SATA. Also most of them aren't exactly designed for the kind of people who would have to ask about them on the RD (except perhaps RocketShipOrion). Nil Einne (talk) 16:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Nil Einne, I'm referring to a real hardware DRAM disk. Here's an example. I remember an external SCSI solution having been marketed for early Macintosh computers. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean using DIMMs or SIMMs? If not I'm not sure what's the difference between what you mentioned and what I discussed (as I specifically mentioned DRAM based SSDs.) In any case, a DIMM based DRAM storage device is still an SSD. See for example the i-RAM which is correctly described as an SSD in our article. I didn't specifically mention DIMM devices in my answer since they all fall in to the old category but they are mentioned or pictured in Solid-state drive which as I said above discusses DRAM based SSDs. And in fact the DDR drive I linked to above is an example of a partially DIMM based device and I found it from the SSD article. Note that whether the DRAM based SSD uses DIMMs or chips connected directly to a circuit board of the SSD would often be of only limited interest to the end user. Sometimes they may be upgradable but sometimes not particularly if you want battery backed flash backup. Edit: Actually the i-RAM seems to be what you are referring to and even the article you linked to says "solid state-storage device" so I'm not sure why there is any confusion. Edit2: I was trying to find out why the DDR drive X1 has DIMMs even though it doesn't seem to be designed to be user upgradable (since it has flash backup storage as I mentioned). I didn't actually find the answer but did find [3] which suggests it was originally designed to be something different and I guess the design was reused in the final product which was apparently launched in 2009 (I think). More importantly I found [4] which confirms what I was saying about the device relying on the user to provide backup power. Nil Einne (talk) 16:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is a similar question from the archives with some answers you may find useful AvrillirvA (talk) 20:13, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly, you're looking for something like Acard's ANS-9010BA or ANS-9010. Rocketshiporion♫ 19:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

exposed financial information

I did a very dumb thing: I sent by e-mail a list of my assets, including account numbers of financial holdings, my social security number and even my home address. Worse, the message was entitled, "assets." Am I doomed? Will thieves likely intercept the e-mail? What can I do? Thanks, --Halcatalyst (talk) 16:28, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Unless you are someone of great importance and wealth who is being actively spied upon or you sent it to someone highly malicious, odds are you're perfectly fine. It's very unlikely that anyone would single you out, a much bigger threat is accidentally logging into a spoofed version of a legitimate site or logging into your bank online and spyware snatching your password. In short, I wouldn't really worry.Phoenix1177 (talk) 17:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

At first I read this question as I sent to an email list a list of my assets, including account numbers...social security number and even home address. Wow, just wow. As it stands, if you didn't send it to a list, but only a single recipient, you should be fine! 82.234.207.120 (talk) 17:53, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Despite the above, it's possible that a bad guy now has that list. E-mail is sent in plaintext and passes through the hands of an unknown number of computers before it reaches the destination. If a system administrator on any of those computers has modified his system to look for words like "assets" or "citibank" then it would be easy to harvest all such e-mails that pass through his computer. This is probably a criminal act, for what it's worth. Certainly don't do that again. I agree with Phoenix1177 that logging into a phishing site is worse, and certain to get you into trouble; but sending your account numbers through e-mail is also risky. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Most likely you're fine... Yes, it's not a good thing to do but generally you don't have to worry about any 1 specific email. That being said, there are things you can do to recover somewhat...

For example, if both you and your recipients are using Microsoft Exchange accounts, you can try doing a message recall (more info: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/how-message-recall-works-HA001091760.aspx )

Otherwise, assuming you know the person (or persons) on the 2nd end of the email, ask them to delete it and make sure they delete it off their email server as well. Chances are low that you would be intercepted at any given time unless you or they were already compromised, but if they fail to clean out their email periodically and later get compromised then you would still be at risk. Acoustic visions (talk) 19:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Independent of what you did wrong, it's important to track possible cases of identity theft: check your credit rating every once in a while, an bank statements regularly. Quest09 (talk) 22:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

finding a blog post

Resolved

I am looking for a blog post that is marked "about a month ago" in the Date, it begins by __link__ing to his other blog post about replacing his desktop computer recently; then he goes on to say that what he wants to replace his laptop as well, and what he is looking for is one that is "the macbook air but not the macbook air": i.e. being as similar to it as possible in every way but without being it; then he introduces Intel's push toward what Intel calls "ultrabook", noting that Intel would like 40% of laptop's to be "ultrabooks" within a certain amount of time; it also details the author's quest for a notebook "like" the macbook air in all these ways (ssd, metal case for inductive cooling, etc etc) noting that in all these things his requirement is like a macbok air. He does note that he would like an ultrabook that boots in 7 seconds, which Macbook Air can do "in a pinch".

And that's as far as I got. I would really like the article - I probably (but this might be a red herring) got to it via hacker news or slashdot or reddit or something. please help me find it so I can finish reading it. My usual bookmark manager, Google, is not working for some reason. Thank you. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 17:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Was it this? (Found using Google's blog search.) Looie496 (talk) 18:42, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

that seemed to be like the text, but it did not start with a link to the other blog post. So I googled a part of the text you provided "(Oh, and they should boot in 7 seconds or less (which at a pinch, the MacBook Air can probably pull off, too)" and got to what I was actually looking for: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2011/09/ultrabook-intels-300-million-plan-to-beat-apple-at-its-own-game.ars linking to http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/08/what-processor-should-i-buy-intels-crazy-pricing-makes-my-head-hurt.ars (which is what had the "one month ago" date). Thanks for the help! This was driving me crazy... (And with good reason, ars technica is excellent writing). I've marked this resolved now... --82.234.207.120 (talk) 19:47, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I just want to add that this was driving me crazy, I remembered so much of the article I got to (but not verbatim, e.g. I tried to search "in a pinch" with other terms, but the article actually used "at a pinch", etc)... grrr... thanks again! 19:48, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Problem with Gateway LX6810-01 Desktop PC and tuner card

Resolved

Hello, i have a Gateway LX6810-01 Desktop. It recently crashed so i had to format the drives and ive installed Win 7 x64 ultimate. (it used to be some version of vista) .... all is working fine except i dont have drivers for my TV tuner card. I looked on the gateway website:

http://support.gateway.com/us/en/product/default.aspx?tab=1&modelId=2308

and they have nothing about my card or what type it is. Im hoping my drivers are here somewhere?:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Browse.aspx?type=Hardware&category=TV%20Devices&subcategory=TV%20Tuners

but theres no way to know what i even have. Any ideas? Thanks.

137.81.118.126 (talk) 19:31, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

You did allow Windows to search for drivers for the card right? This may sound like a dumb question but a search for 'Gateway LX6810-01 tuner' found [5] suggesting it may be an M791-B tuner. The model sounded familiar as a possible Avermedia device to me and sure enough the picture shows an AverMedia label printed on the metal enclosure of the silicon? tuner. Anyway a search for Avermedia M791-B finds [6] where one respondent said drivers automatically downloaded on both Windows 7 x64 and x32. If you didn't allow Windows to try to download drivers, note you should always do so, particularly on Windows Vista and 7 where Windows update drivers seem more common. Even if you want to search for other drivers, it at least may help you to identify the card. Nil Einne (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

BTW, if Windows really doesn't find drivers for your card, you could try [7]. There's a fair chance they won't work, according to [8] they are probably related but binary drivers released by the manufacturer often don't work on customised OEM products, often on purpose. Also I came across [9] which again suggests there should be Windows update drivers although it also suggests they may be problematic and you should use the Gateway ones which you unfortunately couldn't find. Fortunately a quick search for M791 on the Gateway website finds [10] which has drivers for Vista x32 (which probably work on Windows 7 x32 but not Windows 7 x64) although I do hope they aren't for the ATI 550 as the site suggests since the evidence suggests your card doesn't have that ATI chip (and that chip only supported analog anyway). You might want to ask Gateway why their Hardware Vendor Detection Utility didn't find your card and also why they don't link to drivers for the card in the support page for your computer. (I'm presuming you did run the 'Hardware Vendor Detection Utility' the Gateway page you linked to recommends.) Nil Einne (talk) 19:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry guys, my bad. Windows update did fix it. Thanks for the help!

137.81.118.126 (talk) 20:12, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

September 11

HTML Scrubbed

I wrote a note to a private posting board and when it was posted it was not printed but had a note saying an HTML attachment was "scrubbed". When I clicked on the link provided my note was there but in the HTML format and very difficult to read. Why is this done and what does "scrubbed" mean? FCVCO — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.67.241.116 (talk) 00:21, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible that you tried to post an attachment, and that it was "scrubbed" (i.e., discarded) and replaced with HTML, because the board didn't accept attachments? --Orange Mike | Talk 00:44, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for writing....I didn't attach anything to my email - I just sent it written directly on the email page. All of the info in my email I sent is there, its just in the HTML format with all of the editing symbols which I don't understand. One sentence requires scrolling over and over to the right and with all the ></...\[] etc. its just very difficult to read my post! Why would something be scrubbed/discareded anyway? (fcvco) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.67.241.116 (talk) 00:59, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Websites that accept text from users will have some kind of limit on which HTML tags the user can place on the page, for security, to prevent the use of excitingly dangerous tags like, I don't know, <object> or <script>. If you literally send emails to this page, using an email client, then it sounds like the problem is that your email client is configured to send HTML rather than plain text, and the page isn't prepared to show any HTML formatting. Scrubbing might mean the conversion of the functional tags to non-functional, visible versions.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:46, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Problem with Whirled website

I tried to go onto the website known as Whirled (http://www.whirled.com/), but when i did, there was no playing screen. Logging out then logging back in didn't work, refreshing several times didn't work, and updating my Flash player didn't work either.What is wrong and how can I fix the problem? I am using a Windows 7 for this. Strangely though, the playing screen successfully loadad on my Windows XP, but i don't want to use XP because it runs too slowly. 72.235.221.120 (talk) 04:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

You said you tried "logging out and back in". Does this mean a full reboot ? If not, try that next. StuRat (talk) 15:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

blocked web pages

I requested some blogs to send their blog pages by giving my email address. But I don't receive any updates. why? some say it is due to spams. How can I overcome this problem. Thank you175.157.100.140 (talk) 06:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It may be that your e-mail program's spam filter is blocking the e-mail from the blogs. If your e-mail website or program has folder named "Junk Mail" or something similar, take a look inside to see if the blogs' e-mails are inside. If they are, it is possible to set up a whitelist to tell your e-mail program to always deliver e-mails from those blogs to your inbox. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

What exactly is an "atomic move"?

I'm assuming it has something to do with graph-based traversal algorithms...

This originally came up when I was looking at an algorithm for solving solitaire games, where it was mentioned but without explaining what one was... http://cards.wikia.com/wiki/Patsolve?cb=8733 . It makes use of atomic moves Acoustic visions (talk) 17:33, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Google for once hasn't been any help, I can find several questions if some programming language can move something atomically, but can't find anything that actually specifies what an atomic move is compared to a regular move, and so on.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acoustic visions (talk • contribs) 17:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the term come from artificial intelligence, not graph algorithms. From web searches, it seems that an atom move is one that's not decomposable into simpler moves in the game involved. I.e., it's not a maneuver that consists of a number of fundamental moves. Does that make sense? --108.36.90.144 (talk) 17:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The search results you found about "if some programming language can move something atomically" are probably people asking about low-level atomic operations in concurrent systems (to do with linearizability and transactional integrity). That's really quite a different meaning of "atomic" than the game/AI sense you're interested in. -- Finlay M^cWalterჷTalk 18:08, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

That(so some degree) reflects how useless Google was with some of the results... I think the first response suggesting it was artificial intelligence was correct, but I still have no idea what an "atomic move" is...

The closest answer I've been able to find is on this pdf: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~sgs/robots/my.stuff/robots.project.pdf and it still doesn't actually say what an atomic move IS... Acoustic visions (talk) 19:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Somewhat more examples are listed here, http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/3127/dissertation.pdf but there still isn't a "general" definition of what an atomic move in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence actually is... Examples: "A single atomic move for this design is also simple: a transition of one module from its current lattice location to an adjacent lattice location." "Hence, an atomic move for this design is less simple: it involves a single module making an attach or detach operation (to connect to another module or break a connection) as well as a possible motion within any of that module's degrees of freedom." "An atomic move for this category would then involve a module detaching from the collection, moving through the environment to a new location outside the collection, then reattaching at that new location." "As described earlier in Section 2.1.1, with lattice style modules an atomic movement would be to move from one discrete lattice location to another adjacent location."

And so on... Acoustic visions (talk) 19:32, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Our article Atomicity disambiguates to three related meanings in computing. Does that help? Nimur (talk) 04:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Seeing that you don't seem to think you have a satisfactory definition, I'll tell you what I think atomic moves are about. Someone who's an expert in AI can tell me if I'm mistaken.

In AI, there's a type of problems called planning problems. In a planning problem, a particular configuration of the "world" is modeled as a state in a state space. The goal of the problem solver is to bring the "world" from an initial state to a goal state. There are types of "moves" available to the problem solver. Each "move" is called an operator. Applying an operator will bring the world from one state to another. The state space together with the operators implicitly define a directed graph, with the states as the nodes, and the links labeled with operators. Expressed in these terms, the goal of the problem solver is to find a sequence of operators that will bring the world from an initial state to a goal state. Each (application of an) operator is an atomic move, in the sense of a fundamental operation.

Consider the problem of solving a Rubik's cube. Each configuration of the cube is a state the world can be in. The atomic moves in the game consists of turning one of the 9 possible "slices" 90°, either clockwise or counterclockwise. The goal of the game is to find a sequence of moves that will bring the cube to a goal state. A lot of the solution algorithms that you can find are expressed not in terms of atomic moves, but routines that are sequences of atomic moves. If your solver works exclusively with those (non-atomic) routines, the search problem may be easier and it may find a solution quicker, but the solution found is not necessarily the shortest. On the other hand, if you have a solver that works only with atomic movies, the search space is big and you may not be able to find a solution in a reasonable time by searching.

Does that make sense to you? --108.36.90.144 (talk) 04:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Malware in link

I want to report malware at sites linked within an article. I'm not sure where to do this. The page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chind%C5%8Dgu . There is a link in the main body and also one in the external links that points to the site http://www.chindogu.com/ . This page has malicious code that creates popups and attempts to get the user to execute code. It is very obvious. Please edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.90.63.93 (talk) 23:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

 Done --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 23:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I haven't encountered any popups or malware at that site. ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

None for me either. And [11], [12], [13] & [14] (not direct link) don't report any problems either and Google doesn't mention any problems over the last 90 days [15]. AGF here I suggest the OP do a major scan of their computer ASAP. Nil Einne (talk) 03:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

September 12

Support Vector Machine time complexity

For a support vector machine, does the time complexity of classification increase linearly even when each item being classified only has a constant-size subset of the features (e.g. short messages)? Also, has any theoretical work been done on how to choose old training data to delete in order to keep the training data set limited in size (and thus work around the O(n^3) training time complexity) in cases where the data population is partly evolving and partly constant? NeonMerlin 05:57, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Skylight Illumination references

I was wondering if there exists any free descriptions of the sky light illumination for different conditions (sun angle, altitude). The article on cube mapping mentions that considerable research has gone into modeling skylight illumination.

Given that the sun is about 0.5 degrees diameter, this basically needs to be a color and illumination value for the sun (per tiny unit view cone) and a simple phi, theta representation (or spherical harmonics) of the color and illumination of the sky (excluding the sun, per unit cone).

Without going into too much detail, I guess what I'm looking for is best expressed linearly, gamma=1.0 and in terms of r, g and b as would on average look realistic on a good calibrated computer monitor.

While very good discussions are easily found on Wikipedia I always struggle to find usable data. 193.171.188.3 (talk) 13:55, 12 September 2011 (UTC) Eon

...With or without clouds? But seriously, this is the least of your worries.

The most insidious problem is that the variation in luminous intensity between sky and sun is huge - we're talking, dozens of orders of magnitude - so there's no reasonable way to represent this linearly. You're already familiar with the results of this nonlinear, enormous magnitude problem: things like camera bloom, sun bleed, CCD "smear", saturation, and just generally screwing up exposure settings and auto-exposure algorithms. If the sun is in the scene, the illumination is very difficult to model linearly.

Photographers know this, and use optical filters when trying to photograph the sun; computer animators use a variety of ad-hoc tricks to render realistic-looking sun/sky (usually, by faking the electro-optical non-idealities like overexposure and sensor saturation). Nimur (talk) 17:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

If I understand you, you want to create a computer model of a room lit by a skylight. Is this correct ? If so, I'd expect that to be the same as a room lit by sunlight, when the Sun is visible through the skylight, and by "sky", at other times. Perhaps you were thinking it would be more yellow, when just the Sun shines through and the rest of the bluer light from the sky is blocked, but I doubt that the blue light has much effect relative to direct sunlight, even in a greenhouse. StuRat (talk) 17:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I effectively want a computer model (HDR environment cube) to render realistic shadows that look like they are caused by sunlight. I don't want to have my "camera" look at the sun, I just need the sun to illuminate what the camera is looking at. Oh and yes, I mean a cloudless sky. There's nothing wrong with linear and I acknowledge that the sun will be maybe like a million times brighter per unit area than the sky, but that is no problem for floating point values.

Also, I disagree that everything other than the sun is insignificant. If that were the case then shadows would be almost 100% black. From insolation maps I found on the internet I gather that the total contribution of the sky dome (excluding the sun) is about 15-20% of the total light on average. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eonzo (talk • contribs) 17:46, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Pure black shadows assume that no light is reflected off objects in the room, and I didn't say that. Try a yellow spot light for the sun (not a point source, as the shadow edges would be too sharp) and white to bluish-white ambient light for the reflected light (and/or skylight). And, yes, a 20% difference in light level is barely noticeable, since perception of light is highly nonlinear. StuRat (talk) 18:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to misquote you then. But I never meant a room. I'm not sure if "skylight" implied a room, but it is outside that I am interested in. Still I think a shadow outside on a totally flat meadow of grass (no objects nearby) will still show significant light. Also, while I want to do all the computations in linear I would eventually gamma compress the render result so even if shadows were very dark then they would still probably show non-black in the final image.

Oh, OK, I was thinking by skylight you meant a window in the ceiling of a building. So, there's no question of the sky being blocked then. In that case, add a bit more ambient bluish-white light, but retain the yellow spot light. This is for a single frame. If you want a realistic movie, then you might want to vary the light level, and even model shadows from passing clouds, to make it more realistic. StuRat (talk) 23:33, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

How about reading Global Illumination (Number 38 of NVidia's GPU Gems #2). If you want to render realistically, you should not aim for rendering scientifically-accurately; I'd worry less about a true model of sky illumination that is scientifically matched to empirical measurements; and I'd worry more about scene parametrization and rendering algorithms that make your final output look like it's illuminated by the sky.

#16 Accurate Atmospheric Scattering is also worth reading. In the words of the author, "Let's find out how poorly these equations will perform..." As I said, eschew accuracy, go for results. Nimur (talk) 18:16, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, those are excellent resources.... but I really am only interested in how it looks "infinitely far" away. I don't want to actually model the scattering, I am just interested in the 2D cube map. I can probably measure it myself for my location at a given time of day if I have a color camera with known curve with adjustable exposure. The problem is probably going to be insufficient resolution around the actual sun (as is the case with most outside HDR cube maps available).

Why not just assume a uniform diffuse field? The difference between a shadow cast by a uniform diffuse field and a shadow cast by the actual sky luminosity function is small. I think you may be conflating diffuse shadow mapping with cube-mapping; I can't think of any good reason to use cube-mapping of the light source for rendering shadows. (In conventional algorithms, cube maps are used to store intermediate results - projected shadows of an object on the scene - are you planning to cast shadows on the sky?!) I think you just want a soft shadow, as if illuminated diffusely by the sky or other soft light. Here's an algorithm and implementation of soft shadows for NVidia GPUs, PCSS; and Blender's diffuse shader manual. If, after you read up on diffuse shadows, you are still convinced that you need a projective map of the sky luminosity, read our rayleigh scattering article and the diffuse sky radiation; Rayleigh sky model (a model of polarization, not luminous intensity); you can use the Rayleigh equations as an idealization of the sky luminosity for a given sun- and observation- angle. In reality, atmospheric effects, clouds, and so on, will have a huge effect; and there are other scattering physics details to consider (dispersion; Mie scattering; Raman scattering/frequency-splitting; and so on). I really think you just need to use a diffuse light-source to get the effect you want. Can you elaborate on your rendering tool? Are you using off-the-shelf software, or are you trying to write your own renderer/raytracer? If you're using off the shelf stuff, you should consult the user-guide for diffuse lighting techniques; if you're writing your own, I can point you toward some heavier math papers for statistical sampling and diffuse shadow generation. Nimur (talk) 03:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I have written my own Monte Carlo ray-tracer with global illumination (albeit with limited functionality, but it works beautifully for the stuff I want). I already get soft shadows and diffuse lighting by illuminating my scene with a "sky dome" light source - that is an infinitely big sphere that illuminates to the inside. I've recently converted to a "sky cube" light source (which I find to be a bit faster). So now I am concerned with accuracy for the most convincing daylight shadows. You are right, assuming a single color blue for the sky and a slightly yellowish tint for the 0.5 degree diameter sun will probably be OK. Thank you SO much for your persistence to help me. Only thing is all I seem to get are discussions and formulas, but no hard NUMERICAL data. Like, I still don't know the actual sun to sky dome ratio (I gave my unreliable estimate of 15-20%). I love, love, love, Wikipedia, but if anything could be done to improve it it would be more numerical data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eonzo (talk • contribs) 08:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

DVD

How long do they last? 100years? I've heard about DVD rot.--213.107.74.132 (talk) 17:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

This page has a lot of information about this. The life expectancy of some writable DVDs is, unfortunately, as short as 1.9 years, it says. The estimates of 100 years or 1000 years or whatever are of course wild estimates, since the tech has not been around for that long yet. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:55, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Engineering design of DVDs is sufficiently well advanced that you can be sure they will last a lot less than 100 years. A lifetime as long as that could not possibly be in the interests of the recording industry and might well constitute a breach of fiduciary duty to the shareholders. Thincat (talk) 19:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I hope that last statement was sarcasm. If not, I have to challenge you to find a single case worldwide where manufacturing a long-lived item was ruled to be a breach of fiduciary duty. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Extremely short lifetimes like 2 years apply to recordable ("burned") DVDs, which use a color-changing dye that can fade and blur over time. Cheaper recordable DVDs use less stable dyes as a rule, I think. Factory-made ("pressed") DVDs have physical pits in them. Ordinary DVD drives detect the pits by shining laser light through them and reflecting it off a shiny metallic layer behind the pits. That process can fail for various reasons, some easily avoidable (surface scratches) and some less so (rusting of the reflective layer, delamination, warping). But the pits are still there in any case, and I see no reason why they couldn't be read by some means even after thousands of years, if the plastic lasts that long. -- BenRG (talk) 23:21, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about DVD-/+R's, and RW's.--213.107.74.132 (talk) 08:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Best way to extend WiFi signal range in a home

I have DSL Internet service at my home and my current wireless router does not provide a strong enough signal throughout the whole house. One option would be to move the current router to one half of the house and purchase a wireless repeater to serve the other half. Another option might be to purchase a second router, locate it in the underserved half of the house and set it to use a different wireless channel so as not to interfere with the first router. Which would be preferable, or is there a better solution? --Thomprod (talk) 17:41, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Personally I fixed my WiFi signal problem by moving the router and also replacing the network card in my PC that was experiencing the bad signal quality; another option you might want to investigate is building a reflector and putting it behind the antenna in order to increase signal strength in one direction. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:57, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Along with moving the router is moving what blocks the router. Since I have wifi on my phone, I walked around dead spots and looked at the bars moving up and down. I moved the router and tried again. I pinpointed interference to some things that I did suspect (the refrigerator) and some I didn't suspect (an oil painting). I can't move the fridge, but I did move the painting to another wall to keep it from blocking the signal. -- kainaw™ 19:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I have already tried moving the router. Unfortunately, this doesn't help since the house is all on one floor and quite spread out. There is no one location that adequately covers the whole house. Which one of my options would be better? --Thomprod (talk) 13:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The wireless repeaters I have researched all effectively cut your local bandwidth in half. This may not be an issue for you — it wouldn't be for me, because my DSL connection runs at about 1/20th the Wireless-G maximum. An advantage of the repeater is that all the devices in the house can get configured the same way; but an advantage of having a second router is that the amount of wireless traffic that each router has to handle is cut in half. If you're going to be moving around the house a lot with even one of your devices, I'd probably elect the repeater, so the device isn't switching networks all the time as it gains and loses signal. Note that some routers can also be configured as repeaters. (My Netgear routers claim to be able to do this, though I have never done so, and I don't really recommend Netgear products anymore anyway.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

image sent from iphone

How can I download or save an image sent from an iphone to my Yahoo mail account? I can make the image appear on screen but I can't copy, save, or download it. Is there any way to download it other than screengrab? --Dr Dima (talk) 20:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't have an answer, but what's wrong a screen grab ? Assuming the image fits on the screen at full res, you shouldn't lose any quality, and it might even be faster than a download, although a bit of cropping will be needed. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Three things are wrong with screengrab (vs. download): 1. you lose the whatever information was stored in the original file (e.g. date taken). 2. if you are saving into a lossy format (say, JPEG) you lose quality over the original. Otherwise, you end up with a file that is much larger than the original. 3. in most cases, some cropping occurs. All three problems can be, in principle, overcome; but why make it a project when there should be a simple and straightforward way to do this?! --Dr Dima (talk) 00:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Can you explain in a little more detail? If the mail was sent with an email attachment (a mixed mode MIME multipart message per RFC 2046 §5.1.3, to be accurate - there are many types of multimedia messages an iPhone can send),, then you can just save the image file. It doesn't matter what source (iPhone or otherwise) it came from. Is there some reason Yahoo does not allow you to save attachments, or are you just struggling with the user interface? Here are instructions for dealing with attachments if you need them. Nimur (talk) 01:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Those instructions are for Yahoo Mail Classic. If you're using the upgraded Yahoo Mail, the interface may look like this: Viewing and Downloading Images. --Bavi H (talk) 02:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I know how to deal with attachments :) . Alas, this is not an attachment. This is some sort of embedded image; I can pull out the HTML line that generates it, it looks normal: <img id="..." src="http...">. However, when I try to follow the actual URL link the image does not show. Clicking on the image does not produce the usual "save image as" either; I can only copy or paste the useless hyperlink, but not the actual image. The actual image only shows when I paste the hyperlink in the yahoo mail compose window, but not anywhere else. --Dr Dima (talk) 05:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've got it to work! The Yahoo mail site is so designed that it's possible to save the embedded images from the Internet Explorer but not from the Firefox. Attachments work fine in both browsers, of course, but some embedded images do not. Thanks anyway for your replies! --Dr Dima (talk) 06:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Strange, very old encoding

Hi all:

I have a file format that contains strings that look like this:

AAEEEE\307ASJXXER\304 ...

I know that the \307 and \304 are supposed to be some way to encode a "reverse contrast" of one of the letters A-Z, but I have no idea what encoding it is or whether it's really called reverse contrast (the file was made by a program called "AE2" which I haven't been able to install). Any ideas? I need to convert them to a readable format so I can actually look at them...

Thanks for any help, 128.174.126.125 (talk) 20:52, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

If you strip the high bit from \307 and \304 they become G and D respectively (assuming this is ASCII). Some old software uses a set high bit to mark the end of a string. Of course, AAEEEEG ASJXXERD is still unreadable, so I'm not sure if that helps. -- BenRG (talk) 21:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I doubt that this is an ASCII file. AE2 is probably Adobe After Effects, which deals with a whole bunch of different file formats, so without some further information I think this is going to be hard to resolve. Does the file have a filename extension? Can you tell us what the first bytes of the file say? (Often there is "magic" there that is useful for identifying a file format.) Looie496 (talk) 22:00, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

AE2 is a multiple alignment editor (these are protein sequences so AAEEEFG actually makes sense, although of course ASJXXERD could also make sense). ACtually the easiest thing for me to do may just be to BLAST The sequences and use the online sequence to fill in the blanks. But in any case, the extension is .ae and the first bits of the file are comments (#) - it's a text format of some sort. Thanks for the help. 128.174.126.125 (talk) 22:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Aha, that clears things up quite a bit. Looking around, this page gives a lot of info about the program and how it works, and says that a program called convp can covert the file to other formats -- however, since this is Unix software dating from 1992, that might not help you very much. Looie496 (talk) 22:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking around a bit more, it seems that there is a program called ARB that can read those files and convert them to other formats -- it appears to be maintained, but it requires a Linux environment to install and run. Looie496 (talk) 22:45, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

It seems that Ben was indeed correct that \307 and \304 correspond to G and D... I wasn't looking at it as if it was octal numbers, so wasn't expecting it to "skip" some of them (e.g. from 307 to 310) but it makes sense now. Thank you very much for the help! Mattb112885 (talk) 15:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Freezing and hanging of desktop shortcuts

Recently, I've been experience several oddities of my Windows 7 laptop. Whenever I open something big (and by that I mean graphic intensive), the entire system freezes - I can't move the mouse, nor use the keyboard, and the only solution is to hold down the power button to turn it off. I suspect that this might be a problem with the graphics card, but I don't know what I could do about it.

Another problem that I experienced this morning was that, when I turned the laptop on and logged in, it seemed that Windows Explorer got hung on something. The start bar seemed fine, except that the network icon was always "loading", so to speak. Furthermore, none of the desktop shortcuts would appear, and hovering over the desktop background turned the mouse pointer into the circular loading cursor. Killing and restarting explorer.exe only produced the same problems. I finally fixed it by booting into safe mode and restarting the computer from there.

I know this is a (very) long shot, but what do you think might have caused these issues? I ran several antivirus scans both in Windows and at boottime, which all came up clean. I know that it's not likely that you can pinpoint the issue without knowing my system, but I would like some suggestions regardless so I know where to start looking. Thanks all. 66.36.130.43 (talk) 23:39, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Those sound like two distinct problems, to me. As for the first one, an issue with the graphics card does seem likely. Do you happen to know how much graphics memory you have available ? If the problem is repeatable, you might want to try lower resolutions/color depths/refresh rates, to see if they hang, too, under identical circumstances. StuRat (talk) 23:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I have two GPUs, actually. It's that Nvidia Optimus technology which switches between a Intel HD Graphics 3000 and GeForce GT 540M. According to the information in the Windows Control Panel, the Intel has 1969 MB of available graphics memory, while the GeForce has 3795 MB available. 66.36.130.43 (talk) 00:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

In that case, do you have the ability to force it to use one or the other ? (If not, I suppose you can always pull one out.) That might allow you to test with one, and then the other, to see where the problem occurs. If it doesn't occur in either, when used alone, perhaps it's the attempt to switch between GPUs mid-operation that causes the lock-up. StuRat (talk) 21:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like you know all about Task Manager, as you mentioned killing explorer.exe. Anything anomalous looking on how much CPU the various things were taking? Anyway, the next thing I would check is Event Viewer, which will probably show you, at some level, what the problem is. In my case, my laptop also locked up for a minute at a time when it was doing something big and graphic-intensive, and Event Viewer indicated it was a hard disk controller error, which further Googling indicated was "almost certainly" (according to an authoritative-sounding microsoft.com page) a hardware problem. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

September 13

Buying a Kindle Wifi (NOT 3G)

I've decided to get myself a Kindle but there's something that's bothering me.

Where I live I cannot buy it from amazon.co.uk I have to buy it through amazon.com which ships to many international destinations. With the 3G version this would definitley be something to think about because of the different carriers (I think but it's not really important as I don't want the 3G version)

There does however appear to be different Kindle Stores which each have different content available based on region. So what I want to know is whether this is tied to the devices bought from each amazon website. From looking around on amazon it looks like it's something you can select and change. Is this so? Can I just change between Country/Store and download content from all of them (that doesn't really make sense to me as it sort of defeats the purpose of separate Stores).

The reason I want to know is because I don't live in the UK but I am studying there at the moment and spend most of the year there. So I want to know whether it matters which one I get and if it does which one I should get --178.208.218.41 (talk) 04:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you meant to say you can't buy it from amazon.co.uk you have to buy it from amazon.com Nil Einne (talk) 04:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you should try to buy the Kindle from wherever you expect to do most of your downloading. Copyright, and therefore availability of some books, is different in the UK. Dbfirs 07:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I am ignorant about the Kindle, but would agree with Dbfirs as a general stance, because region locking is a fear. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:55, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

ABOUT C,C++ IN ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING.

                 WHAT IS C  C++ IN ECE SYLLABUS?
                                   PLEASE TELL ME IN DETAILS.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by HIMEL DAS (talk • contribs) 04:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC) 

They are programming languages -- see C (programming language) and C++. (And please don't write in capital letters on Wikipedia.) Looie496 (talk) 06:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

computer hardware

QUESTION 1 : A user Rahim has a pc with windows XP Professional SP3 and 4GB of RAM but the system only detects 3GB and the 500GB harddisk only shows as 466GB.Please explain in details why this is happening to Rahim's pc.

QUESTION 2 : How much DDR2/DDR3 RAM does windows Vista and windows7 need to run optimally.Please explain in details.

QUESTION 3 : Ibrahim has a problem where the amount of DDR2 memory has halves instead of double after installed a 1GB module with two 512MB modules.Justify the situation that Ibrahim is facing with appropriate trouble shooting solutions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunita93 (talk • contribs) 07:04, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

QBasic

Is QBasic code the same as YAbasic? i.e

10 beep
20 wait 1
30 goto 10

And these:

if
endif
goto
gosub
for
loop
next
fi
wend
setrgb
etc.....

Could QBasic code be copied to Yabasic and vice versa? Please in Simple English, explain the coding differences. Thank you.--213.107.74.132 (talk) 08:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The article for Yabasic says it has no line numbers, and goto and gosub are not supported, so most QBasic programs won't work in Yabasic. It seems Yabasic implements some unusual things such as user-defined data types, so most Yabasic programs won't work in QBasic. I expect some simple programs will work in both QBasic and Yabasic, but most programs would need altering. I don't have enough experience of either language to produce a comprehensive list of the differences, but the forum [16] should be a good place to find people who know. (Hmm, the top post is titled "Has Yabasic 3 died?". That's a bit ominous.)  Card Zero  (talk) 10:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Be aware that the example above isn't a good example of what QBasic is capable of. QBasic supported line numbers for backwards compatibility with GWBASIC and BASICA programs, but was designed for using indented code blocks and subroutines. The code snippets in the built-in help system and the example programs provided with QBasic showcased these features and barely mention line numbers at all. --Bavi H (talk) 05:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

If you must use BASIC, and must reuse old QBASIC code, use something more modern that's designed specifically for QBASIC compatibility like QB64 or something with a few more features like FreeBASIC. Nevard (talk) 02:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Windows 7

Can you install XP software and games on 7?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 09:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Programs designed for Windows XP may run without problems on Windows 7. If there are problems, you may need to run in compatibility mode or install a shim (some instructions for compatibility mode here). If you are using Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate or Enterprise, you can also use Windows XP Mode, which is a separate download from here. It is a virtual machine integrated into Windows 7, onto which you can install Windows XP programs. -- Kateshortforbob _talk 10:16, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

What about RCT3? Will that work? I've heard some people have problems with it on 7. Am I correct?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 15:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

You should probably ask the fan communities, such as http://rct.wikia.com/wiki/RollerCoaster_Tycoon_Wiki (which is not affiliated with Wikipedia). -- Luk ^talk 15:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Yabasic

How can you make a game in yabasic? I know do your own homework, but just briefly explain the things I need to know to make a game.--213.107.74.132 (talk) 09:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Here [17] is the Yabasic implementation of samegame. First it opens a window. Then it calls renew(), a subroutine which sets up a new game with everything cleared - for instance it sets the score to zero and empties the array which holds the blocks. This subroutine can be called again later when one game is over and it's time to start the next game. The next thing the program does is call main(), which is the subroutine with the main loop in it. That loop is the part of main() which is between the first "while (1)" and the last "wend". Inside this loop, it calls display(), which draws the current state of the array (the blocks) to the screen. Also inside the loop is another loop (again contained between "while (1)" and "wend"), the input loop: this checks for keyboard input with inkey$ and mouse input with mouseb(a$). The program will spend most of its time just going round and round this little loop, waiting for input. Besides all that, the program has some logic which creates the actual rules of the game and make it worth playing. If you can figure out which parts create that logic, strip them out, and put in your own logic instead, you'll have made a game - although at some point you might want to advance beyond games involving simple squares, but it's a start. I see yabasic 3 [18] will support SDL, Simple DirectMedia Layer, which should be handy for doing many things with sound and graphics, if they get it working.  Card Zero  (talk) 10:11, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank's. How can you make a 3D Game in Yabasic. And how can you make a game in QBasic?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 11:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you can access a graphics card from Yabasic at present - you might be interested in Basic4GL, which interfaces with OpenGL (OpenGL and Direct3D are the two main APIs, bits of software that fit between your program and the hardware, for sending commands to a graphics card). You can however still produce 3D graphics, if you don't mind them being slow: you'd need to make (excuse the lack of simple language) filled shapes which scale down the positions of their vertexes as those vertexes approach the vanishing point - this is a fun exercise, and I did it a bit in C using the ordinary Windows drawing commands (the GDI) before I discovered OpenGL. You'd also want to implement Z-buffering. Plenty of reading and messing about there, and it would all be fun, but would only be reproducing the most basic parts of the functionality which OpenGL already provides, and without putting the graphics card to work, either. Doubtless something on the level of Wolfenstein 3D could be made in this way, though, if that appealed to you.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a link to a video of a 3D Yabasic game:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lx0-scSwXk  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.107.74.132 (talk) 12:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC) 

What about a 2D QBasic game?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 12:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

You'd need to make (excuse the lack of simple language) filled shapes which scale down the positions of their vertexes as those vertexes
approach the vanishing point.

What on earth does that mean in Simple English?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 15:28, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Which one of those words aren't in your dictionary? -- kainaw™ 15:49, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Vertex. Sorry for taking a while to reply.--213.107.74.132 (talk) 16:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

In this case, vertex means corner. -- kainaw™ 16:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

See Vertex (computer graphics): "A vertex (plural vertices) in computer graphics is a data structure that describes a point in 2D or 3D space". If you actually want to produce 3D computer games, you'll have to learn a lot more than we can reasonably be expected to answer here (and a lot of it can't be explained in 'simple English' - you need to understand technical terms). There are many books available on the subject, as well as a vast amount of information online. I'd expect anyone computer-literate enough to program 3D games to also know how to use Google to find information online. Start searching, and learning... AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

213.107.74.132 - The level and type of your questions suggests that you are new to programming, or at least new to programming in Basic. May I suggest that you try to walk before you run ? Forget the 2D and 3D graphics, and start by programming a turn-based game that only requires text input from the user, and responds with text output or simple character graphics. Try writing a program to play hangman, Mastermind or a text-based version of tic-tac-toe, for example. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Here [19] is the Yabasic triangle command. It takes six parameters, which are in three pairs, each having an x coordinate and a y coordinate. These are the positions of the three corners of the triangle. X and Y are of course only two dimensions, and in 3D, each corner of the triangle will also have a third coordinate, Z, which says how far away the corner is. Things which are further away look smaller. Therefore the Z coordinate should be used to control the amount of shrinking. This is done by moving the X and Y position of the corner closer to the middle of the screen, depending on the value of Z, before the X and Y are used in the triangle command.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I know the Do your own homework rule, but are there any programming geeks here that know all the basic steps to make a 3D racing simlike Gran Turismo? BTW, I've made plenty of 2D games. And what about the red/blue glasses 3D?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 17:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you might benefit from starting with XNA Racing Game. It is a complete racing game written in C# with XNA Game Studio, intended to run under Windows. Modify and learn, to your heart's content. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I said YaBasic or QBasic only. Thank's anyway. And what about the red/blue glasses 3D? BTW I saw a YaBasic 3D racing game at this link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lx0-scSwXk

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.107.74.132 (talk) 07:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC) 

Don't copy and paste the entire thread to the foot of the page to get attention! Adding to the existing thread, with more information about exactly what you want, would do the job better. The lack of replies is attributable to a lack of clarity. I doubt anybody here has made a computer game which displays anaglyph images. It would entail overlaying one version of the scene on top of a slightly shifted version, using a particular blending effect, which would take some experimentation. I see that the author of the game in the youtube video remarks that he also made an anaglyphic version, but can only provide the code for the normal version. I don't know how he would perform the blending of the second layer with the first. The PS2 has an alpha blend mode which can be turned on or off (here [20] somebody is using it in C), but I can't find any generic Yabasic command for changing blend mode.  Card Zero  (talk) 10:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

PSVita

Can the PSVita run PS3 ports? Will they be like the PS3 games?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 09:11, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

See PlayStation Vita. This is not a "read the article for me because I'm far too lazy to do so myself" service. -- kainaw™ 14:34, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

PS3 HDD

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but if your PS3 does this, do you lose what's on the HDD?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 09:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

See Yellow light of death. The answer is very obvious. Hint: Hit control-F and type "hard drive". Even a hedgehog could find the answer in under 30 seconds. -- kainaw™ 14:37, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Hedgehogs: the de facto Reference Desk benchmark species. Brammers (talk/c) 08:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Smarter than the average erinaceid.

What about if the Yellow light problem is fixed on that particular PS3 by an indepenent console repair shop? Not a new PS3 (or refurb) but the same PS3 with the same HDD still intact?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 07:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

DDR2

how can DDR2 RAM does in windows vista and windows 7 need to run optimally?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunita93 (talk • contribs) 09:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Please see our article DDR2 SDRAM, and come back and ask a more detailed question if you need more specifics. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:57, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Computer Hardware

1. why 4GB of RAM in windows xp professional sp3 can detect 3GB only??
2. and why 500GB harddisk only show as 466GB??
3. how DDR2 does in window vista and window 7 need to run optimally??
4. where the amount of DDR2 memory has halves instead of double after installed a 1GB module with two 512MB modules??--Sunita93 (talk) 10:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I have removed two duplicates of this question. --Kateshortforbob _talk 10:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Hard disk drive#Units of measuring capacity (see 2nd row of table, and multiply by 5) answers the question about HDD capacity . Mitch Ames (talk) 11:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

See 3 GB barrier for the first question. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

1. This only happens in 32-bit Windows, but see 3 GB barrier for a full explanation.
2. Instead of using powers of 1024, hard drive manufacturers use powers of 1000 and there's more on this on our article here. But basically a 500GB hard drive is sold as 500,000,000,000 bytes which is actually 465.66 GB.
3. Technically they'll be fine with as little as 1GB, although by the time you've added AntiVirus software, realistically 2GB or more is a better number to have (that's a personal opinion though).
4. What was the memory before? (how many did you have/what size each). Sorry if I've misunderstood, but from what you've described possibly your computer needs the memory to be installed in matching pairs and if they aren't matched then it won't use it at all.  ZX81  ^talk 12:00, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

For the record, this user asked the same questions a few threads above, and was shot down as a homework question. I guess adding an extra question mark avoids homework detection. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't spot that, oops. Yes I agree though, the original one certainly looks like a homework question.  ZX81  ^talk 23:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the bigger differences are the removal of the 'question' before the number and the rewording of the questions to make it sound like the OP was asking for themselves rather then about hypothetical users as well as changing stuff like 'explain in detail'. I actually have to give a tiny bit of credit to the OP, many homework question askers seem so lazy when they do repost, they just copy and paste their original question. Nil Einne (talk) 08:23, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Mind Reading

A PS3 game, GT5, has mind reading software technology! Look at this link:

http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=5013041

Is this true? A PlayStation game can read your mind? That's a first!--213.107.74.132 (talk) 12:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Sarcasm that obvious shouldn't be questioned. Doing so is nothing more than trolling because nobody who is capable of coming all the way here and asking a question is so mentally retarded that he or she is incapable of identifying that level of sarcasm. -- kainaw™ 14:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

javascript help: after copypasting data from excel/calc into a html textarea

i know i can use split() method to convert the data into an array but what is the separator? have tried \t \n \v and \r without success. probably need a combination of the above. this is to make the script work in ie too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.221.245 (talk) 16:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Whatever you put between the parenthesis is the delimiter. For example, to split a string called str on a tab, you'd use str.split("\t"); -- kainaw™ 16:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I believe the OP might be asking what Excel uses as the separator. A column is separated by a horizontal tab ("\t"), while a row is separated by a Carriage return + Line feed. So a combination of:

myString.split("\t");

myString.split("\r\n");

TheGrimme (talk) 17:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

does calc use the same separator? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.116.187.1 (talk) 00:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Not having Calc, it is difficult to say. You could write your code that works with Excel and test it out. Or, download Notepad++, paste in your data, and then select View -> Show Symbol -> Show white space. TheGrimme (talk) 16:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

sap mm

Hi, i like to know what is the best site for SAP MM,SD learning material, with some live examples.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.249.129.220 (talk) 17:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Downloading all Dropbox files and their revisions

How can I download all the files I have in Dropbox, plus their revisions? --Melab±1 ☎ 21:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

This is urgent. --Melab±1 ☎ 19:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but like it says at the top of the page It may take several days (to get a reply). I haven't used Dropbox in a while, but the last time I checked there wasn't any way built in to automatically extract all revisions, but this page on their website suggests to me they're all in a specific folder on your harddrive so I'd try taking a look there. If not (and you haven't already) I'd recommend contacting Dropbox and seeing what they say.  ZX81  ^talk 20:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Broadband

I'm looking at broadband prices in the UK and I am a bit confused. Some of the prices for 'broadband only' are as low as £7 a month, but they all seem to assume that I have a BT phone line. I don't. So will the price in fact be £7 plus whatever a BT phone line costs, or is it inclusive? I'm completely clueless on this since I am currently with VirginMedia which comes through a coaxial cable. Basically I am looking for the absolutely cheapest "unlimited" download quota 'broadband only' package which is not VirginMedia (nothing wrong with them, just looking at other options) 82.43.90.142 (talk) 23:56, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know much about the UK broadband market but simple common sense tells me you will need a phone line for broadband only packages. If you don't currently have a fixed line phone line then yes, you should add the price for a phone line. (If you do currently have a phone line and have no plans to change the provider you should look for plans that you can use with your phone line. Again I don't know much about the UK situation but due to local loop unbundling and other factors it's possible some provider 'broadband only' plans won't be offered over your current phone line.) From [21] [22], it sounds like there's no legal requirement for naked DSL in the UK and it's barely available so the options for DSL without a phone line are rather limited. If you don't have and don't care at all about the phone line, I would suggest there's a fair chance looking at all inclusive plans would potentially lead to the cheapest deal. Nil Einne (talk) 06:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

That's correct. Many "broadband offers" assume that you already have a BT phone line. Some allow you to transfer the phone line rental from BT to another company. In cities, companies such as VirginMedia can deliver broadband through fibre and co-ax (but not in all streets), and in country areas where phone lines are poor, broadband is sometimes delivered via a microwave link. Another option is the use of mobile phone transmitters, but bandwidth and usage may be limited. Dbfirs 08:31, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I recently changed my phone provider from BT to my ISP (and downgraded my internet package because I'm out a lot). Before the change I was paying £16 a month to my ISP and more than £15 a month to BT just to have the phone line (my last quarterly bill was over £50, of which just a £1 was for calls!!). Now I'm paying £7 a month to my ISP for internet and another £12 a month for the phone line. I pay £0 to BT. I'm not sure what would happen if I told my ISP I no longer wanted phone service. Astronaut (talk) 09:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Your charges from BT would have been much lower if you hadn't used the phone line for internet access (though you probably had no alternative). BT don't allow you to join the "Light user" scheme if you have phone-line internet access, whatever the ISP. I think your ISP charges £12 just for providing the line (they probably pay most of that to BT for maintenance). Unfortunately, in most areas, only BT can physically provide a phone line, and this is often the only available way to receive broadband in non-fibre areas. Dbfirs 20:04, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

September 14

Cable TV

Sometimes in some channels there is an ephemeral appearance of an alphanumeric code.There is no set top box.What is this?Have other people noticed this in their colour television sets with CRT picture tube?Pachyobs (talk) 05:42, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you told us what equipment you do have and which country it is in. Astronaut (talk) 09:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you have to describe when and where this code appears, and give some examples. One possibility is that it's the serial number (or whatever they call it) which appears at the start of each episode of a TV show. They don't intend to broadcast this, as it's only for internal identification purposes, but they do occasionally screw up. StuRat (talk) 21:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Hard Drives

What about if the Yellow light problem is fixed on that particular PS3 by an indepenent console repair shop? Not a new PS3 (or refurb) but the same PS3 with the same HDD still intact?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 08:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

You'll be far better off asking your nearest independent console repair shop. The outcome of repairs will depend on what facilities the shop has and what the precise fault is. Most shops will be happy to explain their services, and may give a free quotation for repairs. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Quote

The outcome of repairs will depend on what facilities the shop has and what the precise fault is.

But will you lose what's on the HDD if it gets the YLOD?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It will depend on the repair shop and the exact cause of the yellow light. Do you really think that someone here has the PS3 you are talking about sitting in their lap and can provide a clear answer - of course not. You're just trolling. -- kainaw™ 16:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

To go in to more specifics, our article mentions the content is encrypted. It's not mentioned where the encryption key/s are stored. If the encryption key/s are spared and the shop don't wipe the disk (and as you said, the PS3 is returned with the same HDD which I presume means the HDD was not defective) and the PS3 doesn't have some sort of security where it refuses to read/decrypt the disk because it detects something has been changed then your data should be fine. If you want to know more on the probability of this happening for general interest, you'll have to look in to each of these elements (e.g. where is the encryption key/s stored, does the PS3 have some sort of security where it refuses to decrypt the data if it detects something has been modified etc). If you want to know for a specific case, your best bet is asking whichever shop's you're looking in to. Note that some shops may wipe the HDD as a matter of course or at least make no attempt to spare the data so you will have to discuss it with them if this is a real world case. BTW, relying on any single device to store your data is an incredibly bad idea, even more so for a hard disk. In other words, you should not be concerned about the YLOD and your data because of what may happen in the future since if you don't have any problems now, you'll want to look in to some sort of backup solution before you have problems not worry about how you will recover your data if your PS3 dies. If the PS3 doesn't provide any sort of backup option, don't use it to store files you don't want to lose. Nil Einne (talk) 20:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

What about game saves that cannot be copied to USB?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 08:46, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Disks the same?

I heard long ago that the installation CDs for Windows XP were identical, you could therefore reinstall XP Home on a Dell PC using the XP Home product key off the Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) attached to the PC, but using the XP Professional installation CD from your other Dell PC.

Is the same true of Windows 7 installation disks? ie. can I reinstall Win 7 Home Premium on a Dell PC using the Win 7 Home Premium product key off the CoA attached to the PC, but using the Win 7 Professional installation DVD from my other Dell PC? Astronaut (talk) 09:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No one knows or has any insight? I'm surprised. Astronaut (talk) 08:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Flash drives are going to replace traditional hard drives in about 3 years?

I was in my computer class yesterday and the professor said that flash drives are going to replace the old traditional hard disk drives in 2-3 years. Is this true? Have they worked out all of the flaws detailed here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limitations) yet? ScienceApe (talk) 13:32, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

That's just his guess, my guess it will take longer than that simply because of the constricts of price vs storage. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Have the flaws been addressed? ScienceApe (talk) 14:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm assuming he meant SSDs, since (at least to me) "flash drive" is a USB drive/thumb drive. KyuubiSeal (talk) 14:31, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It isn't as much a "flaw" as a "design". They are handled by increased speed and size. For example, if I know I have to do two writes for every write request, I just make my writes happen twice as fast and everyone is happy. If I know that my drive will wear out after 10,000 writes but I am expected to handle 100,000 writes, I just load it up with 10 times the memory required. Then, I do 10,000 writes to each one until I've done 100,000 writes in total. Everyone is happy. -- kainaw™ 14:42, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

So isn't the article calling those things "limitations" kind of misleading then? ScienceApe (talk) 14:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No. "Limitations" does not mean "flaws". Cars can't drive underwater, and submarines can't go on the road. These are limitations, imposed by their design and their intended use. They are not "flaws". Your initial question, about whether one kind of storage will replace the other, is essentially a matter of when, or whether, the two technologies will converge. It may be that they will, or that flash will surpass hard disks (as removable optical media has essentially surpassed removable magnetic media). But there's no reason to think that this convergence is inevitable, and it's impossible to guess when it might happen. Just like a convergence between cars and submarines. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Lol well yeah but our articles on cars and subs don't have a limitations section saying that they can't fly. I dono, it's a bit misleading to dumb people like me. :) ScienceApe (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that is because people tend to know that cars cannot fly, but most people hear "drive" for a computer and assume that all drives are basically the same thing. -- kainaw™ 15:37, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Who knows about the exact year, Your teacher is either guessing, or quoting someone who was guessing. But eventually? I'd bet it'll replace spinning-disk hard-drives in most applications. Already many portable devices work that way. Flash memory has some limitations, but traditional drives have other limitations and problems that can be just as infuriating.

The real driving factor is cost. A quick check of NewEgg tells me that $100 will get me 30gb of flash, or 1.5tb of traditional drive. APL (talk) 06:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What format should I save a C.V. as to make it compatible with XP?

Yo. Someone cant read a CV I emailed them, and has asked for it in a format that's compatible with XP. It was sent in a format with the suffix .docx The document was written with Microsoft Word 2007, and saved in the default format. Many thanks in advance. Willy turner (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

They probably want a .doc file , which is word 2003 compatible. - Q Chris (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I know you aren't in the position to say so, but the person can open a docx file. The person just doesn't realize that he or she should install updates. Both Office XP and the free things like OpenOffice or LibreOffice can open docx files if the updates are installed. -- kainaw™ 14:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok well if it's correct that they want a .doc file, what is that format called in the list of options? I apologise for my near absolute ignorance of computer-related things Willy turner (talk) 14:39, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Click on file - then Save as - and select the file type "word 97-2003 document" - otherwise, if you want to send people copies that they can read but not alter check if 'PDF' is available in there. --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

A million thanks everybody. Willy turner (talk) 15:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

RAM

Does the page file contribute to the 4GB RAM limit on Windows 32-bit computers? Or could I set a 20GB page file and it would work? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 14:51, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not taken up from RAM, so you can set it to 20GB, if you like, provided you have that much disk space free (or if you have it page to something else, like a flash drive, make sure it can handle that size). StuRat (talk) 21:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it will not remove the 4GB limit. 32-bit programs can only access 2^32 addresses, which comes out to 4GB. Adding a 20GB pagefile to 4GB of physical memory is like putting in 24Gb worth of physical memory in the first place, the system will not recognize it. Anonymous.translator (talk) 23:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

hmm, two conflicting answers. Anyone have a source? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

We've each interpreted your question differently. I thought you were asking if paging space is subtracted from the available RAM. Anon thought you were asking if paging space allows you to go beyond the 4GB limit for the amount of memory your program uses. So, both answers are correct, they are just answers to different questions. (The words "contribute to" seems to be the point of confusion. If you meant it the way Anon took it, perhaps "ease the restriction on" would have been clearer.) StuRat (talk) 00:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused now. I'm asking if you could allocate 20GB of page file. If you installed 20GB of actual RAM, 32-bit Windows would only see 4GB of it. Does the same limit apply to the page file? Obviously each individual program could still only use 4GB each. Sorry if I wasn't clear 82.43.90.142 (talk) 01:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that should extend your total memory capacity. However, keep in mind that paging space is MUCH slower than RAM, so the need to continuously move data between RAM and the paging space will slow your computer to a crawl. StuRat (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

free service to monitor a page for changes and e-mail you

is there a free online tool that will monitor a page for changes (like every minute or five minutes) and e-mail you if there are any?

p.s. yeah I know I should become an elite unix hacker, then a simple script on one of my "boxen" would do it, with curl and sendmail and whatnot, but I don't have 10 years for this sorry. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 16:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

See Change detection and notification. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Most of these services only check once a day or something similar (changedetection.com says they do it once a day). --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Returning inverses of time intervals in SQL?

At work, we have a database table, let's call it VALIDITY, containing two columns, TSTART and TSTOP. These columns are of type DATE and represent time intervals. The intervals are guaranteed not to be truly overlapping (i.e. the start of one interval can exactly equal the stop of another, but there are guaranteed not to be any overlaps of non-zero length). I can easily find a set of time intervals from this table with a query such as this:

SELECT TSTART, TSTOP FROM VALIDITY ORDER BY TSTART ASC, TSTOP ASC;

But now I had to find all sub-intervals of a given period not belonging to any interval in the table. I haven't found any way to do it in SQL, so I did it by fetching all intervals within the period from the table, and then counting all intervals between them (i.e. from the stop of one interval to the start of the next one). Is there a way to do this in SQL? JIP | Talk 18:01, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

In general, SQL is not very efficient at finding first, next, or last items. I work with hospital data. I regularly have requests for things like the last blood pressure from everyone seen in a certain time period. The only way to do it efficiently is to first make a table of patients (selecting the patient's ID) and the max visit date (selecting max date) limiting by the time period. Then, rejoin the table I made to the original table on patient ID and date to get the blood pressures per patient on that date. What you apparently want is a Next Start Date column for each record. I assume you don't want to add that. You need to make a new table that contains each record and the next start date for each record. Filling it will be a bit of a trick. You want, per record, the minimal start date such that the start date is >= to the records end date. Then, join that to the original table and you have intervals from stop to start (you can omit the ones where stop=start). -- kainaw™ 19:01, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd think you'd want to create a VIEW using the sorted SQL statement you provided first:

CREATE VIEW VALIDITY_VIEW AS
SELECT TSTART,TSTOP 
  FROM VALIDITY 
 ORDER BY TSTART ASC, TSTOP ASC;

Then use the ROW_NUMBER in the view for the follow-up SELECT, something like this:

SELECT A.TSTOP,B.TSTART 
  FROM VALIDITY_VIEW A
   AND VALIDITY_VIEW B
 WHERE B.ROW_NUMBER = A.ROW_NUMBER+1
   AND B.TSTART > A.TSTOP;

StuRat (talk) 21:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

InterGlobe Technologies Logo

File:C:\Users\kundan\Desktop\igt.jpg according to my knowledge this is the InterGlobe Technologies logo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kundan.hit (talk • contribs) 19:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

We have an InterGlobe Technologies article, which has a small copy of their logo there. The logo shown in that article matches the one they show on their website. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

(EC) We can't see a file on your computer, you will have to upload it to somewhere, probably not here until details on this likely copyrighted logo are sorted out. Anyway are you suggesting File:Logo 100x60.jpg is not the correct logo for InterGlobe Technologies? Because the logo seems to be the same one as on their website [23] albeit at a lower resolution (which is required by our copyright policies) Nil Einne (talk) 19:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

cross platform line breaks

I'm sharing text files (using dropbox) with people using macs. I'm using windows. The problem is that line breaks created on the macs don't show up at all in notepad on windows. Is there anything I can do on my end to correctly view these files with linebreaks? 209.147.145.88 (talk) 20:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Use Wordpad instead of Notepad. It supports the Unix/Linux/Mac-style line endings without any hassle. -- kainaw™ 20:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Notepad++ is a decent free Notepad replacement that supports Unix/Win/Mac line endings. It's a text editor, not a word processor like Wordpad. Pretty much any other Notepad replacement would work as well. -- BenRG (talk) 03:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Which Linux rescue disc and which prompt?

I have a gateway NV78 with a 64 bit Intel Duo Core processor running Windows 7 which has crashed due to downloading a file which has apparently rewritten my registry. The system will start to boot prompting me to use normal or safe booting, but neither will reach a running windows screen. An acquaintance used a Linux OS rescue disc to boot the computer and to transfer a few files from the computer's hard drive to an external iomega drive I own, which worked great. But he wants to charge me $250 to save all my files.

I am not a total idiot, and successfully created a rescue disc from http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page which will run on my PC, but I can't seem to get to an interface from any of the prompts which will let me access the files on the crashed PC's hard drive so I can save them to my external iomega. (I know these files are accessible, my acquaintance moved 15G of them successfully to the Iomega and I have accessed them on my Mac, no problem.)

Should I have downloaded some other rescue disc than the www.sysresccd.org one? Does anyone have a url for the iso image file of a better Linux rescue disc? Or am I just missing the appropriate prompt on the disc I have? My thanks for any help. Do be aware I have searched the archives here, but find no obvious solution. Again, my thanks. μηδείς (talk) 22:00, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

At what point in the quick start guide are you having trouble? If you get yourself into the graphical environment there's a pretty good chance it'll let you just click on things to mount them and so on and so forth- should make life easier. Nevard (talk) 01:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I did, by brute force of trying every boot prompt, get to a graphic environment with that rescue disk. But once there I was totally lost--primarily because the icons were neither intuitive nor plainly labeled in idiomatic English. But what I did find, using this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_live_CDs#Rescue_and_repair_live_CDs, was the link to the Bootmed Live CD (actually large enough in the 64 bit version to require a 770MB CD or a DVD) where I successfully downloaded the live Ubuntu rescue disc, which is just like a graphic windows interface. Just a few minutes ago rescued my small movie collection from my disabled PC, and transferred the files to my external hard drive, and then to my Mac, where I celebrated by watching the Giedi Prime sequence from the extended version of the 1984 Dune. The answer for a 64 bit Windows 7 user seems to be to go directly to the 64 Bit Bootmed download. It works elegantly. Thanks to all for the help offered.μηδείς (talk) 04:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A 32-bit boot CD can recover files from 64-bit Windows (and vice versa). I'm not sure why they even offer a 64-bit version of BootMed. Maybe there are newer PCs that don't support 32-bit operating systems at all. If you have a Windows 7 install CD, booting the Windows 7 CD and selecting "repair" might fix your Windows installation, avoiding the need to start from scratch. You can also use a Windows 7 install CD to rescue files from your hard drive, though you have to do it from a command prompt. -- BenRG (talk) 04:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

September 15

Character entity reference for brackets

I'm trying to find the character entity reference for simple brackets [ and ] but cannot. List of XML and HTML character entity references doesn't have anything, and &#91 (the HTML entity, according to bracket) appears as the ampersand character, the number sign, and the number ninety-one, rather than as a bracket. I've also tried Google, and I found how to type an extensive list of references, including a long list of extended characters (e.g. Õ), without using the ALT0___ code that Windows supplies, but it doesn't tell me how to get a bracket to appear. Any ideas? FYI, I'm trying to use a bracket as part of the anchor text for an external link in a citation: the original document has a typo in its title, and I want to include [sic], but that coding will cause the link itself to malfunction. Nyttend (talk) 01:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

If you chuck a semicolon (';') on the end of what you were using, it oughta work fine. Nevard (talk) 01:46, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Testing. [ ] Does this work? Nyttend (talk) 02:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

That's what I wanted; thanks. I knew that some types of references had the semicolon, including the non-breaking space, but bracket didn't include it, so I figured that it wasn't part of this reference. Nyttend (talk) 02:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Warm computers

At home, I use a nice laptop for everything. A problem, though, is the heat. I've got it attached to a cooling pad, so it's only 44 degrees celsius inside, well within the normal range. But after an hour or so on, it feels warm to the touch, and the whole machine seems to give off heat, making me warm and uncomfortable myself. It's OK for typing at my desk, I guess, but it's not pleasant if I want to use it in bed or on my lap.

Is there an alternative device that can be used for simple word processing and web-surfing that stays cooler? Do netbooks stay cool? What about iPads -- if one can type reasonably on them? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I have a simple solution: point a fan at both you and the laptop. It should keep you both cool. Another option is putting something between your lap and the laptop, like a pillow. Or, best yet, do both. StuRat (talk) 04:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Um, no. Don't rest a laptop on a pillow, because firstly this is likely to block the air vents, and secondly, pillows make good insulators - you risk overheating the laptop, and damaging it. I'd find something rigid and flat (a tray perhaps) to put the laptop on, allowing the air to circulate, and then rest that on a pillow. Unfortunately, computers aren't particularly efficient, and do produce a fair amount of heat - even a netbook can get quite warm. As for IPads, I'd think you'd find using them for word processing awkward, without a keyboard. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

To clarify, the cooling pad would still be between the pillow and the laptop. I believe those are designed to be used on insulators like a wooden table, so an insulator like a pillow under it should be OK. It should also keep the vents clear, by extending beyond them some distance. StuRat (talk) 04:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Some netbooks stay quite cool. I don't use an iPad, but my GalaxyTab 7" also stays nice and cool. Typing on a tablet or a netbook can be an uncomfortable experience if you're used to touch-typing on a full-sized keyboard. It can be gotten used to, but you'll never achieve the same speeds you can achieve on a full-sized keyboard. APL (talk) 06:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Cross platform shared libraries

I'm a fairly experienced C (not so much C++ but I can get by) programmer, and I suddenly find myself needing to build a shared library (for audio file conversion, but that's not important, I hope) which links to executables and runs under both Windows Vista/7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard/Lion. Help! Are there any toolkits, templates, or other facilities which allow for production of such cross platform shared libraries with a minimum of overhead and a maximum of shared source code? Thanks. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 02:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

From what I gather, and some IBM people seem to agree (maybe a few tips you haven't heard of in there, and here), just stick to using IFDEF's. Nevard (talk) 06:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

How to you add support for new video formats to an HTML5-enabled broswer?

If you're developing a player for a new video format and you want to add support for the new format to HTML5-enabled browsers, is there a way you can package your player so that it can be added to and used in any browser that supports HTML5? Thanks. --71.185.166.51 (talk) 12:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Partition unallocated after merging

I freed 5gb from my c:\ and 5gb from my d:\ with disk management. then i used some other program to merge one of the 5gb free spaces with d:\. then, d:\ became unallocated and it could not be assigned any drive letters. Help! Thanks. 218.102.197.250 (talk) 13:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)