Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Reference Desk

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October 23

Music writing program

Can anyone suggest a free program with which I could write standard notation music? --The Dark Side 00:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Although it is technically shareware, I recommend NoteWorthy Composer. It's only limitations are when you print sheet music, it prints an order form with it, and you are limited to 10 saves of its native file format .nwc, but have unlimited .mid saves available. Download it here. If you are in need of a keyboard program that can record keystrokes and save them as .mid files, then MidiPiano is what you want. Download that here.--Russoc4 01:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

GNU LilyPond! —Keenan Pepper 05:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Although I haven't used LilyPond, it looks like a pain for doing casual work in. Dysprosia 09:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at Scorewriter for quite a list. What OS are you using? — QuantumEleven 10:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking to me? Maybe you need to adjust your indenting. Dysprosia 10:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

You are, of course, right - I ran that answer off in a hurry. (and this time I am talking to you! ;-) ) — QuantumEleven 10:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Mediawiki needs a better system for talk pages – one where you are not creating indentation yourself but just click on the comment you wish to reply to. Much like many other discussion forums, that is. This, more structured way, would open up the possibility for automatic and uniform "archiving" (the process of moving old comments off the main talk page), permanent links to single comments and automatic signing of comments. And, no, this comment is not a reply to QuantumEleven, but to Dysprosia. I just didn't want to ruin the chain of ever-increasing indentation. ;-) —Bromskloss 11:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

(indenting for the sake of indenting, but speaking toward to OP) I use Finale NotePad. It is fairly simple, and does not have the limitations of NoteWorthy: NotePad will print and save always. Hyenaste ^(tell) 19:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

But also note the criticisms. It seems that Sibelius is quite popular too. Hyenaste ^(tell) 19:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Damn, I love Sibelius. A lot better than Finale, in my opinion. Lilypond is a joke (literally too). X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 07:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sibelius is wonderful I'm sure... but the original poster specifically requested a free program. Shareware is one thing, but a progam costing several hundred pounds is quite another! Loganberry (Talk) 16:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia web services

Hello Wikipedians,

Does Wikipedia offer a web services interface (either SOAP or REST)? For example to search for articles and consume them in an application or website? Also I'd like to know about any good examples of public implementation of web services such as Amazon web services. Mahanchian 15:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia runs on the MediaWiki software, which uses a MySQL database. I'm not sure if you can access this from an application, you'd be better off asking this at the helpdesk or the village pump. --Jrothwell ^(talk) 10:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Accessing machines on the same gateway

I have two machines connected to the internet through the same gateway. I have admin access on both of them. How can I access one from the other? Both of them have Windows XP Professional. Thanks, deeptrivia (talk) 16:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by accessing? If you want to view shared folders, you need to have "file and printer sharing for Microsoft networks" enabled on your network interfaces on both sites and the you can browse shared folders by typing \\[ip address/computer name]\[shared folder name]. Mahanchian 16:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I got it working! Thanks for your help. deeptrivia (talk) 17:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Ethernet hub

Do ethernet hubs protect computers from viruses?--209.106.197.241 18:37, 23 October 2006 (UTC) Jeremy Bartels

No they don't. Mahanchian 19:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you are thinking of a "router"? Many domestic models of routers have a built in firewall and it is the firewall that does the protecting, not the actual "router". Also, it isn't really viruses that a firewall protects you from, it's hacks. You can still download and run viruses with a firewall. You need anti virus software to protect you from viruses. Vespine 22:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh ok. I understand. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

Baseball21888 21:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)Jeremy Bartels

RSS / ATOM for Wikipedia

I want to use an RSS or ATOM feed for the Reference desk. What do you other editors use? I'm using Opera, but is there anything especially good for Wikipedia? And what's a good time frame to have it check for changes? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 23:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by "use an RSS or ATOM feed for the Reference desk"? I might be interested in that too, if I only knew what it meant. You mean a feed that tells you what is up in the reference desk? Is there such a thing? —Bromskloss 07:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you go to the history tab on wiki, there's an RSS feed. So yes, there is already such a thing. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, cool. —Bromskloss 09:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

October 24

Scheduled startup and shutdown

I have set my computer using the BIOS Power Management functions to start my computer at 7:00 AM so a program I run everyday can start at 7:30 AM. THe program includes a line of code to check time and end the program at a certain time. From there the power management section of the display properties sees the system is idle after 5 minutes and puts the system in hybernation. Trouble is the system does not always restart at 7:00 AM and the program never starts running. The system just stays in hibernation. Is there a beter way to accomplish starting the computer in the morning so the program can run and then shutting down the computer when the program is finished in the evening. Adaptron 00:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

please state your operating system, as this is where you would issue a command. TehKewl1 04:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

From what I can see, the computer starts up at 7:00AM. Unless this start-up process takes 25 minutes, the computer will be idle for more than 5 minutes before the timed start of the program at 7:30AM and would go into hiberbation. This could be why the computer just stays in hibernation instead of running the program. Perhaps you should start the computer at 7:20AM instead? Just my thoughts --yaninass2 | talk 04:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Windows XP. I've tried a new aproach. Instead of using Task Scheduler I simple put a shortcut to the program in the startup program folder and the bios power management start time set for 7:30 AM. The display power option is now set for hibernation after 30 minutes of the computer being idle and the program set to stop at 7:00 PM. After the program stops the system goes idle and then into hibernation but unless I shut if off the bios pwer management will not start again at 7:30 AM. Is ther a way to shut it down instead of going into hibernation using the power option? I don't see any options listed other than hibernation. Can I add a key or otherwise teak the registry? Adaptron 16:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

How do you mean "shut it down instead of going into hiberation" ? Can you just shut it down, or does it have to be in a suspected state? 68.39.174.238 03:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a lot easier and a lot more complicated than I first thought. Windows XP actually has a shutdown command but it will not work under certain circumstnaces. What I'm working on now is to generate a shutdown batch file that I can executre from the program I'm running along with BIOS controlled startup and startup folder program execution. Any ideas are still welcome. Adaptron 00:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

HTML Marquee trouble

I'm trying to design a marquee for use on a mock website, but I don't know much HTML, specifically something that causes a break between two sentences on the same line (like 10 spaces or something). With my marquee, one sentence scrolls accross, then I'd like a small break before the next one (as in, both would be visible but there'd be a gap separating them). If I use "br" it creates a new line and the marquee doubles in height. Can anyone help? --Bronzey 08:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I just found a sort of solution, put underscores inbetween the sentences then make them the same colour as the background... it works, but it's fairly ugly. I'd still like some expert advice though :) --Bronzey 08:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The correct way to do it is probably to use CSS, but it's easier to put

<pre>          </pre>

where you want the space. —Bromskloss 08:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No, wait, that breaks the line too! :-( —Bromskloss 09:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, here's a better one (still ugly):

          

—Bromskloss 09:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Hah, thanks for your help :) --Bronzey 10:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Better expert advice is: Don't do it. Most uses of animated side-scrolling text are highly annoying intrusions.

The relevant CSS property is white-space, and the XML attribute xml:space is also relevant; but browser support may be an issue. The safest non-breaking space across all typefaces is the   entity (Unicode U+00A0). --KSmrq^T 14:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

MS OFFICE WORD 2003

If i have a normal ms office 2003 word document and i want to split it up into 3, for example, columns but i dont want the title to be in one of the columns and i want it to be across the top as normal; what do i do???--84.66.6.35 09:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

In OpenOffice.org, you can select the part of your document you want to have in multiple columns and then go "Format" → "Columns…". Perhaps you can do the same in Word. —Bromskloss 09:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's the same. Select the text you want to be in three columns. Then either click format, columns, or use the columns tool on your standard toolbar (it's to the right of centre, the top toolbar). Only the selected text will go into columns. Alternatively, if your document is only one page, you can put the title in the header in the top margin. Anchoress 10:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There are a few ways to accomplish this, but this is perhaps the easiest: Type your title, hit Enter. Choose Format..Columns.. and select column layout you want. Be sure to choose "Apply to this point forward" instead of "Apply to Whole Document". Click OK. Type text for column 1. Choose Insert...break..Columb break. Type text for column 2. Choose Insert...break..Columb break. Type text for column 3. Voila! You now have a title centered above your columns. dpotter 18:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

WORD

How do you put a horizontal line in Word??? Iv looked everywhere but cant seem to find it.

( i have MS Word 2003) thanks--William dady 10:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What kind of a horizontal line? Cuz there are lots of ways to do it. Be more specific please. Anchoress 10:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Just a normal horizontal line like the ones you get on newspapers under the title, iv dont it before but i cant remember how to do it. (also i think you can get them on website programs, like frontpage, and they have their own button)--William dady 10:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you have the formatting toolbar, just place your cursor in the text or on the paragraph mark where you want the line to show, and click on the underline toolbar button which is on your formatting toolbar (it should be the second one at top, to the right). Or choose format, borders and shading, and select the line you want. Anchoress 10:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you have auto-formatting turned on (which is the default), 3 or more hyphens will be automatically turned into a horizontal line. --LarryMac 12:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, turn on the drawing toolbar (View -> Toolbars -> Drawing, it often shows up at the bottom of the screen), click on the "line" tool (by default it's just to the right of "AutoShape"), click and drag to draw your line. Holding down the SHIFT key forces your line to be at some angle multiple of 15° (helpful for drawing vertical or horizontal lines). — QuantumEleven 10:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Q about VoIP.

Do I need to be paying line rental on my landline phone for DSL to work? I'm looking at ditching my regular phone service for VoIP, but don't know if I need to have line rental active. Thanks.

Depends where you area and who your provider is, you'll have to ask them. In Australia you can NOT use DSL without paying regular phone line rental, but I do believe it is possible in other countries. Vespine 14:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

How much more would it cost to have cable broadband installed? If you have to pay for phone-line rental on top of DSL ISP charges, it might be worth switching to higher-speed broadband --Username132 (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Here in Australia, cable broadband is ridiculously expensive (the average is $100 USD per month, with a 20GB-per-month download limit). ADSL is limited to 1.5Mbit.

Take a look at Naked DSL. dpotter 18:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Or more importantly, cable is pretty much only available in the capital cities, and even then not everywhere.Vespine 23:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Recovering Outlook mails and address book from a hard disk

I recovered the hard disk from my crashed laptop. It has all my outlook express mails and addresses in an archived format. It's possibly encrypted too. How can I recover them? I know had the laptop been working, there's a way to export all outlook data, but what can I do now? deeptrivia (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Were you using WinXP? The location for Outlook mail files (.pst extension) in XP is located in "Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook" you can take those files and import them back into Office. —Mitaphane _talk 17:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

SQL question about aggregate rows.

I'm trying to construct a query in PostgreSQL to to the following, and not having much luck. I have a list of purchasing records, each one with a product ID, a purchase date, and a price. My select is grouping by product ID. I want to also be able to ask, "what's the first and last price paid for this item?". The initial query I came up with was select min(purchasedate) as firstdate, max(purchasedate) as lastdate, min(case when purchasedate = firstdate then unitprice else NULL end) as firstprice, min(case when purchasedate = lastdate then unitprice else NULL end) as lastprice from purchaserecords group by productid;, but postgres claimed "column "firstdate" does not exist"; I suppose I can't use a previously defined field in another aggregate column. If I try to substitute in max(purchasedate) for lastdate, it says "aggregate function calls may not be nested". How can I make it do what I want it to do? grendel|khan 14:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I use a separate table that I fill - very fast. But, you can do it with a subselect: select * from purchaserecords as a where purchasedate in (select purchasedate from purchaserecords where productid=a.productid order by purchasedate limit 1). --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I tried subselects, actually, but it was incredibly slow. I'm taking a different tack now and trying to move the aggregate functionality in the reporting engine. It seems like there's no good way to do this. grendel|khan 16:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Subselects are slow - that is why you are told to never ever use a subselect. However, there isn't much in the way of getting the "last" item for every group. That is why I make a "lastitem" table and I fill it with a script. Then, I query the lastitem table. Since my main table has over 10 million records for just over 2 million groups, having a lastitem table makes it MUCH faster to get the last item from anyone in the group. --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Peripheral device

What is the general features, usage, key manufactures, and the latest advncements and innovations in a printer

Printers allow you to create hard copy of the answers after you've done your own homework. --LarryMac 14:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What does your teacher mean by "latest"? I've heard that the printing press is a hell of a lot better than a monastery full of monks copying books by hand. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

audio timescaling

Can you tell me if pitch synchronous granular synthesis is equivalent to pitch synchronous overlap and add (psola) method? THNX! --Ulisse0 15:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, PSOLA is a kind of granular synthesis. - Rainwarrior 17:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Thnx again! --Ulisse0 17:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

PNG

Is the a way to save of otherwise convert bmp formatted files to png formatted files in Visual Basic 6? If not is ther an add on or a program that will convert a whole folder full of bmp files to png? Adaptron 16:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about VB6, but IrfanView has a nice batch convert/rename function which should perform that task. --LarryMac 16:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

ACDSee is also nice for that. However, if you have to do it with VB6, I don't know if it exists, but it shouldn't be the world's hardest thing to do since they are both considered bitmaps. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you can do it in .NET, the System.Drawing namespace is what you'll need. howcheng {chat} 20:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks very much for your help. Infanview will work fine although a plug-in, add-on or routine to do the conversion and save from VB6 would be nice and eliminate several steps. Since Infanview seems to have command line capability maybe I can use if from VB6. Adaptron 22:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Duplicate File Finding Program

I want to use a duplicate file finding program to remove duplicated music files. Of course two tracks that sound the same when I play them wont necessarily be exact duplicates (they could be different sizes, different formats and different names) - would this present a problem? --Username132 (talk) 17:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Well how does the program work? Or what is the program's name? If the program is just hashing the music data (not the filename or other metadata attached to the file) and looking for files that have the exact same hash, then even closely sounding files will be different. If program works buy analyzing the outputing audio waveforms and then matching it to similar sounding outputs, I'd say you're probably going to get some false positives. —Mitaphane _talk 17:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

For a normal duplicate file finder, it'll only find files that are identical. If you have an mp3 at 128 kbps and one at 192 kbps, even if it's the same song, it's going to look significantly different to the computer. If you only analyze waveforms, it might still not work because of the way things are compressed and digitized, that one waveform might look a bit different somewhere where it was cut off cause it reached the peak, while it didn't on another file. So that would pose a problem. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a program called Dupless that does what you want. The old freeware version however is virtually useless for more than a few files since it only provides manual capability. If you program I think even VB6 has file detail lookup capability. I don't know if the non-free version of Dupless offers automation but it should not be hard to find on the web. Adaptron 22:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Ubuntu Problem

I inserted my Ubuntu 6.06 disc (64-bit for my AMD 64-bit processor) and after loading to a black screen with a mouse pointer, I get a small repeating blip from my speakers over and over. This also occurs in graphics safe mode. A few months ago it worked fine, then it did this, a month later it worked fine and now it's doing this. Why is it so flaky? Someone at the Ubuntu forums suggested checking for loose connections inside the case but that sounds a bit wishy-washy, especially since WinXP runs fine. --Username132 (talk) 17:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Reburn the disk and check the BIOS? X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 18:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

This problem occurs with the disc I've burned and the one I sent for from the Ubuntu people. What should I check for in the BIOS? --Username132 (talk) 19:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Placing page in Categories

Hello, I was wondering how to place my webpage into different categories that way my page that I just created will be seen under specific categories. Thank you for your help.

Unless your web page meets the guidelines for Wikipedia:Notability than it should not have its own page, and it will be deleted. X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 18:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

My interpretation of their enquiry was that they've created a new article and want to know how to use categories. I tried to find out what page they might have created but this post appeared to be their first edit. --Username132 (talk) 19:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Categorization FAQ are your friends. Although, for the future, it would be better to ask this sort of question at the Help desk. — QuantumEleven 10:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Dark Laptop Screen

I'm guessing you've gotten this question before, but since i'm not willing to search through the archives to find it: I bought a new dell laptop that i'm pretty happy with, but for some reason (i guess to save power,) the screen becomes very dark the second i unplug it. i tried fishing around for a solution throughout the control panel and settings, including power settings, but i cant find how to disable this. any help? Sashafklein 19:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

theres usually a FN button on most laptops. hold this down, and look for two icons like suns (usually somewhere around the F8 or f9 buttons, or on the arrow keys itself. hold Fn and press these buttons and it should brighten your screen. hope that helps. -JOE

The only other place I would suggest(if you want to disable it completely) is searching options in the BIOS or contacting Dell. This is generally a helpful feature for those who prefer battery life over display. —Mitaphane _talk 20:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Even at full brightness, it is common for a laptops to dim thier displays slightly when running on battery. I think this might just be a side effect from the change in voltage, but it is none the less common. - Ridge Racer 14:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm certain it's a built in feature. The question is whether it can be changed or if it's built into the hardware. —Mitaphane _talk 17:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Transparent Images

I am trying to make a black t shirt with an image i made in adobe. so that i don't have to pay to print black onto the tshirt, i made the image transparent in adobe and saved it as a jpeg. there are two problems. the first is that there was white on the image i made, and on the website where i made the tshirt (custom ink), the white does not display at all. it's just become transparent, it would seem. also, everything that is not white is ringed by white on the website. so my image that was supposed to show directly against the black is lined with a bit of white. would both these mistakes probably be problems with the website? should i have done something different with the image? thanks Sashafklein 19:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

JPEGs cannot be transparent. Save it as a PNG instead. howcheng {chat} 20:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Though remember PNG alpha channels aren't supported by IE! --froth^{T C} 21:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Interlaced? Sashafklein 03:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want. See the interlace article for more info. howcheng {chat} 03:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

What if you choose a black background in Adobe (Photoshop I assume) instead of white/transparent? You're printing on a black T-shirt anyways, just make sure you trim as much as you can (but not too much!) when you cut it out to iron it on the t-shirt. Though if it's the shop that's making the t-shirt, and you're not printing on a sheet of transfer, you might want to check with them. --Silvaran 16:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Just thought I'd point out PNGs alpha channels are supported by IE7 which now has a final release, not just beta anymore. - ^Рэд_хот^{(t • c • e)} 22:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

If I were to sell my PC (probably ebay or craigslist), how much could I get for it?

custom built by ABS computer (abspc.com) here are the basic specs:

Awesome Series P4 2.8GHz 120gb hd Geforce FX 5900 Sound Blaster Audigy 1gb DDR CDRWdrive (not sure of speed) DVD drive Antec Case 2 fans, blue LED lighting XP home SP2 installed

never had any problems with it.

can anyone just give a rough estimate as to how much this might be worth? if you need any more detailed information please let me know. thanks in advance.

Search for similar systems on eBay using the Advanced Search and checking the "completed listings only" checkbox. That will give you a good estimate. howcheng {chat} 20:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Systems are a lot of work to build but well worth the price. A P4 and motherboard with 7.1 sound can be had for less than $200 (maybe even $150), a 240 gig hard drive for less then $100, a DVD/CDRW/R recorder for less then $100, 1 gig DDR less than $150, a case and PS for $40. Add um all up and consider less than half as a good place to start for a used system unless you get lucky and a schoolmate really wants yours and is willing to fork out the bucks. Checking out similar systems on Ebay as previously stated will help narrow things down although prices can vary dramatically from sale to sale. Adaptron 22:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Try this NewEgg trade in calculator here. --01:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It told me $300 for my 2 month old thinkpad that cost me almost $2000 --froth^{T C} 17:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Web based free source control for simple users

Dear all,

I would like to ask if anybody knows a website that can provide source control for *one* file only for simple users (students). We want to basically prevent concurrent changes to the same file by implementing a simple check out - check in procedures.

Thanks a lot in advance, Tommy

One file eh? Simple users? I don't know off the top of my head but you can check out Version_control, List of revision control software, and Comparison of revision control software --froth^{T C} 21:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

October 25

C++ Decimal percision.

How do you get an extremely percise number with C++? Like i know you can use: cout.percision(10); for example But what if i wanted 50 places of percision? I tried to put 50 in the () but i only got i think roughly 10 or so spots of percision (even with a long double data type). is there a limit? is it my compiler? or is it just cause the datatype can't hold it? thanks for the input! --Agester 04:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

According to the floating point article, it should have 52 significants. There might be a limitation to cout or setprecision? I'm not sure, since I don't use them any more. Try printf("%52.50f",variable_name); instead and see if that help at all. If not, I'll look some more.

The 52 number is a number of bits, not decimal digits. The arguments to the formatting functions are counts of digits. (The real answer is given below by Kieff.) --Tardis 15:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

From googling some more, I found that a 64 bit long double only has 17 signicant digits, while a 128 bit long double has 31 significant digits.[1] The 128 bit long double is also not compliant with IEEE standards, and not all compilers support it. And it says on another site that a long double has at least a precision and range of 10, which might be what your compiler is limited to.[2] --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Get some arbitrary precision functions, there are a bunch. ☢ Ҡi∊ff⌇↯ 06:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Also make sure to be a bit more percise precise in your spelling. Especially when programming, such little slips can create hours of ill-directed debugging attempts. DirkvdM 07:01, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a lot easier and a lot more complicated than I first thought. Windows XP actually has a shutdown command but it will not work under certain circumstnaces. What I'm working on now is to generate a shutdown batch file that I can executre from the program I'm running along with BIOS controlled startup and startup folder program execution. Any ideas are still welcome. Adaptron 00:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Internet bandwidth priorities

Is there any way to tell what parts of your Internet connection are being used for different applications, including how much bandwidth is devoted to various programs? I'm trying to download something but it's going agonisingly slowly and I suspect there is some background software (knowing my luck, something I never use) hogging up all the bandwidth. I'd like to find it and disable it. Battle Ape 05:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge, however, filesharing or download programs, as well as autoupdates, tend to take up bandwidth. I recommend simply ctrl-alt-delete, task manager, and kill everything you don't need (with the exception of Windows of course ;) ). You can also stop using any browsers or anything to your knowledge, ctrl-alt-del, hit Networking, and look at bandwidth usage. If it's high, and you're not doing anything, that's what's up. --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 07:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

No, there is no way to do this 'centrally'. Some software (eg file-sharing and P2P) have settings to limit the amount of bandwidth they use. More likely, a slow download doesn't mean a problem at your end but simply a slow/overloaded server. Most home internet connections can download much faster than most servers can send data, especially if many users are downloading from the same server. A tool to monitor how much bandwidth you're using (such as DU Meter (30-day evaluation)) can be very helpful. — QuantumEleven 10:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like a software firewall is what you're wanting. My firewall program monitors incoming/outgoing packet for each process that uses network access. Of course this includes local network usage as well as Internet usage. —Mitaphane _talk 19:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Password-controlled"File Hiding"

Question, refdesk.

I want to protect a folder on my PC from being played around with. However, if someone goes into the folder, I don't want them to know it's password protected. I want a program, essentially, that shows a "blank" folder, until I enter a password to show all the others (password function is obviously hidden). Anyone know of such a program? --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 07:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I think you can kinda-sorta do that with TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt is a tool for encrypting data in an easy way. It will mount a virtual volume (ie like you had an extra drive) that encrypts everything you put into it. But that's not all; you can also put a hidden volume on that same encrypted drive. That means that you can have a bunch of files on it, and everyone that sees it will think that that's all there is. But it's not! If you fire up TrueCrypt and enter a different password, suddenly the hidden volume will appear with all of the files you had hidden. Get it? So, set TrueCrypt to mount a certain virtual drive at startup. It will appear empty to everyone (it will appear like a normal folder, so anyone can put stuff into it). But enter a certain password, and as if by magic, another drive will appear. I think that is the closest you're going to get without actually programming a tool yourself. Oskar 17:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Computer Slowing down with CD Drive interface

Hello guys...I use P4,2.6GHz,256 MB RAM,inbuilt video card.I'm using XP with Service pack 2.My pc slows down more severely whenever I try to copy a content from CD.My music also slows down when I copy the data from CD.Why is this?...The CPU usage goes almost 100 when burning CDs using Nero 6 or nero 5..At first when I bought my PC it was not so..Now only the problem persists..It would be nice of you guys if you could provide useful suggestion in getting my PC back to normal..Advance thanks

First of all, check if your CD drive is operating in DMA instead of PIO mode. To do this, follow the instructions on this page. If your DVD drive was running in PIO mode, change it to DMA mode (as explained on the page I sent). If it doesn't work, there is a link at the bottom of the thread to a different way to enable DMA.

If DMA isn't your problem, try updating the firmware on your CD drive. Go to the manufacturer's website and snoop around for a firmware upgrade. Make sure you get the right firmware for your drive!

Also, try running Nero CD-DVD speed, which will give you a detailed analysis of how fast your drive is running, how much CPU it's using, which can help you to pinpoint the problem. Also, Nero InfoTool is very good at giving you details on the settings which may be enabled or disabled on your drive. Good luck! — QuantumEleven 09:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

256mb is awful, you should really get at least 512mb. That might be a contributor to the problem.71.217.195.83 17:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, are you due for a disk defrag ? Fragmentation could slow things down, especially if your computer's going to paging space due to low available memory. StuRat 18:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Dual booting with Kubuntu and Windows XP

Hi all. I was looking to install Kubuntu on my computer so I can dual boot, I currently have XP installed. So I used Partition Magic to create a 10 GB FAT32 partition on one of my hard disks to install Kubuntu (it also created the swap partition for me). I also installed Boot Magic.

After creating the partition, I rebooted with the Kubuntu Live CD in and then started installing it. But I didn't know what to do when it came to the step on which hard disk to install on (step 6 of 7 on the installer). On that step, it showed my 3 physical hard disks but none of the partitions (in particular the newly created FAT32 one). So I chose the "Manually edit partitions table" option (option 3), at which stage I could see the partitions but I had no idea how to choose to install it on the new partition, plus I really had no idea about all the mounting business.

Would it be easier for me to just choose the "resize" (option 1) and create a new partition for it there, and delete the partition I made with Partition Magic. The reason I didn't want to do it before was just in case I accidentally format my hard disks (not something I want to do!) or find myself unable to boot into Windows (if that can even happen).

Any help as to how I should go about doing this? Thanks all (sorry about the long post). - Akamad 11:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You should have never used PM. Hmm, ok for this I'll assume you want a swap partition and a root partition, nothing fancy like separate partitions for /usr and /home... Go back to PM and delete the partitions you made before, but leave that 10GB of empty space there. On the partition stage of the kubuntu install, edit the partition table and add a new 9GB partition at the beginning of the empty space. Make it ext3 mounted at just a forward slash slash ( / ). Then make another partition at the beginning of the empty space. There should be about 1GB of storage left, but not exactly. Type in 100% to use 100% of the remaining space. Make it of type Linux swap (the first one if there are 2 options for swap). It will mount it to /swap, even if it doesn't say that. --froth^{T C} 01:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah PM screwed things over for me (Boot Magic didn't help), so I'm just going to format my windows hard disk. That way I figure I'll be able to create clean partitions from the start. All my data and stuff are on other hard disks so ther won't be any data loss. Thanks for your help anyway. - Akamad 09:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

While we're on the topic, is Ubuntu's partitioning procedure capable of resizing existing partitions? It's basically the only reason people started using PM in the first place.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The main distribution method is a livecd, so you could run parted before starting the install procedure. IIRC parted can resize NTFS --froth^{T C} 17:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

USENET

What are the highest trafficked Usenet groups?

• most viewed?
• most posted to?
• most replied to?

• Trafficked? ;-) —Bromskloss 12:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

alt.drugs

(anonymous in case the police is looking for me)

Transfer speed

I'm not sure whether to ask this here or at the mathematics reference desk, but it is a computer question so here goes: if I want to transfer a 10 GiB sized file to another person at a speed of 0.5 megabit / second, how long will it take (note that it's megabit/second, not megabyte/second)? I got some different answers when trying to figure it out by myself, but I think the answer is about 1.89 days. Is my calculation correct? 83.250.208.83 12:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That sounds roughly correct, but there are a lot of other variables ... what is the transfer protocol? What size is each packet? How much header information is required for each packet? and so on ... --LarryMac 12:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Using my own experience with a 512kbit upload, I know you get about 50-55 KB/s as a transfer rate (assuming nothing else is hogging the upload, of course). Using that speed as a benchmark it should take between 2.2 and 2.43 days. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 15:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I get 8 bits/Byte x 10 GByte x 1000M/G = = 80,000 Mbits.

Then I get 80,000 Mbits / (0.5 Mbits/sec) = 160,000 secs.

Then I get 160,000 secs x (1 hr/3600 secs) = 44.444 hrs.

Finally I get (44.444 hrs) / (24 hrs/day) = 1.85 days.

Note that this is the minimum time, assuming 100% of the transfer rate is available to this process for the entire time, which is a dubious assumption. StuRat 18:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Latex Book Margins

Hello,

I'm using LaTeX to format a book and this is the first line: \documentclass[a4paper,12pt,titlepage,twoside]{book}

The problem is that the wider margins for binding with my twoside command are on the right side, not the left. How do I get them to reverse?

Thank you for any help,

--CGP 12:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The twoside option should make the margins alternate between right and left, so they're always on the outside. If you want the chapters to start on left pages rather than right ones, use the option openleft. —Keenan Pepper 18:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I tried using openleft and openright and they make no difference on my document. Oddly it also does not change anything if I use oneside or twoside. Is there some other option in {book} that I am not aware of? --CGP 19:49, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the wider margin on the outside of the page is actually for "margin notes". If you include the command

\layout

in your document then LaTeX will put in two pages of diagrams with the margins shown. You can then adjust the values it gives, such as \oddsidemargin and \evensidemargin with commands like

\setlength{\evensidemargin}{17pt}

\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{62pt}

which I think are vaguely sensible numbers to give you a narrow margin on the outside and a largeish binding margin but you'll probably need to fiddle with it somewhat. Bdgoddard 20:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey thanks, it was the margin notes that were throwing off the look. Your new layout commands look perfect. Thanks for the help. --CGP 08:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there a Java keyword for the outer class instance of an inner instance class?

If I have the following,

  public class OuterClass {

    private class InnerClass {

      public void increment() {
        ++someVar;
      }

    }

    private int someVar;
    private InnerClass innerClass;

    public OuterClass() {
      this.innerClass = this.new InnerClass();
    }

    public void someMethod() {
      this.innerClass.increment();
    }

  }

Is there a keyword I can use (sort of like this or super) that will allow me to access the OuterClass instance from within InnerClass? One I can wedge in between the ++ and someVar in the increment() method? Thanks. --Silvaran 16:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, you cannot access the class that contains the "active class" without a reference. Therefore, you must pass this as a parameter to a constructor declared appropriately. However, since the variable is private, I'm pretty sure you can't actually do it even WITH the reference. You will need to create accessors to do whatever it is you want to do. + == Suse 32 vs 64 Bit ==

If the reason to do things like this is to be able to change the way methods are executed in your OuterClass instances, you might want to consider taking a different approach: Change OuterClass to an interface (or abstract class, or class with "standard" functionality - depending on your needs) and use inheritance to create subclasses you can instantiate and place in a variable with OuterClass as the type. Nested classes are, IMO, not really useful unless you need some task done that doesn't make sense outside the class, and doesn't fit in the actual class. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 17:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, you should use subclasses (or just separate classes) instead. It's always slightly messy to use an inner class, but it can be very useful (mostly for passing functions as arguments, like for instance passing a comparator to java.util.Arrays.sort()). That said, you don't need a keyword. The code you have will increment the OuterClass instance of someVar just fine from InnerClass. Also, you don't need all of those "this." (in someMethod() and the constructor). If there isn't a variable with the local scope that has that name, you don't need to specify that it belongs to the class. Again, I personally think it's a bad design choice to rely to much on inner classes. Separate classes are just so much cleaner, in my opinion. If you can give more detail on what it is you're trying to do, maybe we can help further :) My two cents, anyway. Cheers! Oskar 17:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I had a situation where an inner instance class had a parameter named the same as a member of the outer class, a la (within InnerClass)

    public void someMethod( int someVar ) { ... }

Quick solution was to rename the parameter. In other situations, I could prefix the member variable with this., so I thought there might be a similar one for accessing an outer class. I prefer the inner instance classes for small groups of methods that operate exclusively on the outer class. In this case, a static nested class would make the outer class instance variable redundant (why not just use an instance class?), and no other classes in the same package can access it like they could a package private class.

The general pattern for the outer class in my case was some kind of pluggable interface. I had a single outer class, a private interface, 4-5 instance classes that implemented this interface, and a member variable pointing to the interface. So I could change the bulk of the behavior on the fly from within the class, and implementors could be kind of chained together (one implementor could create another and point the outer class to it). --Silvaran 18:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe the construct you want is OuterClass.this.someVar; you qualify the this to indicate which "current object" you're talking about. --Tardis 19:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Suse 32 vs 64 Bit

If a 64-bit processor can run both 32 and 64-bit software, is there any advantage to downloading 64-bit SUSE 10.1 over the 32-bit version? --Username132 (talk) 16:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I would expect the 64-bit version to run faster. StuRat 18:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't, at least not in most instances. The big thing with 64-bit is pretty obvious--the address space. If you have something (database, video editor, whatever) that needs to access more than 3 gigs of memory (2 gigs in Windows IIRC) at a time, INCLUDING virtual memory (stuff paged to disk that looks like RAM to programs), then the 64-bit is going to be faster. With 32-bit, the OS has to make certain compromises (like relying on [PAE] for up to 64 gigs of RAM, but still only 4 gigs of address space for a given process), which are going to slow things down. All other things equal, 64-bit is going to take a little more (though definitely not twice as much) memory to run programs, as addressing will use 64-bit pointers, but that's likely not a concern. Not everything is 64-bit clean yet though, and there are a lot of commercial/proprietary/closed-source applications out there that won't run natively in 64-bit. I suspect Suse has a 32-bit compatibility layer for 64-bit architectures that will solve some--but not all--of these problems. HTH. --Silvaran 18:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought it was not just a matter of address space but also the size of the registers. And I also thought that you only get the benefit if the hardware and the OS and the application are 64-bit. So only recent (and future!) apps that are 64-bit will benefit from using that version of Suse. Or so I thought. DirkvdM 10:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If the kernel makes use of the larger register sizes (and if it does a good job of it), you do have a potential speed gain. Operations that originally took 2 registers can now be done with one, so theoretically there's a little less moving about into and from cache --froth^{T C} 17:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Margin Setting

Ho do I set the margins in Microsoft Word so that, when the text is printed out, it mesures 7.20 by 4.20?

You may have to set margins on your printer software to accomplish that. StuRat 18:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Or you can do it through Word's Page Setup box (File -> Page Setup). On the second tab, set the paper size you'll be using (A4, Letter...). Make a note of the paper size. Then go back to the first tab and set the margins so that the printable area is the size you want (you do this by taking, for instance, the height of the paper and subtracting the bottom and top margins to get the vertical size of the printable area). Hope that helps! — QuantumEleven 08:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

There are two other options. You can click and drag the margins in Print Layout View (an editing view of the actual document), which has the virtue of enabling you to use the page rulers right on the page. Or, if you just want a block of text 7.2×4.2, make a table cell that size (it's much easier than doing it thru the margin menus) centre it on the page, and type in that. Anchoress 09:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

PHP Login

I am learning PHP and I would like to know how to tell if a person is logged in to a website. For example, I can send a cookie, but how reliable is this? How do I know the cookis is real and not a fake. Thanks, 86.41.151.218 22:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Start a session. The server will send a session ID (in a cookie) to the client. The next transaction (like they move to a different page on the server), the client will send back that session ID to the server, the server will look up the information associated with that SID (like the current logged in user id, from which other information can be accessed) and display the page based on the SID (like printing the user's user id in the corner of the screen, or applying the site theme that the user has selected in their options). There's no way to tell whether the cookie is forged, unless you encode the SID with the user's IP address (though this can somewhat reduce security if a certain user's IP address is known by an attacker and the encoding scheme is known, and you need to sent the connection type to keep-alive so the user's ISP's DHCP service doesn't issue the user a new IP and thus invalidate the SID). --froth^{T C} 01:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing that this is the session_start() blah, blah, blah stuff. How safe is this? How do other websites do this? How does Wikipedia track users, for example? Thanks, 86.41.151.218 01:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If you don't use sessions you have to put identifying data (like the users id) into the cookie rather than a SID that points to all that identifying data which is securely on the server. If you don't use sessions, users can potentially edit their cookies to change who they're logged in as (they can do this with sessions too but only if they know their target's SID, which is procurable through XSS attacks). This is from the HTTP cookie article: While cookies are supposed to be stored and sent back to the server unchanged, an attacker may modify the value of cookies before sending them back to the server. If, for example, a cookie contains the total value a user has to pay for the items in their shopping basket, changing this value exposes the server to the risk of making the attacker pay less than the supposed price. The process of tampering with the value of cookies is called cookie poisoning, and is sometimes used after cookie theft to make an attack persistent. Most websites, however, only store a session identifier — a randomly generated unique number used to identify the user's session — in the cookie itself, while all the other information is stored on the server. In this case, the problem of cookie poisoning is largely eliminated. Basically all PHP based sites use php sessions, and sessions as a general idea is almost universally used (I can't think of a single case where sessions aren't used but I could be wrong here). Wikipedia does use PHP sessions through the cookie var "enwiki_session". There's also something called "enwiki_key" that could be used for encoding or something I'll have to look at the mediawiki code. --froth^{T C} 05:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

October 26

Word

In Word, how can I keep a straight edge on the right side without justifing it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.142.163.229 (talk) .

That's the definition of justify, so it's not possible --froth^{T C} 01:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Did you maybe mean not right justified? If so, then choose justified, and it'll left and right justify and fit both ends. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 01:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You generly have 4 options for aligning text:

Left Align

This text is left-aligned so you get a streight line on the left side.

CENTER

This text is centered so all the text appears in the center.

Right Align

This text is right-aligned so you get a streight line on the right side.

Justify

This text is justified so you get a streight line on the both sides. This is done by changing the spacing between the letters / words on each line to make them line up on bothe sides.

86.41.151.218 02:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

What Froth said above is not accurate; you can use a right-aligned tab stop without changing the alignment/justification. Anchoress 09:10, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, you're still "aligning" it, and thus "justifying" it, so while we're speaking English here I don't really see the difference. You're just using a secondary method to do the same thing.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  09:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

While we're speaking English here, we're not here to argue semantics, we're here to answer questions and help people. Froth's answer gave the impression that what the OP wanted wasn't possible. While it may have been technically correct (as I say, it's semantics), it was unhelpful. Anchoress 09:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not essential for the question, but note anyway, as 86.41.151.218 pointed out, that justification means that both left and right side of a block of text align with their respective margins. —Bromskloss 10:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The difference here is between 'justify' and 'msWord justify'. So, although incomplete, Froth's remark was justifiable. DirkvdM 10:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

LOL Dirk, do you have to ponder these puns, or do they just come naturally? Hyenaste ^(tell) 18:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

They come naturally because I constantly ponder on them. :) My mind just works that way - it constantly plays with words. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. And I've tried because it can be irritating at times not to be able to concentrate on the serious meaning of words. For example, at the top of the page, 'humanities' to me reads as 'human titties'. Which is mildly funny at first, but becomes a bit of a drag after a while. And 'John F Kennedy' to me becomes 'John Fuckin' Eddy'. :) DirkvdM 09:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry people, it was more of a quip than a serious answer :/ --froth^{T C} 17:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

3D

We know that 3d graphics accelerators generate 3d graphics but display only 2d field of vision.Any idea what tweak can be applied (something like the stereo command in python)to many of the opel and other games so that they produce stereo view continously which can be used for 3d viewing???

NVIDIA has a 3D Stereo driver for their video cards. If you don't have one of their cards, and the game doesn't support it on its own, there's little else you can do. There are some alternatives, but they suck. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 16:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You can mask the colour writes so that you just draw red, and then render the left-eye view, then switch to blue-green and render the right-eye view, and use a suitably coloured pair of 3D glasses to view it. (In OpenGL you would use glColorMask) You'd have to code it right into the game though. - Rainwarrior 17:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

java j2sdk1.4.0 question

hi,friends.myself jack.I have installed java j2sdk1.4.0 in the c drive and set classpath using environment variables.after creating a simple application helloworldand using javac it is compiled ,but during runtime it shows "Exception in thread main 'Noclassdeffounderror':helloworld.Why is this happening and how should I solve it.please help.

:The name of the class and the name of the file are not named the same. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC) See the Java Forum. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 16:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Microsoft Word

Sometimes on Microsoft Word, if I write something before text I've already written, it strangely deltes and replaces that text. What causes it? --212.219.230.119 11:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a command called 'OVERTYPE', which can be accidentally turned on with a keystroke or a mouse click, which replaces existing text letter by letter when new text is typed in front of it. I don't recall the keystroke offhand to turn it off or on, but when you are looking at your MSWord screen, the 'status bar' (the grey band at the bottom of the screen right above the Windows Taskbar), where you see information like what page you are on, will have several little 'windows' with grey text. When you are in 'overtype' mode, the 'OVR' text will be black, and double-clicking on it will turn the feature off. Anchoress 11:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. (deleted) --212.219.230.119 11:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I get it, you're a troll. Well maybe your answer will be useful to someone, even if you asked it as a joke. Anchoress 11:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I was being serious, I needed to know how to stop the overtyping. (deleted). --212.219.230.119 11:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a soap box. Anchoress 11:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

(deleted} ;) --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 15:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The INSERT key in the 6-pack above the arrow keys typically toggles between insert and overstrike modes. StuRat 15:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

DNS mystery

2 machines on the same hub, running the same OS (Win2K pro), one resolving domain names fine, the other not. Can traceroute to the DNServer from both machines. nslookup results in

 *** Can't find server name for address 195.188.53.113: No response from server
 *** Can't find server name for address 193.38.113.3: No response from server
 *** Default servers are not available

(on the "bad" machine, natch). Any ideas? Rich Farmbrough, 17:51 26 October 2006 (GMT).

In nslookup set debug, type in some domains, and see what's different between the output of the same command on the two machines. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

debug output

 > set debug
 > www.cisco.com
 Server:  UnKnown
 Address:  193.38.113.3

 socket (dg) failed: No error
 *** UnKnown can't find www.cisco.com: No response from server
 >
 
 -----------------

 > set debug
 > www.cisco.com
 Server:  ns.cableinet.net
 Address:  193.38.113.3

 ------------
 Got answer:
    HEADER:
        opcode = QUERY, id = 4, rcode = NOERROR
        header flags:  response, want recursion, recursion avail.
        questions = 1,  answers = 1,  authority records = 2,  additional = 2

    QUESTIONS:
        www.cisco.com, type = A, class = IN
    ANSWERS:
    ->  www.cisco.com
        internet address = 198.133.219.25
        ttl = 49480 (13 hours 44 mins 40 secs)
    AUTHORITY RECORDS:
    ->  cisco.com
        nameserver = ns2.cisco.com
        ttl = 49480 (13 hours 44 mins 40 secs)
    ->  cisco.com
        nameserver = ns1.cisco.com
        ttl = 49480 (13 hours 44 mins 40 secs)
    ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
    ->  ns1.cisco.com
        internet address = 128.107.241.185
        ttl = 71035 (19 hours 43 mins 55 secs)
    ->  ns2.cisco.com
        internet address = 64.102.255.44
        ttl = 167339 (1 day 22 hours 28 mins 59 secs)

 ------------
 Non-authoritative answer:
 Name:    www.cisco.com
 Address:  198.133.219.25

 >

I suspect something is hooking the gethosytbynumber or whatever it is called, but maybe not. Rich Farmbrough, 21:28 26 October 2006 (GMT).

MacBook vs. PC laptop

Here's my situation: I'm a college student, living in a dorm, currently using an approximately 3 year old custom built desktop. I have a dual monitor setup just because it makes it much easier to view more at once. However lately I've been really wishing for a laptop, which would likely become my desktop replacement. I've always been a PC user but recently I've been using Macs (a couple of my roommates have powerbooks) and I've gotten to like them a lot. The new macbook pro release has got me thinking that I should consider a mac over a pc laptop.

My question is, what would you guys personally recommend for a laptop? Mac or PC? What is the overall better choice? I used to play a lot of computer games but lately I haven't really been doing that, though I assume eventually I will get back into a game or two. I want something powerful but also sleek and easy to use. I really like the macbook keyboard from previous experience.

Also I've been reading about Leopard, which will be released sometime in Spring 07. Would you guys recommend, if you do recommend a Mac, waiting till spring, when Leopard is released? Also I have heard rumors about a new, much more powerful chip coming out sometime next year, could anyone shed any light on what is coming for the future, either spring or early to mid-summer?

Now that macs are on the i386 architecture, any "new chips" coming out will probably be available for PCs and macs, though of course only PCs are upgradable. Personally I despise mac OSX and quite haughtily scorn it.. though I read that many pioneers of computer science rather like it, my "hacker subculture" sensibilites demand that I hate it and my left hand is all too happy to oblige. If you like to play windows games, you could just install windows on your macbook. As for the keyboard, I'll offer my usual Thinkpad plug- it has a full size keyboard- indisputably one of the best on the laptop market. I urge you to stick with a PC, if only because the macbooks are uglier than deep fried diahhrea and you'll end up paying a big premium for the mac name, with the only "plus" being that you'll be able to run osx and it'll be a bit easier to dual (or triple) boot with linux. Also consider that Vista won't be compatible with boot camp. --froth^{T C} 23:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Why even consider a Mac? They're horrifically overpriced, especially when it comes to laptops. Get a PC. --Wooty  Woot? | contribs 00:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Both of the above responses are citing the oft-repeated mantra that Macs are horribly overpriced and you are paying a premium for the brand name - while this may have been true several years ago, I don't think Macs are that expensive compared to PCs, particularly for brand name PCs such as the IBM Thinkpad touted by Froth above. Apple has numerous budget options such as the Mac mini, iMac and MacBook which are on par, if not cheaper than brand name PCs.

Let's compare the price for similarly low-specced machines on the IBM and Apple websites:

• IBM ThinkPad T60: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz / 512MB / 60GB / TFT14.1 / Combo / WinXP Pro = US$1,154
• Apple MacBook: Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz / 512MB / 60GB / 13.3 / Combo / Mac OS X = US$1,099

Hello! Can this be? The Mac is actually cheaper! Note: the screen size is slightly smaller on the MacBook (13.3" at 1280x800), but the resolution is actually higher (and the guy asking the question has an external screen) than the ThinkPad (14.1" at 1024x768).

Thinkpads are even more overpriced than macs, I was just giving an example of a comparable keyboard on the "non mac" side --froth^{T C} 06:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Where is it stated that Windows Vista won't be compatible with Boot Camp. I'm not saying it's not true, but I've only ever read that it would. As for the MacBook being uglier than "deep-fried diahorrea", that's purely subjective and your opinion. I don't despise Windows XP, but I find Mac OS X much easier to use, fewer gaping security holes, it does everything I need, it's much more versatile (as stated above, you can run XP, Mac OS X and Linux if you wish... and it just works, as they say. You also get the free iLife package, which is pretty powerful music/video/DVD/photo software. --Canley 02:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's actually possible but it doesn't work without some serious hiccups, and the average user probably wouldn't be able to figure it out. Something to do with vista not supporting EFI I think. By the way the reason I can't stand OSX is that it's like a mp3 player... it looks ok, does its function well, easy to use.. but that freedom that you have with a PC is completely missing. Yeah you can hack your mp3 player to load the linux kernel I guess and some other tricks or whatever, but it's not the same. With a PC you can take it apart, build it yourself (build your own components even if you wanted to!), see it go from its very base components up to the low level functions that make an OS possible. Then you never take high level functions for granted- you know and can intimately understand what's going on under the hood. There's no character in the bootstrapping screens that can't be changed if you can find the proper memory address. You could just never install an OS and use all the hardware in something else. I know that OSX is just that, and operating system, but the whole dynamic of OSX and macs in general is that it's just something you type at and click at and it does everything for you easily.. it's more like an embedded system than a computer! It's like an mp3 player rather than an open environment --froth^{T C} 06:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Nobody buys computers from IBM. 71.217.195.83 04:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The Thinkpad article describes them as "highly successful" and anyway Lenovo thought it was worth $1.25 billion of their money just to be allowed to manufacture the things... --froth^{T C} 06:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

For any computer purchase, but especially for Macs, good timing can bring good values. If you don't need a new computer today, there will always be a better one tomorrow. How long do you want to wait? Around the time of new releases, older models often become bargains. Many computer companies reveal important plans in advance; Apple Computer usually does not.

For current facts, the venerable MacInTouch site will help. For when to buy, MacRumors has a guide combining facts and speculation. Sites like AppleInsider and ThinkSecret also blend insider info and speculation. And would you believe it, Wikipedia has an article dedicated to the Apple rumors community. An outdated survey of Mac-related web sites, but possibly still helpful, is the Best Of the Mac Web Survey conducted by Low End Mac.

If your experience with Macs draws you in that direction, that's probably your best choice. The Intel Macs will run Vista under either Parallels or BootCamp or iEmulator or some improvisation, and Mac OS X already has a FreeBSD-like Unix under the hood (for power users). The MacWindows web site may also be of interest. --KSmrq^T 14:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)]

IIRC, vista specifically destroys the mac partitions on install... --froth^{T C} 16:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want portability and battery life, a Sony or Lenovo is your best bet (I made myself choose between a Lenovo Thinkpad X60s and Sony VAIO TX3; Sony won, I'm happy with it, although I've heard the Lenovo support is really great, and they have coated screens - better for your eyes...) However, if battery life and small size aren't considerations, go with Mac all the way! You may be able to get Windows OEM deals from your local Mac retailers, as well as cheaper deals on RAM than from Apple direct. On the other hand, local retailers can't give you the full educational discount, so you'll have to weigh those against each other. Not that you'll ever want to use Windows unless you have some very specific program you need to run (like GIS software, alas!) Btw, all the laptops I've mentioned will run large external displays via VGA, but probably not dual head. Iirc the graphics cards in Macs are capable of doing this, but not sure how you connect them. Samsung make nice laptops, too. - User:Samsara (Mr. Gates took my tilde key)

if battery life and small size aren't considerations, go with Mac all the way. That's not necessarily the case either. Because it's not a proprietary standard and blahblah, you can find companies that make insanely powerful Windows-based laptops. They are larger and heavier, but if battery life and small size aren't considerations, they're hella powerful. I've seen a few laptops with at least X1600 GPUs that are close to the price of Macbooks (which have horrible Intel GPUs), rather than the more expensive MacBook Pros (with the X1600s). It really, really depends on a variety of personal criteria. I got a Windows laptop because I found a Dell that's smaller than the Macbooks, cheaper than the Macbook Pros, and actually has a decent GPU rather than the integrated Intel nonsense. I personally have no preference for OS X, I'm just as happy with Windows and Linux. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 15:55, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Blahblah? Which bit of my post were you unable to compile? - User:Samsara

No no, not part of your post. I was just explaining that non-Mac laptops come in far more varieties because far more companies develop them for far more types of users. However, I didn't want to type all that out, so I substituted it with blahblah. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 16:05, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

My main point is that unless you want something that is very portable, there is no reason not to be running OS X. And if you're going to run OS X, you're best off buying a Mac, despite how much fun it might be to hack it. - Samsara (talk ·  contribs) 22:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

OSX is one of the least portable OSes on the market --froth^{T C} 18:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I HATE MACS I HATE MACS I HATE THEM... DO NOT GET ONE SETTLE FOR A WINDOWS BASED ONE... the only thing that i like about macs is that some of the desktop screens have handels in them...... this way i can attach a chain and use them as a BOTE ANCRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!pulo 08:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, you've won me over with that convincing argument! --Canley 03:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

It's from a mac commercial parody (here about 1:40 into it) good stuff lol --froth^{T C} 18:44, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

My sister recently bought a Mac Powerbook as her only computer. She is the only Mac user in our entire family. I'm the only Linux user. Neither of us have Windows. JIP | Talk 15:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The best 15 inch laptop

that weighs under 9 pounds. What company sells it, do you think? Are there any companies that allow you to make absolutely custom laptops that are any good? 70.108.215.106 23:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

get a thin client laptop --froth^{T C} 23:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Would that be a good idea? After all, a thin client has to be connected to a server to be of use, which makes them rather impractical for individuals, and they need a constant network connection (to connect to the server) which could be problematic when on the move with a laptop. -- AJR | Talk 18:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well then use your old desktop as a server. --froth^{T C} 18:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

"Best" is highly subjective, I have asked myself that question many times. I personally own a vaio which I am very happy with and my gf has a MacBook which she is very happy with too. Both machines are generously specced and have not failed at any task we have thrown at them. Vespine 01:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

October 27

Good headphones?

Does anyone know the best set of circumaural 'phones around $70 or less? I got the Koss Pro/4AA, but they are for things like amplifiers and studio equipment (handy, but not what I'm looking for). Sort-of looking for something that can work with a CD player. Much appreciated. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 00:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Best is really opinionated. I use a Cyber Accoustic ACM 800 which don't hurt my ears if I wear them for extended periods of time, have pretty decent sound, a few feet of cables, folds up (but not to anything small enough to really be considered portable), and has a noise cancelation system which doesn't work very well. I think it just boosts the volume slightly when it's on. I'm in no way advocating it, but mine costed me $50 at the time. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 00:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

My father is an audiophile, and he got me the Sennheiser HD 497. I've been happy with them, and I think they're in that price range. Hope that helps! -- Creidieki 01:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion; I picked those up. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 16:44, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I second the Sennheiser HD-497s. They're $70 and are fantastic. 202.10.86.63 04:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Not a shabby suggestion at all, but just take note that the HD-497s leak sound like mad. If you're using them in a very quiet place, you'll tick off the people near you. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 15:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Why aren't your current phones suitable for CD players? —Bromskloss 12:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

They have a plug like a guitar cable. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 16:44, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Why not just get an adaptor? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I didn't know there were adaptors for that. Furthermore, I already ordered the other one. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 00:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Take a look at Top 10 Headphones Reviewed dpotter 18:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Firefox 2.0 and Wikipedia

Firefox looks really weird at Wikipedia. It's fine on other websites. Anyone know how to fix it? See pic. Thanks WP 01:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you actually using the release version of Firefox 2.0? It's just that I can see the word "Build" after Firefox, which may mean you are using a beta or pre-release version. The final version is available at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/, I'm using it now and it's fine. Note that Firefox doesn't seem to be detecting this new version as an update, so you may need to install it manually. --Canley 03:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't update automagically?! :-( Here I am, waiting for it to notify me about the new version, and you tell me it won't! Any idea why? —Bromskloss 12:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

No. As of 1.5.0.?, they all say "build". It annoys me, too. - Samsara

I havn't noticed that. Nor have I noticed the bug described by Canley. If you're using the final Firefox 2.0, which language is it and are you using an optimized build like swiftfox? Do you have any extensions installed, or a custom theme? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk)

You can't update from 1.5.0.7 to 2.0 because there's no way to stop an automatic upgrade; so the automatic upgrade hasn't been set up yet. Firefox 1.5.0.8 will let you decline an automatic upgrade. --Kjoonlee 18:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's called a build samsara. If it wasn't a "build" it would be "source" and you'd have to build it yourself (with make or a windows compiler) --froth^{T C} 21:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Err, right, but Firefox doesn't usually include its build number in the window title. I'm on 2.0, and it isn't doing so. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. I *am* using 2.0. The "build" thing is caused by Nightly Tester Tools. The problem is caused by my "classic 1.5 look" theme. WP 07:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Online Jobs

Hello all. Are there any legitimate ways of working and making money over the internet? I can find a job online, but how can I find an online job online? I've looked into survey taking and the like, and it seems pretty fishy. I'm a full time college student without a car, so I really need some information about working from my computer over the internet. Are there any job opportunities available? Thank you for your help. 72.228.54.222 04:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well I'm a publicist and science writer, and I do all my work online. I know there are modestly lucrative and legitimate content-writing jobs out there, but from what my friends in the industry say they are jealously guarded by the people who have them. I make a bit of money on the side writing content for people on the KEEN and NiteFlirt sites, but I got those jobs thru word of mouth. Anchoress 04:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's funny you mention NiteFlirt--I have a friend who did some work for them. She referred me to their website about a year ago, and I was considering becoming a "flirt." Even that seems kinda sketchy to me though. 72.228.54.222 04:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I've done it (not with NiteFlirt), and a good friend does it. I found it excruciatingly boring, but she does very well. Anchoress 04:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have an extra job in my spare time, I do translations over the web for a german company (and actually, I live in Sweden myself...). Unfortunately, I usually only get one or the documents to translate every three or four months, but anything is better than nothing? TERdON 00:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The thing about online jobs is that it really depends on what you want/can do. If you happen to be incined in the computing field, there are some good places like rentacoder that allow you to make bids on projects. Pretty nice, because you get to choose what you work on. Projects range from simple things like making logos, to extreemly time-consuming programming jobs. - Ridge Racer 04:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Modem router combos

I'm looking to buy a DSL modem and a router. Is there any downside to the 2-in-1 router+modem combination units? The two I was looking at purchasing are the Netgear DG834 and the D-Link DSL-504G. Would they be wise purchases? Are there any other places I can find cheap routers in Australia? Thanks. 202.10.86.63 04:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I have used both of these, and while I can't remember the details, they seemed to do waht was on the box. Rich Farmbrough, 10:52 27 October 2006 (GMT).

Downsde of using a combo is speed loss and less range and preformance all together..... best choice would be a D-link DSL-502T modem and the Netgear Rangemax 240 MIMO WNT834....... only downfall of the router is its close to $300 AUS....... pros are that it runs at 240mbps providing that you have a rangemax MIMO wireless receiver.... and the range is great. One of the 3 powerfull ariels are detachable alowing you to upgrade your range. Hardley ever disconects and looks quite sexy...... next best router option would be the NETGEAR Rangmax NEXT 802.11n Pre-n router.... this router has significant sped at close range but lacks at far range... also i recommend waiting for the full N release rather than using a Draft-n router. hope this has helped!!! pulo 08:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

sd cards

i have a dvd player that plays memory sticks,sd cards and cf type 1.my photosmart 8200 series has same.can i download and burn a movie on to one of these cards and then put in dvd player to watch it rather than burn to disc? thanx.x

Depends on the DVD player. I know you can do this with a computer. What is your model/brand of DVD player? —Mitaphane _talk 18:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

xml file

Hi guys, I am trying to create an xml file called banner.xml as per the instructions here. The text for the xml file is here. Can someone tell me how I can create the xml file. This software stuff is beyond me (sigh) -- Lost^(talk) 14:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

You can paste it into notepad and save it as xml --froth^{T C} 16:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't use notepad. Use wordpad. Notepad will save it as banner.xml.txt. You'll have to turn on file extensions (which should have never been turned off by default) and then rename the file. Wordpad will (if memory serves) save it as banner.xml. --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:05, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Notepad will work. Just select All files under the Save as type: thing in the save dialog, rather than .txt. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Or alternativly in notepad, put the filename in "quote marks" and it won't add an extension. -- AJR | Talk 18:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot everybody!! -- Lost^(talk) 07:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

join

When attempting to return only matching records from two related tables where the value in one column of the first table also appears in a certain column of the second table. this scenario best describes which type of "join"?

inner join
outer join
cross join
all of above
none of above

If you went through the trouble of typing "join" in the search box, you'd see the article Join (SQL), which explains each of the join types. Then, you could do your homework easily. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Carbon fibre mice

Does anyone know of a computer mouse whose entire upper shell is made of carbon fiber? I recently got a carbon fiber laptop that I'm quite happy with, and would like to have the same material in my next mouse. There are rumours that some of Logitech's mice are made from carbon fiber, but from images I've seen it looks like the buttons are usually plastic (polycarbonate?), with the grip parts along the sides possibly carbon fiber. - User:Samsara

Why would you need carbon fibre in your mice? It's primarily used to save weight (which shouldn't be a concern in mice), and on the other hand scratches rather easily. ColourBurst 17:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I just like the feel of it. - Samsara (talk ·  contribs) 19:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting, may I ask where you accuired this carbon fiber laptop from? - Ridge Racer 04:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Carbon fiber is pretty expensive for you to buy for a mouse. X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 05:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I know that you can get a Formula 1 brand carbon-fibre mousemat, for a mere £250... Robmods 10:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Carbon fiber? why! If you want some cool looking and feeling material, try the magnesium/titanium composite that thinkpads are made of... sleek black and always cold to the touch --froth^{T C} 19:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Any mice made from that material? - Samsara (talk ·  contribs) 11:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Big VB Programming Project

Please I want to make a big programming Project in VB 6 or VB.NET . So Can provide me with internet site or institute to provide me with this complete code of project.

Now that would be cool. I want to do a big project (like the one I've been coding for last 36 hours straight), but instead of coding it, I just go to a website and download the code. Project done. Where's my pay? --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:02, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

There are seldom sites that will offer exactly what you want - and often not for a small fee, either. Unless it's something rather simple (a calculator?). x42bn6 Talk 19:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

OIN popup

Each time I search using Google, I get a strange and uninvited pop-up from OIN. I can neither block nor get rid of it. I'm hoping I'm not the only one dealing with this, and that someone can help me strike this from my computer. Thanks.Wolfgangus 17:45, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I bet it's spyware. Use Adaware, Spybot - Search & Destroy and Microsoft Antispyware. Then, stop using IE (or at least update it / increase the security level) or programs which bundle spyware. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Spybot alone found 78 'problems'

If you want to continue using Internet Explorer, then upgrade to version 7. Harryboyles 22:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Video Ipod

How many songs can the Video Ipod hold?

That's subjective. It depends on how long your songs are, and what bitrate they're encoded at. Apple gives a number of 7,500 songs, which is based on every song being a 4-minute 128 kb/s AAC. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 21:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

If you had mp3s, theoretically, how many songs could you fit on? X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 04:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The container itself shouldn't make a big difference. So, if you have MP3s encoded straight at 128 kbps, they should take about the same amount of space as AACs encoded at 128 kbps. You should be able to use Apple's guesstimate number in either case. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 07:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

If the playtime is equal, a 128kbps MP3 should be exactly the same size as a 128kbps AAC. Bitrate is filesize divided by playtime. --Kjoonlee 09:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You forgot the overhead; I doubt that, for instance, the headers of both formats are exactly the same size. Bitrate does not include all the overhead (the file header and ID3 tags most probably aren't included in the bitrate). --cesarb 15:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The headers are generally of an insignificant size compared to the data. - Rainwarrior 17:23, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I did have the overhead in mind, but some of my software ignores all that, using total filesize and total playtime to calculate the average bitrate; so I just went ahead. --Kjoonlee 01:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

NTFS & Linux

When I was able to run my live Ubuntu CD, linux could not mount the HDs. Is this because they are NTFS formatted? --Username132 (talk) 23:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

While it is possible to read an NTFS file system from Linux, I know of no safe way to write to one. It is possible if you don't mind the risk of trashing the NTFS drive. If all you want is read access, mount with a normal mount command, but add the "ro" for "read only", such as /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs users,owner,ro,umask=000 0 0 --Kainaw ^(talk) 23:44, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

There is a (perpetually "experimental") NTFS-write module for Linux - http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ As Kainaw says, it's a bit risky; an ro mount should work fine. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Well all my drives are formatted with NTFS - I have enough spare capacity to shift all the data from one drive at a time - how do I then format the drive with a file system that both Win and Linux can read? A right kaffufle... --Username132 (talk) 01:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The obvious solution would be to format the drive as FAT32. Both Linux and Windows will do this. You need a spare partition, and this might be hard to get on an already-formatted drive.--Silvaran 02:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Captive NTFS? It taints the OS with a proprietary driver, but blarblar. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

leave a message on my talk page if you need it and don't have NT :o --froth^{T C} 19:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Is Captive NTFS easy to install? I'm interested in Suse and Ubuntu but I read of problems that people are having with Captive NTFS and both these distributions. I'm a Linux beginner and don't really want additional headaches from experimental software. If you agree, I suggest that I can;

a) shift the data from one drive to a spare drive

b) reformat the empty drive using the Disk Management utility available in Windows

c) shift the data back to the drive

d) repeat from a) on each drive and then finally on the spare drive (five total)

Then my drives will be in FAT32 and all will be well in the world? --Username132 (talk) 13:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how well Linux would run on a FAT32 partition. For sure, it would miss the benefits of a journaled file system. The only drives that need to be in FAT 32 are the ones you want to share between Linux and Windoze. And it's fairly easy to relocate your Linux home directory to a FAT32 drive. But some more options: (i) Puppy Linux reads and writes to NTFS out of the box; (ii) it might be far less trouble to go the other way and enable Windows to read and write to ext2 using the Ext2 Installable File System for Windows. If you look around, there is a registry hack for Windows allowing you to relocate Documents & Settings to a different drive/directory. If you would like to try to make Ubuntu talk nice with NTFS, here is a how-to. --Marbux 22:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Will I be able to reformat my drives in Windows for ext2/3? I'd like to have my drives prepared before I start to install Linux. Since that means reformatting them all, I guess ext2/3 is the way. Will that software you mentioned (thanks) allow only to read/write files on such drives, or will it let me format in ext2 or 3? --Username132 (talk) 13:50, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

If the computer in question has USB, go buy a 1GB USB key for $20USD. Ubuntu can read the NFTS drives and you can keep any writable files on the USB key. This does not solve all possible problems, but it does solve a large subset of your problems. -Arch dude 01:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take that under advisement... ;) --Username132 (talk) 13:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

October 28

ASP date function

I have a site where I need to put a weekly date range in, IE prices effective Oct. 25 - Oct. 31, 2006 (Wednesday through Tuesday of each week). The site is a .asp extension, anyone know of an easy way to pull this off? either in ASP or JavaScript would be great. Hadiz 04:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what do you mean. Here are the ASP date functions. That should help you with anything involving the need to get a current date. If you need any help with programming logic try to clarify the question. —Mitaphane _talk 18:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Simple, don't use asp, ever --froth^{T C} 19:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Labtec Wireless Keyboard

I recently acquired a Labtec Wireless Keyboard and am having a great deal of trouble with it.

It works fine in word-processing software, but when I try to use it on the internet strange things start happening. The longer the computer is on the worse the problem becomes. I can’t reach tech support on the telephone, so I was hoping someone on Wikipedia’s reference desk could help me. Some of what it’s doing include:

1. Launching Windows Media Player at random intervals
2. When I push Shift to type a capital letter it inserts a d or a j or a d and a j before and after the letter I want capital
3. It likes the number 7. A lot. Whenever I try to type any number it puts a 7. It also inserts 7s in random places in words when my fingers aren’t anywhere near the number keys.
4. It jumps from one line to another randomly. I’ll be typing and all of a sudden I’m on the line below or above.

I’m running Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 6.0 66.72.65.164 01:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Does it happen every time? I'd think the keyboard was broken or dirty, but you say it works elsewhere. I've had some random keyboard issues too (Firefox though) where it would put my letters in a random sequence order no matter what order I typed them in. Hmm... I probably should tell you to download Mozilla Firefox since we're on the computing reference desk. In this case it will maybe solve your symptoms, although IE will still be broken. =/ Hyenaste ^(tell) 02:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Two ideas spring to mind: interference from other sources, or your keyboard may be too far away from the receiving device. Do the problems persist if you move the keyboard close to the receiving device? Dysprosia 06:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it seems to be worse when it is closer to the receiving device. If I take it off the keyboard tray and go to the couch (about 2 feet away) it's a little better. But if I go further away then the couch it doesn't work at all (presumably because it's then too far away). The instructions say that the recieving device should be at least 20 centimeters from any electronic devices including the keyboard and mouse. It might be too close to the monitor; there's just not room on the desk to get it much further away from the monitor then 15 centimeters. But if that's the problem then why does it work fine in word processing programs? That may be it though... I just moved it (the recieving device) to the floor, and as long as the desk doesn't break the line of sight between it and the keyboard it's working now... don't want to step on it though... Maybe it is interference from the monitor. We'll see if it keeps working. Thank you! 66.72.65.164 15:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Mouse slowdown/speedup problem

Whenever I want to move files to a new folder in Windows XP after installing a wireless optical mouse at certain times the cursor begins to slow down and then overshoot making it very difficult to use. I assume this is due to the amount or location of memory Windows uses to handle the list of files to be moved such that it reduces the memory available for the mouse buffer. How can I allocate more memory for both the mouse and for the list of files Windows is about to copy or otherwise keep this slowdown/speedup response from happening? Adaptron 04:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is a memory issue. When you're moving your mouse around you are causing interrupts to happen in the computer. The OS then handles the interrupt and goes back to what it is doing. In this case, the mouse interrupt sends information about the position change and the OS updates the cursor position based on that change. When you're moving files around you're performing disk operations. Reading and writing information to and from the hard disk and memory also cause interrupts. These interrupts are also more time consuming because disk accessing is in the order of milliseconds(as opposed to nanoseconds for memory).I'm guessing that because disk operations/memory operation interrupts have priority over peripheral interrupts, that the OS polls your mouse less when disk intensive operations are being performed. Whether there's a way to put a higher priority on mouse interrupts I am not sure of. Are these tasks performed so often that it's a hinderance to you? On the few times it happens to me, it doesn't last that long and isn't much of an issue. —Mitaphane _talk 17:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

This only happens with a wireless mouse. A wire mouse is fine. Since it is probably taking longer to send the changes in position by wireless the transfer could be getting interupted by Windows file routines. The thing is that it only happens when I select the files to be cut, copied or pasted. It is after selection and then going for the next action when the mouse pointer woun't move and will then jump. Highlighting the files seems to cause the problem - not the actual transfer or copying. It is in trying to move the pointer to the action selection tag that the mouse pointer slows down and then trys to catch up but goes way past the action selection location you are seeking. To overcome this you have to move the pointer in very few and tiny increments or you will overshoot go outside and loose the box. Adaptron 03:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

My PC rejects my new HDD

I have a HP Pavilion 743a, and I recently bought a Seagate 250GB IDE HDD. I installed it tonight with no problems... but it's not showing up in POST or in Windows. My main 80GB HDD is the Master, which WinXP is installed on. My new HDD is on the same IDE ribbon as Slave. The jumper is set to Cable Select. Does anyone know what could be wrong? Lavalys says my motherboard is MSI 845GEM / 845GLMS / 845GVM / 845GVM-V / MS-6526G(L) (3 PCI, 2 DIMM, Audio, Video). Thanks. (EDIT: After rebooting, Windows displays the hard drive, but only as 4800MB.)

A 250GB IDE HDD needs 48-bit LBA (see Integrated Drive Electronics for the reason). A 80GB IDE HDD doesn't. That is probably the relevant difference between both HDDs. --cesarb 15:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

So how can I give it a 48-bit LBA? I hope it doesn't require a floppy disk, as I removed it to fit the HDD in!

First, your computer must support 48-bit addressing. If not, I believe Seagate has software (which probably came with the hard disk) which will allow you to use the first 132 Mb or so, which is the best it can do without 48-bit addressing. If this is the case, you might want to return it, if you still can, and buy a cheaper, smaller hard disk. StuRat 04:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

JavaScript - processing long scripts

If you run a script written in JavaScript that takes "too long" to load in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, you get an error complaining that the script is taking too long to load, and gives you an option to terminate. I also think that this message appears several times if you choose no (to make sure, perhaps?) after a certain amount of time.

Is there a way to disable this? I want to let JavaScript run a very long script (of the order of 100,000 repetitions) and display the contents, perhaps overnight. And I don't want to wake up and hit "No" every few minutes.

In case you are wondering why I am using JavaScript to do this, it's because I don't have access to any other languages that I know of, and their compilers/writers/etc. x42bn6 Talk 16:45, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't have notepad and internet access? You do? Oh, then you have access to other languages. You can use gcc for C, and you can go to Sun Java and get JDK 6 beta 2, the file "jdk-6-beta2-windows-i586.exe". Edit the code in notepad, or any simple text editor that doesn't add a bunch of stuff (don't use Word). There are free editors too, I'm sure, but I don't use them, so I can't point you to those unless you specifically wanted it. However, if you're adamant on using JScript, there might be options to turn off all debugging for javascript, but I personally never ran a script that long. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:05, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Apparently he doesn't know how to program in those languages. I would recommend that you install apache and php on your machine (php isn't too hard to integrate into apache, though you'll probably run into trouble setting up mysql if you've never done it). Learn php, it's not too hard. I once had a similar problem, with very long execution time. My script ended up taking more than a week to finish (100000 page requests, and process each one). You have to set a line in httpd.conf to make the max execution time longer than the 15 minutes or so it's set as. --froth^{T C} 19:05, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I don't know how to program in C (or C++), and my Java knowledge is limited to defining classes and nothing else. But it seems like an awful lot of work to install Apache and PHP just for this task... Is there anything in Firefox (in about:config) or Internet Explorer (a registry entry, perhaps?) or even a new browser that can process this? x42bn6 Talk 22:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I hesitate to provide this, because I think it's a bit like showing kids how to stuff beans in their ears — not a wise thing to do. The option you want is called "dom.max_script_run_time", and this mozillaZine article describes it. What I would recommend instead is that you tell us something about the nature of the task, and we suggest an appropriate free programming language that is easy to use. --KSmrq^T 22:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I would have to agree. It's not very hard to get javascript code running in C or Java, since they are all similar languages, unless you're doing something specifically designed to be done by javascript. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 22:43, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a football game. I don't have a licensed copy of C (or C++) anyway and I am hesitant to install the J2SDK on my computer because my former working partner had blue screen issues with it. I am willing to install it, though, if I can be guaranteed it has no issues, for I learn Java later during my University year. I am planning to have 8 countries, with 6 tiers within each tier, and 20 teams in each. I plan to have on average 55 players per team (16 for 1st team, 16 for reserves, and 16 for youth squads), giving me about 6600 players for a single country alone. I then have to put the players into teams. I have lists of first and last names already, and a list of major towns and cities of this country (England). All this will be random, partially because I don't have the type of money EA has. x42bn6 Talk 12:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

GCC is a free command-line compiler for C++ (which I linked above). I can't guarantee you that anything wont bluescreen, but if you aren't going to learn Java for awhile and know C, I would look into GCC.

Beyond the compiler, you also don't know how to use C++ or Java? I can help you there too, since I know javascript, C/C++, and Java. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Meebo

I have a Meebo account and belong to another wiki as well as wikipedia at [armchairgm.com] and have posted meebo on my user page there at [armchairgm.com/User:False Prophet]. I tried both meebo's code and the code I've used on the other wiki, and neither work. My question is can I post Meebo on my talk page, and if so how? Wikipedia's False Prophet holla at me Improve Me 23:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You mean, the actual client? No, the Wikipedia doesn't support embedding of scripts or plugin objects or whatnot. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:58, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

October 29

Alternatives to .lnk shortcuts?

Are .lnk shortcuts the only way in Windows XP to put the same copy of a file in more than one folder hierarchy (e.g. ...\People by Year of Birth\1977\By Occupation\Writers\By Nationality\American\ and ...\People by Occupation\Writers\By Nationality\American\By Year of Birth\1977\), or are there other ways? Any that are cross-platform and portable? NeonMerlin 02:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

What file system are you using? Apparently NTFS supports hard links, but FAT32 doesn't. I've never used NTFS hard links though. Philbert^2.71828 02:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, now that I think about it and read about it a bit more, FAT32 does use hard links but allows only one hard link per file, while NTFS allows more than one, which would allow you to put a file in more than one folder. Philbert^2.71828 02:39, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I use NTFS, and making multiple hard links through fsutil seems to work fine for me. But if I copy-and-paste two hard links of the same file into a different folder, the two new links will be to two separate copies. I need something that can be copied to a DVD±R and ideally also packed in a torrent. NeonMerlin 15:30, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Valid python statement

I know that this is a valid python computer language statement

if X > 5:
    Y = 9

But what about this? All on the same line

if X > 5: Y = 9

Ohanian 02:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, all on one line is legal. The entry in the reference manual gives the syntax. --KSmrq^T 04:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

g-mail account ANSWERED

I'd like to get a g-mail address, but I've heard you have to be invited by someone who already has one. Can anybody help me? My email addy is my WP username @telus.net. Anchoress 02:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just sent one, check your inbox. -- Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 03:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to Michael and BradyB. I appreciate the quick responses, see you on gmail! Anchoress 05:03, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

text ⇒ avi

I need a program that accepts some text as input and outputs it scrolling at predetermined speed as an .avi file.

If there's no such program, maybe you could suggest some clever way to do it.

It must be scrolling and it must be .avi

Any ideas? 212.199.22.55 05:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Try VirtualDub? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's for capturing video, isn't it? If I had the video in some form already, I wouldn't ask :) The problem is to take a text file and produce a scrolling .avi film.

Well, there's a scrolling marquee option, I believe. Then just make a blank screen for the movie, and you should get an avi of scrolling text. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 07:20, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

There must be an easy answer to this

When looking at a page like List of Nunavut birds the syllabics show fine in Firefox but in in Maxthon or IE7 I just see the little boxes. If I copy and paste from Maxthon into MS Word to edit, then the syllabics show up fine. The strange thing is that it's just on my home computer, all of the work computers show everything fine in both browsers. How do I get the syllabics back? Originally posted at "Miscellaneous" by error. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 05:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Someone may have broke something in an edit, go to the history page and check who has edited it and check an older version. TehKewl1 07:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks but that's not it. All pages with syllabics, not just the birds, show the boxes. It's only on my home computer and only with an IE based browser. I'm now at work using Maxthon/IE and it shows fine. It's almost as if the browser is looking in the wrong directory for the fonts. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#musical notation displayed in Wikepedia pages. User:Kjoonlee has answers a related question. Jon513 12:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer it jogged my brain enough to be able to think it through. Although I haven't as yet been able to fix the problem I was able to recreate it on a computer at work. It's the installation of IE7 that causes it. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe the Canadian Syllabics are a relatively recent addition to Unicode. I wouldn't be surprised if older software, incorporating support for only an earlier version of Unicode, couldn't display them. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Malfunctioning drive

I've added another internal hard drive to my computer. Recently, though, the drive has become entirely innaccessable. I can't open it. I often can't view it's properties, and even selecting the drive without opening it in my windows explorer browser causes the little hourglass to pop up and my computer to slow to a crawl for a minute or two. I tried to reinstall a program that I had already installed on that drive, and the program's setup file recognized the file on the non-functioning drive and asked (or rather mandated) that that version of the program be uninstalled before the new one be installed. So i said OK, uninstall the program on the crappy drive, but although the setup utility could apparently detect the old version of the program, it could not delete it. When i try to open the drive, i get "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error." What's going on? The drive crashed pretty suddenly. Any ideas? Sashafklein 06:10, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand you use msWindows. Does the drive apear on the device manager (I believe that's what it's called). Or is it even recognised by the BIOS? Does it appear on the list of drives displayed when you boot? DirkvdM 07:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Does it make a clickety clickety sound when it starts up? this is what my old 850mb Caviar series hard drive did when it finally gave up, if it did, and you had some important files on it, I would recommend taking it to a data recovery centre somewhere, or if not, check the physical connections and jumper settings. Hope this helps. TehKewl1 07:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the drive cable wasn't plugged in all the way and came partially loose. Try unplugging the cable and plugging it back in again. StuRat 12:58, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I tried replugging the drive cable, and it doesn't do anything, though i'd thought it would. The drive does show up on the explorer manager, and although when the drive shut down, I lost some really important files, I managed, a day after the drive started screwing up (and yes, making really disconcerting clickity noises)to access the drive and remove the important files before it screwed up again, that time for good. Any ideas about how i might delete that file or tell my computer to ignore the drive? Sashafklein 17:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Wireless with Halo server

Hiya, I need to run a Halo Dedicated Server from a room next door to the wifi router. Once I have an el-cheapo system I can shove a wifi card in and get everything up and running. My question is - would there be any significant increase in lag (from wired to wifi? I know wired is faster but would this noticeable affect performance for an internet game server? cheers, SMC 10:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Internet Access

I live in a rural area where there aren't any broadband options available. We have dialup, and that's it. No dsl, cable, wimax, etc. For the last 3 years, I've been using direcway satellite broadband, but recently decided to cancel their service. Here's my question: are there any other broadband options available? I really don't want to get dialup or another satellite provider. For example, cingular has a service called media net-- is there anyway I can get an unlimited media net subscription and tie a cell phone into a router somehow? (I'm not talking about evdo, just regular slow cingular internet access).

I've been trying to figure something out for hours, and nothing was coming to mind. Thanks in advance!! 65.12.181.204 16:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Look into accessories you can get for your phone. My Sanyo phone has a USB cable and software that lets you use it as a modem. However, there are drawbacks to this method (as opposed to geting the dedicated wireless internet service from your cell provider) because you'll being using WAP, design for mobile devices, instead regular IP. —Mitaphane _talk 19:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

BIOS

how does one access, BIOS. I've been told to poke around bios as a possible way to change the lighting on my laptop. 70.108.144.2

It depends on your computer, but it's normally holding Delete or F8 when it's booting up, before it starts loading Windows (else F8 will give you the Windows menu). If it does not say because you have a logo displayed when it's first booting, hitting escape will usually go from the logo to the text, which might tell you what key you need to press to enter BIOS. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 18:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Mine's F1 to go to BIOS setup, but I can also access it from pushing a special button on my thinkpad. Pedantically, you use the Basic Input/Output System constantly while the computer is running --froth^{T C} 19:46, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

BitTorrent

You can download bittorrents without BitTorrent, right, for example, through Opera, or, also, you could download bittorents throught Shareaza, but in the end, you still need BitTorrent to open the files, right? Danke.100110100 18:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

You don't need the official BitTorrent client for anything. You typically download the whateveritis.torrent file with your web browser, and then open that with one of any number of BitTorrent clients (of which the official client is but one). That will directly download the mp3, mpg, avi, iso, or whatever file(s) the whateveritis.torrent file specifies. So you really need a browser, any old BitTorrent client, and something to display/print/burn/view the things you download. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

By the way I don't think Opera has bittorrent support (it can't act as a client, though of course it can download .torrent files) and you don't need a torrent client to open the downloaded files, it's just like if you had downloaded them via http or ftp --froth^{T C} 19:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, they added a BitTorrent client to the browser in Opera 9. So yes, it does have support, and as far as I am aware, it's currently the only browser to have this built-in. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 19:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

MP3 Player Help

Hi everybody I need your help. I own an mp3 player from Jwin and the buttons on top are stuck. They can be pushed down but inderneath the plastic button there is nothing to push it is stuck down? If anyone can help me plese let me know. I really need my Mp3 player!!

Thanks Chris