Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

September 21

cable modem problems

I've been having problems with the cable modem dropping for a week. There are four green lights: power, receive, send, and online. when it drops, I get the first two lights solid, but the third one (send) is flashing. If I cycle the modem (unplug the power and plug it back in), it doesn't come back. If I also unplug the coax, sometimes it will come back (it takes up to four tries of this). Four days ago the cable tech support thought it was the modem, and had me replace it. It didn't fix the problem. They think the problem is at my house, and are sending a truck here in a few days.

With it dropping several times per day, then giving only the first two lights solid, until I unplug both power and coax - where is the problem likely to be (at my house or before it gets here)? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

You can probably log into the modem to find out: [1]. Check the signal levels: [2]. That will tell you if the modem is OK.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Right now, my down S/N is 37.1 (>30 is good).
• down power is -10.9 (should be -15 to 16, but -8 to 8 is better)
• upstream power is low: 51.7 (should be >55).

I'm having trouble with the "send" light. Is that due to the low upstream power? Where is the problem likely to be? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

If you have low upstream power, that is a clue that they may have given you a defective modem. But the connections at utility boxes often come loose. And if your neighbors aren't experiencing any issues, and if you haven't been doing any landscaping work, then I would guess probably either the modem or the utility box. You also probably have different cable outlets in your house. So, you could also try plugging the modem into different outlets.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:31, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I was having this same problem before I swapped out the modem last Friday. About two months ago I had a different problem - it would drop frequently, but it would come back up by itself quickly. They came out and replaced all of the connections and that fixed that problem.

I have a two-way splitter in the attic. One side goes to the outlet with the cable modem. The other goes to a four-way amplified splitter for the TV (three of the outputs are in use). I could take out the two-way splitter and put this on the other splitter, but I don't know if that would help. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:00, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Administrator rights at my own PC

Yesterday and today I've tried to install updates (Acrobat Reader + VLC) and have been told by the install software that I couldn't use all of the program, or the program couldn't be installed at all, respectively, because I wasn't having administrator rights or didn't have a password as "Administrator", respectively. I tried to argue: I've awarded myself all the rights and privileges of using my own PC, it's not fair, etc., but well, the install software just wouldn't listen...

So what's going on? First, why is this happening? And second, how can I get back to peacefully installing and using updates? Thanks for your help, Ibn Battuta (talk) 06:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I've had the same problem, though the system eventually listened. I suppose the "correct" procedure is simply to log on as administrator (the original account) whenever installing software. This is a security measure to prevent rogue software from installing itself, and we shouldn't really be using an account with full admin rights for everyday use. Dbfirs 08:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Note that at least some versions of Windows have the account named "Administrator" hidden and disabled. You can enable it (if logged in with administrator privileges): use your favourite search engine to search for "enable Windows administrator account" - there are many web sites that will explain how. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:48, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Google's new option

Is there any way to get rid of that annoying blue arrow which has appeared on Google in the last day or so, and to move the +You option from the left hand side. It's a bit confusing and irritating as it occupies the space where the Web option used to be, and now everything has moved along one space I keep forgetting and accidentally clicking on it. TheRetroGuy (talk) 10:09, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

You can install Adblock Plus or a similar advertisement/content filter tool for the browser of your choice. In Firefox, you can install the extension, and then right-click the arrow image on Google's main page, and add it to your list of filtered advertisements. I added this block-filter (in AdBlock+ syntax):

||google.com/logos/*

This blocks all Google logos on all Google domains. You may prefer the more selective filter only for the single image,

|http://www.google.com/logos/2011/gplus11-hp.gif

Note that Google uses a lot of active content and may change the URL for this particular arrow, based on your region, browser, or other variations - so this may be one of many similar images you need to block. Nimur (talk) 15:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

That's fantastic, thank you. I just installed it with Chrome and the annoying thing has gone. Now I'll go get the versions for the other browsers I use. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:03, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Just found out the thing's called Google+. :) TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Google+ is actually quite a popular and famous service. But, as far as I'm concerned, it's just another spammy commercial internet-site with a flashing animated GIF banner-ad. Nimur (talk) 22:49, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't agree with you more. I just don't know why they have to keep messing with it. If you want these new features, then that's great, but if they're forced on you it becomes a real pain. They should tell people about it and let them make up their own minds. TheRetroGuy (talk) 10:10, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

You could use Lynx until Google stops promoting their new product. Also, if you type https://www.google.com you won't see the arrow. It also happens to be more secure.20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Lynx doesn't seem to work with my computer. I downloaded it, but Windows wouldn't or couldn't open it, so had to delete it again. I like the secure Google though. Looks much better. TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

best way to create 1080p videos in iMovie

Over the next few weeks I'll be creating a lot of 'videos' on iMovie which comprise of maybe a few images blending into each other with an audio soundtrack and uploading to youtube. Which settings should I choose when exporting to make the rendering and uploading process more efficient? My test runs seem to be creating 5 minute videos around 400-500 mb, seems a bit excessive to me. Thanks, doomgaze (talk) 11:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Nobody has answered yet - so I'll fire off my very long response...

That file size sounds very reasonable for a 1080p movie. It's around 10 megabits per second, which is actually quite well compressed. 1080p video (rather, 1920x1080 at 30 frames per second, 8-bits-per-channel RGB) is around a gigabit of data per second (or, about 50 gigabytes for your five-minute video) High-quality H.264 encoders, such as the video codec used by iMovie, shrink that data rate to around a ballpark of 10 megabits per second (right where your video is at, a compression factor of about 100x - a ratio unheard of in any domain of computer science other than video compression). Even still - you started with tens of gigabytes of uncompressed data - so a 100x compression still creates a large file! If you haven't worked extensively with 1080p video, these file sizes seem surprising. When I started playing with video more than a decade ago, with toy computer hardware, I recall 50 kbps QVGA video files that were about 3 or 5 megabytes for a few minutes of footage - but let's say that the image quality was "marginal." A 1080p video I processed in iMovie last week was around 500 MB for 4 minutes of footage and audio at 1080p (the same video was only 50 megabytes when exported as a still-usable VGA-sized file). 500-MB file-sizes are normal for five minutes of 1080p - there's a lot of pixel data in there.

"Optimal" settings are going to depend on many factors: the content of your video affects its compressibility. Your preferred quality, and your personal ability to notice video perfections/imperfections, affects the bit-rate that you consider "reasonable." The type of noise you anticipate affects the best type of coding for the data. Your computer's hardware capabilities - specifically, the exact type of CPU and GPU, affect the encoding time (and some other minor details of the codec). The version of OS X and iMovie that you are running affect the features that are supported.

If you want to upload a 1080p video to YouTube from the most recent version of iMovie, there is a one-click button that takes care of everything (and picks "optimal" settings for you); you can actually click on the Help Menu in iMovie and watch a tutorial demonstrating how to go through this process.

If you want finer-grained control over your video performance and quality, I always recommend the free software utility ffmpeg, which will allow you rescale, reprocess, and re-encode your video with much more technical detail exposed, compared to iMovie. This will let you specify individual codec parameters (far more configurable quality/performance options than you even realized were possible). Still, I recommend using libx264 presets, for most purposes. With FFmpeg, you can also request a specific output file-size, and the utility will encode with whatever quality-setting will generate that file-size. H.264 provides a sort of "quality" slider that directly relates to output file-size. "In general," you will not get better quality-to-file-size than H.264 codec provided by libx264 - so this is the only knob you should really spend time playing with. If you are a professional video technician or a video research engineer, or a well-qualified hobbyist, you already know what you need to do to get better performance by playing with codec parameters, maybe using a different codec for your video, but this is not easy, it requires fairly advanced knowledge, and you'll rarely beat the performance of H.264 anyway. More probably, you'll dork up the processing and get ugly video glitches. Because these advanced settings are not very easy to use, such advanced settings are not exposed through iMovie's user-interface - you can only select preset resolution/quality "packs" that are guaranteed to give good quality results. Nimur (talk) 17:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Limiting memory usage

On Linux (CentOS 5.6), what is the best way to limit the memory allocation to a process or group of processes? I have some software where the memory demands are hard to predict in advance. Sometimes it grabs so much memory that everything else starts swapping and the system is thrashed and unusable. I'd like to set a limit so that this software can use no more than ~90% of physical RAM, in order to help ensure the stability of the rest of the system. I don't mind if the program crashes when it hits that limit. There doesn't seem to be any way to set such a limit within the software itself, so I'm looking for some way to do it at the system level. Dragons flight (talk) 19:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

There are lots and lots and lots of ways to do this. In my opinion, the best and safest way is to create a user account for the specific process; and then limit that user account to a maximum amount of physical ram; this avoids any weirdness or corner-cases with forking, pid changing, executable name changing due to spawning new processes, and so forth. Basically, you "sandbox" the entire program inside a login-session, and then restrict the rights of that login-session.

You (rather, root) can modify limits.conf to limit a user's CPU, RAM, files, PIDs, and so on. You can also restrict individual PIDs, if you opt not to sandbox your process in its own login-account, but beware the corner-cases I mentioned above. You should also make sure that you have pam_limits (usually you do - make sure you have libpam enabled in your kernel and pam_limits.so - these are in and enabled by default, in new Linux including CentOS 5.6. Nimur (talk) 21:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Visual Basic Express & AVG

I'm currently playing around with Visual Basic Express to see if I can get something out of learning some simple programming. Anyway, every time I make anything (following the tutorials provided), AVG tells me what I've made is a virus and won't let me acess it, even though I have pressed the 'ignore' button. How can I stop this from happening? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Printing is a disaster

I have a rather big .Net application that is used by a couple of hundred users who all have their own printers. All I want is to be able to print either an HTML file or a bitmap to a printer and to be able to tell if it should use tray 1 or 2. "In the old days", I could manage any matrix printer. I just needed to know LPT1 or LPT2 and practically all printers understood what they were supposed to do (or I could fix it myself). The main problem now is that people log on to different terminal services, expecting their local printer to print. In one set up this means we have to install 17 (different!) printer drivers, creating IP-ports for them, etc. Our helpdesk is spending 70% of its time solving printer problems (not counting the fact that our program seems to say "I want to print on A4" and the printer starts whining that it only has Letter available, which we also must have wasted a few thousand hours on). A printer should print, not think its smarter than we are.

Is there a "Generic printer" for laser printers in Windows? I can't find it anywhere. I'd be happy to implement both a "Generic PostScript" printer or a "Generic PCL printer" once. Now we have about 5 GB of drivers, most of which we cannot even install without attaching the printer physically. It's hell, really. Somewhere out there someone must have solved all this with this magical printer driver that translates my bitmap or HTML file to any possible printer on any port. The configuration should consist of 3 settings: 1) PCL or PostScript (or "cheap printer brand X"); 2) Tray 1 or Tray 2 and 3) the IP. Anyone? Joepnl (talk) 21:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there a reason you are trying to send data directly to the printer rather than using a printer API to do so? The latter seems like an infinitely easier option, and would allow the Windows OS to handle the actual nuts and bolts of it. E.g. the .NET PrintDocument class. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

That is precisely the problem. I am using PrintDocument. Which needs Windows. Which needs drivers. Which needs personnel. And a awful lot of them. I need an API that doesn't rely on Windows having a printer installed. I want to bypass Windows, the drivers, etc and just tell to my uberAPI: please print this bitmap at IP 172.26.10.101 from tray 2, my guess is that the printer understands PCL. Without having to install a driver at all. Without having to refer to a printer as "Printer 18 (from session 37) (used by Pete) (who's also in session 39) (since 18:31 ECT) (which is 12:11 ABC) (and he'd like Letter instead of A4) (And did you know the Yellow cartridge is almost empty?)". Microsoft and all printer manufacturers are just too helpful. All I want is to print. Joepnl (talk) 23:53, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I feel for you. It was (part of) my job to manage printers at Chrysler some 15 years ago. They were not all created equal. At that time, QMS laser printers were best, since you could log on remotely to check them, change settings, etc. I'm not sure which printers are best these days, but I bet there's still a big difference. StuRat (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

That's part of the problem. If I were to choose the printers every customer would have exactly the same one and there would be no problem. We wouldn't even want to check them remotely because if one was broke (or had paper stuck somewhere) we'd just replace it and it would still work. But I'm glad and should congratulate you that you seemed to have worked your way out of this mess. Joepnl (talk) 23:53, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

And I supported a lot of printers for GM and Chrysler. This just the sort of thing I did in my 15 years are GENICOM. Have to know more about the printer types. And QMS is now Konica Minolta. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

When we install our software, the printers are already there and we simply have to deal with it. Our customers don't and won't understand that getting their $150 printer to work costs us more than replacing it with a network printer, and will not pay for us to get it to work. (we also have to deal with this "it's your hobby isn't it" syndrome, but "professionalizing" on that would cost us their business) Joepnl (talk) 23:53, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, if it really does cost more to manage their printer than supply your own, then you should supply a dedicated printer along with the app (maybe one price for a view-only, non-printing version of app, and another which includes the printer). I'm a bit skeptical that this is really the case, though. StuRat (talk) 00:13, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Problem is that a lot of low end printers are GDI and do not have PCL or PostScript. If these are your customer printers, then a universal is very unlikely. Some vendors like Samsung have universal drivers for newer products. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Most printers are not low end, there are just to many different drivers needed. If there would be a driver called "General PCL Printer" we'd have handled most (if not all) HP printers. Joepnl (talk) 00:37, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Haven't dealt with HP in a while, but I though they were doing something in this area. HP Universal Print Driver - Direct IP Printing ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by 'not low end'? Many $150 (which you mentioned)-$200 inkjet printers don't support PCL or PostScript. Or to put things a different way, it may be advisable to do a survey and see whether the majority of the printers really do support PCL or PostScript. Nil Einne (talk) 04:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

A few years ago, faced by the problem of a company that did a lot of shipping and other weird print jobs, with a lot of people wanting to do different odd things at once, a colleague and I figured out a pooled-printer solution, which I always thought was kind of neat. All the printers hung off a single print server (but had the need arisen that could have become a single dispatcher for many print servers). It exported a single postscript network printer. Jobs sent to it (it was implemented in CUPS on RHEL) were turned into PostScript files, and an entry was written on a little database on the print server. All the Windows PCs in the office ran a single abstract PostScript printer driver (written by my colleague, mostly from an adaptation of whatever sample he found in the DDK). The custom dialog for it had all the different options (the different kinds of labels, plain A4, letterhead, colour, A3) which were packaged up in the print job (I think in DSCs). The server would read the job details from the DSC and route it to the appropriate actual printer. This was a bunch of work, but once it was done it was very flexible - if you needed to add another printer (there was always more demand for the label printers than they could comfortably accommodate) you just added another and told the print server about it. The only problem was people finding their job (because they didn't know which printer would generate it); I did have a little visible log somewhere, but I think they had such traffic that they eventually employed an unfortunate person to stand amid the printer cloud and sort print jobs into trays. I don't know of an off-the-shelf solution that does the same job, unfortunately. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 01:41, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think we are going to do something similar. Some wheels apparently just need to be invented thousands of times. Still I wonder, why didn't Microsoft just tell the printer manufacturers: this is what Windows will understand and if you do it otherwise you'll have to provide your own drivers. No one needs a special driver for their speakers, mouse or keyboard. It seems that printer manufacturers think that they have a product that's very special. It was, in 1990, when you needed a special memory card for your favorite font. Now a printer should just print a bitmap exactly as Windows tells it to. A label "Microsoft Printing Protocol Approved", similar to MSX, "PC-Compatible" or TWAIN would really help us here. It might not save world economy, but it would save at least a few billion dollars in lost productivity. Joepnl (talk) 00:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I believe Microsoft did try to convince printer manufacturers to use XPS but it didn't work very well. Of course this was fairly late in the game (the Vista era) Nil Einne (talk) 03:20, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

September 22

Making money off game solvers

I've written a dozen or so solvers for various online games, like Scrabble, for fun. Some of the games are Pogo.com-only games (I can provide a list, if needed). These are FORTRAN executables which run in the MS-DOS window on Windows (I haven't tested them on Apple or Linux). As such, they have no graphics (well, I do use the ASCII line drawing set to make nice boxes, but that's it). They are, however, very fast. So, how can I sell or rent these for money ? Some ideas I had:

1) Change them into smart phone apps. I have a feeling a great deal of work would be required, and that they would need to be rewritten in another language. Is this the case ?

2) I could actually sell copies over the Internet, but then I'd need to implement some type of registration key system. Sounds ugly.

3) Allow them to be run from a web site, and sell ad space on that site. Here the tricky part is not allowing them to be copied. If I just allow anyone to download, they could just create their own web site where they give away copies of my code. So, can I make it so they can run it from a web site without allowing them to download it ? This seems like it might create quite a CPU load on the host computer, so is there a way to have it run on the computer of the user, without them being able to copy it ?

4) Any other ideas ?

Also, do I need to worry about copyrights ? That is, can I call it a "Scrabble Solver", etc., without having to pay royalties, or must I rename it "Word Game Solver" or something like that ? I'm in the USA. StuRat (talk) 00:05, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

FYI, Google Goggles recognises Sudoku puzzles, OCRs the numbers, and passes that off to a web app which solves the puzzle. It's pretty darn impressive. Without that photo->OCR phase, entering the state of a given puzzle on a smartphone would be pretty soul destroying. For a game with quite a lot of "on the table" state (like Rummikub, Contract Bridge, or Scrabble) a "take a photo to suggest a good move" program would be useful (where you'd also have to photograph, or manually enter, a player's own private state). It might be fun to have a little app that did that (perhaps to even the playing field when one player is weaker), but I'm not sure enough people would pay for it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:33, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, entering the game state can be tedious for some games, and can take up valuable time in timed games. But, in other games it's quite quick. For example, in Boggle there are only 16 letters to type in, then my Boggle solver spits out all the words. StuRat (talk) 02:39, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried Googling "scrabble solver" or "scrabble word finder" or "scrabble cheat"? There are dozens of websites that already do this. For free. (And fast enough for any real-world use — it's not exactly a computationally intense task on a modern computer.) Google "scrabble cheat app store" and you'll find smart phone apps for this. This makes me suspect that unless you really think your word-descrambler is going to do something measurably superior than others', it might not be worth the time and effort. Not to be discouraging... but I think a vanilla word solver is probably not worth more than whatever pleasure it gives you to put them together. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I do think mine is better, and I also have a dozen or so other game solvers. But this is all off point. How do I market what I have ? StuRat (talk) 02:36, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I hate to tell you but given the number of people doing it for free, it's a slim chance of making any profit. Plus, these days only IT professionals will tolerate a console/command line program. Without a GUI it's not really marketable in my opinion. HominidMachinae (talk) 05:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, my option 3 is free (just with ads). As for graphics, it's hard to imagine what graphics would add any real value. Should the letters all rotate in 3D before they settle down to form words ? I imagine that would get old as quickly as the "helpful" paperclip assistant Windows used to have. And in a timed game, who'd want to wait for animations ? The one thing I would like to add is color, but that's not easy, apparently (I asked about that here several months ago). StuRat (talk) 05:12, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not about graphics so much as it is about interface. Depending on the game and platform, dragging and clicking may be a much more natural way of specifying the game state than typing text. Solving puzzles is good, but being the most popular solver also requires being easy to use. Dragons flight (talk) 05:20, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Some of them do have a command line interface, like "Type L to enter a new set of letters, Type B to specify the number of blanks", etc., but some of my simple game solvers just prompt you at each step, with no need to specify commands. You do need to type in the letters on the board, but that doesn't seem any worse than clicking on them, to me. Does anybody really prefer using an on-screen keyboard ? StuRat (talk) 06:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

People like shiny interfaces. It makes a big difference in how they feel about the program. I think that's kind of beyond question at this point. They don't like consoles. Take a look at the computers and programs that have actually succeeded on the commercial market with anybody other than total geeks. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, "total geeks" are a market. I'd be happy to get $1 from each of them. StuRat (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that total geeks are uncommonly adverse to payware. They're more likely to look at sourceforge and find the code there then compile it to suit their needs. If you have to explain to people to go to start -> run -> command and type in the file path you've already lost 80% of your market. Windows 7 doesn't even ALLOW you to use command to open the console, it's going away more and more each software generation. HominidMachinae (talk) 19:10, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It's nothing like that. You click on the icon on your desktop (or wherever you placed it during download), and it opens up the console session for you, with the program already running. StuRat (talk) 19:50, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

For some reason programs that open the console on Vista often close it again immediately once the program runs its output. If you've found a way around that might be slightly more workable. The sad fact remains, however, that these days applications are 50% looks 50% functionality. The market for command-line programs is mostly the highly technically competent, people that would rather download source code from sourceforge and build it themselves or otherwise use a freeware, open-source solution. HominidMachinae (talk) 22:39, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The feature of exiting the window upon completion of the program isn't unique to Vista, all Windows versions do that. It isn't necessarily a problem, though. However, in cases where the person may want to continue to view the results after the program has ended, a simple "Enter Q to Quit" prompt will keep the window up until they want to exit (clicking on the X to close the window also works). And, if the program doesn't include this feature, a work-around is to open the MS-DOS console first, navigate to the executable and run it from that window, to ensure that the window won't exit upon completion. StuRat (talk) 00:31, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

There's a better workaround- there are flags for cmd.exe ('/k', etc) that let you run a command and have the window stay open. Nevard (talk) 03:45, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

And the user is supposed to edit their cmd.exe file ? Sounds like a lot to ask. StuRat (talk) 03:52, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Distributing a batch file or shortcut which uses a flag is not exactly rocket science.. it's not even a lot to ask. Nevard (talk) 05:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Got any NP-complete puzzles in your list? If your solution method is reasonably fast, you don't really need a cool interface to collect your money. 67.162.90.113 (talk) 05:37, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

It would take considerable work to get Fortran working on an Android phone. So much work that it's probably worth just re-writing it in Python or Java. You will not get it working on an iOS phone, I don't think. Don't expect any public or commercial resources — most smart phone developers don't take Fortran seriously as a smart phone language.

Nobody is likely to buy MS DOS programs these days. That's just a fact. People like shiny things that make them feel they've got their money's worth. MS-DOS console programs make people feel like they've been teleported back to the 1990s. The exception to this are Linux geeks and old engineers. But they're not much of a market, and Linux geeks don't like to pay for programs, anyway. I don't think you need to worry about DRM solutions because frankly, nobody is going to go for this. You missed about three or four revolutions when it comes to consumer preferences for software.

So that leaves the website option. Have the code compiled in some sort of server-side executable, keep the permissions correct and the server setup right, and nobody is going to be able to take your code.

Again, I think the chances of you being able to make money off of yet-another Scrabble solver, but this one a console program written in Fortran, are completely nonexistent. Frankly it sounds like the setup for a bad joke. But it's your time, your money! Knock yourself out. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

MS-DOS and the Windows console are totally different things. 32-bit Windows does provide a limited MS-DOS emulation environment, 64-bit Windows doesn't, but console-based Windows programs run in both. Also, smartphones aside, Fortran isn't a weakness. No end-user would care, or even know, whether a piece of software was written in Fortran, and there are modern, highly optimizing Fortran compilers for modern CPUs such as Intel Fortran. The rest of what you said is probably true, though. And if StuRat really is using an old Fortran compiler under MS-DOS emulation, then it would be a good idea to upgrade. -- BenRG (talk) 18:56, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Gfortran. What are the advantages of the Intel version over that ? StuRat (talk) 00:36, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

There are various tools to convert FORTRAN to C, which could be used in an iOS or Android application; it would require a lot of programming to put a smartphone-style interface around the application.

Another way of making money is a free advertising-supported application for Android.[3][4] This means your app is free for people to download, but the more they use it the more money you get.--Colapeninsula (talk) 14:01, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

There is also f2j to convert Fortran into Java code. It's still a work in progress, though. 188.117.30.209 (talk) 18:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

StuRat, what you really need is not technical advice: you need a business-partner. You've completed some technical work; now you want to commercialize it; but ... let's be honest, you have no clue how to commercialize this technology you just made. We could throw a bunch of one-liner ideas at you: "package your FORTRAN code as a static-linked library with a web-protocol front-end API" or "direct-market your program to end-users of mobile phones" or "aim to sell your technology as intellectual-property, rather than as source-code..." but not knowing the details of your accomplishments, all of these are just one-liner ideas; none of these plans are guaranteed to be good, or feasible, or profitable. You need somebody (professional or amateur: maybe even yourself, if you're willing to make the transition from engineering to marketing) who is an expert at looking at technology, deciding what it is worth, and knowing who will buy it. There are literally swarms of such people, churned out of business schools, looking for semester-long "senior class design-projects" seeking to "market real-world technology to real-world businesses." The quality of individuals you find may vary from "incompetent" to "Bill Gates."

I recently saw the documentary Something Ventured, a documentary about financing technology startups. When Sandy Lerner and Len Bosack founded Cisco, the total amount of technology they actually had was hardly more elaborate than your few thousand lines of FORTRAN - but they knew who to sell it to, and that's why they each made hundreds of millions of dollars ... before being backstabbed by venture-capitalists). Of course, they needed their technology, but they mostly needed their business acumen to turn a bunch of boring, incomprehensible networking scripts into a global software/hardware enterprise.

On the other hand, every upstart first-year programmer has an amazing tendency to think his class final project is the embryo of next Microsoft (a new innovative Hangman program written in SOAP and Ruby-on-Rails - the next generation in mobile web-based Hangman-playing user-experience) - when in fact, such simple software is essentially valueless - mostly because there's no business model to sustain it. So, moral of the story: if you're a programmer with something to sell, you need to become a businessman; or, hire one. Nimur (talk) 17:07, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

A business partner might make sense if I had a million dollar program, but I'm thinking more in the line of it making a few thousand dollars a year, which would be a nice little bonus. However, at that rate, there's no budget to hire a marketing exec. So, where could I find an honest web site which would host my code, not steal it, allow it to run there for free for everyone, and give me a portion of the ad revenue from people who use it ? StuRat (talk) 18:49, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Just use some cheap ($10/mo.) hosting service, e.g. bluehost or dreamhost. Keep good records, and if they do steal it (highly unlikely), threaten to sue them. Set up an account with Google Adwords. I think you seriously overestimate how much ad revenue is going to be generated by people downloading console Scrabble answer generators. You'll need tens of thousands of views per day to come up with a few thousand dollars per year. That strikes me as quite optimistic for what you're describing. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, allowing a download would only get a single hit, that's why I want to find a place that will actually run the code there, instead. That way I get a page hit every time they come back to run it again. (Also, once the user downloaded it they could sell it or give it away.) StuRat (talk) 04:15, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The hosting services I've mentioned have pretty robust support for server-side code. You'd have to compile the Fortran into a CGI file, but this is not impossible. I think you're overly paranoid about people wanting your code — if the answers on this page are any indication, most people will not think it would be a lucrative venture as you've described it. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Job scheduler algorithm

What algorithm(s) does a job scheduler tend to use when deciding between jobs in the queue? Obviously submission time, resources requested, and planned execution time matter, but I'm wondering how they actually fold together in practice. I'm interested in the TORQUE scheduler in particular, but if people know what the algorithms are for other systems that is good too. Looking at a queue of processes, I'd like to be able to guesstimate where a given process is in the run order. Dragons flight (talk) 07:41, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The website for Torque says it can support various scheduling algorithms[5], but I can't find any information on the algorithms it mentions. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

In my experience there can be a set of different queues with different limits, and access to equipment. The jobs were picked off the queue in the order submitted. If a job asked for something it could not get (eg a removeable media not there) it would stall and clog the rest of the queue. If a job used too many resources, eg pages printed, or CPU consumed, it would be cancelled by the operating system. Another queue would not start any jobs at all, and needed a computer operator to release the work for processing. Other queues may have multiple initiators and pump through the jobs quickly, as long as they only wanted small amounts of CPU. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:48, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, first-in, first-out, subject to dozens of little parameters which may or may not affect job order.[6][7] 69.171.160.21 (talk) 23:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Command line in Ubuntu without pressing enter

Could you copy-and-paste a command with enter included onto the Ubuntu command line? (the idea is just to make it a little bit user-friendly. Quest09 (talk) 09:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes. If you copy a line with a carriage return at the end and then paste it (Ctrl-Shift v) into terminal, it's automatically run.--Phil Holmes (talk) 09:50, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

You can also create a shell-script file, and have the user execute the script by double-clicking it in the GNOME interface. Nimur (talk) 17:10, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Or use this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptURL ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:13, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The solutions above are all nice, but what if I want to put a command on the web-page and let users copy and paste it into their command line (with enter). How would you put that 'enter' on a plaint html page? Quest09 (talk) 11:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Changing appearance of the screen

Is there way to change the appearance of one's screen if, as happened to me the other day, one has the appearance of one's screen to high up? I tried using the cursor arrow key, but would really like to know whether by pressing "Control" in conjunction with one of the F numbers, one can do this. Thank you in advance for any help, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 09:40, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, by going to the Wikipedia article on Control key just now, I found out that "Control and R" gives a right alignment, and "Control plus L" gives a left alignment, but I would really like to know is whether you can type in "Control" with any key to get an alignment either up or down on one's computer screen. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 15:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I am having difficulty guessing what you mean by "the appearance of one's screen to high up" and "an alignment either up or down on one's computer screen". I'm going to guess that Typographic alignment is a red herring. Perhaps you're talking about the entire image on the monitor being shifted upward or downward? If so, this problem lies in the settings of the monitor itself, usually accessed through buttons embedded in the frame of the monitor, and the software on the computer can't alter these settings.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:49, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, what exactly are you trying to align ? Text within a document ? A window within the screen ? The entire image on your screen ? And what word processor and operating system are you using ? StuRat (talk) 19:59, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Just in case this is of help to you, I am using a Dell laptop which uses Windows 7 as its operating system. I thinkn I was trying to align the whole image of Wikipedia - things seem to have been OK tonight, but thank you for getting back to me. It is useful to know that Wikipedia has an article on typographic alignment. Many thanks for your help, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:07, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Matlab 'function'

Hi there! I have some how forgotten using functions in MATLAB.e.g .... function s = sep(go).... if i have made this function in M-file, matlab and want to use the elements of 's' in another function by calling this 'sep' function to use the elements s(1),s(2) etc in some way... how can i use this sep function in another function to get access to the values of 's' calculated from the function 'sep'? i have forgotten the syntax...? Anyone just give a clue to my memory for this.. Thanks. --119.153.219.130 (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• There is a wikibook on this topic http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MATLAB_Programming/Introduction_to_array_operations. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

cable internet question

This is a followup to my question yesterday about cable modem problems.

I continue to have problems with the cable modem dropping, and they are not scheduled to be here for 5 more days. When it drops, I get solid lights for "power" and "receive". The "send" light has a hard time going solid. My receive/download figures are OK, the send/upstream figures are low.

I have a two-way splitter in my attic. One side goes to the cable modem and the other side goes to a four-way amplified splitter for the TV. I don't need all four outputs of the amplified splitter for the TV. Might it help to take out the two-way splitter and put the cable modem into the four-way amplified splitter? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Not technical help, but I suggest you threaten to cancel, and then do, if they don't fix it. It shouldn't be your problem. If they pass it off to you, get another cable provider, or go with another option like satellite TV, broadcast TV or Internet TV. StuRat (talk) 00:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

It's never a bad idea to bypass a splitter. Each time your cable line hits a splitter, it weakens the signal by at least 3.5db. Keep in mind that (at least in America) most cable providers are only responsible for good signal up to the demark point (Usually a box on the side of the house). Any signal issues that develop after that are generally considered to be the customer's wiring, and hence, the customer's responsibility. If possible, the closer you hook up that modem to the demark point, the better. ^Avic_ennasis @ 00:47, 24 Elul 5771 / 00:47, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

But, if cable isn't working for you, it ultimately doesn't matter why, it just doesn't, so try something else. That's too much to pay for something that doesn't work, whether their fault or not. StuRat (talk) 00:59, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If they send someone to fix it and the person finds whatever is at fault is not their responsibility I'm guessing they will charge you for the call out, so verifying that it isn't something that's your responsibility is a good idea. Nil Einne (talk) 01:14, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm thinking about taking out the un-amplified two-way splitter and plugging the cable modem into the amplified splitter. Could that hurt anything? Could it help my upstream signal? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Because it is an amplified splitter, it is not possible to answer. Some amplified splitters do not pass the signal used by cable modems. Some send a high (unusable) signal that could harm the modem. Some leave the cable signal alone and it makes no difference if you use it or not. Some amplify the cable signal, making it better. Your best option is to plug into the line as close to the outside of the house as possible - just to test it. It sounds like that is in the attic before the first splitter. Then, you will know if the problem is inside or outside the house. -- kainaw™ 01:45, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

the way the cable runs it is not feasible for me to plug in closer to the outside, but I can try bypassing the two-way splitter for a while (which would mean disconnecting the TV for the duration of the test). The cable comes in the outside wall, goes up to the attic, where the splitters are, and the cable modem is on a pretty straight shot down. All of the connectors were replaced by the cable guy about 2 months ago and I use a short, high-quality cable from the wall to the modem. However, all of the internal coax is the type they were using 14 years ago. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:55, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

A Broadband Reports Cable Modems FAQ says There are a lot of amplifiers that will block your cable modem from talking back to your provider, and to look for "Cable modem compatible" or "5-42MHz passive return" when buying an amplifier. Before connecting the modem to it, you might research your amplifier to see if blocks the modem's upstream signal. Your coax wiring may have been setup so the amplifier doesn't affect the modem because of that. --Bavi H (talk) 02:09, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Oops, I see kainaw said the same thing while I was researching my answer. --Bavi H (talk) 02:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The amplified splitter was added by the cable company several years ago. And none of the cable guys that have been here have suggested plugging into it. I'll check to see what it says. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:29, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

It is an Electroline EDA 2400. It says that it has the 5-42 bypas, but it also seems to say that it drops the return signal 7.5 dB. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:38, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks like if I had the 2500, it as a pass-through for the cable modem and then I could eliminate the two-way splitter. `Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:46, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

But the 2400 is OK with a cable modem, so I can try the modem on one of the outputs of it and eliminate the two-way splitter. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:56, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, the internet was down this morning so I took out the two-way splitter and put the modem into the amplified splitter, and it is working right now (obviously). My downstream power incresed by 9.9 dB and the upstream power (where I think the problem is) increased by 2.3 dB to 54dB. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:31, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Now it is back to dropping like mad. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:51, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Video Editing Software

What is the best free video editing software which still has the basic editing tools such as fade in/out sound and media, except for Windows Live Movie Maker? 83.183.172.203 (talk) 22:00, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

VirtualDub can do all that and is completely free (both free as in beer and free as in speech) - the learning curve is rather steep and the interface is in parts a bit clumsy and unnecessarily complicated, but it's a pretty powerful tool once you've mastered it (out of the box, it is lacking a number of functions you would expect in a video editor, but there's a plugin SDK and huge repositories of plugins that can do anything imaginable with a video stream - I seem to recall that I had to find and install a plugin to do crossfades, which seems to be a rather basic function, but installing plugins is really easy) -- Ferkelparade π 13:03, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

September 23

How to write an abstract in LaTeX

Dear Wikipedians:

I am nearing the end of writing my paper. I need to write an abstract. What is the LaTeX tag used for writing abstracts? I am having a really hard time finding it and would like your help.

Thanks,

76.68.7.220 (talk) 02:03, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

\begin{abstract}

\end{abstract}

... and the document class has to support it. for example, of the standard classes, article and report do, but book does not.

KarlLohmann (talk) 02:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

In future, you might want to give LyX a go. Graphical Latex frontend, makes you look like you went through all the pain of figuring out the language, without the actual pain. Nevard (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If the paper is for submission to a journal, LaTeX's abstract environment might not give you what you want -- I often just create a section* and title it "Abstract". Looie496 (talk) 14:56, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

javascript help: variable of radio button selection

example code:

<form name="favcolour">
<input type="radio" id="thecolour" name="thecolour" value="yellow" /> Yellow
<input type="radio" id="thecolour" name="thecolour" value="red" /> Red
<input type="radio" id="thecolour" name="thecolour" value="blue" /> Blue
<input type="radio" id="thecolour" name="thecolour" value="green" /> Green
<input type="Submit" value="Submit" onClick="submit_the_form();">
</form>

what variable would the selection be stored for use in the submit_the_form function? tried document.getElementByID("thecolour").value and document.forms[0].thecolour.value and document.favcolour.thecolour.value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.116.187.1 (talk) 09:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

• Have you tried document.favcolour.thecolour[0].checked a boolean value? 0 could be replaced by 1 2 3 for the other buttons. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

First — they should never all have the same id. That instantly makes it so that getElementById is not going to retrieve useful information in this case. They should have the same name, however.

Secondly — with Javascript, you need to cycle over all of the inputs and figure out which one has its .checked property set to "true". See example #1 on this page. Note that if you submitted this form just regularly, it would submit only the single name/value that is selected. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:36, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Downloading Gmail from corporate account

Hi everyone,

I need to download all of my old e-mails from my corporate Gmail account, as I am about to leave said corporation. I have full permission to do this (nothing remotely sensitive there), but I cannot figure out how to do it. Traditional Gmail downloaders don't work because it's a corporate-type account, and even with the Google Apps instructions on downloading emails (using SSL and particular ports for the POP/SMTP servers, etc.), I can't get it to work.

I don't suppose anyone would have experience with this issue, or could help me out?

Many thanks! 220.233.107.108 (talk) 10:43, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

What I did was:

1. Get Thunderbird and add the GMail account to it.
2. Create a local folder called "My Old Email".
3. Drag the entire Inbox and Sent folders to the new local folder.

Then, I can look at the email anytime I like - even if I'm not connected to the Internet. Another, very slightly more complicated, option is to create a personal GMail account and use Thunderbird to drag email from the old Gmail account to the new one. -- kainaw™ 13:32, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Not to change the subject (he says as he changes the subject) but what is a recommended gmail download method from a personal gmail account? Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 18:47, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

getmail 69.171.160.21 (talk) 23:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Thunderbird might be the easiest option. It can handle both Google Apps and Gmail accounts and you can drag and drop emails between accounts to move them to a personal account. --Hard Boiled Eggs [talk] 04:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

And you can use Thunderbird to drag emails to a local folder on your computer. -- kainaw™ 17:10, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Printing JPEG files in MS Word

Resolved

I've scanned a passport photo and it's saved on my computer as a .jpeg file. I have to complete a form that requires a photo so, instead of printing the form and glueing the photo on, I thought I'd scan the photo and insert it into the form. The form is an MS Word 2010 file. I clicked on the photo box, went to the insert tab, and clicked picture. I selected the photo and it appeared in the Word document. I resized it and it looked great. When I went to print the form, my printer just spits out a blank piece of paper. If I delete the photo then the Word file prints no problem. I can also print the .jpeg file on its own in MS Paint or Windows Photo Viewer. It's just when the image file is inserted into the Word file that the form won't print. Any suggestions? — Fly by Night (talk) 17:54, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Can you save it as a PDF and print the PDF? My guess is that Word is somehow giving instructions to your printer that are confusing it. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Have you checked yourself to see if it's possible? As far as I can tell, it isn't. That was one of the first things I tried. It would be nice to receive tried and tested advice and not just blind guess work. — Fly by Night (talk) 22:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

On my machines, I've never had trouble embedding JPEGs in Word files and printing them as PDFs or regular files. So yes, it is tried and tested. I'm trying to help you here; I can't psychically tell what you've already done or haven't done. The more snippy you are with people trying to answer, the less likely they are to try and help you. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:31, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Insert a text box, then insert the image into the text box. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:39, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

It's already in a text box. When I said "I clicked on the photo box…" I meant that I clicked on a text box where the photo should be glued to the print out. — Fly by Night (talk) 23:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

This might be relevant http://word.mvps.org/faqs/drwgrphcs/invisiblegraphics.htm ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

There is no problem with any of the printer drivers that I use in Word 2000, but I haven't tried it in Word 2010. It sounds like a miscommunication between Word and your printer driver. Have you tried an alternative driver? Have you brought the text box to the front? (Sorry I don't have Word 2010 to test its behaviour.) We can't test your form for you because we don't have a copy. Perhaps there are some hidden restrictions built in? You could always get round these by saving the completed form as an image (without photo) then adding the photo to the image, either in Word or in photo software. Gadget850's link gives lots of suggestions, but did you misunderstand the suggestion to "Insert a text box"? This is not the same as clicking the box for the picture, it is an extra layer. Dbfirs 09:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I finally managed to do it. I inserted text boxes as suggested, but that didn't work. In the end, I opened the image in MS Paint, dragged a selection box around it, the cut-and-pasted the image directly into the Word document. It printed first time. It shows why so many people hate MS Windows. If you use their own insert image option then it won't print. You end up having to resort to ad hoc solutions. Thanks to everyone for their help, and sorry if I came across a grumpy. I was getting annoyed because it wouldn't work. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:46, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Glad to hear that you managed to print, even if the method had to be a "last resort". I assume you meant dislike of MS Word rather than Windows, since Paint runs under Windows. Just as a matter of interest, did the picture show under print preview? I've found, like you, that MS Word can occasionally be frustratingly awkward, but there are usually ways round the problems. Possibly in this case the problem was in the original form? Have you had a similar problem with other documents? I wonder if the size of the original scan was causing the problem? Dbfirs 10:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Machine-assisted translation?

Does any machine-translation software exist that will present all valid literal translations for an ambiguous phrase or clause, and allow the user to choose which one makes sense in case the heuristical guess is wrong? NeonMerlin 18:19, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I use that for turning doctor's notes into ICD and CPT codes. First, it identifies every possible usage for every word. Then, it puts those into usages into sentences and compares that to a library to see which ones appear to be most reasonable. Then, it goes back and uses synonyms to generalize the original text to get the basic concept of noun-verb structure. Again, using another library, it sees which generalized sentences make most sense. Finally, it picks the one that makes the most sense and sees if that matches up with a medical code. I could stop it at any point and have a user insert human intelligence into it if I wanted. Further, I'm not the only one who has written this type of software. Many people have written software to perform encoding of plain text. I don't think anyone offers the software for sale. -- kainaw™ 18:51, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Google Translate will do this, too, although the functionality is a bit limited. If you hover your mouse over one of the translated words, it will highlight the corresponding phrase from the source language, and then offer you some alternative translations. For example, check out some of its other choices for "I do not like" here. Spanish speaker may enjoy how much Google mangled the translation of this simple sentence.--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 21:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

True, but there's no way to check whether the combination chosen is valid. For example, I tried "Filium nautae Romani in agris videmus" (an example from Wheelock's Latin 7th ed). Nautae could be plural, but then it would be vocative (or nominative, if the verb was third-person) and couldn't be modifying "filium", and that's how we know there's only one sailor. In the real world, there may be a grammatical error in the source text, but a valid parsing is still more plausible than an invalid one. Generating and literally translating all possible readings and telling the user which ones are grammatical is the easy part for a computer; reliably choosing the most sensible one given that information is the easy part for a human. NeonMerlin 21:38, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

September 24

forward slash in filename

I need to name a file with a filename that has a forward slash in it. On Windows this is not possible, so what would be the best way to encode the forward slash into a format that can be used in a filename? I was thinking about using percent-encoding, would that be good or are there better ways to do this? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 10:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

If it is for visual purposes you could use the division slash. Copy this character ==>∕<==-- Q Chris (talk) 10:46, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Decent time to use a - instead. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

This could cause no end of problems, are you sure you really need to do this, instead of using some other character ? StuRat (talk) 02:21, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Downgrading from W7 64-bit to 32-bit

So I have read that it's not possible to downgrade from 64-bit to 32-bit just like that *snap of the fingers* (by which I mean there is no program you run for a downgrade); and that the easiest way to tgo from 64-bit to 32-bit is to format your HDD and then reinstall W7. Are there any other methods? Not too hard now, I'm nowhere near as computer savvy as I once was. Thanks! Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 25 Elul 5771 15:18, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

As several people state on this Microsoft message board, there's no way to downgrade; you would have to boot off a 32-bit Windows disc and perform a "clean install", which is going to involve a disc wipe. You haven't stated why you want to do this - it may be that your needs can be met by installing VirtualBox or other virtual machine software, installing 32-bit Windows on the virtual machine, and using that virtual machine to run the apps you need to run in a 32-bit version of Windows. This way, you retain your hard disk the way it is, with 64-bit Windows, and you have a little window in which you can run your 32-bit version of Windows. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:28, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Yep, I said that I'd read that. :p Ah right, it's for my gf, her printer is having trouble interfacing with the comp for whatever reason (apparently related to W7 64-bit) and it's giving her a heap of trouble as she needs it for important business. Hmmm, would a Virtual Machine (I know of it but have never used it) help with the printer problem you think? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 26 Elul 5771 05:00, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It would probably fix the issue, but then your gf will have to copy anything she wants to print to the virtual machine, and then print from there. In turn this means that if printing from Word, she'll also have to have Word on the virtual machine, etc. As a geek, I would use this as a workaround, quite possibly printing to a PDF file every time, copying the PDF file to the virtual machine, and just printing it with Adobe Acrobat Reader. But this may be more than she wants to go through. Is this some sort of really old printer? By now printer manufacturers should have updated their drivers to work with 64-bit Windows. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:27, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It's some printer sold in Israel which she bought recently. I can't remember which it is, but you're right that maybe she should look into updating her drivers. This Virtual Machine business is secure btw, yes? It won't make her comp less secure if she does it (just want to be sure)? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 26 Elul 5771 17:12, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

transagent font?web pages and fonts...

Is there a way to present a text with a font that aren't installed in the users' computer, without using an image? I heard about some technology of Microsoft, that deals with it, but it doesn't work with Firefox, or Google Chrome. Is there a global solution for it? Exx8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC).

Here's a page (the first google result for CSS embedded fonts) [8] which uses the @font-face attribute to display some text in a free font called SketchRockwell. This works fine on my Firefox (I think support for it began at around Firefox version 3.5?) - except that I happened to be viewing the page over a slow connection, so at first I saw the text in a substitute font (Impact); several minutes later, the font file (around 500k) finished downloading and the text suddenly popped into the correct font. See Web_fonts#File_formats, which says this will work with all major browsers.  Card Zero  (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

September 25

SQL injection

Could someone explain SQL injection in more simplistic terms, layman's terms even, than the article? So far, I get that an attacker puts an SQL command into a text entry field but I'm not sure where that field is and how this helps them break in to user data. I'm not looking to do this myself but I'd like to better understand it. Thanks, Dismas|^(talk) 01:30, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's a shot.

So I have a website that lets you search for people by their last name. There is a text input field for the last name, and it stores that input in the variable $search.

The search code works by making an SQL query for my name database, and generates queries that look like this: SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE name = '$search';

With me so far? OK. Now what happens if $search contains a value like this: "'; DROP TABLE mytable;"?

Because I used a single quote to delineate where $search started and began in my SQL query, if $search contains a single quote, my SQL engine will interpret that initial single quote in $search as meaning, "OK, the search variable is done". So I then I am injecting raw SQL into the rest of the query with the rest of my text input. The result is that instead of saying, "get all the names that are like $search," it now says, "get all the names that are like $search, and then delete the table."

So you can see the nature of the attack — fool the SQL into thinking the query is complete, then put in your own malicious SQL code. That's the essence of it. It's easy enough to prevent — just make sure that $search doesn't contain a delimiting character, or sanitize it (e.g. turn the ' into /') — but it's also easy to forget to do that, which opens a huge hole in the database. It doesn't have to be a DROP TABLE command, it can be a command that instead returns all passwords, or lists all the tables, or anything. You've basically exposed any tables in your database to whatever the attacker wants to do with them.

Well, I don't know if that's clearer. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Suppose you have a login page. When you press the submit button, your user name and password are passed to the following script running on the server that creates a SQL statement from it:

sSql = "SELECT * FROM tblCustomers WHERE cust_name ='" & sUserName & "' AND cust_password='" & sPassword & "';"

So, if you entered Joe as your user name and 1234 as the password, the following SQL would be generated and then used to look up the user in a database:

SELECT * FROM tblCustomers WHERE cust_name = Joe AND cust_password = '1234';

In other words, select all entries (i.e., *) in the customer table (tblCustomers) that have a customer name of Joe and a password of 1234. But what would happen if you put this for your user name, instead: ' or 1=1--. Since 1 does equal 1, the database would return a result of all the users in the user table. In other words, you'd be telling the database to return everything from the customer table when 1 is equal to 1. The result would be that you would log into the site as the first user in the table. The two minuses terminate the SQL statement, preventing the check for a password. Therefore, you could leave the password field empty.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:10, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Both of your answers were quite helpful. I now understand this XKCD even more. (though that wasn't the only reason for my curiosity) So, when these tables are "returned" where/how are they returned? Does the web site simply display them all on the web page? Dismas|^(talk) 03:12, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. In this case, the table is stored in the sSql varible. Take the following code in the same script:

Set rs = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
rs.Open sSql, cnn, 3, 3
if rs.BOF or rs.EOF then
  response.write "Access Denied"
else
  Response.write "Welcome"
End if

In other words, if the record set is empty, the SQL query returns no results given that user name and password. If it is not empty, the script assumes that it has a valid user and password. So, it's a very simple script.

On a related note, you could also output a table to a web page as you asked using a user name like this: '; exec sp_makewebtask "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\output.html", "select * from tblCustomers";--. Although such commands return an access-denied error, they're still completing successfully, meaning, in this case, you could point your browser to output.html like this: http://www.somesite.com/output.html to view a table of customers. But sp_makewebtask is specific to Microsoft SQL Server, so these sort of attacks are often vendor-specific.—Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:07, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I see. Thanks! Dismas|^(talk) 09:06, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

How do one set UTF-8 as default encoding in Notepad (in Windows7)

In the dialog box: "Save as..." in Notepad (Under 64bit Windows7 Home Premium) the default text encoding is: ANSI.
But one may click it and choose between:
ANSI, Unicode,Unicode big endian, or UTF-8.

If one wants to set the default to UTF-8 instead of ANSI:
How do one do it?
Esocul (talk) 02:42, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Here is one explanation. I have not tried it myself. In my experience, an easier solution on Windows is to open the Control Panel, go to Regional and Language Options, select the Advanced tab, and change the "Language for non-Unicode programs" setting; after this, you don't need to bother saving Notepad documents in UTF-8. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

There are Notepad replacements that retain Notepad's only useful feature (quick startup time) while adding a lot of other features, including the ability to change the default document encoding. Personally I use Notepad++. If you don't like the visual clutter of tabbed editing, line numbers, etc., it can all be disabled. -- BenRG (talk) 19:00, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Something's wrong: Deleting texts doesn't free up memory?

On my Android phone, an Xperia Play, I deleted all my texts, including some with multimedia. They were backed up to Gmail. This was to free internal memory, which I only had 25mb left of.

When I checked the memory again, it still said 25 MB remaining. Like I said, some of the texts had multimedia (picture attachments).

I was told that texts get saved to the internal memory by default. Therefore, why wouldn't the difference of megabytes available register? --70.179.163.168 (talk) 04:00, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Android typically divides the internal storage space into two sections, the "Phone Storage" where you can save music, photos, and other things (this is the same as the space on a removable SD card), and the "Application Storage" where programs that you install save themselves by default (with third party software or newer versions of android, you can move them to other storage areas). My guess is that you are looking at the free space for one of these, and the text messages were in the other. gnfnrf (talk) 03:21, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Learning Web design.

I want to learn web designing. what computer languages will be essentiol to be a web designer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.96.217 (talk) 06:34, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a big can of worms with a lot of options in it. Forgive me for excessive linking of acronyms, which is what most of these are known by.

The basic web trio that control how things look are HTML, CSS, and Javascript. These are sort of mandatory and essential no matter what you do, working in the "real world" of design. (Only Javascript is a programming language; HTML is a markup language, CSS is style sheet language.)

Those three manage the front end, managing how the browser renders things. On the back end, managing what is actually sent to the browser in the first place, are a variety of server-side scripting languages. The most popular at the moment seem to be PHP, ASP, Perl, and JSP, but there is a lot of variety there. You don't have to learn all of those, of course.

Separate from this are technologies like Adobe Flash, which relies heavily on ActionScript.

Depending on what you mean by "web design", the above may or may not be important. If you only care about being a graphics designer who works on the web, you can get away with knowing only HTML, CSS, maybe Flash. More important than these is likely to be familiarity with Photoshop. If by "web design" you mean "web developer," then HTML, Javascript, and a server-side scripting language or two are more important, along with an understanding of databases (e.g. MySQL). If you want to be sort of a jack-of-all-trades type, you'll need to know a few things in concert. These look like a lot, but it's a lot less than it appears. HTML and CSS are the sorts of things you can learn the basics of in an afternoon. The programming languages all use similar-enough syntax and reasoning that learning one of them puts you in a good position to adapt to the others if you need to. Flash is it's own thing, maybe the hardest of the above, because it combines a lot of things simultaneously (scripting, vector graphics, animation, what have you). --Mr.98 (talk) 13:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Just to make sure it is clear: Mr. 98 is absolutely correct in that the essentials are HTML, CSS, and Javascript. -- kainaw™ 17:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

How to view folder directory of my Android phone on PC without rooting it?

I'm getting nowhere on how to do this. (It's so I can figure out what other files than apps I would need to delete from the phone's internal memory, and it's better-viewed from a PC.)

When I tried the USB cable connection, as soon as I turn that USB storage thing on, it "forgets" that an SD card is in the phone for some reason, and when I click "removable device," I can't get in. It keeps asking me to insert something. So I need to find another way, please. Thanks. --70.179.163.168 (talk) 07:23, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Computing

I frequently got a error, when i try to connect my pc with internet, mines is a dial up connection my error is 711 error

Anyone help me.. ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shriram105 (talk • contribs) 16:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Does this link help? If not, please give us a lot more information - what version of Windows, what sort of modem, and a screenshot of the error message if possible. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:23, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Question Resolved - Webcam video quality

I have recently got myself a Hercules HD Webcam. It is supposed to be a fairly high range model and I expected anyone watching my webcam to get smooth quality video. But they are getting a succession of stills rather than true video. I am also getting that quality from their webcam when we chat. I have seen videos taken from webcam and some have been good quality. Can you tell me what the factors are that control getting or broadcasting a reasonable quality video from a webcam? Oh, a final question . . . my Hercules is advertised as having a capture/transmission rate of "up to" 30fps. What controls the actual fps achieved? Thanks. Gurumaister (talk) 17:17, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I have since been given an answer to the above - thanks anyway. Gurumaister (talk) 18:15, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Add comments to pictures

How can you add comments to pictures, in a flickr-like fashion, but off-line? (I search for something unobtrusive, but to point to a specific spot and show a comment when someone hover the mouse pointer over an element? Quest09 (talk) 21:12, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

The comment isn't added to the picture. It is being associated with the picture by the photo viewing program. There are many programs that you can put on your computer to show pictures with comments, such as Picasa by Google. -- kainaw™ 21:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Windows Vista and Windows 7 let you add comments to pictures in this way, too. As Kainaw wrote, comments are metadata that are not added to the picture itself. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:20, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course, you can add text directly to a picture, too. This is often done to prevent others from taking credit for your work (the catch is, you need to write it over something important, or they will trim it off). You can also extend the image and add the text to the extension. This can be done with just about any picture editor, like MS Paint. This doesn't do the hover trick, though. StuRat (talk) 01:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

MBR, fdisk, and other types of boot sectors

I was reading this page ([9]) on OSDev, and I noticed the part where it states that MS-DOS's fdisk was the first program to use the MBR format. Was it Microsoft that helped to develop the MBR scheme? Also, I have a few other questions associated with master boot records:

1. All pages I read state the MBR is loaded into address 0x7C00 of the memory. I've also seen it written as 0x0000:7C00. What does the "0x0000:" in front of "7C00" mean and isn't 4 or 8 hexadecimal places not enough to address today's RAM?
2. Why isn't the boot sector loaded into the very beginning of the RAM instead of 0x7C00/0x0000:7C00?
3. In the section of the page I linked to, it says the MBR fdisk made was loaded into 0x0000:6000, instead of 0x7C00. What I gather from this is that this MBR could load itself anywhere, although it does mention 0x7C00. What gives?
4. Some distributions of BSD use something called disklabel instead of an MBR. Does this require special firmware?
5. Can more than one sector be loaded by the BIOS during the start up process?

--Melab±1 ☎ 21:35, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

1. The BIOS boots in 16 bit real mode, where far pointers (which is what 0000:7c00 is) mean something weirder than you think - see x86 memory segmentation for lots of pain.
2. In the real mode memory map page 0 is the interrupt vector table (by fiat of the processor), you you can't put general stuff there.
3. pass
4. See BSD disklabel. On a BIOS PC, the BSD disklabel is subordinate to the MBR.
5. I answered this the last time you asked: no.

-- 2.122.75.122 (talk) 11:43, 26 September 2011 (UTC) (Finlay McWalter, out of the office)

Chess Word Processing

I frequently copy and paste chess games from online to Microsoft Word 2010. For the most part everything works perfectly, but there is a curious exception: the program does not appear to like castling. For both castlings in the game, it breaks the 0-0(-0) over two lines; this occurs no matter what font or page orientation I use. This does not happen if I type the entire game manually, but that is quite time-consuming and I am frequently in a hurry when I copy the games. How can I prevent this? Interchangeable|talk to me 21:36, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps using Paste Special > Paste without formatting? I'd test it, but don't have a copy of MS Office handy. Then again, if you only copy one game at a time, that method is probably no more efficient than simply backspacing the unwanted newline, unless you assign a shortcut to it. AJCham 23:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Paste without formatting worked! Thanks! Interchangeable|talk to me 16:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

September 26

GNU Octave: Sum of Iterations in for Loop

  I'm trying to calculate the sum of the iterations in a for loop. Upon entering endfor, the list of answers is displayed. However, when I try to calculate the sum of all answers by entering sum(ans), only the last answer of the last iteration is output, instead of the sum of of all iterations. How do I perform this calculation? And enclosing the entire for loop in sum results in an error. Vickreman.Chettiar 01:04, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The MATLAB programming language, which GNU Octave implements, does not have support for an increment operator; so you have to explicitly state the intent. Consider this simple example:

m = 0;            %  -- initialize this value to zero - it will store the sum
for i = [1:10]
   i * 3*sqrt(i); %  -- compute some crazy function
   m = m + ans;   %  -- increment the running sum by adding the value of our function 
end

Even if you're using the function sum() internally in the loop, for some algorithm purpose, you still want to increment a cumulative sum, m. Initialize your sum before the loop; increment it each time you compute a result.

The sum() function is intended to operate on a vector - so sum([1 2 3 4]) is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4... it's not the same as a cumulatively incremented variable. These are conceptually different "sums." You can (sometimes) reformulate your math so that your for-loop can be replaced by a vector-assignment-operation; and then run "sum" on that result. (In other words, populate a vector with the answers from each loop-iteration; and then sum that vector). In MATLAB, this "algorithm trick" will significantly reduce code execution time, because MATLAB contains intelligent technology that exploits vector parallelism on many types of computers (including most modern Intel computers); but GNU Octave lacks such vectorizing capability, so vector-operations are usually serialized as loops anyway. In other words, you gain nothing in Octave when you use sum() instead of an explicit for loop.

Some advanced discussion from the official MathWorks MATLAB blog on in-place data operations, discussing the subtleties of making += work. C programmers who switch to MATLAB find the lack of += very frustrating; suffice to say, there is a very good reason why += does not make sense in the MATLAB programming language (because data types are not primitive, unlike C). 16:10, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

How many UPC bar codes are there?

Does anyone have a reasonably accurate estimate of how many UPC codes (either just UPC-A or EAN-13 or both) in total currently exist? Or is there a website out there that has a count? Is this even possible to find out?

Also, does GS1 US (formerly UCC) keep any such statistics public? Such as how many company identifiers are assigned each year? -- œ^™ 00:30, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Swreg Problem Please help me

I am using swreg the problem is that Additional backup service price is added on payment page with the price also currency is displaying in usd i want it in GBP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.209.127.86 (talk) 05:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

network connetion sends packets / receives no packets on hp pavillon windows xp

Hi, I'm not expecting anyone to solve this actually because its such a strange problem... 1) The ethernet cable is known good because another computer does connect to the internet. 2) The problem is an HP pavillon a643n computer whose ethernet connection sends packets but receives zero packets. 3) Tried an ethernet card, which installed correctly, network connection shows up in system tray OK, but has the same problem. A few packets are sent, none received. Presumably the packets sent are for establishing a dynamic ip address.

4) Reinstalled Windows XP - same problem. Packets sent, none received. Service PK 2 doesn't help either. 5) turned off firewall. Doesn't help. 6) tried to reinstall ethernet drivers (nvidia something or other) not helping.

Poked around a little using ipconfig / other utilities. Don't really know what I'm doing.

Any ideas? Are there any services I could try to disable on startup?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.77.201 (talk) 06:18, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

So, internet works on one computer but when you switch the ethernet cable to another computer it doesn't work? I think I know what the problem is. Is the ethernet cable from your computer connected directly to a cable modem? If so, it's possible that the cable modem has locked onto the mac address of the first computers network card and is ignoring any requests coming from a different mac address (the HP pavillon). So, assuming this is the problem, the solution is to power down / unplug the cable modem and wait a while, then when you turn it back on make sure it is connected to the computer you want the internet to work on. It will lock onto the new mac address and accept connections from it. You will need to do this every time you switch the cable from one computer to another, as it will ignore requests from any mac address other than the one it is locked onto. The other solution is to change the mac address of the second computers network card to match the first, so that the cable modem doesn't know you've switched it to a different computer. This is not recommended if your computers share a network as it will cause problems. This program can do this AvrillirvA (talk) 12:20, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Hey your right. It IS a cable modem. I didn't know this behavior. Thanks for the tip. I'll try it out. Question though, could I plug in a ethernet hub? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.77.201 (talk) 13:39, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

C programming error trouble

I decided recently to learn the C computer programming language, for some reason, and chose to study the pages on that language at the Wikiversity site. However, I am having trouble now and I have no idea what with. I reached this page: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Data_Types_and_Keywords and copied out the example at the bottom, which worked, then I made a few changes of my own, they worked, but when I went to copy out the original program again, it didn't work the second time. Having given up and then come back to it, it is still doing the same thing, every time I copy it out, it comes up saying 'main must return int' which it did not do originally, but yet the program itself has not changed, so what has gone wrong?

148.197.81.179 (talk) 09:49, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

According to the C standard, main() must indeed return an int. Some compilers may allow it to be void depending on options that you specify, so you may have compiled it with stricter options the second time. What compiler are you using? (BTW, I'm by no means a C expert, but even I can see that the page you refer to and its neighbours are full of inaccuracies, of which void main() and the misspelling of 'compiler' in the strange comment //keyword is reserved word of c complier// are only two). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

As to why void main() is a bad thing, we have to look at the calling convention. On x86 the "usual" calling convention is cdecl (but very similar things operate on different architectures). cdecl expects the called function to place its return value in the EAX register. When you compile a C program, the linker wraps it with a little piece of static code (sometimes called the prefix or prelude) that is what's actually executed when the OS creates the process; this prefix sets up a few things in stdlib and then calls main(). Crucially that prefix code essentially reads extern int main(int,char**); result=main(argc,argv); So that causes the compiler to expect a return value from main, so it will generate code that (essentially) populates result from EAX regardless of whether main() ever wrote to that register. If this was C++ the function names would be mangled so the type was explicit in the linker name of main, but being C it isn't, and the compiler and linker will blithely generate the code anyway. So what value will result, above, get, if it's not getting a return value from main()? It gets whatever is in EAX; generally the compiler will produce code that leaves EAX alone for anything but return values (or or will at least save it on the stack and restore it, if it does use that register for intermediate calculations). So consider the following program:

#include <stdio.h>
void main(){
  printf("hello\n");
}

That should compile fine (with warnings and optimisations turned off). When you examine the returns status of the application (which is set by the return value of main() you get whatever EAX was when main() ended; in this case (as in most others) you get whatever the last value returned by any non void function was, in this case printf, which will return 6. Given the convention (at least on unix/posix) that programs that worked okay report a result code of 0 (EXIT_SUCCESS), you'd think that the little program had failed, when in fact it worked fine. -- 2.122.75.122 (talk) 15:32, 26 September 2011 (UTC) (Finlay McWalter, out of the office)

Note that Wikiversity articles are just some stuff that some person decided to write. They are even less controlled than Wikipedia articles. Looie496 (talk) 15:22, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The quality of Wikiversity content on C programming is far below both the Wikipedia article, C programming language, and the C programming Wikibook. If you're looking for free resources, both of these links will provide better content than Wikiversity. Nonetheless, there's no substitute for a high-quality C programming textbook. Nimur (talk) 16:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Windows 7 image deployment

I'm trying to work out how to use the Windows 7 equivalent of XP's OEM folder when deploying a system image from a WDS server. It's something to do with an answer file, that much I know, but I've not been able to find any sort of guide or sample structure. Has anyone used an answer file before? Jackacon (talk) 12:04, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Excel

I have a table with 1950 lines. Most of the lines doesn't contain any data. I would like to like to print this document but it would be more than a 100 pages long so can I somehow print only the lines that do contain data?

I tried highlighting rows and only print them but that prints everything between two highlighted rows. I tried an option that skips marked cells while printing but it turned out that the marked rows still get printed only blank.

Here is the ODT:

http://www.2shared.com/file/6Mbf0v7C/thing.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.74.50.52 (talk) 14:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

You can sort (under Data ribbon) but you probably don't want to change the order of the lines. I don't know what version of Excel you are using but you can also click "Remove Duplicates" under Data, or even use Filter, Advanced and choose "unique records only". There are probably many other ways of fixing this problem. Sandman30s (talk) 14:12, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm and besides this is not optimal if you don't want to remove duplicates. You can select your column, F5, click special, click Blanks, then right click and Delete entire row. Sandman30s (talk) 14:37, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I was wrong, I'm using LibreOffice Calc 3.3.2. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.74.50.52 (talk) 14:36, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's one cludgey but workable method:

1. Copy and paste the data into a new table (one that you aren't afraid to modify).

2. Add a new column at the beginning (column A).

3. Make cell A1 equal to "1". Make cell A2 equal to "=A1+1". Copy A2, highlight the rest of the cells below it in column A, and paste. It should now have put in row numbers for all.

4. Select all of column A, then click "copy." Then Paste Special > Values (or whatever the equivalent is in your program — you want to paste just the numeric values, not the equations). This makes it so that if you sort them, they will retain their original values.

5. Now select the column that has the data you want to print. Use the "sort" command to sort them in order of the content, descending. Delete all of the blank rows that are on the top before your content.

6. Select column A again, and sort ascending. You should now have a table that consists only of records that are not blank, in the original order. You can now delete column A, and print.

Just one way to do it. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The easiest way is to use the column filters. Select the row with your column headers and under the Sort and filter button (in Excel 2007/2010) click the filter option. That will add little drop down arrows at the top of each column, which you can use to hide the rows containing blanks. You then switch to the page layout tab and select all that remains in your spreadsheet. In the page setup section on the ribbon, there is the print area button with which you can set the print area to be the selected data (but without the hidden rows). You then print as normal, selecting your margins etc to make it look OK on paper. The same features were all available on older versions of Excel, but are just buried somewhere in the menus and I can't remember exactly where. Astronaut (talk) 17:26, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Oops, just spotted that you said you were using Libre Office. Astronaut (talk) 17:27, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Telephone call from "Microsoft support" - Scam or real?

Hi, I'm a refdesk regular using a throwaway-account for (paranoid?) reasons that will be apparent when I explain the problem. I just received a phone call from a person (English-speaking, Indian accent) who claimed to be from Microsoft Support, and claimed that my PC may be uploading or downloading malware or other unwanted content, and that he would guide me through the steps to identify and solve the problem, and that I was completely innocent, it was (might be? - he was vague) doing so, and I wouldn't be aware of it.

He told me to type ASSOC from the command prompt, and correctly identified the string "CLSID\{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062}". I denied having found the string he quoted, and told him (correctly) that we have about eight PCs in the house, the owners of which are not home, and I wanted a number to call back when I had had the opportunity to check the other PCs. He didn't give me a number, but identified himself as "David Johnson", Microsoft ID MS400922 (no relevant ghits), and promised to call me back in two hours. The CLSID corresponds to something called .ZFSendToTarget. So what is this - Scam or real. Sorry for the sockpuppetry, I didn't want to publish my IP or my username if this were a scammer. --Throwaway-account-001 (talk) 14:34, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Straight forward and well-known scam. Just hang up in future. --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:36, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, found that one myself too, after having posted the above. Phoned the police, who asked me play dumb if the scammer calls back, to see what he was up to, and to contact them again. --Throwaway-account-001 (talk) 14:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

If it makes you feel any better, CLSID\{888DCA60-FC0A-11CF-8F0F-00C04FD7D062} is perfectly benign, a normal part of Windows. It is related to the "menu shortcut" that lets you zip a file by right-clicking on it. It should be present on any Windows computer; it is described in more detail in this Microsoft Support knowledge-base article. Nimur (talk) 16:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! The scammer actually called back, and we had some 20 minutes of family entertainment. I pretended the PC was one flight of stairs up from the phone, and acted really dense. I had my daughter speaking with the scammer, and yelling the instructions to me. I was instructed to open Eventvwr in the Run dialog and look for red signs and warnings. I translated all items on the screen (which already were in my native language) into ridiculous synonyms in my native language, and yelled to my daughter if that was what the scammer meant. I said there were no colored icons, and revealed after a while that I had a black-and-white monitor because I have migraine (neither of which I don't). Amazingly, the person didn't understand that we were wasting his time. When I revealed that there were a couple of darkish icons with a white cross, with recent time stamps, we were told that whatever we did, we mustn't click on these, because someone was about to take over the computer. We were instructed to enter a url (www-dot-support-dot-me) in the Run dialog, to get to Microsoft's support page. I entered the url in google instead, and found lots of references to scams. Since I didn't feel like visiting the site, I took the phone, told him what I had found, and said I was certain that he was not who he claimed to be, and was trying to cheat us. He vigourosly denied this, but hung up while in the middle of a sentence. --Throwaway-account-001 (talk) 17:24, 26 September 2011 (UTC)