Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 January 30

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 30

web page creation

hello, I want to make some html files with interlinking thumbnail pictures, is there a simple open-source program I can use?

Notepad++, Bluefish, SCREEM, GNU Emacs, or even Vi. These are for coding, with Bluefish and Screem supports minor WYSIWIG (haven't used it so can't say much about it). If you want WYSIWIG then I would tell you don't bother, and then point you to stuff like NVU. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

As for thumbnailing, you either have to do it manually (ImageMagick or GIMP would work; the former can probably be scripted to do it automatically), or you have to use server-side scripting (like PHP). Or you can google "open source thumbnail creator" and there are lots of options which I have never used. --24.147.86.187 13:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

GRUB on USB

The last time I installed linux it was a nightmare trying to fix my heavily-OEM-customized MBR after grub overwrote it (and suse's "restore original MBR" made it far worse).

I'm interested in booting into my linux partition from a usb memory stick. My BIOS is set up to boot from the various types of USB devices before the hard drive, so.. would it be possible to make my usb memory stick bootable with syslinux or something and put GRUB stage 1 onto my usb key, and then configure it to look for stage 2 in my hard drive's linux partition? It sounds possible, so can someone give me a link to a version of GRUB designed for this? Or if it's a really configuration-heavy process, the name of a distro that does it automatically. --froth^T 04:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know what GRUB is or any of that but if you are trying to boot into linux off a USB you can create a live distro on a USB key, maybe that will help? Vespine 22:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

GRUB. --cesarb 23:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Why would you want to do that? What is wrong with grub on your MBR? If you have 2 harddrives you can install windows on one and grub on another, and you have 2 seperate MBR and you just need to choose in BIOS which hardrive you want to boot from if you ever need your original MBR. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

GRUB destroyed all 512 bytes of your PC-BIOS MBR, eh? What a loss... What you want to do should be possible. Most BIOSes that support booting from USB MSCs just look for a typical PC-BIOS MBR program. I believe you can place stage 2 on the USB stick as well. I'm not totally sure if this is because GRUB stage 2 actually supports USB MSCs (seems unlikely) or whether the USB boot BIOS programs just remap the USB MSC as a PC-BIOS drive (seems pretty likely). Anyway, there is plenty of information available via Google that describes how to do what you want. Also, it may please you to know that it's trivial to backup a drive's MBR; just copy the first 512 addressable bytes on the drive to a file and you're good to go. (using GNU tools: $ dd if=/dev/hdx of=mbr_backup bs=512 count=1 ) -- mattb @ 2007-01-31T17:56Z

What a loss indeed, when your only computer won't do anything except the POST memory test and you don't have an XP disk. I had to download hard drive drivers from a friend's computer onto my usb memory stick, then borrow his XP Home install disk, boot from that, and use fixboot and fixmbr.... OK so I tried setting up all of the GRUB stages on the USB stick (I used wingrub to make it bootable).. and I got the nice little menu that gives me one option (Windows XP) since that's all I set up. However it refuses to boot into it. In menu.1st if I use root(hd0,0) then it won't work at all, if I use rootnoverify then it gives me the menu but when I select windows it says something along the lines of:

rootnoverify(hd0,0)
HD0,0 DETECTED FAT PARTITION
chainloader +1

HARD DRIVE ERROR PRESS ANY KEY TO RESTART

My usb stick is formatted FAT32, but I know the BIOS assigns it (hd1,0) so I don't know why it would say 0,0 is FAT. --froth^T 18:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you absolutely sure that the USB stick is being mapped as the second BIOS drive and not the first? Compatibility would suggest to me that the BIOS authors would opt for mapping the USB MSC as the first drive... I really don't know for sure; it would be very useful if you could see the device map that GRUB uses (probably the one provided by the BIOS). I don't know if GRUB provides any way to display the device map it uses at boot time and a quick look at its documentation doesn't seem to provide any method for doing so... Perhaps adding some debug lines to your copy of GRUB and recompiling would be of help. First I'd try booting Windows from (hd1,0). Also make absolutely sure that the WinXP partition is actually the first MBR partition on the drive. Try other drives and partitions if you're not sure; the worst damage you can do is fail to boot the OS. If that doesn't work, I'd try asking on the GRUB mailing list for details about how x86 PC-BIOS programs usually map USB MSC boot devices. -- mattb @ 2007-01-31T19:32Z

P.S. - If trying to chain load WinXP from the second (or third, or fourth) BIOS drive doesn't work, I'd seriously consider setting GRUB up on the actual hard drive... That will be significantly less trouble than digging around in source code. -- mattb @ 2007-01-31T19:42Z

Yep, absolutely sure. WinGRUB provides a utility for identifying which BIOS-identified drives are mounted as which Windows drive letters. --froth^T 22:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That's not necessarily useful. The BIOS program can and probably does remap drives a couple of times during the boot process. Try booting from the other drives as per my above suggestion; it will take two minutes of your time and is at least worth doing to eliminate the possibility of a simple mapping mix up. -- mattb @ 2007-02-01T00:04Z

Er, no it doesn't. And what exactly do you want me to do? Try to put boot windows with root being hd1,0? --froth^T 23:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, Paragon Partition Manager reports drive C as "Partition 0, hard disk 0" --froth^T 23:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I just installed GRUB on a USB stick and used it to successfully chainload the WinXP installation on my hard drive. Just as I suspected, the BIOS (mine at least) remaps the USB MSC as the first BIOS drive, and the primary ATA hard drive as the second. You'll need to have GRUB remap things to avoid confusing NTLDR (it will just hang with no message if you confuse NTLDR), but that's easy enough... Assuming GRUB works properly from your USB stick, these commands should work:

root (hd1,0)
chainloader (hd1,0)+1
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
boot

Note that after you run the root command, you should see a warning that the filesystem is unknown and is type 0x07 (HPFS/NTFS). If you don't, you aren't pointing at the correct partition. I suggest you try the same steps I used unless you think you know better. If you still have trouble you're welcome to contact me on freenode #wikipedia; my nick is uberpenguin. -- mattb @ 2007-02-01T00:03Z

Ooh, so perfect. Now what should I use under a linux title? Do I have to do the same tomfoolery with the remappings? --froth^T 00:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

IE6.x Favourites and Links disappearing

I'm running IE6.0x on NT4.0 on a 7 year old Pentium II (yeah, old I know, but it works great for me). I just have MSOffice 2000 Premium and a few other things. I have Zonealarm and AVG free.

Tonight (about 2 hours ago), my favourites and links just disappeared from my IE screen. I rebooted several times and they're still gone. The actual links are still in my Windows folder, IE just isn't showing them. At the same time, IE started running really slowly. I just ran a virus scan a few hours ago, but I'm running a spyware/malware scan as we speak. I'm also defragging. I have lots of space on all my drives.

The only new thing recently is I installed screamer radio (www.screamer-radio.com), an internet radio freeware program (which has a good rep as being free of spyware etc).

Any help/suggestions would be great (the main thing is I'd like my favourites etc back). Thanks in advance! Oops... forgot to sign... Anchoress.

Update: I now know what happened, but I don't know why. Windows just started using a 'favourites' folder in the main NT directory, instead of the folder in my profile. It's now kinda fixed, but I'd still like to know what happened. Anchoress 11:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Tips on improving a Java program I wrote

Here's the program:

import java.util.Random;


/* Palex3's String augmentation program which proves that randomization
algorithms can produce coherent results
Original Programming language was Python
Kirbytime transcripted it into Java
*/

public class methinks2
{
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		Random g = new Random();

		String target = new String();
		String target_List = new String();
		String deck = new String();
		String placeholder = new String();

		char letter;
		char[] alpha = #{'a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z',' ','.',',',':'};

		int generations = 0; //number of times the while loop executes (number of decks used)
		int j = 0;
		int decksize = 5; //default deck size is 5, change it to whatever the heck you wish

		System.out.println("Welcome to Kirby's Java transcription of Palex3's generator of phrases: Go from random to your target in 100 000 generations or less!");
		System.out.println("Please enter your target, containing only:\n lowercase letters, spaces, commas, colons, and periods: ");
		target = "wikipedia: we make the internets not suck"; //default target. Replace this line with whatever method of input you wish.
		target = target.toLowerCase();
		placeholder = "@"; //the hidden character that changes into the correct character
		target_List = placeholder;
		deck = placeholder;




		while (j < target.length()) //runs until every @ is replaced with the correct char
		{
			for (int i = 0; i < decksize; i++) //loads deck with random characters
			{
				deck = deck.replace('@', alpha[g.nextInt(alpha.length)]);
				deck += placeholder;
			}
			System.out.println("deck = " + deck);

			letter = target.charAt(j);
			System.out.println("Letter = " + letter);
			for (int i = 0; i < deck.length(); i++)
			{
				if (letter == deck.charAt(i))
				{
					target_List = target_List.replace('@', letter);
					target_List += placeholder;
					break;
				}
			}
			System.out.println("-------------------");
			System.out.println("target: " + target);
			System.out.println("current: " + target_List);
			System.out.println("generations: " + generations);
			deck = placeholder;
			if (letter != target_List.charAt(j))
			{
				generations++;
			}
			else
			{
				generations++;
				j++;
			}
		}

		System.out.println("\n\nDone!!");
		System.out.println("It took " + generations + " generations to generate \"" + target + "\"");
		System.out.println("from random lists of " + decksize + " characters each using cummulative selection.");
		System.out.println("It would have taken " + (alpha.length*target.length()) + " tries to do so randomly!");
	}
}

It works, but I'm wondering if it is doing what I intended to show, as explained in the first comment. If not, how can I change it to make it so that it does do what I intend to show?

Thanks. --Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 10:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you give us some pseudo-code? The above looks like it would run, but doesn't do much. Is it really only supposed to go character by character through an input string, randomly choosing a value until it matches the original, then proceed to the next character? If so, this doesn't demonstrate that you can randomly generate coherent phrases, it demonstrates that it will take an average of 16 random guesses per character given a 31 character alphabet. Droud 14:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, here's the code in Python that I'm trying to copy:

import random

print "Welcome to Palex3's generator of phrases: Go from random to your target in 100 000 generations or less!"
target=raw_input('Please enter your target, containing only lowercase letters, spaces, commas and periods >')
target=target.lower()
target_list=[]

for letter in target:
   target_list.append(letter)

target_list

deck=[]

x=0
while x<len(target):
    deck.append()
    x+=1

alpha=['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z',' ','.',',']
generations=0
random.seed()
while deck != target_list and generations<100000 :
    o=0
    for letter in deck:
        
        if letter!=target[o]:
            deck[o]=random.choice(alpha)
            print deck[o]
        o+=1
           
    generations+=1
    print '-------------------'
    print 'target: '+str(target_list)
    print 'current: '+str(deck)
    print 'generations:' +str(generations)
    
print '-------------------'
print "It took "+str(generations)+"generations to generate \""+target+"\" from a random list of characters using cummulative selection. It would have taken"+str(29**len(target_list))+ "tries to do so randomly!"
raw_input('Press any key to exit...')

So, my code will be working correctly if it does the same thing as this Python program. --Ķĩřβȳ♥ŤįɱéØ 03:44, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Then yes, it looks like it does the same thing. There may be some slight differences in the random functions, but that's it. Droud 01:41, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

How to program something to send text messages to a textbox

Under Visual C++ 6.0... maybe using API functions such as SendKeys() ? --Taraborn 12:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

There are lots of different ways. Presumably you will have the window handle of the text box, in which case you can use SendMessage multiple WM_CHAR messages, or you could send a single WM_SETTEXT message. If the text box is within your own application you can just use the SetWindowText API function. CiaranG 13:47, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --Taraborn 07:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Download

How to download the video that are in the you tube website.We seen online but what are the tricks or method for download or save on the system?--82.148.97.69 12:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• There are several Mozilla Firefox extensions that do this and if I remember correctly our article on YouTube lists some relevant links too. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Use my firefox extension, unplug! There are quite a few others, plus also websites (eg keepvid) which do it if you prefer them to firefox extensions. Unplug works for lots of other video sites, ook video ook works for quite a few too. Some only work for youtube. Search google for more stuff. --h2g2bob 14:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I use javimoya for youtube and google video, and the Download Embedded firefox extension for directly embedded flash media (swfs) and plug-in video (mov, wm) --froth^T 19:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Windows Media Player 11 - Sorting by Title

Hi there, in Windows Media Player 11, when you are in the song view (Music > Library > Songs), is there a way to sort the songs by the title instead of artist? I know that you can click on "Title" at the top of the list to do this, but as soon as you change views it reverts back to sorting by artist. Thanks! --203.208.88.170 13:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Object Request Broker

What's the difference between a reflective ORB and a "usual" one? TERdON 14:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Computer Printing

I hooked my printer up and when i want to print it asks me to create an image file, andthen won't let me print. I have Windows Xp and a Lexmark Printer. Is there something i can do, or is there a way to get around creating an image file?

If you click on Start -> Printers and faxes, your printer will be shown, but I'd guess there's also an entry for a "virtual" printer, for creating PDFs, XPSs or similar. Right-click on you (real) printer and choose "set as default" Davidprior 19:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Java Canvas

I'm doing something in Java which requires a Canvas that I paint on in a window. Problem is, the canvas always stays square, even thought the window, or its position relative to the other components, isn't. I've tried using the setSize() method, but it doesn't seem to work. Does anybody have an idea about what I should do? --83.250.205.7 19:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds, at a guess, like the Canvas's parent has a LayoutManager installed which is undoing your size changes. You can remove the manager, or (more flexibly in the long run) inform the Canvas about what size it should request from the manager (although this may involve writing a trivial subclass of it). --Tardis 21:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I was kinda guessing at that, so I added a border-layout to the parent frame, and added the canvas to CENTER, but that didn't work (I even tried adding stuff to the edges, but the canvas was still square-shaped). 83.250.205.7 21:46, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Try removing the layout manager altogether? (You can pass null for it.) --Tardis 23:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Questions from a Linux (kind of) newbie

As my Windows Vista (evaluation version) install died on its backside the other day (PC powered on and working fine when I went to bed one night, frozen next morning, after cold boot won't start even in safe mode) and the reason I installed vista is that the WinXP MCE recovery partition on my PC didn't recover anything (oh, for the days when PCs came with master discs...) I have just installed Ubuntu.

The last time I used Linux was on a Intel 80486 in 1998, and things look a little different now but I'm finding that it seems to have the good bits of modern MS Windows, and the good bits of Linux that I remember, plus extra good bits for luck.

Anyway all seems well, but i have a few questions

I used to use Media Player / Media Centre, and have quite a lot of music (72GB) in WMA lossless format:

• I seem to be able to play ordinary .WMA files in VLC, but not lossless ones - can I play these in Linux, if not can I convert it to FLAC without using a Windows PC? (If I do need to use a Windows PC, my partner does have a laptop, but it isn't as fast as my PC, and me monopolising it for days on end converting music might not be appreciated :-)
• What can I find that does the job of Media Centre (and preferably lets me use the MCE remote)?

I used to use MS Outlook for Mail, Calendar & Address-book, and sync it with my Palm:

• What's the best package for these 3 functions? I like having them integrated, but I noticed that the mail apps (Thunderbird / Evolution) that I have don't seem to have a calendar - would I be better using separate apps?
• How do I get my data out of outlook .pst files, without actually having outlook installed? ((I've searched he internet, and it says to install Thunderbird (etc) alongside outlook and use MAPI to copy the data across - as with the .WMA files, I could take this route, but would rather not (also it would mean installing my copy of MS Office on my parnter's machine, as I'm no longer using it, is this legal?)
• Will I be able to sync with my Palm Z22?

Sorry for the 20 questions. Thanks in anticipation, Davidprior 19:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I find that when people want 'everything' they had with Windows, it is better to pay the money and use Xandros. They make a point of being totally windows-friendly. --Zeizmic 22:11, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Answer to some of the questions:

• If you are having trouble playing media, you might want to take a look at RestrictedFormats and install the packages listed there; it might solve your problems (which are probably only that the needed codec isn't installed).
• I use KPilot to sync with my Palm (I use Kubuntu, which installs KDE by default); I do not know which is the GNOME equivalent. It seems to be able to synchronize with KMail, but I didn't try it (BTW, KDE's Kontact integrates several different programs, including an address book, calendar and email (which is in fact KMail running with a different window, so KPilot would be able to sync)).

--cesarb 22:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

• Evolution definitely have calendar function, look on your bottom left, it's one of the button. Thunderbird also supports calendar with the "Lightning" extension developed by Mozilla.
• Media Centre replacement option: maybe have a look at MythTV?
• WMA lossless -> FLAC: I would personally use foobar in wine and convert to FLAC directly in there. Not sure about the support of WMA Lossless in Ubuntu but foobar definitely supports it and I also find it to be a bit faster. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:55, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Java coding for cellphones

Hi there. Just wondering; I'd like to create software for my cellphone, and since it got java support (like so many other phones...) it sounds good to use that language. Now, I'm a total newb to java, no idea where to start. Do anyone of you know where I should start? What software I could use and what files to download. Also, if you could post some simple tuturials I'd be glad :). Thanks in advance. BTW, it is possieble, right? 213.64.150.116 19:53, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The answer, as might be expected, is almost just the one word "Sun". However, to be more specific, you want their Java site; this is the beginning of their general language tutorial, and there are many others available (including one on how to use the Java SDK). You can get the SDK there (compiler, virtual machine, debugger, etc.); you'll also need (probably from elsewhere) a source code editor or IDE of some description. For that I personally recommend GNU Emacs, but it's quite the religious choice; some people swear by such simple things as Notepad. Finally, you should check with your phone's documentation and/or manufacturer to figure out exactly how to put your code on the phone, and exactly what services the phone offers; the standard Java library is not going to have a "add entry to a CellPhoneBrand phone contact list" function, although (depending on your phone) the standard graphical toolkits like the AWT might work. Most likely, though, you will need to grab some classes (and/or source) from the phone's maker to successfully compile useful code for the device. --Tardis 21:32, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

If you have NEVER programmed anything in your life, I dare say your first program will NOT be Java software for your phone. If you are really interested in programming, try starting with something like python programming language. Vespine 21:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I started with the Allegro library for C. I'd recommend notepad2 (or Kate) not notepad. As for phones, I doubt you'll get anything to work correctly on that - after all the phone companies make a tidy profit on the games they sell, so they won't make it easy. --h2g2bob 22:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

You can load just any old plain java game off the internet onto a java enabled phone, as long as it uses the basic u/d/l/r/ fire control scheme it will probably work. Vespine 00:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Java Micro Edition (for phones and the like) is a yucky set of libraries on a not-so-newbie-friendly language (though better than C). If you want to learn to program, I encourage you to do that, but it'll be at least 6 months [possibly more] before you get anything interesting on your cellphone. --대조 | Talk 12:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Partition help! (Formerly Duplicating a drive)

Hey all. I'm back again. Sort of.

Anyways, I'm planning on picking up a full version of Windows Vista (Probably Ultimate) sometime soon, but I have a bunch of games and such on my C:Drive. I was planning on partitioning it (But I don't feel like tracking down Partition Magic again), but I have a 250 gigabyte drive mounted externally. (Well, 251, apparently). I have Dubaron's DiskImage installed, as well. So I was planning on mirroring/imaging my primary drive onto the external drive, running XP from the external drive, and installing Vista on a clean old drive.

So a few questions: If you know DiskImage, what's the best way on that to make a complete copy of a working partition, and then have it duplicated elsewhere?

Can you duplicate Windows XP without it yelling at you, even if you only use one instance of it?

Are there any other good programs for duplicating a disc?

Thanks in advance. User:Logical2u_Talk 20:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know anything about DiskImage but... I do know that WGA checks for the serial number of the hard drive it's running from, so you might have to reactivate if you move it cross-drive. Also if you want to partition, ZOMG DONT USE PARTITION MAGIC. As anyone involved with IT will tell you (esp anyone who's ever done computer repair), using symantec products is one of the worst things you can do to your computer. Partition Magic is in particular a horrible, horrible product that "fixes" LBA discrepancies without asking, reassigns partition types that it doesn't recognize, and (for me at least) almost always fails a nondestructive resize. Burn the gparted livecd (use this to burn the iso to a CD-R), put it in, and restart your computer. Much safer, and you might be able to get through all this without (god forbid) running XP from an external hard drive. --froth^T 20:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I lol'd at your comments, actually. You recommend GParted? It's a bootable disc, I'm assuming. So partitioning "around" a Windows XP installation is much less likely to cause any errors, in your opinion? (I used Partition Magic before from a torrent, and two days later my AV program picked it up everything I torrented as a virus, so it wasn't looking likely that I was going to use that). If I remember correctly, Nero (Which could be better...) does .ISOs. So basically boot from CD, partition from the CD before XP loads, and away I go, then? User:Logical2u_Talk 20:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I second the GPartEd recommendation, however, Vista comes included with utilities that can carve out a partition for itself before you install it. Dunno for sure if the retail versions include it, as I tested this on the Betas/Release Candidates (It actually repartitioned a live RAID-0 array with no issues, was rather impressed.) if for some reason M$ removed the feature, GPartEd all the way. Cyraan 21:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, partitioning with a livecd is much safer than "hot resizing" which is resizing the active partition. But basically (with the exception of Paragon Partition Manager, which is very good) there's no good XP utility for hot resizing. I know that Vista includes nondestructive partition resizing but I hadn't heard that it could repartition during installation. OK so if you want to use gparted, yes you can burn with Nero if you have it, I was just trying to suggest a free utility (plus nero is bloatware and I don't like it). Boot from the CD, set stuff up (and only use NTFS, don't try to partition anything as ext3 or xfs if you plan to continue using windows), and when it tells you, eject the CD. Then reboot and windows will load as usual (as long as you don't move your old windows partition) --froth^T 23:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

GParted won't load. I get it to boot from CD and to the main screen (Hit enter for most systems, choose kernals to load), but when I hit enter, it says "GParted Live CD not loaded, Kernal panic: Attempted to kill Init!". User:Logical2u_Talk 15:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you trying to boot from an external CD/DVD drive? How about a non-standards-compliant DVD burner? If so, try the live usb version --froth^T 18:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Not from an external one, but I am trying to boot from a (LG) DVD burner. Maybe I should try my other DVD player. Interesting. User:Logical2u_Talk 20:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Neither of em work. Moving to USB. User:Logical2u_Talk 20:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Er, I don't have a USB thumb drive, nor anything that effectively emulates one. If I run a Linux distro from DVD, would that basically give me the same options as GParted?User:Logical2u_Talk 20:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Erm well you could try knoppix or something... I think it comes with qtparted --froth^T 22:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrary Section Break

Ok, let's recap. .

1. GParted Didn't work due to LiveCD not being detected in either of my DVD drives, and it said there was a kernal error that attempted to kill the "init".
2. I tried Partition Logic LiveCD later, and I got a USB Bus Kernal Error, a Timeout on Kernals on my Floppy Drive, a kernal error on "Filesystemmount", as it said the file system of the disc is unknown, mounting the root file system failed, and initializing the main kernal failed, which then froze the program.
3. Cute Partition Manager loaded, but it doesn't permit resizing.
4. I have a Western Digital 250 GB Sata Hard Drive in NTFS file format with 4kb sectors, IE: One partition.
5. I have a 250 GB external USB hard drive, if that will work for the USB versions of these programs, that would be good too.
6. I have an LG DVD Burner and a regular DVD player, both internal.
   • So then why aren't any of the CDs working for me? Logical2u_Talk 14:58, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

No idea. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 08:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm DLing the latest GParted ISO (I had the 3.3.1 version, I'm DL'ing 8.5.1) so this might actually work. (YAY) Logical2u_Talk 17:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep, it worked... I should've just double checked for the latest version... Logical2u_Talk 17:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Interconnection diagram

what is the importance or recording hardware and software installed and Interconnection diagram

So that when your system fails and you didn't make a backup you can find all of the stuff you need? Or if a particular component fails you can trace out what the problem is --froth^T 23:12, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Internet Dial-Up to Modem Ratio

What is the industry average for number of internet dial-up customers per modem? Smcginnis 21:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Dial-up companies don't use modems anymore, they use aggregators which connect directly with phone company equipment. This is for the 56K support, which doesn't work without a digital connection to the phone company. That said, most companies oversubscribe the number of concurrent connections they can handle by a factor of 20 to 1 or higher. Droud 22:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

By the same token, most ISPs oversubscribe their bandwidth as well, such that hundreds of modem connections may be sharing only a few megabits to the Internet. Droud 22:39, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Many ISPs now use shared "modem" banks, so the queueing statistics are better. In the shared bank, many ISPs are supported from one bank. You can verify this by doing a google search for the telephone number of provided by you ISP: If the search shows that the number is also used by other ISPs, then it's shared. Bacically, modern "modems" and internet edge routers are so cheap that there is no economic incentive to conserve this resource: if you get a busy signal, then somebody made a mistake. If your google search for the telephone number shows that it is exclusinve to your ISP, then we are back to the situation of 20 years ago and if you get a busy signal, you should complain to your ISP. caveat: I only use dial-up when I am travelling, and even then only when I am away from a wired or wireless hotel or hotspot. your experience may differ from mine. -Arch dude 02:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)