Computing desk
< January 30	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	February 1 >

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 31

Need an outliner recommendation

I've been googling for hours trying to find a decent Windows outliner. I have to make an outline for a senior thesis, and I need some freeware that'll let me do it. I don't have MSWord, only OpenOffice, and it's god-awful outlining system won't do. Anyone got a suggestion or recommendation? --Wo o ty Woot? contribs 03:45, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Numbering in Office 2007 is awesome, it's extremely smart. Pony up, you're redmond's. --⁪froth^T 03:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Outliner? --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@froth: I have to do this by tomorrow. @anti: Looked there..but I see a lot of programs. Could someone recommend a GOOD one out of the list? Or do I guess and click? --Wo o ty Woot? contribs 07:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

this one looks good. Not sure if it supports printing or exporting or anything though. Use openoffice2, it's not that bad. --⁪froth^T 04:28, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Did it before you commented on that outliner (will use it in the future!) while wrestling with auto-format and general openoffice2 "hey, I'm going to indent this all the way to the right side of the page, hope you don't mind.". :D Thanks. --Wo o ty Woot? contribs 03:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is your computer 32- or 64- bit?

How do I find out if my computer is 32- or 64- bit? What does that even mean?--Sonjaaa 04:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At this stage of the game I think it's still pretty safe to assume your computer is 32-bit, unless you know it's 64-bit. It doesn't really mean too much, it's just the length of bits the computer can manipulate at once, on the surface 64 is better then 32, but there is a LOT more to it then that, a 64-bit computer is not anywhere close to twice as fast as a 32-bit one. Vespine 05:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Basically if you need to ask, you either have a 32-bit computer or a 64-bit system running a 32-bit Operating System, unless you're running Mac. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Download and run CPU-Z, and tell us what it says under "Name" and "Specification". Cyraan 07:15, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest is if you tell us what processor you have. --Spoon! 07:17, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Might also be on the first tab of the system properties, which you can get at via the control panel. --h2g2bob 13:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it's Windows, you can do what User:Cyraan and/or User:Spoon! suggest, if you're using a Macintosh, check "About this Mac" under the Appl menu. If you're using something else, you'll have to tell us that before we can help. 68.39.174.238 14:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect I have a rootkit

I recently ran Rootkit Hunter with the updated hash database on my Linux server, and it reported that every single one of my main executables (it lists like 50 of them, including stuff like cat, ls, ps, du, etc.) have the wrong MD5 checksum. I have another computer that has pretty much the same configuration (same distro, same updates, same package versions), and its executables are reported as okay. I then copied some of the suspect executables from my server to this other computer, and computed the hashes manually. They are indeed different; diff also reports that they are different; but the sizes and modification dates look identical.

Is this bad? What do you guys think I should do? --131.215.159.11 07:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? Programs actually have different versions. Versions are released over time. The contents are different. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 08:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not very knowledgable about linux development, but it doesn't seem like those simple binaries should ever change --⁪froth^T 19:28, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you install a new version of the GNU core utilities, you can be nearly sure that all the checksums will change. -- mattb @ 2007-01-31T22:50Z

The source for the binary may not change, but thats NOT what you are summing. If they are compiled against different libs, or using different parameters, they will have different sums. I would be suspicious that a rootkit would bother to try to change ALL of your files out, and suspect a much simpler answer instead. --66.195.232.121 15:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Desktop

Which exe program is responsible for loading the desktop at startup?

From my limited knowledge, I think it's Explorer.exe. At least, it's responsible for displaying the desktop icons and wallpaper - I don't know if it's the one that actually loads them from disk. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 11:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

explorer.exe deals with the taskbar, desktop and the file browser. You can safely kill explorer.exe (end process) and restart it again if something funky has happened to your desktop. On a technical note, explorer.exe does not do everything - window manager services (creating and displaying actual windows) are handled by something else. --h2g2bob 13:22, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(sigh) the kernel. Personally, I don't think the windowing and graphics should be dealt with in the kernel. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linux Winmodem Compatability.

Any idea why USR 3COM WinModems are not compatible with Damn small linux?Also when I tried to change the initialization string from the cd bootup version of Damn Small Linux from "ATZ" to that of Us robotics winmodem string,It did not accept the change and only took the default ATZ value.And ATZ is the command to reset the 3Com winmodem.

You can look at Softmodem. I've gone through this with other winmodems and other versions of Linux. No success for me, although others have done it. --Zeizmic 17:51, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had a Dell with a onboard winmodem and even tried compiling my own drivers, still couldn't get it to work, ended up getting a PCMCIA card and it took about 3 minutes to get it going, if I knew how much time I would have lost with the winmodem I wouldn't have even bothered. Don't let me discourage you tho, i'm probably just inept:) Vespine 03:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yea if you consider the time lost in solving the problems it may actually be cheaper to just get a Linux compatitable hardware instead of trying to solve it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:35, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you seem to have answered your own question. The problem here is "WinModem", which is an internal modem requiring drivers and support from Microsoft Windows. These can be very difficult to configure in Linux, which is why external serial port modems are preferred for Linux. If you have a serial port, I recommend spending a little money for a serial or PCMCIA modem and saving yourself a bit of wasted time. Freedomlinux 00:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

myspace

how do i save fit boys on myspace 2 my favourites without them knowing in case i pluck up the curage to say hello. Lilyfan87 11:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The safest way is to just save them as bookmarks in your web browser - "bookmarks", "bookmark this page" (in IE that may be "favorites", "add favorite" or something). --h2g2bob 13:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unix/Fat FS

My flash stick came preformatted as FAT (obviously), and I keep it that way so I can transfer files to Windows computers. But sometimes I get sick of having all my files labelled executable (and all the other permissions set to defaults) when doing Unix-to-Unix transfers. Is there any filesystem overlay or somesuch (I'm thinking FAT with extra metadata) that would allow that information to be maintained but still be readable by Windows? Or do I have to write one? (I've been wondering when I'd get the chance to write my own filesystem) --대조 | Talk 12:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The permissions for drives come from the config file /etc/fstab. See the manual page for mount and fstab for details. --h2g2bob 13:02, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Versions of Linux before 2.6.11 support the UMSDOS filesystem: a FAT filesystem that preserves Unix metadata. --Carnildo 21:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that's exactly what I meant. I might have to start maintaining it, though :->. --대조 | Talk 14:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just put your stuff in a tarball, which preserves everything. --Spoon! 02:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

umask. eg, umask=7000. umask=7777. whatever. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's a hackish solution, but... You could, when doing Unix-to-Unix transfers, create a large empty file, format it as ext3, and loopback mount it. --cesarb 19:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have done that, but it doesn't exactly meet my requirements ("would allow that information to be maintained but still be readable by Windows") although I could put ext2fs in the FAT, and then use it to open the ext3 file. --대조 | Talk 14:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

nvidia nv44 driver update

i want to update the driver of the video card of my computer that is nvidia nv44, (i know that I need to go here http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp ), but if I go to graphiocs driver section there is many types: quadro, geforce 8800 series, geforce e tnt series, geforce go series, what i need to download??? 201.79.42.226 18:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

NV44 is the code name for the Geforce 6200 series GPU, the drivers under "GeForce and TNT2" will work for you. Cyraan 18:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

jboss deployment

I've deployed a model-view-controller application on my jboss application server but have seen that I don't have the servlets and other stuff in the right places.

I'm thinking if I could find a sample web app that uses servlets and jsp pages in a model-view-controller application I could compare that with my losing effort and make the necessary corrections.

Would you happen to know where I could download such a sample app?

The MVC paradigm has nothing to do with where your app server expects to find things. See WAR (file format) for more info. Friday (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Hard Drives

Is it possible to have SATA and IDE running side by side, with SATA as the master? Also, can you copy XP and programs onto a new HDD from an old one, i nedd to get a bigger drive! Thanks Jackacon 19:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and yes. For your second question, consider using Disk cloning tools. Splintercellguy 21:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you are thinking of buying new hard disks for your computer you do need to make sure your motherboard supports both IDE and SATA interfaces, SATA is only a few years old and some older computers may not support it. And just to add to the above, for the second question, there is no consideration involved, you MUST use something like disk cloning, you can't just copy and paste or 'drag' all the files over to the new drives, windows will not boot if you do that. Vespine 03:08, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SATA is a type of IDE (ATA) device. Maybe you mean PATA? --⁪froth^T 04:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Windows-Linux webcam

Hi. I use Linux (Ubuntu 6.06) and have a friend who uses Windows XP. She has a webcam - is there any software we can use to enable video-conferencing? Thanks very much, No Retreat No Surrender 20:04, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Windows live messenger? Jackacon 20:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not on Linux, surely? No Retreat No Surrender 21:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

aMSN in theory can do that, never tried though. Ekiga and any SIP compliant software on Windows would also work. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, aMSN works. No Retreat No Surrender 17:37, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AMSN 0.95+ has webcam support, but only if your webcam is supported in Linux, google easycam2, that will setup webcams in Linux well! - Jonathandavis

How To Turn RAM (Random Access Memory) To ROM (read only memory)

Well i need more room to run my programs on my computer, so i was wondering if there was anyway to turn RAM To ROM? any thing would be of help thank you.

you could increase the size of your Virtual RAM, that uses a part of the HDD for RAM Jackacon 20:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how turning RAM to ROM would help, and anyway this sort of thing isn't very doable. I can't tell what you're asking- there is a difference in computers between memory and storage. See Computer storage for an explanation. Friday (talk) 21:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also RAM and ROM (and their interface with the CPU) are physically very different, there is absolutely no way to "turn" one into the other --⁪froth^T 22:09, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily. The electrical and signalling interface to some kinds of RAM and ROM are more or less identical inasmuch as a CPU is concerned. Broad sweeping statements are usually unsafe. -- mattb @ 2007-01-31T22:48Z

ROM isn't just memory with "read only" restrictions on it- after an imaging it's electrically unchangable. Of course you've got really cool stuff like EEPROM, but that's another story. And of course the OP's question makes no sense whatsoever so we might just be arguing past each other --⁪froth^T 23:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An interface doesn't necessarily say anything about inner workings. You can, for example, wire certain types of SRAM and PROM to the same address and data bus pins of a microprocessor in certain cases and have things work as expected either way (except that PROM will not be rewritable). However, as you said, this is irrelevant to the original question. The OP seems to need a bigger hard disk. -- mattb @ 2007-02-01T00:13Z

About the "virtual memory", most modern kernels/MMs do paging automatically anyway. I don't see how they would operate with no free pages left. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By definition, your RAM cannot be configured as ROM. This reasoning comes not only from the impossibility of converting hardware types, but also that RAM will lose its data when power is removed, while ROM will not. Therefore, this cannot be done without significant hardware modification (not recommended) Freedomlinux 00:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Atari 2600, ?-Bit

Greetings,

I have been categorizing my consoles and am wondering what the bit power of the Atari 2600's GPU (or CPU) was.

AlexanderTG 20:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is the wiki article on the CPU in the 2600, might help MOS Technology 6507 Jackacon 21:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Atari 2600 had an NTSC (or PAL/SECAM) non-interlaced output. That created the limit for the number of pixels on the screen. As for the number of colors, it was 8-bit. However, it was possible to change the color of a bit as it was being drawn to get an in-between shade. So, it theoretically had the ability to display just about any color. --Kainaw ^(talk) 04:41, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Looking back at this question, I think it is important to note that the Atari 2600 did not have a frame buffer - a section of memory where the screen is drawn before sending it off to the monitor/tv. It created the video signal as it was being drawn. The frame buffer is what most computers measure their graphics capability by: How many pixels does it have? What's the bit depth? How many frame buffers are there? Without a single frame buffer, the Atari 2600 cannot be measured in that way. --Kainaw ^(talk) 12:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Email

What kind of email software does Microsoft offer?

Your question isn't very specific, but maybe Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Exchange Server is what you're looking for. Friday (talk) 21:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Outlook is part of the Microsoft Office Suite, the default crappy windows email client is Outlook Express. Vespine 22:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The default one is Windows Mail in Windows Vista. --Spoon! 02:10, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget Hotmail and Windows Live Mail! Droud 12:49, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! 68.193.147.179 20:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vista and Office 2007

I've heard from several sources that it would be unwise to purchase Windows Vista right after release, and that I should wait a few months for most of the bugs to be worked out. Would the same apply to something like Office 2007? Also, if I were to purchase either one, would I be able to install them on more than one computer?--the ninth bright shiner ^talk 21:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Office tends to be much more polished on release. If you're planning on buying office 2007, might as well buy it now; it's unlikely to change much. Windows, on the other hand, is significantly different because of huge service packs that get released for free to licensees. And if you were to purchase Vista the license is only good for one computer. You could use the same DVD for all of the installations (every version is the exact same DVD) but the license key wouldn't be valid anymore. I wouldn't know about office 2007, I have the -uhm- Enterprise version. --⁪froth^T 22:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And now, questions that stem from answers. The service packs are free, eh? Neat. But what do you mean "every version is the same DVD"? That sounds like you could buy the Home Basic version and install Ultimate...O_o--the ninth bright shiner ^talk 22:42, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neat? Heh. Ideally windows shouldn't have serious problems when it ships RTM anyway. :) But yes, every DVD is the same. It installs content based on your license key- if you have an Ultimate key then it installs all of the content, and if you have a Home Basic key it puts a ton of restrictions on the content it installs (and doesn't install a lot of content included in Ultimate). You're not actually paying for a more expensive product, you're paying into MS's marketing strategy, which is really how it's worked all along (all CDs cost the same amount to press, including the "premium" versions of programs) but it's kind of come to a head with vista since they're exactly the same DVDs in different packaging (and maybe different etching on the front of the DVD, I'll know tomorrow when I get my copy!). --⁪froth^T 23:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, how it all installs like that...great! Thanks a lot! I stand by the argument that the Reference Deskies should be paid.--the ninth bright shiner ^talk 23:38, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'd be able to actually pay for Office 2007 :) --⁪froth^T 00:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on how much software is worth to you, there's always MSDN. $1100 a year, just under $100 a month, for basically everything Microsoft. Droud 01:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Totally not worth it. Unless Microsoft was pioneering HVDs and über-dense portable media and giving that away. And I can just wait and save up for all that stuff. My dad and I are both providing funds to get Professional, because it has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Publisher, the last of which he needs and is paying for. Not a bad deal on my end.--the ninth bright shiner ^talk 02:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Psst. Bittorrent. --⁪froth^T 04:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How about manually installing the content? Like those crackers who create custom installers? --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cause you still don't get updates, and you probably won't be able to install WGA-validated apps like WMP11 was for XP. You might as well just use an invalid volume license key and crack the activation- which is much easier if you want a vanilla setup. Custom installers are used for different reasons. --⁪froth^T 06:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Psst. Linux and OpenOffice, although I prefer the gnome native office suite more... --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

AVI files that can't fast foward

I've noticed that certain video files me and my friends have encountered cannot be fast forwarded, you can't skip to any other point in the clip. The only thing you can do is just play it forward, and to get to a certain point you have to sit and watch everything preceding it. Is there any way that this can be avoided? I try taking it into Windows Movie Maker and it's unable to import. What's going on here? NIRVANA2764 21:36, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These files are lacking indexes, which tell a program which position in the file corresponds to what time in the movie. virtualdub may be able to help. Droud 01:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try it in VLC. I haven't heard of problems playing avi files, but if there are still problems seeking, then use ffmpeg to re-encode the file's container. This guide explains fixing flv files using ffmpeg - it is the same procedure for fixing (broken) avi to (fixed) avi. --h2g2bob 02:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indexes? That would be a huge waste of storage space and computation. Think about it: a 32-bit pointer for each frame. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 06:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Even with the 64b timestamps and 64b pointers, it still comes out to less than 4MB to index every frame in a 2 hour movie. In any case, most AVIs can only be played from keyframes, so the index would only contain those. Droud 12:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've had good results with the freeware program AVIPreview. It's a lightweight AVI preview program that reconstructs the index of an AVI file before playback and can cache generated indexes (so re-indexing of, for example, partially downloaded AVI files do not need to be re-performed every time). It does not (yet) have a keyframe search function, though. The software is in alpha and has not been updated for quite some time, but is pretty stable. Also try iO Media Player—it has AVIPreview integrated into its core and is more fully featured. Hope this helps. —Xhantar^Talk

IE 6.0.2100.2180 SP2 Frame Rendering

HellO HelpDesk,

Under IE 6.0.2100.2180 SP2, when I go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archive_33 , I wind up with a screen that looks like this;

[1]

My IE seems to be having a problem with Frames that Firefox (running on the same computer) does not have. This occurred on a previous version of IE 6.0 and my upgrade to SP2 didn't help at all.

Thx,

Kaosmax 23:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's not a problem with frames (frames are not used on wikipedia). Maybe your text size is turned way up. Try going to View -> Text Size -> Normal or holding Ctrl and scrolling your scroll wheel. --⁪froth^T 23:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I recommend http://photobucket.com or http://imageshack.us in the future for image uploads --⁪froth^T 23:21, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I had my text large ;-) Try either reducing your text size (as described above), or changing Wikipedia's skin in your preferences - this can move the edit, history, etc links to a different place. If you need text that big to read the small print placed on some sites, try changing from Internet Explorer to Firefox. With Firefox you can set a minimum font size, so you can make small print the same size as regular text. This would mean you don't need your font settings quite so large. That option can be got at by going to the tools menu, options; in the content tab, under fonts & colours, and clicking the advanced button. --h2g2bob 01:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]