Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

August 7

Password protected sites

some sites are password protected espcially the site of cambridge www.cie.org.uk, the teachers section . this web contains past papers for IGCSE which is important to students .......watever... how can i hack into this site just for good reasons please ......

If there really is something that students are supposed to see, ask someone part of the faculty. Otherwise, this would be a criminal act, and we're not going to help you with that. --Oskar 06:21, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

That said, the easiest way to "hack" any password protection would be to try some common passwords (including any obvious site-specific ones, such as maybe "cambridge" or "teacher" in this case). Presumably, if you did manage to guess the password that way, you'd do the responsible thing and report it so that the password can be changed to something stronger; if you can guess it, so can others. Still, it's better — much better — to get permission before conducting such intrusion testing; a lot of institutions can be touchy about unauthorized access even if you did nothing to abuse it, and the fact that a lock could be picked by a three-year-old child doesn't necessarily make picking it any more legal. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention that it would be illegal: you would fall foul of the Computer Misuse Act, since you are presumably in the UK. Many other countries have equivalent laws, however. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 17:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Greasemonkey script

How would a Greasemonkey script that just searches a document and replaces all instances of some phrase with another look like? --Oskar 06:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, untested:

var node = document.firstChild;
while (node) {
    if (node.nodeType == 3) {
        node.nodeValue = node.nodeValue.replace(/phrase/g, "something else");
    }
    // Walk the DOM tree:
    if (node.firstChild) {
        node = node.firstChild;
    } else {
        while (!node.nextSibling && node.parentNode)
            node = node.parentNode;
        node = node.nextSibling;
    }
}

Of course, there are probably other ways of doing it. Note that this approach has a major shortcoming: if the phrase is split between multiple text nodes (like if only part of it is in italic or bold) then it won't get replaced. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Software for simple animated game

I want to create a simple game from the scratch, with a bit of animation, some game logic, some audio effects and some kind of scoring. The player should be able to select some characters froma pool of characters depending on some situations. Then these characters will complete some tasks (the computer should do this). For each task completed, there should be some score. If the player selects a wrong character to for a task, there should be some penalty points. Each of the tasks should have some animation, with some audio effects etc etc. Is there any free software that I can use for this? I have no experience in animation. -- WikiCheng | Talk 08:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

If you have no experience in programming, then you may want to check out programs such as Game Maker which require minimal technical knowledge whilst still producing reasonable results. The tradeoff between the two options are that whilst Game Maker-esque options have a relatively small learning curve, you lose a little control over the project. Actually learning a programming language and appropriate APIs will permit you much greater control, but will take many months (at least) before you are at a level where you can begin to start thinking about going ahead with your original project. On the other hand, learning a programming language and how to program (which aren't necessarily the same thing: the former is relatively much easier) can be very rewarding and also permits you to write other programs for your computer. Further advice might be obtained from Internet forums such as gamedev.net (mentioned directly simply because it is the largest one that I am aware of). Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 17:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Contrary to what people think you can code in gamemaker also. There is no loss of power or control. I have coded (yes coded) games as complicated as Advance Wars in gamemaker using entirely its code scripting and no the drag and drop interface.--Dacium 05:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I'll give gamemaker a try. Just a last question: Is it free? -- WikiCheng | Talk 13:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes.24.81.198.165 00:27, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

How to insert combo box/combo list box in a cell in MS Excel Sheet

How can I insert combo box/combo list box in a cell in MS Excel Sheet?

Depends what you want to do. You can use a form combo-box object, but that doesn't strictly sit in the cell, it sits on top of it. Or you could use Data Validation on the cell to restrict the values to a list - this makes drop-down list of the values. I usually do this by creating a named range of the list values. Like I say - it depends on what you want the combo box to achieve. --Worm 11:54, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 7 Search Bar

Hello. Does Internet Explorer 7's search bar use website prefixes? For example, if I search something on Wikipedia using the search bar, does it use Wikipedia's website prefix en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...? Alternatively, when I search something on Google using the search bar not Google Toolbar, does the search bar use Google's website prefix www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=…&meta=? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare 15:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The search bars on major browsers (assuming you are indeed referring to the search bar and not the address bar) do more-or-less what you are describing. They perform a text substitution into a URL which runs the query (i.e. for Google, it might store www.google.com/search?q=%query and then replace %query with your actual search string, appropriately escaped such that it would actually work — e.g. if you enter "café noir" as your search string then it will use "caf%C3%A9%20noir" to actually search.). Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 17:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Bookmark manager recommendation

Anyone know a good bookmark manager/social bookmarking site that would let me do fulltext searches of every pages I've bookmarked and by default set it up so that others can't see what sites i've bookmarked? Bookmark managers don't seem to have full text search. Social bookmarking don't seem to allow "Private bookmarks" by default. Furl and Delicious, for example, can let you check a box to specify a bookmark as private, but you have to do the tedious step of clicking "private" every single time to bookmark a site, I think. --Alecmconroy 15:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

PHP Download

How do you allow webpage viewers to download files such as .mp3's using php? (basically, what php code do I type to allow users to download content from my website to their computer?) 69.205.180.123 17:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, you can just link to the filename (using standard HTML <a href=...>) or stream it to the user (they click something, your script grabs the content and sends it to the browser using readfile()). If you are doing the latter, it is best to use headers with the appropriate MIME file types so the browser doesn't just display it as jibberish. If you want to force the file to download, rather than open in a player, you use a specific MIME header. The code below should do it (borrowed from an old project of mine):

header("Content-type: application/x-download");
header("Content-Length: ".filesize($filepath));
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$filepath\"");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
readfile($filepath);


Where $filepath is the path to the file you want them to download. Note that there are some pretty strict requirements to how header() is used; no content may be sent by that particular script before or after it by the same script. --140.247.248.212 18:35, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. That looks like what I needed.69.205.180.123 20:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, its not so much that you cant send anything after these headers, its just everything you send after these headers will be treated as the part of the file. I would also recommend that you change the content-type to the appropriate MIME type for what you are sending. For mp3 thats "audio/mpeg". PHP.net page on header function has more information and examples, including some that support resume. — Shinhan < talk > 14:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

MS Word

Is there a way to have Word Document A linked to documents B, C, and D, so that A is just the sum of BCD? And you can change the individual BC&D and that will change A? Thanks, XM 18:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

That A is a "master document". -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 19:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Your mileage may vary, but I've found Word to be pretty incompetent when managing really large documents. I made an attempt once to break my large (>300 page) document into a master document and subsidiary documents and abandoned the effort. I've always assumed that the folks at Microsoft produce their own documentation in Word, but they must have a lot more patience than I do for Word's foibles.

Atlant 12:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. You can try this sort of thing in Word, but you will be fighting with it the entire time. It is not easier to do it this way (because as Louis Menand so eloquently said, "Microsoft Word is a terrible program."). --140.247.238.85 18:02, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Mac: fullscreen apps

On a Mac (10.4.10, Tiger), is there a way to let apps that automatically run in fullscreen run in a window instead? I'm thinking of games here, so that I can play them while still seeing my Gmail notifier and Adium buddy lists. Thanks! McMillin24 _contribs^talk 20:24, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure but does F9 not let you view all open windows? Not quite the same but allows quick switching. ny156uk 21:40, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Mobile phone internal batteries

Does a mobile phones internal battery (the one that is tiny and soldered to the circuit board)just control the 24hr clock/memory or the whole processor clock? It seems to be that when that battery dies many mobiles phones start malfunctioning. Or is that coincidence? or built in obsolescence?

Is there a specific phone you have in mind? None of my CDMA phones have a backup battery. They store their data in flash memory and set their clock from the network. That is, they have no need of an internal battery. --Mdwyer 05:34, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

GSM phones can have internal battery (Nokia 5110, there were mentioned some sort of polyacetylene (or something similar) type of backup battery in service manual) or can have not (Nokia 3410 lost clock, when main battery were removed). -Yyy 16:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

C programming questions

Can someone please explain to me (or point me to an explanation):
1: Exec functions and their proper use (I've read my system's man page and it just made me more confused).
2: Pointers to functions: how they work, how to use and create them, etc. (Again, I've read the best resource I have available (K&R's The C Programming Language) without any enlightenment)
Thanks in advance! 69.123.113.89 21:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Pointers to functions are just a variable (like any pointer). It's easiest to explain with code samples:

// pointer to function, initially set to NULL
int (* pointer_to_function)( int arg1, int arg2 ) = NULL;
// define some function as normal (note: same argument and return types as above)
int addition ( int arg1, int arg2 ) { return arg1 + arg2; }
// set pointer to a value
pointer_to_function = addition;
// call the function (returns 3)
pointer_to_function(1, 2);

[edit] can be used for callbacks, eg: qsort. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

1. [edit conflict] exec() (and its variants — execvp(), etc. — which differ in what extra information you pass and how you pass it) cause the process that executes them to be replaced with another process, started from an executable file on disk and initialized with your choice of arguments and/or environment variables. In Unix, there is no (standard, portable) way to create a new process except fork(), which creates another copy of the process that calls it. As such, there has to be a way to make one of the two copies (usually the child) into a different program if any choice is to be had about what programs are executed.

Your phrasing is a bit odd. fork creates a new process just fine -- Unix has no concept of a "blank" process . Every process in Unix is rooted under the init process -- every process has a parent process, and when you fork, you make a child.

1. I assume you know what a pointer is; just as you can do

int x=/*...*/,y=/*...*/,*p;
if(/*...*/) p=&x; else p=&y;
/*...*/
*p=4;  /* assigns to whichever of x and y was chosen earlier */
++x; ++y;
printf("%i\n",*p);  /* uses whichever was chosen, so prints 5 */

with normal pointers, so can you do

double (*p)(double);
if(/*...*/) p=sin; else p=cos;
/*...*/
printf("%g\n",p(3.1415926536)); /* uses whichever was chosen, so prints 0 or -1 */

with function pointers. Note that the & and * are optional with function pointers, because you can do fewer things with functions and so there is no ambiguity. Of course, normal pointers are more common, partly because they are simpler, partly because they (unlike function pointers) can be used to build data structures (like linked lists), and partly because function pointers tend to impose significant performance penalties on modern hardware (if used frequently and where speed matters). Both kinds of pointer have the important ability to be stored and passed among functions so that the choice of target for the pointer and the use of the pointer can be quite far apart in terms of code, time of execution, and conceptual design. --Tardis 23:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Now just because "pointer_to_function = addition;" is legal C because there's no real ambiguity doesn't mean you should use it- I had to puzzle over it for a few seconds to realize that what you really meant was "pointer_to_function = &addition;" though as tardis pointed out it's the same thing really --froth^t 03:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

On the exec question...

Exec is used when you want to replace one running program with another. By itself, this isn't a very useful thing to do. But combined with fork, it becomes a very powerful thing to do because it allows one program to "spawn off" a series of other programs. exec is almost always used with fork and, in fact, most programmers tend to think of them as one word: "fork-n-exec".

fork-n-exec can be used, for example, when a software system is starting up. Perhaps there is some sort of master program and a series of subsidiary programs that intercommunicate with the master. Those subsidiary programs are each started by forking off from the master program and then exec'ing the subsidiary program.

The shell does the same thing when you execute a pipeline. The shell fork-n-execs each of the elements that you specify in the pipeline, arranging them to intercommunicate via pipes.

Does this explanation help you?

Atlant 12:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

This is basically how pointers to functions work.

Lets say you have two functions with prototypes:
int func1 (int blah);
int func2 (int blah);
These functions are of the same type. They are both int NAME (int); 
You can declare a pointer to this type of function as:
int (*functionpointer)(int);
You can then set this pointer to point two either func1 or func2:
functionpointer = func1;
You can then make a function call, through the pointer:
(*functionpointer)(0);
Which in this case would be eqvialanet to doing:
func1(0);
An interest quirk of C is that whenever you reference a function you ALWAYS gets its address. So that these 3 lines all do the same thing:
functionpointer = func1;
functionpointer = &func1;
functionpointer = *func1;
They all set function pointer to point to func1.

August 8

simple webcam app

What WindowsXP application can I use to make my webcam take regular pictures every 4 seconds and just store them all in some folder on my computer (not publish or upload anywhere?--Sonjaaa 02:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you want to try to capture an event? Consider googling for 'CatSpy', which will record a short video when it detects a change in the frame. Useful for security. --Mdwyer 05:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sonjaaa: It sounds like you want to do time lapse photography. Try googling '"time lapse" webcam'. Lot's of hits. Saintrain 17:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Firefox Spellcheck

Firefox has an auto spell checking feature which I rely on since I can't spell. I accidentally added a misspelled word to its dictionary. How do I correct that? Mrdeath5493 03:33, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Deleting_spellcheck_entries 67.169.185.206 23:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Rules in Microsoft Outlook

I use Microsoft Outlook for email at work. Recently, when I went on holiday I set up a rule in Outlook to forward my incoming email to my home email address. Now that I'm back, I want to cancel the rule, but I can't. First I turned the rule off, but the emails kept getting forwarded. So I deleted the damn rule, and still they keep getting forwarded. Why is this happening, and what can I do to stop it? Many thanks. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 06:19, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that it is only Outlook which is forwarding the mail? That you didn't set up vacation forwarding on the server as well? Just something to check... --140.247.238.85 18:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. How would I check and fix that? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 19:55, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

AVG Detected virus Obfustat.EVN

What is that please? ... Pharrar 08:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

AVG is an antivirus program, of which there is a free version. However, I assume you know that and are asking for details about the specific virus. Googling yields no hits whatsoever, but does turn up one hit (in a Japanese list of recognised viruses for an antivirus program) for an "Obfuscated.EVN" which seems to be a Trojan. Other than that, I can't find any information whatsoever about it. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 14:12, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

prog...........

am a serious student who intends to teach himself programming.i know its going to be a long short but i know i can pull it off.i have downloaded several tutorials {if anyone knows a few good ones i can use give me a link} from the net and am starting with just basic and c languge.i wanted to know from anyone with experience who can recommend a good tutorial he or she has found useful can give me a link i download.or probably give me some nice tips(probably from a teacher)on how to basically cover programming.i know its an inexhaustive course but am in no hurry.am basically a beginner in programming,my only experiece being messing with game mods —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ianmwash (talk • contribs).

Have you tried searching Wikibooks? Try a search for programming in the Wikibooks search function, it may pop up a few useful tutorials. –sebi 09:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Learning a programming language is relatively easy — learning to program well and effectively in a particular paradigm is harder. Your initial choice of language is fairly irrelevant since more or less any programmer worth their salt will have solid knowledge of at least 2 or 3 and be able to tinker in another half dozen or so. However, what I would say is that C (programming language) isn't necessarily the easiest language to begin with: in particular, the standard library is particularly minimalist (as it was originally designed for systems programming) and the language contains relatively few high-level constructs whilst maintaining a large number of low-level constructs. Some version of BASIC (QBASIC, DarkBASIC, Visual Basic .NET) is a reasonable suggestion, as are languages such as C# and Python (programming language). C++ is another programming language that is sometimes recommended to beginners because it's the 'main language': this is true, however it still has a fairly compact standard library and maintains the low-level features of C (although it does provide many more higher level constructs). It does share certain unpleasant (for beginners) characteristics with C, such as that of undefined behaviour. My personal (subjective) recommendation for a beginner's language is C# because (apart from the fact that I'm quite familiar enough with it to know what I'm recommending) it has a free IDE (Visual Studio C# Express); the .NET Framework provides a rather extensive standard library, of sorts; it is a managed language, meaning that you can avoid (for the large part, unless you are specifically dealing with an APU such as DirectX, or you choose otherwise) pointers and directly manipulating memory. Other than this overview of a couple languages, I will also provide a couple pieces of advice: some beginners are obsessed with optimization: try to avoid this. They are often worried about micro-optimizing irrelevant pieces of code unnecessarily and concerned with machine-level optimizations (whether it's faster to multiply than divide, for example — incidentally the answer is now that they're the same speed on most platforms, although it used to be the case that multiplication was faster NOTE: See discussion below) rather than algorithmic optimization (i.e. if you want to find a specific word in a dictionary, you could check every single entry from the beginning to the end, stopping only when you find the word; alternatively, you could use a binary search algorithm and find it in no more than — and probably fewer than — $2\lceil log_{2}\ n\rceil$ comparisons, where n is the number of entries in the entire dictionary). Most of all: remember to program! It's easy to read books or tutorials (if you choose a language, it's worth asking to try to find a good one, incidentally; such a one for C++ is C++ A Dialog) through to the end but not learn anything. Do all of the examples, but don't just copy them out of the book: try to understand what each section does (and ask a knowledgeable friend, a forum, or an instructor if you can't) and then try to change it to improve it or add something else that you understand, to help reinforce your knowledge. You won't become an expert overnight, but after a few months you should find yourself completely lost a lot less often if you do this. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 14:40, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if you want to learn web programming, but if you do, http://www.w3schools.com probably has the best web language tutorials on the Internet.69.205.180.123 19:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I feel obliged to point out that multiplication and division are nowhere near the same speed on modern processors, at least in the x86 family. According to Intel's docs, on Core 2 the instruction latency is 3 cycles for IMUL and 22 for IDIV. The throughput is half a cycle per IMUL and 22 cycles per IDIV. For a bunch of 32-bit divisions on a 2GHz processor this means a maximum throughput of only 350 MiB/sec, which is well below the main memory bandwidth of a modern machine, so this is a real performance concern. The times for MULPS and DIVPS are 4/1 and 18/17 respectively (latency/throughput), so even for maximally parallelizable float division you're limited to less than 2 GiB/sec. There are still very good reasons to avoid divisions in inner loops. Premature optimization is bad, but so is pointless inefficiency. Programmers still need to learn how hardware works, though probably not in an introductory course. -- BenRG 20:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Mea culpa. Having just checked, I see you're quite right, latency and throughput are only a little less than an order of magnitude higher for both FDIV and IDIV compared to F/IMUL — I'm not sure where I managed to pick up that piece of misinformation and apologise for repeating it (although, of course, the fact that almost any architecture in common use now is at least slightly parallel means that you will only notice it in a tight loop — which, in fairness, as an arithmetical instructions is where it's likely to be used). I guess it is still faster to calculate the reciprocal before the loop and then multiply inside the loop, if possible (although, if this optimization is possible, then the compiler can perform it assuming a language where pointer aliasing isn't a problem). Perhaps I should have used a better example. However, I would argue that you need (assuming you aren't doing something highly specific) only a bit of common sense in terms of optimization. First, recognise that the compiler is probably better than you (assuming you're using a recent compiler); second, profile to find where the 10% of your code that's using 90% of the time is and then tune that rather than the menu-display code. Pointless inefficiency is not a problem if that inefficiency is not greatly affecting the performance of your program (i.e. if the multiplication is dependant on a bunch of IO operations, then it's probably irrelevant; if it's being used to normalize the pixel value of an 10 megapixel HDR image, then it's probably worth tuning to the n-th degree). That said, algorithmic enhancements will still almost always be the greatest source of performance increases in standard use. Also, I apologise for this comment as it's partially aimed at you and partially at the original poster, and so comes across as being at two different levels. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 21:18, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Why do you want to learn programming? If there's something specific you want to make computers do, I'd tend to advise learning a language that's good at doing that thing. Even if the language is horribly designed, you'll likely learn more about general programming principles this way, just because people learn better when there's a palpable reward. -- BenRG 20:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

If you're looking for a C language tutorial, I've heard good things about http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/cclass/cclass.html, although I'm admittedly rather biased. :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 02:04, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

ooh, you maintain the comp.lang.c faq? I had no idea we were in the presence of such greatness :) --froth^t 16:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

BASIC is by far the simplest to learn, but the least powerful. It's fun to pull off optimization tricks with (and it's not as daunting mathematically with all the bitwise operation optimizations you get into in lower level languages) and it's a good way to learn to get used to the idea of programming. PHP is a quite powerful scripting language and highly flexible- I recommend that be the first real language you learn. It is an interpreted scripting language, not a programming language, but it's C-like (well, sort of) and a good launching pad, especially as it's so very forgiving. There are no distinctions between similar data types, there's a function for absolutely everything, and a massive but readable manual for every function and construct at php.net. And since it's designed for the internet, it integrates seamlessly with network connections, gd (scripted image generation), and database engines. The interpreter can be hard to set up for a beginner, but if you just use php.exe (the CLI interpreter) and stick with text based output, you can do a lot. There's always something to do with php because it's such a flexible language. Try to write a script that downloads a web page and parses data from it, or converts text into a png image. Or write a CMS! It's easy with php, but you have to be very familiar with internet-specific things like sessions, POST/GET, and of course HTML, which you should know anyway if you're comfortable enough with the internet to post on wikipedia --froth^t 16:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

How to make a folder password protected in Windows XP.

I want to make a folder password protected (not hidden(attribute)) in Windows XP. How many ways are there to do this and how to do?

The easiest way is to just compress it with a password, that is, make it a password-protected ZIP or RAR file. That doesn't depend on any external software to be working correctly.

You can also set up certain folders to be accessible only to certain user accounts in XP, and make them be encrypted. But that requires you to either set up your user account with a password, or set up a separate user account for just that data with a password. And if your windows crashes, it can be hard to recover the encrypted data, I believe.

Those are the two easy ways I know about off-hand. --24.147.86.187 13:33, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

One of my friends had once created a folder with /(or\) as the folder name and it was a kind of password protected as he used to put a password to access the contents of the folder.

I don't know what he exactly did as I know that the folder name in Windows cannot have / or \.

Operating systems usually aren't designed with this in mind. Don't give anyone else access to your user account and make the folder readable only by you. This is possible, though ridiculously complex, in windows. Well vista at least, and probably XP pro. --froth^t 16:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

USB Bandwidth warning

I keep getting an insufficient USB bandwidth warning on my Dell 2400. The only USB devices attached are the ADSL modem and a scanner. The scanner is not active when I get the warning. Any ideas on why I should get this msg and is it safe to ignore it?--SpectrumAnalyser 11:52, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

You're connected to your network over USB?! X_X you're probably sharing internet bandwidth with your scanner since chances are it's one controller. You should NOT use usb for network connections. Other mediums like wifi and ethernet are designed for network traffic, usb is not, and it's extremely slow. --froth^t 16:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

No Im connected to the Internet via my DSL modem which is connected to the computer by a USB link. that's how the instructions said to connect the modem. Its only recently Ive been getting these warnings though.--SpectrumAnalyser 16:42, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Well yeah that's what I meant, of course your modem connects over the phone line but it goes directly to your computer over usb. USB is taking over everything, and it's an engineer's worst nightmare of an interface. But I don't know what your problem could be if it was working before. Did you try http://www.google.com/search?q=%22insufficient+USB+bandwidth%22? Apparently not --froth^t 16:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

HMMm! This [1] exactly describes my problem: same modem same ISP! So it could be the line?--SpectrumAnalyser 17:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Of course it is.. multiple other people have had the exact same problem with the same modem and the same isp. Their solution is your solution --froth^t 19:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

OK. so why is it flagged a USB bandwidth problem and not a connection problem?--SpectrumAnalyser 22:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

USB is not extremely slow, it just uses a lot of CPU, if operated at high speeds (USB 2.0 has PHY layer data rate of 480MBit/s, which is more than any wireless (802.11abg) network or 100MBit/s ethernet). -Yyy 16:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean total bandwidth I mean all the trouble of encoding it so it can go over usb and apparently software-emulating (famous last words) a real network device since it's not connected to one. There might even be additional processing involved since his computer is connected directly to the modem without a router. This is a terrible idea! Almost all computers have network devices, why go through all the extra cpu load to go over usb? And you really do need a dedicated network switch sitting at the top of your home network even if you have just one computer. -froth^t 16:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Could the problem be to do with the DSL line itself? It seems to be dropping out rather frequently lately.--SpectrumAnalyser 16:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Apache SMTP server?

Does the Apache 2.2 server come with a built-in SMTP server?

69.205.180.123 13:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think there is a way for it to have easy support for sendmail. There is also, apparently, Apache James, though I don't know anything about that. --24.147.86.187 13:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the problem is, the PHP mail function refuses to work. We have the server in place on our computer, it runs all the PHP script, does the server-side validation and returns a conformation page in the browser, but it refuses to mail a copy of the conformation page to our email account. What are we doing wrong? Do you have to specify what part of the file to mail? If so, how do you do that?69.205.180.123 15:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The server must have a configured Sendmail server (as well as Apache and PHP). PHP's mail function will work directly with the Sendmail functions of the server if they are available. If your server doesn't have a properly configured Sendmail service, PHP cannot send mail. For more info on ensuring PHP has access to Sendmail, see http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php -- Kainaw^(what?) 17:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Force a file to play with a specific media player

Is there any way to make an mp3 open with, say, Quicktime Player? I mean, if you set Windows Media Player so that it's file types includes mp3, when you click on a link to an mp3 on the internet, WMP opens and plays the file. If Quicktime is set to play mp3s, when you click the same link, Quicktime opens and plays the file. When making a web page, how can you force a specific program to play the file using the link in the HTML?69.205.180.123 15:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I think your best bet would be to have an inbrowser based player that manages the file. Like Myspace has its own player. If you leave it as .mp3 or whatever then I suspect the individual's file-extension preferencing will take over anything you input into the code. ny156uk 16:48, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

For obvious reasons (not every user will have certain media players installed, not to mention different browsers and operating systems), there can be no portable way of doing this. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 17:16, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

If you stream the file with a MIME type header (as shown in the example above), you can often specify what type of player you'd like to open the file. The host browser doesn't have to listen to that, though — you can't force a user to use a file in exactly the way you want them to (don't be such a fascist!).

Anyway, using the example above, instead of Content-type: application/x-download, you could use Content-type: video/quicktime or Content-type: video/x-ms-wmv to try and recognize it as QuickTime or WMP files, respectively. But again, the user has control over what programs the browser uses to open files (on my Mac, WMV is always opened in QuickTime player because that's all I have which can watch them), so all you're doing here is trying to be more specific than generic filenames (specifying proprietary video formats). (I don't even know if the above will totally work, since they are specifically video formats, but that's what I would try.) --140.247.238.85 18:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, there are two problems with that. Firstly: many servers already do that by basing the MIME type off the file extension (I know Apache does: I just used its list when writing a minimalist web server for a specific purpose); secondly: Internet Explorer (currently IE6 and IE7 alone make up about 60% of the market, as far as I'm aware) completely ignores the MIME type sent in the headers of the server's response (which is daft) and tries (and sometimes fails) to interpret it itself. Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 18:51, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Bustin' outta my iframe (javascript question)

I have an HTML file which has an <iframe> object in it. From the iframe source, I want to create a DIV element on the parent page (that is, the HTML page with the iframe in it). I would have assumed that it would be something like window.document.parent but that doesn't seem to work. Suggestions? How to I reference the page which calls the iframe?

(Pretend the parent file is "parentFile.html", and it contains an iframe whose src tag is "sourceFile.html". I want to use some Javascript in sourceFile.html to create a DIV in parentFile.html.)

(Why would I want to do such a thing, you ask? Because I have the ability to edit content inside an iframe but I don't have the ability to edit the parent page calling it. Sound foolish? I agree. But it's not up to me on this one, I'm stuck with an existing interface.)

Thanks! --140.247.238.85 17:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think I got it: window.top.document gets me access to the top window's Document object. Hurrah! --140.247.238.85 18:16, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Also I think you could use window.parent.document. And be careful, firefox at least is crippled by myriad anti-XSS restrictions on javascript across frames or windows. --froth^t 16:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

August 9

Old Hard Drive Blues: need help.

Hey - So just for kicks, I'm trying to install a second internal drive into a 2000-built Gateway desktop. I finally have figured out how to get everything connected - but now the FIRST internal drive, the one that was in the computer in the first place, isn't working. In fact, it isn't responding at all - when I boot up the system from CD (and manage to get the DOS prompt), every time I try to queue the C:\ drive, I get a "General Failure Error Reading Drive C:\." So is there any hope here? Is there any chance at all the drive isn't completely fragged? Any advice anyone can give me? Thanks. Brasswatchman 00:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you set the additional drive links for slave operation? And have you gone into the computer bios to set it for 2 drives?--SpectrumAnalyser 01:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe so. The second drive was salvaged from another system, where it was already a slave drive. And the BIOS seemed to recognize it as such from the moment I installed it. Maybe I need to change the jumper setting on the master drive? Is that generally required in these situations? --Brasswatchman 01:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Check the links on both drives. One should be set for master, the other for slave. (Do not set for cable select, just to be safe). If you know the drive manf and the model no, you can look on their website for the link settings. Failing that, disconnect the new drive and reset the bios and see if your old drive still works.--SpectrumAnalyser 01:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Did all of the above. When it still wouldn't boot, I took your advice, disconnected the new drive, and tried it again. And guess what - a new and exciting error message that hadn't been there before:

ERROR | Expansion ROM not initialized - PCI Mass Storage Controller in slot 03 | Bus:00, Device:0F, Function:00

What do you think that means? No luck on the Gateway support site. --Brasswatchman 02:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

In addition - thank you very much for your help. Didn't mean to sound rude in my last post, if I did; I'm just a wee bit frustrated at the moment. :) --Brasswatchman 02:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Never seen that massage (maybe specific to Gateway computers) Message seems to say that your HDD controller is not working. It may be that in your 'experiments', you have disturbed the seating of one of the plug in boards (or maybe the RAM modules). Make sure all daughter boards are firmly seated esp the one in slot 3!(remove and reinsert). If this dont fix it, it sounds like a new HDD controller board job.--SpectrumAnalyser 14:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Cannot get internet

There are two computers on my network. One gets internet, the other doesnt. The one that doesnt clames that the network adapters are on and connected. This is what I get when i tell it to repair the network. When I run the diagnostics, I get this. Thanks for your help, the parentals are getting pretty ticked because its the family comp that wont work.

Thanks --Omnipotence407 02:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

What kind of home network do you have? Is it one of those home routers? It appears that the one that doesn't work is expecting DHCP and not getting it. -- Kainaw^(what?) 02:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Im afraid I dont follow. As far as im concerned, its cat5 wire hooked to a Linksys Router. --Omnipotence407 02:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

So, you have a Linksys router for your network. Assuming that it hasn't been messed with, is still in DHCP mode, and is working properly, have you checked the network cables. It appears that the computer that does not work is expecting DHCP and not getting it. In other words, the computer that is not working is turning on the network card, screaming out "Hello! Is there anybody out there?", and not hearing anything coming back. What it expects to hear is the router saying "Well hello there! You're cute. I think I'll call you 192.168.1.112. If you need anything off the Internet, just ask and I'll fetch it for you." -- Kainaw^(what?) 03:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

You might try Wikihow.com - Pharrar 08:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

More like: "You will be named 192.168.1.112. If you hear me ask of you and your friends 'ok whos 192.168.1.112' you must reply with your hardware address so that I can make a connection for you. If you need anything you can reach me at 192.168.1.1. I'll be your gateway and DNS server. Have a nice day" --froth^t 16:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

None of the above has really offered any suggestions on how to fix it. Is there a solution? --Omnipotence407 23:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The message "failed to query TCP/IP settings of the connection" sounds like you need to check the TCP/IP settings of your connection. Right-click on the Local Area Connection icon and click Properties. Make sure Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is checked, then highlight it and click the Properties button. Make sure it's set to obtain an IP address automatically and obtain a DNS address automatically.

If that doesn't work, a brief search for the error message turns up mentions of reinstalling TCP/IP or using System Restore to get things working again. This page says "if you are using XP you do not have the option to uninstall TCP/IP so you have to reset it from command prompt: netsh int ip reset."

--Bavi H 04:59, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I just tested on my sister's Windows XP computer. I was able to re-create the error message by unchecking Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then trying to Repair, so I'm pretty sure the solution involves checking that box to get it working. --Bavi H 05:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it turns out htat the computer had been flagged by the office, as the account had never been set up, only installed. So we got a little over a week of free internet. Thanks for all your help Omnipotence407 21:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Error Message

I am getting this error message every couple minutes. I have run CCleaner and that hasn't worked. What can I do to stop this pestilence. (I'm sorry, but its running ME) --Omnipotence407 02:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Running any app that's trying to access that file? And I would suggest a switch to a Linux distro :P. Splintercellguy 03:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I dont know. Anything besides linux? --Omnipotence407 23:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Open the file in Notepad or edit or something, it MUST start with a string of text that identifies it as a registry file. If it doesn't have that, Regedit will refuse to have anything to do with it. 68.39.174.238 02:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

So should I add that string of text? What would it be? Thanks --Omnipotence407 11:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Heres the file. Do I even need it? I dont have McAfee. [User:Omnipotence407|Omnipotence407]] 14:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

That's no Registry file, that's a website (Rename it to "common.html" and open it in a browser)! Anyway, for some reason something's trying to add that to the registry. I would check your list of running programs. 68.39.174.238 17:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

What's the secret?

Hello. Inkjet refill stores can always successfully refill my cartridges. However, when I try refilling my cartridges with self inkjet refill kits, I am not so fortunate. What is the inkjet refill store's secret? --Mayfare 02:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe they're really good at it? --froth^t 16:16, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a wild guess, but maybe they use a vacuum system to distribute the ink better? At home, all you can do is add the ink slooooowly. --Mdwyer 16:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Mac OS X backup

Does anyone know of any software utilities (preferably free) that backs up all the files on the computer that differ from the default when installed? I'm thinking of reinstalling the OS (because my computer is going really slow (i.e. taking five seconds to minimize a window)). If anyone has any ideas on how to speed it up, those would be appreciated too.

I forgot to sign above, but I do want to confirm that I have Mac OS X Version 10.4.10. Abeg92contribs 12:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The easiest way to backup your files in OS X is to just copy the Users, Application, and Library folders to an external drive. I don't know of any software that can distinguish between originally install files or not.

As for the speed, how fast is the processor and how much RAM do you have? The easiest way to speed things up might be to just upgrade the RAM, but if the processor is too slow for 10.4 then that won't help much anyway. I would take a look at the Activity Monitor to figure out what is going on, personally — what programs are hogging the CPU time and the RAM? Should they be? --24.147.86.187 14:50, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

My processor is a 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5. It has 512 MB of RAM. I will check the Activity Monitor soon... Abeg92contribs 05:30, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Wiki

Hi

I want to set up a file sharing wiki for my class for studying from/getting information to study. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the options available. It needs to be easy to use, have a big data allowance and probably almost up to 50 members (and FREE). Any suggestions? Aaadddaaammm 03:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Click the "Powered by Mediawiki" button at the bottom of this page. Download and install Mediawiki. It is a Wiki and it allows you to upload/download files (even though Wikipedia is pretty much limited to images - Mediawiki can allow any file type). -- Kainaw^(what?) 03:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, but I was hoping for a wiki hosted by someone else. I don't want the hassle of setting it up too much - and don't want to leave my computer plugged in all the time. Any suggestions that fit this? Aaadddaaammm 04:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If you want a lot of file storage, you will have to host it yourself. Find a cheap beige box in the basement and install slackware --froth^t 16:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I had some reasonable success with pbwiki, though I haven't checked any of the alternatives. Anyway, they make it really easy to create a wiki, so you could see how it works. -- Creidieki 08:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be willing to host this for you on my website, if you need. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 20:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If you can trust everyone in your class not to be jerks (delete files, change the password) then make a gmail account and upload all the files as attachment as send them to the account. The give the username and password out to everyone. Jon513 19:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

necessity of Diffie-Hellman key exchange?

What's the point of all the math and stuff? Why don't the two parties just send each other their public keys in plaintext, use the other persons public key to encrypt outgoing data, and use your own private key to decrypt incoming data? Why do you need a "shared secret key" which sounds like a terrible idea compared to the staggering security of simple asymmetric cryptography? And why do they use g^b^a=g^a^b instead of g*a*b=g*b*a or g+a+b=g+a+b which are equally commutative?

Also in the example that shows what Eve knows, how is 's' hidden from her? Both (8^15 mod 23) and (19^6 mod 23) were sent to the other party.. that's the secret 's' completely out in the open twice.

Finally what exactly is the point of all this? I see that 's' is their shared key (presumably their data exchanges could be XORd with s or shifted s bits or some similar algorithm), but the article repeatedly claims that it's an asymmetric key exchange, with public and private keys... I don't see that at all --froth^t 03:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The point of this is that public/private key encryption/decryption takes longer to process than a simple key. For speed's sake, you agree on a shared key and use a fast form of encryption/decryption. Then, it is not an asymmetric exchange anymore since both sides have the same key. Why the powers functions? Because they work. It isn't simply because they are commutative. This gets into public-key encryption (RSA), not Diffie-Hellman. What it comes down to is that with mod there are an infinite possible set of answers. If I said "What number mod 5 gives you the answer 1?", you could answer, "1, or 6, or 11, or 16, or 21, or 26..." Now, if I said "What number times 5 gives you the answer 15?", you could answer "3". If I asked "What number divided by 5 gives you 3?", you could answer "15". See how commutative properties isn't the issue? Then, you can see that by passing the answer to the mod function isn't handing out the answer because there are so many possible answers. -- Kainaw^(what?) 03:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

This seems extremely vulnerable to a brute force attack, especially as g and p are known to eve. All she'd have to do is run through all the combinations of a and b. Firstly I don't see how this is such a theoretically difficult problem- if you have enough time or a fast enough guesser, it's cracked with just two runoff nested loops. And secondly I don't understand how cpu performace is that big of an issue here. The D-H exchange takes several hops back and forth across the network, and that's certainly more expensive in terms of time than just swapping precomputed public keys and using a bit more power to process data, which can be done afterwards anyway --froth^t 14:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

In real applications (as opposed to toy examples for illustrating the calculations), the parameters g and p are of such sizes that solving the discrete log problem by exhaustive search is infeasible (and, for that matter, the parameters sizes are chosen such that the solving problem remains infeasible even with the most efficient discrete log algorithms known). We're talking about sizes like 2048 bits in length. --64.236.170.228 15:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The key-exchange handshake only takes a few KB to complete, while the actual data exchange could be arbitrarily large, so for the common case of the data transfer size exceeding the handshake size, trading keys for symmetric encryption is a win over using the public-key crypto. --Sean 17:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

What does that matter? The actual data exchange is still the same size. So the symmetric handshake takes much longer, is less secure, but is somewhat less cpu-intensive to encrypt/decrypt. Asymmetric is a very simple quick handshake, is rock solid secure, and is somewhat more cpu intensive, but the network is still the bottleneck --froth^t 19:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

There are several reasons one may want to use the Diffie-Hellman protocol. One reason is to provide perfect forward secrecy. Another reason is that analogs of D-H can be implemented using groups other than ${\mathrm {\mathbf {Z} } }_{p}^{*}$ under modular multiplication. One example of an alternative choice of group is the points on an elliptic curve, under point addition. W.r.t. the best known algorithms, the analogous discrete log problem for some groups may have higher computational complexity, which can translates to practical efficiency (both in terms of computation & data size). --64.236.170.228 20:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Asymmetric encryption can be *thousands* of times slower than symmetric encryption, not just "somewhat" slower. The network can not be assumed to be the bottleneck: imagine an e-commerce site with thousands of concurrent encrypted connections. Using a technique 1000 times slower can be the difference between a request taking 100 milliseconds and 100 seconds. Sorry, but performance matters, and it always will. Systems that can't scale up and down tend to be uninteresting. --Sean 23:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Downloading Files on XP SP2

Is it possible to download files on WINXP with SP2 from sites such as rapidshare, as an object blocked message appears.59.92.244.178

You need to be far more specific. Of course you can download files on winxp sp2 from rapidshare. What program are you using and what exactally is the message.--Dacium 05:20, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Try using a non-Microsoft browser like Firefox if you are getting annoying security warnings that you can't seem to disable. --24.147.86.187 14:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Well the same seems to be happening with Firefox too.Its just that I cant download a file unless I get the direct link (which I can right click and select "save as")...~~

Java Programming:Bytecode

What is the difference between bytecode and machine code? I only know bytecode is produced by software and machine code is produced by hardware but what is the difference in the code produced? I have just started learning Java so it would be better if you explain this to me with reference to Java.

(Duplicate question on bytecode removed) -- SGBailey 05:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Bytecode runs on a virtual machine, machine code on a real machine. -- SGBailey 05:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Machine code is not "produced by hardware," it is produced by software, e.g. a compiler. As SGBailey says, it runs on "a real machine", aka hardware. For example, when a program written in C is compiled, the output is a file containing instructions that are processed directly by the CPU. When a Java program is compiled, the output is a file containing instructions that are processed by the virtual machine, which is just another program which has been written to translate the bytecode into machine code. This is why there are different Java packages for PCs, Macs, etc. Operating systems come into play also, since many of the Java functions will ultimately call OS specific libraries, so you'd have different Java implementations for a Windows PC versus a Linux PC. --LarryMac | Talk 14:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Java bytecode is just machine code for a processor which was only implemented in software at the time of its design. There is nothing to prevent hardware implementation of the same instruction set architecture. (I think at one point, Sun Microsystems actually had a Java chip that would execute Java bytecode natively.) On the other hand, machine code for real microprocessors can be executed on software emulators. --64.236.170.228 14:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

That's interesting- was it just a JVM implemented in hardware and attached to an existing chip, or could it actually natively run java bytecode? I thought java bytecode still had to be pretty heavily processed by the JVM before it's proper simple machine code, and that's why it's so slow.. --froth^t 20:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Not having studied the JVM specification, I don't know if there's anything in it that makes bytecode execution inherently slow. The slowness of bytecode execution on software JVM might be the result of simulating a foreign VM on architectures not well-suited for the task. Even for real microprocessors, machine-language instructions may be implemented by microcode. I'm not sure if Java bytecode instructions are worse (in that they require more low-level operations to implement) than the most complex instructions of modern microprocessors with CISC instruction sets. Transmeta's Crusoe processors apparently were able to implement the x86 instruction set quite efficiently. It seems, at least in theory, they should be able to implement Java bytecode efficiently too. --64.236.170.228 20:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Machine code consists of instructions fed directly into the processor. This is the computer's native language- things like "move what's in register A to register B" expressed by 'opcodes' that tell the processor what to do. These are typically very simple instructions like add subract multiply divide jump load compare, etc, that add up hopefully to something useful. You can program directly in machine code (or a step away in assembly language, which is machine code but with symbolic names and you can for example use the word JNE instead of 0102 0129 or whatever the opcode for jne is) but it's extremely difficult on full scale computer processors due to high complexity and the prefetch input queue which is usually taken care of by the compiler. Java bytecode is simply an arbitrary language similar to machine code that the Java Runtime Environment reads like a script and executes machine code corresponding to the 'script' it's reading. This makes java highly portable since to port a java program to another platform you don't need to recompile, you just need to have the bytecode read by a JRE written for your destination platform and it should run similarly. --froth^t 19:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Another problem with the Windows Movie Maker...

I am enjoying Windows Movie Maker, without any codecs checked. But there is a nother problem...when I drag down a picture to the timeline or storyboard, the SAME error comes up as the one with any codec checked, and this error appears for pictures with the codecs unchecked! How can I fix the problem?

Finding out library dependencies of a Windows application

Is there a way to find out, using freely available tools only, the library dependencies of a Windows application? (I'm trying to understand why the Windows version of an open source application does not work on one particular machine. The same application works correctly on most Windows machines but I've been unable to determine what library version and/or configuration differences might have caused the problem.)

Dependency Walker (depends.exe) Angus Lepper^{(T, C, D)} 14:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

help! lost data!

Hello, I have a memory card that has gone corrupt and I need some free ware means of getting it back. Thank you very mush and I appreciate all solutions... Lmc169 14:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried 'Drive Rescue' Its free ware and very powerful. Google it, download (1M), install and run! You can recover most files with it from any drive on your system.--SpectrumAnalyser 15:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.. i'll find it and try it Lmc169 15:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

memory cards are still that good old DOS FAT directory structure; all the same utilities that retrieve files on FAT hard drives and floppies work on them. (so i hear; haven't tried it myself)Gzuckier 16:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thats correct, but presumably Lmc doesnt have any of these tools?--SpectrumAnalyser 16:49, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Try TestDisk? Splintercellguy 17:20, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Wow. only expecting one response here. Thanks very much everyone but for teh moment Drive Rescue is doing it on albeit locking up its interface. When it does lock up though it still carries on working. ill try out the other methods. Thanks for putting an end to a very stressful day! Lmc169 19:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok thankls folks, ive so far secovered the stuff i need and want but teh pics are taking ages. and I want sleeeeeep. (Goodnight) Lmc169 20:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

PhotoRec would probably work better. --cesarb 00:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Isnt PhotoRec part of TestDisk already?--SpectrumAnalyser 00:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Need passive RFID locator system

My Dad is getting senile and loses things right and left. I got a regular key finder system but it was not satisfactory because each tag had a battery in it that quickly went dead. The problem is, once they go dead, you can't locate them to replace the battery ! So, I decided what would be ideal is a passive RFID system with dirt cheap, disposable tags and a base unit that can point to the direction and range to each selected tag. The cost of the base unit is less of an issue (although I probably need to buy a pair of those as he will no doubt lose one), but I'd like one under US$100 if I can find one. I've done some Internet searches but the only passive RFID systems I've found seem set up for large-scale businesses (like clothing retailers). Does anyone have a home system to recommend (or even one for a small warehouse) ? StuRat 18:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The only thing I know of is Loc8tor. Sorry Lmc169 19:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe they use active RFID tags, which still leaves me with the problem of the batteries in the tags going dead in short order. StuRat 20:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't the largest range you will find on a batter-less RFID tag is about 8 meters. There are no directional finding systems for this either as far as I know because it is assumed the distance is so small. Your best idea would be to find one that is solar powered or motion powered etc.--Dacium 00:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

8 meters sounds like more than enough for a portable locator, if he could take it from room to room and get a direction and distance when it's in the room. StuRat 07:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

What type of things is he losing? Just his keys? Why not try a low tech solution, like put a small decorative bowl in a strategic position in each room, tell him the ONLY place he is allowed to put his keys down is in one of the bowls, I know it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but if he makes a habbit of using the bowls for his keys, if he sticks to the rule, at most he'll only have to search a few bowls. Vespine 00:41, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I've tried that, and no, it doesn't work, he just drops whatever he is holding wherever he is at the time. He loses everything; his keys, wallet, medications, etc., on a daily basis. StuRat 07:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Another low-tech solution idea: attach a broad, bright-colored lanyard to his keychain. This gives it a long "tail" and makes it more difficult to "hide". --71.175.69.118 12:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

In the past we've found stuff down under couch cushions, under a pile of clothes, etc. His ability to bury things is amazing. Also, if he can't fit stuff in his pockets that would make it even more likely he would put it down and lose it. StuRat 14:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

(sorry, slightly off topic) My late grandmother suffered with alzheimers for many years. She lost many things including important documents and items of great sentimental value. We would often find them in the strangest places, hidden in the back of wardrobes or under the mattress for example, but she never had an explanation as to why she had put her things in such strange places. I always thought the best approach was to simply look for the things she had lost. If I found it, I would say "found it" with no further explanation or questioning as to why the gas bill was inside a pack of frozen food in the freezer. If I couldn't find it, I would suggest that perhaps I could come back another time to look for it again.

If we were unable to find something, it would either mysteriously show up some time later and she would deny ever having lost it, or she would accuse people (including family members) of breaking into her apartment and stealing it. I guess what I'm getting at here is you need to be aware that the condition is debilitating and can cause a great deal of stress and confusion for sufferers and family members alike.

90.240.111.20 03:03, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

But some of this stuff is of critical importance, like his insulin. He could die if we can't find it quickly, when his blood sugar spikes. My usual strategy of getting several backup copies of critical items, like keys, doesn't work here, as docs only prescribe small amounts of many meds, because they expire quickly (insulin) or can be abused (antibiotics) or resold for profit (epoetin). StuRat 14:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I guess nobody offers what I need. I did find a South African company named Trolley Scan [2], but they want some US$3000 to start and US$4.20 per tag. Also, each tag is too big (credit card size) and the locator seems to give output as text data that still needs to be put into graphics form by a user program. I guess I'll have to buy the crappy active RFID system and replace all the tag batteries once a month (at considerable expense) so they don't get a chance to go dead. StuRat 23:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Powermac G4 HDD Upgrade

I just purchased a powermac g4 dual 450. I have a larger 80gb drive that I would like to install into it and use it as the MAIN drive. (startup disk) The only problem is that no system disks were included. Is there anyway I can do this. Note: I can have both drives connected to the computer at the same time. BTW I am running 10.4.10

You can use Super Duper or Carbon Clone Copy to duplicate your startup drive to your other drive to make a bootable volume. --24.249.108.133 18:37, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Namespaces

I've made a wiki but I don't know how to create new namespaces. If it makes a difference I used EditThis.info to create my wiki.--WikiEarth 21:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

When I go to EditThis.info, I get nothing but a "Login required" error that never goes away, but I'm going to assume the idea is that they set up a MediaWiki for you.

Creating a new namespace requires changing things in a configuration file on the server, LocalSettings.php. Assuming that EditThis.info doesn't actually give you access to the server -- which I rather doubt a free service would do -- then you're stuck unless they've given you some other way to make a namespace over the Web. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 23:07, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

bots

i would like a person to show me how to make a bot. if you know anybody who can please tell me at my talk page. thanks. Smithcool 22:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Creating a bot is a good place to start. --h2g2bob (talk) 02:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

A Wikipedia bot? An IRC bot? A bot that plays first-person-shooter games? --Mdwyer 04:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Surely he means sexbot. Vespine 04:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

We have an article on that - fembot. Lanfear's Bane

August 10

Auto Network Config

We know that the process of pinging a particular address is quite long(~~5 sec).Any idea how WINXP auto configures a network IP address in a short time going through the entire range of addresses???59.92.244.243 03:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I might not be understanding your question, but I'm going to barge ahead, anyway. XP doesn't search an entire range when it picks out an IP address. It sends a message to a DHCP server that says, "Hi! I'm new! Can I have an address?" The DHCP has a range of addresses it is allowed to assign -- often less than 100, for a home network router -- and maintains a list of which machines belong to which addresses. It looks for a free address in its list, and sends it back to XP. "Here's your address! You're allowed to keep it for 24 hours, but you can renew your checkout anytime!" --Mdwyer 03:59, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Hm, as a little side question, why do home routers still utilize ARP when they have DHCP on every machine connected? --froth^t 13:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Because DHCP is responsible for IP level addressing, but doesn't have any ideas about MAC-level addressing. To get from computer 1 to computer 2 via ethernet (especially across a switch), you still need to know the ethernet address. ARP uses broadcast-ethernet packets to figure that out. --Mdwyer 00:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Well DHCP keeps track of what MAC addresses hold leases on what IP addresses, so why not just use that instead of a whole other protocol and separate list? I mean sure it would only work for home routers where the switch -is- the DHCP server but it would be more efficient --froth^t 03:47, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

It's possible to set computers plugged into the router to have static IP addresses in the same subnet. Since those computers never ask for an address via DHCP, the DHCP server doesn't know about them. --Bavi H 00:21, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The poster may be talking about Automatic Private IP Addressing (or link-local). These are IP addresses in the range 169.254.x.x that are assigned automatically when there is no DHCP server present. Wikipedia's article on link-local refers to RFC 3927, which seems to be a have details about how an (IPv4) address is assigned and ensured it is unique. -- Bavi H 04:11, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! I was wondering about that. If XP follows the RFC, then it uses a random number generator to pick an address within 169.254.1.0 to 169.254.254.255. There are something like 32,000 possible addresses, so the odds are really good that it will be able to pick an empty address on its first try. Then is sends out packets that say, "Anyone else using this address?" If nobody answers before a timeout, it gets to claim that address. --Mdwyer 04:19, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Invoking user-preferred file handler in Windows, programmatically

I want to be able to invoke whatever program the user has registered for a given file type (say, for AVI files, could be WinAmp, or then again something else). The long way I've found is: First look in the registry in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.avi to find the document type (say, "WinAmp.File"), then look in HKCR\WinAmp.File\CLSID to get the CLSID ({25336920-03f9-11cf-8fd0-00aa00686f13}), then look in HKCR\CLSID\{25336920-03f9-11cf-8fd0-00aa00686f13}\LocalServer32 (which, I now see, doesn't exist) to get the path to the application program.

Is there a more robust way? I'm kind of concerned that if the program happens to be installed on a network server, the LocalServer32 key is not going to exist. Perhaps there's just a direct Win32 API that does all the registry lookup for you and invokes the server? --Trovatore 08:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I think LocalServer32 is more to do with local services than anything to do with networks. BUT, I'm no expert here - I could be wrong. 90.240.111.20 02:28, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the AssocQueryString function has options to take a file name extension (like ".avi") and return the associated program name. --Bavi H 05:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

inverted screen

what should I do to revert back the inverted screen in my computer?

Try Ctrl-Alt-UpArrow. --LarryMac | Talk 14:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You, or someone else may have changed your Windows appearance or Theme. Right-click on the desktop, choose Properties from the popup list, and see if you reset the Theme and/or Appearance back to standard settings, such as Windows XP. --jjron 14:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

By "inverted" do you mean black is white and white is black? or do you mean the text is upside-down? The first could be to do with display themes/appearence settings, or maybe there's an electrical problem with the monitor or the VGA cable. The second could be that some joker has turned your screen over :-P 90.240.111.20 02:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

am trying to get this book so that i can read it offline

Byte of Python:Downloadable version. how do i download it in pdf format

The author says (here): "This version is much improved over the last publically released download. A downloadable version of this latest version will be made available soon (as soon as I figure out how to export a "book" from the MediaWiki pages)". So your choices are to wait until s/he figures out how to do that, or get an old version from here. --Sean 15:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Entering data into Microsoft Excel

I know this is probably not the place to ask this type of question, but you people have been very good at answering my questions in the past, so I wondered if you could help me here. I'm using Microsoft Office Excel (2003) to enter in the results of a questionnaire, one of the questions for which was "To which of the following age categories do you belong?" Available answers included 10-19, 20-29, 30-39 and 40-49 (plus <10 and 50+). Unfortunately, whenever I input "10-19" into Excel, it converts it into "Oct-19". It does this even if I include spacing ("10 - 19") and clicking "undo" deletes the lot. The really daft thing is, I'm working from the UK, where "10-19" doesn't even mean the nineteenth of October (that would be "19/10"). The help menus are no use, and it still converts it even when I switch off autocomplete. Is there any way I can input the data without it messing with it? It's driving me mad, so any help here would be much appreciated. RobbieG 12:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

(I don't have excel to hand, so this is from memory) - type an apostrophe (') before the 10-19 etc. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Perfect! That's some memory you've got there. Thanks for the help! RobbieG 12:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Or use Data Validation on the column (or relevant cells) and only allow entries from a list - then use your list as the source. --Worm 13:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Or select the relevant column, or appropriate cells, from the menus choose Format>Cells..., in the dialogue box go to the Number tab and under the Category select Text. --jjron 14:36, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

This is one of the known risks of using Excel; see Excel garbles microarray experiment data, for instance. --cesarb 11:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Virtual Hard Disks (vhd)

Can virtual hard disks, like those used with Microsoft Virtual PC, be mounted on a normal operating system so that they act like another hard drive (ie, accessable from Windows Explorer etc)? Think outside the box 13:31, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be a program included in MSVPC called VHDMount which does this - see this blog for details and issues. And this page describes how to install VHDMount from the MSVPC installer without installing the whole MSVPC. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Finlay McWalter, I'll check it out Think outside the box 14:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Dreamhost - experiences?

Does anyone have experiences with the web hosting service Dreamhost? On features alone their hosting offerings look very competitive, but of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Reviews seem to be highly polarised; from those it's impossible to tell if the unfavourable (and generally badly spelled, I notice) reviews are from disgruntled cranks or if the (generally rather polished) good reviews are the work of people in their referrer program with something to gain. Does any regular wikipedian have direct experience of Dreamhost? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

PHP echo() problem

I'm trying to write a PHP page to save comments to a blog I'm setting up, and I can't get the PHP to echo a quotation mark (") correctly. I tried doing the backslash ignore (\") and the code doesn't generate an error, but it echoes the backslash as well as the quotation mark which prevents the html fron executing properly. (most browers probably won't know what to do with <td class=\"blog\"> Anyway, does anyone know how to solve this problem? 69.205.180.123 13:41, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

ok, nevermind. I realized what I was doing wrong. (grabbing the source code of my article page, and outputting it in the result. brilliant I know. Well we all have our days...... you do too. (you know you do)69.205.180.123 14:08, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Recognizing media player type/ html object backgrounds

Is there a way to detect what media player a user has turned on from a website? (using javascript/php/asp/etc.) I know it is possible to detect things about the user's computer (like screensize and browser type) using javascript. Just wondering if you could do the same with a media player.
Also, is there a way to set the background of an html <object> tag to something other than white? Is there a way to make it transparent? (I'd like the latter more than the former, but either is better than nothing.) 69.205.180.123 13:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

SIM Cards

If I have phone X, and if cellular provider Y does not sell or support phone X on their network, but I have a SIM card from cellular provider Y and place it inside of phone X, will phone X function on cellular provider Y's network? Is there any feature that will allow the SIM card to reject the phone it is placed inside of, barring it from the cellular network? I want to know if the miniOne (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/e7e48a137b144110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) iPhone clone from the People's Republic of China can or cannot be effectively banned from the US, due to IP reasons, through the third-party cellular providers. Thanks. - MSTCrow 15:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Assuming that the phone meets the GSM specs and is not locked to a specific carrier (which is common with many phones sold under contract by US carriers), then you should be able to use it on the cellular provider's network. There's been some discussion surrounding the current bandwidth auction (the frequencies being freed up by the transition to digital TV) about whether to require that providers support any device that follows specs on their networks in that bandwidth. Not sure what the US law is currently on cell phone providers, but I've never heard of them going through the trouble (or having the capacity) to restrict access beyond what they do through locking phones. Donald Hosek 17:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

In theory, it could be banned, not by the SIM card but by the network itself, since it knows the phone's IMEI (which also identifies the model). In practice, I think nobody ever does that (other than banning specific phones as stolen). --cesarb 11:08, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

One-page web photo galleries

Does anyone know of a code that allows a photo gallery to appear on one, narrow page of a website? I'm not looking for those full-fledged gallery software things, just some simple html/CSS/java to do the trick, like this or this. I've tried both code on my site, neither works. -- Zanimum 15:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

You can easily do it all with HTML alone, as long as you don't want thumbnails that expand to full-sized pics. (Actually, you can sort of do that by having thumbnails at the top, with links to full sized pics down below, but that still means the page takes a long time to load on slow networks. The more common way to do this with HTML alone would be to have the top page have thumbnails only, and have a subpage with each full sized pic, which are each linked to the corresponding thumbnail on the top page.) StuRat 11:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

second-level domain traffic counting

I just noticed that our article Microsoft Office Online is out of date; its traffic statistics are three years old, and I wanted to update them. However, I'm not able to find any (free) statistics that list second-level domains. What would be a good source we can cite? — Sebastian 16:02, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I question the legitimacy of the original statistics, since there's nothing there that says where THEY came from. 68.39.174.238 17:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

GlovePIE sensitivity

I have a Wiimote hooked up to my computer, and I'm using GlovePIE. The motion controls are fine on the desktop, but when I start up Halo PC, the aim is super sensitive, even though the one in controls is set on minimum. Is there a script command to reduce the Wiimote's sensitively? 67.169.185.206 19:23, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

round-robin program.

Let's say I'm having a really long round-robin tournament with almost 150 competitors. I need a program where I can select the winner of each game and the program will automatically calculate the number of wins for each competitor. These games have no points, only wins are counted. I don't need a whole scheduler. Furthermore, the list of competitors is in MSExcel. Is there a program that will allow me to import this data? Does anybody know of anything like this? Thanks in advance. - Zepheus <ゼィフィアス> 20:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I came up with one on the maths desk a while ago - that was very inefficient - don't recommend it. However if you look at Round-robin_tournament#Scheduling_algorithm you will see that the method is really simple - you barely need a computer - however I'm sure someone else can help more.87.102.74.130 21:04, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Under "File + Save As" you can select "Comma Seperated Values (CSV)" as "Save as type". This format is easily read by any number of program languages, including FORTRAN (my favorite). If you like, I could write you a standalone FORTRAN program to do what you wish, all I would need is a sample CSV file. StuRat 11:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Some experiments in Excel look promising, depending on what you wanted to do. You could for example create a grid 150 x 150, in this case at the top of the first 150 columns you would write each person's name (technically, just their unique number), and in the first colum you would again list each person from 1 - 150. So in the top cells you have "allen, ben, charlie" and on the left running down you've got "allen, ben, charlie". Obviously the first match is "allen vs allen" so you put a null. "ben vs ben" is also a null (null as in 'blank' not '0'. Now you will create a double-entry system, i.e. if Allen beats Charlie, in Allen's column you put a '1' and in Charlie's column you put a '0' (and yes you have to put it in the right row). Ultimately you put an autosum at the bottom of each column which will count the number of wins that the person has (wins are worth 1 and losses worth 0). The tricky thing of course is your data entry, because at the end of every round you have to enter in approximately 150 results (because of the double-entry). With some Excel mastery you could maybe get it to do the double-entry for you, thereby halving the end-of-round data entry to 75.

Speaking of doing this programatically, if you only need to count wins, then excel really is probably the way to go, and simply tally the wins and losses of each player (the "losses" is only as a checksum for integrity purposes, i.e. at the end of the game you should have an equal number of losses and wins (draws excepteD). Programatically to "count" the number of wins is actually very simple, so its unlikely someone's made a program that only calculates the wins of each competitor.

Programatically this would be one way of looking it (you may consider Microsoft Access as an option

Simply create a database table with 4 fields (columns) namely: "UNIQUE PLAYER #" + "NAME" + "WINS" + "LOSSES"

Then the program would ask you who played who, and which player won, and then amend the data for you.

It could then very easily have a feature that would tell you who had the most wins.

This doesn't however help you schedule - there's an entirely different solution for that

Having said all this, it still remain unfeasible to specifically write a program for this (scheduling aside), because you can literally do it on pen and paper with a tally. The scheduling aspect would be a lovely challenge - imagine just being able to push a button and it will print out who is versing who! It's all doable. Let me know if you're desperate and I can look at writing something for you. Are you perhaps imagining more than one point of data-entry (maybe for time purposes, at the end of the round you'll have 2-3 attendants entering in who won?) Rfwoolf 21:13, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

"Add to cart" button for wikipedia

Is there any way (using a script or something) I can have an "Add to cart" button on wikipedia, so that I can keep putting into a cart articles I want to read but do not have time to read right now. Technically, it would be something similar to the "watch" feature, but I really want a separate list for articles I want to "watch" and for articles I plan to "read". deeptrivia (talk) 23:27, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I use my browser to bookmark articles I want to come back to. --Mdwyer 00:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Another way would be to create a new Wikipedia screen name and add any articles you wish to read to that screen name's watch list. StuRat 11:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess I'll try Google Bookmarks. deeptrivia (talk) 16:34, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

August 11

Playing 3D games in PC

hello friends and technicians....I need your overall suggestion for buying a proper graphics card for my PC. I will explain you my doubts...I once had a celeron processor 2 GHz hosting on a mercury 845 model VIA chipset based motherboard(low end) and with memory upto 384MB and with NVIDIA 128MB Geforce MX 4000 AGP card. With this configuration I was able to play almost many 3 D games like NFS underground 2 with almost 80%(800x600) graphics under windows 2000 and about 50% under windows xp. Simiarly I was able to play other few games of that sort too..Recently I sold that for a lower price since it was not upgraable. Now in the past week I bought a new configuration.It has Pentium D 3.0GHz residing on Intel 965RY Motherboard with 1 GB RAM. I thought the system wouyld be excelleent for gaming since it has INtel GMAX3000 which can have shared memory range upto 256 MB.Since it has 4 MB cache in CPU and its a dual core I thought it would outperform in playing most of the games..But what the unfortunate thing was that this new system could not do any better when compared to my older pc mentined in the 1st line. I don't understand why is this..I played many games and checked its performance...I finally concluded that both pcs are just doing the same thing.No improvements..I now feel like that my pc is not perfect for playing good high end games with good graphics...What would be your suggestion?..Is there any way that I can upgrade by buying high end graphics card like 8600GT or so. OR do I gotta change my pc again?....Can anybody tell me what kind of graphics card will my pc can drive with maximum load?...For eg, my older pc was not able to drive MX 4000 card 100%.I don't want the same condition happening again for this model too.I want to know the proper card for this..Plz give me a proper guide.Expecting your suggestions...Thanks for your time with me in advance...

I thought the system wouyld be excelleent for gaming since it has INtel GMAX3000 which can have shared memory range upto 256 MB. there's your problem. Get a real graphics card. Integrated cards suck. If you're serious about gaming, an 8600GTS from Newegg for around 200-300$ is going to be the most effective use of money with that computer --Lucid 01:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh really?....I can't believe that a 3D card can really change the way game plays completly.I looked at the onboard card's features(on intel site)and then only purchased..I even thought I should have purchased extreme edition Motherboard(975)series and core 2 duo CPU for gaming.Never thought of graphics card :-) ..So buying a PCI express card is my solution!...I hope both PCI 1x and PCI 16X are the same, aren't thay?..Mine has two provisions too...I will check out soon...Thanks really

Uh, no, PCIe 1x and 16x are completely different. 16x is what any decent graphics card will be nowadays, 1x is going to be crappy budget cards. --Lucid 01:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Ghost File Win98

Hi! How can I make a Ghost File WIN98?Plz Help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs).

[3] might help. Googling would have saved you the trouble. Splintercellguy 22:26, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

JavaScript archiving function

I'm interested in creating an auto-archiving function for my talk page, that includes not only the "[edit]" link, but another link ("[archive]"), and using autosave functions (&autoclick=wpSave, etc) to add the section to one of my archives. I've started a little something in my userspace, autoarchive.js, but I'm not too sure where to go from there, and what I have done is correct, or could be done a better way. All help is appreciated. Kind regards, –sebi 02:54, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Nokia 6680 help

Hi....! i am asking a question about mobile phone. i have Nokia 6680 which cant display the main menu.i am using Telenor SIM but when the sim is removed it works well.plz help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs).

Wireless Router loosing signal

I have a Netgear router and it is about half way across the house from my room where I have my laptop. Before the signal strenth to my laptop was always either Very Good, or Excellent. And also the speed was always at 54.0Mbps. However it started about three months ago where I started having signal strenth problems with my router. Now the signal strenth of the router has a mind of it's own. One minute it goes from Very Good to very low and the Mbps goes to like 54.0Mbps to like 11.0Mbps. My router has a problem of some sort. Why is this happening? And I know for a fact that it is not the wall problem because remember I said before it never had the signal strenth problem. So what is the deal here? It would be very appreciated if someone could give me the correct information. Thank you Bond Extreme 03:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Someone nearby could have a device that may be interfering with your router, for example, another conflicting router in a neighbours house, a newly built moblie phone base station nearby, etc. Wireless devices use normal radio frequencies, so the same tricks you'd use to get a better signal on an analogue radio will work for them too (lifting it higher, trying different positions, tin foil, etc) Think outside the box 10:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I do know that one of our neighbours does have a router running close to our house. Would that be the problem? How do I resolve this?17:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe your neighbour is having similar problems. Have a chat over the garden fence and see if you can both experiment a bit - moving the equipment around to improve the signal in both houses. Astronaut 01:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

You could also try running a "sniffer" like Network Stumbler http://www.netstumbler.com/ and look to see if any other wireless networks are on the same channel as yours. If there are, try changing channels up or down by 3. --Blowdart 17:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Non-animated animations

My computer has never really displayed an animation. That is, stuff like GIF animations. I can't for the life of me think of the problem...browser? Firefox. RAM? Approximately 2GB. OS? XP. Anybody have any suggestions?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 03:12, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

In Firefox, the way image animation is handled is configurable. See [4] for the details. (Sounds like you have the parameter set to "none" in your browser.) --71.175.69.118 04:06, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, still nothing. It is set to "Normal," but nothing has changed. In fact, it was set to "Normal" to begin with!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 05:03, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Some firewalls and adblockers have options to block animated GIFs, by removing their animation. Got anything like that running? Check their options. — Kieff | Talk 05:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

All I've got is the infinitely ambiguous EZ Firewall. Didn't see anything about GIFs.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 02:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Try viewing a page with animated GIF using an alternative browser on the same machine to see if the problem is specific to Firefox. --71.175.69.118 11:45, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

IE didn't reveal anything...--The Ninth Bright Shiner 19:41, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Clock difference in Pentiumdual core Vs Core 2 duo

Hi friends, I have a query that if a Pentium D running at 3 GHz can outperform a pentium core 2 duo at 2 GHz?...The key point is that this pentium D has 4 MB cache where as the core2duo has only 2 MB L2 cache...Both are 800 MHz bus speed....what makes these two processors unique and which among these two beat the crowd?..anyone knows?....

Core 2 duo will outperform the pentium D (as long as you can take advantage of both cores I think) - the Pentium D's are cheaper though (if you can still get them)..87.102.5.144 10:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Though as you've probably guessed the situation could be reversed, for instance if the program is very large ie more than 2MB.

Someone else could probably give you more info on what advantages a Pentium D has over the Core 2 Duo in terms of instruction pipeline length etc.

Unless you can produce empirical evidence to show that at the same price, a Pentium D will overall outperform a Core 2 Duo, please don't make uncited assertions that contradicts most benchmarks out in the wild. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:14, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

?I didn't - I said the opposite??87.102.1.234 10:15, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Dual-ported RAM re-ask

1. Are there more articles about multiply ported memory here (I couldn't find them)?

2. Does anyone know of RAM with more than 4 'ports' currently in use - if so what/where/when?

3. Have we got an article on quad ported ram under another name? Thanks.87.102.35.197 11:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Please don't re-ask so quickly. Anyway, it looks like our coverage of that subject is very limited, so probably "no" to the 1st and 3rd questions although you can try Googlewhacking to see for sure. 68.39.174.238 13:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

HTML <object> backgrounds

Is there any way to set what color/image/transparent is the background to an HTML <object>?

I'm trying to write a webpage with some embedded audio and video on it. The video shows up fine because both Quicktime and Windows Media Player are about the same size, but when I try the audio, Quicktime is 15 pixels tall and WMP is 45 pixels. If I make the object 15 pixels tall, the WMP looks really wierd and there's no way to control the audio flow except for stop/start. If I make the object 45 pixels tall, WMP looks great, but QT has white rectangles above and below it. (My page's background is kind of a green fading into blue from top-left to bottom-right. A white splotch looks just great on that.....)

Anyway, if there's no way to set the background of an HTML <object> tag, does anyone know how to make an "in-house" player like on youtube or myspace? Thanks. 69.205.180.123 14:30, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

YouTube and MySpace players are just done using Flash. They are easy to make, generally speaking because the Professional versions of Flash (which you can demo for 30 days without paying for) come with pre-fab media players that you just need to customize. --24.147.86.187 16:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

As for the question about the <object> -- have you tried giving it a CSS class and then setting the class background to transparent? That is what I would try... --24.147.86.187 16:24, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Not sure but try the <span> tag which has a background colour thing - it technically highlights whatever is between the span tags, so its great for a 'highlight' effect on text - yet its entirely different to a 'background' which normally refers to table cells (and your actual webpage). Google it for the syntax, maybe say "HTML" + "Span" + "highlight" Rfwoolf 20:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

No, <span> tags are only for inline elements, not block elements. You can try setting <object style="background: transparent" ...> but it is likely that the white blotch is from Quicktime itself, not knowing what to do with the extra space. Also, it is much better practise to embed sound using Flash to ensure consistent controls and not needing to load yet another plugin. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Page Loading Speed

I recently upped my watchlist count by a considerable amount to over 370 pages. Since then, whenever I try to load a page it takes much longer than it did before I watched all those extra pages. Is there anything I can do to sort it out? (I doubt this will make a difference but I use the latest version of Safari). I originally brought this to the Help desk but was directed to the reference desk and this seemed most appropriate. Thanks asyndeton 19:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

370 is not a large watchlist, and there's no reason that should impinge on performance. Those with very large watchlists might experience some slowdown when actually viewing their watchlist page, but not otherwise. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:37, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

CPU designation according to windows

Apparently only the business and ultimate versions of Windows Vista are compatible with more than one "physical CPU". I intend to install windows vista on a Mac Pro dual processor dual core xeon machine. Within the framework of windows vista, does this constitute one, two, or four physical CPUs? Basically, if I install one of the more basic systems only capable of utilizing one physical CPU, will it be capable of using the full processing power of the computer, or only a fraction thereof? Tuckerekcut 22:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The key is the phrase "physical CPUs". A dual core processor is a single physical CPU and so any version of Vista will make full use of a single dual core processor. Your mac pro is a dual processor, two physical CPUs, and thus the lower SKUs of Vista (Home Premium and lower) will only make use of one of those (although it will make use of both cores on it). Even before dual core processors were release Microsoft stated [5] that all cores would be utilised and they would be treated as a single CPU. --Blowdart 15:55, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

August 12

Quintuply Hypnotized

Trying to get some live iTunes support is so hard...anyway, I was tinkering with titles and stuff, when I noticed my numerous System of a Down titles. Most were labeled "System of a Down," but some were labeled "System Of A Down." I tried editing all of the songs at once to have a lowercase "of" and "a," but something really strange happened. In the Cover Flow display, there are five Hypnotizes. I can't figure out why it multiplied, or what's keeping them from rejoining. Any suggestions?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 02:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I suggest EasyTag for tagging your music. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:08, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps trailing spaces? What happens if you delete the album title from all those songs, then replace it? What if you replace it with something other than "Hypnotize"? Tesseran 19:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Woo-hoo! I deleted the Album name and Artist name for all the songs, then put them back in. All sorted out! Thanks a bundle!--The Ninth Bright Shiner 19:46, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Types of processors

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROCESSORS???WHAT IS A DUAL CORE AND A QUAD CORE PROCESSOR

At the top left of this page there is a "search" box. Type CPU into it and press "Go". Also try searching for dual core and processor. Lots of information there! The blue words are links that you can click to find out more about related concepts. Weregerbil 08:06, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Pseudocodes, DFDs and Flowchart

Guys, its ADIDS.

Well i have another problem.

My Computer Studies teacher can't give detailed diagrams for how DFDs work and more and more diagrams for it. I dont also have flowchart examples. I am just doing my O levels so all I want is a non technical examples. Can any one post a link here for me?

PSEUDOCODES

Well. I had a problem writing a pseudocode/algorithm (formal) for i)finding out the avg,highest,lowest no.s from a set. ii) using various loop constructs (like for-next, loop-until,while-do,etc)

Can any one find me a review about such pseudocodes.

Wikipedia gives a much more difficult technical overview on such topics. SO HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!

ADIDS

There are plenty of examples on the net for a lot of these, and the ones on Wikipedia I think are actually pretty good. Take the [[while loop]] for example:

x = 0;        // a variable 'x' is reset to 0;
while (x < 3) // "while x is less than 3..."
{             // "...do the following BEGINing of loop"
   x++;       // "increment x"
}             // "ENDing of loop"
// Note that the loop statement is run from left to right, top to bottom, until the loop conditions fail to be met.

See do while loop, while loop, for loop, foreach.

And of course google any of those. Rfwoolf 14:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Data flow diagrams simply show the "flow" of data through a computer system. So for a program to find the square of a number, you get the original number from a user, shove whatever value that is through a process which squares it, and send the result to the screen for output:

[ keyboard ] ------------------> { square value } -------------------> [ VDU ]
               input number                         squared number

I've used [...] and {...} in place of "external" and "process" icons. The icons used are not always the same - use whatever your teacher says. I'd say take a look at your text book or ask your teacher for help on this one.

The iteration page has some information on looping and even has some pseudocode. Pseudocode is a human-readable form of the steps you need to go through to complete your algorithm. There's no standard for pseudocode, so I'm guessing your teachers are more worried about the algorithm. Imagine you're doing the process yourself, then write down the steps you went through:

for each item
   check if it's the maximum so far and remember the number if it is

You should probably then write it more like a computer language if you like. The first line makes sure max_number has a value which can then be compared to item.

max_number = first item in list_of_items
foreach list_of_items as item
   if item > max_number set max_number = item

--h2g2bob (talk) 14:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

How can I protect my Laptop's Ac/Dc adapter?

I recently had to replace my ac/dc adapter. At first when I jiggled it, there would be a power connection but eventually it went completely black no matter how much I jiggled it. MY question is what are some ways I can protect the AC/Dc adapter and prevent this from happening again? --Gary123 14:04, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

This wouldn't be an IBM ThinkPad by any chance ? They seem to have a problem that the plug receptor isn't mounted properly to the laptop case, but instead is only mounted to the circuit board. Thus, whenever you plug and unplug the adapter you put stress on the weak solder connections on the board, which were never meant to take those kind of forces. To compensate for this bad design and/or defective manufacturing, I'd permanently leave it plugged in at that end, and just wrap the adapter's wires around the laptop to travel. Unfortunately, if this is the problem, replacing the adapter won't help. If you meant the problem is where the adapter plugs into the wall, then I see two possibilities here:

1) The plugs don't fit properly in the outlet. This could be the (electrical) fault of the outlet (the slots are too big and/or the springs which push the metal contacts against the plug prongs are worn out). Or, the prongs on the plug might be too small or improperly spaced or bent.

2) There is an internal electrical fault in the "wall wart", caused by a loose connection between the prongs and the wires.

If the fault is with the outlet, replace it. If the fault is with the plug, replace it. In this case it might be covered under the laptop's warrantee, if any. StuRat 14:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

If it's a thinkpad they'll fix it, period --froth^t 17:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

August 13

Fireworks Cs3 Transparency

Does anyone know how to change the color of the transparent background pattern in Fireworks? The white and light gray checkerboard pattern is difficult for me to use.