Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

September 26

Is it possible to transfer a hard drive to a new machine and still use it to boot?

A co-worker of mine is going to purchase a new PC, and has offered me his old one with everything minus the hard drives (a substantial upgrade from my current box). How difficult and what are the procedures for getting my hard drive (more specifically, my copy of XP) to boot the new machine? Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide. (Edit to say links to reputable guides on this sort of thing are just as good as answers and to remove redundant wording). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.222.160.8 (talk) 01:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I would expect it would be as simple as physically installing your hard drive in the new computer (most likely as the "primary master"). Do you know how to do that ? StuRat 01:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

That I can do. For some reason I was thinking it would be a more involved process. Thank you, StuRat. Also, I remember reading somewhere that XP uses a "ticket" system for hardware changes; something like each XP install gets x number of hardware changes before invalidating itself. Does anyone know of this? 161.222.160.8 02:40, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You know, I tried this once and it didn't work. Although the hard drive was running OEM windows, so I'm not sure if that was causing a problem. The OEM windows wouldn't install on the new machine either, so you might have different luck using if your XP was store bought or "free." As for the ticket thing, I've been told XP can tell if the motherboard type magically changed, and OEM versions self invalidate when this happens. Not sure if that's the really case, but...maybe. Someguy1221 02:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

WGA generates a hash based on your hardware configuration. If it changes enough to be considered by microsoft to be a different computer (this can be as little as upgrading your graphics card and memory, or just your motherboard) then you will be unable to run windows. The program phones home every week or so to make sure your installation is still "genuine." This is clearly spyware behavior, and you should not be subject to microsoft's arbitrary licensing restrictions if you've purchased the software. Our article on WGA says that microsoft is being prosecuted for this unreasonable behavior, but I doubt it'll amount to much seeing as how microsoft's already bought legislation to defend itself- DMCA. --froth^t 03:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... Now I have some pondering to do. Even if I purchase a new copy of XP I think it will still be cheaper than upgrading my current box (about the only part I want to keep is the case :)) Thank you all for taking time to answer my question. 161.222.160.8 04:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You can call Microsoft and re-activate your Windows over the phone. You need to tell them that it is because you upgraded your computer and that you still only have Windows installed on one computer. --131.215.166.122 04:24, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You will probably have to reinstall Windows XP and call Microsoft to get a new reactivation code. Should be no problem as long as you back up the data on your hard drive prior to reininstalling Windows. --Hdt83 ^Chat 04:27, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You'll almost certainly have to re-install Windows, and nothing to do with licensing reasons. Your Windows simply won't have the correct drivers installed to talk to the new hardware. Your basic hardware (motherboard, controllers) are detected on installation, when the built-in Windows drivers are installed to interface with them. You'll have to run the setup again to go through this detection and installation phase. It will probably give you a blue screen at boot-up. Zunaid©® 10:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

And yes, as you know you should remember to back up your data before attempting to reinstall --Click me! write to me 07:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)windows.

Game Maker 7.0 Pro

Does anybody have the registration key for Game Maker 7.0 Pro? --Dudforreal 06:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure they do, but I imagine sharing it here would be illegal, and Wikipedia does not encourage illegal activities. --jjron 09:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Check the interwebs. Wikipedia is located in the US (florida) so they have to have rules against posting content illegal in America.. which, because lobby groups have very deep pockets, includes license keys. Illegal number :o Ridiculous? yes. Illegal anyway? Unfortunately. We can't help you --froth^t 11:00, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Speed cameras

what category of technology would speed cameras fall into? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.23.231.70 (talk) 10:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

visual image capture, velocity measurement, digital image processing. Plus the various technologies involved in converting a number plate number into a letter saying "your car was detected as speeding"87.102.32.155 12:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

also 'traffic control technology','road safety technologies' .. could be any number of technologies - could you be more specific87.102.32.155 14:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

According to the road safety camera wikipedia page, Law enforcement equipment, Traffic law, Cameras by type, Applications of computer vision, Road transport, Street furniture and Speed cameras --h2g2bob (talk) 17:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by "speed camera", and it depends on how you categorize technology. -- Diletante 00:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Surveillance? --24.147.86.187 00:12, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Changing Keyboard Shortcuts

For work I have to use Windows 2000, and my job requires me to ALT-TAB through thousands of documents. I am starting to get RSI and I want to know if there's a way of reassigning the shortcuts so I can change it to something a bit easier to get to. Can this be done?

Thanks 195.60.20.81 12:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

What software are you using to view the documents ? If hitting the two keys simultaneously is the problem, perhaps you could use sticky keys. StuRat 15:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with StuRat. Just press [shift] key on your keyboard for some eight or nine times continuously to activate it. Let us know if that is not what you want. --Click me! write to me 07:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm not sure that will work. With Sticky Keys, the keys only stay down for one use before reverting. I need to use ALT TAB or CTRL F6 for hours at a time, and being able to change one or either of these shortcuts to something a bit easier (or even to rotate them so I'm not wearing out the same muscles/keys) would be really handy. 195.60.20.81 10:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

A keyboard macro program such as AutoHotkey will let you redefine practically anything to mean practically anything. It does require a basic level of programming skill, but it's almost certainly worth the investment in a case like yours. (The investment of learning time, I mean; the software is free.) -- BenRG 11:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

computing

--~about online leave management system,how to use it,its benefit to a company. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kathambi (talk • contribs) 15:07, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

1) People could request leaves online, without disturbing their supervisor.

2) A computer program can figure out if too many people are requesting leave simultaneously, such that the company will be shorthanded, and request that applicants for those leaves reschedule. If they refuse, the supervisors can be notified to make the decision about who will have their leave denied or if other actions, like hiring temps, are needed to provide adequate coverage.

3) Recording who has taken how much of their allocated leave becomes a simple matter. Those who fail to request leave before it expires can be notified in advance. This can avoid angering employees who later find out their leave has expired. StuRat 15:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Karioke Track

Hello! Is there any free software, like Audacity, that can remove the vocals from an MP3 file to produce a karioke (pardon my spelling) track? Thanks!--El aprendelenguas 15:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The only way to remove the vocals properly would be if they were on a separate track to begin with. I don't think the MP3 format gives you this, you only have the final mix. I suppose some software could try to recognize the human voice and remove it, but I'd be rather skeptical about this process working very well. StuRat 17:37, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Typically, music is engineered so that the lyrics are centered in the stereo stage, while all the backup sounds are spread across the stage. So, if you take the left channel, invert it, and sum it with the right channel, the identical things (lyrics) will cancel out, leaving just the differences between the two channels. This, honestly, doesn't work very well, though. You generally end up with a mono file with lessened lyrics and a really bizarre equalization. Some software -- Goldwave comes to mind -- has an automated lyric removal filter that will do this operation for you. --Mdwyer 21:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I tried it with GoldWave on Take Me Out (song) and uploaded the results. It's a little squealy at the beginning when there aren't even any vocals but it's still impressive. --froth^t 09:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow. That was really impressive. I'd never gotten it to work that well! --Mdwyer 01:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I know that XMMS has a voice-removal plugin. Sometimes it works ok, sometimes.... not so much. -- Diletante 00:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Audacity has a voice-removal plugin that basically automates the splitting, reversing, and remerging. In general, tracks with a lot of echo and/or special effects don't de-lyric nicely. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=editing&i=remove-vocals might help. Kuronue | Talk 04:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

ASP.NET and Linux

I have to write ASP.NET code on Windows for my job. Back at home, my computer is 100% Linux-only. My current distro, Fedora 7, comes with Mono pre-installed. Does this mean I could just take my ASP.NET code from work and have it work on my home Linux system as well? (Minus the Windows domain authentication of course.) JIP | Talk 18:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I am assuming that you are developing ASP web pages. You will want to see Apache::ASP for running ASP pages on Apache (on Linux). -- kainaw™ 18:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You assume correctly. From what I gather, ASP.NET web pages are just like JSP pages, only you don't have to code the HTML controls yourself. I'm glad this is supported on Linux as well, ASP.NET looks like too good a technology to waste on BillOS only. As for the Windows-only features, like the Windows domain authentication, I can live without them. JIP | Talk 19:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

If by good you mean bloated, slow, cumbersome to write for, and completely inappropriate to the inherent statelessness of the web page, then I'd have to agree with you --froth^t 09:04, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

NTFC (NTFS?)

my computer uses FAT32 can I put NTFC software on its drive? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.176.109.201 (talk) 21:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean NTFS? Software generally doesn't care which filesystem you use. However, if the software requires the enhanced security of NTFS (permissions, etc) then, it might not work well under FAT32. --Mdwyer 21:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be confused. NTFS is essentially the same sort of thing as FAT32, they're both filesystems, you can have either one on your hard disk, but not both at the same time (technicalities such as partitioning aside). Imagine a hard disk as a long list of ones and zeroes, you need some sort of system that tells you where a file begins and ends. This is what a file system. In order to use use NTFS on your drive, you will need to reformat it (which means emptying it, and reinstalling windows). The clearest advantages are safety (files will be easier to retrieve in the event of problems), security (user based permissions are possible) and size (you can have files larger than 2 gb, which isn't possible with FAT32). risk 22:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Someone's confused, but I don't think it's Mdwyer; perhaps you were referring to the original questioner? In any case, it's entirely possible to upgrade a disk from FAT32 to NTFS in place. For example, the WIN2K installer will do it for you if you wish.

Atlant 11:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You're right, I was resopnding to the original poster. I didn't know it was possible to convert disks to NTFS with data intact, though. risk 13:25, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Just a point in the case, popular distros of GNU/Linux may not support NTFS writing properly out of the box. I am not sure if it pertains to you,but just wanted you to know of the pitfalls. --Click me! write to me 07:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, last I knew (which may now be too long to be accurate), Mac OS X could read an NTFS disk but not write them; that is, they were mounted to the underlying Unix as read-only file systems.

Atlant 11:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Possibly not out of the box, but captivefs is very good at it if you just install it. Captive NTFS. Also NTFS-3G but that's not as good; only use it if you can't get your hands on NTFS.SYS (unlikely). --froth^t 17:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Atlant 18:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Under Windows 2000 and XP (and maybe Vista for all I know), the command-line argument CONVERT will change your FAT32 drive to an NTFS drive. I have done this. You don't need to do it unless you know of a reason to do it. The reason I did it was that NTFS has better file and folder permissions abilities than FAT32. Tempshill 19:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Two-nots problem

I'm stuck on solving the two-nots problem. Does anyone know of a solution somewhere on the internet? Or maybe you could just help me here; I have it down to a very specific question.

KNOWING:
A      A'     <--Important
B
C      C'     <--Important
A+B    A*B    <--Somewhat important
A+C    A*C    <--Somewhat important
B+C    B*C    <--Somewhat important
(A+C)' (A*C)' <--Possibly important

NOTING:
(A+C)' = A'*C' per de morgan's laws
(A*C)' = A'+C' per de morgan's laws

FIND:
B'

I am totally stuck- I'm reasonably sure this is where I need to be but as far as I can tell there's no solution for B' that doesn't involve additional inverters.

To find A' and C' I went a really crazy roundabout way.. I found (A+C)' and (A*C)' first. I noted that:

For A:
If (A+C)' is true then A must be 0
If (A+C)' is false then either A must be 1 or C must be 1 or both must be 1 so
 AC
 01
 10
 11
 A is only 0 when C is 1 and (A' OR C')
A' = (A+C)' + C(A'+C')

For C:
If (A+C)' is true then C must be 0
If (A+C)' is false then either A must be 1 or C must be 1 or both must be 1 so
 AC
 01
 10
 11
 C is only 0 when A is 1 and (A' OR C')
C' = (A+C)' + A(A'+C')

So completely unnecessary since I could have just inverted A and C in the first place and easily had (A+C)' and (A*C)', rather than inverting (A+C) and (A*C) and going backward to A' and C'. But I'm hoping that something similar can be done for B'.. it doesn't work though, there's no definite solution :( pls? --froth^t 22:17, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wireless Networks

What exactly is it that makes some wireless networks private, or security-enabled. And even if your network says it is security-enabled, how can you be sure that others don't tap into your network and view your pages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.200.184 (talk) 22:56, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wireless networks are generally made "private" by using some type of encryption. As to the second question, I guess, there really is no way to be completely and absolutely sure. Even the highest security can be cracked. The best you can do is to be "as sure as you can", to do that you just have to keep up with the contemporary best security practices. That's things like using the latest security available to you, using strong passwords for the key, enabling more then one security measure on your network, also pro active things like monitoring your network usage, keeping backups of critical data, etc. There are a LOT of things you can do to be "more" safe, just HOW safe you want to be is entirely up to you and your requirements. Many people have made careers out of consulting on this type of question. Vespine 23:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.200.184 (talk) 23:48, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that if you want real security, it's possible to only let certain MAC IDs on your network - that's what I had to do in my apartment building. Only my 3 computers and wii can connect to our router - it automatically refuses anything else (so they'd have to be a decent hacker to get in, rather than just an ordinary leech) Kuronue | Talk 04:30, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

MAC address access control is a great idea against active attacks (i.e. people trying to actually connect to your WAP). You also have to consider passive attacks (sniffing). This is when your data is simply "sniffed" out of the air without your knowledge. This is where encryption is most useful.

[WEP] is not secure. It be cracked in a matter of minutes by capturing encrypted frames and replaying them. This forces the router to broadcast ever more packets until you have sufficient packets to crack the key. I won't go into this in detail, but you're _much_ better off using [WPA2]. Wilymage

Credit card transaction processing

While tidying up credit card, I became rather curious how there can be multiple transaction processing networks, if any credit card number can be used to deposit money in any merchant account. Or is it that any merchant that advertises that they accept e.g. Visa, must be capable of using all of the networks that any Visa-affiliated card-issuing bank must use, and the various credit card associations have overlapping sets of networks that they require? Is there a canonical list of these networks which could be documented in Wikipedia somewhere? -- Beland 23:35, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Merchants get their card processing service from card processors; it is the card processors who need to be able to access the different networks. --71.175.68.224 12:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

That much was clear, but it's unclear how credit card numbers can work universally if there are multiple card processors whose systems are incompatible. -- Beland 15:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's, roughly, how things work. First there's the "acquirer"; that's the bank that owns the terminal in the shop (usually they're leased to the merchant). They, incidentally, don't make the terminal (sorry, the "POS equipment" or "EPOS equipment"): it's made by Bull or Ingenico or NCR, and implements a bunch of industry standards (the acquirer generally customises them a bit to suit their network, but it's 95% generic stuff). When you swipe your card in the store the terminal sends the transaction data off to the acquirer's system. That talks to the CCP (the credit card processor, which is AMEX or VISA or Mastercard or a few others). The CCP's system in turn talks to the issuer - that's the bank that issued the credit card (remember that Visa and Mastercard don't issue credit cards - they're issued by HBOS or HSBC or BoA or Santander etc.). If the issuer approves the transaction then the CCP relays that to the acquirer, and in turn to the terminal. [Slight complication: sometimes smaller transactions are approved by the acquirer or the CCP when connections are down or are congested: they take the risk that the transaction is kosher onto themselves, rather than decline all transactions and lose the business - the circumstances under which they do or don't do this are a closely-guarded secret, lest fraudsters exploit it]. The system all works mainly because everyone implements strict industry standards (issued by trade bodies like APACS and sometimes adopted as ISO standards) for the card encoding and for all the inter-company communications. It also works because there are relatively few CCPs and because the CCPs are incredibly strict about enforcing their standards onto issuers and acquirers. The near duopoly that Visa/Mastercharge enjoy in much of the world means that they can force issuers and acquirers to implement exactly what they want. And in turn payment systems manufacturers (those who build the terminals, make the cards, or make the backoffice equipment that does all this) build to the industry standard (with any Visa/MC wrinkles). It's been a while since I last worked on this stuff, but then (and surely now) the packet that the terminal sends to the acquirer was essentially the same for Visa, MC, AMEX and the inevitable wacky local guys. 217.42.190.82 01:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought that the acquirer does not actually contact "Visa" or "Mastercard", but a transaction processor, like First Data, Paymentech, Vital, etc. as listed in the reference I used for the credit card article. -- Beland 14:50, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

September 27

The little server that couldn't....

I just installed EasyPHP (that is, MySQL, PHP and Apache) to try to run a few silly web things. It works fine if I type in "localhost", but I wanted an address I could remember so I used No-IP.com to get one of those mysillylittleserver.no-ip.com but when I tried to connect to it nothing happened. Figuring that they might be slow to update their DNS database, I connected directly to my IP, but that didn't work either! Figuring that maybe my ISP is blocking port 80 (although I doubt it) I changed the port, still didn't work. Figuring that maybe the Windows firewall is cockblocking me (pardon my French) I turned that off (and btw, I did both of the last things at the same time, to make sure that not both were happening), and now that that doesn't work either I'm just about out of ideas. I mean, the server works, if I use 127.0.0.1 or localhost (which is the same, I guess), it's all peachy, but not when I connect directly to my public IP, nada. Ohh, and I don't have a router, so it's not a NAT thing. My ISP couldn't possibly filter all incoming HTTP requests, could they? I mean, they're very nice, they let me bittorrent all I want and they don't do any shaping. Help appriciated. --Oskar 03:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

• First, are you sure that you are not behind a NAT router? (broadband modems and stuff often have them built in) Go to the command prompt and do "ipconfig"; what does the IP say?
• Do you have another software firewall or anything like that?
• Check your Apache config to make sure that it isn't just listening on localhost
• Portscan yourself (with nmap or something like that) to see if your port 80 is responding at all

--Spoon! 04:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Aha! The httpd.conf file contained the line "Listen 127.0.0.1:80" and when I removed that the firewall (I started it again because apparently it wasn't the problem) perked right up and asked for permission for Apache. Now it seems to work fine! Thanks! Ohh, and you couldn't just test going to xxx and see what happens, just so I can be sure it's working? Don't worry, there's nothing bad on there, just a test message :P Thanks, again! --Oskar 05:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC) Not necessary, I got confirmation elsewhere --Oskar 05:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

usecase

sir please give me any sample project that contains USECASE diagrams.iam doing a project so i want to have a glance of any project.i read usecase diagrams topic but i had a doubt.so please provide a sample project with usecase diagrams —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.64.121.42 (talk) 04:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Note the second suggestion before posting a question. Do your own homework. Whispering 17:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The original questioner asked for (documentations of) sample projects with use case diagrams, not use case diagrams created for his/her project. I don't see anything wrong with that.

A use case diagram is nothing more than a diagrammatic "catalog" of the use cases that define the expected behavior of a system. It shows, diagrammatically, what actors participate in what use cases, as well as relationships among use cases. For more examples of use case diagrams, do a Google Image Search on "use case diagram". --71.175.68.224 12:52, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

HTTP in the file system

I'd like to have HTTP access through the ordinary file system so that I can reach, for example, the Wikipedia main page as /http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. What would be the standard way to do this? And why doesn't such a useful thing come preinstalled in distros? (Cause it doesn't, right?) —Bromskloss 09:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing exactly like that (that I know of), but there's a FUSE module for http called httpfs. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it only binds a particular URI to a file, and doesn't provide a browsable directory structure. This is probably because most web sites aren't very much like a directory, it is difficult to translate a page full of links into a directory full of files. There are protocols like WebDAV that give you the ability to use http or https to serve a filesystem, but that's not what you're asking for. -- JSBillings 12:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't expect file listings, of course. The httpfs you mentioned, is it only used for mounting disk images or can I use it to access any file? A quick search revealed that there are at least experimental things that do what I look for, but I was wondering if there was some software that was generally preferred. (Like you usually use Apache whenever you need a web server.) —Bromskloss 13:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Well if you can't list directories and can't write to files, then the filesystem is pretty useless. For reading HTTP files you could always just use wget or curl. Seeing your original post, if you wanted to edit Wikipedia articles, there is a WikipediaFS. --Spoon! 16:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The main appeal I'd think would be easy access for the shell; you have a handler available for every resource on the internet --froth^t 18:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

internet and proxy

If I wana find my pcs "proxy server" by using CMD and this fomular:
c:\>reg query "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings" /v ProxyServer
! REG.EXE VERSION 3.0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
ProxyServer REG_SZ yourproxyhere:port
c:\>

What EXACTLY do I type in the "C:\>" Screen? Thanks!!! Hyper Girl 10:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The first line you have written? :) Splintercellguy 13:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I all I get is "bad command or filename" If this isn't the way then how can I see the pcs proxy settings via the CMD prompt? Hyper Girl 11:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't "ipconfig /all" help? Astronaut 12:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

What version of Windows are you running? "reg" is only standard on XP and Vista, although our Windows Registry article indicates that it is downloadable for other versions (see the Command line editing section). --LarryMac | Talk 13:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

YES!! Thank you sooo much Astronaut!! Thank you thank you thank you! Hyper Girl 15:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Generic Macro in Excel

Can anyone explain how to construct a Macro in Excel which will work anywhere on the spreadsheet and does NOT use cell addresses. In Quattro Pro a Macro can be written which will look like this:

{editcopy}{right 4}{down 3}{editpaste}

This will copy the contents of a cell from its present location to a position 4 cells to the right and 3 cells down and will work anywhere the cursor is placed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.238.8.15 (talk) 11:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Use the offset function...So you just do offset(1,0) and it will offset 1 down and 0 acroos (or possibly the other way round). If you have it set on 'activecell.offset' it will be based on whichever cell the cursor is in. Here's a brief example (http://j-walk.com/ss//excel/tips/tip20.htm)ny156uk 19:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry just thought might be worthwhile trying to reconstruct what you've done. It would go something like this (warning syntax may be wrong as i'm not near a copy of excel to check and memory is poor)...

Dim answer as string

Activecell.value = answer

Activecell.offeset(4,3).value = answer

You probably don't need to do the whole assigning a string/mentiong .value and can word it with...activecell.offest(4,3).value = activecell.value but not sure if that works. ny156uk 19:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

CustomValidator on ASP.NET being ignored

I am trying to use a CustomValidator on an ASP.NET page, however it is not working correctly. Here is a simplified version of the source code:

ASP:

Please input a date:
<asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtDate" Text=""/>
<asp:CustomValidator runat="server" ID="dateValidator" ControlToValidate="txtDate" OnServerValidate="dateValidator_ServerValidate" ErrorMessage="Invalid date"/>

C#:

protected void dateValidator_ServerValidate(object sender, ServerValidationEventArgs args)
{
  try
  {
    DateTime.Parse(args.Value);
  }
  catch (Exception)
  {
    args.IsValid = false;
  }
}

The problem is, the validator doesn't work. Its value is being ignored, and the page posts happily back to the server even if I enter something like "31.09.2007" in the text box. When I set a breakpoint inside the exception catching block in the debugger, I can see that the code is being called, and it correctly sets the result as invalid. However, ASP.NET merrily ignores this. "Normal" validators that don't need custom code, such as RegexValidator, work correctly. What the heck is wrong here? JIP | Talk 15:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a C#/.net guy so I'm going to just speculate as an outsider here: Item one: Try eliminating everything except args.IsValid=false in the source code and see if that causes all validations to fail. If so, the next question is whether DateTime.Parse() throws an exception when it has an invalid value. As a final note, you want to be more careful in what exception you're going to catch. Catching Exception means that you'll catch every error. As a matter of good style, you want to catch the most specific exception possible. Donald Hosek 16:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It turned out that the Ajax Control Toolkit CalendarExtender, which I had omitted above for simplicity, was actually the problem. The validation was being done correctly, but the CalendarExtender insisted on using its SelectedDate property, which overwrote the validation result. I set the property to null and now it works. JIP | Talk 17:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Still about ASP.NET...

My colleague at work is also having trouble with ASP.NET. His problem is about server-side includes.

This code works fine:

Hello user, it is now <%= DateTime.Now.ToString() %>

This doesn't:

Hello user, it is now <asp:Literal runat="server" ID="litNow" Text="<%= DateTime.Now.ToString() %>"/>

In the latter case, the server shows the actual C# source code in the ASP.NET literal instead of running it and displaying its output. I seem to remember that with JSP, which ASP.NET is obviously plagiarised based on, it should work just like that. JIP | Talk 16:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

When you program with microsoft languages, you should be expecting this kind of crap. If that's the behavior of the system, that's how it's "supposed to work"- microsoft just standardizes any bugs rather than fixing them. Why not use a real web programming language? Try perl if you're familiar with *nix, PHP if you're new to web scripting (I find PHP very refreshing after battling through weird low-level operations in C, but of course it's not nearly as efficient. But LOL look at asp.net, now that's just a joke for efficiency), or C++ through CGI for easier porting from C# --froth^t 17:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I will be telling my colleague that. But it's unlikely that a company with almost 100 employees, which has been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for two years running, will suddenly turn to other platforms. At home, I wouldn't touch Microsoft products with a 10-metre pole. But at work, it's a different issue. JIP | Talk 17:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe just stick with telling him the 2nd part ;) "What's wrong with you, just switch to X" is fine on the internet but I'd be wary of using it in real life. o_o Anyway, what's the appeal of being a "gold partner"? Is the software cheaper? News flash, free software is free D: --froth^t 18:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeesh, I don't know the answer on this, but an anti-Microsoft diatribe is not especially useful (and this comment comes from a guy who's an Apple fanboy). Why use dot net? How about the fact that it's a lot easier to find good C#/.net programmers than perl or PHP programmers. I'd add that PHP is loaded with all sorts of grotesque inefficiencies, not least of which is the lack of a real array type (the thing that looks like an array is always treated as a hash). I suspect that the problem here is that the way to handle the programmatic aspect of the literal call here is to use the DateTime.Now.ToString() call in the underlying class rather than trying to put that in the view layer. Donald Hosek 18:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Mac OS X in October

According to [1], and its source [2] it is releasing in October. Do we have any update on it from Apple? --Click me! write to me 17:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC) Update: Source has expired. --Click me! write to me 17:13, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Apparently it's "sometime in october" with no specific word on what particular day --froth^t 17:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Isn't it always the 24^th "just 'cause"?

Atlant 18:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. User:Kushal_one ```` 69.150.163.1 19:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Any more takers? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 22:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Page Creator

Hey people. I was just wondering on Google Page Creator, how would one create a page and just have the PAGE? You know like no title or anything at the bottom or nothing. Just the page?Jk31213 19:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this a real Virus?

I am getting an error message from McAfee antivirus as:

BO:Writable BO:Heap

and when I checked the buffer overflow log file it has following message:

Blocked by Buffer Overflow Protection COMP\user C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE:KERNEL32.GetProcAddress BO:Writable BO:Heap

I scanned the computer (in normal as well as in safe mode) with McAfee but it didn't find anything. Is there any way to fix this? I'm using Win XP SP2 Pro. 202.168.50.40 22:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a problem with Windows. IIRC, unless you have a rootkit Windows should detect a modified explorer.exe and replace it automatically. --froth^t 19:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

LaTeX

I'm writing a document in LaTeX, with TeXnicCenter. When I build the file to pdf, the margins are all huge, but I can't find out how to decrease them. Any help...? MHDIV ɪŋglɪʃnɜː(r)d(Suggestion?|wanna chat?) 21:13, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Try \usepackage{fullpage}. —Keenan Pepper 02:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

That works, but not perfectly, the margins are still quite large, is there any way to manually alter the margins? MHDIV ɪŋglɪʃnɜː(r)d(Suggestion?|wanna chat?) 16:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I've had good results using the following in the preamble:

\topmargin-20mm
\textheight240mm 
\textwidth190mm
\oddsidemargin-10mm
\evensidemargin-20mm

The result is that the text fills almost the entire page on the pdf, and is in fact out of the "printable area". Using these can also make it so your text is wider than the page and runs off. Experiment with different number values to get your desired results. BTW in my expample page I used the article documentclass. Man It's So Loud In Here 18:46, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

The other thing to consider is that LaTeX is designed to prepare documents in a formal manner, and that the best results are usually to leave its typesetting decisions alone. If you're constantly trying to tweak it to make it "look better", then it's probaby not the right tool for your task. — Timotab ^{Timothy (not Tim dagnabbit!)} 19:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't really agree with the above comment (sorry if this discussion is out of place). I like LaTeX specifically because I want to be able to tweak every single aspect of page design and layout and was tired of WYSIWYG word processors doing it for me. A good part of why I use LaTeX over for math-heavy papers is how good it looks, and I'm always trying to make it look perfect. Maybe I'm using it for the wrong reasons, or this is just a difference of opinion. Man It's So Loud In Here 19:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Try the standard geometry package. Also make sure that your paper size is set correctly; I've had trouble with LaTeX preparing for letter paper while dvips was thining of A4. --Tardis 02:35, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Tripod for taking pictures of documents

I have a digital camera with a standard tripod mount. I'd like to get a tripod which would make it easy to take top-down pictures of document (and maybe, if such a thing is possible, have a light built into it, so I don't have to worry about the poor lighting available in the archives where I work). Anybody have a clue where I can find such a thing? Googling "tripod documents" "mini tripod", etc. didn't really pull up things that looked like they would work for this sort of thing. --24.147.86.187 22:33, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Try "copy stand" -- I think you'll find what you're looking for.

Atlant 22:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. --24.147.86.187 13:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

September 28

Computer keyboard on the laptop is not working

My computer keyboard on the laptop is not working good. What should I do? Jet (talk) 00:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by not working good? Not working well? Do keys stick? Do some keys only function if you press on them really hard? Do some keys not work at all? --Mdwyer 01:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Most laptops have a PS/2 connector and USB, so if you have a keyboard for a PC, you can plug that in and use that. --h2g2bob (talk) 01:25, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

computer fraud

what is computer fraud,what forms does it take, how does it affect the society and what measures are there to prevent them?217.20.240.19 00:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

It is fraud that takes place via computer. --Mdwyer 01:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Asking the Wikipedia reference desk a home work question and then passing the answer as your own is a form of computer fraud. Vespine 02:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, that would be a better example of plagiarism than computer fraud, but Vespine has a very good point: Do your own homework. It says that at the top of the page, just in case you want a source for that :P —Akrabbim^talk 02:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

And if you need a source for that, someone just decided it was a good idea. Our RD rules are so random -_- --froth^t 18:19, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

.flv converting

I am trying to find the best way to convert .flv files (from YouTube, etc.) into .mov or .m4v for my iPod, but all the software I can find seems to use a very lossy technique (if I'm using the term correctly). The converted videos are always much lesser quality. Is there a (preferably free) software that would provide a lossless conversion into one of those formats? Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 02:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Use a brilliant little program by Erightsoft called SUPER. Google it, and have fun. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 08:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

ffmpeg, iSquint, etc., can convert them under various settings. --24.147.86.187 13:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

flv is a container format typically holding a variant of H.263, which is supported by mp4. Container formats are nasty though.. you could maybe try FLV Extract to get the video into an avi container, but you're on your own from there. Should be simpler from there though than from flv. --froth^t 18:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this possible...?

I'm asking this for interest... I've downloaded some video game emulators and downloaded a few video game ROMs. And then I thought of blank CDs. So, it made me to ask this: is it possible to burn a video game ROM you downloaded to a blank CD? And just wondering...what type of CD do I need to burn video game ROMs to? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.238.155.66 (talk) 03:11, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

You can burn the ROMs as data and play the games off there using the emu. You can't burn the games and use them in a console unless the consoles are mod-chipped, and those take different methods of burning. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 03:50, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Deletion

How can I delete photos from "my photos" in my yahoo account?218.248.2.51 06:02, 28 September 2007 (UTC)(talk)

Yahoo! Photos would be closed down on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 9 p.m. PDT. Shouldn't they be gone already? Or is there another section of Yahoo! you are talking about? Lanfear's Bane 11:04, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

This will teach me not to read the whole thing. October 18th, 2007: Yahoo photos will, ostensibly, shut down even transfer access, apparently deleting all remaining accounts entirely. So if you wait, problem should disappear in a bit. Lanfear's Bane 11:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

halo 3

where can I download a hi-def video of someone actually playing halo 3? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.195.89 (talk) 15:40, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Here? There are plenty of user videos, but not many of them are HD (since it would be huge). --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Xbox Emulators

Hi..i in a little problem here...i downloaded fifa street 2 the game, which is an xbox game, i got the ISO file. Now how d i make it work on the PC? i got xiso software, extracted everything to a directory, and then got a default.xbe file.......now i had 2 emulators-Cxbx-0.7.8c, and Xeon, and i tried both. Xeon gives an error saying that it could not find main function......and the other one, i installed and then say open xbe file...it opens and there comes a message- Fifa Street 2 loaded!....but then wat do i do? i say emulation and start and then for one second a window pops out...a black windo..looks like command prompt or something...and vanishes after a second....wat do i do? and how do i run fifa street 2: the iso file of the xbox onto my laptop? Thanks.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.31.2 (talk) 18:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, we can't give you help on breaking the law. However, I can advise you to stop vandalizing Wikipedia, if you want to stop appearing incredibly lame. --Sean 18:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh! i m very very sorry sir, i didnt know that i was vandalising the law.....i just wanted to play the game and i downloaded an iso file for the first time, and tried to make it work according to the readme file...i had absolutely no idea that what i did was illegal. so sorry fo it, i'll make sure it never happens again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.31.2 (talk) 03:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Anything past emulating N64 titles or such is best accomplished by actually buying the console in question. Xboxes are rather cheap, and emulation software for even sixth-generation consoles is weak at best. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 11:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

But a Xbox is a PC, just with some modification. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:36, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Regular expressions

I need to create a regular expression for replacement in AWB. I want to replace filename.ext with [[:Image:filname.ext]] where ext is one of several file extentions (jpg, pdf, svg...) Help? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

 Done Never mind. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:17, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Would you care to share your solution?

Extremely annoying login problem

Hi, I recently noticed about the same time I switched to IE 7 (or the current version, the last one rocked...) I started noticing that occasionally I tried logging in, and the internet would freeze once a week, then it became every other day, then everyday, then every other time, and I'm starting to worry. Anyone else have this? Or got a clue? Thnx! Yamakiri^T_C 09-28-2007•23:33:18 23:48, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and when I attempted to purge this, it froze, and now I'm getting only several articles, this means I'm slowly being forced to use Firefox as an alternative browser (which I hate, no offense to most of my fellow .JS and .html buddies), and I'm getting rubbed the wrong way! User:Yamakiri 23:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

NO HELP FOR YOU. --froth^t 17:47, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

(Honestly though this is obviously a problem with the browser; switch to firefox or opera. that's seriously my advice) --froth^t 17:47, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok then, well I really love IE, so this'll be hard... Yamakiri^T_C 09-30-2007•16:33:18 16:27, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

*arches an eyebrow* --froth^t 04:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

URL Syntax

I'm looking this up at W3C now, but I thought I'd ask here and see which works quicker... You may have #xxx in a URL to make an in-page jump. You may have ?yyy to form a query srting. If you have both, which comes first? Should it be #xxx?yyy or ?yyy#xxx? Does it matter? -- kainaw™ 23:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you can have both - pretty sure you can. In any case, the ? should come first, because that partly defines the content of the page. The # will come second, as that then defines where on the page to jump to without actually changing any content. — Timotab ^{Timothy (not Tim dagnabbit!)} 23:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep - found it in RFC2396. The URL is split first on the #, treating everything after the # as the named anchor in the document. Everything before it is the URL. Then, the URL is split on ?. Thanks. -- kainaw™ 00:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

September 29

.CGF

How do I open .cgf files? - 81.158.75.136 16:36, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you read this page to try to figure out if any of these match. All of the looks pretty obscure to me, and it is very possible that it is some other obscure file format they don't know of. Jeltz talk 19:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Hacking modems/routers

How can i hack my router for greater speeds ? i am using vsnl broadband 128kbps unlimited package .I have a adsl2+ router and its model number is TAD100.the maximum download rate it is giving me now is 12kb/sec.I just want to know any tips,tricks or hacks to increase download rate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.7.17 (talk) 01:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Your router? That would do nothing AFAIK. You mean your dsl modem? IANAL but I wouldn't be surprised if it were actually criminally illegal, and I'd be even more afraid if the ISP actually owns the modem and you just lease it (likely). Don't even try; I'm sure you'd have to keep up with the latest developments regularly in order not to get caught, and it's not worth it --froth^t 02:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it's possible at all; I'm on normal ADSL but when I had 128kbps upload my ADSL sync speed was only at 160kbps, so no matter what you do you can't go beyond that; Once reached their servers, they will throttle you according to your login so there's very little you can do there, unless you go out and phish for someone's unlimited account, which is definitely illegal. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:13, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I did read something about this about a month ago, but I'd say the risks aren't worth the reward. 128kbps is not a lot, I hope you're not paying anything over $30 or so a month. That's not much better than dial-up and real broadband is cheaper these days than before. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 11:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

For cable modems at least, often the bandwidth limit will be artificially imposed by the modem (downloaded through special channels from the ISP when you pay for a plan); presumably this makes the connection more stable because packets dont have to travel for milliseconds before you find out that they're not going to get there because they're being dropped by the ISP. So there are ways to open your modem and modify it. I've never actually done it but it seems pretty involved- most require soldering IIRC. And risky. Don't do it --froth^t 17:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Translating machine code

It has occured to me that translating machine code from one system configuration (ie. i386 windows xp) to another (ie. sparc linux) would be an alternative to emulation. Is there any work being done on this? Resources? 70.72.13.55 03:00, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Binary translation or possibly just-in-time compilation. Pretty nasty performance on the first one, OK for the 2nd. --froth^t 05:30, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Transmeta processors perform something slightly analogous, translating x86 machine code into native instructions; in theory they might also do the same for other architectures. --LarryMac | Talk 15:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

linux

i have a pc with intel 965 motherboard,processor-core2duo... i was not able to install any version of the linux.. unable to boot from cd is the error message... i have tried it with different cd rom... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.244.66 (talk) 04:41, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

What Linux distribution did you try? What's the error message? Did you burn the CD yourself? What speed did you burn it at? It, like Windows CD's if you have ever used nLite and make custom Windows install CD's, needs to be burnt at 4x speed to decrease the chance of errors on the disc. There's probably a check for errors command on the LiveCD before you get into the system, try doing that and see if there's any error. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

If your booting from HDD or floppy to access the CD-ROM, your drive may not be compatible with CD-RW - especially if its an old computer. But, as its a "core2duo", antiliveds answer is probably right. Did you burn the Linux distribution from ISO or just copy the actual files to the disk? Think outside the box 14:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I may sound dumb but if you can boot from you optical drive, my next question is how much RAM do you have? Can you try using one of the LiveCDs? Try Xubuntu (if regular Ubuntu and Fedora core fail). Let us know the results. --Kushal^{Click me!} --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 22:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)write to me 22:16, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

copying DVDs to CDs.

To whoever it may concern. How will I transfer movies from a DVD to a CD?

                                         S.G.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.193.137.113 (talk) 05:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC) 

You don't! Or, you can, but it's difficult, won't play in a DVD player, and will have to be compressed so much as to be virtually unwatchable! If you are simply looking to back up the DVD (not make it playable in a drive but available to burn later from a computer as standard data), you could probably rip the DVD, and then either spread the chapters over multiple CDs, or you could convert the .vob files to .avi, optionally edit them with a video editor like Windows Movie Maker, and then burn them. Keep in mind a DVD usually stores upwards of 4.31 GB, compared to a CD's 700MB, a clearly substantial difference. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 10:59, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You could try AutoGK to rip the DVD; config it right and it'll give you a good quality 700MB avi file per DVD movie. You could burn that to a CD or even encode it to a Super Video CD with will play on a DVD player. Think outside the box 14:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Yahoo! photos

They say we can store limitless number of photos in "my photos" in our Yahoo! account.But my number of photos is only 16 and the 17'th photo is not getting loaded into it.06:19, 29 September 2007 (UTC)Hedonister|^(talk)

Well, I'm not sure how to solve your problem, but Yahoo photos closes on October 18th. You might want to think about downloading all your photos by then, not uploading more. Think outside the box 14:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Enlarging digital images - removing zigzaging from pixels

When you enlarge small digital photos, you often get a blurred zig-zag line on the diagonal boundry between one region and another. If you were for example painting an enlarged copy of the image then it would be straigtforward to straighten the zig-zag by re-drawing it as a straight line seperating the two regions. Is there any computer software anywhere that can do this automatically please? This is different from just a sharpening algorithmn. Thanks 80.0.106.37 09:40, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Depends on what type of image you are tracing, and how good you want it to be. If you're talking about photographs, no there aren't any programme that will convert it to vector image in any appreciable quality (or even if one exist, it will be gigantic and way too slow), and and upsampling will not bring back lost information; If you're talking about drawings and diagrams, you can use Inkscape and its built in tracer to trace it to vector, but it's much neater to do it by hand. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that it isn't exactly what the user thinks it is. From a human perspective, we see the badly pixelized image and think that it would be so easy to draw a line between two differently colored sections. However, those colors are not as distinct to the computer. Each one is a combination of red, green, and blue. How do you get the computer to recognize exactly where the line is? It is subjective. You have to know the subject of the photo and then which colors are similar and which are different. All in all, it is not anywhere close to a simple program. It is a similar task to that of trying to program a human brain. -- kainaw™ 13:33, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

There are programs that can scale up photographic images with less artifacts than the simple bicubic interpolation used by most raster graphics editors. A couple I know of include PhotoZoom Pro (formerly known as Shortcut S-Spline) and Genuine Fractals, but I'm sure there are others —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Another approach is to just blur the pic, so the zig-zags are less visible. That isn't as good as other methods, but just about any photo editing program can do this. StuRat 16:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You might be interested in Potrace or Scale2x. -- BenRG 17:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you BenRG, from the samples Scale2x looks good, but like the others lacks a simple non-programmer's interface. Thanks 80.0.120.38 20:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

email password

can i change the password of my email196.203.125.247 09:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You can change your password on essentially every web-based email provider in existence. If you said how you access your e-mail, we might be able to help (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and so forth). -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 10:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Mozilla Firefox

Where can I download Mozilla Firefox version 3.0a8 ? Because I found only Firefox 2.0.0.7 .--125.24.55.130 10:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Here you go, first link from googling "firefox gran paradiso download". --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I still can't find it because my English isn't very good and I do not well at downloading,thank you. --125.24.55.130 11:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

That is the wrong link, it's for an older alpha release. Here is the correct link. Depending on whether you use BillOS, MacOS or Linux, click on one of the links at the top, and it should start to download. JIP | Talk 13:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Since the questioner already said that his/her English was not good, maybe you should leave your OS fanboy-ism at the door and just say "Windows" instead of "BillOS". --LarryMac | Talk 15:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that. JIP | Talk 16:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

>.> --froth^t 17:40, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Binary to ASCII

Are there any programs that allow a user to encode binary data (ie photos, windows programs, etc) into ASCII text files? Hyper Girl 13:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You don't quite say why you want to do that. Assuming you want to store or transmit binary data over a medium that either only supports ASCII or that sometimes does weird stuff to non-ascii data, then Uuencoding and Base64 will help - both articles describe the algorithm and also provide links to programs that do the job. 217.42.190.82 15:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check them out. Any specific programs for the job? Hyper Girl 15:14, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

hehe --froth^t 17:39, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft Word and Excel “*” characters

I have downloaded some tabular material, and there are a number of asterisks scattered throughout it. I'd like to change them into in-line notations, but whenever I try to do a “find-and-replace” in Microsoft Word, it interprets the “*” I enter as a wild-card character. Same thing in Excel. Is there any way in these programs to get these programs to change every “*” to other text? — Michael J 15:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You can turn off wildcards, at least in my version of Word (Word 2004 for Mac). Find > Click the little "show more options" button > Uncheck "use wildcards". --24.147.86.187 16:02, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Aha! It works. I didn't see that check-box there. Thank you. — Michael J 16:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

In MessyWord, various special search codes begin with '^', so I'd try '^*' as an alternative to turning off wildcards. —Tamfang 05:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Java screensaver for Mac OS X

Is there any way to start a java-program (a jar, that is) as a screensaver in Mac OS X? That is, let it start after a period of inactivity? --Oskar 16:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiple MediaWiki installations using the same source

I would like to install 2 MediaWiki installations using the same source files, one wiki at article.example.org which points to example.org/article, the other at development.example.org, which points to example.org/development. The source files are located at example.org/wiki. This is on a shared webhost. Is there any way using Apache mod_rewrite and .htaccess files, that I can get article.example.org/wiki and development.example.org/wiki to rewrite to example.org/wiki? Thanks,  Shardsofmetal  20:42, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a DNS issue methinks but I have no idea how to resolve it as I've never owned a domain name. Ask WP:VP/T about the mediawiki installation. I doubt it'll be easy at all --froth^t —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:00, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorting Columns in Wiki Tables

Can anyone explain this to me? When you create a Table in Wikipedia, you can have its columns become sortable. See this for an example: List of Best Actor winners by age at win. So, here are my questions. When you sort the date columns, for example, entries like "April 13" will appear before "April 1" ... or "April 23" will appear before "April 2". When you sort the annual column, for example, entries like "12th Annual" will appear before "1st Annual" ... or "29th Annual" will appear before "2nd Annual". When you sort the age column, for example, entries like "50 years, 299 days" will appear before "50 years, 3 days". It seems that, in computer programming language, a character like "111" (for example) is considered to be alphabetically in order before a character like "3" (for example). So, it appears that the correct "alphabetical order" in computer programming language is something like this: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 1, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 2, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 3 ... etc. So, as a result, essentially the columns do not get sorted in the intended (i.e., correct numerical) order. My questions:

1. Why is this happening?
2. Is there a way to fix this ... or to compensate for the incorrect sorting?
3. Why does this not happen when you sort the very first column (Rank)?
4. Is there some mistake or error in the sorting program or is it working correctly?
5. If there is an error in the sorting program, how does that get fixed?
6. If there is not an error in the sorting program, is there a way to change the sorting program so that it actually sorts "correctly" (I guess, numerically instead of "alphabetically")?
7. Is there a way to make the program sort a name like "Henry Fonda" as "Fonda, Henry" (the way it normally would be alphabetized, under "F" and not under "H")?

Thanks a lot. (Joseph A. Spadaro 21:08, 29 September 2007 (UTC))

The sorting Javascript appears to be contained here. From a quick glance at it:

1 and 3: it seems to detect whether or not the information to be sorted is a number or is text. It is thinking that "12th Annual" is text because it contains textual as well as numerical data. It does not seem smart enough to detect whether or not the first part is a number and should be sorted in such a way.

2 and 5 and 6: one could hypothetically write javascript that was able to better detect these things. Not the sort of thing I'm good at (haw haw), but I'm sure one of our budding CS majors could figure out an optimal way to do it.

4: Well, it is working "correctly", it just isn't programmed to handle data of that sort

7: Only if it could detect it was a name. At the moment there is no way to "signal" anything to the sorting algorithm. If you could, though, it would be trivial to have it sort the other way. But you wouldn't want it to assume that every two or three word phrase was a name.

Hope that is reasonably reassuring... --24.147.86.187 22:14, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed your formatting --froth^t 23:09, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason "111" sorts before "3" is that "111" isn't a character, it's three characters, the first of which (1) sorts before 3. There's a simple solution to this: treat "111" as a character. More precisely, split the line into tokens matching [1-9][0-9]*|[^1-9] (with maximal munch), and do a lexicographical sort of those tokens, ordering all the numeric ones in their numeric order. Note that it's important that a leading 0 not be allowed in these multi-character tokens, since otherwise you can get distinct strings that compare equal. Some further refinement would be necessary to handle decimal fractions; anything beyond that is probably hopeless. One hassle of this sorting scheme is that it doesn't deal sensibly with hexadecimal, but I suppose this wouldn't bother most non-programmers. Whether this can be implemented efficiently in Javascript I have no idea. -- BenRG —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 01:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Javascript has its own sort() function which can handle different types of sorting of arrays. I guess if it were up to me I'd create two arrays: one for sorting, one for displaying. The sort array would be the same as the display array unless certain conditions were met; for example, if it were something that started with numeric characters and then had textual characters, the sort array would be only the numeric characters, and then it would sort them as if they were numeric (not textual). That would be a relatively easy fix and would be quick to implement. --24.147.86.187 03:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Itunes

Ok - so after being a creative zen man for a long time, I've got an ipod shuffle to use in the gym - great little player, so far so good - the problem seems to be itunes. I only use the shuffle for podcasts and when I'm checking what podcasts I have in itunes I'd like to arrange them in date released or maybe by name etc.. except none of the tabs do anything, you click on them but nothing happens, they don't re-order. Am I missing something obvious or is this a known bug? --Fredrick day 23:13, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

iTunes doesn't really work like that in default, it only sorts the most recent episodes for each feed (which I don't mind, it's by far the most logical way to do it). To do what you are asking, you should add a smart playlist (from the File menu, I believe). I have iTunes in swedish so I can't give you exact instructions, but add one and set it to only contain podacasts (you choose "Podcast" from the first drop-down and then "Is true" from the second, again, I don't know the exact words since I have it in a different language, they might be different). You can limit the list to only the most recently added or whatever, or you could just have them all. From there you can sort it any way you want, and you can even browse it and cover-flow like for the main library. --Oskar 06:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

em.. so what are the purpose of the tabs if they are non-functional? --Fredrick day 13:56, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

To show you additional information, like how long a song is and how big it is and stuff. This is just how the podcasting section works, it's done like a tree with the shows in order from each feed. It's by far the most logical way of doing it, and I've personally never been bothered by it, I think it works way, way better than any other podcast reader I've ever seen. --Oskar 18:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

September 30

Get an E-mail address?

How do you get an E-mail address? Jet (talk) 01:19, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Usually you need to sign up with an institution or site that gives out e-mail addresses. There are many sites that give out "free" accounts (that is, you pay no money for it, though you are subjected to advertising in one form or another), like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. Otherwise most people get them through their employers, universities, etc. Or, you can buy server space on a server host that runs an e-mail server, and get your own custom addresses to your custom URL, though that costs money (though usually not much, if it is a limited number of e-mail addresses). --24.147.86.187 02:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I recommend Gmail for normal use and Hushmail for anything secure. Never use an american server that you don't control for anything you expect to be secure. --froth^t 03:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yawn. Secure from what? The gov'ment? --24.147.86.187 10:30, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

You need to read more slashdot. --froth^t 04:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm just doing research because I already have a E-mail address from Gmail. Jet (talk) 04:36, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, most people get an e-mail address thru their Internet Service Provider. StuRat 12:22, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

You get an email address from someone who owns the domain name and is willing to provide you the service. 00:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC) User:Kushal_one--Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 00:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Microchip for the playstation 2

My friend once told me that there is a microchip you can buy for the playstation 2 that allows you to play pirated games for the playstation 2. When I asked a guy at best buy , he said it can break your playstation 2 but when I asked a guy selling pirated games he said it would'nt break it.I want to know if it's safe for the game system.(can I also the article on it on wikipedia please) Thank you for your time (Wookiemaster 01:38, 30 September 2007 (UTC))

The article is modchip. Now just about anything can break a system (or computer, or whatever). Whether it is likely or probable to is the question. I wouldn't expect someone at BestBuy to necessarily know that—if they are talking with their employer's interests at heart, they will likely exaggerate; if they are talking in terms of those which they were asked to repair, they probably are dealing with a skewed sample (those which did not break, they would not see). Either way I wouldn't expect them to be totally accurate on such a thing, though I profess to know little about it myself. Now, of course, if you are installing any electronics yourself, and have no experience doing so, you can easily ruin them (this can even apply if you are installing RAM yourself, which is comparatively simple, if you don't, say, ground yourself from a static charge), so if you are not familiar with a soldering iron you should not try to install a microchip yourself. --24.147.86.187 02:56, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No a modchip won't break your console, typical propaganda and fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's perfectly safe if you know what you're doing. Which you don't. So don't. --froth^t 03:12, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks you for your help , but just in case can i get someone with first hand experience tell me about it.Someone who's actuelly put it in (Wookiemaster 03:50, 30 September 2007 (UTC))

You won't be wanting to put it in yourself anyway. It requires using as soldering iron which is not something for the inexperienced to play around with. You'll want to pay someone to install it for you. --24.147.86.187 10:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I use one of [| these] to play Japanese and European imports on my PS2. It's essentially a boot disk and a replacement for the DVD drive's flip-top so the PS2 can't detect that you've swapped disks. I've never tried it with a pirated game, but they're heavily marketed with that in mind, so I'm pretty sure it'll work. It's not as convenient as a mod-chip, and it still voids your warranty, but I didn't have to solder anything anything. 69.95.50.15 18:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

TeX not working for me :(

I'm trying to use the TeX rendering capabilities of Wikipedia to make equations for an assignment. However, this is not working very well, as you can see here. I'm trying to make aligned equations like those on the help page for TeX on MediaWikis but it's not going so well. Help, please? --M1ss1ontomars2k4 03:43, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Well that was dumb. I'm not entirely sure what was wrong, but as typed, the formula that I had didn't make sense and wasn't what I wanted. So I'm good now. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 03:48, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

How i enable auto update in symantec antivirus corporate edition ???

How i enable auto update in symantec antivirus corporate edition ??? I tried many things (even looking at some parts of registry), my auto-update is blocked and i can`t enable them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.78.254.230 (talk) 04:05, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Open up Symantec AntiVirus, go to File -> Schedule Updates. What do you mean it "is blocked"? --Spoon! 06:47, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I mean that i cant change the hour and day that the program will auto update, and can not update the program by going to file -> live update.201.78.254.230 20:38, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

image threshold

I want to take two grayscale images and output an image in which each pixel is black or white depending on which of the input images is brighter at that point. (My idea is to make a POV-Ray scene look like a woodcut.) Can GIMP do that in a scriptable way? —Tamfang 06:05, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

If Netpbm can't do that, it ought to be able to. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:51, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The Great Template Reform

So what's behind the standardised template (colour-border on the left etc.) on WP? Where's the discussion for it? --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:33, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

They're all derived from Template:ambox. There's some discussion at Wikipedia talk:Article message boxes. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 10:06, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Some?! The page is a month old and there are already 7 massive archive pages of discussion --froth^t 18:52, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, 'some' as in 'not all of it'. There's more at Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/article and probably even more scattered around elsewhere. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:19, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

GRUB on primary partition

I've decided to try Ubuntu in a dualboot configuration with Windows XP. I have two hard-disks, and have installed it in this configuration:

• Primary SATA hard disk = Windows XP
• Secondary IDE = Ubuntu

Now the problem is that my MBR lies on the SATA disk (my primary HDD), but Ubuntu has loaded GRUB on my secondary disk. How do I save GRUB to my primary partition?

I have two more questions:

• I still have the Mandriva LILO on my primary, (I installed Ubuntu over it). How do I remove it in favour of Ubuntu's GRUB?)
• Is there a graphical GRUB loader I can use instead of the text-based one?

A graphical GRUB installer? Not that I've ever seen, or Google will turn up.

I'm assuming for my instructions that SATA is /dev/sda (hd0), and IDE is /dev/hda (hd1), respectively.

A simple "grub-install /dev/sda" should install GRUB into the MBR of your 'primary' drive.

I think the actual question you are asking through all of this is what your grub.conf should look like, the answer is something like this:

title Windows
    map (hd0)
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    chainloader +1
    makeactive

title Linux
    kernel (hd1,0)/kernelname root=/dev/rootpartition
    initrd (hd1,0)/initrd

You are being lazy. Google returned over 500,000 results for "grub dual boot," at least the first 10 pages of which are pertanant to your specific situation. Wilymage 02:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:20, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

UTORRENTS

HI EVERYONE I WAS JUST WANDERING IF ANY ONE COULD HELP ME SPEED UP MY TORRENT FILES DOWNLOADS P.S. MY CURRENT SPEED IS 13KB\S AND MY DSL SPEED IS 128KB\S PLEASE HELP !!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.71.37.72 (talk) 16:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Have you added port forwarding rules in your router, and does your ISP throttle P2P? Splintercellguy 17:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Bingo. Also force encryption in the utorrent options and uncheck "allow incoming legacy connections" so that your ISP won't be able to tell you're using bittorrent. And always use peerguardian (and I'm not just talking about for bittorrent; use it always!) --froth^t 18:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

There is a lot of information for these kinds of problems at this FAQ and at the uTorrent forums. —Akrabbim^talk 21:16, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that your speed is actually 128 kilobytes/sec and not 128 kilobits/sec? The latter translates to 16 kilobytes/sec, so maybe you are already using most of your possible speed. 208.66.211.217 00:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

How to send entire folder full of pictures over the internet

How would you tell someone of only intermediate computer skill to send a folder full of pictures? Normally I'd ftp them or zip them into one file and email the zip. But I think those options are a bit too complicated for the person in question.

What's the simpler way? --Alecmconroy 20:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Put the folder on removable media and send it through postal mail. You shouldn't even consider emailing a zipped folder full of pictures. Email is not designed for sending huge files. A better option would be a file trading part of another program, such as AIM, MSN, GoogleTalk... -- kainaw™ 21:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Send them a CD, it's the most universal format right now. StuRat 21:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

How many states offer e-learnig programs:

How many states currently offer e-learning programs for grades K5-12? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.197.157.44 (talk) 21:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Print to file - .prn

I have a program installed on my laptop, that I need to be able to print from, but I don't have a printer available to hook up, so I need a way to print from a computer on campus. I've tried using the "print to file" option, but I can't get it to work. It creates a file with a .prn extension, which I can't seem to find a way to open it or send it to a printer on another printer. How can I get "print to file" to work? What do I need to open the .prn file? Thanks —Akrabbim^talk 21:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I use (and love) CutePDF. You can get it at www.cutepdf.com. In use, you click on "print" as usual, but then choose "cutePDF" as your printer. It will then "print" the output to a PDF file. You can pick the destination where you want it saved. Then you can email (or otherwise deliver) the PDF file to another computer, where it can be printed as usual. Bunthorne 03:38, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The .prn file is raw printer commands. You need to then transfer the file to the printer. On unix boxes, this is often as easy as catting the file through LPR. Many HP network printers have FTP-servers built in -- you can just upload your .prn file and it will print. --Mdwyer 05:01, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Changing default open in MS Word

In MS Word 2000 and 2003 for XP/Vista, when I click "File>Open" the default folder it opens up is My Documents. Is there anyway to change the default folder it opens up to a different folder? Thanks. Acceptable 21:57, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

For 2003 (should be the same for 2000), go to "Tools" --> "Options" --> "File Locations" and change the "Documents" entry. - Akamad 00:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

license informations included in file?

Hi, Are infos about the owner of the license included in a file created by a program of graphic creation such as adobe photoshop, indesign or illustrator? For example, can someone find out the name of the license owner, or the number of the license, by looking in a indesign "package" (that's made to send to the printing company)?

Thanks in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.190.181.59 (talk) 22:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I created a test Illustrator file and opened it in Wordpad. The following lines were near the beginning:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 
%%Creator: Adobe Illustrator(R) 12.0
%%AI8_CreatorVersion: 12.0.1
%%For: (Matt Eason) ( )
%%Title: (Untitled-1)
%%CreationDate: 10/1/2007 12:23 AM

...so it appears Illustrator does store the license owner's name in the file. I had a quick look in some Photoshop and InDesign files and didn't find anything similar. These are all the CS2 versions. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 23:42, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I get the distinct impression that you're asking, "Are scary men with guns going to show up at my door because I stole Photoshop?" We're not supposed to help you with legal questions. However, I will say that I seem to recall that Microsoft was once caught because the EXIF record on one of their images showed that it was created with a pirated image program. I can't find the article yet, though. --Mdwyer 04:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

TCP/UDP

WHERE I CAN FIND THIS TCP AND UDP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.132.214.141 (talk) 22:28, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Transmission Control Protocol and User Datagram Protocol — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 23:15, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

MS Word lists

I'm using Word 2004 for Mac, and I have a problem with lists. When I make a basic dashed list, it won't let me indent to make different levels. When I press TAB, the dash stays in the same level. How do I fix this? --Lazar Taxon 22:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

October 1

"linking?" (header added by froth^t)

I have about 1500 (html/doc.)files and want to link them.but i dont know HTML coding therefore if you please tell me about a software with which I link them.and want to make an EXE file. usman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.56.31.3 (talk) 01:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense- html and doc files are just documents that contain data and have to be interpreted by external code. "EXE files" are executables that run instructions on your processor. Do you want a document that includes the code required to read itself? I've never heard of such a product. It certainly wouldn't be accomplished with HTML coding --froth^t —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 02:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe (s)he want something like CHM? --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It does require an interpreter though, it's not an executable --froth^t 20:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Comparison of CRM Software Solutions - and affiliated (fundraising/donor management)

I am looking for information (non-biased, of course - or minimally) on CRM-type solutions. My specific interest is more in the area of software for a nonprofit fundraising/donor tracking application. The comparisons listed here provide some insights, but not specifically what I'm looking for.

I have looked at Sage, Blackbaud, and some more typical CRM applications.

My general questions/requirements to this community include, but not limited to:

1. I need a database with simply interface to other word processing applications (Microsoft probably) 2. I need a solution that is either Internet-based or can run easily with minimal database admin work on our end

Thank you for your time, and I appreciate any assistance this community can lend.

Thank you.

Rdlevy 03:15, 1 October 2007 (UTC)rdlevy

I'd have a look at SugarCRM if I were you. I have used its interface with Outlook, but couldn't comment on Word. Unfortunately Wikipedia does not yet have a comparison of CRM software, unlike its useful reference for Comparison of issue tracking systems. Wilymage 05:31, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Internet

where are the 10 largest internet nodes that handle the most traffic?

Do a small minority of internet vectors handle a majority of the traffic?

does my payment to my ISP go directly or indirectly (how?) to the companies/organizations that handles these servers?

Otherwise, how are these servers supported financially? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.195.89 (talk) 04:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You might want to read up on MAE-West. --Mdwyer 16:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Or for a fuller, more general article, look at Internet eXchange Point — Timotab ^{Timothy (not Tim dagnabbit!)} 04:19, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The ISP's and large businesses buy their bandwidth from the telecom companies who own and run the 'backbone' and the interconnect boxes. So your money goes to the ISP and they pay the telecom companies. SteveBaker 14:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Yahoo!

What do you mean Yahoo! photos close on Oct.18th? Does it mean that the whole facility will be made unavailable?06:01, 1 October 2007 (UTC)Hedonister

See Yahoo Photos#Shut down of Yahoo! Photos. Looks like it. 138.38.158.152 07:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Inputting Japanese kanji

What is the easiest way to input short kanji phrases (such as titles) being read off a printed document, knowing nothing about them but their appearance? NeonMerlin 07:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You can look up kanji by radical in most kanji dictionaries. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

wikiscanner

http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/dotmil.html

look at how the last entry says "petnagon.mil" which is a typo and doesn't link to pentagon.mil

is there a human typing these things in at wikiscanner or did this domain exist at one point? how could this have happened? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.195.89 (talk) 07:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I can think of two ways a scanned document could have a transposition error:

1) The original document contained the error.

2) After scanning, a person frequently must edit the results for scanning errors. This provides the opportunity for them to introduce new human errors. StuRat 15:41, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Despite the name "wikiscanner", I don't think document scanning and OCR have anything to do with this question. My guess is that the domain column in that table comes from reverse DNS and someone (a network administrator at the pentagon) made a typo in the zone file, so one IP address or a small group of them returned somehostname.petnagon.mil as its PTR instead of the intended somehostname.pentagon.mil. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:27, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

heheh some overpaid gov't stiff. what an idiot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.195.89 (talk) 08:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

quesions?

when they say a mouse is optical what do they mean? 2.installing windows vista ultimate on a computer with a speed of 3.2 and ram of 512 mb.is it suicide or my machine can handle it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.202.195.74 (talk) 08:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

1. See optical mouse, basically it take a picture of the surface below your mouse lots of times per second and compare them to work out which direction and how fast you've moved it.
2. I don't think Vista is required right now for most uses, and judging by the way you said your specs, it's probably a Pentium 4 Northwood/Prescott 3.2Ghz which, while being notoriously hot, is not exactly a very fast CPU; 512mb is not a lot of ram but it will run Vista, albeit slower than it will run XP (especially if you run the sidebar); And most of all, if you want aero, you need to look at your graphics card, which since is unlisted, I will make an assumption that it will be some integrated chip or a low end card and if that's the case, no you can't use aero. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It's suicide. Vista runs smoothly on newer machines (roughly the high end from 2 years ago, and forward) but is very nasty on old hardware --froth^t 20:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Froth completely. My suite mate's new Compaq notebook has 1 GB of RAM and AMD 64 X2 something processor (I was told it is one of the latest ones) but still the computer's performance is less than amazing.

You would be pulling it too far. Try MS Windows XP or if you feel adventurous, try Ubuntu (Linux distribution) 7.10 releasing this month. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 22:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You didn't tell use what graphics card you have - but you need a REALLY modern one to run Vista decently. Stick with XP or run Linux - you'll be much happier! SteveBaker 14:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Problem with Russian characters (solved)

Why when I save the pages these pages [3] in my hard disc, the Russian characters appear as "?????????" I'm using Mozilla Firefox and Windows XP, while browsing the page I see them fine, it's only when I save them to my disc that I have problems. --Taraborn 08:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Gosh, I feel like an idiot. While browsing, the appropriate (Cyrillic whatever) character set was selected, but not while opening the files in my disc. Now I can see the Russian words properly. --Taraborn 09:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Linux/Unix: command(s) to return the canonical path to a file

I've been trying to remember a Unix and/or Linux command that returned the canonical path to a file or directory. I've discovered that, at least on GNU, you can do:

matt@matt-desktop:/usr/bin$ readlink -f ls

/usr/bin/ls

I'm sure I used to use another command to this effect, though, but I can't remember it; can anyone suggest what it might have been? — Matt Crypto 11:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

For commands, which is what I use, as in which ls. -- kainaw™ 12:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I tend to use the 'stat' program from coreutils. -- JSBillings 13:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

(I'll assume you're speaking of executable files.) where may also work. For example, on my Solaris system under tcsh, it produces:

myprompt> where ls
ls is aliased to ls -l
/usr/bin/ls
/usr/bin/ls
/bin/ls
/usr/ucb/ls
/usr/ucb/ls

Atlant 16:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I've seen where on tcsh too, but not on other shells. For many shells, which -a does a similar thing. And where specifically finds an executable in your $PATH.

From the OP's original post, all this which stuff is not what he wanted. He wants to be able to look at a symlink, and determine which canonical path it points to at the end (through possibly more symlinks in between). Although the example is a bad one, since in his case, /usr/bin/ls is not a symlink. --Spoon! 17:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I wasn't so worried about whether it was a symlink or not; just that I wanted a path from / to the file (which is what readlink -f does). (I often find that I'm at the command line and I want to just grab the full path to something in the current working directory to paste somewhere else). I could have sworn that I'd used a different command in the past to the same effect, though, and it's been driving me crazy trying to remember it. The related commands that people have posted are pretty interesting, though. — Matt Crypto 10:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a namei command whic produces output like this:

$ namei /etc/alternatives/cc
f: /etc/alternatives/cc
 d /
 d etc
 d alternatives
 l cc -> /usr/bin/gcc
   d /
   d usr
   d bin
   l gcc -> gcc-4.1
     - gcc-4.1

showing every step in the resolution of the pathname /etc/alternatives/cc, which involved 2 symlinks. It's distributed as part of the util-linux package. It should work on other unix systems too (it predates Linux according to the date at the top of namei.c) but I'm not sure where else you can get it from. Download util-linux and just take namei.c and compile it if your system doesn't have it. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a slightly tricky question - UNIX has hard links as well as symlinks. If there are hard links in the path then all bets are off because there is more than one path to the file and there is absolutely no reason to prefer one over the other. Fortunately, symlinks have proved much more convenient than hard links - so you don't see many of the latter anymore. However, there is still a measure of ambiguity to any tool that claims to do this. SteveBaker 14:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Cross posted Microsoft and Google question

I posted this in Humanities because it's more of a business/finance question, but take a look at Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Microsoft.2FaQuantive_deal.2C_Google.2FDoubleClick_deal. Thanks. - 204.104.55.242 15:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Questions about virtual storage space

This is Wiki related, but not HD stuff. Is there a limit on storage space for WP? Is it a concern that edits and such be limited so as to "reduce overhead"? Is Wikipedia "damaged" by arguably unnecessary edits? Lara❤Love 16:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The only limit is in our fundraising. There is an explicit guideline somewhere that you should edit to improve the content and leave the performance to the technical people. Unless you're writing an editing robot, you needn't worry about it. --Sean 17:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That's what I thought. BTW, it's not for a bot. I'm getting my facts straight for a response to an editor who claims a project is a waste of edits and creates overhead because of redundancies. He argues that the project should be merged into another, totally different project, because it damages Wikipedia with unnecessary edits. Lara❤Love 17:48, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hah, no he's wrong. The cost of a single project's edits in terms of storage space is so vanishingly small that it only has any significance whatsoever when added to a million other pages. Massive projects like WP:AFD or even our own WP:RD might consume a significant amount of money on their own just in terms of storage space, but mediawiki pays for these things, not you and not your deletionist friend, so tell him not to worry about it per WP:DWAP. I'd love to quote you exact figures at how much space the average page's full edit history uses, but we don't have any successful pages-meta-history dumps online right now. Just the stubs is 5GB though! (expands to ~100GB) --froth^t 20:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The explicit guideline is Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 18:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You can buy a 300Gb hard drive for $100. Even allowing for multiple, redundant copies, backups and the computers to connect them up to, storage costs are down to below $1 per Gigabyte. The text of even the longest and most frequently edited 'normal' article is unlikely to hit a megabyte (even including the edit history) - which is a tenth of a cent worth of disk space! Photos are a much bigger concern and most articles with even one photo in them use more space for that one picture than for all of the text. Donate $20 to the foundation and you've probably bought the Foundation more disk storage than you'll ever consume. Then you can tell this bozo where to go! SteveBaker 14:12, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

SQL questions

In SQL, is it possible to combine several SELECT queries with different ORDER BY clauses into one? For example:

SELECT id, name, opening_date, closing_date, type 
  FROM publication 
 WHERE type = 1 
 ORDER BY opening_date DESC;

SELECT id, name, opening_date, closing_date, type 
  FROM publication 
 WHERE type = 2 
 ORDER BY closing_date DESC;

Can I combine both queries into one that would return me every publication with type 1 or 2 ordered by the respective fields?

Is it possible to dynamically leave out a WHERE condition? For example:

SELECT id, name, opening_date, closing_date, type 
  FROM publication 
 WHERE opening_date >= '01.01.2007';

If I were to pass null instead of '01.01.2007' into the opening_date condition, I would like the query to ignore the condition altogether and just give me every publication. Is this possible? JIP | Talk 18:13, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

When both queries have the same number of columns, you can use UNION ALL between the queries to get all the results from each one. As for your second question, I suggest casting "null" to something like "01.01.1001" to get all publications. -- kainaw™ 18:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Will UNION ALL preserve the ordering in both SELECT queries? JIP | Talk 19:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

UNION ALL will do nothing to the data. It dumps the results of the first query (usually using the headers for the columns as the headers for the entire "union"), then it dumps the results of each remaining query. So, whatever order the queries are in is the order that they come out. -- kainaw™ 19:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You can only have one ORDER BY clause, so you can't just put UNION ALL between your two queries. I think the best you can do is to save the results into temporary tables and then do a UNION ALL on those. AndrewWTaylor 10:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

What system are you using, I just successfully did: (select id, name from patients order by name limit 4) union all (select sbp, reason from vitals order by sbp desc limit 10) -- kainaw™ 13:01, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm using Oracle 8.1, and it doesn't work. It gives me an error:

SQL > SELECT id, name, opening_date, closing_date, type FROM publication WHERE type = 1 ORDER BY opening_date DESC
2 > UNION ALL SELECT id, name, opening_date, closing_date, type FROM publication WHERE type = 2 ORDER BY closing_date DESC;
LINE 1: SELECT id, name, opening_date, closing_date, type FROM publication WHERE type = 1 ORDER BY opening_date DESC
                                                                                          *
SQL query terminated abnormally

There's no logical reason why it shouldn't work, but it just doesn't. JIP | Talk 15:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

In PostGres and MySQL, I have to put parenthesis around each subquery that I'm joining (as in the example above). I don't have Oracle to test it on that. -- kainaw™ 16:21, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

In Oracle, if I place parenthesis around the subqueries, it fails already at the WHERE clause. JIP | Talk 16:28, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Best Java IDE

A simple question.

What is the best Java IDE for programming by your opinion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.239.172.228 (talk) 20:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You might want to look at Comparison of integrated development environments#Java --Spoon! 20:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Maya, 3Ds Max or SoftImage XSI

I am an animator and used the program Blender alot, but now I need a better program. And I have 3 questions for that.

1. What movies, videogames was made by using Maya and SoftImage XSI?

2. What animator program, of the three above, is best for 3D animation?

3. What animator program, in general, is the most powerful? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.239.172.228 (talk) 19:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Maya (software)#The History of Maya has some information on 1. Algebraist 20:27, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't really answer your questions, (and frankly, the ref desk shouldn't be doing opinions or ratings) but this article was linked from Slashdot today, perhaps it will be useful. --LarryMac | Talk 20:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

All these programs are pretty much equivalent when it comes to features and high end animation. 3ds Max is more widely used in the gaming industry, Maya in the special effects, post-prod and add production houses. Maybe target the ideal companies you would want to work for and send them a mail to ask what software they use, this will give you a good idea of which you should tackle first. 80.200.237.26 20:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I would also suggest checking out Cinema 4D. It's far the most intuitive and elegant high-end 3D app I've ever used. --24.249.108.133 18:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Overall, Maya is by far the most widely used - some computer game companies (like the one I work for) still use 3D Studio MAX - but increasingly we find we need Maya for all sorts of specialised tasks so you'd want to have at least a passing familiarity with both. Other programs may or may not be better - but the differences are marginal in most cases and if you are switching from blender (which is a perfectly good 3D modeller) because you want to get a job - then Maya opens the most doors. If you are just looking for a better animation tool than blender so you can work more efficiently, forget it - they are all pretty similar and none of them add enough value to be worth the thousands of dollars they cost (by the time you get all the add-ons and plugins that is). SteveBaker 14:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Google earth elevation map

Hello In google maps earth anywhere the pointer goes it displays the coordinates and elevation but I can't find how to show the elevation map. Is there such a feature in google earth that allows you to see the elevation map? 80.200.229.187 20:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Text To Speech Software Hunt

Can anyone reccomend some simple to use, text to speech software that uses AT&T natural voices. I have downloaded many evaluation versions though not found anything that will read out text with a clear, naturally sounding voice. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.179.160 (talk) 20:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I know some blind people who swear by JAWS (screen reader). Keep in mind they use this 24x7. wilymage 23:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

JAWS is meant for the blind, so the visual interface is rather pathetic. ZoomText (offered by AIsquared) offers a decent voice and visual interface (be sure to get the version with the speech synthesizer). Both JAWS and ZoomText are quite expensive (hundreds of dollars). NVDA is free, has almost no visual interface (just a help panel), and the voice is so-so. iZoom is less expensive and has a free web version (iZoom web beta), but also sounds a bit mechanical.

Many of those products have different voices and speed and pitch settings, so you can customize them to make it sound better. If you just want to cut and paste text into a window and have it spoken, OddCast offers a free trial web version with excellent voices. If you need more info on any of these or need their web sites, let me know. If you find a better product than any mentioned here, please let me know, as this is my field and I'm always looking for better options. StuRat 00:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, some of the products I mentioned are not available for every O/S. What O/S are you using ? StuRat 00:40, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I'm running Windows Vista though I have an XP machine aswell. I continues teh hunt last night and 'Text Aloud' is looking like a pretty good option. It has the facility to add on the AT&T Natural Voices which are the best I have heard so far. The reason of this hunt is to provide a digital narration for an educational mathematics video. Saving the speech synthesis (from the AT&T Natural Voices development site) as a .wav file then using Adobe Audition to slightly reduce the higher frequencies and add a small amount of reverb produces a fantastic sounding voice, at times almost identical to human speech. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.178.70 (talk) 06:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, so you're all set then ? StuRat 13:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep I think So. Thanks very much for teh help. I love the Oddcast mini app - hours of fun! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.178.70 (talk) 14:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Macromedia Shockwave player 10.1 in Mozilla Firefox Windows XP

Wile opening this site http://www.calcchat.com/, I was prompted to install missing plugins. I tried it but failed. It then wanted me to do a manual install which I cannot do on a library computer. Is there a solution to it? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 22:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC) Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.7 Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 2 Needed plug-in: Macromedia Shockwave Player 10.1

Does anyone want to answer this question? Any more information needed? Please let me know. Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 03:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

No one interested? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 12:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Windows Vista explorer error

This is an error in the Windows Vista Windows Explorer (shell?). It brings up the error message that the windows explorer has crashed in every eleven (yes we have counted it) seconds. Is there an easy way to just disable the error reporting? What is the correct solution in this case? The computer is a Compaq Presario ^{(please forgive spelling)} laptop with AMD 64 processor, 1 GB of RAM, and Windows Vista Home Premium. Thanks. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 22:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like there's corruption afoot: re-install your operating system. If this issue persists, and if we were talking about any other operating system, I would be inclined to suggest a hardware fault. Vista is still far from a polished product, if a re-install doesn't fix your issue, you may need to wait for Service Pack 1, or consider an alternative operating system. Such as Linux. wilymage 23:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You can run can run the bloated, non-interactive "repair" tool by booting from the vista disk; it'll overwrite essential windows files and may solve your problem --froth^t 00:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

So, this is not a spy ware problem at all? What is the first step I should take?

Do you know of any problems with loss of data when reinstalling Vista? I have been using MS Windows for years but I am entirely new to Vista. This error is very annoying to my friend. I would appreciate any constructive comments. Regards, Kushal --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 01:28, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

"Repair" shouldn't break anything --froth^t 02:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt reply. I think I will go ahead then. Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 03:26, 2 October 2007 (UTC)§

In XP, right click My Computer, click Properties, Advanced, Error Reporting, and disable it. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is exactly what I want. How do I accomplish this feat in Windows Vista, though? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 12:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Control Panel, Problem Reports and Solutions, Change Settings, Advanced Settings, Off. --froth^t 18:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, will try it today. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 01:17, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

MS Word lists

I went to Formatting, selected "Bullets and Numbering", selected "Outline Numbered", and then selected the dash-circle-square style, but I still can't get a multi-level list when I press TAB. What am I doing wrong? --Lazar Taxon 23:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You should be able to press return, then tab. I only have Word 2003 to test on.

You could try playing with "Tools" > "Auto Correct Options" > "Auto format as you type" > "Set left- and first-indent with tabs and backspace." wilymage 23:43, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

You could also just use the "Increase Indent" command/button (it is usually just to the right of the bullets button). --24.147.86.187 01:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

October 2

Pseudocode operator

What does the operator := do? Example at Euclidean_algorithm#Using_iteration Steeltoe 00:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It's the assignment operator in some languages. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

...most prominently ALGOL and its descendants such as Pascal. —Tamfang 21:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Early programming languages were concerned that the '=' symbol had two different meanings - one was assignment (A=6 meaning that whatever value A had before, it is now set equal to 6) - the other was a equality test (A=6 being 'true' if A really is equal to 6, 'false' otherwise). There was a concern that people would be confused about this and that mathematicians would start to tremble when they saw 'A=A+1' because this looks like an equation.

Some languages chose to replace the assignment function with an alternative symbol. Algol used a left-facing arrow - but when the ASCII character set became common, there was no arrow symbol - and Pascal adopted the ':=' to mean 'becomes equal to'...an assignment.

Other languages (FORTRAN for example) decided to stick with a simple '=' sign and used '.EQ.' for a comparison. Yet other languages (the original BASIC dialect for example) opted to use a key-word ("LET A=6" is an assignment in BASIC) - later versions of BASIC dropped the 'LET' and deduced what was intended from the context. That's dangerous because A=B=6 could mean 'assign 6 to B then assign B to A' or it could mean A=(B=6) meaning that A is true if B equals 6 or false otherwise.

The C language went the other way - it used '=' for assignment and added '==' to represent a comparison. Somehow, the C way of doing things has won out and this convention is used in pretty much all modern languages (C++, JAVA, PHP, Python, etc). Some formal or 'pseudo'-languages stick to ':=' and I guess that's what the article you found did. SteveBaker 13:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

processor

my machine just got bambooooozled by a serious case of trojans viruses and worms.i need help.i cant system restore,i cant access the task manager.they have gained access to my registry and have changed some things there.its pretty terrible,antiviruses arent working.i use kaspesky 7 but it kills some but some its says the voterai or sumthing trojan was not found.what the guaranteed way of getting rid of this wretched things...dont tell me to run xp again please. 2.in school our teacher refers to the cpu as the processor and also as the microprocessor.is the microsprocessor the same as the cpu.i thought a micro processor was a small processor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.81.186 (talk) 10:09, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry to hear that your computer was infected (212.49.81.186), but your situation seems serious enough for me to warrant a hard disk full format. However, there may be better solutions such as running a latest liveCD version of Knoppix and fighting the malware from there.

I hope to hear from other Wikipedians about the effectiveness of using LiveCD. In any case, I would suggest you to go ahead and read the wikilinked articles, if you have some time.

Please refer to Microprocessor for a full treatment to your second question.

Regards, Kushal --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 12:13, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The processor, microprocessor, and CPU (central processing unit) are the same. It is small, and is central, and is a unit, so you can add any of those terms, or not, if you want, or don't. The only possible confusion would be with the graphics processor or math coprocessor. The graphics processor is normally called a graphics card, though. StuRat 13:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• A processor is anything that does calculations.
• A microprocessor is a processor that fits onto a single chip (which they all do these days). There are likely to be MANY microprocessors in your PC - there is probably one in the keyboard, another on the graphics card, probably one on each disk drive. Years ago, we had minicomputers and mainframes whose processors were too big to fit on a single chip - hence the distinction between processor and microprocessor is becoming outdated.
• The CPU is the central processor. In a PC, it's the processor that runs your programs and the operating system. You can sometimes have more than one CPU in a computer - in which case, they all run your programs for you.

The other processors are simply there to make their specific part of the system work - and perhaps to communicate that data to the CPU. Notably, many modern PC's include a 'GPU' which handles all of the graphics calculations for you. One company has even produced an ultra-specialised 'PPU' to solely perform that task of doing physics calculations in computer games. There are all sorts of specialised processors out there. SteveBaker 13:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

xp

i installed windows xp twice on my machine.i want to delete one installation.i tried by deleting the windows folder of one of the installation now one installation is corrupt.how do i delete the installation so that when i boot i dont get the option to select which installation i want to log into. 2.can i install 3 operating systems in my machine.i want linux,xp and vista.what are the demerits of doing so and what are the minimal specs my machine needs to be having?to maintain such a tall order. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.81.186 (talk) 10:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK, Yes, you can install three operating systems on your computer. I would suggest you to go in this order: first install Windows XP, then install Windows Vista, then install <strikethrough>Kubuntu</strikethrough> your distribution of GNU/Linux.

Regards, Kushal --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 12:17, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Since you only run one O/S at a time, you can have three available so long as the computer meets the requirements for each. The only thing cumulative about the requirements would be hard disk space. StuRat 13:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I once tried to triple boot XP, vista, and linux. IIRC you have to hide the XP partition from the vista installer so it thinks it's installing to the primary partition, then either do something really weird with GRUB or settle for separate Windows/Linux (GRUB) and Vista/XP (winload, which has to be manually configured with msconfig from vista) boot menus. I never could get it to work --froth^t 17:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Possible workaround: You could install two separate hard drives in your computer, and just alternate between them using the BIOS at startup. This would solve the problem of having XP and Vista on the same "machine". You could run linux on both of them very easily with a LiveDistro. This approach offers the lowest interoperability, with the highest simplicity of installation and maintenance, because none of the components will produce unexpected interactions. (See also, Category:Virtualization software) dr.ef.tymac 00:21, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

How much would the US government pay for this algorithm

How much would the U.S. Department of Defense pay to get its hands on a BigO(log(n)) algorithms that solves the factorization problem or the discrete logarithm problem. I was just wondering because recently the RSA factorization challenges were removed and now there are no incentives to figure out new fast factorization algorithms. Since most asymmetric algorithms deal with this problem and many of them deal with protecting financial assets, would this algorithm actually be worth billions of dollars? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.227.158.141 (talk) 14:19, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

If you actually discovered such an algorithm, you'd probably wake up blindfolded and bleeding on the floor with a knee on your back and next thing you know, you're a terrorist without a trial serving a life sentence in guantanamo bay solitary under the Patriot Act. Publish far and wide anonymously. --froth^t 17:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, you might alert world governments a year beforehand so as not to cause quite so much chaos, but anonymously publish far and wide eventually. If you're trying to sell the algorithm under the threat of releasing it, you'd undoubtedly be considered a terrorist and taken down in secret.. they wouldn't just hand you a billion dollars and make you promise not to tell --froth^t 17:40, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

First off all, there is almost certainly not any O(log(n)) algorithms, maybe there exists polynomial algorithms, but certainly not logarithmic ones. As for how much money a fast way to crack asymmetric algorithms would be worth, billions of dollars is a conservative estimate. If you had an algorithm like that, virtually all transactions on the internet would be public, from terrorist communications, credit card transactions, bank sessions and everything else you could imagine. Believe me, the RSA factoring challenges were not, by any stretch of the imagination, even close to being a big incentive (the prize money was what, a few ten thousands of dollars?) Mathematicians all over the world are working their asses of on this problem, and it's not because they hope to win some prize. Almost certainly there are also thousands of people employed by various governments of the world working on this same problem. This would be the holy grail of modern cryptography. Personally, I'm fairly certain it's not possible. To get further, you need quantum computers. --Oskar 17:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The government would not pay you big money for your algorithm. They would declare it classified and arrest you for distributing it, if you distributed it (it would no doubt fall into one of the prohibited export restriction categories). And then probably use it without your permission. See Invention Secrecy Act, for example. Now maybe you could find someone else to pay you a lot of money for your algorithm, but rest assured finding a buyer without ending up in jail would be tricky, and you wouldn't necessarily be out of the legal thicket at all if it got traced back to you. --65.112.10.56 20:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

All this is so interesting to read. Adds a 'humane' touch to the impersonal academia questions at hand. LOL Anyways, before I say anything more and find remarks like rtfm on my talk page, I should leave it here. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 02:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Antitrust laws: support for .odt

Isn't refusing to support OpenOffice files when OpenOffice supports .doc files, considered an anticompetitive strategy? --137.120.3.217 16:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

No. It would be anti-competitive to do otherwise. For example, you create your own word processor. Microsoft supports your format, forcing you to support theirs. Now, you have to set aside assets to develop support for MS Word or get sued for anti-competitive practices. -- kainaw™ 16:28, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, I find your logic somewhat specious and contradictory. Grandparent, I would warrant this question is more suited to the Humanities reference desk. wilymage 00:25, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I gotta say, Kainaw, that "explanation" makes no sense to me whatsoever. I think what you mean is, "It would be anti-competitive to force Microsoft to have to devote resources to ODT files" but boy you've picked a not very clear way to express it (and I'm not sure you're right, but I don't know a thing about anti-trust law). --24.147.86.187 00:23, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The OP stated the situation: OpenOffice supports .doc files, but Word does not support .odt files. The OP then asked if that was an anticompetitive strategy. I have to assume Microsoft was chosen in this example because they have been sued repeatedly for possibly illegal anti-competitive practices (and many times, they have to pay out large fines). So, I put it back on the questioner. What if he develops a word processor that does .wrd files. Then, what if Microsoft decides to support .wrd in Word. Now, does that mean that the questioner is using anti-competitive practices? Should Microsoft sue him? If that makes absolutely no sense, then I'm obviously not reading the question correctly. -- kainaw™ 01:23, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

"It would be anti-competitive to do otherwise".. are you saying it would be anti competitive for ms office to support odt? Yes you are, that's what we're confused about --froth^t 03:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I mean that it would be anti-competitive to make rules such that "if company A supports company B's format, company B is required to support company A's format." The question appears to me to imply that if someone supports your format, you must support theirs - and considers it anti-competitive to fail to support their format. I wanted to point out an example of how requiring everyone to support everyone else's format allows for anti-competitive practices. If Microsoft doesn't want to compete with you, they just support your format and then run you out of business by forcing you to go back and support all of Microsoft's formats. -- kainaw™ 18:11, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think he was asking about your hypothetical rule. Tempshill 19:09, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

To 137.120, volumes have been written on this issue, and quite frankly, you are not likely to get a conclusive answer regardless of where you ask this question because there are multiple ways to evaluate the difference between "anticompetitive practices" and "legitimate trade secrets". Also, the answer you get will change depending on whether you ask an antitrust lawyer, an economist, or a VP of business development for a technology firm.

Unless you clarify which "angle" of this subject most interests you, the best starting point for you is probably Vendor lock-in, followed by Competition law. Also, as a side note "anticompetitive" does not necessarily equal "violation of anti-trust laws" ... just in case that wasn't obvious. dr.ef.tymac 01:11, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say it's anticompetitive, yes, but not illegal. Is it a good idea from the Microsoft POV ? Perhaps in the short run, since ODT files are only a small part of the total market so not supporting them isn't much of a handicap now. However, as that format grows in popularity, MS will either need to offer support or this will be seen as a serious limitation in their software, causing people to go elsewhere for their word processing needs (say Linux running Open Desktop). In short, such practices only work if you have a stranglehold on a market, and MS is rapidly losing their stranglehold. Thus, they will need to change strategies or go under. StuRat 14:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Wilymage is correct, this isn't really a technology question. That said, you should start with what your definition of "anticompetitive". Broadly speaking, "anticompetitive" might mean "doing things that are mean to your competitors", which is, broadly speaking, quite legal. I think what you are really asking is whether this is illegal unfair competition. In the US, at least, under the Sherman Act, it is illegal to restrain trade with your monopoly. So, giving away Office for free would destroy the market for OpenOffice, and therefore would probably be judged illegal under the same rationale used in United States v. Microsoft; but I think it's unlikely that a judge or jury would decide that Microsoft was restraining trade by not taking an affirmative step to make Office read and write other file formats. If such a decision were reached for some reason, it would introduce a weird slippery slope: is Microsoft therefore illegally abusing its market position 1000 times over, by suppressing the 1000 other commercial and shareware word processors and spreadsheets out there; and must Microsoft keep Office compatible with all of them? Tempshill 19:09, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

How is schema definition referenced in an XML document?

In an XML document whose validity constraints are specified using a schema definition, how is the schema definition specified/referenced in the XML document? (I'm assuming that XML does provide a method for such specification/reference.) Is it required that a valid XML document specifies/references the DTD/schema with which its validity can be checked? --64.236.170.228 20:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

First, have you had a look at these? XML Validation, Document Type Definition, XML Schema (W3C), XML Schema Language Comparison. If yes, please be a bit more specific, since the answer is not the same for all of them. If not, please have a look at the articles first for a good overview. HTH. dr.ef.tymac 20:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

October 3

CNET / IT's most influential?

This section seems more appropriate than entertainment for this question: I'm putting together an article on the most influential 'critics' in a variety of fields, people whose opinions in their respective fields hold the most commercial influence, i.e. they often have a direct impact on sales. I'm including Walt Mossberg in the field of technology but need another name from this field. I realize this is opinion-based and thus not entirely appropriate for the reference desk, but I'm unfamiliar with this field; thus my question is whether there is someone at CNET or maybe Wired whose influence is similar to Mossberg's? Wolfgangus 03:23, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say that the only one who comes close to Mossberg in influence would be David Pogue. I mean, you can add a whole bunch of people, but those two are the big ones. --Oskar 09:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

John Dvorak, columnist, and Jerry Pournelle writing at BYTE Magazine were huge influences back in the day. I'm not certain about where they're at today. Tempshill 18:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Finer intervals for Windows vista's parental control

Windows vista's parental control allows you to set the times children can log in to the computer, but only in 1 hour increments. Is there any way (without getting 3rd party software) to set it up in 30 minute intervals instead (i.e. by modifying some registry entrys or something)? 86.41.187.147 03:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you really just some kid who wants to registry hack the parental control (to turn it off)??? Anyway, I don't have vista but maybe this might work. Press start, the run. In the prompt type services.msc and in the description field look for a service that have something to do with parental controls. Then if you find it you double click it and make sure it is disabled as default (for your account only! or parents might find out). And then restart the computer and re-login.

I see no reason to assume this Q comes from a kid. To answer the Q, I doubt if you can do what you want directly. I suggest you set the times to allow half an hour more than you want, then just tell your kid which half hour during this time they aren't allowed to use it, and enforce this yourself. The computer should be in a common area, not the kid's room, for safety, in any case. It will probably be easier for you to manually enforce the starting time than ending time or you will get the inevitable "aw, just a couple more minutes ?". StuRat 13:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Is it Internet Explorer or is it Google...?

For about the last week to 10 days, whenever I use IE to visit Google it takes well over a minute and a half for my hard drives to be scanned... I've tried disabling the Add-ons and deleting the cookies and temporary Internet files but without any positive results. Firefox is a bit quicker to bring up the Google site but still takes longer that IE did 10 days ago. Is this a known issue with a solution already figured out or is Google now including files on my personal computer in the searches and downloads it does online? 71.100.9.205 10:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The only files IE or Firefox should be accessing on your hard drive when you visit Google are the cache files, which shouldn't take a minute and a half, unless you have some sort of plugin or addon that causes it to also index your hard drive. I suspect you are suffering from some other problem, possibly spyware or a computer virus, or even a flaky hard drive. -- JSBillings 12:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The system was shut down during drive compression or defrag but that was after the problem originally occurred. Microsoft Indexing acted pretty much in the same way and it has been disabled so that leaves spyware although I am running Windows Defender so I don't think that is what it is which brings me back to whether Google has become the spy master instead. 71.100.9.205 13:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain Google hasn't installed spyware on their front page. What exactly were you doing when you shut down during drive compression or defrag? That sounds like a more likely culprit. -- JSBillings 13:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

How do you access Google ? If you're using a toolbar, try typing in the address instead, this will tell you if there is extra crap running when you pick the toolbar. If so, just add a favorite/bookmark for the address and get rid of the toolbar. Also, have you tried other search engines ? StuRat 13:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, found it. What seems to have worked is decompressing the drive. Apparently the shutdown was during compression and some files or parts of files were compressed and others were not. I must have done the compression further back than I thought and it was the defrag that was done recently. After decompression, the defrag was done again and now everything is back to normal. Thanks. 71.100.9.205 15:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Why would you compress your operating system's hard drive?... --froth^t 20:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Loop through XML

Hey all,

If I've got an XML file, let's say it contains the actor names and roles. How do I loop through the data and show them in my php file? It's a bit different from showing the XML file with CSS. It's more like using the data in some other formats to be used later. Cheers - Imoeng 14:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Check out the section "XML Parser Functions" in the PHP docs. Basically you need to parse the XML, that is, make its data understandable to PHP and be able to put its data into variables, etc. With XML you should always try to use pre-existing parser functions rather than trying to parse XML as a text file (no need to re-invent the wheel, nor try to re-implement an entire standard on your own). Look at the examples in the manual and you can probably find one that can be modified to do what you want. --24.147.86.187 14:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that these days with PHP5, the DOMdocument family of functions are the preferred set of functions for this sort of thing. A lot depends on how you're using the XML and the size of the dataset (the problem with the DOMdocument approach is that you need to load the whole XML into memory, while XMLreader will scan the file as necessary). Donald Hosek 20:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Cheap printers

I'd like my printer to be able to print lots of pages for the lowest possible cost without caring much about quality. Any ideas? --Taraborn 18:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Historically dot matrix and the even worse thermal transfer printers are used for this, for applications like cash registers. I don't think there's much market for such low quality printers in the PC printing market anymore, however, so a bubble jet printer may be the cheapest technology you will find for those. StuRat 18:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Taraborn is looking for TCO, though, not just the cost of the printer. If you really mean "lots" of pages then a cheap laser printer may be the best solution because toner is cheaper per page. Googling "printer tco" might help, though I saw lots of links to manufacturers' websites. Tempshill 18:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

An easy way to lower the cost-per-page more than changing technologies is likely to do is to reduce and print 2 or 4 logical pages on each physical page. --Sean 19:06, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to all, really informative answers. I'll follow your advice, Tempshill, and google that. --Taraborn 19:08, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

These days the cost of the printer and paper is negligable compared to the cost of the ink/toner. So...

• Make sure the printer has separate Black and Colour cartridges so you can replace the former without swapping out the latter. You aren't going to run out of coloured ink - so why pay to replace it!
• Check out companies that sell cartridge refill kits and make sure your printer is one of the ones they support - if possible, phone them up and ask which printers work best with their refill technique.
• Bear in mind though that you can't keep refilling them forever because in the case of inkjets, the nozzles fail or get blocked - and in the case of laser printers, the toner drum gets worn/scratched. Both things are designed to last only for the life of one cartridge and so after just a few rounds of refilling, your image quality will start to get worse and you'll have to buy a new, authentic, cartridge every few refills.
• When you are looking at the price of a printer - mentally add on the cost of a dozen print cartridges of the appropriate type before you decide buy it...it is very often the case that seemingly cheap printers are sold at a loss by the manufacturers who get their money back by sticking it to you with huge cartridge costs. Higher priced 'commercial grade' printers are more expensive to buy - but are frequently cheaper to keep fed with ink.
• By all means get a laser printer if you can afford it.
• Print only in monochrome (no colour) and reduce the contrast so you are printing in a lighter shade of grey - not utter black.
• Avoid printing large photos or white text on black background.
• Reduce font sizes and print two pages of text side-by-side on one sheet of paper. This saves ink as well as paper.
• Print on both sides of the page if you can...although I've heard stories that this is not good for laser printers...I have no idea why that might be.

SteveBaker 22:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, along the lines of Tempshill's suggestion, get a US$200 B&W laser printer, like the one the Fat Man uses. You could probably get one off eBay for much cheaper than that. Ink jet printers are cheap to purchase--but irritating to own and expensive to refill; they always run out of ink and print very slowly. Toner for a black and white laser lasts a comparatively long time.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 23:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Fuel pump cuts out

My brother got a junk yard 2.4L '97 Chevy Cavalier engine, which he put in his Pontiac Fiero. He hasn't yet hooked the engine up to the dashboard computer. When he starts the engine, the engine control module cuts off the fuel pump after 1/4 second. He's trying to figure out why. I suggested that it may be that the ECM wants to get some feedback from the instrument cluster computer, basically a "yes, I am here" signal, and cuts the engine off when it doesn't get it (some type of security feature). What do you think ? StuRat 18:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a wide range of possibilities - but most likely is that the ECU is expecting a fuel pressure signal from somewhere near the carb and not getting it. If the fuel pump starts running and the system does not get up to pressure then the odds are good that a hose fell off and gasoline is squirting all over the floor someplace - so the ECU turns off the pump after only a very short delay if it doesn't see the expected pressure increase. So it's possible that your fuel pressure sensor is broken, or the wire is broken - or it's simply not wired up right. There are perhaps other possibilities - there is a huge variation in what features are supported and how they are dealt with - so it's hard to be definite. SteveBaker 22:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Connecting my computer to my TV

Ok folks, here's the dilemma, I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with an "Mobile Intel 945GM express chipset" family video card that I want to connect to my 32" Panasonic LCD HDTV. I'm currently connecting the two via an S-video cable, but when playing some video files I get faint upwards scrolling white fuzz lines on the TV. It's most noticeable on an all-black or very dark screen, and I'm certain they're not present in the video files as they don't appear when viewing on the LCD monitor or on other computers. I'm looking to explore causes and possible solutions. My first suspicion was that they were due to some sort of frame rate mismatch resulting from progressive computer signal and the interlaced TV (the 29.97 vs 30 fps thing). However, a friend suggested they were the result of the poor quality of an S-video connection. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to make my video card output at anything other than 60hz to test the framerate theory. So I've been looking at other options. The laptop has VGA and S-video out (and a firewire port), and the TV has component, composite, HDMI, and S-video in. I've found cheap VGA-component cables but I don't think my video card nor the TV can convert from an RGB signal to Pb,Pr,Y so I would need a fairly expensive transcoder ($150). If this is the best/only solution I'm willing to go with it but I want to be sure that (a) it will solve the problem (b) there are no other cheaper solutions that are just as effective. So that's my question: Any ideas/thoughts on the cause of this fuzz/interference? Any ideas on how to test whether its the result of a frame rate mismatch or the S-video cable quality? Any ideas on solutions to the problem?

Thank you all very much, -Nick 24.82.140.138 22:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The first thing I'd try is a different S-video cable to rule out a problem with that. Exxolon 01:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

October 4

RAM thumbdrive?

Don't ask why, but I can't change the virtual memory on a computer to anything higher than 20 MB. Explorer keeps crashing it's so low... But it did give me the option of using a separate memory space - in this case, a thumbdrive. Is it even possible to use my thumbdrive as a sort of pseudo RAM? If so, what would I need to format it as? --69.144.233.96 02:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Even if you can use your thumb drive, I suspect you will still use it as a virtual memory. By the way, some details on the operating system and error messages would be nice. --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 02:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot. I believe it's Windows NT... 200 some odd megs of RAM normally; bumped down to 20 because I was screwing with some stuff. I have a limited account coughschoolcomputercough, but it appears that I can change the virtual memory - just not on the C drive, if that makes any sense. --_{King of the Wontons} | _{lol wut?} | _{Oh noes! Vandals!} 02:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

CAD thing

Does anyone know of a program that can allow you to build computer chipsets (like a mobo, graphics card, etc.)? I mean, one that allows you to add things like stock parts (PCI ports, CPU sockets, graphics chipsets, and so forth). Thanks. --68.89.95.20 02:39, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Does this work for anyone?

Just wondering if the streaming video works for anyone here. If so, what is the direct url so I can put it directly into WMP. Thanks!