Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

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•23:03:30 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•16:03:30 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)

I think I wrote a special program. —Tamfang (talk) 03:51, 12 August 2023 (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 [1] 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)

If you mean displaying 3D mountains and such, there is a checkbox called "Terrain" in the Layers palette, which will toggle elevation on and off. - Canley 03:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry no, I mean displaying the elevation information as a colored map.Keria 13:04, 4 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)

The idea behind its use is so that a person, regardless of what programming language they understand, will be able to read the pseudocode. It's sorta like an "international" programming language that focuses on program structure and not language syntax.--Mostargue 14:14, 4 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)

Ok - thanks very much for the input. Greatly appreciated. Wolfgangus 07:45, 4 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)

I hope Vista does not allow all users to modify the registry ... --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 03:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

It does if you're an administrator. And probably it allows you to edit HKCU even if you're limited, because it only affects you.. I don't actually know this though --froth^t 04:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I got a limited account on my Windows XP once. Then I tripped over the power cord and some <root>/Doc&Settings/Username/.../Firefox/... file got corrupted and I could run firefox because I was on a limited account and apparently firefox could not rewrite the bad file with a new one so firefox could not start. Once I made myself an administrator and tried again, it worked. Bottomline: I don't know much about registry but I know that limited accounts have limited access to everything including their own documents and settings. I hope I am not angering anyone. .... --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 18:34, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Nobody likes running non-root (or at least without the ability to go root, for the nix security model), and microsoft makes it worse --froth^t 19:03, 4 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)

To see how much space would be recovered. 71.100.9.205 08:20, 4 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)

The fuser units in some printers (that normally don't do "duplex" printing) don't cope well with toner "on the wrong side" but I've never seen a printer that was rated for "duplex" operation have much trouble with this. Yes, definitely print 2- or 4-up and duplex whenever possible.

Atlant 13:10, 4 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)

• Another nice thing about laser printers is that the print is waterproof. --Sean 04:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

A few more hints on reducing printing prices:

• Use Print + Preview before printing to be sure you won't waste paper and ink on a bad print.

• If there only appears to be one page to print, don't pick Print All, but pick Print Pages 1 to 1. Otherwise, sometimes you get a second page with nothing but a header and footer.

• If there are ads or other crap on the page you want to print, use the Print Screen keyboard button, then Edit + Paste in Microsoft Paint, then trim all the crap off the page before printing. Web sites which provide a "Print" button frequently insist on putting ads in the printed version, too, but you can prevent this, using the Print Screen method.

• I like to feed paper in manually, one sheet at a time, instead of using the paper tray. One reason is that printers frequently seem to jam if you give them more than one sheet at a time. Another is that if the first page isn't coming out right (say one of the 3 colors isn't printing), I don't give it the next sheet, it sends an "out of paper" error to the PC, and I can abort the print immediately. If it has a paper tray full of paper it would keep going, and you can't stop it from printing short of pulling the plug, which isn't a very good option. The next time you plug it in it wants to continue printing, anyway. StuRat 13:50, 4 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)

Can you list some of the other possibilities ? StuRat 04:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If the ECU thinks that the engine either isn't running - or shouldn't be running, it's going to cut off the fuel supply - that could be anything from a bad crank angle sensor to the ECU thinking that the airbags went off (so there was a crash and we'd better turn off the fuel pump to avoid a fire). I'f disconnect the fuel pump from the ECU, put it on a manual switch and see if the engine will run well when the fuel pump is running OK. Hopefully that'll lead you to some other problem - and eliminating THAT will make the fuel pump work properly with the ECU. SteveBaker 21:03, 6 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)

I think you may have been on the right track with the scan mismatch. Since the diff in scan rates is 1/33 second, does it take about 33 seconds for the lines to move across the screen ? If so, that would support your theory. Can you change the scan rate or progressive vs. interlaced setting ? If so, give that a try. StuRat 13:26, 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)

It makes total sense if C: is nearly full. Remember RAM is physical memory and virtual memory uses your hard drive as sort of "virtual" RAM. Having too little of one can't be offset more than a little by having insane amounts of the other. As far as format goes, since it's NT, use NTFS. Just don't forget to set the size in even multiples of 8. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 02:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Cool, thankees. --69.144.233.96 02:53, 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)

In priciple, any VLSI design package can accomplish this. In practice, you can't drag-and-drop components to create a viable PC chipset. — Lomn 15:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I recommend KICAD - it's free, OpenSourced and you can do schematics and circuit board layout with it. I've only used it for one very simple project - but I know of people who have used it for fairly serious stuff. SteveBaker 17:59, 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! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.169.145.28 (talk) 02:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I tried but I could not see the video. Sorry :'(--Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 03:11, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Worked for me. [2] — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 03:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is a direct link to the .flv file, if that helps: [3] —Akrabbim^talk 16:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Resizing NTFS partitions....

I'm thinking of making a dual-boot system (with Ubuntu) on a computer that already has XP on it, but to do that I would obviously need to resize the NTFS partition. Can today's finest Partition editors do that? 83.249.113.29 10:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually if you just put in the LiveCD and actually went ahead with the installation you would find out that it can resize partitions (including NTFS) during installation, and then you can spend half an hour surfing or playing sudoku or whatever and have your new Ubuntu system with dual boot already configured. So much easier than a Windows installation. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

This is what I thought, thank you :) 83.249.113.29 11:58, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Minidisc player down

Hello I have an electronics question about my sony MZ-R55 MD player that uses NH14WM batteries. Although I have several batteries for it, even fully charged by an independent charger, none of them last for more than 20 seconds. The Minidisc works fine when plugged into the mains via an adaptor. What could be the problem and can I do anything to fis this? Thank you Keria 13:00, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Is your minidisc player from the age when Sony was using lead-acid batteries in their rechargeable players? If so, the batteries are probably "sulfated" and past their useful life. Even if they're not lead-acid, is there any reason to suspect that these batteries aren't simply failed at end-of-life?

Atlant 13:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Well after I noticed the problem with the one battery I had I bought 4 'new' (packaged anyway) ones from ebay from 2 different sources with the exact same result: about 15 to 30 seconds of battery life and they've been charged until the green light goes on in an independant charger. Keria 13:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

All of the rechargeable battery technologies have problems of one sort or another. NiCd's get 'the memory effect' where if you don't discharge them completely, they gradually only accept less charge. Most of the other kinds are only good for a certain number of charge/recharge cycles before they die. Lead/Acid batteries don't like being completely discharged - and leaving them discharged for any amount of time is bad for them.

But the fact that your "new" batteries aren't working either is interesting. Look at it this way: either the batteries aren't getting charged - or they are being discharged very fast. If they were being discharged very fast, where did the electricity go? It wasn't powering anything useful - and a full battery charge would generate a lot of heat if it were shorted out or something. So did anything get hot during those 15 to 30 seconds? If it did then something is shorting the batteries out - and you'd better be careful because that kind of thing can make batteries EXPLODE! But if the batteries went dead over 30 seconds and didn't get amazingly hot - then they couldn't have had much electricity in them in the first place...so either the battery itself is faulty or your charger(s) are faulty. You claim to have new batteries - and from two different sources - it's unlikely that all three sets are bad (although who knows what you get from eBay). So I think the problem may be in the charger. Can you charge them some other way - at least as a test? How long does it take before the green light goes on on the charger? Are you sure the light means "Finished charging"? SteveBaker 17:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Sulfated lead-acid batteries go to their "fully charged" voltage very quickly, but there's very little electrochemical activity that took place to get there so there's very little available charge stored in the battery. So they then go from "full charge" voltage to "no charge" voltage just as quickly. My first guess we'd be that all the batteries are of a similar age and all are dead.

Atlant 23:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

How safe is it to put banking details on a website?

I have a client who wants to sell things on the internet, and for those customers that don't have a credit card, he wants to provide them with his business's bank account details. I'm having great trouble researching online if this is "safe" or not - because every google search brings up results about providing your credit card details and bank account login information over the internet - which is not what I'm asking. If I gave you may bank account details like this:
ACCOUNT NAME: John Doe
BANK: Commonwealth Bank
BSB (Branch Code): 123-456
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 123-456-789-111-213
, what could a person possibly do with this information other than pay me?
Rfwoolf 13:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure sounds dangerous to me. Someone with that info could pretend to be you and empty your account. Perhaps banks require signatures and are supposed to check them against a signature card for withdrawals, but one lazy teller and you're account can be pillaged. StuRat 14:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Precisely right, this info can easily be used by a smart dude for identity theft. For those customers that he has that don't have credit cards (which can't be that many), how about just asking them to snail-mail him a check or something (not as fast, obviously). --Oskar 15:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

As a sidenote, lets see how wikimedia foundation does things. Please turn to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising which provides the following information:

Direct deposit Deposit money directly into our bank account.

The Wikimedia Foundation has a bank account that accepts money transfers.

Account holder: Wikimedia Foundation

Bank:

Dexia bank/Banque Dexia Pachecolaan 44/ 44, bvd Pacheco 1000 Brussels/1000 Bruxelles Belgium

Account number:

IBAN BE43 0689 9999 9501 BIC GKCCBEBB

National Belgian account number: 068-9999995-01 For transfers inside Belgium or from countries not supporting the IBAN-system

Does it pertain to this question at all? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 17:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you have to give HIM your bank account details so he can deposit to it.. why would you be able to withdraw from someone's account with just the account number? You can only deposit --froth^t 17:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

That does seem AWFULLY dangerous. But then the information you are giving out is only what is printed on one of the cheques in your chequebook - and you give those out to complete strangers all the time! But still - with the prevelance of identity theft - tell the bad guys as little as possible. Have people mail you the money - it's worth a couple of days of delay just for peace of mind. If you do decide to do this, I REALLY think you should talk to the bank. They are the true authority on what's safe and what isn't. SteveBaker 17:39, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Amen --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 18:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

You can just put account number/sort-code up and have people use that to send money. I've no idea if it is a joke or actually true but in Private Eye (the magazine) they often have little comical 'begging' ads in the classifieds...Things like "trying to restore classic Mg but too lazy to earn the money myself, A/c: XXX XXXX and Sort Code: ZZ ZZ ZZ", or things like "just graduated, looking for rich individual to gift student loan A/C xxx xxx ..." (you get the idea). As noted it is perhaps not advisable but surely this individual can speak with the bank to have an account setup that will allow this (lots of firms seem to have odd accounts that look like normal accounts but are businessy instead). ny156uk 22:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

(http://www.eyeadvertise.co.uk/?section=classified&catid=13) there's the link...One says "just for fun, i'd like £200. Thanks! 12-60-60. 02423083. :)" ny156uk 22:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello, my name is George Agdgdgwngo, I'm from your billing society, and could I just have your bank account number and sort code? -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 01:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Wich AMD?

1.Whats the suitable AMD CPU for 3D computer graphics, CGI, Animation , 3D displays and softwares?and because of what particular characteristic, that device is suitable?

2.and what about ATI graphic cards(when work with that CPU)?(I want a specific model and answer in both)Flakture 19:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Why AMD ? --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 20:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Athlon_64_X2 seems to be a good start. (I am biased against AMD for no reason.) --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 20:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Internet Explorer versus Firefox

It was taking well over a minute and a half for Google to load so I suspected the problem might be Google since other sites seemed to load okay. The problem appeared to be resolved when I decompressed my partially compressed C drive so I thought I was back to normal. However, IE will not allow Google maps to be viewed and all I get is a blank screen This happens with other HTML pages using IE so I loaded Firefox which I had unloaded at one point thinking it was part of the Google load problem. Sure enough after viewing several Google maps with FF I tried to use IE to open Google and again it took well over a minute and a half before Google would load with the hard drive light remaining on the whole time. Now I think its a war between IE and FF because my IE cookies had been disabled and I was no longer able to log on under several different accounts. So is that a possibility that IE and FF are fighting it out by messing with each other's settings and using my computer as the battleground? If so what can be done about it? Clem 22:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Opera (browser) ? StuRat 04:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You probably need to reinstall your OS. You're attributing way too much personality to software. IE and Firefox don't "fight" over each other's settings. You simply have an OS problem. Keep in mind that IE has been integrated into the windows operating system, so anything you've done to mess that up might show up in IE performance. On the other hand, software such as Firefox or Opera, once freshly installed, use far less of the OS's libraries. Since you have mentioned in this question and earlier that you partially compressed and decompressed your C:\ drive, I suspect you've somehow managed to damage or corrupt your OS install, which is affecting IE. I recommend reinstalling the OS from scratch, and NOT turning on compression. -- JSBillings 10:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

dead pixels

There a lot of dead pixels on my Ti-83 plus. Is there anyway to get rid of them? (Pressing on them made it worse)71.218.38.193 22:32, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Replace the screen? Having a look at dead pixel it seems some 'broken' pixels can be fixed/will fix themselves but other pixel problems are unfixable. ny156uk 22:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Bypassing DRM

I'm not asking how one does this, but rather I am doing a a short project on the Digital Rights Management technology associated with downloaded songs. Can the DRM technology, which for example allows a song to be played only a certain amount of times, be bypassed so that the song can be played an infinite amount of times on a computer? If so, how hard would this be? Thanks. Acceptable 23:17, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The analog hole is one way. If you haven't seen it already, Digital rights management#Digital Millennium Copyright Act might be of interest - in the US, it's illegal to produce or disseminate technology that allows users to circumvent DRM. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 23:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Another fairly obvious way is purchasing a non-DRM version of the media. If just one form of it is non-DRM (say, on a non-DRM CD) then it is exceptionally easy to create non-DRM digital versions. (So instead of buying a DRM-ed mp3, you buy/borrow a non-DRMed CD and turn it into mp3s). --24.147.86.187 12:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, every major DRM system has been broken, allowing people to strip the DRM protection off the protected media. The specific technique varies from system to system. --Carnildo 20:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's the problem (from the content-owner's perspective) in a nutshell: he wants to ship data (lets say audio, but it's the same for video) and not have it copied. To prevent usable copies from being made in transit (over a wire or on a medium like a disk) he encrypts it. But your eyes and ears don't understand encrypted data (it's just gobbledigook) so, before the audio gets delivered to you it as to be decrypted. So there are three places where the whole DRM scheme can be attacked:

• Before encryption: (this is the favourite of the serious, scary-dude Triad pirates) they just get a copy of the music/movie before it goes off to be made into a final, encrypted product. Using bribes (and maybe a bit of common theft) they get studio tapes, screener DVDs, insider copies, rushes, and other materials.
• Reading the encrypted data: as noted by others, above, the encrypted data can be read by unauthorised parties (and thus copied, generally to unencrypted data that anyone can read and copy) using a variety of methods (which vary by the encryption scheme). People can reverse-engineer existing players (that's how DVD-HD and DVD-BR were broken), or they can exploit defects and backdoors in existing players. DVD-VIDEO (that's regular DVD videos as used by most people now) was broken because the CSS cryptosystem used was very weak (and was badly implemented to boot) making a brute-force attack on it quite easy.
• After decryption:Some attacks against DRM capture the data after it's been decrypted (even before the analog hole, most OSes (including Windows before XP) allow you to capture the digital audio before it goes to the soundcard, and it's trivial to save that off); a partial solution to this is making the entire computer system part of the DRM framework, with trusted hardware and trusted signed device drivers (which is how TPM and Vista work) - but the downside of that is that it's very error-prone and inflexible, and relies on everything in the computer working perfectly (which no computer ever has done). Some people ascribe a lot of Vista's current reported slowness (in copying files, playing media, or doing graphics operations) to the omnipresent DRM infrastructure that permeates the whole system.

-- 217.42.190.82 00:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

IMO that permeating security so there's no "analog hole" in your hardware is desirable from a holy crap that's ultra cool hardcore security standpoint.. as long as it's not used against you. Anyway yeah, to restate your points perhaps more clearly, the goal of DRM is to distribute the work, but not actually let you have it. It's the classic paradox of DRM. They want to get it in your hands, they want you to buy it so it becomes your property, but they want to control it --froth^t 02:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Stepmania

I was looking through Stepmania, and I was wondering, which one is the version that has the same steps as DDR? --JDitto 01:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

how do you install a copy of msn/wlm on a thumb drive?

so you can keep your emoticons and settings wherever you go? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.121.36.10 (talk) 02:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

U3? --froth^t 03:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

i have a u3 thumb drive but how do i install a copy of msn/wlm on it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.121.36.10 (talk) 06:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Or you can dump the bloatware and do this. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 09:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

registry

What are HKCU, HKLM, HKCR, etc called? I think I recall them having a specific name like registry domains or something but not that --froth^t 03:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

The Registry Editor help file calls them registry subtrees and predefined keys. --jh51681 10:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Our article calls them hives (Windows_Registry#Hives). 11:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeltz (talk • contribs)

Must have "www."

Hello, I have a website but for some reason it can only be accessed with the www. at the front of the address (eg. www.example.com). If I try to access it without the www. (like just example.com), I get a "Could not locate remote server" error. Is there any way to fix this so the website can be accessed even if the www. isn't typed (say, through the .htaccess file or something), like any other normal site? thankyou —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.208.110.207 (talk) 07:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If you do an nslookup on the name "whatever.com" (without the www.), does it look up to anything? If not, you need to add an entry for it to the domain name server (DNS). Usually this is not handled by you; and you need to tell whoever is running your DNS to fix it. --Spoon! 08:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You have to modify your host file, instead of looking for www.example.com, remove the www. part and just leave it to example.com. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Like Spoon! said, you need a DNS entry for example.com, otherwise there will be no way for anyone's web browser to contact your web server. Once you have that, there are a couple methods you could try that redirect browsers to www.example.com, if that is your preferred domain. I use Apache's mod_rewrite for this. -- JSBillings 10:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

After doing a nslookup I can see that something is wrong with the DNS - I'll have to contact the company who manage my domain. Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.208.110.207 (talk) 11:45, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Your web server itself will also have the know the list of names it can be called by. Friday (talk) 15:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't get this. I thought that the site was, say, example.org and www.example.org is just one of the local servers (just like there could also be an ftp server and what have you). So shouldn't this be a local problem? Unless someone told the dns folk to be more specific than they normally are, or something. DirkvdM 06:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

example.com is just another DNS name, like www.example.com and really.long.name.example.com. If you don't configure an A record or CNAME record for that name, it won't resolve as the hostname in a URL. In this case, no one created an A record for example.com (you don't want example.com to be a cname, for a variety of reasons not worth mentioning here.) Some people and hosting sites don't automatically create them, either by preference or policy. -- JSBillings 14:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Image upload site

What is a very user friendly site to upload images and create a gallery? Thanks 81.241.103.75 08:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[4]--Mostargue 11:10, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

http://flickr.com. Lanfear's Bane 12:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

imageshack.us 68.231.151.161 17:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Java vs. C++

I read about Java and C++ programming languages and I can't really find any big differences.

What ia the different between Java and C++? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.54.33.250 (talk) 12:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Generalized pointers, present in C++ but absent in Java are an obvious difference.

Atlant 13:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh come on, that's what you come up with? How about the obvious difference that Java is interpreted and C++ is compiled? --froth^t 15:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Java is not interpreted. Java is usually compiled into Java bytecode (which is usually JIT-compiled into native machine code at runtime), but can also be compiled directly into native machine code. --Spoon! 18:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

But it is interpreted. Human-readable Java source code is compiled into Java byte code, which the processor can't make heads or tails of. The JVM interprets the Java byte code. In a sense, Java is both compiled and interpreted. The .NET CLR does the same in MicrosoftWorld. In a sense, every language is interpreted. In machine code, the interpreter is the processor itself. I have myself written two interpreters, and have found them to be much easier to write than compilers, which I have very little expertise on. JIP | Talk 20:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

One of the most important differences is that in C++, you have to memory manage each and every object yourself, while in Java and C#, the runtime environment does it for you. JIP | Talk 20:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

As interpreter says, "Any language can be implemented via an interpreter or compiler; there is no such thing as an "interpreted language" or "compiled language", only interpreted and compiled implementations of a language.". --Sean 20:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It's a very broad question, and you haven't told us what perspective you're viewing it from. Do you want differences that matter to someone who studies the intricacies of programming languages? Do you want differences a CIO should care about? These are vastly different questions. Taking a fairly "big picture" view, Java is almost certainly the language where more active improvement is being made. Java has made vast inroads in enterprise application development in a way that C++ almost certainly never will. Java is more than a programming language- it's a platform. Friday (talk) 15:23, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

@ [87.54] And just to round out this thread of replies ... if you are asking from the perspective of someone who doesn't know anything about programming languages, and simply wonder why someone bothered to "invent" Java when C++ already existed and seemed to be doing a decent job on its own ... there are thousands of programming languages and programming language designers love "improving" things. There's more than one way to invent the wheel.

For some good background on programming language design in general, read a few essays by Paul Graham (Here are two good ones [5] [6] that talk about lisp, but have general application). dr.ef.tymac 20:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Follow-up: oh, by the way, in case you aren't enthralled by techie-types debating the nuances of "compiled vs interpreted" and the other kinds of perennial squabbles that are likely to show up in in response to your question, you might want to take a look at Comparison of Java and C++, on Wikipedia. dr.ef.tymac 20:44, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

As others have said, a huge difference is that in Java, all objects live on the heap and are garbage collected. The programmer controls when objects are allocated, but the run-time system deallocates them behind the scenes when it can prove that they will never again be used. In C++, the programmer controls the full life cycle of every object (creation and destruction). This has major consequences for certain styles of programming; the idea that "resource allocation is initialization" is ubiquitous in C++ and nonexistent in Java. In C++ it's generally considered good programming style to use automatic (stack) allocation for most objects and avoid new and delete, whereas in Java new is everywhere. Explicit memory management also means that objects can disappear while references to them remain, which is a famous source of bugs.

In C++ when you write Foo x, it means that x is a Foo (automatic). In Java, Foo x means that x is a reference to a Foo; the actual object lives elsewhere (on the heap). In C++, if you assign to x, you're asking the object x to overwrite itself with whatever's to right of the = sign. In Java, you're changing the reference; no objects are involved. The closest thing to Java references in C++ is pointers; they're syntactically different but semantically very similar. C++ also has something called references, which are syntactically more similar but semantically rather different. Pointers in C++ are more general than Java references, because you can have a pointer to anything that can be assigned to, not just objects. In particular, you can have pointers to a particular element of an array, and pointers to pointers, both of which are useful in practice.

Another big difference is that Java comes with a huge standard library, while C++'s standard library is minuscule (at least by comparison). You can find C++ libraries for practically anything, but they have to be installed and configured separately.

C++ is normally compiled to native code while Java is normally compiled to the JVM, but that has essentially nothing to do with the languages themselves. I really don't understand why there aren't more C++ interpreters or native-code Java compilers. (They do exist.) Also, there's no reason there couldn't be a bounds-checked implementation of C++ (those exist) or an unchecked implementation of Java (well, the Java spec forbids this, but there's nothing deep in the design that precludes it).

I don't recommend Paul Graham's writings in general since he's painfully biased toward the Lisp way of doing things. I haven't followed these links, but everything he writes is like that; even when he's not talking about Lisp, he's talking about Lisp. You'll get a very twisted view of the world from reading his stuff. I love Lisp, but I don't exclusively love Lisp. Learn lots of languages -- most of them have at least a few neat ideas you won't have seen before. (Though Java's pretty boring, actually. C# is more interesting.) -- BenRG 21:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft Publisher and Word Processing Sofware

Can anyone tell me if Microsoft Publisher can be considered as a Word Processing software? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shelaghmccormick (talk • contribs) 17:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Device Presenter

Somewhere that present me the suitable devices of my given requirements and characteristics for PC?Flakture 18:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

How do I create a scraper?

I want to retrieve some data from a variety of websites for a personal project, and it looks like I need to create a scraper.

This is just a one-off requirement and it's simply to save me several weeks of manually inputting data into the websites and getting the results.

I don't have any web scripting skills (HTML is the most I have), but I do have programming skills in other environments (Oracle PL/SQL and VBA) so could probably learn if I have some good, clear examples to follow. I don't want to spend more than 25 quid on this (it's all coming out of my own pocket), so will probably have to do it myself.

How might I make a start?

(I won't say what the websites are or what the project is - it's a secret!) 81.151.177.230 18:25, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Perl? Perl + Lynx?

Atlant 19:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks but...

I need to understand the missing links. Really, I need to know how to knit the bits of technology together. Do I have to get some web space that can host and execute Perl? Or can I embed the script in an HTML page? Thanks.--81.151.177.230 19:30, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You can always get ActivePerl on your windows system, and use the native Perl modules for scraping web sites. There are also Python (programming language) packages too, if you'd prefer Python, as well as other packages. You could probably also write it in Visual Basic, but I'm unfamiliar with that language. -- JSBillings 20:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If you have Microsoft excel, go to Data --> Import external data --> New web query --> then enter the URL you wish to scrape and it will load the data. --Open2universe 20:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

To answer your questions: 1) no, you don't have to; and 2) sure, you could, if you are familiar with the relevant HTML scripting language, but that would be an unconventional way to do it.

There is a multitude of ways you can go about it. The best way is to check the terms of use of the "target" web site(s) and ask the person in charge if they make the information available "pre-scraped" for you to download, or whether they have a Web API, or whether there is a third-party site somewhere that aggregates the content in XML or some other format. I remember seeing a website that did that XML idea with Wikipedia.

You could just directly save the text of the HTML pages to whatever machine you are browsing the internet from and then extract the information you want with a custom-made beanshell or perl or ruby or javascript, provided your machine has the relevant language interpreter or compiler installed on it. You could use a pre-made module such as some of the ones linked below.

You could probably pay someone 25 quid to teach you how to do this on your own, or write some scripts for you, although I'm not sure how ethical that would be if you didn't expressly state what you are planning to do first, and how you plan to use it.

Random ideas in no particular order: WWW::Mechanize Hpricot Mashup (web application hybrid) Web spider Aggregator Scroogle ... here is a site on a specific software package with a nice tutorial and pretty diagrams. If you need someone to spell things out for you step-by-step, you might have a better chance if you can show you've researched the above links (or related) and you've investigated the various options ... or you could just get a computer whiz to fall in love with you or something. dr.ef.tymac 20:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Finding a font

Where can I get a font for my Mac (OS X) so that I can see this diff correctly? Right now the ml link is just a series of identical and strange boxes. Dismas|^(talk) 19:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

• My method was to look at the language code (ml), go to its article (ml), see that it's for the Malayalam language, search for "font" on that page, follow this link, and end up with this font. --Sean 20:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Hey, cool! Thanks, I learned something from that! In the future I'll try to be less of a n00b about finding things. Dismas|^(talk) 23:13, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Easy alternatives to DOS window?

I'm a mac user and very amateur C programmer... I've written a simple program that interacts with the user via the standard streams, which works great in the unix terminal. I'd like it to run on Windows machines, too, but the DOS window only has 80 columns and can't scroll. Do I have any other options besides learning what the Windows API is all about? Can this Win32 console thing help me? (In case it matters, I'm using Windows 98 and Open Watcom.) Thanks! --Allen 20:40, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried Cygwin? dr.ef.tymac 20:48, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

No... I'll read up on it. Thank you! --Allen 21:16, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can remember, you can click on the system menu and select "Properties" and set the number of rows and columns to whatever you want. If you set the row count to something large like 2000, you effectively have a scrollback buffer. You can also do this programmatically with the Win32 console API. -- BenRG 21:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Hm? Vista (and I thought XP too..) has an actual option for how many lines you want it to buffer. --froth^t 22:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

One sucky feature of the command prompt window is that the "screen buffer size" is fixed (you can change it in the window's properties, but it doesn't change dynamically when you resize the window - Windows just puts up scrollbars if you make the window smaller than the SBS, and prevents you from dragging the window bigger than the SBS). I guess the reason is that Windows really doesn't have a proper mechanism whereby the terminal can tell a program running inside it that the window has changed. Unix, by contrast, can sent client programs a SIGWINCH message - which lets smart terminal-aware programs like vi and less and emacs know that someone has resized the terminal - so they can cleverly resize their own displays to match. If you do use cygwin you can start a whole x-windows session and use a full x terminal (like xterm) and you get the SIGWINCH mechanism thrown in. Also (last time I checked) there is a cygwin port of rxvt that doesn't use X (it just uses windows calls, and this looks very like a regular command window) - but it does support SIGWINCH. It's a nice thing to have if you want real resizability but don't want the whole X system running on windows just to get that. -- 217.42.190.82 00:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Cygwin is the right answer - it gives you a UNIX-like environment under Windows - once you've opened a Cygwin shell window, you'll be right at home with all of the tools you know and love. It comes with gcc, make and all of the other things you need. (And it's free!) SteveBaker 20:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

SUPER

I was lazing around the computing reference desk when I saw a solution to my problem: SUPER! I was trying to actually use the VideoDownloader add-on for Firefox...anyways, I downloaded the SUPER installation files (I think), but all I got was a box saying "Invalid Database. The installation will be cancelled." What exactly am I doing wrong?--The Ninth Bright Shiner 21:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Using SUPER in the first place for one. It's just a frontend to mencoder and ffmpeg- use those instead --froth^t 22:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh, okay. I'm still in the dark here, so could you tell me a little about mencoder and ffmpeg? Thanks.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 15:17, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

There's an MEncoder and FFmpeg article. -- JSBillings 16:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

installing xp on laptop with no cd or floppy

i have a laptop with xp pro sp2 already installed, as i just got it from a friend i want to do a clean install of windows to get rid of the junk, but the floppy drive/cd drives are external (floppy usb, cd rom uses some sort of smart card drive?) i've tried installing it but i realised that the computer cant recongise the cd drive as it would need a driver but the driver wouldn't be loaded at the point where windows installs itself. anyway round this?--Colsmeghead 21:51, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Most fairly new (certainly the last few years) BIOSes will allow you to boot of a USB disk (which should include a USB optical drive). So look in your BIOS - I think the BIOS will be able to make the optical drive appear as if it was IDE (as far as the bootloady bits of XP are concerned), so no driver would be required. -- 217.42.190.82 23:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

so just copy win cd to the usb drive?--Colsmeghead 09:51, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

theres no boot from usb option possibly because it doesnt have any usbv drives, you have to put it in a dock thing for it to have any kind of ports--Colsmeghead 11:09, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

HOW much does it cost?!

Due to processes I really rather wouldn't go into detail about, I can no longer install my Office Professional 2007 disc, because it's an upgrade. So, my only alternative seems to buy the cheapest available regular Office disc. What disc would that be? Standard is a frightening $400, which I certainly wasn't expecting. Doesn't Home & Student cost less? Is it even able to be upgraded? Thanks.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 21:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Look for the OEM install of Office Basic at online retailers. Office basic only comes with Excel and Word, which is most that almost everyone really needs (I run a couple of dozen machines at the office, and all but a few only have basic - occasionally people complain that they don't have powerpoint, but not enough to actually get up and walk over to one of the machines that do have it). The OEM disk (which is intended for system installers, but can quite legally be used by anyone) just comes in a little sleeve with the disk and the licence - no blurb, no docs, no box, no handholding. But really, before you spend money, do try OpenOffice.org - it opens every Word document I've ever had to throw at it, does everything I know how to get Word to do just as well. For 99% of people I'm convinced it's just fine; only people who do some pretty scary macro stuff find significant differences between Office and OO. And with OO you get all the suite for free. -- 217.42.190.82 23:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Hm...I found it at $180. Is that too high, or is that what it normally costs? Thanks again for the help.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 15:15, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you a college student? Microsoft likes to feel philanthropist and sell it at fair prices to college students. Check through your school's website- "Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 Suite (Student Option)" costs just $14.40 + S&H for me. Vista Ultimate Upgrade (never buy the full, just upgrade twice for a clean installation) is $18.45. If your school doesn't have a fair deal with microsoft, you can still get software if you can prove your student status. This january when Vista came out, I ordered home premium upgrade from journey for $90, and all I had to do was get the registrar's office at my school to send proof of enrollment to the provided address. This is considerably more expensive than buying from the school however- That $14.40 office 2007 ultimate becomes $249.75 at gradware.com --froth^t 17:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Running IE

How would one run IE from a limited user account to a administrator account, if you know the password to both that is...ie. what does one need to type in "run" by windows to get it run IE as admin? Thank 209.202.45.185 00:42, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Firefox 2 Spell check

When typing a comment in a text field (such as this), I accidentally added the word "unverifyable" to its dictionary (The correct spelling of the word is "unverifiable"). I was about to clicked on the right word in the right-click menu, but not being as mouse savvy as I though I was, I click on the option JUST BELOW IT, which was "Add to dictionary." My question is how do I remove it from the dictionary? And why did they not at least put a separator between the suggestions and the add option, like what Microsoft® Word does? — Kjammer  ⌂ 01:34, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, if you look in your profile folder, you'll find a text file called: persdict.dat which you can edit. You might need to edit it when Firefox is not running. You should probably use a text-editor which can handle Unix line-endings. Wordpad will work if you're in a pinch. --Kjoonlee 16:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

How to find your profile folder: Profile folder at MozillaZine Knowledge Base --Kjoonlee 17:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, fixed the problem. I was looking in the Program Files section for something like this and could only find DLL files related to spell check, which do not store any data. Although you'd think there would be a viewable list in the options menu. — Kjammer  ⌂ 22:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Richard Stallman and Wikipedia

Hi all - thanks for any help with this query....

Has Richard Stallman ever written something or said something quotable specifically about Wikipedia that reflects his opinion of it? (perhaps particularly related to this article: http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html ) Thanks for any references, links and tips! 207.151.227.116 02:38, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Image Scanner Upkeep

Hello. What are the unobvious tasks in maintaining an image scanner? I know that I must regularly clean the glass cover but what else? What if my light tube that moves up and down when scanning burns out? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare 03:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard of a light tube burning out; I'm sure it is possible but I've never seen it, and don't think it is very likely to happen unless you are seriously mishandling the scanner. As for other maintenance, there really isn't any, though if you transport the scanner you have to re-calibrate it occasionally as it can get a bit off of alignment when moved around (this is done via the scanner software). --24.147.86.187 04:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Energy consumption of the Internet

How much energy does the Internet use up? Worldwide and/or in a densely internetted country like the Netherlands. Not counting the endcomputers, because they may have been on anyway, even if there was no-one on the Internet. DirkvdM 06:02, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Everyone should read slashdot :] Not exactly what you're looking for, but go to the article and read through the documentation; there are dozens of sauces that you can use to figure it out for yourself --froth^t 06:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Wow, 5.3 % worldwide and 9.4 % in the US. Since I assume that energy waste in other fields will be higher in the US, that might be even higher in other western countries, especially in the Netherlands. But two thirds of that is due to the computers and monitors at people's homes, sort of like I expected, and it's not entirely fair to count that. But still, for the Netherlands it will probably be something like 5% of energy consumption, which is more than I thought. DirkvdM 17:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

IMO it's not really all that surpising. For every watt they're using, they waste 2 or 3 watts trying to cool the thing.. and my laptop uses a LOT of power for cooling- to keep it from overheating I use a USB-powered fan rig to pipe heat away from the bottom (my thinkpad tries to put out as much heat as possible through air cooling, and any extra it pumps directly through the solid metal bottom, so it's perfect for this kind of setup) as well as the built in internal air cooling system that runs air super fast through a little corner of the laptop and uses powered radiators to dump heat into that little fast-airflow space. I get about twice the battery life when I turn off internal cooling and unplug the fan rig --froth^t 18:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

E-Mail ID

I want the E-Mail ID OF Tiffany Taylor.Now dont dismiss it as a borderline trollish question I am really crazy about her.218.248.2.51 07:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)Hedonister

Her website says it's dgi.business AT aol.com. Good luck! --Sean 13:49, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I would be really surprised if she actually ever sees any of the mail that goes to that address. If you get a reply - it'll be picked from a menu of pre-written replies. Forget it. SteveBaker 17:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Streaming music with wiki

Is there a way to stream music with wiki? For example using windows media player to play music in a wiki article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.75.79.220 (talk) 08:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Hardisk Failure

Hi friends, My PC's been suffering from Hardnisk failure.My configuration is (Pentium D 3GHZ,1GB RAM(transcend),Mercury TV tuner card on PCI slot,160 GB SATA Segate HDD,965 INtel Mainboard,Windows XP SP2) In C Drive I have installed Windows 2000 and in D drive I have installed Windows XP SP2.The thing happened was., that last week I found one partition was not formatted and it was about 12 GB space.I have already divided HDD into 8 partitions.Using disk management in XP,I assigned a new drive letter "Z" and clicked format,and next to that second, my system displayed Blue screen or stop screen error telling that Plug and play device is in faulty cond,could be due to bad\faulty driver.Before this incident,my HDD was just doing superb.I never got such problems...I disconnected all other devices and again booted using that faulty HDD, but to my surprise, it showed the operating system choice menu such as windows XP and windows 2000.Also I was able to detect my drive in BIOS.Once I boot xp, the HDD is loading which I confirmed by its sound and vibration but when the "windows XP loading screen" appears,my system again displayed stop or blue screen error stating the same problem.This was the permanent case.Later,I plugged in the HDD as plug and play into another PC after booting and login to windows XP desktop in my friends PC.The device manager detects the drive, but within seconds it displayed stop screen error with same quote.This is my critical case.I changed HDD cables,power cord,I reset the BIOS and set for default values,but nothing helped out...Booting sectors in my HDD seem to OK,but I thing some clusters might have been damaged...I have huge amount of precious data with many not backed up.I cant give to data recovery centre since that will void guarantee or if I send it to segate,they will return new product and I will lose all data..Please help me solve this problem by any means...Thanks a thousand in advance... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 08:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest using a LiveCD for data recovery, such as Linux System Rescue CD or Rescubuntu, to recover it to another hard drive. Do it fast, since your hard disk seems to be near failure. Splintercellguy 20:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

RAIDed external USB harddrive...

My dad wants to buy an external USB harddrive to back up all his important things. He's really, really worried about it crashing and only having one copy, so I suggested that maybe he should get one that had a built in RAID system (RAID 1, that is), because I imagined some USB drives came with that built in. There are, right? Can someone recommend one? --Oskar 09:38, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

They're pricey. This one looks perfect but it's way too expensive for only 400GB in RAID 1. Maybe this one, but there's a bad review. I don't know, just buy a nice low-end enclosure that comes with all the RAID parts, and then buy hard drives separately --froth^t 17:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think RAID is a good idea. It's too easy to imagine scenarios where both drives are lost at once -- power surge, controller electronics failure, earthquake depending on where you live. RAID mirroring is good for servers that need to be online all the time; when a drive fails, the server can keep running while you swap in a new drive. I don't think it's a good fit for an external backup drive that's only occasionally going to be switched on. I'd buy two drives from different manufacturers and alternate between them for backups, never having both plugged in at the same time. How much important data does your dad have? USB pen drives are dirt cheap these days. You could buy a dozen 4GB pen drives for the price of that Buffalo RAID array. -- BenRG 22:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

problem of faint photos on internet viewing.

Hi, I am Tejraj Singh from Palghar, India, the problem I am facing with my computer is that when I connect internet, pictures/photos are seen faint not clear or say broken (like trying to hide fact in photos ) .this problem is with all internet sites that I had visited. Please help me how to overcome this problem on my computer, is their any short of software or else. Thanking you, Tejraj Singh.220.224.101.32 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.224.101.32 (talk) 11:38, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Singh. Do photos/pictures that you have on your computer also appear faint? If so, it may be either a problem with your monitor, or your graphics card.--Mostargue 11:57, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

It might be something as simple as turning up the contrast on your monitor. This can easily be tested with something like the shades of grey on the right in greyscale, but for your purpose that would have to extend to pure white (where you would then have to see all shades). Don't we have that somewhere? DirkvdM 18:02, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

microcontroller neuron

Are there microcontrollers designed specifically to simulate or duplicate the function of a neuron or does such functionality have to be programmed into a standard microcontroller, and if so, is there an algorithm for such programming? Clem 18:05, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

No - microcontrollers are not designed to act as artificial neurons. You could possibly run a Neural Network simulator on one of them. The algorithms for this are widely published in books on the subject - but without understanding the workings of them, you'd find it very hard to use them - so you're going to need to get hold of a book on the subject anyway. What application did you have in mind? SteveBaker 20:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Bluetooth Webcam

Where can you get a bluetooth webcam?martianlostinspace ^{email me} 19:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there are any. --froth^t 19:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Really?martianlostinspace ^{email me} 19:26, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Bluetooth isn't really made for high speed, high bandwidth transfers, 2.0 transfers only about 3 Mbit/s which isn't all that much. It's designed to transfer sounds and and calendar entries and stuff. I think that it would be pushing it to use it for a webcam. --Oskar 20:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

You might be able to just get a USB webcam and bridge it over a pair of Wireless USB adapters. Belkin apparently makes them but I can't find them. --froth^t 21:06, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

python class method: does a function/method have a way to know it's own name?

Suppose you have the following python code:

   class person(object):
       def __init__(self):
           self.fn = 'homer';
           self.ln = 'simpson';
       def say_anything(self):
           try:
               this_func   = '__what_do_i_put_here__??';
               name        = this_func.__name__;
           except:
               print       "there was an error!";
               name        = 'say_anything';
           print self.fn +" "+ self.ln +" didn't "+ name;
   test    = person();
   test.say_anything();

The code produces:

   there was an error!
   homer simpson didn't say_anything

The goal is to produce the same output, but without the "error" ... which means I have to figure out a way to get a function/method to know its own name ... which means I have to figure out what to put in place of '__what_do_i_put_here__??'. Any suggestions? NoClutter 22:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Removing lyrics from songs

Using existing technology and software, is it possible to remove the lyrics from an MP3 song, leaving behind only the melody, so that one can sing the song themselves with only the melody playing? Thanks. Acceptable 22:59, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. You can easily look up this topic yourself. Please see Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2007_September_26#Karioke_Track. For future questions, try using the search box at the top left of the screen. It's much quicker, and you will probably find a clearer answer. If you still don't understand, add a further question below by clicking the "edit" button to the right of your question title. . dr.ef.tymac 00:41, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

PSP Wifi

I have established a wifi connection on my PSP using my home computer's wireless access. I have noticed that the two devices use the same IP address. So...

QUESTION 1- If I were to, let's say, get banned from a site using my PSP (this has not happened, just an example), would I be banned from that site on my computer as well?

QUESTION 2- Let's pretend I have the Internet Service Provider SBC Global. Both of my internet connections, then, are provided by SBC Global. So, let's say that, on my home computer, I establish an SBC Global email account. Of course, I wouldn't have a pre-established SBC Global e-mail account on my PSP since I am simply using the connection. So, let's pretend that I set up a Gmail e-mail account for myself, that I will use when using my PSP. So, if I subscriped to something or ordered something using my gmail account, would anybody using the computer or SBC Global account ever be informed thru the SBC account of this? So pretty much, would the computer user be able to track the IP address and find not only the history of the computer, but also what has happened on the PSP?

QUESTION 3- Are there any extra fees thrown onto a wireless internet connection if there is a 2nd party using it via a PSP? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.23.84.129 (talk) 23:27, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll assume you're in a residential setting, and your PSP was connected to a home broadband router with wireless capabilities. For the first, The IP address associated with your connection would have been banned, so any machines that use the router will be blocked too. For the second, no. For the third, no, it's your wireless router, isn't it? How can the ISP track how many machines are connected to the router anyway? Splintercellguy 01:19, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

is the psp or iphone a better media player (widescreen movies).

it seems the iphone in widescreen mode playing a movie is similar to a psp doing the same thing. which is better? (the actual experience though maybe its because of brightness, physical size, resolution, dpi etc) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.0.127.58 (talk) 23:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Surfing web without web browsers

Is it possible on a Windows XP/Vista to surf the internet without a web browser on your computer and instead using, for example, CMD? Thanks. Acceptable 23:43, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Not sure about windows versions for these tools, but can you explain a bit more about what you need. There are some text-based web browsers, like the Lynx web browser. There are simpler tools for downloading, like wget, which are also text-based. For more complex stuff, there are scripts like python which could be used. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)