Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

WP:RD/C C #eee #f5f5f5 #eee #aaa #aaa #aaa #00f #00f #000 #00f computing Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing Computing WP:RD/C

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November 19

Cryptography: Which is more secure for authentication: RSA or DSA?

I'm doing some personal research learning about public key infrastructure and asymmetric cryptography. After Googling a bit, I thought I'd submit a question which I've been struggling to find a answer that satisfies me. I think the Computing category would be better suited to post this than the Mathematics category. Which cryptographic algorithm is more secure for authentication, specifically, key exchange and digital signing: RSA or DSA? -- PaperWiki (talk) 02:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know whether one is in theory more secure but AFAIK neither one has been compromised, so they're both 100% right now --ffroth 15:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

RSA can be broken by a quantum computer of sufficient bit size. No quantum computers with enough bits to break an RSA cipher of any realistic size could be created so far. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.67.90 (talk) 18:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought quantum computers don't work with bits =_= --ffroth 02:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

They are digital devices - so they deal in bits - but they do their calculations using qubits which is a quantum superposition of many possible states. It's true that we don't yet have usable quantum computers - but when we do, RSA will become highly vulnerable to attack by even fairly small quantum computers. With conventional computers, you can double the complexity of cracking a code by adding one bit to the length of the key. With quantum computers, you have to double the number of bits to double the time it takes to crack it. So a 64 bit code takes a regular computer over four billion times longer to crack than a 32 bit code - but a quantum computer will only take twice as long. Sheer brute force makes our present codes unbreakable - but we're going to have to come up with something much cleverer in the future. SteveBaker (talk) 03:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, DSA is also vulnerable to quantum attack, but I don't think any attack against ECC is known. There are definitely no known quantum attacks against any symmetric cipher (like DES or AES). Grover's algorithm is far too inefficient to be practical. But all of this is meaningless unless someone finally manages to build a large quantum computer. -- BenRG (talk) 12:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

PCI video cards

I have an old Gateway PIII PC I'd like to get working. I pulled the graphics card a while back to clean it and see if it was PCI (to try to diagnose a video card or other failure in a new rig). It turned out to be AGP. The motherboard's AGP alignment is off with the case, so while I can get it to work by fiddling around when the case is open, once I close it it never works correctly. Whoever put it in and got it to boot was apparently blessed with divine powers, and now it just plain won't work. I'd like to get a cheap secondhand PCI card, just to make the box boot and be able to do basic things like word processing and Internet (there is no on-board video). Nonetheless, since PCI graphics cards are so old and slow, I figure I can get a pretty decent one at the same price as a mediocre one. Does anyone have any suggestions for higher-end (of their day) graphics cards that are PCI and not AGP? I was looking at the GeForce 5 cards but our article does not specify if they are exclusively AGP or have PCI versions. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 05:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

PCI graphics cards are a pretty rare commodity these days. Even AGP is starting to become outdated. Everything's moving towards PCI-E now. You might be able to find one used, perhaps on eBay or something. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 05:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand - I'm just trying to find the highest-end PCI card for its day, specifically a model name, because I figure as they're all old I should be able to get them at roughly the same price. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 05:56, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I remember seeing a PCI Geforce 5200 card, but expect to pay quite a premium for it. They are rare, I paid for my PCI Radeon 7500 roughly 4 years ago for the price of an AGP Geforce 4 Ti. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I purchased a PCI video card from Wal-Mart just a few months ago to repair an older PC for a relative. [1] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:22, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Personally - since this is a 'junker' PC - I'd take a hacksaw to the case and if necessary use duct-tape to get the AGP card to stay put! Enlarging the place on the back of the case where the video connector comes out should be pretty easy - and then you have $0 solution that'll almost certainly be a lot faster than any PCI card you could buy. Remember - it's not just the speed of the graphics card - it's the rate you can give it work to do that matters. The PCI bus is unbelievably slow compared to even 1x AGP (and you might have 2x, 4x or even 8x AGP). In all likelyhood, it's irrelevent how fast the graphics card is because it'll be spending most of it's time sitting there starved for data. Even a slow AGP card will likely beat out a fast PCI card. (Caveat: This is a gross generalisation - a lot depends on...um...everything really!) SteveBaker (talk) 16:26, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Check the clearance around the video card, it might press on a capacitor or something when the case is closed.Polypipe Wrangler (talk) 05:47, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Check, for example this search on Newegg. It's just a "Power search" of all video cards that match the criterion of Interface = PCI. Also, the Fx 5200 has something of a reputation in this field, as mentioned above. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 23:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Windows XP: File | Save As

Windows XP: File | Save As

In the dialog box of any program in Windows XP when you select: File | Save As

There is an option in the "View Menu" to select "Thumbnails"

Is there any registry tweak to make "Thumbnails" the default choice?

If so, what is the tweak?

Also, is there any way to change the "default size" and "default location" of the dialog box?

multimedia

what are the server requirements of distributed multimedia systems

presumably you mean video for your multimedia. It needs a high bandwidth for the network connection, and disk drive connections. If you need to run 24*7 365 days a year, you will need an operating system that does not need to be restarted (for whatever reason). You may need to take an analogue video input and convert it to mpeg2 or something like it. There has to be a way to load up the new content. And perhaps you will need digital rights management for your content. A distributed system will have a lower demand than a single central server, but it will be much more difficult to keep the content loaded. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Multimedia is far to fuzzy a term. You might mean some still images and some simple JavaScript to animate them - in which case your server-side requirements are minimal. You might mean still images plus audio or flash animations or host-side PHP or other programming - or you might mean full-up streaming video. The amount of traffic you expect to get is also a concern. My ancient home web server is a 600MHz PC with a single, very slow hard drive and nothing but a DSL connection to the net. You can get streaming video off of it if you're the only person using it - or it could manage dozens of simultaneous users for some JavaScripted game or something that only requires a few images to be downloaded. At the other end of the scale, consider something like YouTube that serves 100 million streaming videos per day and pays a million dollars a year in bandwidth costs alone! We can't possibly answer your question without MUCH more information. SteveBaker (talk) 16:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Books about Web 2.0

Can someone tell me some books about Web 2.0??? I am from brazil so those books can be in Portuguese or english. Exdeathbr (talk) 14:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's a list: [2]. --Sean 14:21, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Finding authors of deleted youtube videos

I have a youtube video bookmarked that was deleted by the user, i have tried delutube but to no avail, is there a way of finding user who uploaded the video just by looking at the video id code? thanks Jutwdev99 (talk) 14:57, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

No. Try archive.org? --ffroth 15:37, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Depending on when it was deleted you could check the Google cache of the page. Exxolon (talk) 23:12, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Also you might try searching for the name of the video in YouTube or Google Videos. Often videos are mirrored by other users. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 23:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Unix batch renaming of files to remove illegal Linux characters

I'm using Mac OS X connected to a Linux server. Some Mac file names have characters that Linux won't allow. I'm looking for some clever speedy Unix terminal command to look at a folder of files and batch rename all illegal Linux characters (like : \ " > ’ ? |) into normal hyphens. Any ideas? --24.249.108.133 (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

• The only illegal characters in a Linux file name are "/" and "\0". Everything else is legal, if ugly to work with. That said, I've used the following script for years to fix up unpleasant file names. Just save it to a file, and do a:

perl -w this-script.pl *

in your directory of bad files. It tries hard to do the right thing, but you should probably back up your files first anyway. --Sean 19:55, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict; 

for (@ARGV)
{
   unless (-e)
   {
       warn "$0: '$_' doesn't exist, skipping\n";
       next;
   }

   my ($dir, $orig_file) = m#^(.*/)?(.+)$# or die $!;
   $dir = './' unless defined $dir;
   $_ = $orig_file;

   s/%([\dA-Fa-f]{2})/sprintf '%c', hex($1)/ge;
   s/[^\w._-]+/-/g;
   s/[-=_]+/-/g;
   s/^[-=_]+(.)/$1/g;
   s/-*\.-*/./g;

   next if $orig_file eq $_;

   my $i = 0;
   my $fname;
   for ($fname = $_; -e "$dir$fname"; $fname = "$i-$_")
   {
       $i++;
   }
   $orig_file = $dir . $orig_file;
   $fname     = $dir . $fname;
   print "rename '$orig_file' => '$fname'\n";
   rename $orig_file, $fname or die "rename '$orig_file', '$fname': $!";
}

I'm in bash mode and Terminal doesn't seem to like your code. What am I doing wrong? --24.249.108.133 (talk) 22:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

As Sean said, there are very few truly illegal filename characters in Unix and Linux. (There used to be an issue when interoperating with Macs, since Macs used : as their pathname character but allowed / in ordinary filenames. But now that Mac OS X is Unix-based, that's not an issue any more.)

With that said, filenames with "funny" characters in them can certainly be a real nuisance to work with. Here's a simpler script I just whipped up to take care of the characters you mentioned:

for f in `ls | grep "[:\\\\\\">'?|&]"`; do mv "$f" "`echo \"$f\" | sed \"s/[:\\\\\\">'?|&]/-/g\"`"; done

Another character you might be bothered by is the space. Here's a variant of the above script that fixes spaces, also:

ls | grep "[:\">'?|& ]" | while read f; do mv "$f" "`echo \"$f\" | sed \"s/[:\\">'?|& ]/-/g\"`"; done

Unfortunately, this second script can't deal with the backslash \ character.

One more thought: you might want to be careful about blindly transliterating filename characters to '-'. For example, if you have a file named ":r", and you rename it to "-r", and you later type "rm *" in that directory, you're apt to end up running "rm -r" my mistake, which might not be what you wanted. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:01, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[Exercises for the student: Why can the first loop not work for spaces? Why can the second not work for backslashes? Does the second loop work for all spaces, or only some spaces? Why did I use sed, and not tr? Why are there six backslashes in a row at two spots in the first loop? There are some deep waters here... —scs]

Stripping an MP4

Does anyone know a program that can easily stip ALL tags and metadata off an MP4 (specifically audio only i.e. M4A) and leave just the stream in an MP4 container? The reason I ask, is when I convert a particular type of file (best not mention for legal reasons - it probably doesn't matter anyway) the output M4A doesn't work with my Nokia 6300 (normal ones do). When I use VLC to put the stream in a MP4 new container, the phone will then play the file, but if I then add tags (even with Nokia's own software), the phone won't recognise any tags on the file (which it's supposed to). Any help would be appreciated - ^Estoy_Aquí^{(t • c • e)} 21:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

If you're on Linux try EasyTag, Windows try tinkering with Foobar2000. --antilived^{T | C | G} 21:29, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

November 20

word virus

I have word 2000 and lately, my documents will not send in email because Gmail has decided that it has a virus. So does every program out there. The only thing that I can figure out is that in other computers, they ask about disabling macros. I did not install a macro, nor do any show up in the macro list. What is going on? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 01:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

What's going on? You have a virus!! It is writing itself into your Word files as a macro so that it can try to infect other computers. This is seriously bad stuff! Have you tried running a full virus scan first? Get AVG Free if you don't have one that is up to date. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ooh, thanks. Any other suggestions for free Anti-Virus. Last time I tried installing AVG, this computer crashed. So, Id kinda rather not use AVG. I'm running a Trend Micro scan now, is that sufficient?--Omnipotence407 (talk) 01:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If it detects it then it's sufficient. Avast is also free if you don't like AVG --ffroth 02:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It found it. It actually found two things; 3 instances of W97M_GENERIC in what looked like the word program files, and 16 instances of W97M_MARKER.A in the actual word documents. It says that the second one sends a log to its author via FTP once a month. Seems to me that some computer savvy person with the necessary authority could track that back. Why hasn't this been done? Thanks for all the help. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 04:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It's author is probably using another computer that's also been taken over as its ftp destination...or perhaps the destination account is simply outside of the juristiction of anyone who cares. Many countries have too many other problems to be bothered with arresting people who are perpetrating "Internet crimes" that don't affect them and they may not even understand. SteveBaker (talk) 12:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

PostgreSQL: Denormalized input

I recently normalized my PostgreSQL/pgforms database of Magic: The Gathering cards to deal with split cards. The result is that each physical card now requires a row on two separate tables, and it would be a pain to have to switch back and forth between two forms when entering one physical card. But pgforms can't handle more than one table in a form, and I'm told that using a denormalized view with rules at the back-end would be nearly impossible, even with the rules already pseudocoded. Is there a standard solution to database situations where unnormalized storage would cause problems and normalized input would be awkward? NeonMerlin 01:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Anyone reading the pseudocode should know that the PK of cards is "Name","Set", the PK of spells is "Card","Set","Spell", and the FK of spells onto cards and left outer join of the denormalized view is cards."Name" = spells."Card" AND cards."Set" = spells."Set". NeonMerlin 02:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

excel problems

I have excel 97 on another computer. Recently, it has decided that when I double click on a .xls, it tries every group of letters before trying the whole filepath. So, for example, if I was to try opening C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Test Spreadsheet 2007.xls ... First an error message pops up saying that it cant find C:\Documents.xls, then one for and.xls then one for Settings\Owner\Test.xls, then Spreadsheet.xls, then 2007.xls. After clicking OK on all those error messages, it opens the file. Why is it doing this and how can I fix it? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 01:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Never use spaces in your filenames- it breaks old programs and command-line syntax. Use underscores instead --ffroth 02:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It has never done this before. Besides, the "Documents and Settings" is where "My Documents" is, and those are XP defaults.--Omnipotence407 (talk) 02:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Try switching to OpenOffice.org Calc. It's free, more secure against macro viruses and compared against such an old version of Excel should be fully compatible (except for the features OOo will have and Excel 97 won't). Or, you could switch to a Linux distro such as Kubuntu (which doesn't force or default any folder names to include non-alphanumeric characters) and run Excel through Wine. Either Excel 97 or Windows XP probably has to go sooner or later, but it doesn't have to cost any money. NeonMerlin 02:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Oy, except that Calc kinda sucks at the moment, like much of OOo. Slow, ugly, unintuitive, not-quite-fully-documented; reproducing all of the worst features of Excel... but even worse! --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

What department of Microsoft are you working for? Even if it's not unqualifiedly better than Excel 2007, Calc should dominate Excel 97 in any fair comparison. NeonMerlin 02:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Believe you me, I hate Excel too. I think Calc's biggest problem, aside from having its interface standards set by computer geeks, is that they are trying to replicate something that is barely usable in the first place. Excel (like all of Microsoft Office) is a shitty program and making a free version of a shitty program is not an improvement, especially if it is a very slow version of said shitty program. But I digress. My hope is that once OOo gets into a more stable phase a bunch of designers will descend upon its code and make a fork for people who actually want to not have to battle with their office tools to get them to work. But if I am going to have to battle with my software, I want to at least battle at a good pace, so the slowness issue (and the fact that everything produced with OOo looks about 200% more ugly than the already ugly things that come out of Office) means a lot to me. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The interface standards are not set by geeks: one of OOo's strengths is that it's good at responding to bug reports and feature requests from non-programmers. As for it looking ugly, the only significant difference in appearance from Excel is the icon theme, and that can be changed (Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > View > Icon size and style). Many other aspects of the GUI can also be customized that can't in Excel. NeonMerlin 03:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but the interface is super ugly and super clunky looking. Alas, the ugliness does not end there. Try to make good looking graph with Calc. I dare you. One that doesn't look like it was cobbled together by programmers with no idea of how graphs should look, one that takes Excel's already ugly approach to making graphs and makes it even uglier. It can't be done, as far as I can tell. Everything looks like crap; it would be totally unusable in anything but a setting where apperances did not matter (which is unfortunately the case amongst programmers). Not to mention they seem to have spent more time allowing you to make 3D graphs (which are methodologically problematic, as anyone concerned with visual representation of data knows) than they have on simple things like simple XY plots (you can't plot circles at all unless you are using ugly drop-in bitmapped "custom" plot images). This is the sort of thing that consulting with people who actually care about visual representation of data (or at least had read a book or two by Edward Tufte) would have stopped from the get-go. But the culture of OOo is to create a "replacement" for MS Office; recreating a flawed product will not end up with a good product, and everyone knows how awful MS Office is. (And I won't get into things like OOo Base, which is totally unusable for even basic things as far as I can tell, as a database programmer.) Anyway, I wish the OOo people all the luck but at the moment it's not a great program and I wouldn't wish it on anyone who has to use programs like that on a daily basis (like myself). As far as I'm concerned its a neat tech demo (based on a flawed idea). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 14:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow, didnt mean to start this argument, but I have to agree with 24. I tried using Impress for a presentation for school, and it just kept crashing, and took about 5 minutes to save any progress. I flipped back to powerpoint, and whipped off the presentation that had been taking days, in a matter of an hour or two. Ive generally found OOo to be pretty slow, and not a viable alternative to Any Version of Microsoft Office, including 97. Only thing that OOo seems to have on Microsoft in my use is the pricetag. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 04:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The odds are that somehow the file association had gotten whiggy and it is trying to execute it without the quotes it needs around the filename. If I recall you have to fish around in the registry to fix it. This post sounds like what I am talking about—it's the quotes around the %1 that are probably missing (for some reason). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:51, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'm gonna try the registry fix tomorrow after the computer is scanned for the same virus my other computer had. I'll let you know if it works. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 04:28, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The regedit worked great. Thanks--Omnipotence407 (talk) 02:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki, JavaScript and PHP

(This is not a Wikipedia question)

If I have my own MediaWiki system, can I add JavaScript or PHP to specific pages in the Wiki to make them interactive? For example, if I have a JavaScript snippet to create a little interactive widget to convert fahrenheit to centigrade - can I set up the system to allow me to put that into a regular Wiki page? How about PHP code to do stuff on the server-side?

I could obviously do this outside the Wiki on some other web page - but I want the ability to edit it in a browser and to use the Wiki to do version control. Since this is for a private Wiki, I'm not concerned with vandalism or anything.

TIA SteveBaker (talk) 03:18, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Well for Javascript you can edit the skin's js file and do something similar to all the javascript tools on here like WP:POPUPS. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - I knew about that - but it's not what I need. Editing your monobook.js allows one user to stick in some JavaScript that affects all pages he visits. I want the opposite - something I can stick into one page that affects all users who visit it. Think specificially about something like having a little type-in box in the article on Temperature that would let you type in a temperature in Fahrenheit, click a 'Convert' button and see the result appear in Centigrade. This is really easy to do in HTML - but MediaWiki kills the usual comment tags for JS. I'm kinda hoping there is a configuration option to change that behavior. SteveBaker (talk) 05:21, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't have an answer to your question since I don't know MediaWiki all that well (although I doubt it'd be hard to implement a <script>-tag in mediawiki that does what you want), but I do want to point out that you should be VERY careful about this, since this would be a major security issue. Your whole wiki would become one big XSS vulnerability. So you'd have to, at the very least, figure out some way to do it so only admins can edit such pages or add such code (which, since it's a private wiki, you may already have done). If you do implement this in some way, keep that in mind. 161.52.15.110 (talk) 11:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

As I explained, this is a private Wiki, it's set up so that only registered users can edit or move pages, WikiSysop is the only account that can create users - there will only be a handful of users and they are all trusted people. The <nowiki><script></nowiki> trick doesn't work - the script tag ends up surrounded by &lt;...&gt; instead of <...> so the browser doesn't see it. This is obviously an essential protection for a regular Wiki - but I need to circumvent it somehow. SteveBaker (talk) 12:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, what you want to do is make it so that MediaWiki doesn't automatically escape out Javascript or PHP code, yes? If there isn't a setting for such a thing, I bet you could find the function that does the escaping and disable it? (Sorry, I don't know MediaWiki at all so I can't give any specifics.) If I were going to guess where such a setting would be, it would be around the same place where you can presumably enable or disable HTML tags. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep - that's probably what it's going to come down to. I guess I'm just going to have to dive in and start reading PHP code. Urgh! SteveBaker (talk) 01:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that if you run a search over all of the PHP code for "strip_tags" you'll find the function(s) that remove the PHP and HTML, etc. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Nope - I just tried that - there is not one occurrence of 'strip_tags' anyplace in the PHP code. SteveBaker (talk) 01:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Which, now that I think of it, makes sense: it isn't stripping it, it's converting it to entities. Which might be done with "htmlentities" but even more likely is being done with a custom regex of some sort and might be hard to find for that reason. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 17:08, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Why not just do the same approach as WP, except it's integrated into the skin? Once you have the JS in then you can simply reference to it using plain HTML code. But, I think this belongs to somewhere like Village Pump/Technical where people are more experienced with MediaWiki. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The trouble with asking at the Village Pump and such is that those are about Wikipedia itself - and this is nothing to do with Wikipedia (other than that we're using the same base software). SteveBaker (talk) 01:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

My bet is on doing things the way the user scripts had been doing already, only with it built into the skin instead of optional. You can circumvent the code sanitisation by simply putting a <div> with an id, and use the DOM to create the elements inside it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:37, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have it kinda/sorta working. I got into the file 'wiki/includes/Sanitizer.php and found tables of allowed HTML tags. Adding things like SCRIPT, FORM and INPUT into those lists allowed me to make a page containing JavaScript that actually loaded and ran - although Wiki keeps trying to format the text inside those tage which resulted in a bunch of <p> tags getting inside my JavaScript code - so I had to put all of my JavaScript code onto one long line! Also, I havn't yet figured out how to let the sttribute fields of those tags go through - but the PHP code appears to be in that same source file. So it looks like I can fix those few problems and make this work - and when I do, it'll be pretty nifty. It's a shame it's such a security risk (which it truly is) - it would be v.cool to have client-side scripting inside Wikipedia. I wonder if we could limit what JavaScript could do by defining our own Wiki-markup scripting language that would be safe and generate real JavaScript from that? SteveBaker (talk) 07:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Or Try: $wgRawHtml=true 68.4.20.250 (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

"Bunu kimse Yapmaz" vanishing email

A friend tells me he received an email through Outlook Express that mysteriously disappeared from his computer. Fortunately he had copied the above text from the subject line to do a Google search before it disappeared. Otherwise he would have had no record. An Outlook Express internal "find" revealed nothing, no record whatsoever.

A week earlier, after purchasing a computer peripheral from Ecoolstore on eBay from China, he also received an email stating that processing of their PayPal payment had been "completed." When the item did not arrive from Hong Kong within the allocated 14 business day limit he requested a refund but the seller responded that his PayPal payment had not been "completed" so when he went to look for the email it had also mysteriously vanished.

What is going on? Can email that has been received and displayed simply self destruct like the mission assignment tapes from Mission Impossible, or did my friend delete them by mistake without knowing what he had done?

Also is it possible for computer peripherals from China to have spyware installed inside then on a read only memory and if so how can this be determined?

Thanks in advance for any response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.5.134 (talk) 18:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

It is probably too soon to tell anything with the little information that we have.

If the user has a desktop search program, I would urge to use it.

If a secondary computer is available, please try taking out the hard disk to that computer and using it as a secondary drive there.

I doubt that the email vanished into thin air because even if the email contained a strange request like that, there is no reason why Windows Outlook Express would conform to it.

Any ideas, Wikipedians?

To the OP: Before doing anything, make sure you understand the disclaimers above. If the issue in the email was critical, I would turn off the computer and have it sent to a reputable data recovery company. It would expensive and the I would probably finish eating my nails (and probably my toenails as well) as they recover the data, but if the situation warranted that, I would do it. --Kushal^t 19:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• Desktop search is faster than Outlook Express or Windows XP searches but does not appear to be configurable to do a search on text or any sequence of characters within a file whereas "Bunu kimse Yapmaz" appeared in the subject text of the email and in the body of the email rather than as the email's name.
• The peripheral device mentioned was not a hard drive.
• The issue with the email is that it contradicts the claim that the PayPal payment was not "completed." There is no need for a data recovery program but only the ability to scan the hard drive at the byte or bit level. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.5.134 (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction, 71.100.5.134. I used data recovery in the sense that even if the worst case scenario of the data being deleted from the file allocation table, it might still exist on the hard disk and therefore recoverable. --Kushal^t 20:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

To me data recovery implies at worst a hard drive found in the ashes of a house fire and at best a motor or other circuit that has burned out making a cleanroom necessary to disassemble the hard drive and remount the platers in a new case with new electronics to hopefully make the data accessible again. If the data on the hard drive can still be read independent of format then all that is needed should be scanner software that can read sequential bits and bytes looking for keywords. I have data recovery software but it is not keyword friendly. Instead of allowing a bit or byte pattern keyword it merely restores all data it can leaving the user to do his own keyword search by conventional means after all possible data has been restored. I do not expect that such a thing will work in this case.

Also I assume that it is possible for anti-spam or antiviral anti-malware software to allow the text of an email to be displayed but then delete it when it recognizes it contains a pattern it does not like. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.5.134 (talk) 21:20, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The last bit of our post is interesting and very relevant. However, the most sensible anti-spam/anti-malware program will probably keep the message in an archive somewhere so that the software can be trained on whether to treat similar messages as junk in the future.

To the OP: Do you have any anti-spam/anti-malware program that you think will take such actions? --Kushal^t 00:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Advertising new store online.

I have a family member who just opened up a new store, of the brick-and-mortar type, and I have offered to help with online sales. A friend set up the basic skeleton of a sales web site, but it needs a lot of work. Mainly it needs some type of sales software (keep track of shopping cart, process transactions, generate receipts, etc). When I look for this type of software I either find what looks like a scam to me, or over-priced options that want to do everything for me. Any suggestions here?

I also need to advertise so the web site can get some traffic, the most important step would be that when someone google searches the name of the store they get the web site. I've looked at the Pagerank page, and I'm a little confused about how to go about this. It seems like the best way to improve the site's visibility in searches is to go to other sites (like blogs and forums) and post links back to my site (especially contextual links). However, this sounds under-handed to me. For instance I could insert a link to the site here in this question, and since google loves Wikipedia this would increase my rank. But the purpose of this question isn't to insert a link back to my site, it is to ask if there is a legitimate way to accomplish the same task? I also plan on eventually using google's ad service to place context-sensitive text-based ads elsewhere, will this increase my search ranking in-and-of itself? Thanks for your help. 128.223.131.21 (talk) 20:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, link farms on Wikipedia no longer give you a boost on Google as Wikipedia has tags to ask Google not to crawl external links and Google accepts the meta tags. --Kushal^t 20:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Google doesn't love Wikipedia, in the way you think. All external links from Wikipedia have the nofollow tag set on them, which means Google doesn't follow them and doesn't give them any value. That doesn't stop dumb people from trying it anyway, and we're really pretty good at removing that stuff and blocking the spammer (for that is what people who do stuff like that are). And if they're persistent, and do something stupid like make a whole article about their business, when it gets deleted here it leaves a track (like a deletion discussion) that Google does like. So when you search Google for that business, you find the deletion discussion, and that's something that says "scammer" to your customer. guerrilla marketing is one thing, but dumb stuff like that undoes thousands of dollars of positive press and advertising. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

And similarly a lot of the "cunning" search engine optimization tricks you've heard of, including stuffing blogs with backlinks, turn out to trigger Google's (and Yahoo's, and MSN's) sophisticated "we're being scammed" detectors, which blacklist your site and again prove to be vastly counterproductive. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Regarding software, our Shopping cart software article doesn't have a comparision (which is disappointing) but does link to some external lists. Google for "open source shopping cart" and you'll find some you can use for free (and can see the source for, making it much less likely to be a scam). But the big pain is accepting credit cards - for a small online retailer that tends to be rather pricey. For that you need to find a trustworthy "merchant services" provider - there are many providers, but I can't say which is trustworthy. Going with an established brand is probably the path of least risk, but will add a cost (PayPal UK's merchant services account charges 3.4% + £0.20 GBP per transaction, which seems like a lot to me). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:50, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Besides PayPal, you will also find that Google and Amazon offer cash-register services for online credit card payments. When you look at the percentage taken, compare it to the percentage that a small merchant would pay for any other credit card transaction. Also consider the cost of website programming, bookkeeping, returns, fraud prevention etc and it might not be the deciding factor on whether to do online sales. EdJohnston (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

In terms of advertising your site, it's true that the more people with 'good' websites who link to your site, the better your pagerank will be. Using Wikipedia for this doesn't work (as has previously been explained) because we wish not to become overwhelmed with people posting junk links just to improve their page rank - and the Google 'spider' that searches and indexes Wikipedia knows not to include external links. Spamming other sites may work better though - but it's not a morally good thing to do - and I greatly respect your integrity in that matter. The point of the pagerank algorithm (which has totally transformed the web by the way) is that sites that are actually good, interesting, liked will pretty soon get noticed and the pagerank will accurately reflect their worth. The problem is that until you get noticed, you don't get noticed!

What I think helps is to make sure that there are REASONS for people to link to you. Regrettably, however good your business might be, you'll end up in peoples 'Favorites' lists - but they are hardly likely to link to you from their web sites/forums/whatever. Perhaps people will do it simply because of the uniqueness of the business - but that might be problematic if the business isn't all that unique. In that case, I think you should strive to put things onto the page that (whilst not strictly related to the business) drive traffic your way. This means that you need CONTENT. Content is king. So - do you have employees who are talented in some way? Do you have an amateur cartoonist? Run a weekly comic. Someone with a talent for crazy/funny animal photos? Get in on the lolcats craze. Can you put industry-relevent content on there? Well researched and organised raw data will get linked to. Perhaps if you are a food store then you could publish nutritional data for the foods you sell? Make sure every page on your site links back to the main page.

Anything to make someone trip over your web site while searching for something that's not necessarily related to your business. Make them want to link to your web site. If you have reasonable amounts of disk space and bandwidth, you could offer free web space to a club or other organisation vaguely (possibly very vaguely) related to your business. If you give appropriate credit and pay attention to the GFDL, you can mirror Wikipedia articles that relate to your business. Disk space is cheap (if it isn't, find another web hosting service!) - it costs you little to offer tons of stuff.

Ironically, it's not so important that the people who visit these 'peripheral' locations actually buy stuff from you (although it obviously won't hurt) - what you want is those pagerank-pushing links.

Taking a shot at viral marketting (of the web site - not the business) can't hurt. You may wish your business to have an air of respectability - but you're trying to drive links to your site - not to your business. Can you put on some weird sporting event with staff? Maybe challenge your biggest competitor! A custard pie flinging contest is always good for a laugh - get everyone involved - get everyone messy as all hell - post a short version of it to YouTube with something at the bottom of the video that says "Come to xyzcorp.com to see the full version of this movie". Make sure everyone knows where to go to look for the video - ask everyone to send out links to everyone they know. If you magnanimously agree to host the video on your site, you'll end up with your competitors employees emailing links to your site for you!

But you have to get actually creative - not 'fake' creative, the Internet can spot 'fake creative' a mile off. Be weird - be funny - be unique. The links WILL come if you do it right.

SteveBaker (talk) 01:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Republic Commando Soundtrack

Hi all,

the german and english articles state stuff about the soundtrack being available for public at LucasArts, but LA seems to have removed the whole product site :( Does anyone have a DL link for the soundtrack or at least the credit song by Ash?

88.64.74.49 (talk) 21:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Origin of h.264 name?

I know h.264 was "descended" from h.264~h.261. But where did the "h" and "26x" part come from? Do they have any special meaning? --24.249.108.133 (talk) 22:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Assuming you're talking about the video codec. The 'H.xxx' standards come from the ITU-T standards group. They use a letter.number format for all of their standards names - where the letter tells you which kind of standard it is - and the number tells you exactly which standard within the group. They seem to have allocated letters of the alphabet in order - so, for example: 'T.xxx' standards are for faxes, 'G.xxx' are optical networking standards and 'H.xxx' is for multimedia standards. The '264' part basically seems to mean that it's the 264th standard that they've defined in the area of Multimedia. Pretty boring really! SteveBaker (talk) 00:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I hoped there was a more interesting backstory -- like the birthdate of the lead programmer's pet iguana or something! :) Hard to believe there have been 263 previous ITU approved video codecs. --72.202.150.92 (talk) 20:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Not just video codecs; it's all multimedia standards combined --ffroth 21:30, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Windows 95 platform with the 'newest new'

I have a lot of old games that only run well on Win 95 (Railroad Tycoon II among them). This is a weird request, but what is the most modern old stuff you can put on a Win 95 platform, and expect it to run old games like a star? By that I guess I'm thinking about what was brand new in '00 or so. Do the new SM3.0 compatible graphic cards have problems running old games like these, or is it purely the OS? Because heck, I guess I can just dual-boot any new computer with Win95/XP. So I guess there's potential here for the request to be not so weird, but somehow I doubt Win95 would work with some Gfx8800... Still, I'd love to know it from the techies. Thanks a lot in advance. =) 81.93.102.185 (talk) 22:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You could install Win95 or Win98 inside a virtual machine (like QEMU, which is free). This would ignore your actual hardware and will appear to Windows to be old(ish) hardware which it can cope with. This is fairly slow to do, but for Windows 95 on a modern computer, it might work ok. Probably worth a look at, anyway. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

MS Virtual PC 2007 is also free, and probably a bit easier to use. Speed shouldn't be a problem for the sort of games you're talking about. -- DatRoot 23:46, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Win95 might have some trouble with large hard drives (large being more than 8GB) or Serial ATA drives. Video cards shouldn't be a problems: as long as you don't need 3D acceleration, the standard VESA drivers should let you use the card -- I've had no trouble running Windows 3.1 on a machine with a GeForce 6600GT. You might also run into a problem with too much memory: Win98 (and presumably Win95) have problems on systems with 768MB or more. If the hard drive is supported, it might be slow: without motherboard-specific drivers, you don't get access to the faster transfer modes. Sound cards are an open question: there's no standard, but you might be able to get an AC97 driver and card that work with Win95. You'll need a PS/2 keyboard and mouse: Win95 does not support USB. If you need a modem, look for a Hayes-compatible hardware modem -- those all use the same drivers. Ethernet cards could also be a problem: look for a card that offers Win95 drivers. --Carnildo (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Excel

If I have a list as the following in Excel and I want to sort them from A-Z by last name but keeping there phone # and address with their name. How do I do that in Excel?

Last Name, Phone Number, Address

use the mouse to highlight the rectangle containing all the data. Then click data, then sort,

then tell it you want to sort by the column with lastname in it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Excel Question

In Excel, how do I create a list for one cell? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.193.147.179 (talk) 23:15, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

YOu can type the first item, then alt-enter, then the second item, then alt-enter and so on. is that what you want? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:35, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Did you mean a drop-down list in one cell (otherwise known as a 'Combo Box')? If so, I think you have to show the Control Toolbox (go to View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox then you can click on the drop down list icon and click where you want to put it. You should be able to customise it by right clicking and going to Properties but I've never actually done it in Excel, only Access and Word.GaryReggae (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

You'd have to do a lot more work to make it behave properly; don't use controls in Excel files unless you know what you are doing (and even then, they're not usually what you want). --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Unidentified Malicious Software.. "Thumb.exe"?!!

I'm suffering some kind of files on my hdd called "thumb.exe". it copies itself to every drive on the hdd, even to removable drives once i connect them, creating an "autorun.ini" file which makes every drive opens in a separate window, slowing down my pc. it also makes my floppy drive runs every now and then, as if it's looking for a floppy disk inside. anti-viruses are unable to deal with these files because they don't recognize them as viruses inspite of their virus-like activities!!! i used some anti-spyware but it was unfruitful too. when i try to remove them manually, they just come back once i restart my pc, or turn it on after a shutdown. although there is no suspicious programs in the Start-up Menu or in "Windows Services".. my last trick was to remove it manually then format C: drive and reinstall my Windows XP SP2 again. but all in vain, it was in my reception there. what do you think about this, people?. sorry for being gabby!! Thanks in advance Supersonic8 (talk) 23:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure it's "thumb.exe" and not "thumbs.db"? thumbs.db is automatically made by windows and contains thumbnails of pictures in the folder --ffroth 08:11, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure it's "Thumb.exe" not "Thumb.db". I know exactly what "thumb.db" is for. and this is why it took me sometime to discover these files. Thank you Froth. Supersonic8 (talk) 00:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Download Free antivirus software like Avast! or AVG and do a complete scan of your system. Alternatively boot into Linux using a LiveCD, and run ClamWin from there on the harddrive. --antilived^{T | C | G} 21:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

If you have a single file, it would be better to upload it to VirusTotal and it will be tested against pretty much all the anti-virus engines. --Mdwyer (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

November 21

information technology in 21st century

can anyone please tell about information technology in 21st century?220.224.121.1 (talk) 05:01, 21 November 2007 (UTC)kaki

Do your own homework. The reference desk will not give you answers for your homework, although we will try to help you out if there is a specific part of your homework you do not understand. Make an effort to show that you have tried solving it first. Asking for an 'essay' as an answer on the Science Desk is a bit of a give away. I will leave the question in case any kind hearted soul wants to point you in the right direction, but seriously, Do your own homework. Lanfear's Bane | t 10:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm a kind hearted soul (hmm, blushes) but I'm bu**ered if I'm going to do your homework without a bit of effort on your part. Have you done any searches? you're here posting this question so you have some handle on the technology. Now just take another step forward and use the IT that you're asking about. Richard Avery (talk) 15:55, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

A also am ma**arined if I'm going to help him unless he learns to ask properly. (Is this a british english thing?) --ffroth 01:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Here's a big hint: In the 21st century, information technology will rise up and destroy all human societies, replacing them with nothing but more information technology; it will be IT all the way up! Just keep going on that track and I'm sure the teacher will give you an A! --24.147.86.187 (talk) 17:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It is also a very vague (not to mention poorly worded) question. As a starting point, see the Wikipedia link on Information Technology, if you need anything more specific, we can help if you clearly explain what you are looking for but we will not do your homework for you, getting someone else to do it doesn't benefit you as you don't learn anything. GaryReggae (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

uninstall

i have 3 os in my pc.how do i uninstall vista.its a disgrace to technology and a waste of precious space.i dont have the cd. 2.am using suse linux dektop enterprise.am having trouble using it.am learning programming and am not sure how linux will asist.are the tutorials in linux? 3.when i boot on xp and open my computer,i see two cd drives yet i only have one.av checked the cables but its not going away.is it a virus.and i always receve a message prompting me that i have files waiting to be burned onto that drive —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.92.115 (talk) 11:17, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

• If you're sure you don't want anything on the hard drive partition which Vista is installed on, you can reformat the disk. There's plenty of tools to do this (QtParted/GParted for example).
• There are quite a few tutorials for Linux, but Linux is big and covers many software programs. Most questions can be answered by Google, any others could be answered by posting on a forum (like this reference desk, or this one). Also look around your local area for a Linux users' group who can help you. Linux has many programming tools - which one is best really depends what programing language you want to use.
• With your CD problem - if it's just a cosmetic problem, then leave it be. If you want to change it, the issue will probably be shown by going to control panel > system > click device manager button. Check the cd drives listed don't have yellow exclamation marks next to them - if they do, double click them and follow the advise shown (probably re-installing drivers).

--h2g2bob (talk) 23:08, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

In Linux, you can obliterate Vista by reformatting it's disk partition. The 'fdisk' program (run as root) will allow you view the partitions on that drive - and to change the partition ID from whatever Vista uses to (say) 0x83 - which is a Linux partition - then write that out to the hard drive. Then use 'mkfs' (again, as root) to make a file-system on that partition (this is "formatting" the disk in normal terms). Finally, add your new partition into /etc/fstab so that Linux will mount it (either on commmand or on startup). But PLEASE be very, very careful. Treat 'fdisk' and 'mkfs' with the kind of care you'd take with a loaded gun that's pointed at your foot! Either program can annihilate your entire system quite easily. So be REALLY sure you have the correct partition name/number and all of that stuff before you proceed - make sure that every file you care about is backed up before you start. Trust me - I've seen some pretty spectacular screwups with this pair of programs! SteveBaker (talk) 07:37, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

linux 2

what is the best video player for linux?what site can i use for cool linux softwares —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.92.115 (talk) 11:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.net are both good for finding Linux programs.--droptone (talk) 13:36, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

VLC? There are licensing issues, so you probably won't find it in a Fedora/Debian/BSD repository --ffroth 21:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

See Comparison of media players and look at the ones that support Linux under operating system support. Usually the repository of your distribution is a good place to look for software. --Spoon! (talk) 05:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

CCCP recommends MPlayer for Linux. — Shinhan < talk > 11:05, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

sql

sqlبازگشتی —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.71.125.241 (talk) 13:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Does SQL help? or ar:لغة الاستعلامات البنيوية? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Linux keyboard problems

Hi! After running the following linux command: # dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg configuration and the subsequent configuration process I'm having problems with the keys that have a third character, for example, pressing AltGr+7 will not make the braces appear (Portuguese layout), which is a bit annoying for someone trying to program. What can I do? Also, while trying to install the audio device drivers, the graphic mode isn't running immediately after boot, instead, I must type $ startx. And I still don't have sound. How can I solve these problems? I'm a total linux disaster. Thanks! 217.129.241.186 (talk) 15:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi, dpkg-reconfigure locales might solve the braces. You will need to specify that you're using a Poruguese layout. To boot into X, the easiest way is to install an X display manager. If you use GNOME, run apt-get install gdm. If you run KDE, run apt-get install kdm. --Kjoonlee 22:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll try that, thanks! But I already have a X manager, I use ubuntu, it just doesn't start after boot. I have to type startx. 217.129.241.186 (talk) 23:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

There should be an option in dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg asking about keyboard layout. You should just be able to type "pt" in the box. (example: here)

Or you could edit /etc/xorg.conf. As root, create a backup copy of xorg.conf. Edit the file, changing the appropriate line to Option "XkbLayout" "pt" There are more variants here you could try.

KDE also does some keyboard stuff in kcontrol, which might be worth looking at. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:27, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

If you don't know how to make X auto start you really should be using one of the distributions instead of trying to build your own (if that's what you're doing). --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually only programming the support for a basic file system. I'm not a computer science student, I study electronics & telecommunications.

217.129.241.186 (talk) 00:03, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Different sizes

What accounts for the difference between the full number of bytes and the amount indicated before the parenthesis in MB or GB and between the "size" and "size on disk" when clicking on properties of a folder in Windows Explorer? For example:

Location: C:\Here\and\there

Size: 2,21 GB (2.235.887.280 bytes)

Size on disk: 2,40 GB (2.581.848.064 bytes)

Contains 3.560 Files, 322 Folders

Thank you. Keria (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It has to do with how files are stored on a disk. The size represents the actual byte size of the files, whereas "size on disk" refers to how many clusters it takes up. Sometimes files take up more clusters than their physical byte size, or, in other words, don't completely fill up the space allotted to them. Defragmenting your drive can help reduce this a bit if it is extreme (it forces files to more efficiently use the clusters) but some degree of this is going to be inherently there in most file systems. It's kind of like saying that every file must be broken into chunks of 8 bytes (this is an arbitrarily and randomly chosen value here), but most files are not going to be perfectly divisible into chunks of 8 bytes, so the last chunk might only contain 1 byte or 2 byte, but is taking up an entire 8 byte chunk of the drive on the disk. At least, I think that's what it is like—someone correct me if I've got it wrong! --24.147.86.187 (talk) 17:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

So if I were to copy these files on a hardrive mp3 player which number should I take into account? Keria (talk) 17:48, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

You will need to take into account the first number (size), as well as how free space is distributed on your mp3 player. If your player is originally empty, the files are going to be copied to it pretty much in order, thus minimizing the amount of slack space. If you already have files on your mp3 player, and if you frequently delete some files and replace them with different files, then the free space on your mp3 player is probably fragmented, so the slack space problem is going to be more pronounced.

In practice, however, the effect is not going to be very noticeable, especially for mp3 files, which are fairly large in size. This only becomes a problem when you need to copy a great number of very small files. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Fragmentation is part of it, but there's also filesystem overhead --ffroth 01:13, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

How can fragmentation have anything to do with cluster usage? Sorry but a file does not extend to another fragment until its first cluster block is fully used. You don't find files that have 3/4 used a cluster and 3/4 another one etc. De-fragmenting won't reduce the amount of info that is in clusters but not being used. The only way to improve that is to turn down the cluster size.--Dacium (talk) 01:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Why are do the numbers in bytes look different than the numbers in MB and GB?

Normal metric prefixes follow the pattern of 1 km = 1000 m; 1 Mm = 1000² m; 1 Gm = 1000³ m, and so on. When converting to a different prefix, you only have to move the decimal point but the significant digits stay the same or round up. (5678 m = 5.68 km)

Bytes however, don't follow the same rules. 1 KB = 1024 bytes; 1 MB = 1024² bytes; 1 GB = 1024³ bytes, and so on. When converting to a different prefix, the significant digits change. (5678 bytes = 5.54 KB) --Bavi H (talk) 10:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• What's the difference between file size and size on disk?

There's a lot of correct and incorrect information here, so I'd like to try to clarify.

Although files have sizes in bytes, the space on a hard disk is divided into clusters. A cluster is a certain number of bytes in size, and can be different from one hard disk to the next, depending on how it is formatted. The way a hard disk is organized, a cluster is the smallest thing that can be used to store file data. When storing files, the disk always fills up a cluster before using another one. If a file size isn't an exact multiple of the cluster size, then the last cluster will have some left over space that's not part of the file, but still accounts for the "size on disk" number.

To find out the cluster size on your hard disk, just open Notepad, type in exactly one character, then save the file. If you look at the properties of that file in Explorer, you will see that the file size is 1 byte, but the size on disk will be the size of one cluster. On my hard disk, the cluster size is 4.00 KB (4096 bytes). So on my hard disk, any files from 1 to 4096 bytes in size will fit into one cluster and use 4096 bytes on the disk. Any files from 4097 to 8192 bytes in size will fit into two clusters and use 8192 bytes on the disk. And so on.

When you copy files from one disk to another disk with a different cluster size, you'd have to do calculations to figure out what the size on disk would be on the new disk. Generally, it's not worth bothering about becuase it's not much more than the total file size. So you usually can just pay attention to the file size when copying files. You asked about copying files to your MP3 player as an example. I don't have an MP3 player, but the Music folder on my hard disk contains 783 MP3 files (46 hours 20 minutes) and uses 3.08 GB. The difference between the total size on disk and total file size is only 1.47 MB, which is very roughly equivalent to the size of a 1 minute 30 second MP3 file of average quality.

When you are creating files on a disk, you only have to be concerned about wasting space if there are lots of small files that don't fill up very much of their last cluster. The most extreme example is if I had a lot of 1 byte files for some reason. Each file would use one cluster on the disk and so there'd be a lot of space on the disk being used up without storing any useful info. The next most extreme example is if I had a lot of 4097 byte files (the size of one cluster on my hard disk plus one byte). Each one of these files would use up two clusters each, but the second cluster would be mostly empty, so nearly half of the space the files use on disk wouldn't be storing anything useful. In general, most files will use more than 1 byte of their last cluster. And as your files get larger, the amount of space left over in the last cluster is less and less of something to worry about. --Bavi H (talk) 10:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• Although it wasn't in your question, others have brought up fragmentation.

Fragmentation has nothing to do with how much space is used on the disk. A fragmented file just means its clusters aren't in order next to each other on the disk. Defragmenting a file doesn't change how much space is used on the disk, it just puts the clusters in order next to each other on the disk, so it can be read faster. Defragmenting a drive doesn't change the way clusters are used: When writing a file, a disk always fills a cluster before using another one. The distribution of free space doesn't affect how much space is used: The same number of free clusters are used during the writing of a certain size file no matter where the free clusters are located on the disk. --Bavi H (talk) 10:07, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Gtype and Sample Triggering Software

hello, I'm a training sound engineer. I've known about many theatre sound designers triggering sound effects from a Akai Sampler and PC using Gtype software. However, i run a mac platform. Any suggestions for ways to trigger sounds from a Mac using a MIDI or USB interface?

I don't really want to run bootcamp.

86.139.90.55 (talk) 18:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about sampling software at all, but I will say that it is extremely easy to run a virtualizer on OS X with an Intel processor. I run Parallels Desktop for a few things I do that only run on Windows, and it is a complete snap. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

coldfusion applications -- disable server-side caching per-page

If there is anyone on here who knows about ColdFusion, I need a way to disable server (and client) side caching of specific pages, without turning off caching entirely on the entire server. Is there a way to do this in a cf tag?

Alternatively, if anyone knows a better forum to ask this question please feel free to slap up a link. Gracias. NoClutter (talk) 19:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know CF specifically, but the general way to prevent the client from caching is to set a cache-control "nocache" line - see this -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

November 22

what does a speed of 54 kb/s means?

If you have a modem 54kb/s you just get 4-5 kb/s. Why do you call it 54kb/s if you only get 10% of it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 04:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

56kbps is the maximum theoretical speed over a conventional phone line- I believe it's capped by legislation in fact. It's by no means a guarantee. Also I think you're probably getting 4 or 5 KB/s, which is maybe 35kbps.. I doubt your ISP could get away with just 4 or 5 --ffroth 04:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, yep it is regulated, by the good old FCC </sarcasm> --ffroth 04:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

There is usually a confusion of the units. Modem speeds are usually advertised in kilobits per second. Transfer speeds are usually measured in kibibytes per second. If you have 54kbps (kilobits per second), that is 54 000 bps (bits per second), which is 6750 B/s (bytes per second), which is about 6.59 KiB/s (kibibytes per second). So 4 or 5 KiB/s is not that far off. --Spoon! (talk) 05:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The kilo/kibi probably isn't very significant for a general approximation though- the main issue is that 56k means 56k bits per second, not 56KB/s --ffroth 06:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's neither bits not bytes. The 'b' stands for 'baud'. What's more, 'baud' is a measure of the number of 'signalling events' per second - so you shouldn't be talking about kb/s - just kbaud. Because bytes are sent using a serial protocol, you'll generally need 10 signalling events to send one byte (depending on whether you are using 7 bits per byte or 8, one or two stop bits and with or without parity - the typical 8N1 setting needs 1 start bit, 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit - 10 signalling events to send 8 bits). So at best, a 54kbaud modem sends 5.4 kbytes per second. However, that's only possible on an absolutely perfect quality phone line - which you'll almost never have. In practical terms, the modems at the two ends of the line have to negotiate a rate that allows both of them to get clean data through - and they do this by trying to send data at various set rates until they find one that works well that they can both cope with. This may be 28.8kbaud or 14.4kbaud or 9.8kbaud or worse. But most phone lines can manage 14.4 kbaud - which is 1.44 kbytes per second. So I'd say that if you are getting between 4kbytes and 5kbytes per second, you are doing very well. SteveBaker (talk) 07:21, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought with all-digital phone lines these days, you're basically guaranteed a consistent baud-byte --ffroth 07:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A modem doesn't care whether the underlying transmission technology is digital or analog - it encodes binary data as audio - whether the phone service subsequently encodes the audio digitally or not is irrelevent to the modem. SteveBaker (talk) 19:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the old 500 baud phone-on-cups modems, but I'm fairly sure nowadays that fully-integrated modems can handshake with the phone system and degrade performace based on whether there are any slower analog segments between it and the destination --ffroth 21:29, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

You have a strange idea of how telephony works! All modems since about the 9800 variety have had the ability to negotiate the best data rate for the phone line quality - but that's not the same thing as using a digital phone line digitally. There is simply no way to do that through a standard telephone jack. Sure, if it's a digital line, you'll get better quality and higher data rates will result from the negotiation phase - but it's not because the modem somehow knows it's a digital phone line - it's because the audio quality is just generally better so the 'negotiation' process works better. There are all sorts of ugly phone-related problems that modems have to work around - even with a mostly digital connection. For example, when you talk into a telephone, it feels more natural if you can hear your own voice coming out of the speaker. (This is called 'side tone') Annoyingly, this feature is provided by the telephone exchange reflecting a little bit of your own audio back at you (kind of like an echo) - this has to happen even on digital phone lines. That 'echo' is really annoying for modem designers and they have to have all sorts of ikky 'echo cancellation' circuits in them so they can distinguish their own echo from the modem tones sent by the other computer. A truly digital solution (like DSL) avoids all of those problems - which is why DSL produces such vastly superior data rates down the exact same copper wires as regular telephony. SteveBaker (talk) 08:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

ITU-T V-Series Recommendations#Simultaneous transmission of data and other signals says the contrary, it says it's 56kbits/s. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Contrary to me or steve? --ffroth 07:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Steve. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe a baud is a singla signalling unit -- a tone, if you will. At 1200bps modem is actually a 600 baud modem, but each baud encodes two bits by being one of four different tones. However, as is obvious from the above discussion, there's been a lot of confusion about the term. --Mdwyer (talk) 17:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Ubuntu exim4 TLS problem

Hi, can anyone out there help me - I've got a mail server running Ubuntu and exim4 and I can't get TLS to work. I've tried setting it up as described in several howtos, but I can't get it to advertise STARTTLS :(. My configuration is default for ubuntu except as follows:

A file named 00_localconfig in the "conf.d/main" directory with the following:

   MAIN_TLS_ENABLE = "yes"
   SYSTEM_ALIASES_PIPE_TRANSPORT = address_pipe
   

and the debian/ubuntu config file update-exim4.conf.conf with the following (identifying features obfuscated with generic type info):

  # /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
  # 
  # Edit this file and /etc/mailname by hand and execute update-exim4.conf
  # yourself or use 'dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config'
  #
  # Please note that this is _not_ a dpkg-conffile and that automatic changes
  # to this file might happen. The code handling this will honor your local
  # changes, so this is usually fine, but will break local schemes that mess
  # around with multiple versions of the file.
  #
  # update-exim4.conf uses this file to determine variable values to replace
  # the DEBCONFsomethingDEBCONF strings in the configuration template files.
  #
  # Most settings found in here do have corresponding questions in the
  # Debconf configuration, but not all of them.
  #
  # This is a Debian specific file
   
  dc_eximconfig_configtype='internet'
  dc_other_hostnames='mail.domain.com : www.domain.com : domain.com '
  dc_local_interfaces=
  dc_readhost=
  dc_relay_domains=
  dc_minimaldns='false'
  dc_relay_nets='192.168.0.0/16'
  dc_smarthost=
  CFILEMODE='644'
  dc_use_split_config='true'
  dc_hide_mailname=
  dc_mailname_in_oh='true'

gnuTLS is also installed, and this:

   sudo swaks -a -tls -q EHLO -s localhost -au example@example.com -ap '<>'" 

gives me this:

   swaks -a -tls -q EHLO -s localhost -au example@example.com -ap '<>'
   === Trying localhost:25...
   === Connected to localhost.
   <-  220 mail.domain.com ESMTP Exim 4.62 Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:30:05 +1100
    -> EHLO mail.domain.com
   <-  250-mail.domain.com Hello root at localhost [127.0.0.1]
   <-  250-SIZE 52428800
   <-  250-PIPELINING
   <-  250 HELP
   *** STARTTLS not supported
    -> QUIT
   <-  221 mail.domain.com closing connection
   === Connection closed with remote host.

Any suggestions of fixes, diagnostics or ways of acquiring effective divine intervention would be welcome!

--Psud (talk) 09:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and running this as root:

  exim4 -d

gives me:

   Exim version 4.62 uid=0 gid=0 pid=18767 D=fbb95cfd
   Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.3.29: (September  6, 2005)
   Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl GnuTLS move_frozen_messages Content_Scanning Old_Demime
   Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dnsdb dsearch ldap ldapdn ldapm mysql nis nis0 passwd pgsql
   Authenticators: cram_md5 cyrus_sasl plaintext spa
   Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral iplookup manualroute queryprogram redirect
   Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
   Fixed never_users: 0
   Size of off_t: 8
   changed uid/gid: forcing real = effective
     uid=0 gid=0 pid=18767
     auxiliary group list: <none>
   configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
   log selectors = 00000ffc 00089001
   cwd=/etc/exim4 2 args: exim4 -d
   trusted user
   admin user
   changed uid/gid: privilege not needed
     uid=106 gid=112 pid=18767
     auxiliary group list: <none>
   user name "root" extracted from gecos field "root"
   originator: uid=0 gid=0 login=root name=root
   sender address = root@domain.com
   Exim is a Mail Transfer Agent. It is normally called by Mail User Agents,
   not directly from a shell command line. Options and/or arguments control
   what it does when called. For a list of options, see the Exim documentation.  

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Psud (talk • contribs) 09:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know specifically about your problem, but perhaps you can read the Exim4 page on the Ubuntu community documentation. --Spoon! (talk) 02:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

It's cool. Problem seems to have sorted itself out when I threatened the system with reinstallation --Psud (talk) 13:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

HOW IS WEIQI RELATED TO CHESS

? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.2 (talk) 11:02, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

They are both board games of ancient Asian origin. I'm not aware of any closer relationship; the gameplay is completely different. Our article on weiqi (usually known in the west as Go) contains some comparison between the two.

(I'm not sure what this is doing on the computing reference desk.) TSP (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

IC's :What does 74(series) temperature range mean ?a

What does 74(series) temperature range mean ,and how is different from 54 series?

11:11, 22 November 2007 (UTC)59.92.139.115 (talk)shashank

The 7400 series article has a little bit on this, although it doesn't include any actual specs. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 19:14, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

5400 is military temp range -40 to +85 operating. Transistor-transistor logic —Preceding unsigned comment added by TreeSmiler (talk • contribs) 03:50, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

software programs

features and functions of benchmark —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.220.4.57 (talk) 12:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

`````` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.220.4.57 (talk) 12:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Check out Benchmark (computing) and let us know if there are additional questions. --— Gadget850 (Ed) <sup>talk</sup> - 13:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Or a question in the first place.. --ffroth 21:26, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

computer

I want to know the object orientation that are present in microsoft access. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.206.136.70 (talk) 13:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

That's sort of a broad question. Access uses VBScript as its core scripting language and is pretty much as object orientated as Visual Basic 6.0 (not VB.NET) would be, though most of the database stuff is automatically instantiated so you don't have to do it manually. Do you have a more specific question? --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

When running DOS programs(Clipper program) in windows xp screen shrinked to half why?

I am a Clipper Programmer. When I am running one of my Clipper programs in windows xp the usual full screen menu is shrinked to half screen. What is the reason for this distortion? What is the remedy?. Please help 59.88.73.103 (talk) 16:04, 22 November 2007 (UTC)psnyasas

It's generally a bad idea to run DOS programmes under XP, try using DosBox instead. --antilived<sup>T | C | G</sup> 21:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

A full screen command prompt in Windows XP uses a text mode with more lines on the screen than the standard 25 lines from old DOS days. If this is what you are referring to, I found two alternative ways you can change it:

• Enter mode con: lines=25 at the command prompt.
• In the system menu, choose Properties, then click on the Layout tab. In the Screen Buffer Size section, enter the Height as 25. --Bavi H (talk) 03:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Text size problem

After a recent reinstall of Vista Home Premium, my IE7 is having trouble with wiki sites such as Wikipedia. All text is displayed at half the size of how it should be with double the amount of space between lines. This is not an issue relating to my text size or page zoom settings, and does not affect other browsers from what I can tell (Firefox works normally). Can anyone suggest a solution?Martin Leng (talk) 19:34, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

That sounds odd. Have you tried emptying your cache, first of all? --140.247.11.24 (talk) 19:57, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried not caring how much IE7 wants to screw itself up? Just stick with firefox.. --ffroth 21:26, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Laptop memory upgrade

Current configuration:

• Compaq Presario V5209US
• Hynix HYMP564S64BP6-Y5AB 0622

Memory that I plan to buy:

• Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Notebook Memory
• 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM
• KVR667D2K2SO/2GR
• Capacity: 2GB (2 x 1GB)
• Speed: DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
• Cas Latency: 5
• Voltage: 1.8V
• ECC: No
• Buffered/Registered: Unbuffered
• Heat Spreader: No

Is the Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Notebook Memory compatible with my laptop? -- Toytoy (talk) 21:48, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but here is the Crucial.com page for your computer which describes the types of memory that are compatible with it. From what I can tell what you are describing seems identical to this RAM, which is compatible with your system, so it should work. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 02:57, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft Sam

How come it doesn't say 'soy' right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.66.155.90 (talk) 22:11, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty old. Try typing in "soif". Lots of fun to be had with that glitch. NIRVANA2764 (talk) 02:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

And "crotch". I wish I had Microsoft Bob- Vista comes with stupid Microsoft Anna --ffroth

Zoy is a pretty good alternative for soy.  Stewy<sup>5714</sup>talk 23:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

November 23

Sony Ericsson K800i owners

Hi all!I wish to buy sony ericsson k800i and want to know a few questions from k800i owners (who has this phone) (1)I often save article from wikipedia into my hard disk and then transfer to my Nokia 6680.I have Netfront web browser install on my phone so problem in reading then.So MY QUESTION IS THAT whether on k800i, can I watch that sort of article or websites (Fire Fox --webpage-complete option during saving). (2)what is the current price of k800i in Saudi Arabia ...........thanks to all —Preceding unsigned comment added by Star33 2009 (talk • contribs) 07:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

It appears that the k800 uses the same browser as the Nokia. Maybe swapping the browser with something like Opera Mini (which is free by the way) would help? In regards to prices I'm sure google could help, but my colleges proxy is blocking that particular search TheGreatZorko (talk) 12:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I own a K800i and can't find a way to read pages from a memory card on the browser.

As for prices in Saudi Arabia, haven't a clue. Stifle (talk) 15:18, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Presuming you can run software from a memory card could you find out if Opera Mini can do this? I myself would be interested because my phones data rates are horrific (£1 ($2) per meg, bought in £4 ($8) chunks), but I cannot run programs from a memory stick.TheGreatZorko (talk) 15:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

name a website or database

name a website or database where i can find all the names of softwares from leading publishers all over the world along with information like publisher name,no.of versions released,platforms on which they work , etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.36.255.122 (talk) 07:56, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

That would be quite a huge list. Wikipedia has a whole bunch of lists for different types of software. Maybe THIS will help? TheGreatZorko (talk) 09:13, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Software for editing big text files?

I'm editing a giant text file, where doing certain repetitive things by hand would take hours. I need an app (Windows) that can remove the first X characters of each line, and organise lines by the date that starts each line (formatted "12 Feb 92", "17 Apr 07" etc). Is there anything like that around? Froglars the frog (talk) 09:54, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

You can process text files automatically into MS Access and use coding to cut up/play about with the text. I have previously used Excel to this effect but for files over 65,000 or so lines it becomes more awkward. Your best bet is to use a system where you can write a macro to strip out the information you require or chop the data into the way you want. For instance you could use find to locate the text-string, left/mid/right to get the information you require from that line or to chop it up. I suspect this way may be difficult unless you are good at vba, someone might have another idea though. Find/replace in word allows rather basic edits. ny156uk (talk) 10:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing really "automatic" about processing text files in Access; it relies completely on knowing VBA. If you know VBA, you could just as easily do it in other MS Office applications. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I use UltraEdit. I've edited 14M files and it has macros and sorting. --— Gadget850 (Ed) <sup>talk</sup> - 11:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Why not do it in two steps? 1. run a script that will cut the first X characters of each line, and 2. run another one that will sort it by date. You could do this quite easily in PHP if you have that installed, other languages too. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:43, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Using the Unix mentality, you could stick together some small tools in a pipeline. A pipeline doesn't care about the lenght of the content going throug, in general. Unix tools ARE available for Windows -- I recommend Cygwin. Or get some native tools from here. Anyway, the first step could be done with a command called "CUT". To remove the first eight characters:

  cut -c 9- <infile.txt >outfile.txt

That's from memory, so I might be wrong, but that should say "give me the characters from position 9 to the end of the line". Use of the unix SORT command may get you through the second part of your request, but in general dealing with date strings is not trivial. --Mdwyer (talk) 17:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The OP specified a "Windows app", so I fear that using a Unix-like sort command will be out of the question. But if somehow it's an option: while it's true that dealing with date strings can be difficult, sort's -M option will be of interest. Once the first X characters have been stripped away, the lines could be sorted using

sort +2n +1M +0n

which should take care of everything except the Y2K wraparound problem. To fix that, I'd probably roll a little windowing algorithm in awk, along the lines of

awk '{if($3 < 10) $3 += 2000; else $3 += 1900; print}'

—Steve Summit (talk) 04:01, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

"OP specified a Windows app". Yes, I saw that, which is why I gave pointers to both Cygwin and native versions of the unix text tools. I know unix fans have a disturbing habit of telling windows users that their system sucks. I really try not to be that guy. But when someone asks me how to drive nails, I'm gonna suggest a hammer. When you ask me how to do automated editing of VERY large text files, I'm going to tell you to look into the unix textutils and using pipelines. I'm going to help you with some recommended command lines, and I'm going to help you find the right programs. If there's any time left, THEN I'll tell you that windows sucks. --Mdwyer (talk) 06:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC) (Who edits Wikipedia from a windows machine)

(Hey! Peace! No problem. I'm with you. [Well, except for the editing Wikipedia from a Windows machine part. :-) ] —Steve Summit (talk) 17:02, 24 November 2007 (UTC))

This isn't a matter of "Linux is better than Windows" (although it is) - this is a matter of "Commannd-line tools are better than pointsy-clicksy-GUI-crap" (which they are for this kind of problem). The problem with GUI-based tools (yes, even the ones that run under Linux) is that one tool has to be able to do the entire job by itself. If the author of that tool didn't think you need a 'cut-off-22-characters-then-sort-by-date' function then you're screwed. The Command-line approach (done the Unix way with pipes and such) lets you take a bunch of little tools and assemble them like Lego bricks to complete a more complex task. Just as you can build almost anything using 20 different kinds of Lego brick, you can build almost any processing pipeline out of the couple of hundred Unix tools in common use.

Also, if there is some problem your GUI tool can't handle, it's tough to fix it - even if you can program and the tool has some kind of plugin/scripting interface - which most don't. With command line tools, you can often create a little PERL or Python tool - maybe just a dozen lines of code - and use it as just one more Lego brick in your total solution. (Although if you aren't a programmer, neither approach works). Command-line tools can often (but not always) stream data through stages of this pipeline of little tools such that the entire file that you're working on (along with various 'undo' buffers and such) doesn't have to reside in memory all at once. For processing vast files, this is the only way to go.

So the command-line approach is ideal for this kind of problem...although it sucks for reading Wikipedia so you still need GUI tools. The other thing you need for the command line approach to work is a LOT of well-thought-out lightweight tools. (Things like 'cut' and 'sort' and 'awk'). This is where the Windows/DOS versus Linux thing kicks in. DOS's collection of command line tools is pathetic and their 'shell' (the thing you type your commands into) is horrible, it hasn't evolved since the days when it was a CP/M clone - which explains why command-line approaches have fallen from favor since the rise of Microsoft. Hence, if you are a Windows user and want to have a FULL set of tools at your fingertips, you need to install something better. Fortunately, the OpenSource community at GNU have provided the same shell and 99% of the lightweight command line tools that run under Linux in a form that work reasonably well under Windows. So - rather than bitching about Windows-verus-Linux, we need to be talking about GUI-versus-command-line (which is much less of a debate because you absolutely need both in order to work efficiently). Hence we need to tell Windows users to grab Cygwin and learn to use the power of the command line in the way Linux users have since before there was Linux.

SteveBaker (talk) 08:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure who's shouting at who here! (I presume we're all actually in heated agreement.)

When I wrote "I fear that using a Unix-like sort command will be out of the question", I was not expressing any doubts about the virtues of command-line solutions, or in any way scolding Mdwyer for suggesting one! The only reason I put those words there was to apologize to the original poster, who had asked for a "Windows app". Some people get bent out of shape when they ask you for one kind of answer and you, seemingly ignoring their request, give them a different one. In case the original poster was that kind of person, I felt bad about piling on to Mdwyer's not-quite-as-requested answer with additional not-quite-as-requested elaboration. That's all. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

MS Excel: Lookup tables and conditional formulas

I have an Excel 2007 spreadsheet with details of all railway tickets in my collection. I record various details from each ticket, including the location at which it was issued: to do this, instead of typing the location name, I use a lookup table (VLOOKUP) with each issuing location's National Location Code (four-digit code unique to that location) and the location name alongside it. So, for example, I will enter "5268" in Column S, and "Brighton" will appear in Column R. All quite straightforward so far.

The problem is that some codes no longer uniquely identify one location - either because a station name has changed, or because a code from a defunct location has been reused at a different place. In every one of the 20-30 cases, I know the date on which the change took place. Is there any way in Excel of including a conditional formula within, or in conjunction with, the VLOOKUP formula in order to pick up the date of issue from the "Date" column, and, depending on this, return either the "old" or the "new" name as the result of the lookup?

For example, 6941 changed from "Lower Edmonton" to "Edmonton Green" on 28 September 1992. Rather than overtyping the result of the lookup formula in Column R with the correct version of the name, as I do now, I would like to create a formula such that "When Column S = 6941, if Column L < 28/09/1992 then return 'Lower Edmonton', otherwise return 'Edmonton Green'." Is this possible?

Thanks for any thoughts anybody can offer. Hassocks5489 (talk) 13:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that should be doable using nested IF functions. For example: =IF(VLOOKUP_COLUMN_S=6941,IF(VLOOKUP_COLUMN_L<29/09/1992,"Lower Edmonton","Edmonton Green"),"Edmonton Green") should work, where you substitute your VLOOKUPs as indicated. This one will return "Lower Edmonton" only if the two VLOOKUP conditionals evaluate to "TRUE" otherwise it will return "Edmonton Green" if one of them or both evaluate to "FALSE". --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:49, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Faulty graphics card card!!!!! (So I'm told) technophobe pensioner

I foolishly allowed someone to try and download photos onto my toshiba laptop/ (l year old) they used their simm! Card. And lost all their photos. They left!!! I turned on computer a waterfall of colours ran down the screen and has been like it ever since - only cleared by clicking the mouse on the screen in the top right - left hand corner it carries on down the screen when iscroll down again and i have to re click mouse to enable me to read anthing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.28.28.133 (talk) 19:49, 23 November 2007 (UTC) (change from upper-case shouting by 24.147.86.187 (talk))

You cannot imagine how sick it makes me to obey WP:BITE right now --ffroth 21:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

(Which in itself is a BITE - so you blew that one.) SteveBaker (talk) 20:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you missed the part where they pointed out that they weren't computer savvy and were a pensioner. Would that someday you won't be able to use the most modern technology when you are retired.--24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:52, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

It's clear they have trapped your computer in the Matrix. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 23:54, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

How could I help but guffaw seeing the words TECHNOPHOBE PENSIONER!!!! shouted at me from the subject line? --ffroth 00:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Aww someone lowercased it.. it was in all caps --ffroth 00:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

To answer the unasked question -- "how do you fix it?" Video cards are considered Field Replaceable Units, so you'd probably better off replacing the video card. However, any kind of damage caused by someone plugging in a peripheral could also have damaged other parts of the computer. I suggest you consult a computer technician who can run some basic tests. -- JSBillings 14:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

This is a laptop - not a deskside PC. That generally means that there is no way to replace a faulty graphics subsystem yourself. If it's only a year old - is it still under warranty? If so - send it off to be fixed by Toshiba (don't mention the SIMM card!). Repairing laptops is not a task for amateurs so if it's not under warranty you're going to need to pay someone to fix it (which will probably be Toshiba), most companies will give you a free repair cost estimate - which will give you a better way to decide what to do. I'm sceptical that plugging in a SIMM card (even a faulty one) would cause this kind of problem - the fault was probably just a coincidence - but if you were determined to at least attempt a do-it-yourself style fix, I guess I'd take a magnifying glass and a flashlight and see if I could see any bent pins down inside in the SIMM slot that might be shorting together. If so, GENTLY bending them apart might maybe fix it. However, that's a million-to-one long-shot. You might also visit the Toshiba web site and see if there are any notices about this kind of problem. They may also have free diagnostic software that you can download that might help pinpoint the problem. SteveBaker (talk) 20:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

It says "l year old" not "1 year old" --ffroth 23:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

...and this confuses you somehow? SteveBaker (talk) 07:47, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

November 24

Restructuring GOTO programs

I found an old BASIC program lying around on my computer, and I was thinking of rewriting it in perl. But as with so many BASIC programs, it uses extensively the GOTO statement and is incredibly difficult to parse. Is there any way I could have the computer restructure, or just somehow analyze, it for me?  ›mysid (☎∆) 10:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Draw some flowcharts? Or if you post it here I'm sure someone would gladly help you. --antilived<sup>T | C | G</sup> 10:26, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

There are algorithms for automatically turning spaghetti code into structured code. Cristina Cifuentes's thesis has a nice overview (Chapter 6). But I suspect you're looking not for algorithms but for a ready-made implementation targeted at BASIC code, and in that case I have no idea. -- BenRG (talk) 13:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

If the program is well-structured -- that is, if the GOTO's all end up implementing familiar if/then/else and looping constructs -- it should be straightforward to translate into a structured language (once you can locate the familiar if/then/else and looping constructs in the wall-to-wall mass of code). But if the GOTO's are arbitrarily spaghettiesque -- as, in large unstructured programs, they all too often are -- it can be effectively impossible. Moreover, the tangled GOTO's in such a program usually end up implementing logic that is (a) ill-conceived (i.e. not what the user probably really wants, after all) and (b) buggy. So you may be better off figuring out what you want the program to do, and rewriting that part of it from scratch, rather than attempting any kind of translation (whether automated or manual). —Steve Summit (talk) 17:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I would say that if you intend to simply convert the program for the sake of using it 'as is' then your best bet is to leave the GOTO's alone. PERL appears to support goto's and gosub's too - and this will at least give you the best chance of ending up with a working program at the end. However, if you plan to expand the program - add more features - whatever - then you're going to have to really get to understand the thing - and in that case manually replacing the goto's is a good idea. As other have pointed out, most of the time goto's are being used because BASIC is such a primitive language and you can generally see that they are being used to stand in for more modern programming constructs - which makes it fairly easy to fix them as you are reading, translating and generally trying to understand the code. The other alternative (which I'm not seriously recommending) is an option I took many years ago I had been presented with a really AWFUL example of spaghetti programming in machine code for an obsolete microcontroller that I had to get working in under a week. In the end, I found it easier to write an emulator for the microcontroller in C++ than it was to translate the code! I hope you don't have to go that far! SteveBaker (talk) 20:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers. Drawing a flowchart (of the beginning of the program) indeed helped, as I was able to grasp the idea behind the very obscure usage of GOTOs. Just a snippet of the code so you get the picture of what I'm dealing with :) :

 ...
 260 IF r - 1 = 0 THEN 530
 ...
 530 IF s - 1 = 0 THEN 670
 ...
 670 IF r = h THEN 740
 ...
 740 IF s <> v THEN 760
 750 IF z = 1 THEN 780
 755 q = 1: GOTO 770
 760 IF w(r, s + 1) <> 0 THEN 780
 770 GOTO 910
 780 GOTO 1000
 ...
 1000 GOTO 210
 ...

›mysid (☎∆) 17:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My condolences. That's what I was afraid of. "Arbitrarily spaghettiesque", with a vengeance!

(It still baffles me that people write code like this -- but they do, they do. Moreover, they think -- at a deep and unquestioned level-- that it has to be like this. They just don't know any other way. The code they learned from -- in the poorly-written textbooks they read, in the poorly-taught classes they took, in the poorly-written programs of their peers they looked at -- was all like this. Whenever you have a bug, you add a bit more special-cased code to patch around it, and if that involves another GOTO or three, well, there are already 2,643 of the damn things, so a few more won't hurt.

Worse still, some programmers come to believe that not only are computer programs necessarily tangled and complicated and hard to understand, but that they are uniquely smart enough to "understand" and maintain them. They feel sorry for the rest of us who throw up our hands and run away screaming when confronted with their gawdawful monstrosities -- we're obviously pitiful simpletons who'll never be Real Programmers. The notion that bugs might be fixed, or programs cleaned up, or features added, by simplifying and clarifying things, by removing duplicated code, by omitting needless gotos -- that notion is either heretical, or laughable, or unthinkable, or Just Plain Wrong.

Me, sometimes all I can say in this situation is, It doesn't have to be that way. But I'm never sure what to do about the programmers who don't get it. I keep hoping to find a way of explaining it to them, but perhaps their brains are just different.) —Steve Summit (talk) 18:02, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Time loop

My computer's clock is perpetually stuck between 6:04:21 PM and 7:04:20 PM and keeps resetting to the former when it reaches the latter. The date is also consistantly stuck at November 19, 2007. The problem arose when I had to mess with my computer's motherboard jumpers. Thoughts on fixing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by SeizureDog (talk • contribs) 11:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... any temporal anomalies in your area recently? (*snicker*, "recently") --ffroth 23:37, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Check your shunt settings, obviously. Also, maybe completely clearing your CMOS and then letting your OS set the time? 68.39.174.238 (talk) 00:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There are two possibilities, I think:

1. For some very strange reason(s), your computer is (a) two weeks, one day, 16 hours, 4 minutes, and 20 seconds late for this year's North American DST changeover and (b) repeating the "fall back" thing over and over.
2. Your name is Phil Connors, you're on assignment in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and you're almost 10 months late for Groundhog Day.

—Steve Summit (talk) 01:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

collaboration

I do some collaborative work for my classes. I would like to find some way to easily compare revisions, in an easy to access format. I tried google Docs, but that was a pain. Would a wiki work? How would I set one up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by --Omnipotence407 (talk) 16:12, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

A wiki is a great way to do collaborative work and to compare revisions. As for setting one up, it depends on what type of wiki software you want to use. Wikipedia uses MediaWiki, which is probably the most advanced and worked-upon wiki software out there at the moment. You probably need to purchase server space if you don't already have some, and then install MediaWiki on it. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Would I be able to use a site like geocities or googlepages, or something like that?--Omnipotence407 (talk) 16:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

No, Mediawiki requires a server with MySQL and PHP support, which you'd either have to set up on a machine you controlled or would be a nontrivial cost to rent. Take a look at Comparison of wiki farms for some hosting options. But MediaWiki is written primarily to host Wikipedia and its siblings, and is probably overkill for a small project - so take a look at Comparison of wiki software for some simpler alternatives. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:49, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

It's true that Mediawiki is extremely powerful, but it's also ridiculously easy to set up. (My hat is off to whoever wrote its installation procedure.) As long as you have MySQL and PHP set up, installing Mediawiki is a no-brainer. I think it took me about 5 minutes on my laptop. (Happily, Mac OS X comes with PHP and MySQL out of the box.) —Steve Summit (talk) 17:19, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Why would you expect it to be difficult to set up? There's nothing in the installation procedure that's unusual for a PHP app- you just run the install script to build databases, and go on with the config. Granted it doesn't make you configure it, but you want to anyway --ffroth 02:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

And note that "non-trivial" can be less than $10 a month (paid in advance). Server space is relatively cheap as far as computer things go. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 19:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The expense (if any) is only in getting access to a computer on the internet (which might be a computer on your internal network if you only need access within the school/college). All of the software you need is OpenSourced. Hence you have to install MySQL and make sure that the web server software you are using (Apache say) is configured to support PHP. Then MediaWiki itself is extremely easy to install and works like a dream. Yes, it's fully-featured - but that doesn't make it hard to set up - so you might as well go with the best, even if you don't need all of the bells and whistles. One huge benefit of using MediaWiki instead of one of the others is that the steamroller success of Wikipedia means that there is vastly more expertise out there for MediaWiki than for the other Wiki platforms. If you are used to MediaWiki, the others (such as TWiki) seem amazingly primitive by comparison. SteveBaker (talk) 19:46, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll say. We've got a WikkiTikkiTavi installation at work -- nobody uses it. One of these days I have to figure out how to pour its database into Midiawiki's. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I need a bigger screen

Hi, I'm still using an old 15" CRT screen, so I pondered these:

• A 22" 1680x1050 widescreen TFT
• A 24" 1920x1200 widescreen TFT
• Dual 19" 1280x1024 TFT screens

I guess a DVI connection would be better. Not being a gamer, I'm using an Athlon 2000 system.

The problems are:

• My board only supports AGP 4x
• I'd like to use Linux with open source graphics card drivers

Which solution would work, and which would you recommend? Which graphics card should I buy (or will my old ATI Xpert 2000 be sufficient)? TIA, --Hochwohlgeboren (talk) 20:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I would go for the 1920×1200 TFT, but it really depends on what you're going do with it. Having dual screen is not as good as you would think, I would much rather have 1 huge screen than many small screens. Are you going to watch HD (1080p) things on there? Compiz? If you're gonna do either of these then you would need a reasonably good card with quite a bit of VRAM, something like the Geforce 7600 will do. --antilived<sup>T | C | G</sup> 04:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually happier with two medium resolution screens than with one high res one. You see more pixels that way and the side-by-side setup gives you a super-wide setup that you can't get with a single screen that happens to suit the kinds of things I do. Admittedly for games playing and watching video's I have to restrict myself to just one of the two screens - but that's just not my main activity and it's rather nice to have the movie playing on one screen and to have Wikipedia up on the other without overlapping windows and such. I agree that a GeForce 7000 or 8000 series graphics card is the best here - but I doubt that either of those are going to work with AGP 4x - so you might be better off looking for a GeForce 6800 on eBay (make sure it's one of the ones that has two video outputs. However, your requirement to have OpenSourced drivers means you are stuck with ATI cards - and IMHO, that's a REALLY BAD choice. Whilst OSS, their Linux drivers are slow, buggy and poorly supported. nVidia's drivers are the same versions they ship for Windows users, they are fast and very reliable. nVidia's support for Linux is exemplary and I think Linux users should reward them for treating us as a first-class platform rather than beating them with a stick for not opening their source code (which it turns out they cannot do for reasons of how they licensed some of the technology). All AGP cards will work with AGP 4x - just be sure you don't buy a PCI-express card by mistake. SteveBaker (talk) 07:40, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I was wondering if AGP 4x was fast enough to support a big screen. My calculation for dual 19" is:

32 bit x 1280x1024 pixels x 60 Hz x 2 screens = 5033164800 bit = 600 MiB 

Which is still below the 1 GiB that AGP 4x can do. I don't know though if my calculation is too naive, or if the system is bottlenecked by other components. I'm not planning to run HD things or Compiz, my CPU would probably be too slow anyway.

I felt my need for a bigger screen when I was running Eclipse, which looks like a stamp collection at 800x600. Maybe I should buy a 22" widescreen and add a 19" regular one when I need even more space?

After what SteveBaker said, I think I'll give the NVidia-drivers a try. Will all GeForce 6800 (or newer) cards support the widescreen resolutions? Do I need a certain amount of RAM on the card? TIA, --Hochwohlgeboren (talk) 15:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Using an AOL proxy to hide bittorrent activity? Possible?

Is there any way to make bittorrent work from behind an AOL proxy? I seem to recall doing it way back when, and AOL hasn't been my ISP for many, many, years.. but I keep the software around mainly because it allows me to edit wikipedia anonamously. Seems like the same thing should work for bittorrent, but it hasn't lately, yet I distinctively remember doing in the distant past. Any hints?--172.164.141.138 22:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

No, AOL proxies runs on the HTTP protocol, while BitTorrent runs on the BitTorrent protocol. You can use it to access trackers but any traffic to and fro your peers cannot go through the proxy, just as someone who speaks Chinese cannot relay messages in English. Also, it's not entirely anonymously behind AOL proxies, they've enabled the "forwarded-for" header so MediaWiki still knows who's the editor. --antilived<sup>T | C | G</sup> 22:31, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

True, but the "forwarded-for" headers only work if you volentarily upgrade your AOL software to the newest version, which I haven't done in years, so I'm quite anonymous, thanks to the utter crapiness that is AOL they had no mechanism in place to forcibly upgrade their customers to the newest version of the software.--172.130.223.53 22:35, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

...he says, editing from a non-proxy AOL IP. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't go that far, true I'm not editing from behind a shared proxy, but it is still none-the-less an AOL proxy. The distinction between the shared and non-shared proxies is an artificial one created by wikipedia, due to the disruptive nature of the shared proxies (which are currently soft range blocked preventing the few remaining holdouts with antiquated versions of AOL from editing from them except when logged in). This doesn't change the fact that there is no way to associate this IP with any real person, place or thing. And back on the original topic, I finally got bittorrent to respond from behind AOL's dynamic proxy server.. bet you want to know how (: --172.134.213.44 00:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Since I registered a free AOL account that I use when I log into AOL via the main AOL infrastructure, completely separate from my old "pay" account with AOL, and I only ever log into AOL as "guest" there's really 0 connection between my real life indentity and my IP address. They wouldn't have the slightest idea how to connect my IP with my real name, account, etc... don't even use AOL as an ISP anymore, was automatically switched to RoadRunner back when AOL/TimeWarner went the way of the dodo. Just as anonymous as an open proxy, or tor based proxy, with the added benefit of still being able to edit wikipedia-- 172.135.180.198 00:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

November 25

spyware removal

are there any anti-malware programs which you can download for free, do not hyave to register and will remove spyware? The Updater would like to talk to you! 01:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, try Spybot Search & Destroy or Ad-Aware 2007 Free. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Those two are good, safe, choices. But beware of companies offering such things in general - sometimes they are in themselves merely tricks to get you to install software that contains malware. Before installing any of them, do a Google search and see what other people are saying about them. SteveBaker (talk) 07:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Getting cookies earmarked for another domain

I'm not totally sure I have my head wrapped around HTTP cookies, but here's what I want to do:

1. I am running a PHP script on mydomain.com. Its goal is to access anotherdomain.com as a spider—it accesses it programmatically, getting data.
2. anotherdomain.com is only available to those with a username and password and uses a cookie as its authentication scheme. After authenticating, the site deposits a cookie with the name "adomaincookie" and a hash value. The cookie's domain is set to anotherdomain.com.
3. What I want to do is have my php script at mydomain.com be able to get the hash value for "adomaincookie". Once I have that, I can have it send to cookie to the site as part of its HTTP request.

I don't have any access to anotherdomain.com other than as a user, do I can't edit any of its coding or whatever. Is it possible to do this? The name of the cookie does not change, but its hash value does. At the moment I have been manually looking it up in my browser's cookie list but this isn't practical—is there a way to automate the retrieval of this cookie that the other site has set? I've searched around but can't find a way to do it. Any thoughts would be appreciated. No, this is not for any nefarious deed, I am just doing a little data mining. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you can. Otherwise it would be a serious security problem. If someone has your cookies, they can often log into sites you have been or retrieve other private information.

I suggest you use a program running directly on your computer (rather than from the Web); then it can access your cookies. --Spoon! (talk) 07:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - but that wouldn't allow him to write a site that pretends to be PayPal by passing data transparently to the real PayPal whilst spying in on the data stream along the way. (I'm kidding - but that's the real reason why this doesn't work.) SteveBaker (talk) 08:40, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Sure, but you'd think that any hash algorithm would at least factor in the IP address of the person using it so that it wouldn't work from another IP. (Whenever I do a hash I make sure the IP address is one of the factors because that alone helps a ton security-wise.) I guess what annoys me is that it is a trivial thing to get the cookie data with a program outside the browser, so by itself the security issue would already seem to be in theory quite compromised if that alone was the issue, but I understand why making it a little harder would be the case. Hmm, oh well, I'll figure out some sort of work-around. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Fine print question

I was downloading realplayer when I stumbled on this in the fine print:

6. FIREWALL CONFIGURATION. The Software configures certain firewall applications such that the user is not alerted when the Software requests or receives data necessary for playback content over the UDP protocol.

What's UDP protocol? Yeah, I read the article on it, but it just looks like it was written in another language. Thank you. --Jeevies (talk) 06:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

In order to explain what UDP is, I first have to explain what it isn't. There are two main mechanisms ("protocols") for talking over the Internet - TCP and UDP.

TCP (Tramsission Control Protocol) is used for most things where it is vital that the data get there intact but which are not time critical (things like email and web surfing) - every piece of data that is sent has to be acknowledged by a response from the computer that was receiving that data. This enables chunks of data ("packets") that go missing can be retransmitted. There are even mechanisms that retransmit data anyway if an acknowledgement isn't received by the sending computer because the acknowledgement data got lost! TCP is complicated and relatively slow.

For other kinds of data - where a missing piece of data is not the end of the world - the UDP method (which stands for User Datagram Protocol) is much cheaper and more lightweight. The sending computer sends the data and just kinda hopes that it gets there - if it doesn't, it doesn't and that's that. UDP is fast and efficient - but unreliable.

For something like RealPlayer, where data is time-sensitive, TCP is overkill and inefficient. If a frame 123 of a a particular video or sound file goes missinng - then by the time the receiving computer realises that it's got frame 122 and frame 124 has arrived, but 123 is missing, then sends off a 'packet went missing' message and the sending computer retransmits frame 123, the receiving computer is probably already in need of frame 125 and you (the user) already saw a jerk or heard a glitch in the stream. So rather than messing around re-sending data that's already too late to be useful, it's more efficient to use UDP to send it.

There are common firewall settings that are intended to make your computer more secure by turning off protocols that you aren't using in order to give "The Bad Guys" one less way to attack your machine. Since (I suppose) UDP might be one of them, they have the RealPlayer installer switch the firewall settings over to allow these particular UDP packets to pass through the firewall instead of being blocked. That's something you might (rightly) feel outraged about if they didn't get you to agree to it up-front.

UDP is also commonly used in online games where the fact that your opponent is now standing 5 centimeters to the left of where he was 30 milliseconds ago is a piece of information that's only useful to have for the next 30 milliseconds - by which time it's out of date. If it goes missing, there is no point in resending it, it's better to wait for the next update that says that he's now 10 .5 centimeters to the left. So those kinds of routine updates go via super-efficient UDP. On the other hand if he shoots at you - then that's a rather crucial piece of one-time data - which the game probably sends via TCP.

SteveBaker (talk) 07:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow, thank you very much! I really like the online game analogy, since that happens to me lots. :D --Jeevies (talk) 08:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Unix question: Getting specific lines from a text file

In Unix, head gives me the first n lines from a text file, and tail gives me the last n lines. But how do I get n lines starting from line x? The way I do it now is to first use head to get the first x+n lines, and then use tail to get the last n lines of that. But is there a way to do it by only using one command, and not having to calculate x+n? JIP | Talk 12:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

sed -n '10,15p' yourfile

or if you have a very large file you can make sed quit scanning after the desired line for speed:

sed -n '16q;10,15p' yourfile

Also possible with awk and perl, and I've seen the command "body" to complement head and tail. Weregerbil (talk) 13:14, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

My friend Philip Lantz once invented a little general-purpose utility "line" for extracting arbitrary lines from a text file or stream. I find it extremely handy. (Yes, I could use sed, but I find "line" to be much more convenient.) You can find my implementation at http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/src/#line. If you use its -f and -p options, it will do the x+n math for you. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:07, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Keyboard + Trackball

Does anyone recommend a cheap bluetooth keyboard with a built in trackball or other "mouse" type device? I want to be able to sit on my couch and use my Mac mini using just the keyboard and whatever is built into it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 16:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wine on Leopard

Does anyone have any idea on how to build Opengl/Direct3D support into Wine for leopard? I downloaded the latest version, and it builds fine. The only problem is that it says it can't ind OpenGL on my system! Non 3D programs work fine in Wine, but gaming just crashes. I'm using a macbook pro. Please help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 18:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Python Console Focus

I've got a Python program that performs some animation in a Tkinter window, but uses the getch() function from msvcrt to handle input. Is it possible to code the program to switch the focus back to the console after the window initialises, so that the user doesn't have to Alt Tab ? Robmods (talk) 18:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)