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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December 2

LaTeX figure captions

Howdy, does anyone know if there is a method of setting up a figure caption to appear in the list of figures, but not in the text itself? I'm working on a bit of a hack to get the placement of a figure to be consistent with my school's thesis guidelines (ugh). Thanks, --TeaDrinker 00:38, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

• If you don't get any satisfaction here, you might try the Math desk, which has lots of LaTeX pros. --Sean 03:50, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I did get another workaround for it, but (as with most of the LaTeX I put together, it was a bit of a hack). --TeaDrinker (talk) 18:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Japanese IME input

I'm trying to use the Japanese IME for XP but it's a little confusing. I'm used to the two-letter input system, for example typing "k" then "a" to produce か - however, the Japanese IME by default uses some sort of mapping system that maps each English letter to a kana, and I have no idea how to change this. Any help would be appreciated. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:57, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I've only seen the one where you type romaji and it gives you kana, and I got that by default. Are you sure you're using Japanese IME standard 2002? --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:17, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Yepo, v8.1. Tried messing around in the settings (including input settings) to no luck. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 10:54, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Did you try this: Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages -> Details -> Select "Microsoft IME Standard 2002 ver. 8.1" and then click on Properties. In the General tab there is Input method combobox where you should select "Romaji input". I always use Romaji input, but when you mentioned your problem, I switched this to Kana Input and got same symptoms as you. So, try switching this to Romaji input. — Shinhan < talk > 13:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Was a combination of things including the above, but it's fixed now. Thanks for the help! -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 22:31, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Fedora 8 problem: Picture spontaneously disappears

Since I switched to Fedora 8 from Fedora 7, I've had problems with my screen. Sometimes, the entire picture just spontaneously disappears from the monitor. The monitor switches to standby mode, as if it didn't have a video input at all. The computer keeps responding to keyboard and mouse input (as far as I can tell without seeing anything - but the keyboard lock lights still work), but no picture is displayed. Unplugging and replugging the monitor doesn't help. Restarting the X server does help, but I lose everything I had open in my session. What is at fault here, Fedora 8, my video card, or my monitor? JIP | Talk 09:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I would initially turn off power management services. It is possible that it is errantly putting your computer into sleep mode. -- kainaw™ 18:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't find power management services anywhere in the services list. What is the service or daemon called? JIP | Talk 18:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Screen saver gone bad? Try xset s off --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:09, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

A network prompt problem

Please help anyone I have a network problem. I have been running a network comprising 25 nodes using a Novell 4.1 version. When establishing the network some 20 years back the nodes were loaded/booted with MSDOS. Later this has changed to windows95 and windows98. But now when Windows xp is loaded and comes to the DOS prompt for running the original Clipper program the DOS prompt is not showing the path in full. When we use Windows xp the mapped drives in the novell login script are not showing the path at the dos prompt. More clearely, at the dos prompt it shows only the mapped drive letter only. But this is not the case with Windows 95 and Windows 98, they show the prompt with detailed path. The same login script is used for Windows xp. for example

 If we map 
       G:= Vol1:\MAINCOMP\WORK1
 when using Windows 98 at the dos prompt we get
       G:\MAINCOMP\WORK1>
 but with Windows xp at the dos prompt we get only
       G:\>
 In both the case above the command $P$G is already there.

Further if there is a subdirectory below the mapped drive ie if there is a subdirectory NEWWORK below WORK1 and if we changed to that subdirectory using CD then the prompt will be

     G:\MAINCOMP\WORK1\NEWWORK>   with WINDOWS 98

AND G:\NEWWORK> with WINDOWS XP

This problem casused much difficulty to the users as well as to me in understanding where we are actually!. Please help me. 61.1.227.94 11:12, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Maybe just map G: to be Vol:\ ? That should result in the same former behavior. I think its because only the NT Windowses (Or maybe just XP and up) will map a drive letter to a directory, 9x could only map to another base drive itself? 68.39.174.238 03:51, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

While I haven't run a 4.1 LAN in awhile, I do remember some tricks. Novell's scripting language allows IF/THEN constructs, and the script has access to info in the client, like the version of DOS being run. You can do something like IF (DOSVER) = 5 THEN Map etc and IF (DOSVER) = 7 THEN Map etc, where the Map statement differs according to the OS reported. You'll have to look up the exact syntax; all I have here is an NT domain and I refuse to get my hands and mind dirty... -SandyJax 21:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Java plugin for Mozilla Firefox installs, but doesn't work (once again)

After I upgraded from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8, my Java plugin stopped working. I have registered the plugin by creating a symlink from /usr/java/jreversion/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so to ~/.mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so (where version is the version of the JRE), and checked that libjavaplugin_so isn't found anywhere else in either the Mozilla Firefox install directory or my personal settings directory. When I start Firefox, about:plugins finds the plugin, but Java Console does not appear in the Tools menu, and no web pages recognise the Java plugin. This worked all well and great under Fedora 7, but not any more. What the heck is wrong? JIP | Talk 18:25, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Help finding a game

I'm looking for the name of a fairly old game for the Xbox (I think), but definately a console from that generation. The game focuses on running a pre-historic nomadic Tribe, and using yourself and those from your tribe to tackle monsters and whatnot. From what I remember, you can also customise your Tribes design, by altering the Headdress and colours etc. I only know of the game from reading an old Games magazine a while ago, and as such do not know its name or even if it was released. I know this isnt much information - but its all I have, and as such its fruitless to try and find it through Google or Wikipedia. Therefore the only person that will be able to give me the name of the game is someone who owns it (I imagine).

Again, sorry for the lack of information on the game, but I think its unique enough for anyone who has it to know what game it is. 90.207.56.119 23:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Seemed you were talking about Black and White at first, but I doubt it, as I am not sure there was ever an Xbox version, and I do not remember the headdresses. If that's it, cheers. I'll see if I can remember any others. BTW Black and White was Games Magazines Game of the year for 2002(same year the Xbox came out, maybe thats why you associate it with the Xbox) - Dureo 06:43, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Just realised this was in the wrong section, sorry for that. As for Black and White, it seems to be a simaler game to that, but thats not it. Thanks for the help anyway. 90.207.56.119 09:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, this might be a stupid guess, but I've been looking at this question for a while, and wondering "Is that person talking about Ooga Booga on the Dreamcast"? I suspect you're probably not, but hey, it's worth a shot --Monorail Cat 11:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Afraid not, it seemed to have more of a mature tone 90.207.56.119 18:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Populous: The Beginning? That fits much of your description, although it wasn't an Xbox title. --DeKay01 (talk) 22:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Nada, I'm afraid. To clarify more (I should really add all this at once, but it takes things like this to refresh my memory of what type of game it actually is, so sorry for that), it seemed to have "Realistic" Graphics, and use a Third Person view of one character , I think. 90.207.117.231 (talk) 17:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

December 3

tight and square autoshapes in word

In microsoft Word when I set autoshapes to to be tight or square in text why do they regularly do such odd this as to move to random pages, stick to the top of pages and refuse to move, refuse to change pages, and cause text to jump to the next page. Other people I know also experience this and it is ridiculous, whoever wrote the script that causes this must be totally incomprehensibly incapable. Why is this not addressed, it has been an annoying feature in office word for many years know, and yet has remained completely unaddressed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.203.50.108 (talk) 00:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

MS Word is not a paint program or a slide show program. It is a word processor. Squares, circles, arrows, and the like are not words. That is why it is not an important feature of MS Word. As for why it acts the way it does... When you create a shape (or embed a picture), it is anchored to an invisible location in the text. When that location moves, so does the embedded shape or picture. Also, there are many ways in which it affects the text around it - based on the set text wrapping. It may also be aligned left or right - causing more effects. Because the anchor is invisible and difficult to manage, it is often necessary to cut the image/picture from the page and then paste it back in again where it is needed as opposed to simply dragging it around. -- kainaw™ 02:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

try to be helpful. if all i wanted to do was write words why don't I just use notepad, in fact for those purposes why does word even exist. But the matter of the fact is I am doing a report and as a result I need many figs of graphs, diagrams and data etc. embedded in the page. What program should I use then, is there Microsoft Word and Pictures and Graphs and Diagrams out there, and I'm just to stupid to realise. Don't be obtuse. Your explanations don't really serve the problem at hand.

You asked "Why is this not addressed" and I answered that question. How is that not helpful? I even explained why the problem occurs and then explained a common trick for handling the problem. I completely fail to see how that is not helpful. Perhaps you want help for a problem other than the one you asked about. -- kainaw™ 02:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Solution: Right click on the Picture, Format Picture -> Layout -> Advanced -> Picture Position and then uncheck "Move object with text". In this window you can also order the picture to top left corner for example (rather than moving it manually). I'm not quite sure about the "Lock anchor" setting though. Moving objects with text is turned on by default so you can insert image smilies for example and have them stay at the same point in the text. — Shinhan < talk > 13:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to get the shape to sit tight in text, and not move. Even when th text moves, but it refuses to do this, when I type over the end of the page, it moves all (not just new text all of it, leaving the page blank, if you click the cursor on this blank page it simply waits at the bottom of the previous page as if you cannot edit the page) the text off the bottom the page and jams all the images to the top of the page, and if you drag them away they jump straight back, its clearly a glitch i'm not just being moronic. Also now when images are set to tight text refusing to go in line with them, as if the images are set to be inline with text, this is a new glitch to me.

This has annoyed me for as long as Word has allowed you to do AutoShapes. Even the 'Move Object With Text' and 'Lock Anchor' options don't work all the time. My advice is to 'Group' Autoshapes together if they're part of the same diagram, otherwise different parts move independently and mess the diagram up. As somebody else said, Word isn't the best application for this kind of thing, something like MS Publisher or Serif PagePlus which has frames deidcated to text that will not 'go' anywhere they're not supposed to are better. GaryReggae 22:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Proxy

So, if I'm using a proxy such as www.hidemy.info, what does that actually hide me from? Can my network administrator not see what I've been accessing, or people hacking my computer, or what? I've always been rather unclear on what a proxy actually does... Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 00:52, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It masks your IP and other complicated things from the website receiving your request, so it essentialy makes a request for your computer, then gives it to you. A network admin can always see what you're doing, so if you go to www.someporno.com, then they see you've been to that site. I don't know what you mean by hacking, as in what, so I can't help you there, but in general I'd say they can still hack you.YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 12-3-2007 • 02:10:50

I was thinking about something I read about Tor where it said that people randomly scanning for unsecure computers would be unable to see what you were doing. But thanks. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 02:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I use tor with privoxy alot, in the form of the browser OperaTor. Privoxy helps secure Tor. In that sence, it depends. YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 12-3-2007 • 02:26:40

hidemy.info appears to use an unencrypted connection, so it's not protecting you from very much. About the only useful thing it does is prevent the target site from seeing your IP address. Anyone who could spy on your web browsing before can still do so; this includes your ISP, anyone using the same wireless access point as you, and so on. It probably also anonymizes your HTTP request and strips cookies, but you can install software on your own machine to do that (Privoxy, for example). Tor is much more secure (though probably slower). The usual suspects (ISP, etc.) can tell that you're using Tor and how much data you're transmitting, but that's all. But even with Tor the exit node can still spy on the connection, as can the exit node's ISP and so forth. They don't know who you are, and don't know whether different HTTP requests come from the same source, but they might be able to make a decent guess by looking at the content of the traffic. -- BenRG 04:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Cell phone info - Razr

Can anyone tell me how I can transfer songs from my computer to my mom's Razr? I know that they use a non-standard screw size, and they set these systems up intentionaly. Since we're not rich, please don't suggest we buy one from Alltel, and switch out from Verizon. We tried to get the memory card out, but the (for lack of a better word) 6-sided screw is a 1 in metric. Thanks! YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 12-3-2007 • 02:06:51

If your computer has bluetooth, you can send it that way. USB bluetooth adapters are pretty cheap now, you could probably buy one for $20 if your computer doesn't have it built in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 02:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I tried that, but couldn't figure it out. It kills my internet each time I try it so I've got to use system restore. Thanks though! YДмΔќʃʀï^→Г_C← 12-3-2007 • 02:28:09

I don't get it. What kills your Internet connection? And Why do you need to use System Restore just because your Internet Connection got terminated? Will not a reboot (after removing the bluetooth adapter) reestablish the connection? --Kushal^t 22:12, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty easy to do. You just need a P2K browser, like P2k commander http://www.savefile.com/files/920161 Just download that, connect the phone via usb, and then you should be able to browse the files. 76.224.121.58 (talk) 01:07, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

using .gzip, .gz, and .tar

How can I use any of these on windows? That thing in DOS won't work, and I don't see any software that I can figure out (Picozip). Plz help!Wanda Church 02:30, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

As others wrote, there are both native Windows programs that can handle them, and to those I would add IZArc (Freeware) and ports of *NIX ones: other than Cygwin which has the (possible) disadvantage of being a full emulation layer, there are the the UnxUtils and GnuWin32 collections of which the former is now slightly obsolete, while the latter AIUI is being actively maintained up to date. --Blazar.writeto() 13:38, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think WinZip can handle unix archive formats. Also see Comparison_of_file_archivers#Archive_format_support--APL 02:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

If a file is compressed using gzip, gz, tar, bz, or bz2, then it is most likely a unix/linux file. There isn't much chance that it will be any use in a Windows environment. Of course, it is is possible to use tar to compress a picture or movie or similar, but when something is meant to be used on multiple platforms even the unix/linux guys will usually be nice and use zip to compress it. -- kainaw™ 03:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

(No, we Linux guys use all of those formats for cross-platform AND windows-only stuff - it's more convenient than ZIP). You'll also see '.tgz' which is a file that's a '.tar' file that has been gzipped. SteveBaker 21:47, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Cygwin can handle all these kinds of file. Open source Source code is often stored in this way. And yes Winzip can handle those three formats: .gz and .tar. gzip is the program to zip into .gz format. And tar handles .tar format. Graeme Bartlett 03:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

winrar supports all those formats and I find it more useful then winzip. Vespine 05:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It's the winnar --ffroth 18:15, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

7-Zip will also handle these formats and is available under GNU Lesser General Public License(i.e. free). See also Comparison of file archivers. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:26, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Outlook express error 0x800ccc79

How do I get around this please? I am using windows98. - CarbonLifeForm 12:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

That error appears to mean that the SMTP server requires authentication. Try the steps listed here (scroll down a bit). If that doesn't work, just google the phrase "Outlook express error 0x800ccc79" and check out the other results. --LarryMac | Talk 12:41, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

"My server requires authentication" box is checked. Emails arrive; nothing goes. - CarbonLifeForm 12:53, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I had that (or something similar). In the end it turned out that the outgoing port was wrong. The secure connection for the outgoing mail should give a different port number, you'll just need to find out what port your email provider needs Jackacon 20:34, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It was working fine 3 days ago on ports 25 110. And I can access emails through easyspace.com webmail. But not outlook. - CarbonLifeForm 21:03, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

In my experience, Outlook Express can't tell the difference between "server is not responding" and "incorrect username or password". It could be that the server you're trying to connect to is down. --Carnildo 01:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It is possible that your email address has expired. Check with the provider. - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

stopping websites

how do you stop websites from being accessed via the notepad? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.138.222.238 (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean you want to disable the "View / Source" menu option? Any attempt you make to do so can be circumvented in lots of different ways. A browser needs the source to be able to render the page, that's pretty much how it works. Information wants to be free. HTML wants to be naked and promiscuous. --LarryMac | Talk 19:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly, from notepad you can enter a URL into the File->Open requestor, and it will go out and retrieve the source! Neat! --Mdwyer 21:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks Mdwyer, that is cool! Think outside the box 14:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The answer is that you make them into flash animations or generate them on the fly from JavaScript or something. SteveBaker 22:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

If you generate them from JavaScript, you can always just download the JavaScript directly and find some way to execute it so that it produces the HTML to you on disk. Flash is a bit more difficult because it's a proprietary language, but the Flash application can be downloaded to disk with HTTP just as easily as HTML can. The only difference is that making sense of it is more difficult, but Flash decompilers do exist. I use a free software Flash decompiler called Flare myself. The bottom line is, anything you can view in your browser, you can store on disk. There is really no way around it. If you want to restrict access, implement a server-side policy that refuses to send anything to non-authorised clients. JIP | Talk 22:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

In firefox you can highlight "generated" html and select view selection source to see it. Select all ftw. --ffroth 19:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Trying to disable this functionality makes about as much sense as disabling right click on images. All it does it make is slightly harder to retrieve the information. Anyone who has any idea what they're doing can get it very quickly. Exxolon 23:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

And will probably avoid your website in the future if they possibly can. risk 00:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe Internet Explorer 5 had this ability to encrypt a website's source, so that the source code was simply rubbish - via an ActiveX control. That being said, I haven't heard it being ported to any other browser nor upgraded - it sounds a little sheepish to me. That said, you can disable it if you are an Administrator on a Windows platform: [1] - but as people have said, it doesn't stop people from viewing a website's source. And the website developers themselves cannot do such a thing (without, of course, writing something akin to a virus). x42bn6 Talk Mess 13:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

What's stopping users from using a different browser than MSIE, or a direct telnet connection? This Internet Explorer hack only works if you have control over your users' computers (family, corporation, or university campus). If it's meant to be a globally visible web page, you have no guarantee your users will be using (a) Internet Explorer 5 with ActiveX, (b) Internet Explorer 5, (c) Internet Explorer, or (d) Windows in the first place. JIP | Talk 20:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It largely depends on what you need done, you can't prevent the source from beeing visible but you might keep the information you want hidden out of the source. Taemyr 15:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Free animation software

Does anyone have any experience with any freeware animating software? I need to combine a set of images to be the frames of a movie file. The individual frames are exported out of mathematica, so they can be any format I wish: .jpg, .bmp , .svg etc etc. I want the result to be as portable as possible and retain the quality of the original images so a quicktime movie would be best, but an avi would work also. I have googled "Free animation software" already and found a large number of results, but figured I could see if anyone else has any advice before starting the trial and error process.

Thanks in advance. Man It's So Loud In Here 19:20, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

For short 'GIF' movies containing just a handful of images, I use GIMP (just put each image into a separate layer). For more serious stuff (MPEG, etc) I use an open-sourced program called 'mencoder' - which is a part of the 'mplayer' package. SteveBaker 21:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

C++ library for an http server

I want to code a c++ project that creates a web server over http that can handle login authentication, cookies, and basic get and post interaction all in c++. I can probably figure out how to do this from scratch (maybe not) with sockets. Is there a good library out there that does this? something i can tell it to just sit and wait for a http connection then send off an on the fly generated webpage. I dont want to use apache/php or some otgher standard way of doing it i want to do it all embedded in one program. Thanks --Iownatv 22:33, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

• For reasons completely obscure to me, C++, which is one of the most widely-used languages in many domains, doesn't have a reasonable standard library like other comparable languages. The STL and other standardized parts are extremely puny as compared to even Java's base libraries, much less something like CPAN. You can search for "c++ httpd.library", but as with so much else in the C++ world, you may be better off rolling your own. I hope that boost.org will blossom into something to be proud of, but for now they're focused on just making up for C++'s inherent inadequacies. --Sean 01:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• yeah a CPAN for C++ would be great. It doesnt make sense that something like that doesnt exist yet --Iownatv 03:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
• also thanks for that google query, my searches for C++ web server library and http server werent showing good results like the one you gave me. I found one that seems good called Minimal httpd library MIHL written in C. --Iownatv 03:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Google search help

How can I search for the dollar sign ? I want to add this to a search for a GPS unit so I can only find sites that list actual prices. (As a bonus, I won't have to deal with sites that list prices in pounds or kwedizels.) StuRat 23:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

This Google help page doesn't tell how to do that, but does give you something that might be more useful: you can search for GPS plus an amount in dollars that must be in a set range. Algebraist 00:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Yea, "GPS $100..$200" works pretty well, thanks. StuRat (talk) 21:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're using Google to search for products/prices/online shops, you might also want to try froogle, Google's online shopping search engine. --Monorail Cat 02:28, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You put a backslash in front of it. eg \$200 SteveBaker 02:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

That method doesn't seem to work for a dollar sign without a value, like "\$", to list all prices found in dollars, unfortunately. StuRat (talk) 21:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't work for other characters though. I was trying to figure out why this page thinks that .jpg.html files are potentially malicious but the backslash doesn't affect the dots and google searches it as 2 separate terms. --ffroth 03:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Was that a serious question? I can put a link to www.myserver.com\puppy.jpg on a website, and everyone enjoys the cute picture of a puppy. Or, I can put a link to www.myserver.com\puppy.jpg.html and some inattentive people will think it's the same thing. It's not; its an HTML page that displays that puppy picture, installs two trojans, and formats your backup drive. -SandyJax 20:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

"Malicious" is a funny word to use to describe HTML. Marnanel (talk) 19:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

itunes is irritating

hello, this might sound like a simple question but it is perhaps not so simple. how do i turn off the itunes plus feature? I want to purchase an album but i cannot due to it costing more because of being listed as an itunes plus product.

help appreciated thanks. 142.161.226.96 23:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

iTunes is not irritating. They recently changed the prices to be equal for Plus and regular. —Nricardo 12:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I can back that up. iTunes Plus is the same price as iTunes -- 99¢ US. --24.249.108.133 (talk) 00:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

December 4

Auto Power On

I used to have my computer automatically power on at a certain time. I remember setting it up in the BIOS menu. After I fried the mother board, I installed a new one, and I cannot find this option. How can I set my computer to auto power on? Thanks --Omnipotence407 02:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen such an option- sounds stupid. You'll likely never see it again, it was probably particular to that one BIOS. --ffroth 03:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Some of those TV cards have that feature built in. But you may have to fork out another $200 for the card. Graeme Bartlett 05:29, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You could do it with wake on LAN, but you'd need another networked computer to do that --Monorail Cat 11:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

My older Toshiba laptop had this feature, but my newer Dell does not. I recall fiddling with it, but never really using it. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 12:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Some motherboards have this Resume On Alarm feature where you can enter the time and even the day of the month which you want your computer to switch on. Try using it if your BIOS has this feature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruin rrss23 (talk • contribs) 14:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

All Mac computer have had auto on and auto off for years. --208.189.34.45 (talk) 04:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Power supply for VGA card

I have 400W PSU. My config is 1 HDD(160GB),Pentium D (833MHz,3.00Ghz),1GB RAM,one XFX 8600GT 256MB,one DVD drive,Intel G965 mainboard. The card draws 41W as max(from site).But I didn't get the performance of the games as seen with the standard benchmarks except for the processor change(benchmark used core2duo).In games like company of heroes, at the specified settings I only got 20 to 30FPS whereas the benchmark displays over 50 to 60FPS.Also it is not smooth even when I get 40 FPS.Also I didn't use freshly installed XP and I didn't fragment my drive till date.Is there any prob with PSU or need more RAM?.Please advice.Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.62.202 (talk) 11:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Have you already installed the drivers for your graphics card? If the drivers aren't installed Windows XP should be quite sluggish even for the mouse movements. Did you connect the 6 pin power cable from the PSU to the graphics card? Most graphics cards need more power than the PCI-e slot can offer and performance is automatically reduced as a fail-safe when the power connector's not plugged in. Also, try defragmenting your hard drive. File system fragmentation affects your computer's performance because more seek operations are needed to read the whole file off the disk. --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 12:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Is your display resolution and bit-depth set the same as the benchmarks? What about antialiasing setup? Those kinds of thing can be overridden in the "nVidia Properties" tool that you get by right-clicking on the desktop. If you've overridden them to something other than the benchmark folks did - then that would make a difference. Also, the processor difference may not be negligable. "Smoothness" in graphics comes about when the frame rate of the game equals the frame rate of the monitor. Using a flat-panel monitor may also cause 'smooth' graphics to look like they are jerky (I have a particular passionate hatred of most, if not all, flat panel monitors!) SteveBaker 14:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

download wikipedia

hey lets say i want to download like 10 topics on wikipedia.a pal of mine told me i need a software called web dumper which allows yo to download hundreds of articles from a website.is it possible or is he full of crap.how will i be able to download several topics without downloading page by page.

2.when i reboot machine the graphics are all mixed up.instead of the mouse pointer i get a square thing which moves as the mouse cursor.when i reboot everything is fine.only change i made is i changed the ram.

You can actually download the complete database you know, you don't have to download each static page.. --ffroth 19:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

ah... ok, and how does s/he/we do that? some more info would be great Boomshanka (talk) 00:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database download, which even has a section Wikipedia:Database download#Please do not use a web crawler. That's a ridiculously large amount of stuff to download if you only want a few articles though. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 08:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Google always telling me there's no results. Nothing but lies!

I've suspected it for years but could never prove anything. Until now! Google is lying about results!

Search string = "the big shot" "no sir, i dont"

Google says: Your search - "the big shot" "no sir, i dont - did not match any documents.

Sean says: [2] --Seans Potato Business 16:49, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

• Well, neither "don't" (nor dont) are on that page. On the other hand, the actual catch phrase -- "no sir, I didn't" -- shows up as often as it should. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 17:46, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Google sees through apostrophes. Whether you put them or not, it doesn't matter. Search for "dont" and you will get lots of "don't"s. Also it does say don't on that page. "His catchphrase was "No sir, I don't like it."" The fact that it also says "didn't" does not exclude the possibility that it could say "don't" and indeed it says both forms of the phrase on the same page. --Seans Potato Business 18:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I get lots of results for "the big shot" "no sir, i don't" but only with the apostrophe in "don't". I think this has to do with "don't" being part of an exact phrase, so Google isn't ignoring apostrophes in it. Recury 20:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

According to The Google Guide, a single apostrophe is significant; their example compares "were" and "we're" (the first result on the "were" search is misleading). The Google Guide is not affiliated with Google, but it seems reliable enough, given the example results. --LarryMac | Talk 20:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I just checked with the search string "the big shot" "no sir, i don't" and indeed found results that I don't get for "the big shot" "no sir, i dont" but what I don't understand is, why when I use search string "dont", then I get results inclusive of apostrophes. It appears to behave differently between searches for a single word and for a whole phrase. --Seans Potato Business 16:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it's the double-quotes, not the single word vs phrase. Compare the results for dont to the results for "dont". --LarryMac | Talk 16:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You beat me this time, Google, but I know what you're doing and I'll be back! [begin fade] You haven't seen the last of me! ---Seans Potato Business 00:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Win XP Installation/Startup Question

header added -

my friend brought me his pc which had xp home,i reformatted the harddrive and put xp pro after startup it asks for administrator password "what happen" please help cannot login dont know what password is —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.80.232.229 (talk) 19:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Surely the documentation that came with your licensed copy of XP Pro addresses this? During the installation, there should have been a step to enter a password, although this step can be skipped. So you need to remember what you put in at that step, or wipe and re-install. --LarryMac | Talk 20:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Blogging as a character in fanfic

Please note, first, that I'm not seeking legal advice, though I can understand if one thinks that; however, the answer should be pretty straightforward, and goes to the nature of blogging itself. I've never blogged, but had the idea that it would be fun to write fan fiction via blog, but with a catch - my blog would be that of a fictional character. (No, not Harry Potter, I'm not into that. :-) It would be G-rated, it's not one of those things some people do with fics. I just think it would be an interesting use of a blog. And yet, blogspot is unclear on whether that's allowed, fromw hat I read, and I don't know if people do that or not. www.fanfiction.net frowns on blog fics (or, at least they don't allow chat, maybe blogs they would, but you can't reach people there to ask.) And, just to show I do know the law behind it, the summary would contain a disclaimer saying, for instance, "x is a product of Warner Brothers/Charles Schultz/whatever, and this is purely a piece of fanfiction designed or entertainment, and not for profit." Or something to that effect. What about blogging as a fictional character you've created?209.244.30.221 20:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how blogging as a fictional character would be any different legally from regular fanfic. It's not like the characters will get mad because you've misrepresented their views or anything. As for blogging as a fictional character you create, that is perfectly legal and many do that already. Recury 20:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Calculator Password Program Code

Hey, well I have a TI-84+ calculator and one of the applications installed is one that allows you to start a program/app/pic automatically whenever you turn the calculator on. I was wondering if anyone knows a program code that allows me to set a password. It also needs to be a program that cannot be quit/exited by Clear or 2nd|Mode or by any other means except for entering a correct password. Does anyone know how to program this? Or at least know a site/forum that provides this code?

Thanks! Valens Impérial Császár 93 22:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Initializing an array of non-PODS?

Consider this near-C++:

struct foo {foo(int i,int j) {}};
foo f[1]={{1,2}};

I have to initialize the one element of the array f, because foo has no default constructor. So I try putting the arguments to the constructor in braces in the brace-initializer for the array, but that's no good (gcc says "braces around scalar initializer for type ‘foo’"); parentheses of course just mean I'm using the comma operator. New (C++) says that new can't initialize arrays it creates, so perhaps it is simply impossible to put a datatype which may not be "default-constructed" (including PODs in that category) in an array (automatic or dynamic). Am I missing something, or is it truly impossible? --Tardis (talk) 22:56, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You can do something like foo f[1]={foo(1,2)};, which constructs a foo, and then copies it into the array (it does involve an extra step of copying). --Spoon! (talk) 23:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm aware of that approach, but I was hoping to create an array of non-copyable objects. I suppose that re-engineering the class in question is actually the right idea: make it copyable, or perhaps just give it a default constructor after all. --Tardis (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Alternately, you can try the Java approach, where all objects are accessed through references. So you have an array of references (pointers in C++) and you can set each one to a newly allocated and constructed object one at a time. --Spoon! (talk) 20:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That's what I ended up doing, pending redesigning the classes in question; it's just annoying (when not in Java) that I then have to go and delete the objects myself later, as well as add in a pile of *s and replace .s with ->s. Thanks for your, um, pointers. --Tardis (talk) 16:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Added question: is there any way to initialize even a POD array in a constructor's initializer list?

struct bar {int a[2]; bar() : a({1,2}) {}};

This obvious approach doesn't seem to work. --Tardis (talk) 23:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Nope, you cannot. Arrays don't have non-default constructors. You can use a growable array data structure like vector, and insert elements one at a time, or insert multiple copies of an element. --Spoon! (talk) 23:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The difference between construction and initialization never ceases to amaze. --Tardis (talk) 15:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not super-clear on what the question is, but you might be interested in C++0x#Initializer_lists. --Sean 23:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

cangjie

Hi. I'm running Mandriva using Gnome. I wonder what is the easiest way to enable me to enter chinese text via Cangjie method. I have UIM and SCIM installed, but neither of them seem to have Cangjie in the list of available input methods. (In fact SCIM doesn't seem to list any besides direct unicode). What should I install to enable Cangjie input? --Duomillia (talk) 23:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you mena kanji. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 02:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

No, see cangjie method. I have cangjie in my SCIM, under Traditional Chinese. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Alright, so what do I have to do to get Cangjie onto the list of available IME's under SCIM? It currently just has European, English, and RAWCODE. --Duomillia (talk) 21:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

You definitely need to install Chinese support first. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

December 5

Do web hosting accounts have bandwidth caps?

I am testing my website's bandwidth speed using Speed Test Pro http://speedtestpro.net[3] and it shows that my maximum bandwidth speed for my website is only 1.9 Mbps. My Internet connection using Speed Test Pro again shows my speed as 3 Mbps so I know it is not my ISP that is slowing it down. Does shared web hosting limit your maximum bandwidth speed? Or do I have something setup wrong on my web hosting account? It is a cheap web hosting account, but their website says they have a 100 Mbit connection to the Internet. I am confused and very frustrated, can someone help, please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakelittle11 (talk • contribs) 01:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Some providers have caps. It's also possible that the account have a set cap for how fast a single computer can download.

Does the website say they have a 100 Mbit connection, or does it say that they have dedicate a 100 Mbit connection for your site. If it's the former then you share those 100Mbits with other users of the provider, so you only get a fraction of the connection. In the latter you still share with other visits to your site. In addition there is loss,latencies and overhead involved when sending anything over the internet, so you will never get the a throughput equal to your bandwidth, see Throughput.

You might want to try at different times to see if this affects things, expect connections to be better when fewer people is on the net. Taemyr (talk) 08:37, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

radio auction

how do I get an application to enter the auction for the 700 mhz spectrum?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/technology/01google.html?em&ex=1196744400&en=6c9bd6fe4276d660&ei=5087%0A —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.195.89 (talk) 01:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Look here (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/spectrumauctions/3gindex.htm) it would appear that you submit a fax to the radio communications headquarters at Docklands. Of course this is a UK ofcom radio auction but similarly contact the area that are auctioning the spectrum and they will direct you how to do it. This (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/osmhome.html) might be the owners of US ones. ny156uk (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The FCC is responsible for the auction. You would need to register with the FCC. You would then have access to their Auctions Portal. Of course, you would also need several billion dollars in spare change. Information on the 700MHz auction can be found here. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 18:24, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Runescape

What is the first second and third most expencive thing in runescape acording to the grand exchange?thanks--76.235.183.66 (talk) 02:31, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Please do not crosspost. Lanfear's Bane | t 13:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Freeware video converter.

I know this has probably been asked before but I've been googling for an hour with no luck. is there a half decent windows video converter that can rip a dvd to mpeg4 with a few settings like compression and screen size would be nice, the aim is i want to synch a dvd to my iphone. the only tools I can find have lousy trial periods only allowing you to convert 5 minutes, or some other catch like big watermarks. Surely there must be a basic tool that can do this for free.. Vespine (talk) 02:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Typical, spend an hour searching, almost give up, post the question, and five minutes later happen across what may be the answer, a program called "handbreak".. Well if anyone has other suggestions.. Vespine (talk) 03:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

For the benefit of anyone else searching, that software is called HandBrake. --LarryMac | Talk 13:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

you could try Super (software) - most flavours of video - not sure about from DVD tho . Boomshanka (talk) 03:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

How to select particular columns of a particular row in VBA Excel

I have an excel sheet having data in rows 1 to 15 and columns 1 to 7. I a generating a code in which i need to select a particular row on basis of a condition. If the condition is true, the columns 1 to 7 of that particular row need to be selected and do some formatting on those columns. I want to know the code by which i can select columns 1 to 7 of a row in VBA excel.

Try this (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa221576(office.11).aspx) Range("1:7").select should work but Vba is really picky so it might take a few tries (can't try on my machine as no excel at home). ny156uk (talk) 18:14, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Computer memory related to hard disk

When we see the properties of our computer it display some less capacity of hard disk comparision of its original capacity (ex. if hard disk is 80 GB the computer show only around 74 or 75 GB) Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by San sharma (talk • contribs) 09:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

80 to 74 or 75 is about the ratio of binary gigabytes (2^30 bytes) to decimal gigabytes (10^9). The Gigabyte article has some background information on this common confusion. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 09:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• There's also some loss of useful space where the operating system will reserve some disk space for its own purposes. --Sean 13:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

When you format a disk, some of the space needs to be used for the file system/index. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 02:11, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Recovery of hard disk

I format my hard disk without taking backup. Can i recover my data? —Preceding unsigned comment added by San sharma (talk • contribs) 09:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It depends. You can assume that any date that has been overwritten is lost. This means that if you used wipe options when formatting everything is lost, it also mean that if you have written stuff to the hard disk(this most likely includes booting the computer with this drive as primary) then some of the data is lost. Other than that you might want to take a look at the tools described in Data recovery#Tools. Taemyr (talk) 10:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Difficulty booting Linux in VirtualBox

I'm using VirtualBox to emulate Debian so I don't need to use another computer just for the sake of being able to experiment with Debian. However, there is one thing that seems to prevent the installer/Debian from loading. When I boot into the installer, I can't get into any of them except using installgui since they get stuck at tsc clocksource has been installed and only after resetting the virtual machine several times I managed to get past the clocksource freeze. Sometimes, I see a line saying that the "timer is running x% from normal - aborting" and that usually causes the freeze. I even got a kernel panic stating a sync problem. Even if I manage to get past that and install Debian, I have to perform the reset several times again as it wouldn't get past the few lines after the clocksource has been installed. Only through luck/many resets I could boot Debian and begin using it. What actually went wrong during the booting process causing it to get stuck at a line? --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 09:47, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: I've just upgraded to the latest version of VirtualBox so the whole thing managed to boot up (only panicked once), only the thing just lags and the clock seems like UTC+16 hrs. It's totally asynchronous except the audio since the clock runs slower while under load. Anyhow, I've already solved the problem, so no need to reply here. --Bruin_rrss23 (talk) 13:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Overnight

Sometimes I leave my pc computer on overnight. Always it is incredibly sludgy next morning and takes a while to limber up. Why? I have checked it as OK with Adaware SE and spyBot. I run Windows XP and AVG. - Kittybrewster ☎ 10:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Often, it has "paged out" everything you're interested in using in favor of whatever it was doing overnight. See virtual memory. It seems slowish until your programs and data get paged back in again.

Atlant (talk) 12:48, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Windows XP has a habit of moving any program or parts thereof that aren't actively being used to the swap file. By leaving your computer on overnight, almost everything will be considered "not in use", and will be swapped out. The "limber up" time is Windows finding out what you're actually using, and bringing them back off the hard drive. --Carnildo (talk) 23:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That leaves the question: what is running overnight that uses all main memory? Windows does not page anything to the swap file unless it really needs the memory for something else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.70.206 (talk) 02:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

File indexing daemons? Screensavers? Virus scanners? --Mdwyer (talk) 04:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Rarely my Apple Mac has the same problem, but it comes up to speed quite quickly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.25.42 (talk) 09:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The only things that work overnight (I think) are MailWasher (collecting new email junk) and AVG (updating and searching for viruses). Maybe some URLs update themselves. - Kittybrewster ☎ 10:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak specifically about Windows, but some virtual memory paging algorithms are "free space greedy" and wil try to increase the free space even if nothing is competing for space at that instant. They do this on the theory that you never know when there will a sudden demand for free space (for example, to launch a new program) and, hey, you haven't used Word for eight hours anyway!

Atlant (talk) 13:33, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Windows is super duper non-free-space-greedy. Vista fills all but about 40MB of my 2GB of memory with cached data based on their secrit algorithmz to predict what data I'm going to want next --ffroth 00:06, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

downloading directory tree from Apache autoindex

Hi, I want to download a directory tree from an HTTP server. The directory and its subdirectories do not have index files, and all are displayed by Apache web server's mod_autoindex, so their format is predictable. I could use something like wget -r, but I want to avoid the "Parent Directory" (I don't want it to go up and download the entire web site.) and the "Name", "Last Modified", etc. sorting column heading (they are just duplicates of the same directory) links that are generated by autoindex. In fact, I don't really need to save the generated autoindex page itself. Is there a good program out there that can do this? Thanks, --131.215.166.100 (talk) 12:16, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

wget has -np to avoid going into the parent directory, and you could construct a list of patterns for -R to reject the alternate sortings. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:20, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

WinZip

Where can I find an older version of WinZip? I updated my Winzip, and the new versions are only available for free for 45 days. This was not the case with the older versions. Funsides (talk) 17:58, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This may be time to change to TUGZip or 7-Zip instead of Winzip. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

With version 10, Corel now requires you to purchase an upgrade on each major update. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:06, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

The Zip patents have expired, so pretty much anyone can make a zip program. I think InfoZip is now the standard, but their windows tools pretty much suck, in my opinion. I don't use 7-Zip, but I have heard good things about it. Finally, you could actually buy WinZip. I know, I'm talkin' crazy. --Mdwyer (talk) 04:35, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

At the WinZip page on Oldversion.com.--droptone (talk) 15:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Software installer

Thinking about WinZip... we use an older version of WinZip Self Extractor as a simple software installer for deploying drivers. Can anyone recommend a simple installer package that might be better and available under GPL or the like? --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 18:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

NSIS? It's not GPL but it's like GPL. --antilived^{T | C | G} 19:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is my PC running so SLOW?

I like to think I know quite a bit about computers but my PC has got to the stage where it is really beginning to annoy me as it seems so sluggish compared with other computers I use, for example my laptop, which has a lower spec and the same O/S seems like gresed lightning compared to this PC. I have upgraded virtually every part of it and it still seems slow. It's not particularly noticable for general tasks although opening Firefox takes about five seconds which seems like ages but when I try and do anything more demanding, it doesn't want to know. Movie editing and games can be painfull slow, we're not talking about the latest FPS games with richly rendered 3D graphics here but games a few years old. Even 16 bit SNES games (played on an emulator, yes I do have all the original games but it's a real pain having to keep dragging the old consoles out and going behind the TV to plug them in). These only use like 16Mb or RAM so not exactly resource intensive! Trainz 2006 and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 also run like snails when I try and do anything beyond the most basic tasks, Trainz only needs 32Mb of graphics RAM which is much less than I have. It is making these games completely unplayable. What is supposed to last a second in the game lasts three seconds, it doesn't drop frames, just serves them a lot slower than it should do, the graphics freeze in between frames while the audio just stutters.

Here are the vital stats:

CPU: Pentium 4 - 3.00 GHz
Motherboard: ASUS P5PE-VM
RAM - 1GB DDR400 (in one module I think)
GFX: GeForce FX5500 AGP Card with 256Mb RAM
Audio: Creative Audigy Platinum
HDD: 80Gb; 25Gb free. This 80Gb 'drive' is a partition of a larger (250Gb total) drive.
O/S: XP Pro

Could it be any of the processes I have running? I'm not sure about some of them listed but here is what is running in Task Manager after a boot up where I have loaded nothing other than Firefox, Notepad and the processes that Windows starts up out of the kindness of its heart without being asked:

ALG.EXE (3,168K) What is this?
AVGAMSVR.EXE (308K) something to do with AVG antivirus?
avgcc.exe (240K)
AVGEMC.EXE (1,644K)
AVGUPSVC.EXE (596K)
CRSS.EXE (3,608K) what is this?
CTHELPER.EXE (5,508K) what is this?
CTSVCCDA.EXE (1,152K) what is this?
E_FATIACE.EXE (2,048K) what is this?
Explorer.EXE (18,660K) Win XP 'GUI'
firefox.exe (32,280K) Should Firefox really be using 32Mb RAM?
jusched.exe (2,060K) What is this?
KHost.exe (11,708K) What on earth is this?
KService.exe (12,078) ditto
LSASS.EXE (1,128K) What?
MsPMSPSv.exe (1,328K) What is this?
notepad.exe (2,996K) running in order to type in processes running
NVSVC32.EXE (2,674K) What?
SERVICES.EXE (3,844K)
SFAgent.exe (10,556K) SpamFighter (email filtering) agent I think?
SFUS.EXE (5,128K)
SMSS.EXE (372K)
SPOOLSV.EXE (4,268K)
SVCHOST.EXE appears five times, uses up about 35Mb total
System (220K)
System Idle Process (16K)
taskmgr.exe (4,208K)
WDFMGR.EXE (1,548K) Eh?
WINLOGIN.EXE (892K) Is this dodgy?
wscntfy.exe (1,744K) What is this?

All the above processes are apparantly using 229Mb of RAM in total - why is over a quarter of the RAM being used before I even do anything? I would very much appreciate any suggestions. Upgrading to Vista is not something I wish to entertain as the benefits are dubious and the prices even more so. Going over to Linux is not practical either - while I would dearly love to bid farewell to Bill Gates and his empire, most of the software I have only works with WinDoze. GaryReggae (talk) 22:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

A windows machine using only 229Mb just sitting there sounds pretty good to me. Is the computer slower now than when it was new? It could easily be some form of malware slowing you down, or it could just be normal windows slowdown over time. If practical in your situation, you might consider wiping clean and reinstalling the OS and all your apps. Of course, it'd probably pay to try less invasive fixes first. Friday (talk) 22:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Try installing Linux as a dual boot and see if you can use your programs with WINE. --Duomillia (talk) 22:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

A slow windows machine is not unusual, but your machine still has a pretty good spec, so it should zip along nicely if you take care of what is running on it. The first step should be to do a complete scan for viruses and run a spyware scanner (I use the free version of Ad-Aware, but there are others available). As for the list of processes, I think the following are supposed to be there for windows to run: CRSS, Explorer, LSASS, SERVICES, SMSS, SPOOLSV, SVCHOST, System, System Idle Process, WINLOGIN. And these other programs are there because you said you are running them: Firefox, Notepad, taskmgr.

To try to find out what the other stuff is, search for each program on your disk, right-click on it and select properties to read the version info. Many programs have version info in them (for example, my notepad.exe says "Copyright Microsoft Corporation..."). See if you recognise these programs as belonging to Microsoft, your video card maker, your anti-virus or anti-spam, your printer maker, etc.

Take a hard look at your system tray. Are all those updaters, checkers, configuration tools, etc. really necessary. Many of these things in the system tray get started at boot time and if you don't need them they just make your computer slower. There's a tool in XP (maybe called msconfig) which lets you modify what starts up. Use it to cut out the unnecessary stuff; and remember ... Is it really that important that Java runtime checks every day that it is the latest and greatest? Or that you have the ability to call up Real Jukebox from the system tray as well as the start menu?

Maybe your disk is highly fragmented. Delete your temporary internet files, delete the temporary files, and empty the recycled folder before you start.

After a good clean up, maybe you won't have to reinstall windows :-)

Astronaut (talk) 00:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies so far:

@Friday: Reinstalling Windows helps a bit but it's a lot of work to keep reinstalling all my apps and I only did it last in September this year.

@Duomillia: I might give Linux another try as I wasn't aware of WINE and not being able to run my Windows apps was the only thing that put me off it. I've got a few spare HDDs (although I'm not sure they're much good, 20Gb is probably the best of the bunch) so I'll have a play around with Ubuntu or something.

@ Astronaut: Thanks, I will do a virus and spyware scan (I must admit it often doesn't get a chance to do a full system scan) as well as a proper defrag. As for the system processes, it appears ALG is the MS Application Layer Gateway service (whatever that is), all the ones beginning with AVG are AVG antivirus files, CTHELPER.EXE must be related to my sound card as it is from Creative Labs, CTSVCCDA.EXE is again fro Creative and something to do with CD-ROM access, E_FATIACE.EXE is related to my Epson print/scan/copy machine, JUSCHED.EXE it appears is Java Update, I have disabled automatic updates to this in the Java Control Panel as I will update it manually, KHost and KService, each of which are using up 12Mb of RAM are soething to do with Kontiki Peer-to-peer software which is something to do with the BBC IPlayer; I have disabled them on startup as I only use them occasionally and don't need the to start up every time! MsPMSPSv.EXE seems to be something to do with Win Media Player which I rarely use as I prefer WinAmp. I can't see any way of disabling this as it is not in the list in MSConfig (I'll come onto that later). NVSVC32 is related to NVIDIA so I'd better leave that as it is, SFUS and SFAgent are related to SPAMFighter although I don't see why it has to run all the time, it only needs to run when I am in Outlook but there is no way of disabling it. WDFMGR is another MS driver thing, WSCNTFY is 'Windows Security Center Notification App' which is annoying but I guess unavoidable.

Onto my System Tray now, all I have is the icon for removing USB devices, TaskMgr, Security Centre, AVG and Epson Status Monitor 3. Interestingly, I've just noticed my audio settings systray icon has vanished but I can access that fro the Start Menu anyway.

Now onto the contents of MSConfig.exe. The Services list is worrying long but it all looks like mainly MS and AVG stuff. Now for the Startup tab, here is a list of the contents: NVCPL (NVIDIA), NWIZ (NVIDIA again), NVMCTray (NVIDIA again), UPDReg (Creative Registry Update), avgcc (AVG), CTHELPER and CTXFIHLP (both Creative), E_FATIACE (Epson), SFAgent (SpamFighter), MSOffice Common Startup.

As I say, I will run a virus scan, spyware scan and defrag now and let you know the results. Thanks again for all your help.GaryReggae (talk) 07:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Well after several hours, Spybot Search & Destroy has finished searching and found 68 items!

AdRevolver - 12 entries - This is just a Cookie

AdViva - 1 entry - Another Cookie
BFast - 1 entry Another Cookie
BurstMedia - 2 entries - more Cookies
CasaleMedia - 5 entries - Cookies again
CommonName - 1 entry - Quite a nasty one this, apparantly it hijacks searches and displays pop-under ads although I haven't seen any evidence of this although then again I don't use Internet Explorer (at least very rarely)
DoubleClick - Cookies x 3
FastClick - Cookies x 6
HitBox - Cookies x 10
MediaPlex - Cookies x 4
StatCounter - Cookies x 18
TradeDoubler - Cookies x 3
WebTrends Live - Cookie x 1

I have 'fixed' the lot using Spybot although I don't think there was anything that could be causing slowdown apart from perhaps the CommonName one. Now onto the Defrag which will probably take hours although there shouldn't be much fragmentation as I haven't deleted or moved much stuff on the Win partition since I did a fresh install.GaryReggae (talk) 11:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Late I know but:

Assuming the file names are legit (AVG should ensure they aren't viruses):

• ALG.EXE (3,168K) — Application Layer Gateway (Builtin Windows Service): You may be able to stop this and get away with it if (Like me) you're obsessed with a clean process list.
• CRSS.EXE (3,608K) — Client
• LSASS.EXE (1,128K) — Local Security Authority System Service (Built in to Windows): This one very deeply rooted, I'd leave it be.
• SERVICES.EXE (3,844K) — Obviously runs some services (Built in to Windows).
• SMSS.EXE (372K) — Session Manager System Service (Builtin): Don't try too much around this or you many not be able to login!
• SPOOLSV.EXE (4,268K) — Spooler service: If you stop it, Windows wont see any printers!
• SVCHOST.EXE — Service Host: Some belong to services you can stop/disable, some don't. NEVER try and kill a SVCHOST process without saving your work: If you kill the one that belongs to RPCSS (Remote Procedure Call), Windows will tell you it has to shut down in a minute (If you got hit with MSBlaster, you'll know what that looks like)!
• System (220K) — NTOSKRNL housekeeping (Don't really know, can't do anything with it either!)
• System Idle Process (16K) — Housekeeping: This is what makes the sum of all process time add up to 100, this one usually hangs out around 99 % CPU when the machine is idling (Unless you have SETI@Home or similar).
• taskmgr.exe (4,208K) — Obviously, Task Manager!
• WINLOGIN.EXE (892K) — Windows' Login system and activation checker: Screw with this and it'll screw with you(r user account)!
• wscntfy.exe (1,744K) — "Windows Security Center NoTiFYer": That annoying "shield" in your systray that wants you to install updates, automatically update, install Windows Defendant, update your AV, turn on Windows Firewall, enable UAC (On Vista), etc, etc. Open Security Center, click "Change how Security Center notifies me" and uncheck all 3 and it should go away.

Other processes:

• Explorer.EXE (18,660K) Win XP 'GUI'
• firefox.exe (32,280K) Should Firefox really be using 32Mb RAM? — If that's truely all its using, that's amazzing.
• jusched.exe (2,060K) — Java Update Scheduler: If you install Java, it has this run at login to see if there's an update to annoy you with. You can get rid of it by opening Control Panel > Java > Update and telling it to NEVER check for updates.

WRT these:

AVGAMSVR.EXE (308K) something to do with AVG antivirus?
avgcc.exe (240K)
AVGEMC.EXE (1,644K)
AVGUPSVC.EXE (596K)
CTHELPER.EXE (5,508K) what is this?
CTSVCCDA.EXE (1,152K) what is this?
E_FATIACE.EXE (2,048K) what is this?
KHost.exe (11,708K) What on earth is this?
KService.exe (12,078) ditto
MsPMSPSv.exe (1,328K) What is this?
("Microsoft PMSP Server", PMSP="Personal Messaging ..."?) NVSVC32.EXE (2,674K) What?
("NV SerViCe 32") SFAgent.exe (10,556K) SpamFighter (email filtering) agent I think?
SFUS.EXE (5,128K)
WDFMGR.EXE (1,548K) Eh?
(Maybe "Windows Driver Foundation ManGeR")

Goto Start > Search and search for the file names. If they turn up in a program files directory, that should tell you more about what they are. If they turn up in \WINDOWS\System32, rightclick and select "Properties" and then "Version" tab and go through the entries (any) that are there. Company name, etc may tell you something. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 02:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

O blast it!, I completely missed your huge block of text above; ignore what I've got there, it's all redundant... 68.39.174.238 (talk) 02:09, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I left the defrag process running overnight and I was wrong about how fragmented the Windows parition was, it was pretty bad although my data partition didn't really need doing. I have defragged both and still things are running slugishly. I will have to try plan B...experimenting with Ubuntu. GaryReggae (talk) 14:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Personally I would perform a registry scan. My PC was also going slow until I scanned and found out that my registry had >5000 serious problems. Also, SVCHOST.EXE has been known to overload and use up 100% of processor time and anywhere up to 300,000KB RAM space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.162.11.5 (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Resolution in HDTV

I have a chance to get a good deal on a Panasonic HDTV that has resolution described as: 1366 x 768.

I see a reference in Wikepedia that if the resolution is not "1080" (presumably 1920 x 1080)the HDTV may not be compatible with computers (I would presume for showing things like photos on the HDTV display from a computer)

Can anyone shed some light on this. The articles I have looked at do not mention 1366 x 768 resolution.......Gary B. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GSBens (talk • contribs) 22:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes it will be compatible with computers, as long as it has a VGA or DVI input. It simply means that the TV is only capable of 720p and not 1080i/p, and will be scaled down if such content is displayed. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Personal experience -- if you've got a laptop, try to hook it up in the store. I've got a Westinghouse that reports the same resolution as your panasonic, but for the life of me I can't get it to run from a computer at the native resolution. The best I can do is 1024x768... --Mdwyer (talk) 04:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Depending on your graphics card adding the custom resolution should be a relativly painless task. If you have an Nvidia card then this will be of use. With an ATI card you will have to use a program called Powerstrip, unless there is something I have missed (I seem to vaugly recall a button to add HDTV compatible resolutions in the catalyst control panel.) If not (or you have another brand of graphics card) then look up a program called Powerstrip. With regards to connectivity there is a good chance the TV will have a DVI connection, and if your graphics card has DVI outputs then just plug it in. Otherwise you will be looking for some sort of converter. If it only has HDMI then you can find HDMI to DVI cables for a small price at most good electronics stores. I am willing to bet there are HDMI to VGA cables as well although I have never looked. TheGreatZorko (talk) 10:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Hard disk partitioning question

I'm about to upgrade my Linux system to an altogether new one, which has a bigger hard disk. Previously, I used to have my hard disk partitioned so that about two thirds were root (/) and about one third was home (/home). But then I found out that my digital photographs filled up my entire home partition. So I bought a new hard disk solely to store them. Now I have about 5.4 GB in use in root, 1.4 GB in use in home, and a staggering 28 GB in use on the new hard disk (almost all of it is digital photographs).

My new hard disk will be bigger than both of my old ones put together. Should I keep with the current partitioning (root, home, and digital photographs), or combine the latter two together, so that one sixth would be root and five sixths would be home?

All the above is ignoring the boot and swap partitions. Their size is negligible in comparison to the root and home partitions. JIP | Talk 23:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I know most distributions suggest some elaborate partitioning scheme but - it's bogus. The filesystem is a lot better at assigning space to your data than the partition table. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.70.206 (talk) 02:17, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Distributions suggest elaborate schemes so that an overflowing log (in /var) or process writing to /tmp can't bring down the whole system. It prevents a user filling their /home directory from impacting other services on the box. It isn't totally bogus.

Now, that said, I personally don't do the partitions. I have a tiny /boot, a sizable swap, and the rest is /. --Mdwyer (talk) 04:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

On my Linux box I have two partitions (plus swap): a big one containing /var and /home and a smaller one containing the rest. The idea is to split off the mostly static OS files from the mess of frequently changing stuff under /var and /home, thereby hopefully reducing fragmentation and seek times. I haven't really checked if it has any actual effect, but certainly it works no worse than any other scheme I've tried. Of course, the down side to this setup is that I had to make /home a symlink to /var/home — though I suppose I could've used a bind mount instead. Anyway, I have found that, for certain infrequent but occasionally necessary operations, such as OS reinstalls or even data recovery after a disk failure, having multiple partitions is convenient, simply because it allows you to work on the system in more manageable chunks; the exact choice of how to set up the partitions is of secondary importance there. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

December 6

Desktop icons in Mac OS X

I was wondering if it's possible to have desktop icons on the desktop? I know you can drag the icons from the Applications folder but is there another way to have them in both places? Knowing me, I'll delete the icon from the desktop and accidentally delete programs... --139.184.222.105 (talk) 00:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh would "Make alias" do it? --139.184.222.105 (talk) 00:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's what it's for. Algebraist 00:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Although what you really want to do is use the dock for the applications that you use most frequently. You can right-click (ctrl-click) on any running program to add it to the dock or just drag the application icon to the dock. Donald Hosek (talk) 18:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

top-level domain I can't find in directory

I got an email the other day from a ".cp". At first I thought it might be a country code, but I haven't been able to find it on any domain lists. Googling was mostly ineffective as it appears to be ignoring the ., or that is communicating some kind of command I'm unaware of. Is anyone familiar with .cp, and if so, what is it? Natalie (talk) 04:44, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't exist. Furthermore, according to ISO 3166-3, the list of former country codes, it never existed. It's either a typo (for .co, Colombia, maybe) or just a lousy forgery. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 05:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I have gmail - is there an easy way I can see the actual top-level domain? Natalie (talk) 14:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Of what? Where it came from? There's no way you can tell- it could have gone through a dozen servers from its original source. --ffroth 18:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

There's still the chain of "Received:" headers, and at least some of them won't have been forged. Gmail's GUI changes from browser to browser, but at least on Safari, you can view the headers by clicking on "more options", then "show original". --Carnildo (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

md5 as password

How secure would it be to use the md5 checksum of a file as a password (assuming that the file is reasonably unique and only possessed by the password's owner, and also assuming that an attacker may know that the password is an md5 checksum (but nothing about what sort of file the checksum was generated from))? 69.123.113.89 (talk) 05:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

See MD5#Vulnerability. For most purposes it would be secure, if you're really paranoid use SHA-1 with salt or even SHA-512 with salt. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:08, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not really a good idea, at least if you plan on keeping the file around. If an attacker can access your computer and knows that you MD5'd a file there, they can recover the password just by hashing every file, which wouldn't take very long. (If they can't access your computer, and the file is not something common (like Wikipedia's logo image or something), the hash is effectively a random string of 128 bits.) See book cipher, one-time pad, and CSPRNG for more on this sort of approach. --Tardis (talk) 15:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Help me get rid of an "Open With" function

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/8923/openkw9.png

Why does the Open With function pop out when I try opening C:/?

AlmostCrimes (talk) 07:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

You probably don't have any software that can handle PNG files installed - I'm not sure if Internet Explorer does or not but Firefox (a different web browser) can open them so if you don't have anything suitable installed, try Firefox, it's free and IMHO better than IE. If you DO have soe software than can deal with PNG files installed, double-click it in the Open With box and make sure the 'Always open using this application' box is ticked, then you won't see the prompt again. GaryReggae (talk) 11:51, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

He's getting the Open With prompt when he tries to open C: in Explorer, not when he tries to open that PNG file. Sorry OP, I don't know why it's happening — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 12:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks nasty. Some kind of shell extension not working. Reinstall xp and select "repair". --ffroth 18:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Open Control Panel > Folder Options > File Types and scroll down to the file type "Drive": It should say "N/A", along with Folder, etc, etc. If it's not there, hit "New", "Advanced >>", then scroll down to "Drive" and select it and hit enter. Alternately, hit "Browse..." in that box that comes up and go to C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe and select that (Since Windows Explorer (Not IE) is what drives should open with anyway). 68.39.174.238 (talk) 01:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I've had a similar problem where drives or folders would open the Search Companion. The fix for that problem is described here. You might consider carefully investigating the registry to see if it's the same thing with your problem. --Bavi H (talk) 03:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/890/problemeh0.png re: 68.39.174.238, if I understand your directions properly then it's already not associated with any file type?

Bavi, when I did as your link said and changed the registry entry for Default in the appropriate root folder (Drive) the problem still persisted. Thanks for the help everyone, but I'm still stuck at a dead end. I can still access C:/, just that I have to use explore by right-clicking the start button instead of My Computer, which I'd vastly prefer.

AlmostCrimes (talk) 14:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Try the drive association fix from Windows® XP File Association Fixes --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Forum administrators and privacy

To preserve my privacy, I am using two IDs in a web forum. Can the administrator of that forum find me or identify me someway that the two IDs belong to same person? 2) When I register in that forum, they send a email to verify that it is my email address. If I click on that link, will my name given to my email provider be visible to administrator? Or will my name be visible only if I reply to that mail sent by administrator? Eventhough I register through two email address for two different forum accounts, in both my email accounts, I have given same first and last name.

Can you understand what I mean to say? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.115.105 (talk) 08:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, admins can tell the two ID's belong to the same person, by matching up the IP's between the two, and no, they probably won't get your name just from sending you the confirmation email, nor clicking the link. However, unless the admin knows that you're in some way suspicious or something they won't be bothered to match IP's and things, especially in large forums. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:05, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

What you are referring to is a sockpuppet acccount. You may have honest reasons for using one - so don't assume that I'm implying you are trying to use two accounts for deception. It is often possible for users (non-admins) to detect sockpuppet accounts. It is common for a person to use one account to say something and then quickly use the other to back up what they've said. After repeating this many times, users recognize that the two accounts work together. Then, if they use the same language - especially the same typos - it is more obvious. Worse, users get confused and sign their messages with the wrong account's name. So, if you really want to ensure the users don't recognize you are using two accounts you need to keep them separate. As for your name, if you haven't given it to the website in some other means, they don't have it. Clicking on a link in an email doesn't send any information about you that the administrators didn't already have (and put in the link). -- kainaw™ 16:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Unicode composition ...

I'm trying to figure out the algorithm to implement Unicode Normalization Form C, but I'm confused when it comes to how the omposition stage id supposed to works: on this the standard says:

"If C is not blocked from the last starter L and it can be primary combined with L, then replace L by the composite L-C and remove C"

.. but if I "replace L with L-C, then remove C", then (to my puny ind, at least :-) I;ve would be just addeing, then immeduatey rnoving "C", which put me exactly back where I started.

Am I missing something? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RussPott (talk • contribs) 10:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

• Try searching for "Unicode Normalization Form C" on Google Code Search. --Sean 15:06, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Reverse DNS = (random).phx.gbl

I just checked my website's log (I have a temporary log to see who's browsing my page) and found an entry from MSN crawler, with the hostname (PHP's $_SERVER["REMOTE_HOST"]) ending with .phx.gbl. Since .gbl isn't a valid TLD, I'm wondering why/how Microsoft does this. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 12:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I have seen nothing official as to why Microsoft is using the phx.gbl domain. I've seen claims that it isn't Microsoft at all. There is a theory that it is a botnet run through MSN Messenger. As for how, Microsoft is powerful enough to create any TLD they like. It may be a Windows thing. Whenever I try to lookup a phx.gbl domain on my computer (Linux), I get "No match for domain". Microsoft can easily hardcode Windows such that gbl domains to use their personal DNS database. -- kainaw™ 16:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

"powerful enough to create any TLD they like" may be true, but not without some kind of public record. The simple truth is that reverse DNS is easily forgeable. Sign up for a "business" account with some ISP, ask for a few static IP addresses and have the reverse DNS authority delegated to your own nameserver. Then put in whatever PTR records you want. You can say that your IP address's name is this.phx.gbl or that.wikipedia.org or the-other.microsoft.com. (You might get sued, but that's another topic.)

These deceptions are easily detectable though. Back to the web server log - the server gets a connection from somewhere, let's say 69.246.218.176. It does a reverse DNS lookup and finds that the name is "c-69-246-218-176.hsd1.in.comcast.net" (an unimaginative name which completely misses the point of having hostnames in the first place, which is that they're supposed to be simpler than the numbers they map to, but that's a rant for another time). Does this mean the source of the connection is actually located at comcast? No, it just means the person who controls the reverse DNS of that IP address has put the name "c-69-246-218-176.hsd1.in.comcast.net" in as the answer to the query. If we want to know for sure, we have to do a regular ("forward") lookup on the name and see if we get back the address we started with. And we do, in this case. Now that the reverse and forward lookups have been compared successfully, it's possible to say with a high degree of confidence that the connection actually came from Comcast.

Grawity's web server apparently skips the verification and just logs whatever the reverse lookup says. That's not good. Unverified reverse DNS in your log is worse than no reverse DNS at all, so I'd say if you can't find an option to make it do the verification step, disable the reverse DNS lookups completely. Let it log IP addresses, and you can look up the names later. And then you'll know which IP address is giving you the bogus reverse DNS replies, which is the first step to finding out who's behind them. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

One more tip, since REMOTE_HOST was mentioned: the corresponding variable which would contain the IP address is REMOTE_ADDR. If you can log both of them, it won't matter so much that the hostname is unverified. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No more my documents

Hi. I was working with a large number of folders in My Documents. Windows Explorer (I work with xp x64) was getting slower and slower and there was a folder in the Bin that would wouldn't be completely deleted (it wouldn't empty the bin). The explorer crashed and was accessing the memory like crazy. I left it so for half an hour with no changes so I finally stoped the explorer process through the Task Manager and restarted. Now the My documents have disapeared (luckily they are still on C:). What happened and what can I do to have my documents back on the desktop as it used to be (I think). Do you think there might have been damage done? Thank you. 80.200.149.148 (talk) 15:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're missing the My Documents shortcut on the desktop, you could try restoring it by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop and selecting Properties. Go to the Desktop tab, and click Customise Desktop and make sure that the My Documents checkbox is ticked. --Kateshortforbob 23:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Convert IFF ILBM to PNG/GIF?

Is there a Linux utility to convert Amiga IFF ILBM files to a more contemporary graphics format? PNG would be preferred, but GIF is OK too. BMP is a last resource but best avoided. JPG is right out because it's lossy. JIP | Talk 19:13, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I know you specified Linux, but if you don't find a Linux utility, you might try IrfanView under Windows. My copy lists IFF ILBM as a file type it can work with, and it can save in dozens of formats. I don't have any such files available though, so I can't check on how well it works. --LarryMac | Talk 19:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

netpbm has an ilbmtoppm. (And in case you're not familiar with netpbm, ppm is its intermediate format for color pictures. You'll then use ppmtogif or pnmtopng) --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:31, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Turns out I already have this netpbm thingy. I will have to try it out. Thanks. JIP | Talk 07:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

computer questions

(moved from Humanities desk)

1.which procedure would you use to open a folder in the Folders window and display its contents?

2.to copy a selected file from one folder to another ,you could use what method.

bonnie tola —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.68.40.71 (talk) 19:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm assuming you use Windows. Open up Microsoft Explorer and navigate to your folder. That answers question 1. As for question 2, repeat the aforementioned, click on a file, choose "Copy", navigate to the target folder, and choose Paste. Or you could do it faster by opening a Command Prompt window and typing "copy \path_to_file\filename \destination_path". In the unlikely event you use a non-Redmond system, open up a terminal and subsitute "cp" for "copy" and real slashes for those idiotic backslashes. JIP | Talk 20:09, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

By the basic nature of the question, I feel that JIP should have told you that you "navigate" by double-clicking on folders with the pointer (that little thing the mouse moves around on the screen). There are some operating systems that let you do this with a single-click instead of a double-click. I do find it rather interesting that a person could locate and post a question on Wikipedia without having any idea how to open a folder. Of course, the big blue "e" doesn't require you to open a folder. -- kainaw™ 20:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

FIPS codes?

According to Template:GR, the U.S. Census Bureau's Factfinder website allows the user to search places by FIPS codes. However, I can't find such a place on the website. Can someone find somewhere on the website that I can search by FIPS? Nyttend (talk) 19:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

"(talk)" appears now (sometimes!) in WP signatures

Do you have any idea how I find out what the "thing" is that was changed so I can change it on my own Mediawiki powered wikis? I've run myself ragged on Mediawiki and obviously not searched for the right thing.

Fiddle Faddle (talk) 23:08, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a default now for IP addresses, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-11-19/Technology_report, MediaWiki:Signature and MediaWiki:Signature-anon if you've updated to the latest version with those strings. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 01:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 07:48, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

.albm file extension/format - How to convert ?

I have received a file which is supposedly an archive of images (the images are vintage 1997 or so), which has an extension .albm ... searching the web suggests that this is an HP proprietary file format used with the HP Photosmart devices and possibly others. I have not found a convertor I can use to unravel it though... supposedly File Juicer (http://echoone.com/filejuicer/) can, but that's for Macs and I am on a Wintel platform... some sites suggest Konvertor (http://www.konvertor.net/indexe.html) but that URL seems dead. Any ideas? Thanks! ++Lar: t/c 23:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Google finds any number of places that allow you to download the trial version of Konvertor (I found http://www.logipole.com/download_konv_us.htm, although I've no idea if it's a trustworthy site). If that fails: as a wild stab, copy the file and change the copy's file extension to .ZIP - a remarkable number of "custom" archive file formats are really just zip in disguise. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:01, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I should have mentioned that I tried the .zip trick (it's an oldie but a goodie) and that didn't work. I will try searching for Konvertor harder instead of just relying on what someone else said the link was :) ++Lar: t/c 00:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

If all else fails, search the .ALBM for the strings JFIF and GIF: maybe the format is as simple as a concatenation of existing file formats, with a little proprietary directory on the front. If that's true, it's not rocket science for someone to code up a splitter that pulls out each JPEG or whatever. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:47, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

If it's not compressed, data recovery software such as PhotoRec might do the trick — just tell it that the file is a disk image of a failed disk. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Try file (Unix). --122.57.210.186 (talk) 02:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The Konvertor link works for me; the lsit of supported formats shows it will read .ALBM files. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I got a copy of it and it can see into the archive, there are pictures in there all right, but it blows up trying to get the pictures beyond thumbnail. So I need to hack more. :) ++Lar: t/c 16:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

December 7

compiling python source code to an executable file

I am a beginner python programmer and I want to compile a source code file (with extension .py) to an executable file (.exe), can anyone tell me how to do it? Thanks in advance.--George (talk) 02:23, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're on Windows, use Py2exe. It emits several files, so you might want to then make an installer with NSIS which yields a single exe file. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

And, for reference, if you were shipping for Linux you'd package your Python code in a package (DEB, RPM) that had dependencies on the Python system and any other packages you needed. I honestly don't know what you'd do on MacOS. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

You can also use cx_freeze (no article yet), as mentioned on Frets on Fire. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Virus

Sir, When I scan my computer, and if it founds any virus, it has one option saying that to "move to quarantine" I just want to know that what is "quarantine" and if I move that virus to quarantine where does it go? and after then is my computer is safe from that virus? I am using Bitdefender Anti virus on my pc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arvindshivanand (talk • contribs) 06:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Quarantine means the infected file will be moved to a selected directory (very often within the subtree of the anti-virus application) and maybe renamed (its extension will be changed to signify that it's infected and/or to hide its real contents). Quarantine is a way of semi-protecting the PC from the virus within the file if the file is sensitive enough to care for because it contains any data important to you. Personally, I almost never choose to quarantine infected files - if they're repairable, try to repair them, if not, rather delete them if they don't contain sensitive data. Good luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 07:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

RTC modem - where RTC is...

Hello, dear Refdeskers! I have a quick question - in the phrase 'RTC modem', what does RTC stand for? Real time something? I am just not sure. No, a bit stumped rather ;) Thanks and cheers! --Ouro (blah blah) 07:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

RTC? It usually means Real Time Clock in the electronics field. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I know, I have thought of this already. But does 'real time clock modem' make sense? --Ouro (blah blah) 11:21, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Since when does marketing lingo have to make sense? Just look at "Blast Processing" or measuring power of consoles in bits. TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

And this refers to what? --Ouro (blah blah) 13:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

RTC can also stand for Real time computing or Real time control - I doubt either of those are it either. Is it perhaps just the manufacturer's name or something? SteveBaker (talk) 16:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be used extensively in Europe (I found many search results in French and Spanish), and there were many pages that seemed to be comparing it to ADSL. Perhaps a cable modem of some type, but I could not find anything definitive. I also saw the term "real time communication" in my searching, but not in a clear enough context to make the leap to "yep, that's what it stands for." My gut feeling is that it wasn't a manufacturer name, but I'm pretty sure my gut fails WP:RS. --LarryMac | Talk 17:10, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I can tell you that it's definitely not a manufacturer's name. The term is taken from an instruction manual of another device, where the RTC modem is used as a means of communication of the device with a computer terminal as opposed to a direct cable connection. The manual also suggests that this modem connection is a dial-up connection. LarryMac and SteveBaker, thanks for your input, guys... --Ouro (blah blah) 17:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Hunch 've just wikipedia'd over to fr.wiki where I saw that RTC can refer to fr:Réseau téléphonique commuté (and the manual was originally translated from French). Could it be that it denotes a telephone (phone-line) modem? My gut gives a slight nod. --Ouro (blah blah) 17:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

That fr article has an English link under "Autres langues", which points to Public switched telephone network (PSTN). In English then it should be "PSTN modem" which would be just a slightly awkward way to refer to a plain old phone line dialup modem. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:25, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

In my head, this fits, and Google returns a hit or two for 'PSTN modem'. Just now also I've done a search for 'RTC modem' only for French-language sites... looks promising this. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Virus

Sir, I am usinf Bit defender anto virus 2008 i my pc. It has detected 19 viruses in my computer from which 3 have been deleted, but rest of are not deleted . What should I do delete those viruses. Iwant to know how to delete them. One more thing, that, if Anti virus detects some virus it has one option "move to quarantine" . What is "quarantine" and if move the virus in quarantine , is my computer is safe from that virus?

I will be waiting for ur response.

Arvind Kumar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.45.160 (talk) 07:28, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The quarantine question had been answered above. As for the viruses that had not been deleted, the question would be easier to answer if we knew what messages are you getting from Bit defender - why isn't he removing the viruses? What kinds of viruses are they? Sometimes specific patches or programmes are required in order to delete really malicious software. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

There is a possability that there are infected files that are currently in use, and cannot be closed. Restart the PC in Safe Mode by pressing F8 during boot, just before the first Windows loading screen appears, and chosing "safe mode" or "safe mode with networking". Run the virus scan within safe mode, and see if that removes the viruses. Before doing this however I would back up any particularly important documents just incase the virus scanner removes an important Windows file, although this is unlikely. If this fails to remove the viruses I suggest downloading a trial of Eset NOD32, which is a professional level virus scanner and generally regarded as the best virus scanner on the consumer market, and if that cannot remove your viruses then I have no idea what will.

With regards to quarantine this is incase an infected file is needed for the continued operation of software or the operating system, so it can be put back allowing the user to back up his data, even if the file is infected. TheGreatZorko (talk) 10:39, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Moving location of My Documents and the like

I recently shifted back to Windows XP after using Vista (nothing wrong with the OS, just my soundcards drivers under the OS) and had moved Documents, and Music (the Vista names for My Documents) to another drive. This was trivial and involved right clicking on the Documents icon and chosing a different location for it. Now back on XP Windows insists my My Documents folder must be located at C:/Documents and settings/<name>/My Documents, and right clicking on the folder doesn't seem to work. How do I move the location of My Documents to where they are now? (That being F:/Music and F:/Documents) TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:02, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

See [4]]. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 11:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh hey that button wasn't there before. It's exactly like Vista! Does this work with My Music as well? I'm not on my home PC at the moment and this PC doesn't have a My Music folder. Hell I'm not even sure it has a sound card.TheGreatZorko (talk) 11:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It should work with the 'special' folders witin My Documents too. I always use this button as I prefer to store my files on a separate partition as it saves all the hassle of oving them every time Windoze decides it needs reinstalling. 62.249.220.179 (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: Unicode composition ...

This should really be a follow-on response to an existing question titled "Unicode composition ...", in which I wanted to respond to who- ever suggested that I look into "Google Code Search" by saying that doing so didn't really help me, but I couldn't figure out how to respond to existing questions on the "Reference desk" (some help on which would be greatly appreciated :-) - which probably makes me seem pretty stupid, but I should explain that I'm still quite "dim", having not fully recovered from a massive brain hemorrhage a few years ago.

So, for the same reason, my original question still stands:

If the normalization standard says, regarding composing after decomposition: "[the last starter] L is replaced by the composite L-C.then C is removed", wouldn't doing so leave me where I started, with just "L"?

Am I missing something? what, then, does the above statement actually mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.105.122.191 (talk) 12:14, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Symbain for Pc--Linux for mobiles

Any idea if there is a live boot symbian version for PC??would it be faster than windows?How about any of other free open source fully loaded OS for Mobiles?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.240.72 (talk) 13:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if it helps, but according to this article, Symbian Operating System is a proprietary (Symbian OS does not seem to be open source.) operating system that runs only on ARM processors (Symbian OS does not seem to be designed for desktop/notebook computers). Does your PC have an ARM processor? --Kushal^t 17:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Firefox URL bar

Suddenly the url bar is not reflecting the page I am visiting (eg http://en.wikipedia.org ). How do I re-set it to do so please? On the left end it has a google G; on the right end it has a magnifying glass. - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

That is the search engine bar, not the URL/Address bar. It shows whatever you last searched for. -- kainaw™ 15:15, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Where is my URL bar? - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:16, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It is difficult to say. Have you tried closing Firefox and re-opening it? It is possible a javascript hid it if you didn't purposely hide it. -- kainaw™ 15:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Right click in the blank space of your navigation bar, choose 'Customize', look for something called 'location', drag it up to your navigation bar. --Elliskev 15:19, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. Thank you. - Kittybrewster ☎ 15:26, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

quick and straightforward path to a small-scale ecommerce site selling PDFs?

Problem: I have a relatively small-scale e-commerce site that I started as a student at my University. I sell publications that are saved to PDF files that people can buy one at a time, or buy subscriptions and see everything on the site until their subscription expires. Unfortunately, I am no longer a student (graduated) and the rules prohibit me from using the University servers anymore, because making money off this site is no longer consistent with my educational experience as a business student (since I am technically no longer a student).

Request: I do not have a lot of money and the site doesn't really generate outrageous revenue, but I'd like to keep it going. I went to the bank got my business name setup and all that stuff, but they told me I need to give them the webserver address and site and URL with a privacy statement and a bunch of other stuff. I already have a few subscription customers, and I'd like to keep things going without disrupting their existing subscriptions.

I'm wondering, is there a pre-fab turnkey solution that will work for me? I've looked at some "small business DIY ecommerce" type sites, but all of them seem to assume the merchant is selling and shipping some kind of product. All I am selling is the right to download and print PDFs, either "one at a time" or with a timed subscription that expires at a specific duration.

TIA for any infos. NoClutter (talk) 20:02, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like what you need is a web hosting provider. They come in all shapes and sizes; I'd suggest comparing and perhaps getting quotes from several providers to see which one might fit your (current and future) needs best. Word of mouth, so conveniently available online these days, may be useful in determining which providers are the most reliable and easiest to work with, provided of course that you always take it with the grain of salt it deserves. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

December 8

Coloured text in console mode

Is there any provision for coloured text in the standard, cross-platform C libraries for console mode? What about C++? NeonMerlin 02:45, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• The closest thing to this will be ANSI escape codes. Post back if you don't get the hang of it. -- Sean —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.144.151.247 (talk) 03:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are libraries, such as curses, that will help you with this — it's not standard in the sense that e.g. libc is, but it's fairly well established and available on pretty much any system that has a console mode at all. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

DSL 10-day warmup?

I just installed DSL in my home and the modem had an interesting sticker on it. It said, "Attention! To achieve maximum speed, leave moden connected for 10 days." Can someone explain what this is about? The thought of a computer device needing 10 days to do anything is rather astounding. --208.189.34.45 (talk) 02:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The modem itself certainly won't need 10 days to "warm up". The only explanation I can think of is that your ISP is, for some reason, limiting the connection speed for new installations and removing the limit after (at most) 10 days. I'm not sure why they'd do that, though, unless perhaps it's to deter users from working around some elaborate traffic shaping scheme that needs several days to decide whether your connection speed should be throttled or not. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 03:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The explanation I've heard is that it needs to monitor the connection to determine the speed it can handle. Since that may vary with the load, it's necessary to monitor it over a long period of time to check what speeds work at various load levels. StuRat (talk) 03:53, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Card Making Program

Is there another program besides Microsoft Publisher to make and print cards? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.121.107.55 (talk) 03:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, see the list of desktop publishing software. Many word processors — especially presentation-oriented ones like Apple's iWork — can probably also do it to a varying degree. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Space of hard disk consume by operating system

Why operating system consume some part of hard disk which is don't shown by computer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by San sharma (talk • contribs) 04:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It'd certainly be nice to have an operating system that didn't consume any disk space, but that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. (Although one might, perhaps, consider an OS running from a live CD to qualify, and some older computers, such as notably the Commodore Amiga, did store a significant part of their OS in ROM.) As for the space not being shown, I'm not sure why that would be the case — perhaps it's so you wouldn't be tempted to go around deleting those important files in order to "save space". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Video Encoding

Any idea wether we can combine Xvid or Divx video with M4A audio into one video file with Avi extension?? Also what are the best settings to encode a video for playback in a nokia E62??59.92.248.15 (talk)

Photoshop pixelation effect

I'm a moderately experienced Photoshop user, but I can't figure out how to make this effect. I'm looking for an arty pixelation, like the Rubik's Cube sculptures of Space Invader (as found here: [5] I want to make one of these sculptures, but I'd need a guide first. Anybody know how to do this? Thanks! -ParkerHiggins ( talk contribs ) 04:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

For simple pixelation just use the mosaic filter, or down size the image using bicubic interpolation and then upsample the image, using nearest-neighbour interpolation. Then you can add the grid by drawing a single grid and make that a pattern and repeat it. That's just one way of doing it.--antilived^{T | C | G} 09:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Is huge amount of physical RAM necessary for getting better FPS in games?

As for as today's latest games are concerned, do they really require about 2GB of memory?.I have 1GB+xfx 8600GT(256MB)+Pentium D 3.00GHz running winxp. I don't get sufficient FPS as shown in benhmark. The difference in config of theirs and mine seems to be RAM and processor. I guess cpu doesn't meddle much here as an issue. Can I get more FPS with another 1 GB RAM?. or is it time to go for high end GPU?.Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 11:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it depends what games you want to play, and if you have Vista or XP (Vista eats RAM). Definitely upgrade your CPU before RAM or GPU though, that's what's bottlenecking you most (even if you use Vista). Dual Cores are pretty inexpensive nowadays. · AndonicO ^Talk 12:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd make a general statement that Windows eats RAM. I run Win98 on a machine with 512 mb RAM - enough to have switched off the swap file altogether. Satisfied with the results. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

No - the frame rate isn't the thing that's driving RAM requirement. (Trust me, I'm a game designer!) It's to do with the amount of content in the game. If the game says it needs 2Gb on the box - then that's how much you need. There is no incentive for game designers to demand more memory than they need. As a games company, the more demands you make, the fewer people can run the game, the fewer games you'll sell and the less money you'll make - and it's definitely all about making money. So if it says you need X Gbytes- then X Gbytes is what you need. If you try to run with less than it says on the box, the game MIGHT still run - but be swapping from disk. If that happens then the game won't run smoothely at all and will in all likelyhood be almost unplayable.

The reason games need more these days is because graphics chips are getting faster at a rate that is outstripping even Moore's Law and every time the speed of the hardware doubles, you can draw twice as much stuff in the scene and therefore you need twice as much memory to store it (unless you are planning on drawing a lot of the same thing over and over - but that's getting unacceptable to games players too). Worse still, in addition to the throughput rates going up, the display resolution that people are using is increasing too - and that means that you need higher resolution textures - and higher resolution textures need more storage space. As if that were not enough, we're also being tempted by things like high definition lighting algorithms that need more of the graphical data to be stored in floating point instead of single bytes - which can double or even quadruple your storage needs at a stroke. Sadly RAM sizes are not increasing anything like as fast as Moores Law - and our needs are increasing more rapidly than Moores Law - so overall, we're being squeezed into tighter and tighter spaces and having to get more and more creative about saving RAM. There is a game-complexity/quality versus RAM-needs trade-off - and where that trade-off is set depends on another trade-off which is that if you demand too much RAM then fewer people will be able to run your game - but if you set the quality bar too low in order to use less RAM, then it won't be such a good game and you'll sell a lot less. One of the attractive things about writing games for consoles like the Wii, Xbox360 and PS3 is that you know exactly how much RAM every user has - so no more ikky trade-offs.

The CPU speed and the GPU (graphics card processor) are both critical to getting a high frame rate - if you have the required amount of RAM then either the CPU or the GPU is the bottleneck. Which it is depends on the game you are playing and the setup you have. If the GPU is the bottleneck, then it may either be the GPU's pixel draw rate or it's "vertex processing rate" that's limiting you. If it's the former, then reducing your screen resolution even by a small amount will dramatically improve your frame rate ("fps") - so it's always worth trying that to see if it solves your problem. If the game goes faster when you reduce the display resolution - then a newer, faster graphics card might be the way to spend your money. If reducing the resolution doesn't help then it's hard to say whether the CPU or the "vertex processing" stage of the GPU is limiting you. Worse still, if you have an older motherboard with an AGP graphics card slot then it's possible that the AGP performance is the limiting factor and neither CPU nor GPU upgrades will help. That's much less likely to be the case if you have PCI-express with the graphics card plugged into the 8-lane connector as it should be.

Sometimes, the feature-set of the graphics card matters a great deal. There is a feature in the game I'm working on now that works really elegantly on cards that support "full floating point" math - but has to be implemented differently for cards that only have "half float" math. The alternative implementation is a lot more complicated - and therefore runs more slowly. However, there are other games that don't need full floating point support which run just fine on either sort of card. So switching out to a more fully-featured card - even one that is a bit slower in raw performance terms - would probably speed my game up a little bit (not a whole lot - but noticably)...but with other games it might slow them down. A large fraction of my job is avoiding ikky problems like this!

As you can tell, this is a horribly complicated business.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

2D designer program

hi,

does anyone know of a free/internet downloadable 2D designing program...something like the actual program 2D designer.............?

thanks.....--84.67.229.4 (talk) 12:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

How about looking here for starters? --Ouro (blah blah) 13:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The standout winner is inkscape - but there are a lot to choose from. Just make sure that the artwork is stored in SVG and you can fairly easily switch from one to another until you find the one you like best. SteveBaker (talk) 14:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

MKV problems in Win Vista

Hello there. I'm just wondering if anyone here has the same problem, or how I can fix it. Thing is, I cannot open .MKV files on my PC (running x64 Vista). I can play them on my mac, works fine, but on the PC.. nah. I'v tried the might VLC player and a load of 3rd party codecs, with no success. Not even the Media Player Classic worked. Oh, yeah, one player did work - the one in Azureus (bittorent client). Though that one isn't the most optimised player and it can't play HD videos w/o lagg.

Vista just ain't compatibe with MKV? 90.231.145.160 (talk) 15:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)