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April 18

SVG in Safari

When I try to view SVG images in Safari (version 3.2.1, Mac OS X 10.5.6) at full size, I can only see a part of the image, and there is no way to scroll around to see the rest. Is there any way to fix this, or is there another browser that works better? Lesgles (talk) 01:04, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I ran into the same problem (with IE) yesterday when trying to study this image from a PC that had only IE installed. Back home, with Firefox, it works nicely at full resolution, with scrollbars on the bottom of the page and on the right edge. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 06:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Try the Safari 4 Beta, or Opera, both of which have greater standards compliance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers might help also. 144.138.21.23 (talk) 06:19, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try those! Lesgles (talk) 06:55, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Getting Sick of This 'Administration Priveliges' Bollocks

How do I set my own account on my own PC to have administration priveliges? It's a real PITA that I keep getting denied access when I need to do stuff. I am using Vista.--KageTora (talk) 10:27, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You mean the error messages or the continually being asked to confirm? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:43, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, in this particular case (prompting me to post this question) I have been told by a game I have just installed that I need admin priv to get protection or whatever. So, how do I set my account to be the admin?--KageTora (talk) 10:46, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Open the start menu, click on your picture at the very top of the menu, and then choose "Change account type" (or whatever the name of the option is in English). However, it is indeed very possible that you already are an administrator. Then, maybe it is UAC that annoys you, or you might need to run the game as administrator. To do so, right-click on the game's icon, select "Preferences", "Compatibility" and check "Run this program as an administrator". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:55, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Beware that this would give the game the power to mess up things which it couldn't otherwise do, so a downloaded game with a virus could cause more serious problems. StuRat (talk) 14:41, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Rather than disabling the entire User Account Control, might I suggest simply elevating yourself when needed? To do this simply right-click the program/shortcut and select "Run as administrator". Although the UAC can be a pain, security has never been convenient and it's there for a reason. ZX81 ^talk 15:33, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Trucrypt Question

How do I find out my password for the files I have encrypted on TruCrypt? Or are they all just gone forever? I'm not having a good day on this bloody PC. --KageTora (talk) 11:43, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

TrueCrypt does not contain any mechanism or facility that would allow partial or complete recovery of your encrypted data without knowing the correct password or the key used to encrypt the data. The only way to recover your files is to try to "crack" the password or the key, but it could take thousands or millions of years depending on the length and quality of the password/keyfiles, on software/hardware efficiency, and other factors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you remember anything about the password, like whether it contained an English word or any letters/digits/symbols that you're sure aren't in it? If you can narrow it down to a billion possibilities or less then brute-force password cracking might be feasible. I'd guesstimate that you could check ~100 passwords per second per CPU core on a modern PC. There's no known attack on a TrueCrypt volume that's faster than brute-force password checking. -- BenRG (talk) 16:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's be realistic here - the whole reason you encrypted the file in the first place was to prevent "the bad guy" from doing precisely what you are asking to do! Why would you imagine it's even possible? Forget it - if the contents of the files are worth less than a million dollars - they're history. SteveBaker (talk) 01:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Dim monitor

Are there ways to dim monitor screens further than the default buttons allow? I find it very hard to focus on a bright screen in an area without any lighting. The operating system I'm using is Windows vista on an LCD monitor. Thank you for your help. -- penubag  (talk) 12:18, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You can use software for that (I can't think of any right now, though). The application simply changes the brightness of each pixel, so that the LCD receives a dimmer image. Also, you could try to wear polarizing sunglasses, at an appropriate angle (in fact, you can adjust the apparent brightness of the LCD by tilting your head). A very interesting approach would be to place a polarizing thin film just in front of the screen. Then you could rotate this to adjust the brightness. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:32, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Many graphics drivers let you adjust the brightness via a control panel application. Perhaps you have an icon to open this control panel in the bottom-right corner (Swedish: meddelandefältet) of the screen, or in the Control Panel "folder". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:01, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

This will vary quite a bit by monitor. On mine I can go to Control Panel + Display + Settings tab + Advanced button + Color tab. From there I can change the "Target Gamma" or all 3 "Color Splines" (for Red, Green, and Blue), either of which can make it dimmer. Another hint is to change the Desktop to black (or at least a dark color) and also change the window backgrounds to dark colors. I find white text on black background far easier on my eyes than the reverse. I've changed my Wikipedia profile to do this, as well. StuRat (talk) 14:33, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

A minor note: I believe that it is more likely to vary, in general, by graphics card, not by monitor. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:39, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, that method works okay but that doesn't dim the back light, only makes the LCD stronger. You method did help some though.-- penubag  (talk) 04:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

PHP Hit Counter Help

Hi. I'm trying to create a PHP hit counter. I want it to display the number of unique visitors to the site. If the user has a cookie from the site, it does not increment the count. If he doesn't, it increments the count. In either case, it prints the number. Here's what I have so far. Right now, it isn't incrementing. If I get rid of the conditionals, it increments, but doesn't care if you've been to the site before. Thanks.

			<?PHP
				if (isset($_COOKIE['id']))
				{
					$filename= "counter.txt" ;
					$fd = fopen ($filename , "r") or die ("Can't open $filename") ;
					$fstring = fread ($fd , filesize ($filename)) ;
					echo "$fstring" ;
					fclose($fd) ;
				}
				else
				{
					setcookie( 'id', 'counter', time()+(60*60*24*7));
					$filename= "counter.txt" ;
					$fd = fopen ($filename , "r") or die ("Can't open $filename") ;
					$fstring = fread ($fd , filesize ($filename)) ;
					echo "$fstring" ;
					fclose($fd) ;
					$fd = fopen ($filename , "w") or die ("Can't open $filename") ;
					$fcounted = $fstring + 1 ;
					$fout= fwrite ($fd , $fcounted ) ;
					fclose($fd) ;
				}
			?>

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tim james 5 (talk • contribs) 12:47, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks basically fine. In the else clause you may want to echo $fcounted after you set it (rather than $fstring before) if you want the new user to see the newly incremented counter. -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 17:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Your code is not thread-safe. If two people hit the site at the same time, the following may happen:

1. Visitor 1 hits the code: $fc = fopen($filename, "w")... erasing the contents of the file.
2. Visitor 2 hits the code: $fstring = fread($fd, filesize($filename)); ... reading an empty file.
3. Visitor 1 finishes up, saving the count.
4. Visitor 2 continues, opens the file ("w" erases the contents), adds 1 to $fstring (which is empty), and saves $fcounted (now 1) to the file.

The end result is that your count will reset to 1. You must use flock (php command is flock) to ensure the file cannot be read while it is being written. -- kainaw™ 20:02, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Or even better, as some more complicated PHP hit counters do (like BBClone), have a series of possible files it can open in a queue, so that you can accommodate, say, 7 hits at the same time and not lose any data. Also, I suspect there are a lot of things that will hit your page (like bots) that won't allow cookies. In such cases looking at the IP address itself might prove more useful. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:04, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. It works now. Here is the final code:

			<?PHP
				if (isset($_COOKIE['american'])) {
					$filename = "counter.txt" ;
					$fd = fopen ($filename , "r") or die ("Can't open $filename") ;
					$fstring = fread ($fd , filesize ($filename)) ;
					echo "Visits: $fstring" ;
					fclose($fd) ;}
				else {
					setcookie( 'american', 'counter', time()+(60*60*24*7));
					$filename = "counter.txt" ;
					$fd = fopen ($filename , "r") or die ("Can't open $filename") ;
					$fstring = fread ($fd , filesize ($filename)) ;
					echo "Visits: $fstring" ;
					fclose($fd) ;
					$now = time();
					while ($now + 1 > time()) {
					}
					$fd = fopen ($filename , "w") or die ("Can't open $filename") ;
					$fcounted = $fstring + 1 ;
					$fout= fwrite ($fd , $fcounted ) ;
					fclose($fd) ;}
			?>

I'm not sure what I changed, but it seems to work now.--Tim james 5 (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Your code is still not locking the counter file. Therefore, you are begging for two users to hit the page at the same time and reset your counter to 1. Waiting 1 second to write to the file isn't helpful. It just postpones overwriting the file for 1 second - technically making the problem worse. -- kainaw™ 22:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Encryption

Is there a way to encrypt a single text file? I wouldn't mind either encypting the text in the file, or the file itself. --RefDeskAnon (talk) 18:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

There are many, many ways; too many to list. A few easy possibilities, you could zip the file with a password, use an online encryption tool, put the text file in a TrueCrypt volume, or try this self modifying text program which acts just like notepad but with a password to secure your text. 8I.24.07.715 ^talk 18:28, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Beware of snake oil (cryptography). That online encryption tool looks completely worthless. fSekrit is a good idea, but it looks like it was written by a crypto novice and is pretty weak (no salt or IV). I think modern ZIP encryption is fine and it might be your best choice, but you'll probably have to save the file to disk in plaintext before you encrypt it, which might be a problem depending on what you want the encryption for. TrueCrypt is a good choice except that the container overhead is going to be pretty large for a single text file (at least 256K). Don't use random encryption programs you find on the Web, stick to products with Wikipedia articles (and whose articles don't say they're snake oil)products that were mentioned in this thread. -- BenRG (talk) 21:44, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

It all depends on how secure Op needs the encryption to be.To just stop your friends from looking at your diary for instance, the above methods should be fine. If you protection missile launch codes then... you get the idea —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 22:29, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

See GPG. --194.197.235.70 (talk) 00:36, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Someone mentioned Zip encryption. It's actually pretty rubbish, and there are a whole bunch of programs that will unpassword a zip file nearly instantly. The encryption on RAR files is better, at least I guess this from the fact that password braking programs for rars rely on brute forcing. Gunrun (talk) 08:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Open SSL has command line tools to allow you to encrypt an arbitrary text string, and I am pretty sure that there are some 3des utilities and blowfish utilities that come standard in a lot of *nix systems that will do the same thing. As a practical matter, GPG/PGP is what you want though. Shadowjams (talk) 19:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The original ZIP encryption was weak, but strong AES encryption has been in the official ZIP specification since 2003 if not earlier. At least PKZIP and WinZip support it. Info-ZIP apparently doesn't, judging from the man page, and moreover it still implements the weak encryption without so much as a warning. I suppose it might be dangerous to rely on other utilities' ZIP encryption for the same reason. RAR also had weak encryption initially but that was fixed some time ago, and since there's only one vendor for RAR compression you can be sure you're getting the strong encryption if you use a recent version. On the other hand it's a proprietary undocumented format and the software costs money.

I wouldn't trust random command-line encryption utilities even if they're bundled with major Unix systems. Unix boxes traditionally shipped with a crypt utility which was insecure even on 1970s hardware. A Google search for "linux blowfish" turned up bcrypt as the first hit. It's available as a Debian package and it has a Wikipedia page and the page doesn't say it's snake oil, but there are a lot of warning signs in the documentation. I downloaded it and sure enough it's a joke: ECB mode, no integrity check, and probably other less obvious problems. So I'm going to have to change my earlier advice. Don't rely on Wikipedia to tell you what isn't snake oil.

I'm not so sure that GPG is what the original poster wants. GPG is a complicated set of tools with a nontrivial learning curve. A lot of people just want to encrypt a file with a password. Although GPG is at least widely used and supported and written by people who know what they're doing. Those are advantages, I'll admit. -- BenRG (talk) 00:49, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Those are all excellent points I wish I'd made. Just two things: I don't think RAR's format is undocumented (there are open source RAR utilities including crackers); and RAR can be free, if not actually open source (not sure if the RAR version that's in the common repositories is open source or not). RAR apparently changed their encryption method with version 3, and it appears they use a key derivation function in a loop now, although I can't find the documentation. Shadowjams (talk) 17:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Setting up RAID arrays / need disk imager suggestion

Okay, so I've got two 250 GB HDDs and two 1 TB HDDs. I want to set up two RAID arrays: the TB drives in RAID 1 (mirroring), and the two 250 GB HDDs in RAID 0 (striping); important stuff, photos, documents, videos, etc. go on the TB array, installed apps and the OS go on the other one. I know RAID 0 doesn't provide a huge performance benefit, but it's slightly better than plain spanning, and will let me install as many games and crap as desired without space concerns.

Am I right to assume that my motherboard's hardware RAID controller (Intel® ICH8R Southbridge RAID) will allow me to set up two separate RAID volumes? Will I hit any issues at all with this plan?

Also, both the 250 GB HDDs have data on them already. I'm going to need to do some disk image juggling to keep that data; anyone have suggestions for good disk imaging software?

Edit: Going to amend this with one more question: if I take an HDD out of a RAID 1 array, will it be accessible without issue by any other computer?

-- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 23:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes the ICH8R should allow you to create multiple RAID volumes, at least 2 and probably 4, although this may vary depending on your motherboard implementation.

Do the 1Tb disks contain data? If not then the simplest solution rather than disk imaging is probably just to copy the data to them first and move it back when the RAID-0 is setup. I'm sure you are aware of this, but I just want to mention it in case, RAID-0 provides no redundancy. If EITHER 250Gb disk fails then you will lose the entire volume and you may want to consider keepin ghtme as separate disks or just having another RAID-1 mirror with the 250Gb disks, but obviously that's up to you though.

You can break a RAID 1 array at any time and have two exact copies of the same disk - I do this all the time, it's VERY convenient. This is assuming the RAID-1 volume wasn't in a rebuild state obviously. Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 23:55, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, cool. I know about RAID 0's limitations, and I'm still debating it, but like I said it's intended only for installed programs and the OS. The installed games, mods, and applications have basically filled a whole of one of the 250 GB drives, and I've still got several others that I've had to uninstall because of space issues. I wouldn't mind simply being able to install to that partition without any regard for how much space is left, rather than having to juggle between two.

The imaging software would be used to keep the MBR and things straight, though I suppose I could just use fixmbr or whatever the equivalent is in Vista. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:08, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

On running the HDD through SequoiaView, I've found a few things that I can do to save space on the main partition (relocating Steam to the TB array will save a hell of a lot of space and cause no inconvenience, for instance), so I'll just RAID 1 both sets. Thanks for the help. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I use R-Drive Image and it works pretty well for me. Better than Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image. SF007 (talk) 02:19, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

April 19

Gateway Laptop completely freezes when AC cable is unplugged.

Hi everyone,

Somewhere around half of the times that I unplug my AC plug from my laptop when it's turned on the computer completely freezes. Clock doesn't move, mouse stops, everything. The only way to fix it is to hold down the power for a few seconds until it turns off then turn it back on.

I can't think of anything I did that might have caused this, and I've ran numerous virus/spyware scans (ad-aware/avg/hijackthis). This leads me to believe something in the hardware is failing, or it's some setting I changed somehow without knowing.

The fact that it doesn't always happen bothers me, also rarely when I remove or plug in a USB device while the laptop is on, it does the same thing.

I have a Gateway M-6851, running Windows Vista SP1. Any ideas? Thanks!

Chris M. (talk) 00:19, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but it sounds like it's causing a momentary power fluctuation - which sometimes is bad enough to crash the laptop but sometimes not. Exxolon (talk) 02:38, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

That's just what I was thinking. Try unplugging the other end of the power cord first, and see if that makes a difference. Also, if you have an outlet hooked up to a wall switch, try turning it off at the wall switch before you unplug. You could also use a power strip and flip that switch off before you unplug. StuRat (talk) 15:20, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Awesome window manager

I need some help with the Awesome window manager. I basically want it to look like this. I'm looking for the name of that font, what terminal/console that users is using and what the best file manager would be for Awesome. File managers always look horribly when I use them with Awesome. --BiT (talk) 00:51, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Also, can someone tell me what file managers are being used in the aforementioned link and in this one? They both seem to have the GNOME icon but they don't look like Nautilus or anything like that. --BiT (talk) 01:06, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Pretty sure the file manager is Thunar. It's the default file manager for Xfce. Indeterminate (talk) 00:41, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure? I've tried Thunar and the form looks rather like it but as you can see the Thunar manager doesn't have the GNOME icon in the corner. --BiT (talk) 01:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep, I installed it on my ubuntu system here and it's got a little gnome icon in the corner. I don't know what build they're using in that picture. Indeterminate (talk) 01:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

But I'm currently using Thunar with Awesome and there isn't a GNOME icon there? Also, have you got any idea what theme those people are using? --BiT (talk) 01:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, strange. Maybe it depends on what distribution you're using and what version of Thunar. Anyway, sorry I can't help much, I haven't used AwesomeWM before. Indeterminate (talk) 09:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Installing MakeHuman

I've just downloaded MakeHuman, and extracted all the files from the zipped folder, now how do I actually install it? (I'm running Windows XP SP3). Thanks! 203.40.181.54 (talk) 01:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe it's a "plugin" for the blender (software) 3D modeller - right? That being the case, I think you need to find the blender instructions for installing plugins from the blender website - at which point (hopefully) it'll be obvious. SteveBaker (talk) 00:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Umm... I don't think it is, Wikipedia says it is a stand-alone piece of software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MakeHuman), not a plug-in for anything else... 144.138.21.31 (talk) 03:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm - evidently it WAS a blender plugin back in 2005 (which is about the last time I played with it) - but has since gone stand-alone - so at least I'm not completely crazy! SteveBaker (talk) 21:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

[Check this out]. Apparently you need to install the Microsoft package and then double-click the makehuman.exe file. Indeterminate (talk) 09:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Learning VisualBasic

I downloaded the visual basic thingy...from...somewhere (it was a long time ago). Is the in-built tutorial (which, from what I did, is pretty in-depth) a particularly good or bad way to learn my first programming language? I ask because I'm unable to learn anything from it. Vimescarrot (talk) 12:40, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen this tutorial but the language I'm most familiar with is visual basic and I've done a lot of work with it. After I had learned some I had grabbed VB 6 for dummies (on amazon), which I thought was impressively well written and easy to understand, even though I had done a lot of it, the parts that were new were very clear. If you're using a new version (.net, or 2008 for example) there are equivalent books I assume would be valuable. On the other hand, a free but very effective tool to learn visual basic is the wikibook. Several of my friends learned with this source (link) and feel that they understand it well enough to use it. It also goes into some more advanced things the dummies books wouldn't, which is nice for the future. Chris M. (talk) 15:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for that information but it didn't actually answer the question I asked. ;-) Vimescarrot (talk) 19:05, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, the answer was more subtle then I had intended. You said that you weren't able to learn anything from it. I said that it's not hard to learn from several other sources, and so by saying that I was implying that it wasn't a particularly good source, or I would expect you'd have more success. 74.218.161.17 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:56, 19 April 2009 (UTC).

But the logic of that is flawed. It may be my sheer ineptness which prevents me from learning, not the tutorial. Vimescarrot (talk) 21:11, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the answer - but unless you have a specific need to learn VB (eg for your job) - I would pick a different language to learn as your first. VB is an evolutionary dead end. Learn Java first. SteveBaker (talk) 00:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

"VB is an evolutionary dead end." Care to back that up? Granted, I haven't done any VB development in years, but I still see job ads for VB and Microsoft keeps updating it so I'm not sure how VB is an evolutionary dead end. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I was recommended VB as an easy language. But I'd be happy to hear reasons to learn something else. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, the main problem I have with VB is that it combines legacy features from VB6 with modern OO features and Microsoft provides no real distinction between the two (i.e. Len(myString) versus myString.Length()). For those that care about code quality, things like that will drive you nuts. Another option is Small Basic.[1] What kind of applications do you want to write? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 12:20, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of writing any kind of application. I just wanted to learn it. I spend all of my free time on my computer; I thought it was a useful, non-timewasting thing to do...(I'm happy to hear the answers to this, but may I point out my original question remains unanswered? :) ) Vimescarrot (talk) 14:07, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Think up a specific application that you could use. In the work it takes to figure out how to implement it, you'll end up learning a ton. There's really no other way I know of to do it—you have to jump in with two feet. Feel free to ask on here for good "beginner" applications (don't try and write a BitTorrent client right off the bat!). How about a simple address book? Tackling that will show you the basics of GUI development, data processing, maybe even some mild databasing. All good things to know how to do! --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent). Oh, you want your question answered? Why didn't you say so!  :) OK, which tutorial are you referring to? Is it the "Visual Basic Guided Tour" found in help? If so, no it doesn't look like a good way to learn programming. If it's "Creating Your First Visual Basic Program" also found in the help, that looks a little better. I recommend going out and buying an intro VB book. Alternatively, you can take an intro to programming class. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:18, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I can't remember what the tutorial was; it was on an old PC, so I don't actually have access to VB now anyway. No doubt I'll be just as incompetent at it no matter what method I try to use to learn it. Vimescarrot (talk) 17:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• The first programming language I learned was Visual Basic.NET. It's a very common beginner's language. It is also very powerful. It makes learning other languages much easier, so there's no reason not to learn it. Visual Basic 6 is much different from Visual Basic.NET, by the way, and Microsoft no longer supports VB 6. You can't do nearly as much in VB 6 as VB.NET. You can do almost anything you want in Visual Basic.NET -- anything you can do in C++ or Java. In fact, unlike C++, it has built-in garbage collection. You can also use it in web pages via ASP.NET. The programs run very fast, too, because they use the .NET Framework, although the end user has to have the .NET Framework installed in order to run your apps. It's very intuitive, although I wouldn't mind having C-style braces to aid code readability. Multi-line comments would be nice, too. My favorite part of coding in VB.NET is the IDE -- Visual Studio. I've tried Eclipse for Java, and that is one of the biggest pieces of shit on planet Earth. (No wonder they give it away for free.) Visual Studio's debugger tells you exactly what the problem is and highlights the error. The auto-complete function saves you a lot of time, too.--Tim james 5 (talk) 17:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

VB6 is in my estimation reasonably easy. VB.NET is not as easy but it is more regularly structured. Languages that are more regularly structured (Actionscript, as one random example) are in my opinion a LOT easier than either VB or VB.NET. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:45, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

This is purely WP:OR (although I am a published author in this field), but a lot of people who say that VB6 is easier than VB.NET started learning VB with VB6. Thus, VB6 seems easier because they already knew it. IMHO, if you took someone who was completely new at VB, VB.NET would be easier to learn than VB6. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 12:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Creative SoundBlaster Live! Sound Problems

Hi.

I have a Creative SoundBlaster Live!, its not the one with the full chip, but the cut-down version. (I like the MIDI SoundBank manager better on this version.)

I have two problems with this sound card which cropped up last year. I was on XP SP2 and it worked fine, upgraded to SP3 and it was still fine for a while, but then these problems started appearing. Me being the type of person I am, I had to re-install Windows after fiddling with it. I am now using XP SP2 again and the problems are still here.

1.) If I have my sound volume very low, the sound card will actually turn its self off. i.e. nothing plays, not even the small buzzing that usually comes out of speakers. The only way to cure this is to move the main slider (called playback) on the Mixer up to a higher level, let go of the mouse and it plays the XP error noise (like it should) and then move it back low again.

2.) If I use certain programs then my P.C. after a little while, randomly each time between about 10 and 30 seconds, will pause with the sound jamming and playing the last "second" over and over again. The only way to get rid of this is to do a hard reboot.

Known programs that cause this error:

Audacity - version 1.2.6 (Recording or Playing), Notation Player - version 2.1.2

It might help to know this piece of information. Its a nightmare trying to find drivers from Creative. They have this soundcard in about 5 or 6 different varieties. It is possible I have the wrong drivers installed. I used Creative's Auto-Update service to determine what my soundcard was, and then manually downloaded the drivers from their website. I manually downloaded them because Creative seems to not Auto-Update everything like it claims to.

I have disabled the onboard audio, and as this sound card wasn't with the P.C. (Its basically been built from scratch, but with HDD and RAM from an older P.C. which used an onboard chip. The old sound drivers (C-Media) won't uninstall and that could be the problem. Everytime I go to uninstall them it says uninstalling and then asks to re-boot. When it boots its still there in the Control Panel. I have done this under my account, in safe mode using the Administrator account. and using TuneUp Utilities 2008 to try and remove it.

If anyone knows what could be the problem I would be grateful to know your thoughts. Thanks. Elven Spellmaker (talk) 13:06, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I've owned almost every Creative soundcard since the Soundblaster 1 and the most joy I ever had was with the SBPro. It was the most compatible card ever, and it worked until I had to retire it. Ever since, I've found all SB cards deteriorating over time... ranging from annoying little sound crackles to the computer not even picking it up. I think your card has had its life (since it did work at one point with XP). Use your onboard sound... this has caught up over the years to be as good to sometimes better than Creative's mid-range offering. Creative's top-end is for a minority of audiophiles or for people with extra cash. On one of my older computers, I've thrown out the Audigy 2 and enabled the onboard 6 channel sound - and it actually sounds better, not to mention some games actually picking up the 3D sound. Onboard is also more efficient as there is no overhead of having to use the PCI bus. Sandman30s (talk) 14:41, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I would use my Onboard sound, if I didn't use MIDI so much. The general MIDI DLS that Windows uses is appalling. Also I think that the C-Media drivers might confuse the onboard chip. Elven Spellmaker (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Re the drivers, the only way would be to delete the drivers themselves after removing all C-Media entries from the registry. You can always download Yamaha/Roland soundfonts (not free but worth it and cheaper than buying a soundcard) if the default ones are that bad. I thought that the default Windows General MIDI samples (in XP onwards) have always been better than the default AWE32/Audigy/Live! soundfonts anyway. Good luck, elven friend! Sandman30s (talk) 18:49, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

what's the cheapest fm radio attachment that plugs into the BOTTOM of an iPod ie completely portable (not lighter jack for the car thing)

Which one is the cheapest fm radio attachment for the iPod that just plugs into the bottom of it in a portable way, ie suitable for just carrying with you in your purse? 79.122.6.184 (talk) 14:38, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Here. Five bucks. Add some duct tape if you want portability. F (talk) 10:19, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Or if you just consider duct tape to be a fashionable addition. :-) StuRat (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Script to replace an image

Resolved

I'd like to write a greasemonkey script that will replace a certain image on a webpage, say for example the Wikipedia Globe logo with another image of my choice. I'm still a n00b at userscripts, so any help would be awesome. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 15:08, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Never mind guys, I worked it out myself

You can also use My Image Here if you don't want to write scripts. F (talk) 10:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Script to replace an image (part 2)

I need some help with writing a greasemonkey script. I thought I had it figured out, but I just can't seem to make it work. I'd like the script to replace any instance of a certain image on a webpage with another image of my choice. So for example, on this page I might like to replace this image and this image with this and this

From looking at other userscripts, I've come up with:

var findString = ['http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/mag_anom.GIF']; // array of image src
var newString = ['/media/wikipedia/commons/3/37/2_russian_street_cats-crop.jpg']; // array of new image src

var findString = ['http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/curr2.JPG']; // array of image src
var newString = ['/media/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Domestic_cat_cropped.jpg']; // array of new image src

var allImages, thisImage;

allImages = document.evaluate(
    '//img[@src]',
    document,
    null,
    XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
    null);

for (var i = 0; i < allImages.snapshotLength; i++) {
    thisImage = allImages.snapshotItem(i);
    for (var j = 0; j < findString.length; j++) {
        if (thisImage.src.match(findString)) {
            thisImage.src = thisImage.src.replace(findString[j], newString[j]);
        }
    }
}

but it's not working. What do I need to do? Many, many thanks for any help with this —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 18:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's a working version without the XPath stuff:

// a hash table where the images we want to replace are the keys,
// and the replacement images are the values
var substitutions = {
    'http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/mag_anom.GIF':
            '/media/wikipedia/commons/3/37/2_russian_street_cats-crop.jpg',

    'http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/curr2.JPG':
            '/media/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Domestic_cat_cropped.jpg'

};

var allImages = document.getElementsByTagName('img');
for (var i = 0; i < allImages.length; i++) {
    var thisImage = allImages[i];
    var subst = substitutions[thisImage.src];
    if (subst)
    {
        // we want to create a new image rather than modify the old
        // one's src in order to get the width and height of the new image
        var newImg = new Image();
        newImg.src = subst;
        thisImage.parentNode.replaceChild(newImg, thisImage);
    }
}

--Sean 20:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! :D —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 22:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

It was my pleasure. Plus I was on the clock. Apparently the only kind of programming I enjoy is WP:RD/C requests. --Sean 02:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Script to replace an image (part 3)

Last question, I promise! I'd like to achieve something similar to this script, but instead of just google it could be modified to work on any image on any page. Say for example I wanted to replace the cnn logo with a selection of randomly changing images. Many thanks, not only for this question but to all those who helped with my other questions too! WP:RD rules! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 07:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Can't you just change the @include line to "http://*/" or "http://*.*/" or something like that? --Sean 13:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

hmm, I've been mucking about with it, but on other sites it just displays the images (the google logos in default state) in the top left hand corner of the page, or seemingly chooses a random image to replace. I'd like the option to replace a specific image of choice. I hope I'm not asking too much, or have I expended my question quota! Don't worry I do answer questions too —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 13:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You should put in some logic along these lines:

if (document.URL.indexOf("http://cnn.com") == 0)
{
   // replace CNN's logo here
} else if document.URL.indexOf("http://google.com") == 0) {
   // replace Google's logo here
}

And so on. For followup questions like these, you should just add on to the original query. --Sean 14:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I've condensed the question to one heading. Sorry to be a complete annoyance, but I really have no javascript knowledge at all, and I'm not sure how to use those lines of code you provided. They don't work on their own and I don't know how I should integrate them into the google image script.

garage door opener, forgot code

I need some help reseting the code on my garage door i can't figure out how. thanks for your help, -Rob 64.198.92.180 (talk) 21:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Garage door opener: Sears Craftsman 41a5021-2b Wireless outdoor keypad: Sears Craftsman 132b2171-2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.198.92.180 (talk) 21:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about that specific opener - but on mine there is a reset button on the motor housing - you have to bring all of the remotes to the garage with the door shut, press and hold the button for (IIRC) 30 seconds and all is well. But I don't know specifically about yours - the procedure might be way different. SteveBaker (talk) 00:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

April 20

Base classes (C#)

I have a handle management class called Win32Handle (written in C#) and specialized derived classes for objects like job objects, processes, threads, etc. In Win32Handle I want to have a Duplicate() method which all derived classes will inherit. The problem is, instead of the Duplicate() method returning a Win32Handle I want it to return a specialized class instance. For example:

ProcessHandle ph = ...;
ProcessHandle ph2 = ph.Duplicate(ProcessAccess.Terminate);

instead of:

ProcessHandle ph = ...;
Win32Handle ph2 = ph.Duplicate((int)ProcessAccess.Terminate);

How can I do this? --wj32 ^t/c 02:49, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You could make your Win32Handle class be generic Win32Handle<T>. Then redefine Duplicate to return a T. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 04:59, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Great, that works! Thanks a lot! I didn't try this before because using D the compiler just segfaulted. --wj32 ^t/c 06:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

This is called the curiously recurring template pattern. -- BenRG (talk) 01:02, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. I think D (although I am not using it right now) may have some problems with this pattern... --wj32 ^t/c 04:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You may want to post this question to the newsgroup "microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp" instead. Quite possibly you will get a better answer. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with 124.214.131.55's answer (I couldn't tell). decltype (talk) 05:51, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Time Travel

What is your current advances on time travel? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.30.106.235 (talk) 05:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Take a peek at the article on time travel. Going forwards works pretty well. (Or, given that this is the computing reference desk, you didn't mean time capsule did you?) 88.112.62.225 (talk) 06:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I have formulated a way to travel forward in time about an hour every 3600 seconds! Gunrun (talk) 08:09, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

and each of that second must be at least as fast as (1/5.39124)*10⁴⁴ t_p manya (talk) 05:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It would be better to ask this question on the Science Ref Desk - since it has nothing to do with computers. Sadly, the answer there will be just the same - you can't go back in time - and going forwards is mundane. SteveBaker (talk) 21:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Going forward isn't always mundane. It's possible to go forward in time at an accelerated rate, by moving at high speeds, such as those which are a substantial portion of the speed of light. See Time_dilation#Time_dilation_and_space_flight. Just don't plan on going back in time to where you started. StuRat (talk) 18:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Travelling fast is pretty mundane. There is nothing qualitatively different about travelling at relativistic speeds compared to walking down to the shops. There is nothing that one would think of as a special time machine invention involved. --Tango (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

"Mundane" is in the eye of the beholder. Sure it doesn't break any laws of physics, but nothing ever does. If you left Earth, and returned a week later to find that humans were extinct and had been replaced by talking chimps, you wouldn't find that mundane. You would think "Wow. Time travel is amazing." APL (talk) 19:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

TrueCrypt's security

Why does everybody (internet forums, wikipedia, etc) believe that TrueCrypt is really secure? How should a skeptical proceed to test this assertion?--80.58.205.37 (talk) 10:23, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Mostly because it is open-source for public scrutiny, and the rationale for all the security design considerations are very well documented, and it uses well-known ciphers. As opposed to proprietary software who claim to be secure because of their "amazing 4096-byte parallel matrix" closed-source cipher. decltype (talk) 11:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If the ciphers are secure, and the implementation is straightforward, then it should be secure. As for someone skeptical, consult paranoid security experts — unless you have a deep understanding of both computer programming and cryptography you're not going to be able to come up with a meaningful way to test it yourself. ---98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Type of DC socket in a HP laptop

The laptop shows it is powered only when the power plug is inserted and kept at certain angle. I did some research on the internet and found out that the problem lies in the socket in the laptop. One of the tests was to remove the battery and see if the laptop goes off if the angle is slightly changed. HP's website unfortunately does not have a manual for this model (ze5700). I have never opened this laptop before, if the socket is soldered to the mother board I cannot replace it anyway, so i won't open it in that case. If the socket is of non-soldered type, perhaps I can buy one and replace it. ( is it a generic part? or i have to order it from HP?). Can you please say which type of socket this laptop posseses?. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.24 (talk) 10:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen your exact model so I accept I could very well be wrong, but I've personally never seen a non-soldered power socket on a laptop motherboard. Soldering is simply the quickest/easiest/cheapest way for them to do it and I would assume that yours is the same too. I also doubt that your socket is faulty, the socket itself doesn't really have anything in it that can break, but from you're describing the problem sounds like part of the solder connecting the socket to the motherboard has come off and you only get a proper connection when you angle it a certain way forcing the connection. Whilst you could try getting it repaired under warranty (if it's still valid?) it's not really a manufacturing defect and it's only really the sort of thing that can happen if it's dropped or knocked whilst the lead is in and I'm afraid finding someone to try and resolder it is probably the only solution. Even then it might not work very well though, we had a Dell laptop that we tried to fix for this problem and it just kept breaking again and in the end we had to get the user another laptop. I appreciate my entire post is an assumption on your laptop, but I hope it's of some help. ZX81 ^talk 11:26, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

There are really two kinds of problem - one is that the socket is bent inside and only makes contact when you bias the plug in that particular way. The other is that one of the solder joints that holds the socket to the circuit board has cracked and is only making intermittent contact. If you are lucky - and it's the first of those things then perhaps you can gently bend the connector back to where it makes good contact. It's usually the bigger strip of metal that contacts the outside of the plug rather than the thin one that goes up the center of the plug. However, in likelyhood - you'll have to either replace it or re-solder it - and that amounts to the same thing in the end. If you can find a local computer repair store, they should be able to do it while you wait...but how much that's gonna cost is anyone's guess. Anyone who can solder can do this...and learning to solder isn't that hard (I'm self-taught - and I'm a klutz - but I can do stuff like this easily). Fry's have low-budget soldering irons for $10 and solder for $5 - so perhaps this is time for you to learn! It's such a simple job that if you happen to live near Round Rock, Texas - I'll do it for you for free. In the unlikely case that the socket is literally broken (I think that's unlikely) then you'll first need to remove the old one - and that's a bit harder...you need a way to remove the old solder first and that requires another tool called a 'solder pump' - which will probably set you back another $15. No matter what, you've obviously got to get it fixed - so that's that. SteveBaker (talk) 21:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

kezboard trouble

to get y i have to tzpe z and vice versa. close square brackets comes up as equals. how do i fix it_ cannot find the tilde.

I think you are mapped to a german keyboard. If you are using windows xp, click the "DE" icon in your task bar (near the clock) and select EN to change it. If that is not the case, perhaps there are other errors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.24 (talk) 11:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Try Alt+Shift. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Still in XP, if you go to the control panel, click Regional And Language options, and make sure the Standards and Formats is selected as the English of your nationality. Livewireo (talk) 21:27, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

How to count characters on Wikipedia articles

Hello, is there any tool which can be used to count the length of a Wikipedia article in characters (i.e., not in bytes)? Thanks for your help! --Leptictidium (mt) 16:21, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Add this to your monobook:

importScript('User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js');

In the toolbox on the left there should be a new link ("Page size"); click that.  GARDEN  16:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Port Forwarding

I'm looking for information on how to forward ports on the Ambit DOCSIS cable modem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shadowclouds6635 (talk • contribs) 18:21, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You might be able to change the settings by going to this page, but it looks like your model allows your ISP to disable settings from their end, so it might not be possible.

Also you can try using username: admin password: cableroot and see if that shows more options. These are just internet rumors, so don't take my word for anything. Indeterminate (talk) 19:22, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

hmm, I came across a similar thing about the ISP rewriting the firmware or something, to prevent port forwarding. I've phoned and asked them and they say they do not prevent port forwarding, so I'm at a loss as to what to do. The link you provide doesn't work, and there are no options for changing settings at the router login page. Are there standard unblocked ports already forwarded which I could use? Like 80 or something? I'm trying to let my friend connect to my server from her computer. Shadowclouds6635 (talk) 19:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

From your response it seems that what's probably going on is that your ISP is blocking port 80 (or 25, or whatever else) for their own reasons (viruses, to create price discrimination, some other reason). If your cable modem is a level 2 device (what I'd expect), then port forwarding is irrelevant. You might be more interested in figuring out how to port forward on the IP device connected to your modem (router or computer). If your cable modem is a combined router and modem, then access the router portion of the modem and setup the settings as the other responses and your instructions suggest. In many cases cable modem configurations are not accessible (legally) by the user. But a cable modem at its most basic level won't be doing TCP level restrictions. Anything doing that is more than a simple cable modem (which is certainly possible). What ISP is this? Shadowjams (talk) 08:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Virgin Media. The port I wish to forward is 5800, so my friend should just have to type my ip address such as xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:5800 to connect. I've added the exception in the Windows firewall, I just can't think of what else to do. There are no changeable options in the modem page, even after I log into it with the password, it just lists the version number of the modem, downstream and upstream info. Thank you for helping me. Shadowclouds6635 (talk) 08:47, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Bump Shadowclouds6635 (talk) 09:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Bump Shadowclouds6635 (talk) 12:11, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but please don't bump your help request. It says at the very top of this page that it might take several days for someone to reply (and that's assuming anyone knows the answer) and it certainly won't "bump" it back to the top like it would on a forum. Regarding your actual problem, I assume if you're using port 5800 then you're trying to configure VNC's web access so try opening port 5900 as well. 5900 is VNC's (default) data port and I can't remember if you need to open that for the the web access to work, but it's worth trying. Other than that Virgin Media might be blocking port 5800 (I don't know) so to test that, configure VNC to run on a different port and see if you have the same problem. ZX81 ^talk 14:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

 

Based on what I infer from forums posts about your modem, it sounds like the ISP can restrict what the modem can and can't do. I'd consider dropping the lease in favor of something like this, or one of these. If that's not an option, contact me again.   — C M B J   16:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

MicroSd and MicroSDHC compatibility?

I have a Toshiba TS705 see and it has a card slot microSD (TransFlash). Can I put a 4GB microSDHC into it?--212.79.145.190 (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, you can put it in, and it shouldn't break anything, but it might not work. SDHC is backwards compatible with SD, meaning that SD will work in SDHC readers[2], but SDHC won't work in SD-only readers. It sounds like the TS705 might be SD-only, but I can't find any definitive specs. Indeterminate (talk) 19:11, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I am thinking about buying it, and I cannot test it without buying it...  :(--212.79.145.190 (talk) 19:15, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

MicroSDHC#SDHC Might be an intresting read.. if your intrested in that sort of thing. If you do buy one get it from Fry's Electronics, They have a relaxed return policy. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  19:18, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

According to the Toshiba Europe site, it supports up to 512MB microSD, so I don't think it has microSDHC. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime, I tried it with a SDHC card and it didn't work. :( On the other hand, it do works with a 1GB microSD. Anyway, having 1GB is enough. --85.137.179.58 (talk) 18:47, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

From a Wikimedia sound file to Itunes

How would I copy a Wikimedia file to Itunes, or make an audio CD from it? It is easy to play a w=Wikimedia sound file, but (using Windows XP) I do not see how to save it on my computer or import it into another application. An example is [3]. The closest I see when I click on the file is "Open link," and "save link" which does not save the file as such so that some application such as Itunes or Audacity could burn a CD of it. Thanks. Edison (talk) 19:23, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

This google search might be of some help. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  19:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

When I say "save target as" on your example above, I get an 18M ogg file saved. You can import this file into any number of converters or burners... it works with Nero to make an audio cd. Sandman30s (talk) 20:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Save the file to your desktop and see if iTunes can open it. It may be able to convert it to a format it can burn (.ACC). Livewireo (talk) 21:24, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Restore image within VBox

This is an interesting question too which i am not sure there is an answer. I have 2 laptops, the firstlaptop is running windows XP Pro. The second laptop (of different design than the first) is running Ubuntu 8.10. The second laptop has VBox OSE installed. My goal is to take am image of the first laptop and restore that image on a virtual hard drive within a virtual environment ran by VBox. The only problem i am encountering is that when i try to start up that virtual environment i get a Blue screen of death shortly after HAL loads. Is there anyway i can prepare the first laptop to function in a virtual environment? Or is there a way i can change VBox to emulate the hardware found on the first laptop? Or is there any other ways that i can get this to work? Not only would i like it to work when i restore an image from another computer but i would also like it to work when i map a hard drive from another computer using VBox's built in raw disk utility (as i am encountering the same problem with the BSoD and what-not). Any advice / links / URLs / hugs and/or cookies (chocolate chip please) would be very useful and/or appreciated. Thank you. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  20:49, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

In an attempt to clareify, here is a copy of what I said on the Talk page.

I supose that is where my problem lies. My inability to relay the right question. My question is about taking a running system; a home computer for instance, And take an image of that hard drive with a program like R-Drive. Then using R-Drive's bootable CD to boot up a another computer, and restore the image taken on this other computer. The only problem is this 'other' computer is really VBox. And since this 'other' computer is searching, reaching, trying to feel for what it's world was not moments before, and not finding it's hardware, it's world, it falls in to a state of Kernel panic. My question is how to i tell the computer, the OS, that it's world, it hardware, what it has known to be true and what it has relied on for it's life, is about to change in every way, to prepare it to be plunged in to darkness. How do i give it a flicker of light to rely on? Something to grasp and hold on to. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  17:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

digital camera

My digital camera is pretty new. it used batteries really fast, like needs new batteries every 5-10 pictures. is there something wrong? Wikivanda199 (talk) 22:24, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

What kind of batteries does it use? Are you using the recommended ones? There might be a low-power setting you can switch it to, which could help. --Tango (talk) 22:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

How much time passes between pictures? What kind of camera is it(make / model)? – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  22:45, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Most cameras use rechargable, special batteries, but some cheaper models use standard, non-rechargable AA(A) batteries. I believe that cameras using standard AA(A) batteries will require quite frequent battery replacement, but certainly (unless it is a really cheap camera!) not as often as every 5-10 pictures. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 07:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Not convinced by the AA perspective. I have a Pentax K100D, not exactly an expensive camera but not cheap either. It takes AAs and it can take around 500-700 shots with them. Certainly the proprietary battery-packs that some cameras take aren't 'better' than normal batteries, they're just designed so you have to use their replacements instead of normal batteries. Most dSLR cameras i've seen take AA batteries. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Scratch that last comment - seems that's more just because i'm a Pentax lens only so only really looked at Pentax. Seems Nikon and Canon use their own batteries. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 15:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Cameras that use AA batteries work with NiMH rechargeable AA batteries. The non-rechargeable batteries you're thinking of are alkaline batteries, which are available in AA size. Plenty of expensive cameras use AA batteries and plenty of cheap cameras use proprietary batteries. My Canon PowerShot SX100 gets hundreds of shots on a pair of AA rechargeables. There's no way a camera could only get 5–10 shots on a single charge (regardless of battery type) unless there were long periods of standby between the shots. It's not even physically possible to drain a battery that fast. -- BenRG (talk) 15:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

• Provide some more details. What kind of batteries (AA, AAA, proprietary?) and what type (lithium, alkaline, NiMh)? What's the camera brand and model? Anything else strange? Shadowjams (talk) 08:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - there is something very odd going on here. If you put a new set of disposable batteries into the camera - turned it on and pressed the shutter button five to ten times over (say) 20 seconds - and then found that the batteries were dead - they'd be so hot, you'd burn yourself touching them! You simply can't discharge a battery that fast without it getting insanely hot. In fact, they might even get so hot that the chemicals inside might boil and then the battery would explode! Since none of these terrible things have happened to you (presumably), there must be something else going on. So either you're talking about taking a picture, leaving the camera turned on for 20 minutes, taking another picture, waiting 20 minutes and so on (in which case, just remember to turn the camera off when you're done using it)...or, possibly, you have rechargeable batteries that aren't properly charged - which suggests that they are either duds or the charger isn't working or something). Dead batteries will sometimes "come back to life" after a few minutes of recovery time - then die again shortly afterwards - so if your charger were completely dead (or not plugged in or something) then you might take the rechargeables - think that you're charging them (when really you aren't) and because they've rested for a while, you get a few more shots out of them before they die again. However, after you've repeated this procedure a few times, they'll die and stay dead. So this kinda fits the possibility that you have a dead battery charger. I suppose another possibility is that you aren't letting them charge for long enough. SteveBaker (talk) 20:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I had this experience once when the only AA cells I could buy where the non alkaline "heavy duty". These hardly lasted for 20 pictures, when normally 100 or 200 pictures come off alkaline cells. Are you using fresh alkaline cells? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

These are AA batteries. It usually takes 20 minutes for me to take the 10 pictures and it is on for most of that. All the pictures are in macro mode if that makes a diff. The camerea is a Nikon L18 coolpix. Wikivanda199 (talk) 12:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Are they rechargeable batteries ? I have rechargeable AA batteries which are several years old, and they don't hold much of a charge any more. 5-10 shots with the flash on is about what I'd expect. Perhaps they gave you some old rechargeable batteries with the camera ? StuRat (talk) 18:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Take the camera back to where you got it. I'm actually in the middle of a similar situation (my camera is older, but one day it just started burning through batteries at a rate similar to the OP's). I talked to my sister, who used to work at a camera shop, and she said that it's not unheard of for cameras to suddenly fail in this way. I have no idea if there's a fix for it (she didn't think so, but was unsure). I'm using this breakdown as an excuse to get a dSLR, but if your unit is still under warranty, you should have someone fix/replace it if you can. Matt Deres (talk) 20:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

April 21

Problem with Java applet

I'm programming a java applet for a computer science class. The applet is basically a simplified version of a minesweeper game. The professor has removed several sections of code and commented the area with "//YOUR CODE HERE".... I have provided code which i think completes the requirements, but when i compile the code and run the container HTML, it has a few strange bugs.

Basically it says i've won as soon as i click any square. I've looked over the code many times and still can not find the problem. Additionally, Netbeans 6.5.1 shows no errors.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what the heck is wrong? Thanks! :)

http://pastebin.com/m6423e51e

137.81.112.205 (talk) 01:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, i've looked at the method "allSafeSquaresAreExposed", since if there is a problem here, it would tell me ive won... but there seems to be no fault in this method.

137.81.112.205 (talk) 09:41, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, first let's figure out if the bug is in the "allSafeSquaresAreExposed" method. Remove your code and hard-code the method to always return a false. Does this stop the Java applet from ending immediately and saying you've won ? If so, this is where the problem is manifested. Note that this isn't necessarily where the problem originates, however. StuRat (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's the method in question:

   public boolean allSafeSquaresAreExposed()
   {
       //YOUR CODE GOES HERE

       for (int i=0;i<numSquares;i++)
       {
           for (int j=0;j<numSquares;j++)
           {
               if (hasMine[i][j] == false && isExposed[i][j] == false)
               {
                   return false;
               }//end if
           }//end for j
       }//end for i
       return true;

       //end of YOUR CODE GOES HERE
   }

Looking at your code, I don't recognize the "i<numSquares" and "j<numSquares" syntax (but then again, I don't know Java). What does that do differently than just putting "numSquares" in both positions ? I'd also expect the number of squares in the i and j directions to be different, and thus have different variables, but apparently your program is only designed to handle square grids. StuRat (talk) 18:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Java Cipher

I would like to make a new Java cipher that can be loaded with Cipher.getInstance("MyNewCipher"). I've looked at a lot of code examples and they all have something in common that doesn't make sense to me. See this example. If I copy that as is and attempt to compile it, I get an error because Cipher is not imported, but the class extends Cipher. If I import Cipher, I get an error because there is no constructor and Cipher does not have a null constructor. How is it that apparently everyone else in the world can extend Cipher without importing it and then magically get a null constructor out of it? -- kainaw™ 01:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The Cipher with the no-args constructor is com.sun.portal.kssl.Cipher which is not the same as javax.crypto.Cipher. Perhaps Bouncycastle source code has more relevant examples. I'm not sure but you may need to sign you cipher jar for it to work; see [4] and google. 88.112.62.225 (talk) 04:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll check bouncycastle. There's a lot of code there. I was hoping this would be as easy as adding a MessageDigest service. -- kainaw™ 20:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Printing seamless tiles

Is there a simple tool (Windows or Linux) that can print a page full of seamlessly tiled, err, seamless tiles (like the ones you can use as a tiled desktop background)? I tried searching on Google, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to search for that...tiled printing, which I assumed to be the term for that, is actually the name for rasterbation which is the opposite of what I want to do, and all other combinations of search terms I can think of give me tutorials on how to create seamless tiles (which I already know) and repositories of printable seamless textures (which is useful, but I still don't know how to print them). Thanks in advance, Ferkelparade π 02:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a feature you might find in a word processor. For example, I have OpenOffice 2.3 Writer on my computer. I was able to go to Format, Page, Background, choose an image and set it to tile. --Bavi H (talk) 03:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

ImageMagick can do everything. For this, try:

composite -tile tiled_image.jpg -size 1200x1600 xc:none tiled_output.pdf

That will give you a 1200x1600 tiled image that you can print. You can twiddle the dimensions to suit your paper size. --Sean 12:49, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for both your suggestions. I've meanwhile figured out that there's a way to do that in Scribus but it's not that comfortable, so I wil definitely give ImageMagick a try. -- Ferkelparade π 19:17, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It's easy to do in GIMP too (that's a free paint program). Load up your image, right-click on it and select: "Filters/Map/Tile..." then enter the size you'd like the result to be (either as a percentage or in pixels) and hit "OK" then right-click again and do "File/SaveAs...". SteveBaker (talk) 20:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Less number of Seeds

Does having less number of seeds during downloading a movie through a torrent affect the quality of film at the end?Most of films like Ali,Cinderella man etc...have come out awful after download.They had less number of seeds initially.In all these films for every few minute a scene get stuck for four to five seconds and jumps to the scene which is at the end of four seconds.It happens too frequently through out the film.How should I select good torrents? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.174.130 (talk) 05:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You are paying for the films you download, I hope? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 07:47, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

No, a low number of seeds will only affect the download speed, or if there is not a distributed copy of the file among the seeds you will not be able to complete the download. The problem you describe, of the playback skipping throughout the film, is caused by an incomplete download. Where the film jumps it means you are missing small "chunks" of the download. You must go back to your torrent program and complete the download to view the film properly. 8I.24.07.715 ^talk 08:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

While you shouldn't download illegally, this is still a very valid question. What the above poster said is right; if you get the file downloaded to 100%, it doesn't matter if there are 1000 seeds or 1, because you won't get it to 100% unless the CRCs match (although there are ways to trick the CRC to match, but that's a different story). Another problem could be that you are getting a poorly encoded file, or a very well encoded file that your computer isn't good enough to handle. My desktop can't handle 720p h.264 too well, for example. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

BitTorrent doesn't use CRCs, it uses SHA-1. CRCs can be spoofed easily but there's no known way to do that with SHA-1. -- BenRG (talk) 16:37, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Oops, my bad. I was mistaken because for some reason, I recall organizations trying to create false pieces, and CRC wasn't too hard to spoof. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 19:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know there are organizations out there right now injecting fake data into torrents of Hollywood movies. The fake data can't end up in a completed download, but it can make downloading a lot less efficient, especially since the .torrent file only stores hashes of chunks of 256K to several megabytes while files are usually transferred in chunks of 16K. When a 1-megabyte chunk fails the hash check, the client can't immediately tell which peer is responsible since it might have received parts of it from several different peers. Also, in the worst case the whole megabyte has to be downloaded again just because of 16K of bad data. -- BenRG (talk) 01:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It's called Torrent Poisoning —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 07:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

row separator in MS Excel?

Just like you have separators in menus to club related items together, is there anything like row separator in Excel? I do not want to use text or background/fill colors, and I do not want to leave empty row of small height. Any ideas please? I am using Excel 2003. manya (talk) 06:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Would making some of the gridlines/borders bold also be out of the question? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 07:15, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I got something close to what I am looking for by removing all cell borders and then applying only bottom line border to the last row in each 'set of rows'. But when I print it, it does not look good because of missing borders of all cells :( Still looking for better solution. manya (talk) 07:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you use standard borders and make the bottom line borders thicker? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 07:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Zain. That works well for me. - manya (talk) 07:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Google

1. How can you make a Google search case sensitive?

2. How can you make it so you get a result with your phrase at the end of the sentence, not any part of the sentence? For example, a sentence that ends with "but dos isn't"? 58.165.23.195 (talk) 07:11, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

1. You can't. Also see an old post.

2. If Google supported the period character, it would have worked, but Google ignores most special characters excluding +#$_-

Jay (talk) 08:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

1) I've often wished Google could do case-sensitive searches. A search for "NeXT" gets over 3 billion hits, for example. (At least the first one is our article on NeXT.) StuRat (talk) 17:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Switch

What happened to when we could just turn off a computer by pressing the On/Off switch? Why do we now have to hold the switch for 5 seconds to turn the computer off? After all, you may need to turn a computer off like that if you are forced to. 58.165.23.195 (talk) 09:08, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I've always thought the reason was to prevent you from accidentally turning off the computer and losing unsaved work. That's probably why the reset button is so tiny. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems pretty obvious to me.  GARDEN  09:24, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

You can still turn it off using a single press on the power button. Just set the option in the Power control panel (for Windows). F (talk) 10:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Suddenly turning off the power can cause problems and in some cases seriously damage your computer. The delay is presumably so you can be certain you want to turn the computer off with none of the pre-preparation a compauter normally goes through. Vimescarrot (talk) 10:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Agree 100% with above. Even if it doesn't damage the hard drive, your computer uses cache memory and that data will be lost when the power is pulled, which alone is enough to lose or corrupt files. Also, harddrives could have the heads parked wrong or something and cause some sort of failures, although I'm not sure what comes into play if you use solid state hard drives. I've seen power outages cause all sort of havoc, even with surge protectors and APCs (well, 1 APC, but still, the possibility is there). --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:24, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

In most systems, pressing the power button once will trigger the shutdown command. You can press the button and walk away. The computer will (eventually) shut down. Of course, it may get hung waiting for you to verify that you don't want to save changes to some files you have open. -- kainaw™ 15:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

And holding it down forces a shutdown by the hardware, not by the OS (or something like that). 24.6.46.177 (talk) 01:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I mean, if you really can't wait a few seconds to turn off your computer when it isn't responding (which shouldn't happen that often anyway), you can still always just pull the plug from the outlet, flip the switch on the power supply on the back of your computer (if you have one), or flip the switch on your power strip, and it would be the same. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 16:22, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Seeds

While a torrent is downloading under the seeds column wi find 2 numbers one not in bracket and other one enclosed in bracket.Same with peers column.What do they mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.174.130 (talk) 12:50, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I believe the open number is seeds you are connected to and the number in the brackets is seeds connected to the torrent. I assume you are using utorrent? Livewireo (talk) 13:10, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

That should be correct, in general. To be more specific, the larger number should be the pool, cause some software might have different notations. And uTorrent uses parantheses. I think Azureus uses brackets but it's been a long time since I've used it. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Resin and Mysql

Hi I am having a problem trying to display an image using resin and mysql. I have the code as such

'http://localhost:8080/Project2/images/acerpal.jpeg'

When I try to display the image all I get on my display page is the above text any ideas thanks. BigDunc^Talk 14:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Please don't post multiple copies of the same question =3 --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 15:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't I was getting an error when I tried to post and wasn't aware that I had posted and only came here to re post from my home PC. BigDunc^Talk 16:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Silly question, but when you type that URL into your address bar, does the picture show up? x42bn6 Talk Mess 00:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It does yes. BigDunc^Talk 11:12, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Berne convention and the Internet

Hello. I have three questions about the Berne Convention as it applies to the Internet. I hope this is the appropriate desk for these. ^^

1) I've heard that anything you write in a blog is automatically subject to the Berne Convention. Is this true? Would this apply to anything written in web pages in general? (Also, what would happen if the web page disappeared? Would the rights hold?)

2) If I upload a file to a file hosting service, would it apply to the Berne Convention as well? Would the file type make any difference?

3) Are there any other ways to apply a document to the Berne Convention besides these (if at all)?

Thanks in advance, Kreachure (talk) 21:14, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

1. Depends on what country you are in. If you are in a Berne country, then yes, it automatically goes under Berne, because you are a citizen of said country and Berne is automatic.

2. Uploading is not a creative act. Berne comes into effect whenever you create something new. Did you create the thing that you are uploading? Then Berne still applies. File type doesn't matter. Note that you can lose your Berne-given copyright ability if you, say, agree to transfer the copyright (which some file uploading services and etc. make you do, so they don't have to worry about being accused of copyright infringement).

3. I think you're kind of confused on what's being covered by Berne. Not "documents"—think instead, "expressions." If that expression is in the form of a document, so be it. If it is in the form of a speech, no different. How about a song? No difference. A building? No difference. A Microsoft Word file? No difference. What matters is the jurisdiction in which it is created (under Berne or not). At least, that's my understanding of it. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Being in a jurisdiction not covered by the Berne Convention seems very unlikely, so yeah, my questions were assuming you're inside the Berne Convention coverage. I have another question from what you said though, related to proving that it's you who created something first: Is blogging, making a web page, and uploading safe ways to prove that it was indeed you who created whatever it is you created first, so that the Berne Convention applies automatically to you as soon as you 'publish' (or upload, etc.) them (and no one else can claim that it was them who created it instead)? Might there be safer ways on the Internet to prove it? I came up with file hosting because I presumed that there's some timestamping involved in the process (which would prove that it was you who created the thing first), but maybe there are safer services to 'secure' your rights through the Berne Convention? (Or, maybe there's simply no need to worry about timestamps and such in the first place?) Kreachure (talk) 23:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See poor man's copyright. The best way is to avoid the internet altogether if you are really worried about such things. Personally if I were doing a poor man's copyright I would do it with hashes and services (like Usenet) which distribute said data widely (making it increasingly unlikely that I was in collusion with any given site or company). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:13, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You may also want to read through World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty — Ched :  ?  02:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

how can people just hack into gov. computers??

how is it possible to simply hack into a government computer or power grid or whatever? Let's say there wasn't any social engineering with email either. I mean, I just don't get it, if this capability exists couldn't someone technically shut down 80% of every internet end-user because we're all on the same windows operating systems? or couldn't the entire backbone of the internet run by the DoD or DARPA or whatever be shut down? If gov. computers are vulnerable it just seems like nothing is safe. why isn't there trillions of dollars of credit card fraud if you can hack F-35 data filtering 16 digits of credit card data on a 128 bit encryption should be child's play. Any inight into this? thanks, -Rob 173.30.14.113 (talk) 00:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't remember numbers, but I think a large proportion of hack-jobs involve insiders, which presumably makes the job considerably easier. And for some reason, I think decryption is one of the worst ways of hacking since it's infeasible to attempt to crack some of the stronger algorithms out there (2⁴⁰⁺) - it's a lot "faster" to look for exploits like open ports and badly-configured control panel areas. x42bn6 Talk Mess 00:39, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Further... If you read an article in mainstream press that states something like "Someone hacked the CIA," it does not mean that someone hacked into a CIA computer that contains anything secure. It means that someone hacked into the CIA webserver, which is obviously accessible from the Internet, and is not considered a "secure" or "high risk" server. Often, the web servers for secure locations aren't even housed in the same building (or state) as the real servers that are used for storage of information. -- kainaw™ 01:20, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You say that - but just today I read that many terabytes of design documents for the Joint Strike Fighter were copied by hackers - probably from China: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html In this case it seems they hacked into computers belonging to the developers of the jets - and from there got into Pentagon computers.

What amazes me is that this information is stored on computers that are connected in any way whatever to the outside world. The best security is physical security - if there are no wires and no wireless connections - then it's going to be very tough indeed for the information to get away. But evidently, even the best kept secrets of the US government are out there on servers that you can reach from the Internet. Incredible. SteveBaker (talk) 03:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I read the paper today and i think it said the real real top secret data was physically separated from the internet, but yes, still that terabytes could be stolen out of thin air is just incredible to me. how could there be that many loopholes that net admins aren't monitoring!?? -Rob 173.30.14.113 (talk) 03:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm reading that article incorrectly, it does not make any sort of claim that hackers got into Pentagon computers. It specifically states that the Pentagon computers are not connected to in any way to the Internet. It states that the hackers got into computers that monitor the flight tests, which record a lot of information about performance and such. Sure - that's bad. However, it isn't the same scale as hopping from AOL to Lockheed to the Pentagon and then downloading all the nation's top secret info. I also like the way the article scales up: It appeared to come from China, but very well could have been anyone since online identities may be spoofed ... It is possible it was China ... China would do something like this ... We are damn certain it was China because we need another reason to convince everyone that China is evil! -- kainaw™ 05:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

There's a name for this: air gap (networking). -- BenRG (talk) 21:44, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

• This morning there was an article in Dutch papers that said the Chinese government spied by breaking into "secure" computers of the Dutch government. In this case it was possible due to pure ignorance about security on their part. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You don't have to hack into them, see Data spill (and that lists only a tiny fraction). Only foreign governments are interested in things like CIA records and it's dangerous meddling with them so there's more easy money in things like your credit card details, but even that's not worth much because it is so easy to get such details nowadays, they need thousands to make a good profit. Dmcq (talk) 17:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I used to work on the NSSN nuclear submarine program, and they kept all the important data (nuclear reactor, weapons/sonar systems, etc.) on different, secure computers while the majority of the boat was less secure. So, it's quite possible that someone could have broken in and gotten lots of data on the less secure parts, but who wants the plans for crew quarters, galley, and bathrooms ? ("Those yanks have X98 urinal cakes on-board ? Now we know the secret to world domination !") StuRat (talk) 17:42, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

April 22

Laptop graphics - will it run..

Hello, I'm thinking about getting hold of some older RPG games to run on a laptop - the amount of memory and processor speed it has seems much greater than that required. However I'm not sure about the graphics - it has an "Intel Mobile 945 Express chip" which I think will use software for much of the rendering - I've heard that sometimes such chips just don't work..

Games I am considering include the old Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, and maybe Neverwinter Nights

I've done dxdiag successfully to 9.0c.

Should I expect problems (esp on Neverwinter Nights) ? Thanks.77.86.67.245 (talk) 00:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

BG and IWD shouldn't have any problems running, but it depends on the rest of your hardware. If you have a decent CPU and RAM, then you might manage to get NWN running. What are your other system specs? --Russoc4 (talk) 01:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You beat me to it - update - I downloaded a Neverwinter demo (couldn't find demos for BG/Icewind) - curiously - it worked - even with everthing turned on (shadows etc).

However that was just as far as getting the 3D display up and running, moving around, menus etc.

I think I'll take the risk that it continues to work on a full version - unless anyone knows better.?

Is there any reason I should expect problems later on? I can still supply specs if wanted (tell me what figues you need).FengRail (talk) 02:12, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Intel graphics chips are extremely problematic. You might get lucky - but I wouldn't bet on it. If you'd named an older nVidia or ATI chipset, I'd have said "Yes" with a high degree of confidence. SteveBaker (talk) 02:04, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

That's what I had heard hence my suprise when it worked - if it starts ok should I expect it to continue to work - any thoughts?FengRail (talk) 02:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily - but it's a promising sign! SteveBaker (talk) 03:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to mark as resolved and cross fingers. Thanks.

Resolved

Infected

My brother's laptop with XP won't load the desktop when started up. When running in safe mode, I got the error code 1073741819, which apparently means the computer is infected with a virus. All the fixes I see online involve going to start and then run..which is impossible since the desktop won't load! Any ideas? 174.16.93.99 (talk) 01:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Try to start in safe mode: (press F8 as the computer is booting up)

if computer starts shutting down

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE.
2. Click the Task Manager button.
3. Click the Processes tab.
4. Click the Image Name column heading to sort the processes alphabetically by name.
5. Look for a process named Msblast.exe. If you find it, click the name to select the process, and then click the End Process button.
6. Close the Task Manager

Then go to here and download the tool and run it.

Hope that helps — Ched :  ?  02:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

 

You can access the "run" dialog by pressing and holding the Windows key plus the letter R, irregardless of whether or not explorer is running visible.   — C M B J   04:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

No, Windows+R is handled by explorer so you cannot use it when explorer is dead. --wj32 ^t/c 07:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I sincerely apologize. You are right. In the event that explorer is an invisible zombie process, however, it will get the job done.   — C M B J   15:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Viruses

I just downloaded Dr. Spyware to run a scan, and it found 21 infections of these two viruses: Trojan.CWS and Trojan.ClientMan. First, what exactly are they? Second, this pretty much confirms the reasons behind my computer freezing and crashing and what everyone has said about Windows Live OneCare sucking. Of course, the reason I took it was because some guy at FutureShop recommended it to me. Does anyone working at those electronic retail stores really have a clue about what they're doing? --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 03:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey Whip, re: the various viruses/trojans - I'd just google each term, read the summary on the first few lines to get an idea of what each one is. The following rant, is all WP:OR and IMO only. First, most of the people you find in tech stores are either going to be older folks just supplementing their income, or younger kids either working through school, or looking to get into the technology field. Also, stores are going to have "hot items", sales folks are told what items to push, because of a markup or promotional gig. Live One Care is M$, so it's gonna have a brand recognition advantage. I won't get into what I think about Best Buy. So the answer to your question is: NO, they don't really have a clue - that's not meant as a violation of NPA, just that the folks who do have the ability in the technology fields, don't work those type of jobs. Get yourself a free copy of Spybot S&D, or AdAware - then protect your self with a good AV program. The top free ones would be (AVG, Avast, or Avira). All IMO as I said. — Ched :  ?  03:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and I do have Spybot S&D, which is why I'm so miffed that these viruses got under the radar. BTW, when Dr. Spyware "cleans" the infections, does it really get rid of them? Cause I have the free version. --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 05:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

As a general policy, I do not certify infected machines as sanitary unless they have been freshly reformatted. You cannot ever be absolutely certain beyond any reasonable doubt that an infection is in fact gone.

With that said, when I am, however, forced to eradicate an infection manually, I use a combination of HijackThis, Autoruns, Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and RootkitRevealer. (Note: These tools are designed for advanced users. Use them carefully under the supervision of someone knowledgable that can provide advice, or seek a qualified friend to do it remotely for you.)

My advice is this: if the machine is used to transmit or store sensitive data; play it safe. It's a whole lot easier to reinstall Windows than it is to clean up identity theft.   — C M B J   04:19, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

P.S. To verify the integrity of a single file, scan it with Jotti and Virus Total. This will test the file up against 30+ different virus scanners.

For future reference, when you are deciding which anti-virus solution to use on your computer, take a look at the latest benchmarks. According to the charts, OneCare has 81.1% detection rate, whereas Kaspersky has 97.1% and AntiVir Premium has 99.7%.   — C M B J   04:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't trust an antivirus or antispyware product just because it reports an infection that another one doesn't. Some of these products are outright scams which tell you your system is infected so that you will pay for the registered version that can uninfect it. Even the legitimate products (I gather Spyware Doctor is in that category, if that's what you meant by "Dr. Spyware") often report false positives. The vendors don't have a lot of motivation to reduce false positive rates because it helps their bottom line, both by encouraging unregistered users to register and by creating the impression that the product is actively fighting off barbarian hordes when in reality it's just sitting there wasting RAM and CPU. Note the quote from the review at the bottom of the Wikipedia article: "in our trial scans, Spyware Doctor repeatedly flagged several dozen harmless cookies as potential threats, more than any other antispyware product we tested." Were those Trojan.CWS and Trojan.ClientMan infections that it flagged just cookies? If so, you're not infected. -- BenRG (talk) 12:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Uh..no. Spyware Doctor would probably not report cookies as Trojans! :O Trojans.CWS refers to CoolWebSearch, an infamous browser hijacker Trojan. The PC Tools description And here's the PC Tools description for ClientMan. Both are real threats and should be removed ASAP. Additional scans should also be run with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware Both are legitimate programs that well known for their detection and removal capabilities. In fact, MBAM (Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware) recently removed its one billionth piece of malware. :D (MBAM does not target cookies; SAS [SUPERAntiSpyware] does) I should note that Microsoft Live OneCare will be discontinued in June and that it is not a recommended anti-virus. Even McAfee does better in the latest AV Comparatives tests. It is simply not effective enough against malware.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 23:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

One more important note. The free version of Spyware Doctor does not remove detected threats. It only detects them. You're better off with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware instead. Replace OneCare with avast! or Avira but not AVG Free. (Or any good paid anti-virus; Kaspersky, NOD32, avast! Professional, and Avira AntiVir Premium are all good choices) AVG Free lacks anti-rootkit; something simply not acceptable these days. Rootkits are used by a lot of malware these days to both hide themselves and protect themselves against removal. If anyone wishes to debate my recommendations; please feel free to do so. ;) I will provide links to back them up along with more information on why I consider certain programs to better than others. :)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 23:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Torrent

Suppose I wanted to check the movie while it is still downloading....Will it damage the file permanently?What will happen if the % is around 50? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.246.174.130 (talk) 03:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It depends what program you're using to download the torrent file. I know LimeWire and FrostWire allow you to preview what you're downloading, playing only the percentage that has been downloaded so far, but I can only say that about audio music files. Don't know about movies. --Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 03:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of any bittorrent client that will damage a file if you open it for viewing before its done. Keep in mind, however, that sometimes you won't be able to view the file. 1) bittorrent clients do not download the files in order. If you don't have the parts at the beginning of the file, you cannot view it. 2) Some filesharing clients seem to use some sort of cache mechanism I've never bothered to figure out, so the file isn't where you think it is until it's done. I'm not sure if I've ever seen this in a torrent client, but it's pretty common in programs like Limewire. APL (talk) 04:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I have had torrents stop downloading because the data was in use by the media player when an upload request came in. Just had to restart, picked up right where it left off. Was using utorrent. 161.222.160.8 (talk) 18:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

What media player were you using? That wouldn't happen unless the media player opened the file for write access, which is just stupid. --wj32 ^t/c 07:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

When I download stuff I sometimes check the first few seconds (if available) to take a look whether that which I am downloading really is what I want, to check quality and things. Never had any interruptions, neither with videos nor with audio. Using Transmission running on Zenwalk Linux. --Ouro (blah blah) 10:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 3 tabs

I'm not sure if this is belated or if I'm just missing something, but I thought the tab bar didn't show if there was only one tab. I just recently installed Firefox beta but uninstalled it shortly after, but maybe it affected Firefox 3.0 since this was about when I started noticing this. But then again it could be some of the addons I have installed since some of them lost their preferences (no idea why). I always thought the tab bar hid when there was only one tab open was a FF default (at least in ≤3.0)...was it? -- penubag  (talk) 06:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea if it is a FF default or not. But you can change it. Tools→Options→Tabs, and check 'Always show the tab bar'. Oda Mari (talk) 06:27, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not a default (or at least wasn't in v3.0.3)- somehow the setting must have been changed. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 17:11, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Software for interior design

Can someone help on software for use in interior design? The name of the software? Difficulty to learn? Thanks for the help. roscoe_x (talk) 07:12, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Whilst you wait why not browse Category:Computer-aided design software - some are not for interior (architectural design), some are.

Also List of Lighting Design Software might help you in a web search - depending on what sort of thing you were looking for.

How does YouTube generate its unique IDs

YouTube is using rather short, 11 characters long, unique IDs to identify their videos (see for example this video), and I'm wondering how they generate them and make sure there are no clashes? My assumption is that they generate a standard UUID (36 characters), base64 encode it (22 characters) and finally only keep the first half of the string (11 characters). However, by doing so, isn't there a risk of getting duplicate IDs? What is the theory / reasoning behind generating such short IDs? Laurent (talk) 09:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Conversely, what would be the point of generating longer IDs? As long as there are sufficient IDs for all the videos, does it matter if they are 11 characters or 22 characters? Well, yes, because humans don't much care for long strings of random characters. If the URLs are too long, people will feel the need to abbreviate them. In the event of a collision/duplicate ID, youtube can just modify or regenerate the second ID. While there are some very good reasons to make UUIDs secure, none of them apply to youtube video/page IDs. Besides, your suggested "shortened" IDs provide 64¹¹ possibilities—roughly 7.3x10¹⁹ (73 quintillion) unique identifiers—well more than youtube is likely to ever need. – 74  10:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes 62¹¹ (62 = 26 lower case a..z + 26 upper case A..Z + 0..9) is a big number.

To prevent duplication I would imagine that they would implement some sort of numbering scheme eg start at 0 and work up 1,2,3 etc - to prevent codes looking like "aaaaaaaaaaa" "aaaaaaaaaab" etc they might perform some sort of add followed by bit shift to make the strings look more random - what the exact proceedure is I don't know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FengRail (talk • contribs)

They don't need to avoid colliding with other people's ID generators like UUIDs do, which makes the problem much easier. They could just use a counter that increments once for every video that's uploaded. If the system is too distributed for that, there are still ways they could densely pack the ID space—for example, each server could request blocks of 1000 IDs from a master server as needed. I don't know how many videos are on YouTube, but I think it's less than 2³⁰, so they shouldn't need anywhere close to eleven characters—five should be enough. (And if those ran out they could just bump the length.) But the identitiers are much longer than that and they look random, not sequential. One possibility is that they're using some sort of counter but then obscuring it, e.g. by encrypting it with a block cipher and a fixed key. That would still guarantee no collisions (because block ciphers are invertible). I'm not sure why they'd want to obscure the id, though. Another possibility is that they're generating random IDs and hoping there won't be any collisions. In that case I hope they're aware of the birthday paradox, which says that the probability of a collision will rapidly go to unity when the video count exceeds 2³³ ≈ 8 billion videos, a number I can imagine them actually reaching some day. They could avoid random collisions by checking with a central server, but if they're going to serialize everything through a central server then it would be easier to just use a counter. -- BenRG (talk) 12:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks all for your help. I wish it wasn't so much WP:OR so that I can add the result of this discussion to the UUID article. I ended implementing a short UUID algorithm using the BenRG's suggestion - i.e. I store in my database a unique number that's incremented each time it's read. I then encrypt this number using a block cipher and a fixed key and finally base64 encode it so that's it's usable in a URL. Again, thanks for your help! Laurent (talk) 15:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to add the following observation. YouTube video IDs are made of eleven base-64 characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, - and _). However, for the last character in the ID, only 16 out of the 64 characters are uniquely used. (For example, in the video pF7snTyCrJs, you can use s, t, u, or v as the last character to get the same video. There are 16 groups of four sequential characters that follow this pattern, so there are really only 16 unique values for the last character.) Thus, the total number of unique IDs is 64¹⁰ × 16 = (2⁶)¹⁰ × 2⁴ = 2⁶⁴. In other words, the internal ID number is 64 bits. --Bavi H (talk) 03:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Please help me understand more about java applets/content panes.

I want to modify a program that i just completed for a class, and add extra functionality. The program is basically a java applet which allows the user to play minesweeper. I want to add the contents of the current applet to a Jpanel or something so i can add a little section above the game where the user can change the game difficulty by pressing one of three buttons.

What i dont understand though, is how to get the contents of the applet to put it on a Jpanel in the first place. I talked to a friend who happens to have years experience with Java and he told me that there should be a place where the code uses .add, and i dont see it. How is the content added to "Applet", which The public class "MineFinder" extends?

If anyone could help me to better understand what is happening, and how to add the information displayed by my applet to a Jpanel for me to mess with, i would greatly appreciate it! Thanks!

Here is my code: http://pastebin.com/m6f8e6678

Thanks again!

137.81.47.223 (talk) 15:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

screensharing

I have been reading about remote desktops. I have used remote administration, in that the techies at work prefer to do things this way when staff phone up with queries that are not simple. I know that there are various ways to share screens, and that this lets you virtually look over someone's shoulder -- great for explaining an aspect of a project to a co-worker, e.g. a pdf. What I am trying to find is a way to look at the same webpage at the same time, with the ability to point to and annotate stuff. For example, let's say I phone my brother to choose a present for our parents. I go to mythologicalfemalewarrior.com to find something suitable, and invite him to the page I found. I click on one item, he says he prefers another and moves his mouse to it, and my cursor moves too. Is there a service like this? BrainyBabe (talk) 16:58, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

What you might be looking for is VNC. Setting it up might be a little complex if your not really IT, but it can be done. Hope this helps – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  19:19, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

 

If remote desktop is acceptable, take a look at this list of remote desktop software. TeamViewer, for example, is free for personal use, requires zero (and I do mean zero, as it automatically bypasses host and client firewalls,) configuration, and overall handles bandwidth very well. VNC, which is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows, should also be considered as a viable solution. A KVM switch is more akin to what you describe, but it would not be as practical.

If you need any further assistance, or if remote desktop is simply unacceptable, feel free to give me a holler. I'd be glad to help.   — C M B J   03:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Where can I get a supercheap big TV or LCD display

hi there, thanks for any leads or tips you can give me, Wikipedians! I am a PHD student in Los Angeles, California and my colleague and for research purposes (we analyze TV, film and online video content) we need a big flatscreen TV or LCD monitor (maybe about 30inches but could be smaller) for supercheap (almost free or free!) due to our tight budget. Where would be a good place to find such a thing? I know this is a long shot, but this site was recommended to me as somewhere which might come up with a good answer! thank you very much! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.125.239.87 (talk) 17:16, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Since you are in Los Angeles, there are refurb factories nearby. They take returned monitors/tvs and check them to see if they are in fact broken (and make minor repairs). The ones that work are resold at a fraction of retail cost. I purchased a 42" LCD television that was $1800 retail for $600 refurbished. Come to think of it... My printer was $300 retail, but I paid $50 refurbished. My two monitors on my computer were $400 retail, but I paid $150 refurbished. My laptop was over $2,000 retail. I paid $900 refurbished. That is the way to go, in my opinion. However, you state that you are a PhD student. You must be going to a university. I've worked at many universities and they all have a supply office which allows you to "borrow" things that aren't being used by others. I borrowed 32 computers (with monitors, keyboards, mice, desks, etc...) once to do networking research. -- kainaw™ 18:04, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much Kainwai!!!! you mean I can go right to the refurb factory and buy equipment? I will look into the supply department angle too! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.47.142.129 (talk) 03:32, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Some refurb factories will sell direct to the public. Some may be under contract to only sell to certain dealers. You are in LA though - so there are many refurb businesses. I see no reason for all of them to be under a contract to sell only to certain dealers. Another option, if you are still looking, is to purchase from a rental company. Again, there are a lot of rental companies to choose from in LA. Along that line, there are a lot of pawn shops, but my experience with pawn shops in LA is that they will give you about 1% of retail when they buy from you and charge 90% of retail when they sell stuff. -- kainaw™ 04:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Google News down?

Is anyone else getting an HTTP 503 error when browsing to http://news.google.com/? Is the site down or is it a problem with my network? Mike R (talk) 18:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Fine here. Algebraist 18:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I get a 503 as well. --Russoc4 (talk) 18:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Same problem here: "Server Error The service you requested is not available yet." Laurent (talk) 18:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I am in the Central US. Could the problem be geographically based? Where are all of you? (Feel free not to answer due to privacy concerns etc.) Mike R (talk) 18:56, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm in the UK. I tried accessing the site via a US-based proxy, but it still works for me. Algebraist 18:59, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've also gotten the error several times today. I wait 30 seconds, refresh, and I do get the results though. — Ched :  ?  19:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I am no longer getting the error. Mike R (talk) 19:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's a nice resource that helps answer your question for any URL: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ I hope I have been helpful. 137.81.96.96 (talk) 19:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, that's a helpful site. Mike R (talk) 19:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Cursor moves up and down on computer screen all by itself

Most of the time it behaves, but sometimes it suddenly jumps to the top or bottom of the screen, sometimes it moves just a little (from one memu option to another), sometimes it moves up and down at random even when I'm not touching the mouse. It never moves horizontally. I often do different malware scans, nothing significatant found. I cleaned my mouse shortly before it tarted, but that might be merely coincidence. 78.146.109.34 (talk) 21:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I would lean toward a mechanical "problem". Is it an optical mouse? Could you give us any details? Kushal (talk) 01:05, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a common symptom of a mouse with a broken tail. The cable bends and flexes every time you move the mouse and wires are really not good at doing that so they break. When they do, one of two things happens - either you can't move the mouse in one axis because the metal broke and the wire is disconnected - or (as you've found) the insulation between the wires breaks and one of them shorts against the next - then the mouse won't stop moving in one direction. Wiggling the wire will sometimes restore function for a while - but it's going to do it again after another couple of minute's use. I've thrown away literally dozens of mice over the years that failed in exactly this way. If you're desperate and you are handy with tools - you can de-solder the cable - cut maybe three inches off of the end and solder it back again...but I've bought perfectly usable mice for $5 - so I don't think it's worth the effort. SteveBaker (talk) 02:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Unless it's a wireless mouse - I which case electromagnetc interference could cause it - I get similar effect at ~11pm as the motors in the central heating go off - shouldn't happen to a digital signal - but does. (Before anyone asks - yes the motors are sparking and should be fixed)FengRail (talk) 04:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Blu-Ray

Does anyone else hear wonder why blue ray, is so successful, it this where we are going in the next 20 years, isn't the whole 3d shape of a dvd out of date with growing flashdrives, highspeed internet and frostwire. "Blue ray lasers" have a wave legnth of 405 metres which is still within the range of light visible by the human eye, can a ray outside that range still be burned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryan Prevost Baldwin (talk • contribs) 22:14, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Blu-Ray is much higher quality than DVD. There is no other viable competitor. With Blu-Ray, if I want to watch a movie, I just pop it in and watch it. With high-speed Internet, I can download a movie at lower quality (Blu-Ray is 1080p and our on-demand HD is 1080i). Of course, I can't watch it right away because it takes about 8 hours to download the movie. I can drive to Blockbuster and rent a Blu-Ray version of a movie I don't have faster than waiting for it to download. As for flashdrives, it is possible to put movies on many different storage formats. Discs are easy to store. The case is just about the right size for scanning a stack of blu-rays and easily seeing which one you want to watch. So, this all comes down to asking why DVDs were so popular when everyone had VHS tapes or why CDs were so popular when everyone had cassette tapes or why cassettes were so popular when everyone had LPs or why the next storage medium will be so popular when everyone has blu-rays. -- kainaw™ 03:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Flash/stick/pen drives do seem to me to have potential to take market share from Blu-Ray. They have the advantages of being more portable (a Blu-Ray won't fit in your pocket), and have more storage capacity, so you can store an entire season of a TV show on one versus just a few episodes on Blu-Ray. The moving parts in a Blu-Ray player guarantee that it will break down in a few years, and waste electricity until it does. A Blu-Ray disk is also more fragile and subject to breaks, scratches, and delamination. Flash drives can be rewritten, too, or made as read-only devices. The price for flash/stick/pen drives is a bit more, at the moment. The real disadvantage, currently, is that flash drives don't have read speeds high enough to play 1080p directly, so you'd have to copy from there to a hard drive first. When this improves, watch out Blu-Ray. StuRat (talk) 14:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Good use for a Caps Lock key?

Does anybody know of a good use for a Caps Lock key? One day while at work I realized that the only time I ever hit the caps lock key was by accident, so I found a screwdriver and pried it out of my keyboard. I now have a new & improved 103-key keyboard (patent pending) and love it, but I also have a useless caps lock key cap that I don't know what to do with. Any suggestions?

Real question: Can I do the same with my laptop? Can laptop keys be removed as easily as desktop computer keyboards without doing real damage? I have a Toshiba Satellite A205 series. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

On my Toshiba Satellite Pro A100 I can remove and reattach keys without problems. An alternative solution would be to remap the capslock key to do something useful. Algebraist 23:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

If you have a word processing software, you can always set case in it if you made a mistake. I don't really use the caps lock but some people might need it *cough* Oprah *cough*. Kushal (talk) 01:01, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm also a rabid caps-lock hater. Generally, I lever off the keycap, pour plenty of super-glue into the hole beneath - then cut the bottom quarter inch off the bottom of the keycap and epoxy the cap back in place. Sure, I could remap it - but that hardly expresses my distaste adequately. As an alternative - you can get one of these [5] and glue that onto the capslockectomy site. As for the left over key...hmmm...high explosives? SteveBaker (talk) 01:55, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I just tell the computer to remap the caps lock key to nothing. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 02:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The Colemak keyboard layout replaces Caps Lock with a second Backspace key; you might give that a try (or, as jpgordon said, just remap it to nothing instead of removing it). – 74  02:43, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I use the caps lock key rather often. When someone claims that a computer is not responding, I press the caps lock key. If the little light turns on, the computer is still functioning. If it doesn't, the computer is no longer responding to the keyboard. This often shows how bogged down it is. If it takes 5 seconds or so to turn on, the computer is running at max processing power on something rather nasty. For me, it isn't for capitalizing text, it is a quick PC diagnostic key. -- kainaw™ 03:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

First of all caps are very useful - there got it off my chest. As is the caps lock key. I like to press caps lock, scroll lock, and num lock in rapid succession and watch the lights go on and off - who needs drugs.

Uses - scrabble - that's quite a good score. Otherwise make a pendant - sell it to a geekFengRail (talk) 04:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I use the caps lock key reasonably often, for, I guess, its intended purpose: connecting to an IBM mainframe, which likes to be talked to in all-caps. Something of a special case (ho ho) though. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 07:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I use caps lock as a backspace and my older laptop's caps-lock key wore out and fell off. There was no way to put it back (glue might have worked but with my skills I had probably jammed the rest of the keyboard too). I think you can remove it carefully if you are not planning to put it back. --194.197.235.70 (talk) 09:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Some entertaining and useful ideas in this thread. I enjoyed reading it. --Dweller (talk) 10:48, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I grew up with Sun Oracle keyboards, which had a Ctrl key where the CapsLock is on PC keyboards, so I just remap my caps lock key to that. It's a lot more comfortable than reaching way down to the corner. --Sean 13:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The only time I would use it is when entering a lot of text as uppercase, such as on the title page of a document. However, I agree that it's probably hit by mistake more often than on purpose. They really should move it away from the A, perhaps it could be stuck over with the Print Screen/Scroll Lock/Pause buttons. That leaves open the question of what to put in it's place. Perhaps a reverse tab ? That is, what shift-tab does at present (returns you to the previous field in a form). StuRat (talk) 13:47, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I JUST USE IT TO SHOUT! To be honest though I did just type that with the shift-key held down rather than caps-lock on...so maybe the caps-lock is a bit of a waste of time ny156uk (talk) 16:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all the ideas. I popped it off my laptop, but with the exposed mechanism underneath, it wasn't as clean a fix as on my desktop. I'll pursue the remap approach. -- Tcncv (talk) 22:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

DRM strip

i downloaded the Robot Chicken Star Wars Specials and can play them on iTunes 7.6, but on iTunes 8, it says that my computer is not authorized to play the videos. I can play them on QuickTime, but can't convert them. I've already paid for the videos and don't want to buy them again. Can i use a program to get rid of this DRM?

PS: I've tried re-authorizing my computer, but even though i can play songs and other videos, i can't play these two videos.

 Buffered Input Output 23:51, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it works with video but with songs from iTunes you can just write them as an audio-cd and then download them. If you could do the same burning to disc and reimport it might wipe the DRM. ny156uk (talk) 22:33, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

April 23

Permanent call tracing with a PBX

Does permanent call tracing, or at least a harder-to-forge version of call display, become easier to set up if one is using a private branch exchange? NeonMerlin 04:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Linking excel data with word documents

While preparing reports i have to prepare documents in microsoft word in which there are a lot of tables.The values come from the result of calculation in excel.Is there any way to link the values in both documents so that whenever something is changed in excel it is changed automatically in words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.89.108.128 (talk) 07:45, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I just tested this with Office 2007 so if you're using an earlier version of Office the procedure will be a little different.

1. In Excel, select the cells you want and hit ctrl-C to copy them to the clipboard.
2. In Word, click where you want to paste the Excel table, and hit ctrl-V to paste. (Don't hit any other keys yet.)
3. When the paste is complete, a little clipboard icon appears to the lower right of the pasted table. When you mouse over it, it turns into a dropdown menu. Choose "Keep Source Formatting and Link to Excel".

Now every time you make a change in the Excel sheet, it'll be updated in the Word doc. Tempshill (talk) 20:07, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Statically linking C++ Windows Forms Applications (CLR)

Hello. I don't have much experience with building Windows Forms Applications in Visual Studio, and I am not sure how to link the application statically. When I was writing Win32 console applications before, I always used to use the /MT switch instead of /MD to statically link the CRT library to make the executable work on all computers. However, when I do the same in a CLR project, I get an error saying that /clr and /MT switches are incompatible. Is there any way to statically link a Windows Forms Application? Or make it work on all computers in some other way? I would appreciate any feedback on this. Thanks in advance!  ARTYOM  09:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Statically link the .NET runtime libraries? No, you can't do that unless you use some special linking software like Remotesoft's linker. --wj32 ^t/c 10:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I believe there must be a way of running the program on other computers. Maybe something besides static linking that might help?  ARTYOM  12:38, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "running the program on other computers". If you're using the CLR for your program, the target program must have the CLR (.NET Framework) installed. --wj32 ^t/c 00:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Free software and non-commercial use

I'm trying to figure out whether Snes9X should be considered free software or not. It's an open source, free application, however it doesn't allow commercial use of its source code, therefore somebody recently added that it's not a free software (per Wikipedia's definition). However, as long as it's open source I think it is free software, even if there is a special clause for non-commercial use. What do you think? Laurent (talk) 09:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Open source has a definition which clearly stated that any open source license must allow commercial use. There was a license which was open source but not free software, although in most cases these terms are equivalent from technical point of view. MTM (talk) 12:32, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've updated the article and wrote that Snes9x is not a free software and that its license cannot be approved by the OSI. Laurent (talk) 13:00, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Difference: plugin and activex

Resolved

What is Adobe Flash player 10 plugin and what is adobe flash player 10 activeX? How are they different from each other? 117.0.60.206 (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

"ActiveX" would just be for use in Internet Explorer and the "Plugin" would be for every other browser - The end result is exactly the same though, it's the addon for your browser to allow you to see Flash content, it's just a difference in naming. ZX81 ^talk 17:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much! 117.0.60.206 (talk) 18:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

What is windows media format runtime?

What is windows media format runtime? 117.0.60.206 (talk) 15:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd have to see the context to know for sure, but it could refer to a program which plays videos designed for Windows Media Player (as opposed to a more robust program that can create and edit them, too). StuRat (talk) 17:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It is listed in the Add/Remove programs of my PC. And can Windows Media Player not play videos by itself? I see both windows media format runtime and Windows Media Player 10 in the installed programs list, and that got me confused. 117.0.60.206 (talk) 18:57, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it's it's to enable you to play Media Player formats newer than you have installed. For example WMP 11 is now out and you've said you have 10 installed so possibly this is allowing you to play WMP 11 encoded files, but I'm just guessing and another user may have a better idea. ZX81 ^talk 19:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Scenario

Computers A and B operate on Windows XP. Computers C and D operate on Windows Vista. Computers A and C have crashed while the other two are operational. No recovery discs. If I create a recovery disc from computer D, will I be able to use it (legally) on computer C using the Windows product key for computer C?

Same question for the XP computers. 90.216.35.141 (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

If you're using the product key for C that came with C, then yes that should be legal as the media kits are all the same. How are you creating the recovery disc though? I only ask because if it's recovery software made by the computer manufacturer, if the computer you try and install it is a different make it might not install even with the correct product code. ZX81 ^talk 17:29, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I haven't decided that yet. Will it not just ask for the product key as you are installing the OS? 90.216.35.141 (talk) 17:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I need to add a correction to what I wrote above and I'm kicking myself for having not paid more attention when I wrote it, I was focusing more on the licencing part than the actual discs. If you have an OEM XP Licence code (i.e. the operating system came with the machine), then it'll need an OEM XP CD to install it from. If you using a retail version that you bought, you'll need a retail disc. If it's an upgrade version... you get the idea. With XP all the files on the disc are actually the same except one file which controls what type of disc it is, I'm not sure how media kits for Vista work though. If you don't have the original discs (of the right type) then you may just be able to contact the computer manufacturer to purchase new discs or Microsoft if it was retail/upgrade (since you don't need a code, just the discs). ZX81 ^talk 18:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Got phished - what now?

Am I just overly concerned? I just got a phishy mail "from IRS", and stupidly clicked on the link. So far, nothing bad happened, it just gave me the message "The requested URL /~phil/index.html was not found on this server.". (The complete URL is http://members.boo.net/~phil/index.html.) Is there anything I should do to prevent any damage? The article on phishing seems to be only concerned with lofty concerns, not with what the individual user can do. Mary Moor (talk) 16:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like the phishing site was already taken down so don't worry about it. It's only if you've actually typed in your personal details you should start worrying. ZX81 ^talk 17:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) You appear to be safe; the page has simply been taken down. Clicking on links generally won't do any damage (at least no more so than visiting any other webpage—a secure browser is important), but you should never provide any privileged information (including usernames, passwords, SSN, etc.). To prevent future attempts, you might want to upgrade to a browser that automatically identifies suspicious websites (the link you posted displayed a very obvious phishing warning in Opera). – 74  17:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Phishing involves them asking you to enter account numbers and other personal info on what you think is an official bank or government web site. If you haven't done that, then you should be OK. StuRat (talk) 17:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, everybody! Would it make sense to add that information to the phishing article? Mary Moor (talk) 17:45, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The article already has that information. :-) "phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication." In this case, the e-mail claimed to be from the IRS. ;) --Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 23:10, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Open-source vs. proprietary reward

Is there any case where an open source project is economically more rewarding than keeping things as proprietary? I know that most don't do it for the money. --80.58.205.37 (talk) 17:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The obvious example is Linux. While there are more profitable operating systems (ie: Windows), there are many proprietary operating systems that are not anywhere near as profitable. -- kainaw™ 18:17, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia ? Had it been a proprietary system written by paid experts and sold just like a paper encyclopedia, it would likely have been a dismal failure. StuRat (talk) 18:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

A proprietary system would not allow so many people from around the world to collaborate on an encyclopedia. This is also true for Linux; it would take much, much longer for a small group of "professionals" to make something as big as the Linux (kernel). --wj32 ^t/c 00:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Screen resolutions by O/S

I have a Windows 98 computer with a RAGE PRO TURBO AGP 2X graphics card which has a 1600×1200 max screen resolution on my current monitor. I also have a Windows XP computer with NVIDIA GEForce4 MX 420 graphics card. What max resolution could I expect to get on each of these if I went out and bought a bigger monitor ? I would like a dual monitor setup, if possible. Also, new monitors are all wide-screen, while my current monitors are full-screen. Can those be mixed together with a dual-screen set-up ? StuRat (talk) 19:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but I think a larger monitor will not affect the max screen resolution that Windows's "Display" control panel shows. For example, if I take my old 14" CRT monitor and plug that into your Windows 98 machine, I would expect to be able to set the display to 1600x1200, and when I click "OK", the display will just go blank, because that old monitor doesn't support that resolution. The control panel doesn't - I think - remove screen resolutions that aren't supported by your monitor. So, the maximum resolution won't change if you get a new monitor. A dual-screen setup with an extended desktop can mix multiple monitor aspect ratios. GeForce 4 Series may be of interest. Tempshill (talk) 19:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if I misunderstood, but I assume what you're saying is that you want to take both graphics cards and put them in the same machine (the XP one?) and have dual monitors, one on each card? Is the GeForce MX 420 is a PCI card? The only reason I ask is because I've personally never seen a motherboard with 2 AGP ports so if it's AGP then you wouldn't be able to fit them. Likewise I'd recommend reading our AGP article as you may have some voltage compatibility issues with putting the ATI card into the XP machine because of the differences in AGP versions. Also, you'd be mixing ATI drivers with NVIDIA drivers and whilst it can work, it's not ideal and can give you system stability issues. I'd recommend simply buying a new AGP graphics card (they're not that expensive anymore) with dual outputs and then connecting your monitors via that. It might be hard to find an AGP card these days though, but they do still exist. Speed wise it's going to be a lot faster than either of what you have now too. I can also confirm you can mix widescreen/non-widescreen monitors too, each with different resolutions (I'm using 3 monitors at the moment with 2 different sizes/resolutions). Hope this helped! ZX81 ^talk 20:00, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

As a side note may i suggest Synergy (software). Its a very userful program that will allow you to use one mouse, one keybored with 2 or more computers. 64.172.159.131 (talk) 21:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Cell phone as microphone

Is there a way to use a cell phone as a computer microphone? Not for recording but for, say, Skype? Thanks.--Elatanatari (talk) 21:47, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

In theory, yes. You'd need a phone with a usb link to your computer. Then you'd need to write and install a new operating system for your cell phone that has a custom application for transmitting its microphone signal to your computer. Or you could spend 10 bucks and buy a mic.

edit: it also occurred to me that you can disassemble the phone, cut out the microphone, and wire it with an amplifier and a 3.5mm TRS connector. You can then plug it into the mic jack. Taggart.BBS (talk) 00:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

April 24