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April 30

MSN Question

Is there a way to re-add an email address you recently deleted by accident? Note : Not having the email address does not give me the option of asking the person whose email address it is what the email address is because I can't contact them by email, otherwise this would be a pointless question.--KageTora (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 07:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If you sent or received an e-mail from this address, you may still have it in an old e-mail, possible in the trash bin/recycle folder. StuRat (talk) 09:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

computer /network security

1.how to detect ,prevent and remove from infected computers the following vuruses,bacteria,trojan,worm,trap door,logic bomb,spyware,adware and password sniffers.

2.with reguard to computer security what are the definitions ,advantages and disadvantages of the following a)physical biometric accesss control methods,behavioural besed biometric access control,intrusion detection sysytems,one time passwords,and passphrases.

i have problems with above issues am just operating a small network and want some information on the above thank u am Mbabs —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mbabaali1 (talk • contribs) 07:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Despite your claim that you're operating a small network, these look very much like homework questions to me. You should probably start at computer security and go from there. If there are specific things you don't understand, we can probably point you in the right direction, but we're not going to do the work for you. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Installing software on an MSI netbook with Suse Linux

Whenever I use Yast on my MSI Wind netbook to install something, it complains

Cannot access installation media

Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP1 10 1-0.

Check that the directory is accessible.

When I check 'show details' it says

File /suse/i586.gcc-4.1.2_20070115-0.11.i586.rpm not found on media dir:///usr/share/lang

And indeed in /usr/share/lang/suse/i586 I only see two files, both beginning with 'aspell'. DirkvdM (talk) 07:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Opera Mini on PC?

Can I run the Opera Mini browser on my desktop PC? Whether it be Windows, Mac, or Linux? The reason is that I read that Opera Mini utilizes this proxy server to compress and reformat web pages. But presumably this functionality might also be useful to desktop users too. So I was wondering if there is a way to run it directly on my PC. Thanks, --71.106.173.110 (talk) 07:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It is possible, albeit under a J2ME emulator such as the Nokia Series 40 SDK. I often use it for previewing applications and/or games that I downloaded prior to installing them on my phone. You can get it at forum.nokia.com, although you have to be registered (which is free of charge). Blake Gripling (talk) 08:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I recommend using MicroEmulator, it seems to be fastest for me. --grawity 06:41, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

What is the name for this technique or design pattern?

I am trying to remember the name of a design pattern/technique of emulating calls to a client from a server. This technique involves the client making a call to the server, which is not replied to immediately. When the server has data to send it replies to the call with this data. The client responds by making another call, passing the response to the call as a parameter, and this call then waits for the next time the server needs to call the client. I think it is something similar to "reverse callback", and it is used a lot in AJAX. Its one of those terms that is on the tip of my tounge and I will kick myself for not knowing when I hear it! -- Q Chris (talk) 09:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Inversion of control? Jay (talk) 14:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It is certainly not what I would normally think of as IOC, I am pretty sure I have heard a more specific term. -- Q Chris (talk) 15:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

We have the article "Reverse Ajax". Is that what you're looking for? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, this might have been what I was thinking of, though I thought there was a more general term to describe doing this independent of architecture. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

See also server push and Comet. chocolateboy (talk) 21:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Arranging Ubuntu for ease of later upgrades

[As this got no responses.]

Some time in the next few weeks, I'll get a little computer from Dell that will have Ubuntu 8.04 ("customized by Dell") installed ("preinstalled"). Ubuntu 9 is already out, and I daresay Ubuntu 10 is in the works. Before I start fiddling with Ubuntu to make it more like what I want, I'd like to do any juggling around that will make it easier to upgrade to 9, 10 and beyond. I'm rather out of date with (K)ubuntu. I imagine that /home will not be in its own partition. If my assumption's right, would it help later upgrades to retain the changes already made by Dell and myself if I were to put /home in its own, newly created partition? If yes it would, then I suppose I could boot off a Knoppix or similar CD, fiddle with the partitions, copy /home to a new partition and delete the original -- but would the system then recognize the new "/home", or what other tweaks would be needed? Other tips welcome too. -- Hoary (talk) 14:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu is on a six month release schedule. 8.04 (2008Apr) is a long term support release, which means it will be supported until 2009Sep. 8.10 Intrepid and 9.04 Jaunty have since been released. Separating your /home partition will make it easier to do clean installs, but you can upgrade within the OS from 8.04 to 8.10 (then to 9.04, if you wish.) I like separating by /boot partition as well, but I have not seen anything which demonstrates this as a best practice. Taggart.BBS (talk) 19:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Then I'd like to separate my home partition. I don't expect to have much of a problem creating a new partition, plonking a copy of /home in it, and then deleting the original /home (although even this assumption may be ignorant and mistaken). However, I've no particular reason to think that the result would work (that the system would know where /home was, and that the content of /home would still be correct). Would it, and if not then what other preparatory work would be needed? (Or is there some utility that automates all of this?) -- Hoary (talk) 00:18, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to edit /etc/fstab to get that partition mounted on /home automatically. See this for better info. -- 93.106.43.155 (talk) 09:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Splendid; thank you! -- Hoary (talk) 09:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Webbased email

What web-based email is good for me if I don't care about that 8 GB of Gmail, but do care about price, stability, reliability and privacy?--80.58.205.37 (talk) 16:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

GMail is free, stable, reliable, and as private as web-based email will get. What are you looking for that GMail does not provide? -- kainaw™ 17:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have some doubts about its privacy. Google scans it to serve ads. --80.58.205.37 (talk) 17:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

But that's an automated process. I mean, of course it's possible that they violate their users' privacy despite their promises to the contrary, but there's absolutely no guarantee that another web-based e-mail service provider wouldn't do the very same thing, or worse. Google, at least, is an established service provider with a pretty good track record of not being evil, and getting caught on something like this would be a terrible blow to their credibility and, depending on the case, would probably be illegal. That doesn't guarantee that they can't do it anyway, of course -- but frankly, it's a hell of a lot more than most, if not all, other free web-based e-mail providers have going for them. I mean, if this is a major concern for you (and it's not an unreasonable concern in itself, I think), then this may be a "can't have your cake and eat it too" situation. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It is an automated process. Highly specific and efficient computer programs do this. If you were exchanging child pornography the advertisement-minded computer program would neither know nor care. It would ask you if you wanted to buy Spongebob toys. Mac Davis (talk) 18:16, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Another way to look at it... Free services need to turn a profit. Google makes it clear that they turn a profit by context-sensitive ads. If a service doesn't explain how they turn a profit, it is possible that they do it by selling the secrets in your emails to other people. -- kainaw™ 19:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't use Gmail and thus write from ignorance. Still: Given the choice, I'd rather be served with ads for products that are of no interest to me than with ads for products that are of interest: there'd be less likelihood that the former would trigger purchases. I have about as little interest in Barbie dolls as I have in anything that I can actually put a name to; thus ads for Barbie dolls would be safely lost on me. If I had no worries whatever about my correspondents' perceptions of me, I might get an account such as barbiedolllover0501@gmail.com, but even without that I might sometimes give myself a signature including Barbie-relevant strings. And I could set up a throwaway account at hotmail.com to and from which I'd once a month send a great wodge of Barbie-related text (copied from Barbie). How does that sound? -- Hoary (talk) 00:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not have absolute trust in Google, but I agree that you can't get more privacy from any third party based email. If your mail is sitting on someone else's servers, you're pretty much dependent on their honesty. If it helps, a big company like Google is probably less likely to have some bored server admin browsing emails just because he can.

If you're determined to have more privacy, you're going to have to set up your own email server. This is a project, even if you do it through a collocation service that will hand-hold you all the way. You can put Horde on the server and have web-mail that way.

But, and here is the key issue, email is intrinsically insecure. Email has no built-in encryption, and little built-in security. Any email you send is vulnerable at many points along its journey from sender to recipient. If you're sending emails that are interesting enough for people to bother, there are a lot of ways your email could fall into the wrong hands. The way to prevent this is through encryption such as PGP. APL (talk) 22:36, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at Comparison of webmail providers

One thing to note if privacy/security is a big concern is that although you're looking primarily for webmail, it might be worth choosing one that allows sending/receiving via SMTP & IMAP as it'll allow you to use a mail application with a plugin for GPG or similar. IMAP access also makes other things easier (for me personally, offline access is very important)- Cheers, davidprior ^t/_c 21:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

run application in background

Please help! tell me how to run a java application in background using windows? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avitashpurohit (talk • contribs) 18:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean as a background process? You can do this with Process Explorer; run the program, right click your java application from the list, go to Set priority and select either below normal or idle 8I.24.07.715 ^talk 19:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

How does a website earn money for its owner?

I heard that websites try to get high page views (or web requests?) to earn money. How does this work? 117.0.51.228 (talk) 19:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Well presumably they get better ad money if their site has high pageviews as it is then more likely the ads will be seen.  GARDEN  19:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

But what if a website doesn't have ads? ARe there other ways to earn money with high page views? 117.0.51.228 (talk) 19:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Some websites, like Homestar Runner, gain revenue through merchandise sales. Others, like the Wikimedia Foundation, rely on donations from visitors. These are not directly tied to pageviews, but both revenues are based on how popular a website is. —Akrabbim^talk 19:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, some ads are less obvious than others. Affiliate links can be a good source of income if the website owner knows what (s)he's doing, and like merchandise sales, affiliate link sites need a lot of visitors to make any real income. 168.9.120.8 (talk) 12:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Depending on the website and ideology, Donations can be a superior good source of income. Mac Davis (talk) 18:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Closed-source project hosting website

Does anyone know of some good free (free as in offers their service for free) project hosting websites for closed source projects that don't own the code and also that enable people to sell software like other proprietary projects? --Melab±1 ☎ 19:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Googling for "free subversion hosting" or "free cvs hosting" gets some results, though the free plans tend to be very limited in size (200 MB or so). Buyer beware. --Sean 15:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Titles of external links in MediaWiki

Hello, I run my own mediawiki server. Is it possible to make external links to automatically parse the title from linked pages instead of assigning the links numbers like [1], [2], and [3]? thanks. 85.186.103.89 (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

No. --Sean 15:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a bot that does this. The source is available here. chocolateboy (talk) 23:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

May 1

Ripping Blu-Ray on Puppy Linux

How can I rip a Blu-Ray disk on Puppy Linux ? I asked this before, for Ubuntu, here: [1]. StuRat (talk) 04:23, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Dial-up in Ubuntu 9.04

How do I establish a dial-up connection in Ubuntu 9.04? This is my only way to access the Internet where I live, and I'm annoyed they dropped support for it in 8.10... Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.138.21.132 (talk) 08:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You might want to try this on the [Ubuntu Forum]. I don't know for sure but usually when things disappear they can be added back in via the "Add Software" or package manager. It seems likely that dial-up is now seen as a niche requirement and not installed by default. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, I can only get on the Internet via dial-up, so I can't download the necessary packages... 144.138.21.117 (talk) 07:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Get someone else to download the packages (or do it on the computer you are using now) and put them on a CD or memory stick. Of course you will need to find out which packages first though. You can load packages from media with package manager.-- Q Chris (talk) 15:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

So if I try to download GnomePPP, look at the address it is trying to get the package from, and go the that address on the Windows system I am using now, might that work? 144.138.21.157 (talk) 05:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it would, I think that just doing a google search for the full ".deb" package name will probably find it. Of course you may find that when you try to install the downloaded files it may tell you that other dependencies are missing which you will have to install either from your media or by downloading again if this also isn't included. -- Q Chris (talk) 19:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that worked :) Thanks! 144.138.21.235 (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

DVD/GOOGLE CHROME

I have a movie on a DVD-RW disk i place into the laptop i here the action of the CD Drive but nothing happens when i go to my computor the drive is not there any ideas as its the only movie i have and i am working abroad? Secondly my browser is google chrome every 20 mins or so the web page freezes and comes up with kill web page message were i have to reopen the browser very annoying when you are in the middle of something on the web is there a fault with google chrome or with the network or even my laptop>>>>????Chromagnum (talk) 11:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

One thing to check on the DVD is that it's properly inserted into the drive. Sometimes they are off-center a bit. I even have occasionally put them in upside down when working in the dark. StuRat (talk) 12:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

If, as you say, it's indeed a CD drive you are inserting the DVD-RW disc into, the reason it won't work is that CD drives cannot read DVD discs.

As for the browser freeze, I can say with confidence that it's not the network. Whether the problem is with Google Chrome, your operating system or something else, I couldn't begin to guess with the information at hand. I would recommend that you reinstall Chrome and see if that fixes the problem; if not, I would install another browser, such as Firefox, and see if that works better. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Two thoughts, first check the drive is actually a DVD drive. Secondly, how old is the laptop? Older DVD drives often have trouble reading RW media because they are not sensitive enough to detect the dye layer used in them 8I.24.07.715 ^talk 13:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks; The DVD issue i resolved by a reboot it then picked up the DVD but it still doesnt see it if you enter a diffrent one you have to reboot each time but i have a work around so all good; Chrome re-installed no diffrence have supicion it is the network dropping out briefly killing the page thanks peopleChromagnum (talk) 06:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Hard disk failure and data recovery

I've been reading a lot of late about the two topics, and I've two questions that are, I'm sure, quite silly to someone who has any real knowledge of the recovery process; I hope you will pardon my ignorance, and I thank you in advance for satisfying my curiosity. First, where there is no physical damage to the magnetic recording media (most crucially no head crash) and where data are not directly compromised (as, e.g., upon infection with a virus), why can't one (in a clean room, and following the same standards under which a drive is originally put together) remove the platters, etc., from the dead drive and swap them into a new, working drive, which can be used normally? Second, several of the sites linked as references in data recovery describe a process in which one alerts the recoverer to the file types he/she wants recovered (simple recoveries, for instance, it seems, usually comprise the various file formats under which are stored documents, photos, music, and e-mails), and one gets the sense that in the recovery process the recoverer does not actually see a complete list of the files on the dead hard drive but only those files for the extension of which he/she searches, which isn't consistent with recovery stories (like this one) I've read. So, does the recoverer see all recoverable files upon his/her accessing the drive, or can he/she only search for the file types the recovery of which the user desires? Thanks, and apologies for the length; not only am I not quite tech-saavy, but neither, although I've been in the States for a bit, am I a native speaker. 68.76.144.42 (talk) 18:08, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure about your actual question, but I must say, if you hadn't said that you weren't a native English speaker, I would never have thought it. Congratulations! Genius101 ^Guestbook 21:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I imagine the method you described would work, but it might actually be easier to do the reverse. That is, instead of moving the platters to another hard disk of the exact same type, just replace those components of the drive which have failed (the motor, for example). I would think this would be rather expensive, though, unless you can ship it to China to have people earning pennies an hour do it. StuRat (talk) 22:02, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The process of removing or replacing parts from new harddrives into old ones or old harddrives into new ones is used as little as possible, because this is less efficient (see:[2]). It is much easier to use a forensic bridge[3]. This ensures that you can use the disk without writing any data to it.

For the second question, programs designed for less technical users like "photo recoverers" come up with graphical lists of files of specific extensions. However, serious forensics tools are usually command-line based, such as fls[4]. This guide is easy to understand[5]. More[6][7] and a book on this[8]. If you want to run the programs for yourself try The Sleuth Kit or Autopsy Browser[9]. Halfway through this[10] Hak5 episode, they Michael Gerling does a demonstration of file recovery. Mac Davis (talk) 18:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

A computer that restarts when told to turn off

Whenever I tell my computer to turn off, it restarts instead. I have Windows XP SP 3. I have an ASUS M2N (zip file with overview and spec pdf) motherboard. Originally I thought the problem was caused by XP sending the wrong signal. I did a complete wipe of all of my hard drives and did a fresh install of XP. And it still restarts when I tell it to shut down. Any suggestions? If you need more info about my computer, please ask.--Rockfang (talk) 19:59, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The obvious workaround is to plug the computer into a power strip with a switch and turn the computer off there. (First shut it down the normal way, then, when it restarts, kill the power.) You can use this method until you find a permanent solution. StuRat (talk) 21:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Recently my Mac's directory got corrupted, apparently because (or at least when) I switched off the power strip during boot. I'm just sayin'. —Tamfang (talk) 01:25, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Could be a bios setting --h2g2bob (talk)

Specifically, some bios have options that will restart the computer if it bluescreens or crashes. Sometimes, this can restart the computer upon shutdown. Try looking for this setting, and making sure it is disabled Dougofborg^(talk) 14:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

320 GB HDD; 140 GB (D:, named "DATA") is seperated from 144 GB (C:, named "ACER"), merge them together

Resolved

I have an Acer Aspire AS6920-6968. It has a 320 GB HDD, however this is split up: 144 GB is my C: drive, while 140 GB is my D: drive. I want to reformat my laptop and combine these two partitions together. How would I go about doing this? My laptop has Windows Vista Home Premium by the way.--Pass1019 (talk) 20:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

on the windows install disk there should be a partition editor. delete the two partitions during setup and format the unpartitioned space —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 20:46, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The thing is I don't have an install disc, I had to use Acer's program, eRecovery, to create a backup DVD that will put everything on it in order to reformat. So I'm not really sure what to do. Would this work?--Pass1019 (talk) 20:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Is your operating system installed on the drive you want to merge? I'm not sure you'll be able to do it like that. For software, check out PartitionMagic (search google for cracked version if you don't want to pay) or the free program GParted which you can download and put on a Live CD. Again, I don't know how much success you'll have trying to merge a partition with an operating system installed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 20:55, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure PartitionMagic works with Vista. I could be mistaken though.--Rockfang (talk) 20:58, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing on the D: drive (140 GB), its empty. It's called "data" so I think its just to be used for storage, but I want all my space on one partition. My C: drive (144 GB) has all my stuff on it.--Pass1019 (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

In that case you should be able to delete the D partition then expand the C partition to take up the entire drive. StuRat (talk) 21:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

May we ask why you want one huge partition ? That's not generally the recommended way to do things, as it eliminates the flexibility you get from multiple partitions. For example, if you want to install something you're unsure of, putting it in the D drive would make it easier to get rid of it if you decide you don't want it. Also, you could put another operating system on the D partition to test it out. StuRat (talk) 21:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Because I just want all my space in one area. Anyway I figured it out, it was really simple. I went to "Computer Management" and then deleted D: and then extended C:. Now C: has 284 GB! Easy. Like I said, there was nothing on D: anyway, it was practically there just for storage.--Pass1019 (talk) 21:51, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

WARNING: Latest Developer Beta of Google Chrome will not load Wikipedia Properly

The latest Developer Channel Beta of Google Chrome (2.0.177.1) does not load Wikipedia properly most of the time. I urge you to switch back to the beta channel if you are on the developer channel. If you already have the latest version, uninstall and reinstall chrome, or hold out for an update to fix this. Problems include not loading pages, problems with gadgets like Twinkle, and improper rendering of formats. I have notified them about this, but I imagine that there are other bugs ahead in line.--Unionhawk ^Talk 21:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I'm not seeing any of these problems (Vista SP1) — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 02:52, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

How can this, honestly, be just me? I'll uninstall/reinstall, but, how can this be just me?--Unionhawk ^Talk 04:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm really not trying to be as unhelpful as this will sound, but if something is in beta then it's going to have unexpected results sometimes which might be why your configuration does one thing and it works on someone elses. ZX81 ^talk 05:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft Excel question

I have a column of formulas, and they all are a function of a different column. This I know how to do. However, I want to include a value from just a single cell, that would be common to every cell in the column. For example, A1=B1+C1. When I drag down the column, all the values get incremented (i.e. A2=B2+C2, A3=B3+C3, etc.). However, I only want one of the values to be incremented, and the other to stay constant (i.e. A2=B2+A1, A3=B3+C1, etc). How do I do this? I haven't been able to find the answer anywhere else. I suppose if I could describe what I'm trying to do in less than a paragraph, I would be able to perform a more effective search, but I haven't been successful. Does anyone have an idea of how to do this? —Akrabbim^talk 21:38, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

If you want something to stay constant you put a dollar sign in front of it. So to have the column stay constant use $A2, if you want the row, use A$2, if you want them both, use $A$2. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Pressing F4 steps round the options on the current cell reference. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:20, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

May 2

Inexplicably unable to log into my Hotmail account

I changed the password for it more than week ago, haven't logged in ever since but I wrote down the password. Yesterday, I tried logging in, and it kept turning me down because the password was "incorrect". This is really huge for me, because every account for other websites I have is registered to that address (including my account here) and since I've forgotten my passwords to them, the only way I can retrieve them is through email, but now I am unable to check my mail. I don't have an alternate account, and I made the mistake of not writing my answer to the secret question, so now it seems like I have no way of logging into my email account. Still, I wrote down the password and I wrote it down correctly, so I don't understand why I can't log in. Does that mean someone hacked into it and changed my password? I've been losing sleep over it. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 01:16, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The likelyhood of your hotmail account being hacked is quite low - unless you clicked the "invite all my contacts" option when signing up for MySpace/Facebook/etc. All the same, take a look at your info on these other websites to see if they show signs of being compromised (bogus messages sent to others is one thing to look for). However, I think it is more likely you either made the same mistake both times you entered the new password, so now the password is not what you think it is; or maybe it didn't get changed at all, so have you tried the old password?

As for the answer to the secret question, that should be obvious to you (for me, I know 'what high school I went to', but MS offers other examples like 'the name of your dog' and so on). You really should have chosen a question so easy you didn't need to write down the answer. Astronaut (talk) 02:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The password change went through, because I tried my old one and it didn't work either (yes, I remember my old password very well). I seriously don't get it. Whip it! ^{Now whip it good!} 02:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

One common problem with entering a new password is having the CAPS LOCK key on. Thus, the PW is all uppercase. It's also all uppercase when you enter it a second time, because CAPS LOCK is still on. Of course, it's hidden both times, so you can't see that it's uppercase. The CAPS LOCK key is like a password land-mine. StuRat (talk) 13:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x805ADACC, 0XBACC349C, 0XBACC3198)

Hi,

Every week or so I get a Blue Screen of Death on my PC after using it for a while, but today,when I switched it on it immediatley went to a Blue Screen of Death, so I switched it off and on and it again went to a Blue Screen of Death. I switched it on again and it then went to a Green Screen of Death. The Green Screen of Death said this was the technical information: STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0x805ADACC, 0XBACC349C, 0XBACC3198). What does this mean? I then restarted the computer and it worked fine. I then ran an antivirus and removed a worm that I must have got within the last 12 hours. Could that be what the problem was? My system is: Windows XP Home Edition 2002 Service Pack 3, if that helps.

Thanks. 92.7.18.36 (talk) 05:36, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a minidump file available? If so, please zip + password protect it and upload it to a file hosting site. 0x7E is SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED. It basically means some sort of driver created a system thread which then made an invalid access to memory (0xc0000005) and crashed your computer. Did you get the error code for the first BSOD? --wj32 ^t/c 07:22, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea what a minidump file is, sorry. That was the only error code I took down; I just took a photo of the screen because I found it wierd there was a Green Screen of Death then after I thought of asking you guys why it was being wierd. 92.7.18.36 (talk) 07:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Look in C:\Windows\Minidump. Is there a file named Mini[date of the crash].dmp? --wj32 ^t/c 07:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I have a few, but none for today's date. 92.3.192.222 (talk) 09:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

radio 'loop' on laptop

hi all, just this morning, whilst downloading, my laptop has suddenly started playing a loop of a radio political sketch/skit show - someone pretending to be bush etc, between skits there is a silly voice saying 'heads up' then a poping noise, every now and again there is an advert for a BUPA care home, then another skit. It sounds like a radio show. There is no application open other than bitlord (and when that is closed it doesn't stop) i'm scanning using AVG 8.0 just now. Has anyone come across this before? Perry-mankster (talk) 12:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

When you say that there's no application open other than Bitlord, do you mean that it's the only one that shows up in the list of applications when you open Task Manager? Because that doesn't mean that there isn't a process running in the background. You want to click on the Processes tab and see what's actually cooking. You'll see a lot going on there, and one of those processes is probably running in the background and playing this stuff for you. One possibility is that you have a hung process there that doesn't show up on the Applications list, but is still kind of going on. A web browser that's still playing a stream from the internet could do this, for example. I doubt it's a virus. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 16:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

C++ help..

Hey!I'm basically a beginner in C++.I'm in search of a website where i can easily found problems and the coded programs as the solution of given problems, so that i may develop a program for that problems and check out my progress.I hope i'll be helped out soon!..cheers--59.103.12.242 (talk) 12:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Project Euler, although you only get to see the solutions after you have completed a problem. And the solutions are given in multiple programing languages. Taemyr (talk) 12:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The best thing to do is just look at life in terms of programming. You need to study for a final exam in English? Use string arrays to create a program that will quiz you on what you need to know. Mac Davis (talk) 18:46, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Specification of Keys

While working on Microsoft Office Powerpoint, Is it possible to specify a key for specific function ? For example KEY Z to change the slide, KEY X to add something in the notes or KEY C to write something in the slide or KEY V to chanfe the size of figure on slide. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.55.135.211 (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Help touching up an image

Can anyone help me touch up this image, which is of not-brilliant quality? I've only got a rubbish version of Photoshop, but anyone with anything more advanced... fancy a challenge? :-) A vectorised version would be brilliant, but I see that that might be hard due to the dot-printed scan - not mine, I was emailed it. Anyway, thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 14:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

You can download "GIMP" - which is a free and fully-featured paint program. You can vectorize in programs like Inkscape which does a reasonable job with dithered-looking images like this one. SteveBaker (talk) 20:39, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Targeted advertising

Nearly every time I use Facebook, I notice adverts targeted at what I have searched for recently during the last forty eight hours. I am sure that they are targeted. For example, I recently looked for new batteries on Google, and then data recovery software - Hence my earlier question from this IP address. Both of these topics have arisen in adverts.

Is there anything I can do to stop it? There are apparently no such settings within Facebook. Normally I use Firefox, but Safari for Facebook (reasons are complex). When I use Google, I always do so logged out.78.33.187.186 (talk) 16:46, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The only things that come to mind are using a proxy server or never going to Facebook at all. I advocate using both at all times. Mac Davis (talk) 18:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Phorm springs to mind. Either that or some other tracking cookie or adware program. What antivirus program are you running? Some of them (Kaspersky for one) do a good job getting rid of such things. If it's Phorm or tracking cookies, you can also nuke the cookies manually, and you should be able to set your browsers to decline cookies or ask you if you want to accept. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 18:21, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this would be helpful then[11]. I do not know which one to recommend though. Mac Davis (talk) 18:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I've just deleted all of my cookies from both Firefox and Safari, they refuse them in future, and Firefox deletes them all when I close it. But whatever it is, it it browser independent: do the browsing in Firefox, but the ads appear in Safari, where I use Facebook. I've also upgraded the Mac native firewall, to "essential services only," and "stealth mode" which ensures that uninvited traffic "is given no response.

Yes, I'm concerned about Phorm and privacy, but I understand it isn't yet operational. As for antivirus/security, I don't use any - which would be less necessary on a Mac anyway. I have a proxy, but a very slow one. Might it be useful if I changed my facebook tied email address away from what I normally use?78.33.187.170 (talk) 22:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Google has AdSense, Yahoo has Web Beacons. They track your searching for the purpose of serving up "relevant" ads. Google was keeping search results for 3 months at one stage, and proposing to keep them longer. They are supposedly "de-personalised". But the day you search for batteries, they'd know at least for the rest of the day. These are not stored in the cookies that your browser can clear. Something like CCleaner will find them for you, disguised as Internet Temporary Files from several hidden locations (and it is an eye-opener to read down the list before deleting them).

Be aware refusing cookies, for many sites, will prevent the site from loading at all. If you have one of the newest versions of Firefox or Safari, try the "Private Browsing" setting, which records a lot less about your activities (but may or may not prevent the advertising cookies).KoolerStill (talk) 07:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The best method I found for ridding ads is Adblock plus for firefox. Also, you can customize it with this helper [12]-- penubag  (talk) 09:19, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed that I've had to except several sites from the cookie block - like the bank, for example. But I would rather do so manually and know what I'm doing. The Firefox version that I am using is v3.0.10, which wouldn't appear to have private mode yet - in any case, I would be concerned about missing an edit history (which I do use). CCleaner is Windows only, I'm using a Mac (which should actually help my security). As much as ridding ads would be great, I would rather mask the path of what I'm searching for - ads are OK, targeted ads aren't when they come from another source than the site that I'm on.

I'm less annoyed by Google/Gmail Adsense, because it scans your emails/search terms, and returns targeted ads on the same activity. I haven't a clue where Facebook is getting its sources from, but it definitely isn't itself.78.33.187.162 (talk) 09:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing audio codec?

There's a video file I haven't played for some months, and it now seems to be missing the audio. I ran it through VideoInspector and got this result - how would I go about getting the sound? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 17:33, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Try installing VLC media player, and see if you can get sound on it. If that doesn't work, there's always the possibility that the sound may have become corrupted. Until It Sleeps 02:05, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It won't play with sound on VLC either. How might it have become corrupted? ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 07:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

File Downloading Protocols

Hi, I just downloaded a massive 154 MB file over a dial-up and the download's been corrupt. Is there some way by which a download manager will block-by-block check the checksum of the file downloaded with the server copy and downloaded only those blocks which are corrupt ? The server should send the checksum of a block and the client would compare that with the client side checksum, to be specific. 218.248.80.114 (talk) 18:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Bit torrent does something similar to what you've described. That large of a file over a dial up is always going to be tricky. If you know someone with access to the noncorupt file, it is possible to figure out which sections are corrupt (check summing sections of the file and comparing) and then send just the bad sections, but I don't know of a program that will do this for you automatically. Shadowjams (talk) 20:06, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

rsync? --76.167.241.45 (talk) 22:22, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh yeah, good point. I was thinking rdiff, which would be hard to create the deltas without the two together, but rsync should do it on its own. Shadowjams (talk) 23:00, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I actually want that feature in a standard download manager over http or ftp. Do the protocols have this provision? Why not? 218.248.80.114 (talk) 05:27, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

FTP and HTTP weren't really designed for this sort of thing, they were quick and dirty hacks that became far more popular than their creators expected. HTTP does have an optional Content-MD5 header, but I think it would be hard to convince server administrators to enable it because of the cost in CPU time (especially when you add in the potential for denial-of-service attacks). On the other hand, if you can find a .torrent for the file you downloaded, many if not all torrent clients will scan your existing file for you and redownload only the parts that are broken, and there may even be hybrid HTTP-BitTorrent software that will download the broken parts via HTTP. It might be possible to convince server admins to provide .torrents for large files they distribute by HTTP, since it has the potential to save them money. -- BenRG (talk) 14:55, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Page numbers in Word

After many hours of formatting numerous Word documents, each chapters in a longer work, I have outputted them to PDF and merged the PDFs only to find that despite having identical margins and settings in each file (as far as I can tell), the page numbers in some of the files are inexplicably a little off-center and some are even down half a line where they should be (something which is obvious when you merge them together and are turning from one page to the next). I've checked all the document margin settings, tab settings, etc., and found NO differences between the documents. What could be causing this?

I am using Word 2004 (sigh) on OS X 10. I generate the PDFs with the standard OS X Print > PDF > Save as PDF function. I merge them with Adobe Acrobat though it is clearly in the originals and not a function of the merging.

Thoughts? Things to check? God, I hate MS Word. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:35, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thought One: I concur with the sentiment, but you will hate it less if you automate it more.

Thought Two: double check the page numbers are in the same font and size. A wider left margin will move the figure to the right, and vice versa. If the margins are identical, check that your paper size is also identical.

Thought Three: did you go to all the trouble of formatting each document separately? Highlighted and selected fonts and sizes for every heading?

The only sure way to get them the same is to mark them as Head1 Head2 Para2 etc, without worrying about how they actually look. Then make up one sample-text page with the styles you want, marking them with the same labels (highlight, choose style from the drop-down). And make one set of headers and footers (which is where the page numbering happens). Then you delete the actual content and save it as a template (or just as a document with one word in it - empties won't save). Then you use the merge function to add in all the other documents, which will pick up the same style.

A shortcut.If the other formatting is all identical and 'done by hand',no need to worry about the heading and para styles. Just merge all the documents together, onto the first chapter. Once it is one document, it is easy to reset the margins, footers and page numbering globally. If it's too big for one file (I think Word 2004 does 2gb files) make a copy of the first file, delete all but the first line of it, merge the remaining documents onto it, then delete the place-holder line. The merged items will pick up the formatting of the base file, including the new margins and numbering.KoolerStill (talk) 08:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Merging the documents is not really practical for this particular workflow -- it becomes unmanageable to edit a 300 page document from a human point of view (even if Word can technically manage it, which even then I'm doubtful of — seems like a recipe for crashing). Styles are done by hand just because at this point setting up and tagging them would be prohibitively difficult. Anyway, I figured out the centering problem—Word has two different ways to center footnotes. One involves a center tab stop in the center of the margins, the other involves the "center" paragraph alignment that apparently uses somewhat different margins (there is maybe a 1/12th of an inch difference in my case). I have converted them all to the same approach which fixes that problem; the random chapter with the vertical difference I will just try to manually fix by tweaking the footer margins. Thanks for your input, though. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

And the vertical thing appear to be caused by some of the footnotes being in Times and some in Times New Roman. arrhghghgg... but fixable. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

May 3

Why do you need Java for downloading Limewire now

Why do you need Java in order to download songs off of LimeWire now? It was never required before. What's up with that? Ericthebrainiac (talk) 01:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Read the articles you linked to. You can't run a program written in Java without the Java Runtime Environment. What was it written in before?--24.9.71.198 (talk) 01:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you had the JRE before, but it was an old version and LimeWire added some functionality that needs a more recent version. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 06:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

text image to plain text recognition

I have some PDF files from a scan in good condition and I need to copy the text from the document onto a form. Copy-Paste doesn't work, but is there some software or web app that can look at the text in the pdf (or any other text scan) and generate plain text? Like text recognition software?-- penubag  (talk) 09:39, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

If you have Microsoft Office then you can load your picture into Microsoft Office Document Imaging or whatever it's called. That converts scanned images to text, and it's surprisingly accurate. --Heron (talk) 10:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

For free solution, see tesseract (software), GOCR, ocrad. If you are on Windows, you should be able to run them under cygwin even if no other windows version is available. Also, there exist a program called pdftotext, but it won't help unless the "text" in your pdf is really in text and not image format. --88.194.216.207 (talk) 10:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

MS Office Imaging takes files only in TIF format, so you need some way to convert PDF to TIF. Moreover I doubt if its good for scanned hand-written text. The OP hasn't mentioned whether the PDFs have typed text or a hand-written one. Jay (talk) 17:02, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't use MS office so those free solutions worked fine. Thanks! -- penubag  (talk) 06:03, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Linux, adding user to group without having root access

I have an account at a web hosting service, and need a directory to be writable for the web server daemon (user www). My user account is myname, and I am a member of group myname. I would like to add user www to group myname, so that I can make a directory writable for user www without doing a chmod 666. Is that possible without having root access, and if so, how is it done? Thanks, --NorwegianBlue ^talk 11:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

It is possible, though very bad, that the /etc/group file is writable by you. If so, just add www to your group. However, you should view the contents of /etc/group first. It is possible that both you and www are in a common group already. You can assign the directory to that group and forget about changing groups for www. -- kainaw™ 20:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I checked it out now. Reassuringly, /etc/group was readonly for anyone but root. User myname was the only member of group myname, and member of no other groups. Moreover, user www was member of no groups other than its own. The entries looked like this:

     ...
     www::80:www
     ...
     ausername::7761:ausername
     anothername::7762:anothername
     myname::7763:myname
     ...

According to the manpage, the format is groupname:password:groupid:userlist. The double colons appear to indicate no group password. If I've understood this correctly, I need my group entry to be changed to

     myname::7763:myname,www

Correct? If so, I'll contact the site admins and request the change. Strange that no-one else among the many users of the site have had the need (or have been allowed) to add www to their group. Does it pose a security risk? I tried

     chgrp www dirname/

too, but the operation was not permitted. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 22:35, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

On a properly set-up system, it should be impossible to do what you ask without root privilage. Even if you found a loophole in local security - there is no guarantee that your hosting service wouldn't find it and fix it at some future time. You need to find another way. SteveBaker (talk) 03:16, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I understand. I can of course contact the site admin, and request the change. Is there a sequrity risk in adding www to group myname? --NorwegianBlue ^talk 10:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Any other user who has www privileges will be able to use those privileges on directories for your group. For a multiple-host service, it is usually better to give each user two accounts - a user account and a www account. Then, there's no blurring between privileges between unrelated users all running their scripts as www. -- kainaw™ 02:23, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I had a second look at /etc/group and /etc/passwd. There didn't appear to be any accounts that fit your description, www was member of no groups but its own. But I'll contact the site administrators, and hopefully they'll suggest a solution. Thanks. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 18:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Free handwriting font?

Does anyone know of a website like this one but free? Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 11:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You could use some font creation software. here is a tutorial. IT's a little bit more dificult, but you may be able to tweak the results better. And it'll save you the nine bucks that yourfonts.com or fontifier.com APL (talk) 15:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

That will, of course, entail buying the HighLogic software used in the tutorial... ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 16:05, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a 30 day trial, but you could also use a free piece of software like FontForge, but I understand it's not quite as user friendly.

(Incidentally, didn't yourfonts.com used to be free? I've got a note to that effect in my bookmarks file. But it's definitely a pay service now.) APL (talk) 19:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

There's dafont, among others. - mako 05:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

That's nothing like it... I meant a website like this one. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 06:48, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

PDF TO WORD

What kind of programs do I need to convert pdf files to word files (or txt files)?? I do know that Adobe Acrobat Pro is one of such programs, but 500 bucks for just a program seems too much of a price to pay. And since I'll be needing to convert pdf files frequently from now on (pdf to word AND word to pdf), free trial programs aren't exactly ideal for me. So does anyone know of any FREE, easy to use softwares that converts pdf files??? (or if possible, a link where i can download the full version of adobe acrobat pro for free?)Johnnyboi7 (talk) 14:16, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

OpenOffice probably can do it. For windows, you can get a few different command line pdf convertors with cygwin, like pdftotext, but I don't think any of them will convert to "word file" (whatever it is). --93.106.46.15 (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

By "word file" I think Johnnyboi means a native Microsoft Word document (a .doc file). No, OpenOffice won't do this; it doesn't even read PDFs correctly (not that it's intended to). It can create PDFs but not import them. Tonywalton ^Talk 14:57, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Are the PDFs scans, or digital outputs from a Word processing program? (That is, are they pages that were scanned in or were they just exported as PDFs.) If the former then you are really not going to likely be satisfied with automatic conversion — OCR for long documents is piss-poor and requires about as much editing time as it would take to just type it all in right the first time. If they are digital outputs, it is relatively easy to find things that will take all the text from the life (like pdftotext) and dump it into a big text file. It is not very elegant and sometimes has problems depending how exactly the PDF was created. As for converting PDFs to DOC files, there are a lot of non-free "converters" out there but they are not, in my experience, very accurate.

The basic problem here is that PDF is meant to be a write-once format — it is an output state meant for printing, not for document editing or distribution. Once something is in a PDF format it is NOT easy to edit it or to get it into any other type of file format. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suggest you work on your operating plan some more. Converting PDF to anything is terrible. It is a headache. It rarely works. You spend hours (if not days) correcting mistakes. What you need to do is have a bunch of word documents. Those are the masters. You edit them as needed. You make a PDF copy of the word documents as needed. So, you do not convert your word document to a PDF document and delete the word document. You keep the word document and two copies: one word and one PDF. Whatever your plan is - it should include the concept that PDF documents are read-only. You cannot edit them in any way. -- kainaw™ 02:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a freeware program here. I used it recently and got reasonably good results. At least all the original text was preserved. Results vary wildly depending on the source of the PDF, and the program I linked to won't extract any text at all if the PDF was made from a scan. --Heron (talk) 19:10, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Watching an AVI file on a DVD player

I've got an avi file (700MB) that I can watch on my pc no problem using VLC media player or whatever. How can I put this in a format where I can watch it on a standard DVD player? I know I could run it through Final Cut Pro or something and convert it then burn it through DVD Studio Pro, but that seems very long winded and would take ages. So is there a quick way to do it? My DVD player says DiVX on it, so can I just burn it to a DVD? Thanks.Popcorn II (talk) 18:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I use ConvertXtoDVD - quick, painless and bug-free method of getting almost any video format onto DVD quickly Sandman30s (talk) 20:35, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks but I'm using a Mac and doesn't look like this supports Mac.Popcorn II (talk) 21:06, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a good chance it will work without conversion. If you have a DVD-RW or CD-RW handy then you can experiment without wasting plastic. AVI files can use many video compression methods but "Divx" and variants (Xvid, Microsoft MPEG-4) are common. You can go to Tools/Codec Information in VLC to see the compression type. DIVX could also mean DIVX (Digital Video Express) if it's a very old player—in that case there's no chance it'll play the file. -- BenRG (talk) 00:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

If the DVD player says it plays DiVX files, then you don't need to do any re-encoding; just burn the file directly on the disc and the player will play it. When you pop it in, a list of the playable file(s) will pop up on the screen and you can start wherever you like. With all respect to Sandman, do not re-encode files unless you actually have to; you'll almost certainly lower the quality every time you convert something. Matt Deres (talk) 14:04, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

google search

If foo yields a hit, you would expect foo -"blah blah blah" to also yield a hit. This search yields a hit, and this search does as well, as expected. However, this and this do not yield anything. Why? Thanks. --VectorField (talk) 18:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Google has a few strangenesses. One of them is dropping out most punctuation marks from your search criteria.(It will also no longer search for partial words, eg "winism" will no longer find "darwinism" as it used to). I get the same results as you; but if I just LOOK at the Advanced page, then click Search from there, is moves your exclusions up where they really belong, ahead of the site:parameter, as separate words, so it reads 'darwin -blah -blah -blah site:'etc.

Putting a phrase into quotes just places into the 'this exact wording' box, if you look in Advanced. But for exclusions, there is no 'exact wording' box. Anything you put into exclusions, with or without quotes, will be treated as separate words. So you are telling it to give you everything about Darwin, as long as it does not contain the words "it" and "was". Try to come up with rare words to use as criteria, especially for exclusions.KoolerStill (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Page Up/Down Capture

I have a program that works fine. When you press either the page up or page down buttons, it does its thing. I want it to work with one of those handheld presenter things that has a "forward" and "backward" button it. In PDF viewer and powerpoint, the device acts as a page up/page down keypress. So, I thought that since my program handled those key presses, all would be fine. However, it doesn't respond to the handheld presenter at all. I'm just looking for a starting point to figure out how to make my program respond to the presenter instead of only the keyboard. -- kainaw™ 22:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

What's the brand and model number of the presenter thing? Does it do a page-up and page-down while you are in Notepad or Word and you have a long document open? Tempshill (talk) 03:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It is a Targus AMP03US. I cannot answer the question about notepad/word until I get to a Windows machine again. -- kainaw™ 13:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

May 4

edit swf

Resolved

I don't think this is possible, but is there any possible way to download an .swf flash file and view/edit its source? -- penubag  (talk) 00:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

You can use a flash decompiler (e.g., Flash Decompiler Trillix), which will convert the .swf to one or more .fla files, which can be opened in Adobe Flash Professional. It doesn't work as well as editing the original source files, though.--24.9.71.198 (talk) 01:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Thanks just what I was looking for! -- penubag  (talk) 01:42, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

div/mod in C?

in Haskell and Standard ML, they have two sets of integer division and remainder functions:

1. div / mod - div is integer division truncated towards negative infinity; and mod a b is a - div a b, or equivalently, mod a b is the remainder with the same sign as b
2. quot / rem - quot is integer division truncated towards 0; and rem a b is a - quot a b, or equivalently, rem a b is the remainder with the same sign as a

Other languages seem divided on this. In C and Java, it seems that signed integer division and remainder are the second kind (i.e. truncating towards 0, and remainder has same sign as first argument). In Python and Ruby however, they seem to use the first kind. What is the easiest way to do the "div" and "mod" operations in C? --206.72.77.76 (talk) 02:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

You know that / in C++ will truncate towards zero. You want it to truncate towards negative infinity. Correct? It seems to me that it would be very simple to use a ternary operator: quot = a<0 ? (a-1)/b : a/b; -- kainaw™ 03:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Except that the actual sign of the remainder is implementation-defined. I suggest making a simple function that also checks the sign. decltype (talk) 06:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not implementation-defined though. According to the C99 standard, the division operation is defined to truncate towards 0. And the remainder is defined such that (a/b)*b + a%b == a. So it has to have the sign of the first operand. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 08:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Correct. I was responding to Kainaw, who gave his example in C++. The OP mentioned C, which in practice often means C89/90. decltype (talk) 07:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's the best I can come up with:

      div(a,b) = (b<0 && a>0) ? (a - 1) / b - 1     : (b>0 && a<0) ? (a + 1) / b - 1     : a / b
      mod(a,b) = (b<0 && a>0) ? (a - 1) % b + b + 1 : (b>0 && a<0) ? (a + 1) % b + b - 1 : a % b

If you know b > 0 then you can shorten things considerably:

      div(a,b) = (a < 0) ? (a + 1) / b - 1     : a / b
      mod(a,b) = (a < 0) ? (a + 1) % b + b - 1 : a % b

You have to be careful when writing these things because of integer wraparound. For example, (a-b+1)/b wouldn't work in place of (a+1)/b-1. I think this will correctly handle the weird boundary cases like b == INT_MIN. -- BenRG (talk) 21:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

XP non-admin account vs. Power control panel

So on my XP machine, the account with administrator rights (let's call it "XAdmin") has the "Power" control panel set up such that the display is never automatically turned off. On the account that lacks administrator rights (let's call this "XUser"), the "Power" control panel shows that the display is automatically turned off after 20 minutes. From the XUser account, clicking the popup menu that changes this 20-minute setting causes an "Access Denied" dialog box to appear.

Is this behavior working as it's supposed to? Does the machine have a single setting for this configuration item, and it applies no matter what users are logged in? Currently the display indeed does not ever turn off - why does XUser show it as turning off after 20 minutes? (I would not care much about this except that I'm trying to diagnose a problem where if the computer is configured to turn off the monitor, sometimes it seems to crash while the monitor is off.) Thanks in advance - Tempshill (talk) 03:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I also run non-administrator, and certain things just don't work right, because Microsoft wrote them that way. The "access denied" box is very familiar -- just like when you try to open the system time. - mako 05:21, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Promote software?

What is the best way I can promote my software (get lots of users)? I've tried submitting it to Softpedia and MajorGeeks but that doesn't increase downloads much (except when there are updates). It's hosted on SourceForge, if that helps. Any ideas? --wj32 ^t/c 09:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Having them on good-name download sites provides the potential user with good comparisons between similar products. BUT you must have your own site as well. A simple blog or free web page is enough. Check the developers' sites for some other programs from Majorgeeks. These sites give a description of the program, often include a change-log of updates and fixes, and form the user manual and FAQ for the program. On some, the developer actually personally provides tech support for individual queries. Such a page increases the search engine hits that mention your product (look into how to tag the page for more hits). You can also ask users to put a mention of your product on their blog or site. And you can mention your product on forums about related topics (but do not spam them).KoolerStill (talk) 13:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I use software having websites with nice URLs and easily available license information. Many users prefer to use packages from their own GNU/Linux distribution, adding it to some popular ones should help. MTM (talk) 19:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Restricting access to all but 2 websites

I would like to know if it's possible to set Internet Explorer (I don't know which version, I havent't seen the computer yet. I do now it comes with Windows XP SP3) to prevent access to all but Mozilla Firefox's and Ubuntu Linux's website. I need to access these two websites in order to download a live distro.

On a sidenote, as a user without administrator priviledges in Microsoft Windows XP SP3, am I allowed to download files? I know I won't be allowed to execute them, but what about downloading? -- 219.101.253.98 (talk) 09:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't specifically help with XP, but this is what I did using vista. it might work in XP.

I set up my kids Firefox running on vista so it only goes to a few sites. Go to windows user accounts, click on manage another account, choose the account you want to set the restrictions on(in this case my kids account), then click on 'set up parental controls'. Then click on 'Windows web filter', then click 'edit the allow and block' list. Now you can put in only the sites that you want, remembering to put /* at the end of the address, for example 'www.bbc.co.uk/*' will allow access to all of the bbc, but nothing else. It doesn't matter if my kids use firefox, or explorer, or somehow get hold of another browser, they can not get to any other sites other than those on the list. Well, they've not figured out a way so far.121.220.220.12 (talk) 11:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Why would you want to block all but two websites?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 01:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It's what people call a "practical joke". -- Hoary (talk) 01:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! I thing this feature can only be found on Windows Vista, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

And no, it's not a practical joke, I just don't want to run the risk of running into malware and such things. Call it paranoia, if you will, but never a practical joke. I am, after all, the only person who uses this computer anyway... -- 219.101.253.98 (talk) 02:17, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

problem in c++ program

Hey! can someone please sort out the problem with this program?? Thanks in advance.--59.103.12.232 (talk) 10:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>

using namespace std;

void main()
{
    int s, r, n, c;
    
    for (s = 20, r = 1; r <= 4; r++, s--)
    {
        cout << setw(s);

        for(n = 4; n <= c; n--)
        {
            cout << "x";

            for (c = 1; c <= r; c++)
                cout << "y";
        }
    }
}

You could start by initializing the variable c to something before using it. Bendono (talk) 11:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

(Formatted the code). --wj32 ^t/c 11:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Also in the second for loop... You are checking for n to be less than another value. Then, you decrement n. For the loop to start, n must be smaller than c. Then, you make n even smaller. It will be difficult for this loop to ever run to completion. It is more likely that n will get smaller and smaller and smaller until the int wraps. -- kainaw™ 11:36, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

The program is ill-formed because main does not return int. What was the program supposed to do? decltype (talk) 07:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

My website

This is my website. I would like to know how to add meta tags to it so that i can optimize it for search. [Link to website] Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Duality32 (talk • contribs) 14:16, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, editing the RefDesk talk header is not the answer. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Nor is using your talk page for spam--Jac16888^Talk 14:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at our article about meta tags. See if that helps at all. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Most crawlers do little with meta tags as far as I can see, mainly because user-reported data about what your website contains is not usually accurate. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 12:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Yea, Meta tags are sort of an obsolete technology. Great in 1998. But now search engines pretty much ignore them and try to base their listings on the pages' content. APL (talk) 19:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Downloading embedded videos

Is there any way to download this? I don't want to download this specific video but I was wondering if it is possible to download this type of media? Thanks! --217.227.68.197 (talk) 15:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Using Real Player you can download videos from websites easily. But be sure to check the copyrights of the website you are downloading from. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  16:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

For some reason that doesn't seem to be working...--217.227.68.197 (talk) 17:05, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

After installing it you have to restart your internet broser. Once that has been completed load the video, move your mouse over it and near the top (top right corner) of the video you will see a real player toolbar popup. clicking that will allow you to download that video. You can also just right-click on that video and choose 'Download this video to RealPlayer" at the bottom of the list. Now if it matters i am using winXP w/ Firefox. If you are using something different please let us know.– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  17:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm using Vista and I have now tried with Google Chrome, IE 7 and Firefox but to no avail. I get the realplayer toolbar and I can click it and it loads and then says that it's not possible! Thanks for your help, though! --217.227.68.197 (talk) 18:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Try it on YouTube(or another website that shows videos) , If it works then we know that the website you are trying must have protections on it. If it does not work maybe you downloaded the one for windows XP.– Elliott(Talk|Cont)  18:15, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It has worked! Thanks! Is the quality always quite bad? --217.227.68.197 (talk) 18:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I dont know about the quality but i think there might be an option in Realplayer to change that... – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  19:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Flash Videos in Ubuntu 9.04

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 and i am having a problem watching flash videos full screen. They just seem really jumpy and laggy. This was not happening in 8.10. Initially i just thought it was a problem with the upgrade so i wiped my hard drive and did a fresh install of 9.04. I am still having that problem. This is on a Dell latitude D610. I have noticed this problem on Hulu, YouTube, And Adult Swim, I have not tried anywhere else. Any help would be greatly appreciated. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  17:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Does this ubuntu bug posting help at all? There are several solutions tried in it. -- JSBillings 21:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thank you – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  04:17, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

TI 89 Titanium list sorting

Are there any list-sorting routines built into the TI 89 Titanium that can be used in functions, not just in programs? --Lucas Brown 42 (talk) 17:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

May 5

Need help with ASP

Hi All,

I working on getting a basic email sent from a website hosted at volusion.com.

They don't provide access to CDO, and but they did give an alternate solution: an 'smtp' class of their own. Am getting an error tho, but their support isnt very good so I'm trying here.:

[13]

The what i have so far (the class is from volusion.com):

<%
Class vsmtp
	Public VsmtpKey
	Public EmailSubject
	Public EmailFrom
	Public EmailTo
	Public TextBody
	Public HTMLBody
	Private Attachment
	Private AttachmentFolder
	Public Sub AddAttachment(ByRef FilePath)
		If AttachmentFolder = "" Then
			AttachmentFolder = Server.MapPath("/v")
		End If
		If StrComp(Left(FilePath,Len(AttachmentFolder)),AttachmentFolder,vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
			FilePath = Replace(Mid(FilePath,Len(AttachmentFolder)-1),"\","/")
		End If
		If StrComp(Left(FilePath,3),"/v/",vbTextCompare) <> 0 Or InStr(FilePath,",") > 0 Then
			Err.Raise 512, "vsmtp.AddAttachment", "Invalid Attachment Path"
		End If
		If IsEmpty(Attachment) Then
			Attachment = FilePath
		Else
			Attachment = Attachment & "," & FilePath
		End If
	End Sub

	Public Sub Send()
		Dim HTTPRequest
		Set HTTPRequest = CreateObject("WinHTTP.WinHTTPRequest.5.1")
		HTTPRequest.Open "POST", "http://" & Request.ServerVariables("LOCAL_ADDR") & "/vsmtp.asp", False
		HTTPRequest.SetRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
		HTTPRequest.SetRequestHeader "Host", Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME")
		HTTPRequest.Send _
			"VsmtpKey=" & Server.URLEncode(VsmtpKey) &_
			"&Subject=" & Server.URLEncode(EmailSubject) &_
			"&FromEmailAddress=" & Server.URLEncode(EmailFrom) &_
			"&ToEmailAddress=" & Server.URLEncode(EmailTo) &_
			"&Body_HTML=" & Server.URLEncode(HTMLBody) &_
			"&Body_TextOnly=" & Server.URLEncode(TextBody) &_
			"&Attachment_CSV=" & Server.URLEncode(Attachment)
		If HTTPRequest.ResponseText <> "True" Then
			Set HTTPRequest = Nothing
			Err.Raise 8, "vsmtp.Send", "Unable to send email. Check logs for details."
		End If
		Set HTTPRequest = Nothing
	End Sub
End Class
%>

<%
Set m = new vsmtp
m.VsmtpKey = "my long key here"
m.EmailSubject = "Test Subject"
m.EmailFrom = "test@testdomain.com"
m.EmailTo = "test@testdomain.com"
m.TextBody = "Hello World!"
m.HTMLBody = "Hello World"
m.Send()
Set m = nothing
%>

note: When I comment out m.Send() I get no errors, so i'm guessing thats where the problem is. Also Im new to asp, how can I get the error description to show?

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 00:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I am no expert in VBScript, but it looks to me that the volusion supplied class is attempting to use an uninitialized variable Attachment. Try adding the following to the top of the following to the top of the Send method.

		If IsEmpty(Attachment) Then
			Attachment = ""
		End If

If Attachment is undefined, it might be invalidating the expression in ther HTTPRequest.Send statement. If that doesn't help, try adding ... & " " & Err.Description) to the end of the Err.Raise statement, which might give you a more informative error message. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:21, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Thanks for the reply, tried it, didn't work and I found the reason: Turns out the '(serverip)/vsmtp.asp' does not exist. It took me a long while to locate the log files. Thanks any ways! PrinzPH (talk) 18:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

An easy and cheap (preferably free) way to read & convert JPEG 2000 files to regular JPG?

What I would like to do here is get scans from the Internet Archive which are in JPEG 2000 format, convert them to JPG, and upload them to Commons. The Archive used to provide book downloads in JPG, but converted over to JPEG 2000 after a certain date, so more recent scans no longer have the option to be downloaded in JPG format. Thanks. --BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 05:13, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I guess I'm not really offering a suggestion for software or a method to do this conversion, but if you're going to do this you might consider converting the images to PNG rather than JPEG, so that you aren't compounding compression artifacts. —Bkell (talk) 07:17, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Adobe Photoshop will do the job. It's almost free, at the low price of $999. You can download a 30-day trial, though. Plus, Photoshop supports automated conversions of groups of files, if you're dealing with a sizable collection.--67.174.107.10 (talk) 07:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Read [14]. There are a few free options that might work for you. --Stefan ^talk 09:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

GIMP has a JPEG2000 plugin to open those files and it is easy to save them as JPG once they are open. -- kainaw™ 14:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

ImageMagick is good for scripting or converting large numbers of files. I think it supports JPG2000. APL (talk) 15:12, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

If you want to do batch conversin if images, IrfanView is a good choce. I'll say it's easier to use than all the above programs. F (talk) 07:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the recs. In looking at the list of software that works with the file format I was unsure of which ones to try out, so I wanted to get people's input. Will report how it goes if I have issues. --BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 17:26, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Google and Wordpress

I've recently started a blog with the help of Google's free blog service, and it seems that Google doesn't support Wordpress.Is it possible to install Wordpress for blogs in Google? Please help. 117.194.231.202 (talk) 07:46, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

In case it helps, I'm talking about something like this http://aanushaghosh.blogspot.com/ blog. 117.194.229.230 (talk) 06:00, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

No - if you want a Wordpress blog, just sign up at Wordpress.com — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 07:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Bitrate vs Quality

I have a video in VOB format with:

Variable Bit Rate Video Stream (12.8 Mbps, 9800 kbps nominal)
Constant Bit Rate Audio Stream (448 kbps)

I would like to convert this video to MP4 iPod format, but am unsure what bitrates to use so as to get the best quality. Video quality must not be so low as to cause noticeable artifacts in the video, and Audio quality must not be so low as to cause random static or buzzing in the audio stream. I'm using SUPER to convert the videos and it would be a LONG conversion process. Numbers are good. Thanks in advance.  Buffered Input Output 12:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

creating lists in Excel

I am trying to use Excel to create picking slips for product in a storage facility. Is there some version of the LOOKUP function (or other worksheet function) that will return more than a single value for the cell being looked up? I would especially like to be able to control the number of values returned.
On one sheet, let's say I have a whole bunch of different items (apples, lemons, pears, etc) in a column with the column next to it listing the slots where each lot can be found. Maybe there are dozens of fruits, with dozens of lots apiece. On a second sheet, I'd like a way of saying "apples, 3" and having it return the first three values for apples found on the first sheet. The MATCH and LOOKUP functions can return the first value, but nothing else. Is this possible? I have Excel 2007. Matt Deres (talk) 13:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at using a Pivot-table = you should be able to place the items in to show each of the available items and have a drop-down list to choose the item you're interested in. It may mean reorganising the data in the background depending on how 'table' like the information you have is. Worth a look though as pivot-tables are extremely flexible and very useful in many situations (once mastered). ny156uk (talk) 15:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Pivot tables seem to provide me with what I want, but not the way that I want it. :) For one thing, there seems to be a lot of extraneous stuff that gets added to the screen that I don't need. Also, it seems difficult to get the table to work fluidly; I don't want to have to redo the query every time circumstances change. With something like the LOOKUP function, I can easily use references to other cells to semi-automate queries and make the sheet more user-friendly for people who don't like Excel (!). Any other suggestions? Matt Deres (talk) 16:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I've managed to do at least some of what you want by using a mixture of MATCH, INDEX and OFFSET and some "helper" columns. If your fruits are in a named range called FruitList and "Apples" (or whatever) is in A2, then =MATCH(A2,FruitList,0) in B2 gives the position of Apples in the list. Then in C2 put =MATCH(A2,OFFSET(FruitList,B2,0),0), which means "look for Apples, starting after the previous one you found"), and in D2 =MATCH(A2,OFFSET(FruitList,B2+C2,0),0). Then if the slots are in SlotList you can use the formulas: =INDEX(SlotList,B2), =INDEX(SlotList,B2+C2) and =INDEX(SlotList,B2+C2+D2) to get the names of the slots. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Game too slow

I just bought a new game, GTA IV, on my laptop, Windows Vista platform. It has a 1 GB ram and a built in NVIDIA GeForce card. Yet it was unable to play this game. The game plays in still images, very slow....the configuration is not enough. So what are my options ? Is it possible to make the game play better by downloading (free) game accelerators ? Will it help if i upgrade my RAM ? Is it possible to put a new graphics card in a laptop ? What do i do to make this and other new games play ? Rkr1991 (talk) 14:01, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

"Game accelerators" are fake. I don't have this game on my PC, but the Grand Theft Auto IV article has a "System Requirements" matrix that shows that 1GB ram is a minimum requirement, which doesn't bode well. You should compare the model of your GeForce card with the "minimum" and "recommended" card types - maybe your GeForce card is particularly old (believable since laptop GeForce chips are usually pretty weak). You need to make sure you have the very latest GeForce driver (use the nvidia website). If that doesn't work, you may need a beefier setup with more RAM and a better graphics card. Tempshill (talk) 14:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I got an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M graphics card. Is it too old ? So what do i do know ? Is it possible to download any free update for this which would make it work ? And first of all can a new graphics card be inserted into a laptop ? Will increasing ram speed halp ?Rkr1991 (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

The 7150s are not high-performance cards, and I think the "Go" cards are even worse (to conserve energy.) They also came out mid-2007. I hate to break it to you, but what you've got is a low-end video card that came out nearly two years ago. I don't think you're going to be able to play GTA4 with this machine. GTA4 requires a pretty high-performance system. Sorry. APL (talk) 15:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried to play the game on minimum settings? Lots of games have lower resolutions/draw distances/less enemies/whatever so that you can play them on lesser machines more smoothly - lots of people seem to leave it on standard and put up with jerky-playing but it's better (in my eyes) to play at worse-quality smoother. Anyhoo it may be worth a try as often the resolution can be reduced to a smoother-running level. ny156uk (talk) 15:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that GTA IV's PC version is well-known for having various problems and glitches, including serious framerate problems. I believe Rockstar has released a number of patches for the game, but I'm not sure how well they address these issues. In any case, as the game is known to be pretty buggy, the problem might not get solved by simply buying a new graphics card. (Or, you know, it might. But you might want to look at what kind of results others have reported before you make your purchase...) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 23:34, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I used Windows Vista with 1 GB of RAM and while I kind of like Vista it seems to me that 1 GB of RAM is not enough for anything beyond basic use. Everything runs great when I am just using Firefox and such, but when I try to use Photoshop it all grinds to unusable slowness. Perhaps my problem is something else and not that Vista is a major memory hog, but my understanding is that it is. My current working theory is that 1 GB of RAM is not enough to run anything serious under Vista. Pfly (talk) 08:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Vista is widely regarded as Microsoft's devious way of getting people to shell out for XP.

I don't know about your part of the world. In mine (Tokyo), the computer "makers" (companies that sell computers made for them in China, Taiwan, etc) all dutifully put in their catalogues the Japanese-language equivalent of "[name of company] recommends Windows Vista [particular version]"; however, they say less conspicuously but still clearly that the products are also available with XP. Meanwhile, the retailers make it very clear that XP is an option. This seems to be a big sales point.

NB I have no personal preference here. Actually I've used Vista a lot more than I've used XP, though I've only used Vista on spanking new, expensive machines belonging to others. I only retain a single Windows machine, on which I am typing this very message, using K-Meleon contentedly running under Windows 2000 on a nine (?) -year-old computer with 192MB of RAM. (Not that I'd dream of touting this as a games computer.)

So you may wish to consider "downgrading" to XP (or even 2000), if you can't add more RAM (or even if you can). -- Hoary (talk) 08:47, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I dispute most of what Hoary wrote. Anyway, Vista doesn't have anything to do with the problems the OP is experiencing. He needs to change his settings to minimum possible graphics options and see if that works. If not, his graphics chipset is probably insufficient, and his RAM is, too. Tempshill (talk) 15:30, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I have GTA4 for PC myself. I think the short answer here is that the laptop in question is well below the minimum specification for playing the game, and even somebody with the minimum specification will probably still find the performance of the game to be unacceptably bad. The game performance is more dependent on CPU and graphics than RAM though. Rjwilmsi 18:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

GTA IV is a very high requirement game on the PC and even with (for example) a GTX 200 series GPU, a 2.5+Ghz quad core processor and 4GB of RAM, you still can't play the game on the highest settings. With a similar setup to what I listed, I need to keep the settings on medium or I get a lot of stuttering and dropped frames. On top of that, I would reccomend a MINIMUM of a 512MB GPU with 1GB or more being prefereable because this particular game stores a lot of texture data. A fast and multicore processor will also help. If you have a modern desktop, I'd reccomend installing it on that or seeing what happens when you turn down all settings to minimum. Downgrading to XP will not help in this case. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 18:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Digital audio player with resume-from-playlist function

moved from WP:RD/S

I am looking for a digital audio player with a function that allows me to resume from playlists. Let me explain: I have a playlist 1 of, say, 10 tracks. I listen to it for awhile and get to the middle of track 3. I turn off the player, turn it on a while later, and would like it to resume where I left off (in the middle of track 3), and continue to track 4 of the same playlist when track 3 is done. I listen for a bit longer, get to the middle of track 5. I stop playing, and load up playlist 2, composed of, say, 8 tracks. I start listening to playlist 2, stopping when I get to 20s into track 6 (of playlist 2). I stop, and switch again to playlist 1 - at which point I would like it to resume from where I left off on playlist 1, namely the middle of track 5 (of playlist 1). In other words, I would like a player which not only stores the location where I last stopped, both when I turn it off, and when I switch playlist (where it should store my location within a track and the track's position within a playlist). Are there any players which do this? Thanks in advance! — QuantumEleven 15:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

This for sure belongs at the Computing Reference desk. Looie496 (talk) 16:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with other devices (read: Apple fanboy), but I know in iTunes there is a setting to set songs to play where you left off. There may even be an option to set a whole playlist to act like that and have that transfer over to a newer iPod that would support it. -- MacAddct1984 ^{(talk &#149; contribs)} 16:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Comparing two CPUs

Lets say I have one CPU that has a clock rate of 2 GHz and 4 cores. I have another CPU which has a clock rate of 1 GHz but 8 cores. Other than that all specs are the same.

2*4 == 1*8

So which one is faster? Assuming their prices are the same, which one should you buy?

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.234.68 (talk) 18:59, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Not information to compare the two. See Megahertz myth. Taggart.BBS (talk) 19:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

If the two CPUs are exactly the same, except for the fact that one has twice the number of cores, but runs at half the speed, and other components (particularly things like the Northbridge also perform the same in both configurations, then the theoretical speed would be the same

That said, I can't think of any range of CPUs which have variants with double the cores at half the speed - though you could perhaps Underclock a multi-core CPU so you could end up with this situation.

Its difficult to write software that works optimally on multi-core CPUs - with more cores, you're less likely to use all of the CPU's power - so if there was a real world choice between the two for typical home/office use (e.g. Web browsing, office apps, games, etc.) 4 Cores at 2Ghz would likely be faster than 8 cores at 1Ghz. Cheers, davidprior ^t/_c 20:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Amdahl's law says that N processors each running at speed M give you less performance than one processor running at speed NxM. So in your example, 4 core at 2GHz wins over 8 core at 1GHz - no matter what. Worse still - many programs are still not written to make use of more than one or two cores - so unless you're running lots of programs in parallel, it's rare indeed for more than a few cores to be doing much work. With more cores you may also get contention for resources - so even in programs that are designed to work with more cores - they may run faster on fewer. But it's a deep and tricky subject...you can almost certainly find corner cases where this is not the case. SteveBaker (talk) 03:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

List of different processors and their speeds or ages

I'm considering buying a secondhand computer from a shop that has several different models for sale. Since its very cheap to buy extra memory from eBay, I want to buy the computer with the fastest or most recent CPU. I have read the article Megahertz myth. Is there a list to be had anywhere that orders the ages, speeds, or desirabilities of CPUs over the past few years please? I want to be able to quickly glance at the list while in the shop and use it to select the computer with the best CPU. 89.241.158.255 (talk) 20:02, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Benchmark (computing)#External links includes CPU benchmark database which seems to have most modern CPUs in it - as for ages / release dates, the pages within Category:Lists of microprocessors would be a good place to start. Cheers, davidprior ^t/_c 20:54, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It depends on the kinds of software you're going to run - but the speed of your memory and the memory bus is typically the bottleneck...so pay attention to motherboard speeds and the speed of the RAM you add.

I have some other advice - which is: Don't buy the latest technology. Buy something a little older that's a LOT cheaper. Counter-intuitively, this gets you a faster computer...bear with me!

If you have a fixed amount of money to spend on computer technology each year - your computer will be faster (on average) if you buy cheaper, slightly outdated, compute power and replace it more frequently - versus buying the very latest, greatest technology, but spending so much that you have to keep it longer before upgrading again. I studied this rather carefully as a work assignment about 5 years ago and concluded that buying year-old technology would save you about 60% of the cost and therefore allow you to upgrade almost three times as frequently - resulting (back then) in having a computer that's about 40% faster on average. However this depends on the rate of progress of the technology and the rate of price drop for older technology and all of that is pretty variable - so you'll have to make your own call on that one. SteveBaker (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Is there a list anywhere that ranks the desirability of common older models of computers sold say from 2003 to 2006 please? 78.145.24.191 (talk) 12:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

"Models of computers", no, because there are too many manufacturers and configurations to make a chart that is possible to understand; but this chart at Tom's Hardware is a processor ranking from 2004 that tested the CPUs' speed at compressing files with WinRAR. Over to the right there's a 2006 chart and a 2007 chart, and under each one there are many benchmarks other than WinRAR that you can examine. By the way, a tip: Ask new questions at the bottom of the page rather than appending a question here - the readership of answerers is better at the bottom of the page. Tempshill (talk) 20:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

CMOS AND gate

When constructing an AND gate using CMOS logic, why can't one simply reverse Vss and Vdd instead of combining NAND and an inverter? 173.73.140.91 (talk) 21:13, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

See the MOSFET article, as it has a fairly good description of FET operation. The NAND circuit consists of a combination of p-channel and n-channel FETs. The p-channel FETs (the ones with the small circle) are connected with the drain towards Vdd (+voltage) and the n-channel FETs are connected with the source towards Vss (-Voltage). What is not apparent is that there is also a substrate connection which is connected to either Vdd (for p-channel FETs) or Vss (for n-channel FETs). The diagrams on this web page (about half way down) shows these connections more clearly. To form a channel in a p-channel FET, a negative gate-to-source (gate-to-substrate) voltage must be applied. Similarly, to form a channel in a n-channel FET, a positive gate-to-drain (gate-to-substrate) voltage must be applied. If the Vss and Vdd voltages were swapped, neither of these conditions would occur and no active channels would form. The result (I believe) would be that the output would be undriven. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

May 6

Computer programming comics

I'm looking for some comics based on computer programming (and I'm rather surprised at the sparsity of them on XKCD). Any references to computer programming comics (even just one comic in a collection) would be appreciated. -- kainaw™ 03:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's a few from Dilbert: http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/11/28/dilbert-on-extreme-and-agile-programming/ http://www.s-anand.net/dilbert.html#20050823 http://www.s-anand.net/dilbert.html#20050824 http://www.s-anand.net/dilbert.html#20051116 — Matt Eason ^{(Talk &#149; Contribs)} 12:19, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

There were also lots of programming comics and longer storylines in Userfriendly, too many to list them all here. One more thing that instantly came to mind are the old Topolino comics (the mass-produced Italian Disney comics), especially those from the late 60s/early 70s. Depictions of computers, programming and the effects of changing programs were as stupid and unrealistic as you can probably imagine in early 70s kids' stories, but there was the occasional gem. In one memorable story, Scrooge McDuck has bought a new computer that nobody understands how to program, then they discover by accident that a savage from Polynesia is the only person in the world who can talk to the computer. The savage has an extremely long, scruffy beard and talks in a peculiar dialect that consists entirely of phrases like "grrrk awk sed". I don't know if it was intentional (I have no idea how probable it is that mid-70s Italian comics artists would even have heard of Unix), but it always makes me think of Richard Stallman. If you want, I can try and dig up the story - this would take a couple of days, though, as I have several hundreds of these comics to dig through :P -- Ferkelparade π 12:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Abstruse Goose often has computer programming comics, along with science & math ones. -- MacAddct1984 ^{(talk &#149; contribs)} 01:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I had created Category:Workplace webcomics long back, unfortunately it has not grown enough to have a sub-cat for Computing webcomics. What is XKCD? Jay (talk) 08:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

XKCD F (talk) 10:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added these to my list of searches. I am trying to build a database of them so when it is relevant, I can locate a comic on a specific computer topic. Of course, there are some topics that I'm sure won't be covered. How much humor can you extract from the ternary operator? -- kainaw™ 19:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

MySpace

For anyone who knows a lot about MySpace. I just created a MySpace account but I meant to create it as a musician account. First, is it possible to change the account to a musician account? Second, if I cancel (close) an account, can another one be opened with the same name? Tezkag72 (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about MySpace, but I really doubt you can create a new account with the exact same name if the names are limited (that is, if you can't make one with the same name right at this moment with the other one). It would not be very intelligent to set up a system where once someone retired a name, it could be created again (it would create all sorts of impersonation problems). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:21, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

IP slash notation

Hello, I am studying for a networking course, and I am trying to familiarize myself with IP slash notation. The instructor expects us to interpret an IP address and its slash notation (x.x.x.x/x) to provide the IP address range, the network address, the subnet mask, and the broadcast address. I tried to Google for specific guides but cannot seem to find any results. Can it be explained more thoroughly here or a link provided to elsewhere? For example, with 216.9.137.100/24, how do I find out that 1-254 are usable addresses, that the network address is 216.9.137.0, that the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, and that the broadcast address is 255.255.255.255? 98.228.34.62 (talk) 03:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a good reference. -- kainaw™ 03:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

See also CIDR notation. --Spoon! (talk) 07:48, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The WP CIDR notation article isn't very accessible. Here's my quick attempt at an explanation (please point out if I'm wrong).

An IP (IPv4 at least) is 32 bits, some of which will be the "network" part and some of which will be the "host" part. So 192.168.1.1 has a network part (192.168.*.*) and a host part (*.*.1.1). In the old days, we knew which part was host and which part was network because they were predefined (Class networking). So you had Class A, Class B, and Class C addresses. The "slash", or CIDR notation, is a better way of defining which part is network and which part is host. So, whatever number's behind the slash (/24, /16, /28, whatever), that's how many bits of the IP are part of the network. Whatever is left is part of the host.

Keep in mind that an IP address like 192.168.1.1 is written in decimal octets. That same address could also be written 11000000 10101000 00000001 00000001 (or 3,232,235,777 (decimal), or C0A80101 (hex)). If you've got 192.168.0.0/24, then the first 24 of those bits will be the network, and the next 8 will be the host.

That tcipguide is good. Shadowjams (talk) 02:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

PostgreSQL: Adding columns to a view that other views depend on

I have a view in my PostgreSQL database that I need to add a column to. Other views are based on this view. PostgreSQL refuses to create-or-replace the old view with the new one; it also won't drop the old view and create the new one, even in the same transaction block. Is there any way to automate one of the following approaches, or any other approach that I haven't thought of?

1. Find and drop the dependent views, but keep their definitions stored in the main database, and add them back once the view update is done.
2. Create a copy of the view being updated, perform the update, change all references to the original to point to the copy, delete the original, and rename the copy to the original name.

NeonMerlin 08:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You cannot automate it in Postgres, but you can dump the database, run a search/replace (regex would be better) on the text file, and restore the database. I've done that many times when the work required was too difficult inside the database itself. As a benefit, you can restore on a different machine first to ensure it works. -- kainaw™ 17:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

PC to XBOX

Is it possible to convert a PC game to an XBOX 360 compatible one ? What software do i need to use ?Rkr1991 (talk) 12:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

No. APL (talk) 13:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

In practical terms, APL is right, of course - there's no simple converter you can use to play PC games on the XBOX (unless you count installing linux on your XBOX and then trying to run your PC games in Wine). But it is possible - it happens all the time when games developed for the PC are ported to the XBOX. You'd need the complete source code of the game, the XBOX development tools and a pretty good idea of what you were doing programming-wise, of course -- Ferkelparade π 14:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

It might also be worth pointing out that you are entering a legally gray area here. Although you technically own the game, I seriously doubt that it would be legal to port it to another platform unless it is open-source or if you have permission from the game developer Dougofborg^(talk) 14:20, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You also need 8 to 10 months with two coders, some art, and some producer-type work. Tempshill (talk) 16:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ferkelparade's Wine solution would not work. Wine does not emulate the CPU. Pre-existing Windows programs are all compiled to work on x86 CPUs, and would therefore not run on the 360's PowerPC chip. APL (talk) 17:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

If you have to ask, you won't be able to do it. --140.247.4.172 (talk) 15:41, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok so that's something for all you software geeks out there.... See of you can code a software which does...Rkr1991 (talk) 15:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Nope. Like every other console, the Xbox is a closed platform that is controlled by the console manufacturer (Microsoft, in this case). The only way to port a PC game to the Xbox without getting a title ID (basically, without cooperation from Microsoft) would be to somehow write a PC emulator in XNA Game Studio and then come up with a way to move the PC data over to the Xbox in some sneaky manner. It shall not happen. Tempshill (talk) 16:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Which free GTD tool on windows would you recommend?

For people who are chaotic, tools for organizing things would be of immense help. A software that uses David Allen's principals would be an ideal one. I cannot evaluate which of the http://www.abstractspoon.com/tdl_resources.html or http://www.fusiondesk.com/products/starter.html or http://www.mylifeorganized.net/downloads/index.htm is good since iam too chaotic. Has anybody tried any of these?. If you have other recommendation, I would be more than happy to hear that too. 131.220.46.26 (talk) 14:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I always kept a "todo.xls" file around and used Microsoft Excel. Tempshill (talk) 16:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a lot of discussion of such tools at the Lifehacker blog; including topics such as which tool is best for specific tasks. --LarryMac | Talk 17:16, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

3 year old Windows XP computer

has an annoying habit of switching itself on in the middle of the night, when nobody is using it. Sometimes this happens during the day as well. Am I doing something to cause this? When I shut it down I usually use the Hibernate command. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.217.250 (talk) 17:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Try looking in your BIOS screens and see if the BIOS has been set up to start your computer at a particular time every day. Tempshill (talk) 17:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I knew someone with a computer that would spontaneously turn itself on. If would also sometimes turn itself off, or refuse to turn on when the power button was pressed. Our theory was that it was a dodgy connection in the power switch. Could it be the same issue with yours? --Tango (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

unplug it from the mains when not in use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 20:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Check the Wake on LAN settings on the card as I believe this is what is causing it to turn back on. You can find these settings by going to Device Manager and selecting Properties and then the advanced tab. WoL can either be activated via a "Magic Packet" or more simply by the network card receiving traffic or simply having the network connection plugged in, one of those last two is probably what is happening in your case (the router/switch is forwarding packets to it which in turn wakes the machine for example). Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 03:15, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Don't use hibernate; use shutdown instead. Astronaut (talk) 13:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

That shouldn't be causing the issue, should it? Technically when you hibernate, the RAM state is saved and then the computer shuts itself off. Unlike the Standby mode, there is no difference in state between a computer that's been shut down and a computer that's been hibernated. I am betting ZX81 is correct here. Tempshill (talk) 20:46, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Setting up Belkin G (Wireless router) with a Edimax AR-7084gA modem-router

ill preface this with...I'm a technical person - I understand computers and have had no trouble in the past setting up networks, nor adding a router to an existing network (though to be fair it was wireless-to-wireless). Anyhoo i've tried about a million times now to get these two devices to share my ADSL connection - I want the modem to do its job and be a modem and I want the Belkin G to be a router and let my laptop connect to the net wirelessly. I've used the install cds, i've tried configuring in the router and the modem and so far i've got nowhere. Does anybody have idea of what you need to do to get a wired-router-modem to work with a wireless-router that hasn't got a modem. I've tried putting in the wireless router to A) use a dynamic connection B) use a PPPoA connection with same details as modem (i.e. username password etc.) and C) I've tried setting the router up as a 'wireless access point' under an IP within the main modem's DHCP range (is that right?). Any help would be hugely appreciated - at the moment my laptop is tethered to the world by wires (admittedly a very long network cable). ny156uk (talk) 20:40, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Scratch that i've figured it out. ny156uk (talk) 20:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

May 7

DOS

1. If Windows 2000, XP, and Vista had DOS support, would DosBox exist?

2. Why did they even remove the DOS support from those operating systems?

3. Does Microsoft know about DosBox?

143.238.237.25 (talk) 01:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

MS-DOS is only 16-bit and whilst the Windows 9x tree could use 32-bit file access, it was still running on a 16-bit operating system. To be able to run a true 32-bit (or higher) operating system (Windows 2000, XP, Vista) removing DOS was the only logical option. ZX81 ^talk 03:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Of course Microsoft knows about DOSBox. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 07:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

They didn't just remove DOS from Windows, they started from scratch with a completely new operating system, like Apple did going from OS 9 to OS X. Windows 2000/XP/Vista (32-bit) do have some DOS support—they recognize MS-DOS executables and fire up an emulation environment, though it's pretty limited (unlikely to work with any graphical games). If you want DOS support in the sense of booting your whole system into DOS, you could probably still do it if you wanted to, but do you really want to? People aren't writing DOS drivers for new hardware any more. At the very least your sound card wouldn't work. I don't know if modern hard drives would work, so you might end up running off of floppies, if you even still have a floppy drive. DOSBox is better. Microsoft could write an emulator to compete with DOSBox, but I don't think there'd be any money in that. -- BenRG (talk) 22:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

See Virtual DOS machine (ntvdm) and Windows on Windows. These are two programs already used in Windows to emulate DOS and provide backward compatability.--24.9.71.198 (talk) 22:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

MP3

Are there any free programs that can convert MP3 to MIDI? If so, could you please direct me to one? 143.238.237.25 (talk) 02:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This is like creating a vector image from a photograph, i.e. very difficult. The opposite (MIDI->MP3 or vector image->bitmap) is much easier. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 07:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Dual-booting Win7/WinXP help

I had a dual-boot system running the Windows 7 RC, and Windows XP Home. I deleted the Windows 7 partition, and resized the main one back to take up the entire HDD. Now, when I turn my computer on, it still comes up with the dual-boot menu, and selecting Windows 7 results in an error message. How do I get rid of the dual-boot menu? 144.138.21.41 (talk) 07:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

First of all it's wise to make a backup just in case, but if you have an XP CD (not a recovery CD) you can boot from that and select "repair using recovery console". When at the prompt simply type the following three commands without the commas pressing enter after each: fixmbr, fixboot, exit (and the machine will reboot after that last one). You SHOULD find the XP bootloader has been restored and your machine starts again without the Windows 7 bootloader/menu. As mentioned above though, please take a backup first! If you have a "Recovery CD" this won't work and you won't have these options - Those CDs are destructive created by the system manufacturers which will wipe the entire harddrive and put it back as when you first received the machine (losing all your files and programs). ZX81 ^talk 12:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I have a recovery CD, but it seemed to work anyway (strange). Thanks for that! But out of curiosity, is there a way to do it without the CD? Thanks!144.138.21.235 (talk) 21:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Vista, Core 2 Duo and 64-bit MSIs

Windows Vista Home Premium correctly identifies my dual-boot ThinkPad T61's CPU as an Intel T7300 Core 2 Duo, and the 64-bit version of Kubuntu 8.04 works fine on it. However, when I downloaded the 7Zip MSI packages, Windows told me of both the x64 and IA-64 versions, "This installation package is not supported by this processor type. Contact your product vendor." I ended up using the 32-bit version. Is this a bug in the MSIs or in Vista? NeonMerlin 07:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Are you using 64-bit Windows?F (talk) 10:34, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Following on from what the above wrote, it sounds like you're only using 32-bit Vista which is why the x64 installer won't work (Vista doesn't even come in an IA-64 versiom so there's no way that one will work). If you download the 32-bit MSI from the same page (second link down), does that work? To check which one you are using load "Control Panel" and select "System". On that screen that appears you'll see a part that says "System type" which will be either 32-bit or 64-bit. ZX81 ^talk 12:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

@

How to write @ on Mac? Kurtelacić (talk) 10:16, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

For which keyboard layout? File:Apple-wireless-keyboard-aluminum-2007.jpg clearly show the @ symbol as the shift character on the number 2 (ie. you hold down shift and press the "2"). Of course, it might be in a different location if your keyboard is not a US English layout. You user page suggests you might prefer to use a Croation/Slovene keyboard; File:Qwertz-si.svg is the layout for a Croation/Slovene PC keyboard, which suggests @ is accessed with Alt-GR + V. However, Apple keyboards don't have the AltGr key and instead use the Option key.

To summarise: If using a Mac US keyboard, use Shift + 2. If using a Mac Croatian keyboard, try Option + V.

Astronaut (talk) 13:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I took the liberty of fixing your qwertz link. --Sean 14:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

That's been helpful. Thanks! Kurtelacić (talk) 21:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

How about an ANSWER!!! [converting VOB to MP4]

(ec) Fine then. Let's try this again.

I have a video in VOB format with:

Variable Bit Rate Video Stream (12.8 Mbps, 9800 kbps nominal)
Constant Bit Rate Audio Stream (448 kbps)

I would like to convert this video to MP4 iPod format, but am unsure what bitrates to use so as to get the best quality. Video quality must not be so low as to cause noticeable artifacts in the video, and Audio quality must not be so low as to cause random static or buzzing in the audio stream. I'm using SUPER to convert the videos and it would be a LONG conversion process. Numbers are good. Thanks in advance.  Buffered Input Output 12:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

There is no need to be rude. How can you possibly demand an answer from volunteers? If no-one replies then it's safe to assume no-one knows. Try posting in a more relevant forum or newsgroup. It may well be that, someone who doesn't check the reference desk each day does know the answer, but will now choose not to answer you because of your rude demanding tone. - 194.63.116.72 (talk) 14:04, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

perhaps you missed my above question, not set to a rude tone at all  Buffered Input Output 16:04, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The instructions at the top of this page tell you it might take several days, you only waited two. Be patient! --Tango (talk) 16:43, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Use a quantizer, set to 4 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 14:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not possible to say a good bit rate without knowing the video resolution and the frame rate, but obviously the higher the bit rate the higher the video quality is going to be. Ultimately though you'll need to trial and error it until you find something that you're happy with. To speed things up don't encode the entire video, only encode 60 seconds of it until you find a quality you're happy with. I'm not sure it's any help, but on my 320x240 phone I create Xvid AVI files (not MP4) at the same resolution, but with a frame rate lowered to 12fps and a bitrate of 250kb/s (2 passes) and an audio rate of 112kb/s and I find this produces very watchable video with low filesizes, but your mileage may vary. ZX81 ^talk 18:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Open source Java programs

I am working on some Java development projects. To learn more advanced coding techniques, I like to look at source code from top quality open source projects to see how and why others do things in the way they do. For php, there are scores of open source projects. For Java, I'm especially interested in end-user applications and Java web start applications, but it would be helpful to look at any high quality Java code.

I already know about and am using GeoServer, along with NASA World Wind and GeoTools which are SDKs/libraries. Aside from these, I'm not so sure what some of the top quality open source projects are and would like some suggestions. --Aude (talk) 14:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The Eclipse IDE is developed in Java, so that might be a good one to look at. Rjwilmsi 18:35, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

And the Vuze/Azureus BitTorrent client is open-source Java (though it doesn't use the Java windowing toolkits). It may not be particularly well documented, and sometimes it seems the files are a mess, but they may be worth a look too. (Warning: There are lots of files in Vuze). Washii (talk) 23:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

LG KP500 Mobile Phone

I know it isn't really computing but its technology so I thought this was the most appropriate place to post. Anyway my sister gave me a LG KP500 'Cookie' mobile phone for my birthday that she got 2nd hand off ebay but I've no clue on it. I know I need a Sim card but how do I tell if it has been unlocked so it'll take a sim card from any phone company & how do I get it unlocked if it hasn't been? Also is it possible to get a pay as you go sim card (contract?) for it & how would I do that? I'll need to get a charger & download the instructions book from the net anyway (all I've got is the phone) but is there anything else I need? Thanks AllanHainey (talk) 15:46, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

One fairly sure way of knowing if it's unlocked would be to temporarily borrow two SIM cards (different operators) from friends and try them in the phone. If they both work it's probably not locked. ZX81 ^talk 18:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

In the UK at least, you will find that the mobile phone operators will happily sell you a pay as you go SIM card for a nominal charge of £1 or so. You should be able to order these off their websites. just borrow SIM cards from a couple of friends to see what networks your phone will work on. Rjwilmsi 18:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

New gTLD Applications

Where on ICANN's site can I find a list of all new gTLD applicants and which gTLD they're applying for for the current "New gTLD Application Proccess"? --Melab±1 ☎ 21:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Viruses

Hi, I have AVG and I have just had it scan for viruses, it found these...

\\?\globalroot\systemroot\system32\gxvxcmikhcfvqilgxmuuoxynpcuxiifvwvowu.dll

It identified this as a "Trojan horse clicker.YPK", I wasn't sure whether to get it to deal with it because its in system32 and I know thats important and so I didn't want to destroy the computer on a false positive.

C:\ProgramFiles\Internet Explorer\Iexplore.exe [3732]

This was also identified as a "Trojan horse clicker.YPK", isn't this just internet explorer? or should I move it to the virus vault?

More importantly when I search something in Google the links redirect to adverts about half the time, the problem is AVG can't find the virus doing this. I have googled this issue and many of the sites suggest the users running HijackThis to find problems, but ont get it to fix anything as it finds many problems, then posting what it finds on the forum and the users will tell the person what to do. The problem with these forums is they are very specific to each user. Can any one help with this?

Thanks very much for anyway in which you can help. 92.0.157.174 (talk) 21:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

You've made the right choice in asking for help. First off, don't panic; malware can and will be removed. :-)

As for the Trojan that AVG detected it is almost certainly not a false positive. In this case it appears to be a redirection Trojan.

As for the second detected threat; did you make a typo? Internet Explorer's executable is supposed to be "iexplore.exe" under "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"

HijackThis would probably help in removing this infection however it is not necessary right now. It can be run after the clean-up process to help to check that the malware on your computer has been removed.

To help prevent problems resulting from malware removal and to help prevent re-infection, please:

• Disable Windows System Restore
• Update Windows using Windows Update

Additionally, please provide the following details:

• Your version of Windows
• Your version of Internet Explorer
• The version of AVG you are using

--Initial Steps for Removal of Malware--

• Update and scan with whatever version of AVG you are using. Please post the log here but within collapse templates (Ideally you should register with Wikipedia so you can post the logs to your user talkpage). Please use {{collapsetop}} and {{collapsebottom}} at the top and bottom of any logs, respectively, for any logs you post throughout this malware removal process. This does not appear to be a major infection at the moment but that cannot be determined until you post your logs.
• Download, install, update, and scan with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Please post the log here afterwards.
• Download, install, update, and scan with SUPERAntiSpyware Please post the log here afterwards.
  • If necessary, (Both programs will alert if necessary) reboot to finish removal of malware

These are the initial steps for removal of malware. If necessary, I will list further steps to complete removal of malware.

--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 22:34, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Xp54321,

Thanks for your help, I have now made an account.

For the second threat it was a typo, its ‘’’C:\ProgramFiles\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe [3732]’’’.

I have now disabled Windows System Restore. On Windows Update is says I have no high priority updates so I haven’t updated; there were 3 software and 2 hardware updates but they were really random such as some tool for smart card vendors.

Version of Windows:Windows XP, Home Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 3

Version of Internet Explorer: Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11

Version of AVG: AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.5.325

My AVG is up-to-date, after I scan; how do I post the log? and what is the log?

Once again, thanks. Random_Elephant 23:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

VLC media player

For all its specialised features, why, why, WHY... does this program not have options that you can SAVE to get it to

• open as a maximised window by default
• repeat the file indefinitely by default

Some of the most commonly desired features are not even included (or if they are I can't find them). What the hell were the programmers thinking? I'm raging right now.--Yo Dawg! What's Going On Today? (talk) 22:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Why the FUCK is there no options menu? I can't control my anger here.--Yo Dawg! What's Going On Today? (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

OK fixed the latter problem it seems but I rage at annoying programs.--Yo Dawg! What's Going On Today? (talk) 22:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

So tell me, how do you get this program to run in a maximised window (NOT fullscreen) BY DEFAULT and get rid of that STUPID thing when you open a file and it displays the file's name at the bottom? I hate programmers sometimes, they're such idiots.--Yo Dawg! What's Going On Today? (talk) 22:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

How to Dual-Boot Windows XP and Windows 7

Hola! Well, I hesitate to use the Wikipedia reference desk for questions that I could usually google, but when it comes to things like partitioning hard drives and clean-installing operating systems, I get a little paranoid about losing some (all) of my data. So here's my question: I did, in fact, google how to dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP, and it told me to download "GParted Live". So I did that, and burned it to a CD, and booted it. And I tried resizing my existing partition so I'd have enough space to create a new one. But my existing partition had some kind of warning on it. I don't remember exactly what it said (and I don't feel like booting back into it to find out), but it was something like "The contents of this file couldn't be read, because of this some operations might not work" or something along those lines. And when I tried to resize the partition, I couldn't because it was already at its minimum size. So is there anything I can do to fix this, or some other partitioning program that might work better? Digger3000 (talk) 00:07, 8 May 2009 (UTC)