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July 31

The Amazon Kindle's web browser

Can the current Kindle support a web browser interface for entering URLs and seeing web page content? - Bevo (talk) 01:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at our our article. Chevymontecarlo - alt 07:27, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I did and it does not say specifically if the Kindle's "experimental" web browser is limited to what webpages it can access. - Bevo (talk) 12:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

This topic's discussion resumed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Amazon_Kindle#Kindle_as_web_browser - Bevo (talk) 02:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Peer-assisted networking

Hi, I am struggling to understand in very basic terms the section "What are peer-assisted networking settings?" here:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html#117802

Does this mean, if this feature is utilised, that my PC could be serving video content to somebody else's computer? Could anyone explain in very basic language what this is all about? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.186.136.165 (talk) 01:25, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly correct. If you enable "peer-assisted network settings", your computer will host, serve, and send video and other content to other internet users. This is a form of peer to peer networking. It could also be described as "crowd-sourcing" - outsourcing the costs of providing network content to the general public. The Adobe.com article doesn't explain the specific technology involved, but I interpret their description to mean that your computer will always be running the Adobe Flash environment in the background. That software will regularly log in to an Adobe command server, who will tell your computer what content it should host, and who it should share that content with. Your computer will then start delivering video or other Flash content to random other people on the internet (presumably prioritizing this behavior according to whatever scheme is most efficient for Adobe and its partners - and not what is most efficient for you and your computer). This decreases costs for content-providers like Youtube, (because they're "borrowing" your network connection, your CPU, and your hard-disks). I would be very suspicious of enabling this feature - it has absolutely no benefit to your own browsing experience, and may seriously hog your computer's resources (memory, disk, network, and CPU). Serving video is resource-intensive. Nimur (talk) 02:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, on further reading, the Adobe website says that any application that wants to function as a server must ask your permission. So, this feature is a bit less insidious than my alarmist response above - it will only do that if you permit it to. However, I would still be wary - this still seems like a no-gain scenario for the end-user. Nimur (talk) 03:06, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Nimur, thanks for your very informative response. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.171.144 (talk) 14:01, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Have cognitive scientists explained why it's tedious to not use pronouns?

Please see thread at

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language#Have_cognitive_scientists_explained_why_it.27s_tedious_to_not_use_pronouns.3F

thanks

Andrew Gradman ^talk/_WP:Hornbook 01:46, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Blu-Ray video files?

I have Sony PMB software, and average graphics card which my Cyberlink video software tells me needs upgrading on a dual core computer running Windows XP. The Cyberlink software is needed to write to my new Blu-Ray drive, because unless there is some sort of upgrade for XP(?) it only "knows" about DVD/CD. This means I cannot use the Sony PMB to convert mts to MPEG because it tries to write to the blu-ray, but windows xp cannot recognise it. It could write to a DVD, but the limited capacity would be a problem, which is why I got the blu-ray drive. My question is, using AVS software to play the mts files with the stand alone player results in a perfectly good HD movie but it hangs every couple of seconds, weather it is on the hard drive or playing from a Blu-Ray or DVD disk. However, when I use the AVS software to convert to an HD mpeg file (AVS shows a special blue icon for mts and a red one for mpeg) the HD picture and sound not only plays perfectly, but is even smoother than the PMB software. The mpeg definitely is still HD, the detail is far greater than normal video. My question is, if I were to put the disk into a Blu-Ray player, which files would it play? mts, mpeg or both? And if I copied the AVS player and a short HD mpeg file on to DVD or Blu-Ray disk, would it play on a different computer without any HD software installed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.80.10 (talk) 06:21, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Moved from RD/Science by CS Miller (talk) 09:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Maximum privacy in Facebook

I don't really use Facebook, but I find it useful to have an account to send people messages (it's basically email...but...inferior. But no-one checks their actual emails any more...) Anyway, it seems that Facebook becomes involved in some kind of newsworthy privacy-related scandal on a yearly basis. Now, I've done everything I can find to cripple my Facebook account; as far as I'm aware, no-one can post anything on my page, and I've made all of my details as private as possible to my knowledge. But, I don't know Facebook well. Could anyone tell me what to do in order to, for all intents and purposes, disable everything that can be disabled, except for messages? Perhaps there's a website somewhere that already has this covered... Vimescarrot (talk) 13:22, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Reclaim privacy has a good solution. Chris M. (talk) 18:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Ooh. Thanks. Vimescarrot (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

portable app that corrupts/erases the drive after password entry failure?

I use (and love) Portable Apps, and a few weeks ago saw mention in an article of a security app that gave you X tries to enter your password to access the USB, and at X+1 would hose the entire disk, thereby neutralizing the risk from loss or theft of the USB drive. I thought I had saved the link but it seems I did not. I've searched around and have found password organizers and secure file deleters, but nothing quite matching that app's description. Can anyone help? 61.189.63.171 (talk) 15:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't see how you can do that through an application alone because there's no way of guarenteeing that it'll execute on the client machine, it will need some sort of hardware awareness. A U3 device sort of does what you're asking (When accessing my U3 Titanium drive if I get the password wrong twice it warns me that I only have 3 tries left before it'll be locked out with format being the only option), however the U3 drives aren't hardware encrypted so I suspect that simply formatting them would allow for data to be recovered using normal disk recovery methods. The other way that I know of is the much more secure IronKey drives which are hardware encrypted and upon sufficient password failures will erase the encryption keys, effectively destroying all the data (it'll technically still be there, but encrypted with no way to recover it). Sadly the IronKey's aren't cheap though. ZX81 ^talk 16:26, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Although not a software option. If you are willing to invest a little bit of money you could get an Iron key flash drive. They do a similar task to what you are asking for, and from what I have gathered are cross platform. My other suggestion is to use Truecrypt to encrypt a partition on your flash drive. It won't keep people from repetitively trying to guess your password, but at least it will keep people out of your stuff. Zell Faze (talk) 00:41, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Compress

I save 10,000 html files (with images, css, etc) a week, usually totaling around 12GB for a months worth. I compress them to save space, and with solid compression I can get 12GB down to 900mb. However, I was wondering if there a more efficient way to do this? Should I compress the files weekly instead? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You can probably have it occupy zero space on your PC by just leaving it all on the internet. I know that's not really the kind of answer you were looking for, but I'm puzzled why you need to save 10,000 html files a week. Astronaut (talk) 00:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Does it matter why? The question is about the most efficient way to compress them. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 00:19, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

12:1 ratio is really pretty good, particularly considering that images are involved (is that lossless or lossy compression for the pics?) The efficiency of compression should not vary much with frequency; if anything, compressing larger units of data should produce better compression ratios (you lose edge effects, and depending on the complexity of the algorithm, more data should produce more regularities, for deeper compression). You're more likely to suffer from redundancy waste than compression waste in this situation (where you compress slightly different versions of the same website separately). --Ludwigs2 07:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose what I was suggesting is, if you reconsidered the need to save such a huge amount of data on such a rapid frequency, you wouldn't need to try to find even better compression. But Ludwigs is right, a 12:1 ratio is already pretty good considering you include images. We have extensive information on data compression, with links to articles about many different algorithms. In particular, you might find Lossless data compression#Lossless compression benchmarks and Lossy compression interesting. Another thing to consider if this is your own website and you have access to the uncompressed images in (perhaps RAW format), you could choose a greater compression when converting to a lossy format like JPEG, before uploading them to your site. Of course that would produce more compression artifacts which users of your site might not appreciate. Astronaut (talk) 07:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Are the pages essentially the same with minor changes or no changes from week to week? For example, you're mirroring the CNN website. (This is the sort of reason, by the way, that Astronaut was not out of line to ask you why. It helps volunteers come up with answers.) If so you could use a solution that only saves compressed versions of the changes, and otherwise assumes no changes from the previous version. Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:47, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Is the output of Google Translate copyrighted?

I know that professional translations of public domain texts tend to be copyrighted (i.e. new translations of Shakespeare by academics). Does this extend to the output of a Google Translate translation? I want to pass a public domain text through GT, correct it for fluency, and ideally post it on Wikisource. I'm not looking for legal advice, the interpretation of an educated layman or Wikipedia copyright ninja would be fine (assume US or UK for jurisdiction). Thanks, Skomorokh 19:00, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that the point about the translations of PD stuff is that the translator has added creative effort. For example the English translation of the Rubiyat is a distinct work from the original. I kind of doubt the courts are ready to declare that Google Translate is a creative entity. But of course this is all guesswork on my part and I offer no warranty. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

"(Trovatore) kind of doubt(s) the courts are ready to declare that Google Translate is a creative entity." But how could they say otherwise? If asked specifically, "did creative effort go into the creation of the translation", it would be appropriate to answer directly, "absolutely yes - the algorithm designs, the statistical translation database, and the creation of the translation user-interface all constituted original creative design by Google and its researchers." This is exactly why it is so hard to apply conventional legal norms to IP and technology issues; and it's why any information we offer here shouldn't be construed as legal advice. Courts can decide what they like. But your baseline should be the Terms of Service for Google Translate: among other things, "By submitting your content through the Service, you grant Google the permission to use your content permanently to promote, improve or offer the Service." At all times, they refer to the content (including the outputted translated data) as your content. They also specifically state that by submitting, that you have granted Google permission to use your content for technical, business, promotional, or other purposes. Compare, if you want, Microsoft's Bing Translator legal information and service agreement. Microsoft covers this issue with a very specific agreement: "You may be able to submit content for use in connection with the service. You understand that Microsoft does not control or endorse the content that you and others post or provide on the service. Except for material that we license to you, we do not claim ownership of the content you post or provide on the service."

As always, we can link you to relevant articles and information about the legal implications of these terms of service, but information about the applicability of these Terms of Service agreements, and the legal enforceability of them in a copyright dispute, would constitute "legal advice" that we can not provide. However, in my opinion, Microsoft has gone farther in guaranteeing your ownership by specifically stating that they make no claim of ownership to your data. At the same time, they leave some leeway by not explicitly telling you whether your translated output is "your content" or "content that Microsoft is licensing to you."

The moral of this is that copyright status of machine-processed versions of your data is still a legal gray area. The specifics could be debated in a court battle. What we know, though, is that:

• Google (and Microsoft, and other translater services) expressly state that they will store copies of your translation input and output, and use it for their own purposes
• Google (and Microsoft, and other translater services) will share your input and output with 3rd parties, so if you have proprietary, confidential, or classified information, do not submit it for machine translation to such services.
• Because the details of machine translation, (specifically, statistics-based translations), your document's content might "percolate" through the translation algorithm, in the form of machine-representations of natural-language mappings. This will make it technically impossible to "remove" your content from a state-of-the-art system - so even if a copyright dispute is legally ruled in your favor, it will be practically impossible to "un-do" the leaking of your content. (This doesn't even take into the account the issue that, once publicized, n-number of copies of your data may be held by 3rd-party viewers).
• Finally, it's worth stating that Google (and Microsoft) provide you with a Terms of Service agreement, that does go to some effort to assure you that your data remains yours; but that these agreements don't really seal every possible interpretation. Seek legal advice from a qualified attorney if you need a more concrete answer.

Hopefully this helps you evaluate the status-quo for the copyright status of machine translation. Read the Terms of Use carefully. As with Trovatore, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and I offer no warranty for my interpretation. Nimur (talk) 19:48, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Nimur, no doubt creative effort went into the design of Google Translate. If that were the standard, you can just sign over the copyright to everything you write to Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, assuming you're writing on a computer. The point is that Google Translate itself exercises no creativity. It's just a dumb algorithm. --Trovatore (talk) 20:34, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The US Copyright Office has the opinion that no mechanical process whereby the outputs follow invariably from the inputs can give rise to copyright, irregardless of how complicated the process might be. As Nimur highlights, there is undoubtedly creativity involved in the design of any piece of software, but the current US legal position is that this creativity protects only the software itself and has no impact on works that might flow through it. Hence mechanical translations have only the copyright status they inherit from the original work. So if the original is public domain, so is the output. Dragons flight (talk) 20:47, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

An eminently sensible opinion for them to hold. Of course strictly speaking it doesn't answer what happens if it doesn't follow invariably from the inputs; if, for example, some source of true randomness is used. My very strong guess is that the courts would hold that that doesn't matter, and that they would decline to find "creativity" in any process not performed by natural persons. --Trovatore (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

True randomness is not creative, either. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Right, that was kind of my point. --Trovatore (talk) 02:56, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Let's not forget that irregardless is a perfectly cromulent word. ;-) -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 20:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

SSRN-Rebuilding Babel: Copyright and the Future of Machine Translation Online by Erik Ketzan -- Wavelength (talk) 21:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The legal question is that this comes at the intersection of two different sets of regulations in US copyright law. One is on translation, which is defined as an inherently creative act which creates derivative works. The other is on "purely mechanical" manipulations of information, which do not create new copyrights. I am not sure we can really say how a court would rule on this, in the end. They could say that machine translation is "purely mechanical" and thus has no authorship. Or they could say that the mechanical process is sufficiently "creative" as to have some authorship within its output, though who would get the credit for that (e.g., Google Translate, not you), is not obvious. It's not clear whether you can claim copyright on algorithmic output at all, though. Wolfram Research claims copyright on all of the output of Wolfram Alpha, for example, but it's not clear that would hold up in court. Anyway, the bottom line is, I believe, that the likelihood is rather low that it would be interpreted as creating a new copyright, and in any case you the copy-paster probably wouldn't be the author in any case. But this ain't legal advice, to say the last... --Mr.98 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I feel rather confident that no court is going to find that any copyright belongs to Google Translate. Data is a toaster. Algorithms and machines have no personhood before the law. --Trovatore (talk) 03:00, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Suppose Google Translate always produced a paragraph from Harry Potter when the output language was set to English, ignoring the input text. In that case the output would clearly be copyrighted material, despite being "produced by" a deterministic algorithm. Now suppose it chose several words and phrases from Harry Potter and strung them together—still copyrighted material? One could at least make a case that it would be. This is pretty much what machine translators do in reality: they string together words and phrases from a potentially copyrightable phrasebook, guided (one hopes) by the input text. Does the author of the input text have a copyright claim on the output? Probably. Does the author of the phrasebook? Maybe. Does the computer? No, but that was never the issue. -- BenRG (talk) 04:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the copyright inheres in the original authors of the bits of text that Google Translate is putting together to make a translation, then it follows that, in offering Translate, Google is engaged in mass copyright violation. But I don't believe that will be the conclusion. In general the shorter a piece of text, the harder it is to assert copyright on it, and I gather that Translate uses only rather short pieces. It's not like it's going to copy in the Gettysburg Address. --Trovatore (talk) 04:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Did you trouble to read the paper that Wavelength provided a link to? After skimming it, I think there's a danger that any court could disagree with your stance, because section 102 of the US Copyright Act says that "a translation" is a derivative work; and derivative works are copyrightable. (Page 5 and 20.) I can certainly see a court just taking the literal route and applying this law, not caring whether "a translation" was created by a human, by a human who uses a machine to help translate (as I understand all professional translators do, nowadays), or purely by a machine. I have to agree with Nimur, that we don't know how a court will rule, and that it's irresponsible to guess or advocate while pretending to be confident about the outcome. Page 20 notes that the copyright laws do not expressly require "human" authorship — there was a 1997 case "addressing the bizarre question of whether a book purportedly authored by celestial beings may be copyrighted; 'The copyright laws, of course, do not expressly require 'human' authorship.'" Comet Tuttle (talk) 02:42, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

A translation is a derivative work, but AIUI the copyright goes to the translator (subordinate of course to any copyright on the original; I believe the upshot is that any publication must have the permission of both the copyright holder to the original and that to the translation). But machines, or programs, cannot hold copyright!!!! I didn't say they had to be human, but they do have to be persons. There is no way that any court is going to find that an algorithm is a person. --Trovatore (talk) 05:45, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You'll note by the way that your reference to page 20 of the article is a question about whether this company doing machine translation might be liable to the original copyright holder. That's not at issue here, because the original poster was talking about translating stuff from the public domain. Yes, I agree that if the original material was subject to copyright, then the machine translation would also be encumbered by the original copyright. But I can't see any reasonable argument that Google Translate would have any copyright interest in the material. (Nor that the original poster would.) As far as I can tell (and I'll repeat here that I'm only an interested amateur) the machine translation of public domain input would remain public domain. --Trovatore (talk) 05:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Again, I think a lot less certainty would suit you, on this one. There is simply no precedent (that's been cited in this thread anyway, or that I know about) in any US court ruling or in US law that supports your assertions, even if you put four exclamation points after them, and a court could go either way and still be reasonable. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:55, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all, an interesting and informative discussion. Skomorokh 21:01, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Google gone weird - malware?

Whenever I search for images on Google, I get this irritating and difficult to control scrolling page of hundreds of images. If this is not due to a malware infection, is there any way to fix it and return to normal non-scrolling pages? Thanks (There must be an internet programmer's motto: "If it ain't broke, then make it worse"). 92.15.12.218 (talk) 19:35, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not malware, google changed the layout recently. You can revert back to the old style by scrolling to the very bottom of the page and click "Switch to basic version" 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 19:44, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Even after the inconvenience of clicking "switch to basic version", the results page is still mangled. I would switch to bing.com except I think they use the same system. These internet dictators, they never ask the public what they want or do trials where things can be returned to normal if the public don't like it - another example being the BBC news site, which may have a hidden puropose of decreasing the amount of content. 92.28.249.190 (talk) 22:41, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Using Excel/Access for Neopets shop inventory

Here's the situation: I have an account on Neopets.com and currently have a virtual shop there. Usually, when I have a new item I want to sell, I would look it up in the Shop Wizard (item search engine) and just take the lowest price on the list (always the first result that comes back). That's what I would normally do for a few items.

Now the difficult part. I have a lot of items (over 1000) I'd like to sell. To save time, I was thinking of putting all of the item names into an Excel spreadsheet or Access database (which would work best in this situation?) where I would have the item name, its current Shop Wizard price, and the category it belongs to. That way, if I ever need to sell the same thing again, I don't have to go back to the Shop Wizard every time and can just refer to the sheet.

So let's say I have a list of items in a spreadsheet or database. Can I get Excel/Access to automatically import the SW prices, or would I have to do that manually? If the latter, I can't go over every single item, plug it into SW, search, and then copy and paste the price back into the spreadsheet; that would be too tedious and take too long.

Any Excel/Access geniuses out there that can help? 141.153.215.18 (talk) 20:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I have a friend who used ImportHtml() in Google Spreadsheets for something similar. You'd need to construct a URL that retrieves the information (which needs to be public), and then use the Index() function to retrieve the appropriate information. I don't know much about the specifics, though, and I think that desktop spreadsheet software tends not to have that feature. Paul (Stansifer) 21:03, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You could definitely do this in Access, and probably Excel, but it would take some work. It's not too hard to get Access to retrieve web pages using VBScript, but it would not be the easiest "starter project." Excel would be a bit trickier, because everything regarding VBScript in Excel is a bit trickier (it is not quite as naturally integrated with the data as Access is). --Mr.98 (talk) 22:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using iPhone at a WiFi hotspot

If one selects the free WiFi network available there, does the following browsing and data transfer you do while there rack up against the quota of the standard data plan they offer? I wouldn't think so, since if you're using the WiFi of the establishment, you're not using AT&T's 3G network. Thanks. 71.161.56.247 (talk) 20:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Using a wifi network doesn't count toward your data plan as you are not using AT&T's network. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 22:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're connecting to the Internet through the WiFi of wherever you are, not through AT&T's network, so it doesn't count towards your data plan. Chevymontecarlo - alt —Preceding undated comment added 17:33, 1 August 2010 (UTC).

Forcible Setting

Why does sometimes my default home page (Internet Explorer) automatically set to : http://searchdnet.googlepages.com/index.html ? -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 21:05, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Malware (again?). I suggest you sweep your PC for malware using a tool like Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Astronaut (talk) 23:37, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Concur, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't some kind of nasty malicious software. Good luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 06:07, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that definitely sounds like something Malware would do. Chevymontecarlo - alt 17:32, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista ReadyBoost

Any idea why Vista recommends I use 870MB for readyboost when the max space on my drive is 960MB? Would it run slower if it were completely full or something? Thanks StatisticsMan (talk) 22:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I woudn't think so, but then you would have no space left to store extra documents if you used the entire capacity.Sir Stupidity (talk) 23:57, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I am using the flash drive exclusively for ReadyBoost so I'm not worried about that. I have another flash drive I use to move files around. This one is hooked up in the back and I will probably not take it out for a long time. StatisticsMan (talk) 02:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a line from the Readyboost Article:

Microsoft recommends the amount of flash memory for ReadyBoost acceleration be one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) in your computer. This recommendation should not be confused with the message that is displayed in the “ReadyBoost” tab of drive properties dialog: for example, for a flash drive of 16 GB capacity formatted as FAT32 it will display a message that “Windows recommends reserving 4094 MB for optimal performance” even if RAM size is 10 GB, just because 4094 MB is the maximum file size on a FAT32 volume; after reformatting it as NTFS or exFAT, the message changes to “Windows recommends 15180 MB”.

However I have no real idea why... Can someone help me out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sir Stupidity (talk • contribs) 04:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

It says why in the paragraph. It recommends less than the max in this case because "4094 MB is the maximum file size on a FAT32 volume." This is not my problem as my recommendation is 870, not 4094. StatisticsMan (talk) 21:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Fonts are weird

I lost power to my computer, probably due to a faulty PSU, and when I started it back up most fonts on my computer were stuck in italics. Now, I've started it up and everything is stuck in bold mode. Anyone have any information? 68.69.69.9 (talk) 23:10, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

The fonts where are stuck in bold? The windows interface (the writing on the task bar buttons, title bars of windows, etc.) or the fonts in a particular program or programs? I can't see why a power loss would do anything to fonts. I would suggest running a virus scanner. --Tango (talk) 00:16, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The fonts within some websites (Wikipedia, CNN, MSNBC, likely many more) are in bold on Firefox. Everything in Winamp is stuck in italics. 68.69.69.9 (talk) 00:32, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

These are extremely unusual symptoms. If you are describing them accurately, they probably are unrelated to the power-outage. Winamp has a font setting in the options; you might want to check it. You might also want to edit your operating-system-wide Appearance Settings.b This tutorial from Microsoft guides you through the process to configure OS-wide font settings. Check if the settings there are out of order. Nimur (talk) 00:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

So I put more effort into it and it turns out the font registry entries were corrupted. It's all good now, thanks Wikipedia! 68.69.69.9 (talk) 01:10, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Lifetime of a laser printer

I tend to run my cars and computers until they rust in place, so am familiar with their end-of-life symptoms; but I've not used a laser printer, so am not sure how they die.

The HP printer (2200 I think) assigned to me at work is now 6-8 years old, and over the past month just won't print really black copies any more. It's still even (not streaking), and taking the cartridge out and shaking it in every direction does not help. Is it nearing the end of its life, or is the symptom of somethine else? Might there be one easy thing to repair or replace, that would reinvigorate it?

Thanks, DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:33, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

In my experience if it is still printing light print even after shaking the cartridge, it is probably time to get a new cartridge. I doubt you would have difficulty getting a cartridge for that printer - I can still get cartridges for my 10+ years old HP laserjet 6L. In fact, a Google search reveals lots of places ready to sell you a cartridge for your printer (of course, in the workplace you probably have a purchasing dept that deals with that kind of thing). Astronaut (talk) 23:45, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

You probably have a purchasing dept... Yes, that would be me :-), and getting new carts is not yet an issue. Guess I'll do that.

I'm still skeptical, though, because I have NONE of the other standard symptoms of "empty cartridge": no streaking, no spotting, and this cart is only 2-3 months old when 6 is the typical minimum.

DaHorsesMouth (talk) 00:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean that it only prints grey? Have you printed a test page from the printer's control panel? Those usually have color bars and bypass the operating system's printing programs. It could be an issue with the settings for the printer.

From what I've heard, a laser printer can last forever, so long as you clean it every few months. When you clean it, use toner cloth and a toner vacuum. Don't wipe off the drum or you might scratch it. Having said that, some models are better than others. Some break after a few years. Others last much longer.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 02:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Most cartridges have an estimated number of pages worth of toner in them, usually expressed as a number assuming something like 5% coverage. Whether 2-3 months is a reasonable length of time for the number of pages that have been printed with that cartridge is something you need to consider, but maybe the cartridge is faulty. Astronaut (talk) 08:08, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If there is still toner left, the drum may be approaching its end, it has a long but finite lifetime. Check your printer's manual (or search the web) for replacement interval information. 88.112.56.9 (talk) 09:46, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I have a HP LaserJet 5 which was apparently made in 1995 and it works great. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 12:01, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Unless you have a printer from hell, you probably need to change the cartridge, clean the drum, or otherwise update the printer's firmware/software. Make sure you check the printer's control panel to see if something is amiss. Laser printers made by HP ussually tend to last a while...I have an HP LaserJet 4 that still works...(though I never use it). (On a side note, its interesting to see that the 2200 series supported Windows 3.1).Smallman12q (talk) 21:35, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, that scared me -- started to think it might have been first introduced in the mid-1990s, for example, and could have been 12-15 years old! Our own WP says 2001, so that's not so bad :-). Thanks for that. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this happen on HP LaserJet 6L's - if everything is grey instead of black, and Text starts to get blurry/fuzzy along the edges, the laser scanner unit might be at fault. Good luck finding a replacement part... -- 78.43.71.155 (talk) 18:44, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

August 1

History data

Where in my computer's hard drive (Drive C) is all the data for the History section stored in? Which folders do I have to go to? 64.75.158.195 (talk) 10:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The history data for what? Your web browser? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 11:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Web browser history data is stored in difference places depending on the browser. IE stores it in "Documents and Settings\%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\History" (where %USERPROFILE% is your Windows login name). Firefox keeps it in "Documents and Settings\%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%PROFILE%" (where %PROFILE% is a random string). --Mr.98 (talk) 14:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't find a folder that says Local Settings or Application Data. I use Internet Explorer, by the way. 64.75.158.196 (talk) 01:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

LaTeX and Flashcards

Hi all,

Hopefully this is an appropriate place for this question! Basically, I'm studying mathematics at university and I'm trying to find a way to put flashcards on my iPhone, for revising long proofs of theorems etc. However, since most of the things I'll need to revise will be partly symbolic, I was wondering if there was any way to put LaTeX (or some kind of TeX) in flashcard form on the phone, since the majority of the apps I've looked at don't seem to have much in the way of special character support (logic symbols etc) - if there is such an app I've failed to spot it, but either way a nudge in the right direction, if this is feasible, would be much appreciated! Incidentally my phone isn't jailbroken, so if at all possible I'd need solutions which keep things that way.

Thanks very much, 82.26.0.194 (talk) 12:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean to read latex on your iphone...or to edit/make latex flashcards on it? If you want to read it...you might consider converting it to a format that can be read on a non-jailbroken iphone such as pdf.Smallman12q (talk) 21:26, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, ideally something in the actual flashcard form with proper mathematical typesetting is what I'm looking for, editable by whatever means - iPhone or computer or anything else - would be fine, but (for example) I'd like to have the statement of a theorem on the 'front' and the proof on the 'back', or some similar format, rather than literally just a block of typeset mathematics in something like a PDF. If worst comes to worst I am capable of just making a PDF of everything and then keeping that on the phone, but if it comes to that I think I'd rather just write them out in real life. I am aware what I'm asking for is quite specific, so I'll fully understand if the answer is just a 'no it isn't possible', especially since Apple are fairly renowned for limiting how much you can do on their devices, I just thought I'd come here and ask if anyone had any clever suggestions, or knew of an app where the proper typesetting is possible! Thanks for any responses in advance, 82.26.0.194 (talk) 00:07, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at Anki? I believe it supports Latex as well. There's also MentalCase though its not free. Let me know if this helps.Smallman12q (talk) 01:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That looks great, I may well give Anki a go, thankyou! I think I prefer the look of MentalCase, but it doesn't seem to support LaTeX, does it? Or perhaps it does and I'm being stupid! 82.26.0.194 (talk) 09:46, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure...(I personally haven't used...just know some people who have)...though a comment here and here suggests that latex may be supported. You could always ask on their forums to be sure.Smallman12q (talk) 11:56, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Programs

Resolved

I'm sure this is a question which has been done to death, so forgive me for asking. Will 64 bit Windows run programs designed for 32 bit systems? I have many programs, some very old, which don't and will never have 64 bit versions. Will they continue to work, or will I have to run them in a virtual machine or something laborious like that? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:55, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, 64-bit Windows is perfectly able to run 32-bit Windows applications, thanks to the WOW64 subsystem. In fact, most programs on a 64-bit Windows system are likely 32-bit applications, as of today. (However, although 32-bit Windows is able to run 16-bit applications, 64-bit Windows is only able to run 64-bit and 32-bit applications, not the ancient 16-bit apps.) --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, so my old Windows 3.1 and DOS programs won't work, without an emulator like DOSBOX anyway? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 18:05, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

That's correct...virtually all of your Windows 3.11/DOS/16-bit apps won't work without an emulator.Smallman12q (talk) 21:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

As you may know, 32-bit drivers will not work in 64-bit Windows. Some hardware doesn't have 64-bit drivers. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Write it by hand, take a picture of it with your iphone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.90.157.2 (talk) 20:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

What? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 20:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Trendnet router Status blinking slowly, WLAN blinking rapidly

Dear Wikipedians:

I'm currently using a Trendnet TEW-652BRP router. I have opted to connect my DSL modem directly to the router as one of its nodes, instead of connecting it to the Internet port, because I would like my DSL modem to directly assign DHCP address to all of my computers so that my computers may take advantage of my DSL modem's UPnP capabilities for automatic port forwarding. Therefore, the WAN light of my router remains off.

After I have set up everything. I found that all the wired connection to my Trendnet router works fine. However, when I attempt to use the wireless connection provided by my Trendnet router with my laptop, I find that it does not work (the laptop is able to latch on to the wireless connection fine, but it could not detect any Internet connection through the wireless connection). I also noticed that the "Status" light on the router blinks slowly and the "WLAN" light on the Trendnet router blinks rapidly, I think this might be a sign of trouble.

I also have a Linksys WTR router that is configured in the same way as my Trendnet router. On that router I am able to get on to the Internet through the wireless connection just fine. So I am wondering what is going on?

Thanks for all your help,

174.88.33.187 (talk) 17:03, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm...this afternoon after I came back from the computer store, the wireless connection on the Trendnet TEW-652BRP router all of a sudden started working. I didn't do anything to it. The indicator lights are still blinking at their respective paces but the wireless network on Trendnet just all of a sudden worked, what a pleasant surprised, problem resolved!

174.88.33.187 (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

Replace image

In greasemonkey, I want to replace an image on a webpage with another image. The image I want to replace comes from the url "http://example.com/image.php?title=1234" where "1234" changes and could be anything. I want to replace it with "http://otherwebsite.com/5678.jpg". How would this be done? 82.43.88.151 (talk) 21:45, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a tutorial: Replacing an element with new content. Nimur (talk) 21:51, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I actually tried that page already, but the image I want to replace doesn't have an "id" to getelement by. When I tried "getelelementbyname" it didn't work either 82.43.88.151 (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

If you didn't design the website you want to modify, there's not much you can do to make the following procedure convenient. Basically, you will have to replace the document.getElementById() with your own function, "getNodeByCustomTechnique()" that you must write to find the node. If you could just modify the HTML source (if you were the owner of the site), you could add an id tag to the node in question, but I gather that is not an option for you. So you'll have to locate your un-identified node the hard way.

A bit of web searching found this tutorial: Page Structure and Navigation. As they say right up front: "If you don't know javascript you're out of luck!" See the section "Where's my Node": Your three choices are very limited if you are not the author of the HTML document, because you can't modify the node attributes. So you are stuck with Option #2: "start at the root of the document and slog your way through it using the childNodes attribute of the node (using a code fragment like this) and hope you eventually find what you are looking for." Or, Option #3: use "document.getElementsByTagName("img")" as your starting point, and check every element of the result-set. Because there is no id-tag, you have to come up with some other way to determine when you have traversed to the correct node. Is the target-node always at a pre-set the position image on the page? Then you can hard-code a traversal pattern. Does the target node image source URL remain constant (or always match some simple pattern)? Then you can check every img node to see if its src attribute is the one you want. Combine your javascript programming to traverse the DOM tree with whatever bit of logic and pattern matching you need to determine when you've found the node you want. Once you have the node to modify, you can replace the image source as shown in the previous tutorial. Nimur (talk) 02:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

August 2

Hyper-V Eight-Socket (64-Core) 1TB RAM Server for hosting Ubuntu Linux Virtual Machines

Hi.

File:Http:/media/wikipedia/en/5/57/Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.png

Logo of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

   I am now seeking a server which meets all of the following criterion. The server is to be run on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, and contain multiple virtual machines running on Ubuntu Linux.

1. Accomodates eight Intel Xeon Eight-Core processors.
2. Supports one terabyte of RAM.
3. Has redundant, hot-swappable Power Supply Units.
4. Has atleast five x8 PCIe 2.0 and three x4 PCIe 2.0 slots.
5. Is rackmountable; amount of rackspace consumed is not a concern.
6. Preferably consumes no more than 3,000 watts.

   Thank you to everyone in advance.

If you want a terabyte of RAM, you will have to wait a few design-cycles, or use a multi-node virtualization technology like Altix. I don't think the SGI machines will run Windows (not even Hypervisor). Unless you have a lot of money and a special development / R&D contract with a hardware vendor, there is no way you can buy a single system with one terabyte of RAM in 2010 (or probably even in 2013). Are you working at a government lab, by any chance? Or perhaps you have mis-interpreted your spec, and actually need an entire rack of servers (not a single unit). Also note that your image did not work, (you used Wiki Syntax, when you probably meant to use a hyperlink); but even if we fix that, your link can not work, because you have neither uploaded the actual file nor placed it on a publicly accessible network address. (172.x.x.x is a private IP). Do you need assistance uploading files? Nimur (talk) 15:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Useful article: Distributed shared memory. Clearly, if you are virtualizing your terabyte of RAM to run separate virtual Ubuntu servers, you don't need shared memory anyway, so you don't need a terabyte in one box. If I understand your actual parameters, what you really need is eight Ubuntu servers with 128 GB of ram each (still on the extraordinary end of the spectrum); and you also want a software management tool (Hypervisor) that can configure, manage, and/or provision all of them. Some marketing-ese brochures will call this setup "one server" or "one system" - this is just a matter of nomenclature. Nimur (talk) 18:24, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the OP intended to upload anything. I believe they were simply trying to hotlink to [1] although it's not a particularly useful image. The private IP is I guess just some sort of non transparent proxy set up where you access other websites thorough a webserver gateway. A quick search shows plenty of other people having done similar things, I guess there's some sort of software that does this Nil Einne (talk) 09:50, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Believe or not Nimur, Dell and HP will both sell a single system with 1 TB RAM. The Dell PowerEdge R910 is configurable up to four 8-core Xeon processors and 1 TB RAM for a measly $100,000. The HP DL580 G7 will also go to four 8-core Xeons and a 1 TB RAM though they want $120,000 for it. As far as I can tell neither vendor supports a system with more than 4 of the 8-core processors. Dragons flight (talk) 10:31, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Those are multi-mainboard systems; more than one server in one chassis. Still, good find, Dragons Flight. Nimur (talk) 21:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't seem that this question is going to be that many more responses so perhaps I can ask, am I the only one who is surprised by these sort of questions (I'm not complaining about them)? It always seems to me when we get these sort of questions that if you're planning to buy a $100k+ system you just have to call a bunch of vendors and they'll be more then happy to call, e-mail or visit you personally to try and work out something that fulfills your needs and any person in charge of such a purchase decision would likely know that and definitely won't need to rely on volunteers on a reference desk to help you find such systems. If the question is just for personal interest (do such systems exist and how much do they cost) I would understand but of the ones I seen they seem to suggest the person asking is really planning to buy such a system. Nil Einne (talk) 13:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

There's atleast one server in the world that supports eight processors and a terabyte of memory; the Fujitsu Primergy RX900 S1. Though seeing as it takes up eight units of rackspace, I don't know why anyone would want this machine instead of four 1U servers with two processors and 128GB of memory each. Those are a lot more common. Oh, and I removed your hotlnk (because it doesn't lead anywhere) and changed the section title from Eight-Socket (64-Core) 1TB RAM Server to Hyper-V Eight-Socket (64-Core) 1TB RAM Server for hosting Ubuntu Linux Virtual Machines, so it's a lot more descriptive now. Elspetheastman (talk) 12:33, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Dosbox

Ctrl-F12 speeds things up. How do I add this to config.sys so I don't have to keep pressing this a few dozen times each time I launch dosbox? Clarityfiend (talk) 03:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The config file it goes in is dosbox.conf, which usually lives in the same directory the dosbox executable does; the parameter to change is "cycles". —Korath (Talk) 04:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Incidentally if you are running different games and you keep needing to adjust settings for each one, I'd recommend getting one of the graphical front-ends such as D-Fend Reloaded. They allow you to create profiles for each game with its own configuration saved separately, such that you never need to touch actual DOSBox at all. Think of it as something like MAME but for old DOS games and you get the idea. Zunaid 13:32, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wireless All-in-One devices... but wireless fax?

I'm looking at several attractive wireless all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. One thing I can't get over is that the fax part of the machines require an old wired telephone line (which seems to defeat the purpose of wireless printing and scanning). Are there any AIO devices that exist that can wirelessly fax over the internet? --68.102.163.104 (talk) 03:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Most fax machines are connected to a phone line and receive their input by this method. An image sent over the internet would normally be printed from a computer on a normal printer to preserve best quality. Normally, people send PDF or similar format pages over the internet, but yes, it is possible to send in fax format. Having a fax not connected to a phone line seems to defeat the purpose of a fax machine. Why not just use the scanner and your computer in wireless mode to send your image (as a scan, PDF or fax). Someone else will explain how to send a fax from your computer to a fax machine because I don't know anyone else who has a fax machine but no computer, so I never send this way. Dbfirs 08:01, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I guess my concern is that a fax machine is very easy to operate even if you don't know anything about computers. Stick in a piece of paper, dial a phone number, and press start. Scanning a doc into a PDF then emailing it or using Fax software requires a number of steps involving a scanner, computer, mouse, file hierarchy, multiple software apps, and OS. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I guess that the designers of your "all-in-one" wireless device assume that anyone wanting to use the fax facility will have a phone line and will know how to plug the device into this. In theory, if they knew what software you had on your computer to send faxes, they could integrate the fax output with this and automate the process. When all telephone calls are integrated into the internet (will this ever happen?) then they might consider this. At present, most telephone and fax calls are separated from internet traffic at each end. The data might well travel along the same routes in between, though mine doesn't. Dbfirs 17:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I have VOIP at home, so running a hard phone line from the fax machine to a splitter on the VOIP module at the other side of my house isn't really possible. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The article Internet fax outlines some options, but doesn't give details. I'm sure it should be possible to connect your computer to your VOIP splitter so that you can send faxes to people who have no computer or e-mail address, but such people are becoming rare, so is it worth the effort and possible cost? Dbfirs 07:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You could get a wireless Analog telephone adapter that supports T.38 (something like [2] but wirelss) and connect that to your MFP although that would still require an extra box. Alternatively MFP that supports T.38 do exist both according to our article on MFPs and [3] although that isn't wireless. You could also use some server, if you have one, to run a T.38 server and then just print with the MFP, you could probably integrate with the MFP somehow to send faxes too but I'm not sure how easy it would be.

There are probably several reasons T.38 or other FoIP support is rare. For starters it seems many VoIP providers don't apparently support T.38. And for business they may prefer to have a server manage that sort of thing for a variety of reasons like record keeping, easier and greater control etc. I also suspect many people particularly those home or SOHO users most likely to have VoIP setups aren't that interested in fax anyway. Some may find subscribing to some sort of fax service easier for those odd faxes they receive and the odd occasions when they send faxes.

Note there exist (expensive) MFPs [4] [5] that can scan to e-mail I presume these just need to be set up with the SMTP server and then the sender needs no further apps. The receiver would need something to open the file, but realisticly few people can't open PDFs or TIFs, the only risk may be some smart phones. (I don't think the e-mail client counts since anyone with an e-mail address must have some way of checking their e-mail). More importantly perhaps many receivers would probably find receiving an e-mailed attachment more convienent then a fax anyway and particularly in the developed world there is probably an increasing number of business (let alone ordinary people) who can receive e-mails but not faxes and decreasing number who can receive faxes but not emails. E-mail also enables colour which is still rare in faxes AFAIK.

In fact even most of the cheaper MFPs seem to have some sort of pseudo scan to e-mail thing where they use software on the PC to attach the file so you go back to your PC, type in the address and perhaps a subject and send. E.g. I think this [6] does that. Some may even have the ability to input the address on the scanner so they really automatically send and you don't even need to go to your PC provided it's running. In fact even my 8 year old scanner had an e-mail button, but I never set it up. Even without scan to e-mail in a streamlined setup drag the file to your email client (or otherwise attach it).

I would actually suspect scan to email functionality is in greater demand then T.38/FoIP support for MFPs.

Nil Einne (talk) 11:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Mobile phone in Europe

I'm planning on traveling to europe soon with my unlocked t-mobile phone. Now it supports 850 / 1800 / 1900 mhz, but not 900 Mhz. My question is could I get decent coverage on 1800 mhz alone in the following cities: London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice? Also, could I find a prepaid gsm network to support my phone in those cities, preferably one reasonable priced? Thank you71.229.144.57 (talk) 04:42, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You can most definitely find cheap pay as you go phones in Europe. I'll let others field the frequency questions (GSM has a few frequencies it operates on, but I assumed most phones could operate on any of them). Shadowjams (talk) 05:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

T-Mobile and Orange both work on 1800 in the UK, so your 'phone should work with either of those providers. You should be able to buy a cheap PAYG SIM for either, as well. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, and what about France & Italy?71.229.144.57 (talk) 23:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I've never had any problems taking my UK mobile to France or Italy - I drove to Venice a year ago and never had any problems with my phone, though I did get a £90 bill when I got back! Astronaut (talk) 13:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Any mobile sold in the UK should at a minimum be dual band with 1800/900 so it doesn't really help the OP who as he/she has said, has a triband phone without 900mhz as used in much of the world, including Europe, but not parts of the Americas including the US and Canada. See GSM frequency bands if there is any further confusion. Nil Einne (talk) 06:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

From [7], [8] and [9] it doesn't appear there is any 1800 only network in France or Italy. (One in GSMWorld for France is listed as 1800 but the same network is listed as 900/1800 under a different plan so I doubt its accurate.) This doesn't mean you should give up. 1800 is commonly used in the more urban or populated areas so if your sticking to those places you've mentioned you may be okay. A simple search find various discussions e.g. [10] [11] which should provide more help and suggest you may be able to get by with a 1800 phone in France and Italy in the urban areas as I suggested. You could also try it and see, if you find coverage is too poor you could pick up a cheap phone while in Europe. Nil Einne (talk) 07:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

My apologies - my phone has just worked everywhere I've been in Europe and I've never had to consider particular frequencies. If I'm understanding the coverage maps on this page, all operators in both France and Italy provide 900/1800 MHz coverage in all but a few rural areas. I assume that means both frequencies are avalable pretty much everywhere. The same site will let you check out roaming agreements between your mobile operator and European operators and their coverage maps if one is available. The same site let me finally explain why my supposedly quad-band phone was useless in Montana and Yellowstone NP - my operator only has a roming agreement with AT&T and not with Verizon. Anyway, if you are still unsure, check with your operator before you leave. Astronaut (talk) 12:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No the coverage map just means they're covering the whole area. What frequency they're using will vary depending on numerous factors and the coverage map doesn't provide that level of detail (probably partially because it can vary quite a lot over time and from the providers POV it doesn't matter for most of their customers). It's likely to be rare that an area is covered by both frequencies from the same provider, in fact I suspect it's likely there are quite a few areas without any 1800 coverage at all. I mentioned that 1800 is usually used in urban areas, but didn't mention what may automatically follow 900 is commonly used in more rural or less populated areas, the reason is primarily because 900 transmission characteristics means it has longer range so a provider can cover a wider area with a smaller number of transceivers, useful in such areas. BTW from what I can tell the OP, isn't planning to use roaming, and really I'm not surprised. You can still ask them, and they'll probably help particularly if you don't tell them you don't intend to use roaming but I personally wonder whether they'd be able to provide much better information then 'it may work in some areas but not all' (if you're some sort of major business customers they may try harder). Of course you also have to see what their roaming partner/s are, if they have more then one then coverage could be improved as you can use either but since I'm guessing domestic roaming between the French providers if it exists is only going to work in areas where coverage on both frequencies is spotty this won't work so well for you if you're using a new sim card. On the flipside it's possible one provider may provide better coverage in the 1800mhz but isn't a roaming provider. Nil Einne (talk) 16:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC) (modified from original)

Scribus vs. InDesign

Dear wikipedians,

If you were supposed to be the editor of an academic journal and could choose to use either Adobe InDesign or Scribus, which one would you choose and why? (no money problem: the software will be paid)

Thank you in advance,

82.229.204.155 (talk) 08:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Indesign CS5 certainly has far more features than Scribus...and its a bit easier to use. The scribus interface is a bit lacking...Smallman12q (talk) 12:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

What would you use it for? At least in my field (Computer Science), authors will nearly always be required to submit "camera-ready copies" (i.e. in reality either PDF or LaTeX sources). Very few, if any, journals still typeset the final copy. If you expect authors to submit machine-readable documents, the only really plausible alternatives are LaTeX, PDF, or Word(spit). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:17, 2 August 2010

(UTC)

Scribus has improved considerably since 2010. It now can produce PDF output, and has gone through a major upgrade (ver. 1.4).

~~

I don't think that's common across disciplines. In the humanities and social sciences, anyway, authors submit Word or RTF files (not PDF, which would make reconstructing footnotes a HUGE pain). They are typeset with programs like InDesign or Quark. In any case, I would not trust humanities/social science academics to know how to submit something camera ready! They are not tech savvy, and do not know LaTeX for the most part. (Which is a science thing.) Hell, they barely know how to use Word, in my experience. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Not that I disagree on the substance (although my last and only paper not printed directly from my final submission was a 1996 publication in the Journal of Symbolic Computation). But I'd bet that for most humanities papers LaTeX is actually easier to use than Word... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:24, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

If you are comfortable with using markup languages, which is well beyond the technical comfort level of your average humanities scholar. But I do essentially agree—Word is a pain and produces more problems than it solves. The one place where Word edges out LaTeX as I understand it (as a non-LaTeX user) that is important for the humanities is in being able to easily "track changes" (used in indicating edits), and being able to easily "visually" edit the document, both of which are pretty crucial to the humanities workflow. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:11, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

For an academic journal it probably doesn't matter much — they are very simplistic when it comes to layout (says someone who used to work on one). InDesign is clearly the superior program on general design/ease of use terms, though again, for this particular application, I doubt it matters much. If it were me, I'd probably choose InDesign, mostly because the program is well-known through the printing and design industry, and has been intelligently augmented and built up continuously for really well over a decade. The practical tradeoff there is that most everything "works" as expected (I can't recall the last time I ran up against a genuine "bug"), and if I get specific instructions from a printer (e.g. export this with a given inside bleed and with certain color settings), there is always a straightforward way to do this with InDesign. I haven't used Scribus enough to make an intelligent contrast, but my general feeling with open-source design software (e.g. GIMP and Inkscape) is that these kinds of considerations generally get the back seat (hence GIMP still has no support for color management, and it is hard to export Inkscape files reliably into formats other programs can understand). Maybe Scribus is radically different, but I doubt it. If I were just playing around with stuff at home, I'd probably give it a whirl for the price alone, but if price was not an issue, I'd go with the better program. --Mr.98 (talk) 12:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Nobody has mentioned ODF? While OpenOffice is a bit clunkier as a user-interface, its document file format is probably far superior to any of the above. It is modern, extensible, works with free and open-source software editors and has convenient libraries for machine processing (and most new commercial software can read, modify, and save ODF too). It is also the underlying back-end architecture for Google's web-based "thin client" Google-Docs utilities. As far as Tex: (I've removed my anti-TeX rant, I will replace it later with some referenced commentaries about usability. To the original questioner: don't underestimate the value of usability. Nimur (talk) 16:28, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

sqlcmd

Hi! I found this example:

-- c:\sqlvariable.sql
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVar = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

You can run it from a command prompt:

SQLCMD -E -i"c:\sqlvariable.sql" -v myVar="You are connected as "

I think th right snippet should be

DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

t.i.a --217.194.34.103 (talk) 09:11, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a question? --Sean 16:18, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It appears that he is asking if the first "SET @myVar" should be "SET @myVariable". Yes, it could be that way. Or, you can change the original @myVariable to just @myVar. -- kainaw™ 16:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Excel sorts A- higher than A+

Hello, in my spreadsheet I have a column with letter grades in, from A+ to E-. When I sort by that column, Excel rates the minuses as higher than the plusses, so I see all of the C, then the C- then the C+ for instance. Do you know how I can ask/make Excel see these in a different hierarchy? Thanks 195.60.13.52 (talk) 16:02, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Assign values to each grade (with A+ > A > A- etc) in a lookup table then use the lookup function in Excel, then sort on these values. Dbfirs 16:57, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think either of those linked articles is actually very useful for a novice Excel user. Better to link to an article that specifically discusses lookups in the context of Excel, like this one. In any case I think the CHOOSE/MATCH method is easier for this sort of small range of possible values. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The easiest way to do this that I know of is to make a separate column that converts these letter grades into data that Excel can sort. An easy one would be a field that simply converted them into numbers, e.g., if column A is the one with the letter grades in it:

=CHOOSE(MATCH(A1,{"A+","A","A-","B+","B","B-","C+","C","C-","D+","D","D-","E+","E","E-"},0),10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,0,-1,-2,-3,-4)

Then you sort by that column, descending. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:05, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the link - I was looking for a better one, then got distracted. The alternatives are better anyway unless the OP wants to calculate average grades, and then your choose-match function is probably simpler. Dbfirs 17:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

actually, the easiest way to do this is to create a Custom List. Go to the Preferences, choose the Custom List lab, and then type in the grades in the order you want, one grade per line. Excel does a pretty good job of data-typing, so when you sort grades it should automatically choose the custom list for the sort value (or if not you can choose it explicitly by clicking 'option' in the Sort window). --Ludwigs2 17:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I think my way is easiest! No additional typing, no messing around with odd Excel features you aren't familiar with. Just copy and paste my formulae (changing the "A1" to be the correct initial pointer), and you're done, done! :-D The trick was just to ask someone to come up with the formulae for you, of course, which I'm not including in the difficulty rating. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Except that you have to do that every time you want to sort by letter grade. creating a custom list gets excel to do that for you. for instance, I did this with my copy of excel once, 4 years ago, and its been sorting by letter grade transparently ever since. --Ludwigs2 19:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I have an easier way, though it's not nice looking. In column A, put the letters, and in column B, put the plus / minus / normal modifiers, spelled out like that. Then when you sort, sort by column A by A to Z, and the second level sorting is column B, sorted by Z to A. The sort will look like "A plus", "A normal", "A minus", "B plus", etc. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That's only easier if you don't count the time spent re-entering the data! The true "easiest" way would have been to put it in numerical form to begin with, to be sure. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I have tried Ludwigs2's solution, and he is the winner! I never knew about that feature. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:23, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Force needed to press a keyboard key?

What's the force needed to press an average desktop computer keyboard? How about laptop keyboard? And what weight (mass?) is needed to keep it depressed? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 16:03, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It's the same as it was the last time you asked. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:40, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! I knew I had asked it before, but I couldn't recall how I phrased the original question when searching for it! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Lwavuc.exe

After some malware problems (running Windows XP), which I thought were fixed, I continue to get messages about lwavuc.exe. I don't know what this file is. A Google search for it gets zero hits so I'm suspicious that it is malware.

The messages are that this program is trying to access the internet. As a precaution, I have been blocking it. Today I got a window (created by what program I can't tell) wanting to reinstall this program.

Can anyone please tell me if this lwavuc.exe is part of a legit system, how to tell if it is corrupted, whether I need it and what for, or is it malware? Any leads on this would be much appreciated. As I say, Google found nothing about it.

Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 16:36, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I searched my hard disk and did not find lwavuc.exe on my Windows XP system, nor via a Bing or Google search. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Certainly sounds like malware to me. However, it also sounds like there is another component that checks up on lwavuc's activity and if it suspects it has crashed, tries to restart it. I suggest you do a more thorough search, perhaps using a program like Malwarebytes. As for not finding any information about lwavuc on Google or Bing, much of the malware I have encountered recently has used a random name generator to hide it from obvious searches. One thing I would check is to see if you can find the lwavuc.exe on your PC (I would not be surprised if it is hidden by a rootkit). Astronaut (talk) 13:03, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both. "Anti-malware" from Malwarebytes was very useful. It found bad files and registry entries (16 in all) which other programs had missed (or which were not present when the other programs were run).

Lwavuc.exe was the third of a series of malfiles - lwavua, lwavub. At this point, "everything" seems to be working. Wanderer57 (talk) 21:15, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

S.O.S.

I followed a fooloish advice. I saved this as "block.css" :

   * { display: block !important; width: 100% !important; }
img, td, th { width: auto !important; }

Then went to "Tool" - > Internet Options -> Accessibilty -> Format using my stlyle sheets and took it to "block.css". It got all shitty. Now I reseted the option. Even deleted the "block.css" but things ain't getting back to normal. Please help  Jon Ascton  (talk) 18:27, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

[Note to others: For previous context, see Screensize. --Bavi H]

To turn it off, go to the same box and uncheck it: Tools, Internet Options, Accessibility button, uncheck "Format documents using my style sheet", click OK.

My example was a little extreme, I should have described it better. My goal was to force everything to fit into the width of the browser, but I should have stated that it doesn't work well on all websites. I apologize. --Bavi H (talk) 23:52, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

It's OK, man. There's nothing to apologize. You did try to help. It's all right. But I have already tried that before I posted this message : I have already -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Accessibility button, uncheck "Format documents using my style sheet", click OK. That was the first thing I did to get back to normal. IT DID NOT WORK. Then I even deleted that "block.css" altogether. Now there is no "tick" in the box at "Format documents using my style sheet" option, nor a "block.css", but browser is in very state. What should I do ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You may have to clear your cache and or press reload to purge the items. Or install Firefox and use that instead. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course I know that, I did that, I cleared cache a dozen times, and refreshed the page all the way. Doesn't work.

Hm, if you have unchecked that box, then it sounds like your problem isn't caused by the user style sheet. (A possible test: Make an empty text file, call it empty.css, set it as the user style sheet and see what happens.)

It sounds like something else may be causing your problem. Can you compare how a certain website looks in your browser and in another browser or on another computer and describe the differences? Can you post a screen shot? --Bavi H (talk) 00:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It seems Wikipedia pages are the only problem givers. Though fonts appear a bit too thick on google too, but that's still readable. Here's the screenshot -> http://khurmi.com/ghgh.JPG -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 15:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It looks like the Text Size may be set to Largest. Try going to View, Text Size, Medium. --Bavi H (talk) 23:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Session expired

Hey all. I'm trying to screen-scrape [12]. Alas, when I try to cURL it I get "Sorry, this session has expired." I sort of understand why this happens, but I am at a loss at how to fix it. Any input appreciated, 92.2.85.143 (talk) 19:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

You might have to grab a cookie and re-present that when you do your curl. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there free software (for Windows) creating Searchable PDF with hidden text layer?

For Ubuntu see http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-make-scanned-pdfs-searchable-ocr-using-pdfocr.html Thanks! --FrobenChristoph (talk) 19:37, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Googling "free ocr pdf" turns up a lot of possible solutions. The question is which ones are better than others, I suppose. (Quality of OCR can vary a lot.) --Mr.98 (talk) 20:14, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure that these solutions can create "Searchable PDFs with hidden text layer"? I have found no free program doing THIS --FrobenChristoph (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

That's what most programs that make OCRed PDFs do, yes. OCR = searchable. Inside a PDF, that is 90% of the time done as a hidden text layer. (Some more ancient programs used to convert the scanned text to "computer" text but this usually looks really bad — e.g. see page 2 of this pdf. It is programatically easier to make it a hidden text layer in any case.) --Mr.98 (talk) 23:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't find a single free program with this feature. Can you point me to at least one program which is doing this: creating a searchable PDF? --FrobenChristoph (talk) 03:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

If you just want to add invisible text to an existing PDF (without OCRing it) then I've cooked up a little example program using iText to do that. It's written in Java, and you'd need to be a moderate Java programmer to adapt it for practical use. If that's useful, let me know and I'll post it here. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:46, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I have'nt these skills --FrobenChristoph (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Google Images

Any way to go back to the old Google images? The new format instituted a few weeks ago is not fun.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:35, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#Google_gone_weird_-_malware.3F 82.43.88.151 (talk) 22:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, much better, thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:20, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Nikon Camera/Computer File Saving Format

Resolved

I have a Nikon Coolpix880 that saves to my CompactFlash card. For some time, it saved into a folder called 100Nikon, and then suddenly all photos started being saved into 101Nikon. Now there's a third foler, 102Nikon. Perhaps this is so that file numbers don't overlap because I took so many photos, but if I delete the 101 and 102 files, will photos be safely saved, or can I mess with the file saving ability if I do that? DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Online Manual, page 143'The camera file system conforms to the Design Rule for Camera File Systems (DCF). Under this system, folder names consist of a three-digit folder number followed by the folder name (e.g., “100NIKON”). Each folder can hold a maximum of 200 images (it may hold less, depending on the size of the memory card and other factors). Should a folder fill up, another folder will automatically be created with the same name but a different folder number (e.g., “101NIKON”). ' There's more detail in the linked manual, but in general, I'd say to let the camera manage the CF card. --LarryMac | Talk 23:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Wow...thanx! Don't have the manual and didn't think to look online. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

August 3

Excel trendline angle

Hey, I was asked an interesting question a couple weeks ago, and since I didn't know the answer, I thought I'd try to see if any of you could answer it. The question is: Is there a way to measure the angle the trendline makes in Excel? 151.198.251.25 (talk) 00:49, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes and no and depends what you mean. a couple of pointers:

• the visual angle of the trendline in an excel scatterplot will change if you resize the plot; there is no easy way to measure that directly, since excel doesn't have access to the plot dimensions (short of dropping into vb and retrieving the chart display size).
• You can get the slope of the regression line of the normalized (un-resized) plot using Excel's SLOPE function, and since the slope is just rise over run, its arctangent should be the angle of the line. so use =ATAN( SLOPE( A:A,B:B ) ), where column A contains the x values and column B contains the y values. --Ludwigs2 03:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, you can right-click the trendline, select Format Trendline... Options and then select "Display Equation on chart". That will give you the slope and intercept. --Phil Holmes (talk) 07:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

yes, but that won't be in a machine-accessible format (it will be rendered as part of the graphic). --Ludwigs2 14:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The OP asked for a measurement. No mention of machine readable. I think I was adding to your information with something simpler. And if you select the "graphic" I think you'll find it can be copied and pasted. --Phil Holmes (talk) 17:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

oh, I see what you mean. ok. --Ludwigs2 20:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a Wiki anywhere that lets us make biographies & autobiographies of common people and ourselves?

What would be considered vanity here would be alright in the Wiki I speak of - Bios of ourselves, friends, teachers, etc. But what is the most popular Wiki of that nature? Thanks. --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 04:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a mainstream wiki exists that allows the creation of biographies of non-public figures except for yourself and your family, because of issues related to privacy of personal information, and the potential for abuse, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. Regards, decltype (talk) 07:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

There are a number of places that let you publish (auto)biographies of individuals that would not be suitable for Wikipedia (sorry, Decltype!) Biographicon and Wikibios are the two listed at Alternative outlets. I haven't used them myself, so can't say anything more than that they seem to follow the Wiki anyone-can-edit philosophy; I don't know how widely used they are. It's not uncommon to refer people who have create bios of themselves, their family or friends on Wikipedia to one of these sites instead. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I foolishly failed to take into account WP:WHAAOE. Biographicon says that the site announced in 2008 that it was shutting down due to insufficient interest, but it certainly appears to still be running at the moment. There is also Biographical Wiki for biographies of dead people which seems to be quite populous. I'm guessing it's pulling most of it's data automatically from genealogical records, though--Kateshortforbob _talk 15:05, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. I may write a lot of friendly bios of friendly people, but can I write about bullies and how they picked on classmates and why they should be avoided, etc.? On which of those bio-wikis is that okay? --Let Us Update Wikipedia: Dusty Articles 06:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Kate, I foolishly failed to take into account that the internet has a website for everything. However, IIUC, Wikibios requires one to provide the e-mail address of the subject, and they will ultimately have control over their bio. As for writing negative biographies, Wikibios prohibits content "that may be construed as: unlawful; illegal; threatening; harmful; abusive; harassing; stalking; tortuous; defamatory; libelous; vulgar; obscene; offensive; objectionable, (...) giving rise to civil or criminal liability; or in violation of an applicable local, national or international law." I'm fairly sure a "bully biography" would fall into one or more of those categories. decltype (talk) 10:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Desktop icons on main window unavailable on one of three log-on accounts in windows XP?

Some friends of mine told me to look at their windows XP computer. The husband, wife and daughter have multiple log-ons (I have forgot how to to this, can someone remind me?) set up by the person who got the computer for them. All the accounts, except the husbands work fine, but the husbands account has no icons at all on the main window. However, there are normal icons on the startup bar and the tray at the bottom. Dragging and dropping from these to the main window has no effect, and opening folders, copying and pasting to the main window also has no effect, as does using the "send to (desktop) option-the background (a picture of a dog) remains without icons. I changed the picture to the traditional XP rolling hills, this made no difference, and using system restore, which in any case only goes back a few months on his computer, made no difference either. I suppose I could start a new account for him and get rid of the old one (remind me how) but with the hassle of setting up all his old files I would in any case prefer a more sophisticated solution. Something to do with the registry perhaps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.1.88.6 (talk) 05:53, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Or something to do with malware? Try cleaning it up with Malwarebytes anti malware first before deciding in making a new account which would be (if it is on normal view, not classic)

Start-->Control Panel-->User Accounts--> Create new user account.

That should give you the option to make a new account.

Sir Stupidity (talk) 08:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

If you haven't done so already, you may want to try this, from Microsoft: Your Desktop Icons are missing in Windows XP. --Kateshortforbob _talk 14:51, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

no visual songs

37GB capacity with 11 GB available but no songs appear on playlist plus songs —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.106.65.211 (talk) 07:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi. You haven't given us enough information. What program or device are you talking about? --Mr.98 (talk) 11:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

errata sqlcmd

Hi!

I had wrote that the right snippet should be

DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

in this example I found :

-- c:\sqlvariable.sql
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVar = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

but I think I was wrong, the right code should be

DECLARE @myVariable varchar(255)
DECLARE @myVar varchar(255)
SET @myVariable = '$(myVar)'
SET @myVar = @myVariable + ' ' + suser_sname()
PRINT @myVar

t.i.a. --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:14, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

This question was asked and answered above. Did you have a problem with the answer? Did it not work? Did you just ask a new question without checking to see if the old one was answered? -- kainaw™ 12:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I just wanted to correct my code snippets --217.194.34.103 (talk) 12:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

No problem. It would have been better to post this in the section above so everyone knows what it is in reference to. -- kainaw™ 15:07, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

In C++/CLI

what's the differnce between _nogc normal C++ pointers and __gc pointers that work on .NET reference types? tia --217.194.34.103 (talk) 10:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

__gc objects are managed memory, and responsibility for deleting them lies with the garbage collector; __nogc objects are manually managed, and the programmer must explicitly delete them. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

there mihgt exist a garbage collected language that is directly compiled in machine language?

tia --217.194.34.103 (talk) 12:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there are garbage-collected languages that are compiled into machine language. "Directly" is an implementation detail and depends on your interpretation of "directly" - nearly all compilers use multiple stages with intermediate representations. There is, for example, a garbage-collected version of C++. Objective Caml supports interpretation, byte code, and direct native code generation for execution. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Sure, there's no relationship between whether a given implementation of a language uses an intermediate language and how memory is managed. Stick to garbage-collected C++ primitives and you're done. gcj compiles java to an executable too. What "directly" means is implementation-specific and mostly quibbling - does GHC compile Haskell "directly"? Does GNU Common Lisp? All compilers have intermediate data structures between phases - does merely documenting the intermediate language (or using a pre-existing one like C) make the process "indirect"? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Even an interpreted language like perl can have a particular script hard-coded into its interpreter. You can recompile the interpreter to produce a "perl" executable that only interprets the specific script you wrote. See, for example, Embedding Perl in C/C++ or Linking Perl with C. So, as above, it's not even really sensible to draw a clear distinction between "compiled" and "interpreted." We can say the same about garbage collection. If you manually manage your memory, whether your language is compiled or interpreted, you are writing a simple garbage collector. So, the ultimate way to ask this question is, "how sophisticated is the memory management, and how much is automatically handled for me, in the particular language, implementation, compiler, set of standard libraries, operating system, ... , that I am writing my code in?" Nimur (talk) 17:21, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Software transfer

I have an old laptop and the HD is on it's last legs and is about to die. Is it possible to transfer the programs/software that I have on it onto a new HD. And before someone asks I don't have the keys for most of the software due to a couple of house moves. Mo ainm~Talk 16:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

See List of disk cloning software. While you're at it, you can clone your hard disk to a bigger hard disk — the new hard disk doesn't have to be the exact same size — and (most of) the software will take care of enlarging the partition for you. Personally I use Norton Ghost. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not hard to clone one HD to another. The problem is, that means copying over the old operating system, drivers, etc. Some of which may not be compatible with the new laptop. It would take a bit of work to update those, probably, and at the end of it, you still have whatever OS you had on it before. (Which may or may not be an issue for you.) You can't just copy the files from one to the other, though — it would take a full clone to copy all of the registry information over so that it would work the same as before. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(Since Mo Ainm didn't mention he is actually going to buy a new laptop, I had assumed he or she was going to buy a new hard disk for the existing laptop. Mr.98 is correct that if you clone the hard disk and put it in a new laptop, various drivers will probably be needed for the laptop to operate properly — hopefully Windows auto-detects the fact that the drivers are missing and offers to grab them for you via Windows Update.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You're right — I had misread it as getting a new laptop altogether. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

So would my copy of MS Office work on the new HD if I cloned my old HD? Mo ainm~Talk 19:47, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It should work, yes. Cloning the disk literally copies everything exactly as it is now onto the new disk and unless Windows sees some sort of major problem, everything should work exactly as it is does now. ZX81 ^talk 20:19, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant thanks everyone now I need Norton Ghost suppose it is torrent time ;) Mo ainm~Talk 20:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

By the way, messages like that cause me to avoid helping you in the future. Software developers rely on people being honest and purchasing the software they spent a year writing. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Clonezilla should do just as well, and it's free. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant I will try that one so. Mo ainm~Talk 21:42, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Just one more thing — with laptops it can be hard to physically hook two hard drives together using just the standard cables. This is just because laptops usually only have one hard drive bay and space is a premium. So you might have to get a USB enclosure to make this work. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Menu Items Remaining After Clicking

Recently, I've been getting a niggly little problem - items in drop-down menus on this Vista machine are remaining on screen after I have clicked on them. Only the item which has been clicked on within the menu remains (e.g. 'Save as...'), and it remains over everything else on the screen. It doesn't matter whether it's a menu brought up in the browser, or brought down from the task bar, or brought up over the desktop. There is no way to get rid of it. Does anyone know why this is happening and how to make it stop? TIA! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this problem before on Windows machines, it looks to be some rendering bug with Windows. I've always fixed with a reboot. This forum post suggests right-clicking the desktop and pressing Esc as a fix. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 19:33, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I rebooted this morning (after an update) and the problem has been happening. It was happening before then, too. I have been looking around the forums and I've found numerous people saying 'right click + esc', but that doesn't work for me. What I did find, that seems to have worked, is a post telling people to switch off fade options and whatnot in the systems settings window - which I have done and it seems to be fixed - but I really would rather find out why this is happening and fix it without having to switch off stuff when it was perfectly alright before with the same stuff switched on. Cheers, though. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 19:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried updating your graphics card drivers? It sounds like fade in/out animation isn't working with your graphics card (or at least in the manner that Windows expects it to). If you can swap your graphics card, that might be another way to see if the problem is specific to the graphics card. --—Mitaphane _{Contribs | Talk} 20:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm on a HP G60 laptop with integrated chipset. I won't be able to change the graphics card, and I get periodic updates for it. This may, in fact, be the problem, and I may have to wait until the next update comes along fixing what the last update may have broken, as is sometimes the case. Cheers again. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

My printer doesn't work

I have a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer. I'm sure that it doesn't have colour--I never attempted to print in colour--just B&W; and while it printed before, it doesn't now. I took the cartridge out and shook it--such worked for the office copier in the past; but this time I only get a partial print. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.66.10.69 (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I would guess that the toner has simply run out and needs to be replaced. Shaking it can sometimes work to restore print quality when the toner is getting low, but if you're getting only a partial print out, the normal reason for that is just a lack of a toner. It can be something more serious with the printer itself, but that's harder to diagnose and the toner is the more likely problem. When did you last change the toner and how many pages have you printed since then? (some printers will tell you this information if you print out a configuration page). ZX81 ^talk 16:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

(EC) The cartridge has probably run out of ink. The website for support is here. You can download the user manual to tell you how to check if the ink has run out or not. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 16:52, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I got it on sale almost 2 years ago, and have likely printed a good number of sheets. Do I have to get a new cartridege, or can I simply refill the existing one? How much would either cost? Thanks.76.66.10.69 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC).

You would normally just get a new cartridge. I really don't think there is an option to fill up an existing cartridge. As for the price, that would depend on your vendor (look for it online, or go to a local supply shop), but it won't be much more than US$10-20. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 17:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Doing a quick Google search for "Samsung ML-2510 Toner" came up with quite a few placing selling compatible toners (getting an original is going to be harder/more expensive but compatible ones should work just as well), one of which being here for $25. I have never used that company and therefore not necessarily recommending them, I'm just trying to give somewhere you could possibly get it from. ZX81 ^talk 20:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I successfully refill toner cartridges for an old HP 6L printer. I don't know how successful the refilling of Samsung ML 2510 would be, but I think I refilled a similar cartridge many years ago. Refilling can be very messy, so if you can get compatibles for a price that you consider reasonable, then that option might be preferable. Compatibles and refills tend, on average, to give a slightly lower quality of printing than originals. Dbfirs 07:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Samsung makes some good low-end printers. I agree— replace the toner. The starter cartridge that comes with the printer has a yield of 1,000 pages, while standard cartridges are 3,000 pages. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 10:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

can a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone sync music with iTunes the same as before?

First of all, please note that we are explicitly allowed to jailbreak our phones now!

With that out of the way... after I've done so (with ultrasn0w after jailbreaking with jailbreakme.com, this is an iPhone 3GS modem 05.12.01 version 3.1.3 (modem/"baseband" mc139dn), will I still be able to change the music on it by syncing with iTunes?

Or does iTunes know somehow that the firmware is unauthorized/has a jailbroken version now, or for any other reason will give me shit/difficulties?

Thanks. 92.230.233.168 (talk) 17:24, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Note that "allowed" is a nuanced thing here. That ruling means jailbreaking is not a crime; it doesn't mean Apple has to let you, has to permit you to sync with iTunes or use ITMS, or can't still brick your phone. As to syncing to iTunes - it seems to depend on the jailbreak - previous jailbreaks have broken iTunes sync, which I believe were subsequently patched by later fixes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:46, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Backup

I have a lot of easily replaceable files on various hard drives, so I don't need to actually back them up. But I would like to somehow record the files so that if something happened to the drives I would know what I'd lost. So are there any good programs for scanning drives and recording a list of all the files on them, with things like size and modified date etc? Thanks 82.43.88.151 (talk) 17:34, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

You don't say what operating system you're using. If it's Windows, open a command prompt, cd to the root of where all these files are kept, and say dir /s /v > log.txt, and log.txt becomes that list. On Unix, Mac, and Linux it's much the same, except you say ls -lR > log.txt instead. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:41, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

dir /s on Windows 7, /v isn't a valid parameter anymore.

If you use Mac OS X, the command given by Finlay will work too: open a terminal, write cd /, then ls -lR. --Dereckson (talk) 21:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

On Windows 7 (also Vista and XP if you've installed it) you can use Powershell instead. Once you're at the right directory try get-childitem -recurse > log.txt. get-childitem can also be replaced by gci, dir, ls or some other alias. Nil Einne (talk) 07:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I tried the cmd method but "log.txt" doesn't appear in any directory after it's finished. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 10:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The obvious question are you sure the directory you're trying to write to is writable from the user you're running the cmd in? If you're using Vista or Windows 7, be aware unless you've opened the cmd as administrator, it's going to be a restricted user. For example, if you're trying this from the root of the system drive, it won't work in a normal Windows 7 or Vista config because you can't write to the root from a normal user. Ditto for program files. You could always specify where you want the file to be written and make sure it's something you can write to (if in doubt perhaps try copying a file there from the cmd). Try for example dir > %userprofile%\log.log and then look in your user directory for it, e.g. cd $userprofile% (you may also have to change drive if it's on a different drive) then dir log.log.

Also remember you will need to include quotes if the file or directory name you are specifying has white spaces. E.g. dir > "Z:\This is where I store my logs\Latest log.txt". And remember the directory won't be created so if you want to store it it in "Z:\This is where I store my logs" you need to create that directory first (and make sure it is writable). Oh and finally remember if the file exists and is in use, it's possible it can't be written to/overwritten. BTW on a related note do note > will overwrite/replace any existing file, whatever it is. Use >> if you want to append to an existing file. If the file shouldn't exist I often use >> as a form of simple security against mistyping or accidentally specifying a name of a file that already exists, that way if it does happen I should be able to recover the other file (there may be some way avoid overwriting at all I've never bothered to look). Of course you could also do a dir and look for the file yourself first.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I run everything from administrator. It's still not working. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 14:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

1. What about when you try "c:\log.txt" instead of just "log.txt"? 2. Does it take a long time, hitting the hard disk, before it gives you another command prompt? Or do you just immediately get another command prompt? Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Running everything from administrator is somewhat irrelevant if the directory isn't writable by whatever administrator account you are using although actually I believe if the directory isn't writable you should get an access denied message in the command prompt. (I'm presuming here some sort of Windows XP or later, for anything older it should be the same but particularly for the 9x kernel line I don't know.)

I suggest you try something like CT or I mentioned above. Specify the directory and make sure it is writable one. If you are running from an administrator the C root (if you have one) would usually be writable by the administrator or alternatively the userprofile directory should always be.

You may want to try a dir /s first, if you haven't already, so that you get to see the output (although the file should still be created if you properly piped the output even if the command you specify doesn't exist or isn't working). If you don't get any output with that it sounds like there's something strange going on.

BTW you are sure you're looking in the right place for the file right? If for example you're in C:\Users\82.43.88.151 (as shown in the command prompt) and you do a dir > test.log the file should end up in C:\Users\82.43.88.151. If you cd "P:\All My Junk" I hope you recognise as the command prompt shows and I alluded to above this won't change drive so you will still be in C:\Users\82.43.88.151 until you do a P:.

If in doubt you could search for it, if you're using Vista or Windows 7 I presume you aware how the search differs from Windows XP and how to make sure it's searching everywhere you want it to.

Nil Einne (talk) 11:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there a name for this type of data

I frequently use two dimensional databases (usually in a spreadsheet format or SPSS) and occasionally relational databases (in Access). Most of the data I work with is fairly simple, but occasionally there is a type of field where there are many possible values. I don't know the best way to deal with this, and I have been unable to successfully search for this as I don't know the correct terminology.

I will give the simple example of a contacts database. For most fields there is a single value, for example if the field is "Name", the value might be "Dave". But a complicated field may be something like "Group" for which there are several answers, "Home", "Work", "Hockey club" etc. One way of dealing with this is to have a field for each group and a true/false for each record, but that results in a huge number of fields. My question is: is there a name for a type of field where there are many possible values and combinations of values?

Thanks for your help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyrilPenaCastillo (talk • contribs) 19:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

This is commonly referred to as an "enumerated" field. Most relational databases have an "enum" data type. You can fake it with a lookup table and foreign key. -- kainaw™ 19:18, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed you specified "combinations". An enum field doesn't do combinations well - most databases don't do enum combinations at all. Neither does a lookup table. What you have is a "many-to-many" relationship. A common example is the student-to-teacher relationship. Students have one or more teachers. Teachers have one or more students. So, you cannot have a simple "teacher" field in a student table or a simple "student" field in a teacher table. Instead, you have a mapping table which contains a record for each student-to-teacher relationship. If possible, you want to avoid many-to-many relationships. So, you might break Group into LocationGroup containing {Work, Home, School} and ClubGroup containing {Hockey, Football, Soccer} - which assumes you can't be in more than one ClubGroup. If you simply cannot get the group fields down to a set that you only have one value set, you can hard-code combinations like: {Hockey, Football, Soccer, Hockey/Football, Hockey/Soccer, ...}

There is another way to tackle combinations, but it is not for the non-programmer. A number, like 285, is a collection of binary values, like 01101100101. Each digit can be a 1 or 0. You can arbitrarily assign each digit to be a column value and, if it is selected, make that digit a 1. Then, you can set or unset each digit as needed. The problem is that when you are done you have to write the user interface to encode and decode all those 1's and 0's properly. -- kainaw™ 19:27, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by CyrilPenaCastillo (talk • contribs) 20:16, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Some databases, like MySQL, distinguishes the SET and ENUM types, the first allowing combinations of values, the second to pick only one.

Here two MySQL fields from two MySQL tables:

`place_status` set('start','hidden') DEFAULT NULL

`perso_sex` enum('M','F','N','2') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'M',

place_status could have 0 (null), 1 (start or hidden) or 2 (start and hidden) values. perso_sex could only have one value. --Dereckson (talk) 21:06, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Please don't try to do what Kainaw suggests—it's a hacky solution and will cause you more grief than help. What you want to do is create a junction table, a very standard thing in relational databases. Basically you have one table of your main entries (tblAddressBook), and then a table of the possible values for your multiple-valued field (tblPlaces), and then a table that sits in between and just contains keys that are "associated" with one another (tblJunctionAddressbookPlaces). In Access these relationships are very easy to indicate with the "relationship view."

I elaborated about this in a previous post, here. Please feel free to ask more questions if it is not clear. This is a nice illustration of what it will look like in Access. Junction tables are easy, flexible, and do not bind you to figuring out your entire data structure from day 1, unlike the ENUM or wacky binary options above. (You can also easily still use it with regular SQL Join Queries; see the example in the link above.) I think in formal theory this may be called an Associative Entity, but I've always just heard it called a "junction table" or "join table" by Access programmers. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Exactly how is that different than the many-to-many relationship table that I suggested? It looks the same to me. Perhaps you got hung up on my suggestion to NOT use binary mapping if you are not a programmer and assumed that telling a person to NOT do something is a suggestion that they do it. -- kainaw™ 22:09, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't see your one useful suggestion buried within all of your bad ones on my first pass. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:23, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Guys, don't fight. There's a lot of ways to design database systems. "Good" and "bad" are meaningless subjective opinions without context. Every implementation has different needs. Nimur (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

"Good" is subjective without context; "bad" can often be universal. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea why you guys have complicated things. This is simply a lookup table. In your source table, create 2 fields called name and group. Group is a numeric field. Your lookup table, called group, will have 2 fields, the type (numeric) and group (character) for "home", "work", etc. Then your join would be on the source table (field group) and lookup table (field type). You can set it up as a foreign key relationship if you decide to use indexes (recommended). Many development components make use of these relationships automatically and your form will pick up the data in the lookup table and it should be selectable. Queries on the data will involve joins, typically outer joins. Sandman30s (talk) 11:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A lookup table will not handle the many-to-many relationship that the questioner described. -- kainaw™ 12:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Why do you say that? Consider this (syntax might be wrong, haven't done databases for a long time)

CREATE TABLE Students
{
   id             INT NOT NULL UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY,
   personal_name  STRING NOT NULL,
   family_name    STRING NOT NULL,
.....
}


CREATE TABLE Teachers
{
   id             INT NOT NULL UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY,
   personal_name  STRING NOT NULL,
   family_name    STRING NOT NULL,
.....
}


CREATE TABLE Classses
{
      id             INT UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY,
      teacher_id     INT   REFERENCES Teachers (id)
      name           STRING NOT NULL
...
}


CREATE TABLE StudentClasses
{
      student  INT REFERENCES Students (id),
      class    INT REFERENCES Classes (id),
}

As the StudentClasses table doesn't have a unique designation on any of its fields, there can be multiple entries in it, for each student, and for each class. I would however, add a constraint to ensure that {student, class} is unique.

You could populate the database like this (doesn't directly aline with the above schema)

Database tables

Students id name 1 Alice 2 Bob 3 Charlie 4 Dave

classes id name 1 Biology 2 Chemistry 3 Physics 4 Geography 5 History 6 Modern Studies

StudentClasses student class 1 2 1 4 2 1 2 6 3 2 3 6 4 3 4 5

which gives the result

StudentClasses

student	class
Alice	Chemistry
Alice	Geography
Bob	Biology
Bob	Modern Studies
Charlie	Chemistry
Charlie	Modern Studies
Dave	Physics
Dave	History

CS Miller (talk) 20:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That table indented the rest of the page, presumably due to a missing tag, so I removed it. Please feel free to re-add it and remove this comment after fixing. --Sean 21:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I thought I'd fixed it after commiting; it didn't show in a section edit. Mediawiki doesn't seem to like indented tables. Here goes again... CS Miller (talk) 21:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You just gave a very good example of a mapping table or junction table. It is not an example of a lookup table. -- kainaw™ 12:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Cisco Valet M10

I see some reviews refer to it as a router, others as an access point. Which is it? And what are the benefits of a router vs. an access point? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 23:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Technically speaking, it is both a router and an access point in the same box (and in this case, on the same circuit-board and probably on the same network controller chip). For the home user, this is great - the "box" is an all in one device that requires minimal configuration. But there are some unusual networking situations (not very applicable to a "home user") where you would want separate devices for routing and providing wireless link. For example, if you were building a campus-wide network with many distant locations that people can walk between, you want to make sure your access points can perform wireless hand-off. To coordinate this, the router should be located at a position in the network so it can communicate with different Access Points and perform that handoff. You can read about routers and wireless access point for technical details about what "routing" means in the sense of computer networking. Nimur (talk) 00:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, it helped a whole lot. 24.189.87.160 (talk) 00:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

August 4

Shady Facebook Group

I've been invited by my Uncle Don to join the quite obviously spam group "Make Money Online" ([13], if that works for you guys). I'm quite confident that Don didn't really create this page himself, not least of all because all of his aunts are dead, while the creator of the group claims that "his aunt has been making tons of money...". However, from my end of things, it does look like Don's account created it. How did this likely happen? Did Don give his password to someone he shouldn't have? Or did I do something wrong on my end to invite this sort of thing? Buddy431 (talk) 01:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't view the page due to not having a FB account... but have you considered directly asking your uncle if he created it? 24.189.87.160 (talk) 06:56, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've had probably 3 friends send me such spam messages over the past year. They attributed the problem to a computer virus, which may mean the virus snooped packets, or installed a keylogger, to log their usernames and passwords when they logged onto Facebook, and either (a) sent all the info to the bad guys, who have a script to make all the victims join this group and spam their Facebook friends about it; or (b) the virus takes care of these tasks itself without needing to send any info out to the bad guys. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:57, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes multi-level scams like these come with canned backstory's that you're just expected to copy/paste. APL (talk) 19:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

What is this image process called, and how can I do it?

Hello! Given this:
+ I want this -->
That is, is it possible for image software to take two single-layer near-identical images and extract the differences to a transparent background? Is there a name for this process? Is it something I could do with GIMP or ImageMagick? Any pointers how? Thank you!--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 03:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

It is called difference masking. I don't know about those programs, but in Photoshop, you open both files, then drag one image onto the other and change the blend mode of the top layer to "Difference." Then, you go to Select --> Color range and select the background. Hit DEL, and remove the bottom layer. You now have the objects on their own layer with a transparent background.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:43, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Some versions of photoshop leave some weird dithering issues around the edges. This is generally the right approach, but computationally the issue's pretty straight forward. Shadowjams (talk) 06:48, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You can write a simple script in MATLAB or GNU Octave (or any language that is convenient to load the images as arrays of pixel-values). Pixel-by-pixel subtraction of Image 2 from Image 1 will come close to your desired output. But what it really looks like you want is a more complicated algorithm (pseudocode below):

if ((img1[x][y] - img2[x][y]) <= threshold)
    output[x][y] = white
else
    output[x][y] = img2[x][y]

You can write this as a very simple for-loop in Octave. You can set the threshold to account for various noise, or set to 0 for exact-match detection. You might need to perform image registration to align the images perfectly. Nimur (talk) 15:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I rarely use MATLAB, but wouldn't you want: if(abs(img1[x][y]-img2[x][y])<=threshold) -- kainaw™ 16:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

(Yes, probably would want an absolute-value in there for most cases). Nimur (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This is surprisingly simple in GIMP. Under File, select Open as layers. Select both images and they will open in one image as layers. In the layers dialog, select the top layer. Then, in Mode, select Difference. Done. -- kainaw™ 16:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Great answers so far, thank you. I'd also like to add the following question: What if these photos didn't have the exact same background? What if I stood still taking pictures of a person walking somewhere and wanted to create an animation of just the person? The background would be the same, but it would be slightly shifted and have small differences at the edges from the imprecision of my hands trying to hold the camera in the same place. Can these programs show any tolerance to a situation like this, and only extract the main differences?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 19:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps image registration that Nimur mentioned might help accomplish this? Is this technique available in free and open software?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 19:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't recommend a technique because the ideal technique depends on the image. There are probably hundreds of different techniques for extracting an image from a background. Photoshop, for example, has the magic wand, the quick-selection tool, the extract filter, color-range command, the lasso, the magnetic lasso, channels, the marquis, and so on. I watched two DVDs of video tutorials on masking (essentially the same thing as selecting) in Photoshop -- [14], [15]. So, if you want some hints, I can give them to you, but I'd need to know more about the image you want to mask. You can combine selection techniques (in fact, you should) to achieve better results. Masking an image can take hours. The ease with which you mask depends on how similar the subject is to the background. An ideal situation would be a subject against either a green screen or blue screen. The more contrast, the easier the program will be able to distinguish the subject.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 20:19, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a difficult challenge - not totally impossible, but difficult. Image registration will be a precursor step - aligning the backgrounds. This is accomplished by numerical optimization to find the maximal alignment (cross-correlation) between the images. Then you could either subtract or mask. There are other, much more complicated ways to do this: motion vector estimation, for example, is a critical piece of modern lossy video encoders, like H.264 - and allows an estimation of what pixels have "moved" between two images. Very quickly, these types of image processing tasks cross a line from "basic addition, multiplication, and subtraction of images" to "advanced nonlinear optimization problems in high-dimensional vector spaces", and are open research topics. Some advanced image tools, like PhotoShop or Gimp, may support some best-effort implementations of these kinds of operations. Nimur (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I found a plug-in for GIMP that performs image registration and works quite well (check it out here), but I'm still having some problems with the basic step of getting the differences of two images. When I followed Kainaw's GIMP instructions above for my sample images, I got this image:

It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's close, and it looks like I might just be missing an extra step or two to get what I need. It seems like the brighter leaves bleed through the image of the molecule, and the bottom-left symbol is a bit transparent. Is there a way to rectify this?--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

To remove the bleed (assuming that the bleeded image has constant, not variable, transparency), I'd try to cut out the molecule image onto its own layer, overlay the a copy of the background and set its mode to "difference", and then adjust the transparency until (hopefully) the molecule looks approximately like normal again. If different parts of it have different amounts of transparency, I think the only solution is to do the opacity reduction with the airbrush tool, a steady hand, and some good luck. Adding and removing transparency in parts of an image can be achieved by editing the alpha mask. Paul (Stansifer) 14:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Wait a second; the problem isn't bleed at all. That's what the difference image is supposed to look like. What you want is to (a) turn all non-black areas to white in the difference image, and (b) use the result as a transparency mask in the original image to turn the background transparent. Paul (Stansifer) 14:10, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. The process Paul Stansifer just described is equivalent to the pseudo-code I posted earlier: masking, and then selecting image2 data where necessary. This is not something Gimp can do in one step; and it is why I suggested the algorithm in Octave's image-processing kit. You could perform that process in Gimp in several steps: use your result with the black background as an intermediate step; then, chroma-select black areas; then create a mask from that selection; then use that mask to select pixels from image 2). Nimur (talk) 20:09, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Wow, excellent work, everyone. While I'm not familiar with Octave yet, I will keep Nimur's advice in mind if I need this trick for a large quantity of images. With a small number of images, though, GIMP's being working great! Thank you.

Whatever happened to pump and dump spam?

Whatever happened to pump and dump spam? A few years ago, my inbox was full of emails trying to get me to buy worthless stocks that the spammer had bought in advance, trying to drive up the price so they could sell at a high price. But I've not seen any of this type of spam for ages. Why is that - did enough people catch on to the scam to make it worthless (I doubt this, seeing that I still get plenty of messages from various Nigerian princes), did the people doing it get arrested, or are spam filters just much better at blocking this sort of thing than they are at catching prescription medicines and fake designer goods? 59.108.42.46 (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've only had a chance for a brief look, but a couple of anti-virus/anti-malware companies speculated that it was caused by improved spam filters and a regulatory crackdown at the SEC ([16]),([17]). This website, which analyses spam, suggests that the spammers used deliberately malformed image files to bypass optical character recognition in spam filters; it's possible that OCR has improved enough that this technique is no longer effective (personally, I no longer see image spam of any kind - a few years ago, it constituted about 30% of the spam I saw). Apparently, there is also now software which detects trading patterns which indicate pump-and-dump scams ([18]). The drop seems to have begun in late 2007/early 2008, but there was also a hosting provider McColo which was notorious for having spammers as customers, which was closed down in late 2008. This might account for some of the drop; although many of the spammers later set up shop elsewhere, it's possible that they switched to a new business model. I haven't been able to find a definitive answer so far, though --Kateshortforbob _talk 16:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I still get image-spam for generic drugs, so I'm not sure if it is better filtering. However, I'd agree with Gabrielle Glaister about better regulation. The 'stocks' were generally on the non-SEC regulated pink sheets. According to the Caveat Emptor - Buyer_Beware section, any 'stocks' that are spammed are automatically suspended. It would be easy to set up a few hundred email accounts on the major webmail accounts and have them auto-forwarded to central account ran by the market; if a company is listed on several of these accounts then it would be ipso facto evidence that it is being spammed. The same could be done with the major ISPs with their co-operation. Of course, it could be possible that a company P'n'Ds its rivals to give them a bad name, but I've not seen or heard of it. CS Miller (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you mean Prima facie evidence. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 09:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

raw to png

I need a program that can convert .raw to .png, and back again. Any suggestions? Thanks 82.43.88.151 (talk) 12:54, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think ".raw" is one format. However, ImageMagick can handle the more common raw formats. See [19]. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

IrfanView and Raw Therapee can also convert many RAW formats easily to a png, though going back to a specific RAW format isn't possible. The obvious question is, "why are you trying to do this"; why just not keep the photo is a RAW format until the very end, when you then convert to the PNG? Buddy431 (talk) 13:45, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

RAW formats are, by their very nature, platform specific, camera-specific, model-specific, sensor-specific, etc. There has been a small effort by some of the major camera vendors to provide consistent output raw files - truthfully, these are not raw data any more (they have been reordered into standard output formats). There seems to be a common misconception: RAW does not merely mean "uncompressed" or "losslessly compressed" - it also means "in the specific pixel, bit, byte, and Bayer pattern order of the particular sensor that generated it". It theoretically also means "with absolutely zero digital processing applied" - but the definition of "absolutely zero" varies from implementation to implementation. This said, once you have images out of the camera, it's better to switch to a standard but losslessly-compressed (like PNG), or uncompressed (like BMP or TIFF) image format if you need to preserve image fidelity. "RAW" files are really a programmer's debugging tool. They have caught on in digital photography because of the side-effect that they are also uncompressed. If you want to convert an image to RAW, you can easily write a program to do so. Nimur (talk) 16:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't write a program to do so, I wouldn't know the first thing about writing programs. 82.43.88.151 (talk) 16:08, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You should probably use a format like TIFF, which will not modify the raw data in any way and will be uncompressed; but has a standard file format, and can be used with a huge variety of existing digital imaging software. Nimur (talk) 22:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Nimur, I don't understand what you're saying here. Of course you could define a TIFF variant that stored the same data as your camera's raw format, but no off-the-shelf software would support those images. Or you could use a commonly supported TIFF variant, but that would not preserve the original data, which I think was the whole purpose of this exercise.

There are basically three or four parts of converting the digital sensor output to a JPEG image: demosaicing, optional denoising, clamping and quantizing to an RGB color cube, and the actual JPEG compression. Of those, the JPEG compression is easily the least lossy step, if you use a high quality setting. The only reason to keep camera-raw images around is to preserve the image's original color gamut and/or to benefit from future improvements in demosaicing and denoising algorithms. You lose all of those benefits (except denoising, I suppose) if you convert to PNG or TIFF, unless you define a specialized version of PNG or TIFF that no standard software will understand.

82.*, what is your ultimate goal? Do you want to losslessly compress your camera-raw images to take up less space? There is a file format called Rawzor designed to do exactly that, but the format seems to be undocumented, without even an open-source decompressor, so I can't in good conscience recommend using it if you care about long-term availability of your images. You could also use Zip or 7-Zip. -- BenRG (talk) 23:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A brief test of compressing a Canon RAW image saved less than 2% compressing with .Zip, so I'd conclude that they're fairly well compressed already. --Phil Holmes (talk) 08:21, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Not only compressed, but some data is encrypted as well. Look at Digital Photography Review's interview on the subject; and Decoding raw digital photos in Linux, including source-code for reverse-engineered versions of the proprietary lossless compression used by major vendors: dcraw.c, and additional tools for Canon: clean_crw.c. Nimur (talk) 20:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

DVD Ripping

My DVD collection is taking up too much space so I am trying to rip my collection to my hard drive. I used Corel DVD Copy 6 to rip my Star Trek The Next Generation DVD's but I found it the be extremely unreliable (crashing frequently etc.). What DVD ripping software would people recommend? I want something reliable, and I want to be able to play the movies on my PC, PS3 and XBox. Thanks 86.45.185.245 (talk) 15:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

DVDShrink, DVD Decrypter or AnyDVD for ripping the DVD to disk, then you should probably encode the ripped files into a better format like XviD .avi or x264 .mkv, using HandBrake, MEncoder or AutoGK. HandBrake can directly copy from DVDs, but it only reads from non-copyrighted protected dvds (your star trek ones are most likely protected) 1230049-0012394-C (talk) 15:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I've heard many good things about DVDFab. It lets you back up to your hard drive, another DVD, or can output to specific mobile formats. --Zerozal (talk) 18:35, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A minor note is that to use DVDFab without paying money is a trial for 30 days.Sir Stupidity (talk) 08:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Apple Travel Adapters

Does anyone know of a maker of travel power adapters (http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB974ZM/B?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY) for the Magsafe power supplies for power books and other macs that isn't made by Apple and is therefore not £30 for a few pieces of plastic? I'm sure someone must make the same thing, unbranded with Apple, for like a third of the price?

86.153.255.200 (talk) 16:22, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The basic set of travel adapters comes with new computers, and if you buy used you should always ask if they are included. The kit is mostly a replacement for those, with (I think) a few funky extras. best places to look for off-brand units are eBay and Amazon (if anyone sells off-brand units, they'll have stores up there). --Ludwigs2 16:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No adapters but the local one came with my recent MacBook Pro (bought in Switzerland) and none came with either of my previous two Apple Laptops bought in the US. You can, however, use ordinary adapters. The bricks themselves are multi-voltage multi-frequency, the adapters just provide the electrical connection to the mains. You can also pull off your local end piece, and use a normal local HiFi power cord. Most people should have some of those lying around. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

E-mail postage system

I have heard and read about a proposal (I'm sure there have been several) about a new e-mail system in which users have to pay a small amount of "postage" (say, 1 cent US) per individual e-mail sent. The objective is to greatly reduce spam, as it now would cost a spammer US$10,000 to send out his 1 million e-mails; and the cost to an individual is low. Editorializing and implementation details aside, does Wikipedia have an article on any such proposal? Has any consortium seriously advocated such a proposal yet? Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:02, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

See Internet taxes. It has been proposed to thwart spam. IN the article, you will also see that it has been suggested as a way to move money from the (white) United States to the (black) Africa in an attempt to make up for the racial divide of the global economy. -- kainaw™ 18:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

That part of the article is, incidentally, unsourced. (The apparent source says nothing about Internet taxes whatsoever.) --Mr.98 (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The UN referred to it as a "bit tax", not "email tax" or "internet tax". They defined it as "a very small tax on the amount of data sent through the Internet." It appears that that the reference to the UNDP report was replaced with just "Id". -- kainaw™ 00:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

See also Hashcash for a non-payment scheme. All these schemes have drawbacks, which is why they're not in use. --Sean 19:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Attention economy#E-mail spam covers something similar. However, the extraordinary success and utility of email basically preclude any non-backward compatible changes. Also, for many people, Bayesian spam filtering has so effective that spam is basically a non-problem. Paul (Stansifer) 19:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. Hashcash is awesome. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Button on taskbar disappeared

I was at a library with Firefox, but this happens with Explorer too. If you go here then you see a list of open programs, each one a "task in progress". I did this in order to beable to describe what I was doing: that has nothing to do with my specific situation. Yesterday each one of the buttons represented some web site. On one of them, a popup ad showed up despite the popup blocker, and the button for the site I was on disppeared, replaced by the one for the popup ad. I never saw the site again (except by going to it all over again) until I clicked on the red X for all the rest when I was finished.

I've had the buttons rearrange their order, too, when one of the sites was acting up. What's going on?Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:38, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The taskbar is a list of open windows, not open programs. A popup window can close the window that it popped up from. As for order, you can customize the order to be alphabetical, it order opened, related to screen position, etc... -- kainaw™ 18:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm just telling you what the other site said. But the window wasn't closed. It was there, but I couldn't get to it without closing all the others. And the buttons got rearranged without my consent.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you positive that it didn't go into "grouping" mode where multiple windows of the same program are grouped into a single button? -- kainaw™ 18:53, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

They did not.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This does not answer the "why", but are you aware of Alt-Tab? If you ever "lose" a window, hold down the Alt key and hit Tab a few times. This will let you get to any existing window, whether hidden or not. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:37, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

A hint about the "how": this sometimes happens on IE8 if the circle keeps rotating and rotating. The sort of thing that could shut the Internet down, for example, though that rarely happens on my computer.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:58, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Google Wave killed, any Wave like replacements?

Google today announced they are killing Google Wave [20]. It's an amazing tool I use to collaborate with several remote freelancers all in different locations. We can't live without it (once we finally wrapped our minds around it). Are there any commercial products or services that offer anything similar? The main feature is persistent, time re-windable shared group chat/email/discussion/task tracking/meeting scheduler/to do list/brainstorming with live typing? --69.148.250.94 (talk) 23:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

You may have noticed articles noting that Google has already open sourced "much of the code". I haven't seen news of any replacement site yet. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

You may not currently be able to find all of Google Wave's functionality in a single tool, but you might like to check out this recently reposted Lifehacker top ten of web based collaboration tools [21]. Equisetum (talk | email | contributions) 11:56, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

August 5

Intel vs AMD: Has Intel achieved a decisive victory?

I used to follow the processor industry pretty closely, but not buying a new PC in the last 5 years has meant I haven't paid close attention to recent developments. I do regularly read tech news, though, and all I've seen lately is praise for new Intel product lines -- nothing about AMD. Has this grudge match been settled when I wasn't looking? Is AMD no longer competitive? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 01:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi

Intel currently has the lead with the following products

Intel Xeon 3000 Processor Series, which consists of:

• Intel Xeon 3100 Processors
• Intel Xeon 3200 Processors
• Intel Xeon 3300 Processors
• Intel Xeon 3400 Processors, which are a line of single-socket server processors with wattages ranging from 23W to 130W, cache sizes ranging from 2MB to 12MB, and frequencies ranging from 1.73GHz to 3.73GHz.
• Intel Xeon W3500 Processors, which is a line of processors intended specifically for workstations.
• Intel Xeon W3680 Processor, which is a 130-watt six-core workstation processor with a 3.33GHz base frequency, 3.6GHz maximum frequency, and a 12MB L3 Cache.

Intel Xeon 5000 Processor Series, which consists of:

• Intel Xeon 5100 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5200 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5300 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5400 Processors
• Intel Xeon 5500 Processors, which are manufactured using 45 nanometer technology for dual-socket computers, and consist of dual-core and quad-core processors.
• Intel Xeon 5600 Processors, which are manufactured using 32 nanometer technology for dual-socket computers and consist of dual-core, quad-core and hex-core processors.

Intel Xeon 6000 Processor Series, which consists only of Intel Xeon 6500 Processors, which are manufactured with 45nm technology for dual-socket computers and consist of quad-core, hex-core and oct-core processors.

Intel Xeon 7500 Processor Series, which consists of:

• Intel Xeon 7100 Processors
• Intel Xeon 7200 Processors
• Intel Xeon 7300 Processors
• Intel Xeon 7400 Processors, which consist of quad-core and hex-core processors manufactured using 45 nanometer technlogy.
• Intel Xeon 7500 Processors, which are designed for computer systems with 2 to 256 processor sockets, and have up to eight cores each running at a maximum frequency of 2.666GHz, and are equipped with caches ranging in size 8MB to 24MB.

But AMD is still actively competing with, and has in someways (such as processor core count) surpassed, Intel with the following products

1. AMD Opteron 6000 Processor Series, which consists of processors which are designed for dual-socket and quad-socket servers, with 12MB L3 caches, either eight or twelve cores each, and frequencies ranging from 1.7GHz to 2.4GHz. The AMD Opteron 6000 Processor Series, which currently consists only of the Opteron 6100 line of processors, supports up to twelve DIMMs per CPU in four channels.
2. AMD Opteron 4000 Processor Series, which consists of processors which are designed for single-socket and dual-socket servers, with 12MB L3 caches, either eight or twelve cores each, and frequencies ranging from 1.7GHz to 2.8GHz. Each AMD Opteron 4000 Series processor supports up to six DIMMs of DDR3 1333MHz RAM in two channels.

By the way, I also changed the title of your question from "has AMD decisively lost against Intel?" to "Intel vs AMD: Has Intel achieved a decisive victory?".

Rocketshiporion

Not sure what was wrong with the original title....--el Aprel (^facta-_facienda) 04:52, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

And you're supposed to be a linguist? Active sentences are less confusing that passive sentences. We expect the subject to perform an action, not the action to be performed on the subject! Objects should be placed in the predicate! Also, the word against implies that losing is something performed on Intel. Therefore, the current wording is less ambiguous.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 06:32, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Man, the folks from Language Log are gonna kill you; there's no passive voice in the original title. Heck, this usage of "lose" isn't even transitive; you need to add a direct object to make a passive construction: "Has the battle been lost by AMD?", which is awkward because "battle" is unnecessary. Paul (Stansifer) 13:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I've asked Rocketshiporion on his or her talk page to not change any more section titles, per our recent week-long debate. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Colorado will not load on Internet Explore 8, but other articles will

I already asked the help desk, Wifione suggest I come here/try Google Chrome, It works on Google Chrome. My Internet Connection is fine for all other Wikipedia articles/general websites

For Internet Explorer: 8.0.6001.18702

For MSN 09: 9.60.0053.2200

Computer: Compaq Pesario

operating system: Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 5.1: Service Pack 3 BionicWilliam (talk) 08:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

At 110 KB long, the Colorado article is quite long and does take longer than usual to load, but otherwise it works fine on my on my Windows Vista/IE 8 laptop. There have been no changes to the article in the last couple of days, so I suggest you check your PC for malware or rogue IE 8 addins that could cause it to fail to load the page. Do you get an error message, perhaps in thesystem event logs? Astronaut (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not the article length that makes it quite a burden on the browser, it is the total download size, I would imagine. Total, with all of the images and etc., the page is 1.2MB in size. That puts it kind of on the heavy end of the spectrum. Most long articles seem to be generally around 400KB by comparison. United States of America is about the same size. I suspect it is just because there are a lot of images on the Colorado page. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:44, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Finding a MAC Code/wireless dongles/uninstalling browsers

Hello, here are my latest computing problems, sorry to be a nusisance but these are causing me a lot of annoyance.

I have recently moved house and want to set up broadband (ADSL), however several new ISPs websites have told me that there is already broadband on my phone line so they need a MAC code from my previous broadband provider before they can do anything. There is plenty of advice on this online, with numerous websites telling me to contact my previous provider, however I don't have a clue who the provider is so I can't contact them and in any case, any contract would not be in my name and I'm not sure they'd be willing to just dish out the MAC code to somebody who is not authorised.

Is there a way of analysing the phone line to find out who 'owns' it - or can I get round the issue of having to have a MAC code some other way? Cable broadband is one option but not particularly cheap, or alternatively, mobile phone network broadband. I do have a '3' mobile USB dongle but it keeps disconnecting when used on my laptop (it works fine on my PC so I think the problem is related to Windoze).

That brings me onto my next question - why does the '3' dongle keep disconnecting when used on my laptop? The problem is extremely annoying and goes like this: I load up the '3Connect' software and once the USB modem status says 'Ready to connect', I click connect. It works OK and the status says 'Connected' for about a minute then the connection drops out. I go back to '3Connect' and it says 'Ready to connect' so I click connect again and it comes up with an error message that there is a problem connecting and would you like to try again. Clicking OK results in the same message and this error is fatal, in that the only way of connecting again is to reboot the laptop, when I can use it again for a minute before experiencing the same problem. It works fine on my desktop PC, it rarely disconnects and if it does, I can reconnect without having to reboot. I am therefore pretty convinced that it is a problem with the laptop and not the dongle or the mobile phone network these things use (GSM or whatever it is). It is also not a problem with the location, as if I use the laptop in the same room as the PC it won't work.

Both machines have Windows XP, SP2, although both are long overdue a rebuild, which I am dreading as there is so much stuff to load (on the desktop PC at least). I would very much like to ditch Windoze on the laptop as I can survive without Windoze-dependent software on that as long as my desktop still has Windoze. However, will the '3' mobile broadband dongle work with Linux (Ubuntu being my preferred choice)? Has anyone had any experience of using these things with alternative OSs? I don't think the 3Connect propriatery software would work so it would need some kind of generic driver or app.

Next question, are there any significant disadvantages of using mobile broadband over fixed line/ADSL broadband? I think the 3 dongle costs about £10 per Gb but it is pay-as-you-go and I haven't needed to top it up yet so I don't need that much allowance, really just Facebook and general email/browsing, although I sometimes use Youtube a bit to watch music videos (these are usually pretty low res) and I also use Spotify sometimes for listening to streamed music.

Finally, there seems to be some kind of bizarre conspiracy against other browsers on my desktop PC. I used to have Firefox, Safari and my browser of choice, Chrome all installed and working OK on this. However, in the last couple of weeks, something has deleted all the program files. There is no trace of them in C:\Program Files although the Desktop, Quick Launch and Start Menu shortcuts are still there, clicking them brings up a message that it can't find the folders. I am not surprised, as they have been deleted (and not in the Recycle Bin). So, I went to the Google website and attempted to install Chrome, apparantly it only takes a few minutes, and on my laptop, it did (I was using a public WiFi network to download it). On my PC, it downloads the installer and then says 'Installing', with one of those silly progress bars that fill up and then empty again (giving no actual indication of progress) and it never completes. The same goes if I try and install Safari or FireFox. Now this sounds to me like a virus but I did a full scan using my AVG antivirus and nothing was found. I know you are probably going to suggest rebuilding it but that is a last resort and in any case, it is perplexing why these browsers have been removed. Internet Explorer still works but I would rather use something else.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers you have and sorry about the long post, I need somewhere to moan about my computer problems, otherwise I will end up throwing them out the window!!! GaryReggae (talk) 08:43, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Forgot to mention, the mobile broadband dongle mentioned is a ZTE MF112.GaryReggae (talk) 08:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I assume you are in the UK. If you can use the internet from home, then you can do a whois inquiry on the IP address. If not, you will have to pursuade BT to tell you the ISP currently occupying your line. When I called BT just a couple of minutes ago, they suggested they would need your phone number or postcode to "do checks on your line" which would tell them the ISP. In theory, you can then call the ISP to get them to issue the MAC code. However, I have an awful suspicion you will repeatedly come up against the "we won't talk to anyone but the account holder" line used by so many organisations these days (when my sister's ISP switch was taking a long while, I ended up pretending to be my brother-in-law so they would talk to me!). An easier way might be to contact your solicitor (if you have bought) or the letting agent (if you are renting) to get them to tell you the name of the previous occupant and perhaps a forwarding phone number. Then you can call the previous occupant and get them to press for their internet to be disconnected (after all, they're probably still paying for it). Astronaut (talk) 14:34, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

You do not actually need to use the 3 Connect software on windows (though it does need to be installed in order for the drivers to be available). You can connect/disconnect using windows built-in networking (on Vista, just right click on the network icon and connect to 1.3G, not sure where it is on XP though). I found this rather more convenient than the 3 Connect bloatware. If you're familiar with programming you can use the RAS functions to handle the connection. I have found Three to been very reliable this last year, though I had a lot of problems previously which I put down the the local cell tower being overloaded. You could try moving the laptop to see if you can get a better signal, or try a USB extension cable. Price-wise I'm using their 12GB/12 month package (cost £80 inclusive of dongle) which is very good value for money if you're a light user (I generally browse without images which is easy to toggle on/off on Opera)

The dongle will work fine on Ubuntu (nothing to install). You just need to right-click on the network icon (top line, right), Edit Connections, Mobile Broadband, then fill in the provider deails. I did have some problems with DNS and had to manually configure /etc/resolv.conf (added nameserver 141.1.1.1) but as I was only doing a test with the LiveCD I never followed it up. The ubuntu forums are very helpful though. Good luck. Kram (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

On disadvantages, the main one is reliability which is very dependent on your location (just go looking in the forums for examples of woeful experiences, though bear in mind that satisfied users don't tend to post). The other niggle is data allocation expiry (on Three pay-as-you-go, if you top up with 1GB it only lasts a month, and does not roll over), which is why the 12 month pay-as-you-go package was so attractive (and its much cheaper than getting a landline installed). Another issue is over-restrictive nanny filters used by some providers (Vodafone, are you listening?). You can supposedly get the filter turned off, though I didn't bother (I only got the Vodafone dongle as a backup for the occasions that Three was unavailable, and it had an attractive non-expiring data allocation (provided you connected at least once every 6 months), sadly no longer available on new dongles). BTW I have stayed clear of Contract packages as I don't fancy getting burned by over-usage charges, though they may be appropriate for some users. And a plug for NetWorx by SoftPerfect (google it) which is a great (free) bandwidth usage monitoring tool. PS Sorry for the slight rant! PPS I recall seeing some mention of USB power issues with 3G dongles on laptops, so you could try (borrow?) an externally powered USB hub to see if it helps. Kram (talk) 21:23, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Recovering data from a bad latptop harddisk

This hard drive has too many bad sectors and at some point windows did not start so i got rid of that laptop and retained the hard drive. I bought another laptop, it works well but would not boot from ultimate boot cd. This laptop has cdrw /dvd drive and i burned ultimate boot cd in a cdrw and it worked on the older laptop. Current laptop apparently wont boot from the old hard disk either - it shows windows boot menu with safe mode etc.

So I decided to boot from linux cd and copy data from old hard disk to a usb drive. Damn small linux boots but i dont see the hard drive or usb stick in the file manager - i looked in etc/ and also in dev/. So,I a clicked the green thing near hda1 or hda5 on the widget on lower right corner (does not belong to the file manager), but just could not find the drives.

My next attempt was use ubuntu, on booting it started to read the old hard drive and said "I/O error bad sector 3636657" or something along those lines. There are too many bad sectors so, it is still doing that. I don't know whether ubuntu will eventually start. But if it does start, i could easily find the drives in its file manager.

Another thing i could have done wrongs is that i have misplaced the jumper on the old hard drive. Current laptop has no jumper on its hard drive. I don't know if that causes any of the problem.Perhaps you could please give some suggestions on how to recover data. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.99.136.3 (talk) 10:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Puzzled why you dumped the old laptop but kept the dying hard drive. Most people dump the dying hard drive and install a new hard drive in the old laptop.

Anyway, recovering data from a dying hard drive can be difficult. I recently tried doing this, before eventually giving up when various Linux distributions consistantly refused to mount the drive any more. The drive had gone from making intermittant rattling noises to a constant noise like a meat grinder. I did have some luck in using Windows Recovery Console to rebuild the Master Boot Record and Partition Table and was then able to access the drive for a short while before it failed again - unfortunately the part I needed to access was hidden from Windows (in the system recovery area) and it was the restart with a Linux Distribution (to allow me to access that area) that broke it again.

As for jumper settings, if you are accessing the faulty drive through a USB port, I don't think the jumper settings matter. However, if you have mounted the faulty drive inside the case on the second connector on an IDE cable, the jumper setting does matter. Astronaut (talk) 11:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Lost XP file

When I boot up, I get a message saying 'Cannot find KBDMPI.DLL. Anyone know what this file does and how I can restore it? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.82.209 (talk) 17:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Safari

I have just downloaded Safari (web browser). I was bit excited when I read on the Wiki article that it is a "graphical" web browser. That filled my mind with dreams. I have always expected more than browsers can give us. Lately when I switched from IE to Firefox I was not disappointed - the spell-checking thing in itself is quite cool. So what more has Safari to offer ? Can I directly adjust colors etc. of my Wikipage or other pages ? What else it will do for me. Thanks -- Jon Ascton  (talk) 17:42, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

"Graphical" means that it is not "text-based" like Lynx (web browser). IE and Firefox are both graphical web browsers. -- kainaw™ 17:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I use primarily Safari on the Mac, Firefox on Linux. Safari is a bit "smoother" and fits better into the Apple ecosystem, but I think technically Firefox is as good or better, and it has a great plug-in engine. Don't expect too much. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Slow Blender interface

I'm minding somebody's house for a week, and doing a bit of programming which involves some 3D models. Blender works fine for me at home, but on his (higher spec) PC, the interface is intolerably slow - there's a delay of about three seconds when selecting an object, pressing a button, opening a menu, and so on. (The actual rendering is very fast.) So I hunted through the processes and services to find some likely culprits, and stopped messenger, ad-aware (he is running avast, too, but I left that on), and some residual service left over from a previous Norton installation. Each time I got rid of one of these processes Blender seemed to perk up a bit, but after a few edits it was back to the incredibly slow interface; and this isn't with complicated models - even if I just have a couple of incredibly simple models with a few vertexes each, it's still like this. He has XP and a Radeon Xpress 200. The Blender version is 2.49. There is plenty of free memory and disk space. I'm on the verge of giving up, but: is there is any known common cause of a slow Blender interface? Wurstgeist (talk) 20:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
OK, some research tells me that this is because the Radeon R300 (the Xpress) had crappy drivers, and the Blender programmers were too stubborn to write a workaround, saying ATI should fix the drivers instead, and now ATI belongs to AMD and you can't get updates for these old drivers any more and nobody ever fixed anything. My only solution seems to be to start Blender's "game" every couple of minutes and then stop it again, which resets something or other in Blender's inner workings and stops it being slow for all of the next two minutes. Unless anyone has a better idea? Wurstgeist (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)