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July 29

Problem in Scheme with Let

Okay, I'm trying to write a function that will generate all of the "co-matrices" (essentially a co-matrix of an n*n matrix will be an (n-1)*(n-1) matrix with a given row and column removed) of a matrix in Scheme, here is the working code to generate a given co-matrix

(define co-matrix
  (let ((answer ()))
    (lambda (matrix row iteration)
      (cond
        ((= iteration 0)
         answer)
        ((> ( + 1 row) (length matrix))
         ;if this is true, we want to go start of matrix
         (append answer (cons (cdar (get-list 0 matrix)) (co-matrix matrix 1 (- iteration 1)))))  
        (else 
         (append answer (cons (cdar (get-list row matrix)) (co-matrix matrix (+ 1 row) (- iteration 1)))))))))

Here's the nonworking (but probably would if I could figure a way around the let statement stuff) code to generate all the co-matrices when we fix a row and remove each row.

(define co-matrices
  (let ((answer ()))
    (lambda (matrix iteration)
      
      (cond
        ((not (= iteration (length matrix)))
         (append answer (list (append (co-matrix matrix iteration (- (length matrix) 1))
                                      (co-matrices matrix (+ 1 iteration))))))
        (else answer))
    )))

Why is it that my code for dot-product (below)

(define dot-product
  (let ((result 0))
  (lambda (vector1 vector2)
    (cond
      ;we take the product of the two vectors, add it to the result and then add the dot product of the cdrs of both lists to the result recursively.
      ((not (and (equal? vector1 ()) (equal? vector2 () ))) 
       ( + result ( + (* (car vector1) (car vector2)) 
                      (dot-product (cdr vector1) (cdr vector2)))))
      ;if we're at the end of both vectors, return result
      (else result)))))

works but the co-matrix stuff does not?

I'm not a Scheme expert (I tend to use ELisp instead), but it seems to me that you should interchange your lets and your lambdas. Otherwise your variable initializations are occurring during the definition of your functions rather than during their execution. Does that help? --Tardis 23:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It does actually! Thanks so much.

Help Customize The Dell I Intend To Purchase

I'm about to buy a new system, and these are the specs. I request that someone help me out in deciding if I made the right decision in choosing this setup. Sorry about the long post, but I'd really appreciate some help so I don't get ripped off, overkill, underkill, etc. M@$+@ Ju ~ ♠ 05:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dell Dimension E510 Series: Pentium® D Processor 940 with Dual Core Technology (3.2GHz, 800FSB)

Operating System: Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition

Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (4x512M)

Keyboard: Dell USB Keyboard

Monitor: 20 inch UltraSharp™ 2007FPW Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

Video Card: 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory

Hard Drive: 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/ 8MB cache

Floppy Drive and Media Reader: 13 in 1 Media Card Reader and External USB 1.44MB Floppy Drive

Mouse: Dell Optical USB Mouse

Network Card: Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet

Modem: 56K PCI Data Fax Modem

Adobe Software: Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0

CD or DVD Drive: Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capability

Sound: Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D), w/Dolby® Digital 5.1

Speakers: No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)

Office Software (not included in Windows XP): No Productivity Suite - Corel WordPerfect® word processor only

Anti-Virus/Security Suite (Pre-installed): No Security Subscription

Hardware Warranty: 1Yr Ltd Warranty, 1Yr At-Home Service, and 1Yr HW Warranty Support

Dial-Up Internet Access: 6 Months of America Online Membership Included

Miscellaneous: Award Winning Service and Support

Future Operating Systems: Windows Vista™ Capable

Operating System Re-Installation CD: Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition re-installation CD

Dell Digital Entertainment: Starter Entertainment Pack -Basic digital Music, Photo, and Casual Gaming

TOTAL:$1,214.85

"Made the right decision" sounds like you already bought it. In case you can still change stuff, here's what I think. "No Security Subscription" is no good and it doesn't describe what anti-virus software the system has (only that you are not subscribed for updates). You need to know if this means you haven't got any protection, or that you need to download updates manually. If it isn't included, either get it or download a free option. Whether a system is right for you depends on how you want to use it. Are you an avid gamer? To play the more recent games, I recommend you get a 3D video card. - Mgm|^(talk) 05:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and AOL and Wikipedia don't mesh well. Unless you're on dial-up, stick with whatever provider you have now. - Mgm|^(talk) 05:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You need to tell us a little bit about what you plan to use the system for, before we can advise you on whether it will meet your needs. I see you have chosen Windows XP Home as your operating system - presumably this is the cheapest operating system available. If you plan on wiping it to install Linux, let us know, as we may be able to find a system for you that comes with Linux preinstalled, or without an OS entirely. You have chosen Corel WordPerfect, again presumably because it's the cheapest option available. If you have the option of dumping it for less cost, OpenOffice.org is free and probably at least as capable. You have a modem included, which will be of no use if you plan to use broadband. You have a floppy disk drive specified - is this because you want one or because you can't order the system without it. Telling us what country you are in may help too, and what currency is that final price in?-gadfium 06:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like Dell PCs. Anyway, I would recommend AVG Anti-Virus (commonly known as AVG) for your security and I assume it is coming shipped with XP SP2? That includes a firewall, too. Iola k ana|^T 14:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

- AOL and Wikipedia don't mesh well? I've been using AOL and Wikipedia for years now with no ill effects. User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's okay. But as mentioned, what are you going to be using it for? If you plan on gaming, then it's a moderate build. --Proficient 20:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since you bought it from Dell, I'd recommend you reformat the hard drive and install your choice of Windows (Personally, I like Server 2003)from http://thepiratebay.org/ or Linux. Then, get a firewall, buy yourself a broadband router with NAT+SPI, and install anything else you might need. The hardware seems competent, even overkill (2 GB RAM? Even Alienwares usually ship with 1GB).--Frenchman113 on wheels! 15:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I think of it, GET SOME SPEAKERS! That 5.1 channel sound card isn't doing you a lot of good without speakers. Now that I think of it, you should also dump that Adobe Acrobat Reader for something lightweight like Foxit Reader. And, if you need a broadband ISP, sign up under Speakeasy if possible.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 15:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, why do you happen to need a 250GB hard drive?--Frenchman113 on wheels! 15:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey guys, well I intended on setting it up for gaming, but maybe I wasn't totally clear. I won't be using AOL, but they do not give you the option to get rid of it. I would get my own speaker system that isn't their make, and as for the graphics card, it was the highest end they offered in this computer. I was using a coupon code that made the price alot lower, so it isn't just a cheap setup, in total it's about 1,500+ but was reduced. Do you think I'd do better calling them with the specs I want? M@$+@ Ju ~ ♠ 16:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably. However, you may have to pay slightly higher for a custom system. You should consider Dell's N series PCs though, they don't come preinstalled with junk (or Windows for that matter, see http://thepiratebay.org/) and are a couple hundred cheaper. You'll have to ask for that specifically, licensing deals with MSFT don't let them advertise it.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 17:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ha, I called Dell and had them give me a quote, and I dunno how it happened, but it would end up costing me about $300 more! Either way, I've changed the specs a bit but I'll spare you the details. I think I'll buy a seperate video card that is a higher end model and that should make the computer pretty nice. Thanks for your help guys. M@$+@ Ju ~ ♠ 19:38, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Checksum for backups onto DVD

Hello! I am in the process of backing up my documents, music, e-mail and so forth onto DVD+R. I also have an old set of backups (covering a similar range of data) from a year ago. My questions:

Is there a way of checking the integrity of the old backups without opening every single file on there manually? There are several thousands of them, this would take too long. I just want to know if all the files are still readable/intact - or is this impossible without a 'true' copy to compare them to (this isn't possible anymore, as obviously the contents of my documents have changed in the past year)?
If #1 is difficult/impossible to do, is there something I can to my current round of backups to ensure that, in future, I can test their integrity more easily? A checksum of some sort, perhaps? If anyone has any suggestions for programs I could use, that would be greatly appreciated. I am relatively computer-savvy, but run Windows. — QuantumEleven 10:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should Google for "DVD integrity check" or something similar.
In the Unix world, people would probably use md5sum for that. In the Windows world, I've heard that some people use Parchive. --Kjoonlee 17:35, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't find an integrity checker, I guess you could run md5sum twice on your set of backups, and try seeing if any MD5 sums differ. I'm sure there's an MD5 checker for Windows with logging support that you can use to check directories recursively. You could examine the two logs later on to see if you're getting any faulty reads. --Kjoonlee 18:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FSUM. I think you can use something similar to the following. --Kjoonlee 18:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

fsum -r -jm e:\*.* > check.md5
fsum -c check.md5

Microsoft Word and ligature/accented glyphs

I have never used Word in the past, but I have to deal with Word documents now at work. When I found that Word doesn't cope with TrueType ligature glyphs, I at first refused to believe it. I mean, TrueType has been in use since when, 1991? Then I found out that OpenOffice supports them without problem. It is simply beyond me how a $230 application can lack such basic functionality, especially seeing that it is provided by its $0 competition as a matter of course. Now it appears that Uniscribe has some support for context shaping. It apparently just refuses to apply it to Latin script. Can I conceivably trick Word somehow into using a font's ligature/precomposed glyphs repertoire, e.g. by making it believe the script is not Latin or similar? This may not be straightforward, as the fontforge manual tells us that

Microsoft tries to document what features they apply for which scripts in Uniscribe, but that isn't very helpful since Word and Office have quite different behavior than the default.

That seems to mean that Microsoft documents one thing, and their applications do something entirely different. This reduces me to trial and error. Is there any information available surrounding this? dab (ᛏ) 18:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of TrueType ligature glyphs, and I am sure it doesn't surprise many people that it's not supported by MS Word. --Proficient 20:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am unsure, I might mean OpenType (a Microsoft format!). Fact is that I save my font as TrueType (.ttf, hence I don't think I am using OpenType functionality) in FontForge, and the ligatures (defined as being of the "liga" 'standard ligature' type) work in OpenOffice, but not in Word. dab (ᛏ) 22:04, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~I found this help page on the Microsoft site. It explains how to use fonts and how to "embed True Type fonts" in Word and Powerpoint. I hope this is helpful. Road Wizard 22:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)~~ I have crossed this comment out as, after more research, it doesn't seem to tackle the specific issue of ligatures. However, I will leave the link there in case others are having difficulty with True Type fonts. Road Wizard 22:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

.torrent

what are some ways to get better download times on torrent files?

Leave your PC on for longer periods of time, and upload more. — QuantumEleven 20:25, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes uploading less can increase download speed (if the upload cap is set too high or too many connections are allowed it can eat up all the bandwidth). digfarenough (talk) 15:18, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try portforwarding, this should help you with this problem.--Sangeeth 20:31, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Download torrents that are being seeded by a large amount of people. Also, portforward as mentioned. --Proficient 17:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Power Caliberation Error

Hai...I use Nero 6 Version for burning DVDs and CDs of general types(DVD-R,+R,RW...etc.Right from the begining with some mid range quality discs(CD-Rs as well as DVD-R and DVD+R) I've seen a lot of such complaint"Power Caliberation Failed" and my burning process becomes failed.I tried to look for the description of it in nero itself but I ended up with their statement that my drive needed some Firmware upgrade and Blaa....blaa...blaa....But I believe it's not the case since when I burnt those same discs but with reduced speeds...I was able to succesfully burn but this though didnt happen all the time..So what does this mean and what could be the cause?...My drives are a brand new one which I purchased before a couple of weeks.It's a Samsung CD-Writer and Sony DVD-Writer DWQ-120A.What should I need exactly to avoid this error and what exactly this means?..Help Needed guys

Hi.. the problem you have got now is very common click here [1] i hope you found what you are looking for.--Sangeeth 21:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Sangeeth,Thanks about that link but that was just one step more than one big piece of mess..I could possible find people bursting their tears about the same problem of mine but no solutions were provided till todate...I returned empty now....any more?..

hi... OPC (Optical Power Calibration) errors are related to the drive trying to test how strong to make the burning laser. If you recieve this error, the piece of media you are using may have problems. Once the error occurs once on any piece of media, click past the error messages. This will return to the burn screen and eject the media from the drive. Insert the SAME blank media again, then click refresh. The status in XCopy should change to green and give a message of ready to burn again. Click burn, and the burn process should continue as normal. If the error occurs again, please make sure that the blank media you are using is on the compatibility list for your drive, and that you are not running any software listed on the DVDXCopy Black List.

Also, if you recently had the DVD burner installed you will want to make sure you have a strong enough power supply to power all of your system devices. Newer PC's with high end processors need more power and are more likely to need a higher wattage power supply. If there is not enough wattage to go around, the drive cannot muster enough laser power to burn the disk. Sangeeth

graphics card builtin

Hi

I have a graphics card builtin (SiS 661FX_760_741_M661FX_M760_M741) into my motherboard. I want to change the graphics card is it possible ????

thank you

Yes it's quite possible if your motherboard allows peripheral expansion.But if it's a quite old model,then you may no longer change it because of the unavailability and no supporting softwares(rare cases).But your in-built video processing unit can only be disabled prior to the installation of your new graphics card.You need to have a proper graphic slot interface in your motherboard for this purpose.Check your moher board PCB side and look for some slots or either way you can check out the manuals of main board.Changin the graphics card depends upon your mother board type.If it's very older,I bet you can never get one.If you know the motherboard model number,then I recommend you to try looking for upgrading information in the internet through google search first.

If you have a SiS 661FX then your board is reasonably new (I think the FX bit refers to hyperthreading, but that's a vaguely-remember bit of info). Then you should have an AGP (accelerated graphics port) slot, or if you're really new a PCI Express slot. Since you mention SiS 661FX_760_741_M661FX_M760_M741, it seems that you have a manual for your machine. One needs the specific model name of the motherboard to give more info, but SiS 661fx refers to a chipset, not a motherboard. In the absence of documentation, find the model name of the motherboard by first switching off mains power, then opening the case and looking on the board. The model name is printed on the board itself, and is the largest lettering on the board. If you have all sorts of cards and connectors already plugged in, it's usually easier if you use a bright torch and go over the board systematically, gently moving aside wires as you go. Once you have the name (e.g. something like "GT-80" or "PBX-7" or whatever) then you can ask any computer shop to help you find a suitable card (or come back here - without that name we are guessing). Remember that just getting a fancier graphics card does not necessarily solve all problems related to the display of graphics intensive programs. Sometimes getting the newest driver for your onboard graphics does the trick for you, and at the other extreme nothing less than a new machine may do what you want. --Seejyb 14:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Translation for other side of pond: "bright torch" = "bright flashlight". Please, no open flames! :-)

Also be warned that AGP has gone through several revisions, and naming is diverse and confusing. Not all AGP cards work with all AGP slots, so be careful. Also, every PC has PCI slots; these are not the same as PCI express slots. --KSmrq^T 18:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC

thank u for u r information....

    sangeeth

Err, I think I f-ed my windows install

I kind of deleted the i386 directory on my Windows partition, with system restore off. My PC seems to be running fine, but is something gonna come back and bite me in the rear later on?--207.75.179.117 22:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, but you will now have to find a Windows CD when you are installing Windows components. The i386 folder stores the files that would be found on a Windows installation CD. 71.123.180.200 23:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict) The i386 directory usually holds a copy of the installation files for Windows. Without it, Windows may need to prompt you for the original Windows CD if you want to install more Windows features. If you don't have the original Windows CD, then you have limited your options. Most likely, you will not need to install such features, so this may never be a problem for you. I suggest you do turn on system restore, so that any future corruption of the operating system can be rolled back.-gadfium 23:52, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you have a valid Windows licence ( sticker on pc), I think it should be possible to get a replacement cd. Else there would be stil the possible way to get one from a Peer to Peer network. helohe (talk) 02:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There should be a warning: "Don't feed the windows install". DirkvdM 06:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

July 30

Security of ZIP files

I've heard that just about any method of cryptography is crackable someway or another. What i need to know is just how secure is the encryption of of ZIP files. specifically, by using the "Compressed (zipped) Folder" feature in XP and using "Add Password" from the context menu.

Lets say i had some realy sensitive data to store...

Is there ANY WAY to crack or bypass the encryption? would it be feasable on a high-end consumer desktop? What if it landed in the hands of some intelligence agency? can they crack it?

not done yet, a few more questions...

If the attacker does NOT use a brute force attack (trying the possibilities sequentially), is it any more secure to use a long and complex password? what if he DOES try brute force, would using an 8-digit pin be signifcantly less secure than using a long random or pseudo-random alphanumeric (and is there a limit to the length)?

Now lets say it is crackable, what kind of resources? again.. can it be done on a consumer desktop?.. what if its handed over to an expert or security company to try cracking it?

Finally, if it is a weak method to secur my data, what are some other alternatives that are quick and easy (that is, drag-and-drop into the "secure" archive/folder)

Thanks in advance if you can answer some of these questions. I already checked out some of the cryptography articles and the ZIP format article, but if you have external links regarding this specific scenario, please do post them. 02:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

One easy way to know about this is to try and search for utilities that remove passwords. All of the ones on the web that I found use brute-force methods, which means that a very long password made up of random letters and numbers (i.e. not something that would be subjected to a dictionary attack) would take a very, very long time to undo by brute force alone. Of course, it might also make it impossible for you to remember without writing down, and if someone found where you wrote it down...

Now, that aside, our article on ZIP (file format) says that "ZIP supports a simple password based symmetric encryption system which is known to be seriously flawed. In particular it is vulnerable to known-plaintext attacks which are in some cases made worse by poor implementations of random number generators". I don't know what that means in terms of practicality, but it should be worrisome if you are desperately concerned about the security of the data.

My recommendation: get a client (I am sure there are many out there) that can encrypt files themselves with something strong, like PGP, and use it to encrypt your ZIP files. --Fastfission 14:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please confirm how you want to do the encryption. You are using Windows XP and your hard drive uses NTFS. You right click on the folder, then pick properties. In the Properties menu that appears, you click the Advanced button. In the Advanced Attributes menu that appears, you see the boxes for "Compress contents to save disk space" and "Encrypt contents to secure data". You will find that you can only check one or the other. Is this what you mean? --Gerry Ashton 00:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Largest (dot-com) corporations outside U.S. or in Singapore

What are the largest dot-com corporations outside the U.S.?
What are the largest corporations in Singapore?
What are the largest corporations in Singapore in the computing/IT industries, particularly dot-coms?

Here, size is defined both by revenue and how famous the corporation is.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Converting "CHM" Files to another format.

How can I convert ".chm" files ( I think compiled html files ) to some other format like pdf format?

Searching for "chm to pdf" on google returns a very large number of results. You didn't specify your operating system, so you'll have to search on your own. You may also consider converting chm to html then using a html to pdf converter. digfarenough (talk) 15:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume Windows, as the format seems to be most commonly used for help files. Are there other common uses for CHMs? --Optichan 16:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rigistry Error

I'm using WinXP Professionl without any service packs.Last time when I turned my PC to on,it loaded and displayed as usually the logo screen and showed immediatly that the Registry hive has been damaged and it can't be loaded.Rigistry Hive loading failed and some other info have been displayed..It was displyed in a Non-GUI Blue Screen and my computer freezed therby.I retried again and again by restarting but it was the ultimate....Then I had to repair using the Windows CD from the booting menu and so far but finally it re-installed the system files alone and hence I was able to recover my data..What's this problem all about and ofcourse I didn't reset the PC at all.I shutdown properly...But last time since I opened too many programs,windows said it was increasing my Virtual memory...but after few restarts,it finally displayed this error..Any precaution available?...and what's the cause?..

Get a spell-check. Get more RAM. Also, reformat your hard drive (full reformat) and reinstall Windows. Then update to service pack 2. Come back when you've done that, though this sounds really fake since if your PC failed, you couldn't post that question to wikipedia.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 15:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The poster seemed to pretty clearly indicate that he/she was able to get Windows going again. Also, most people I know have access to more than one computer. Finally, "Then update to service pack 2" is a sentence fragment, consider getting a grammar-check. digfarenough (talk) 23:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a sentence fragment. Then is an adverb and update is in the imperative. Perhaps I should have used a comma though.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 17:33, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whoaaaa buddy, i dont want to be just busting on XP because we're kind of stuck with it, but it is insecure and full of bugs with all the latest service packs and patches, using the original release without updates is asking for troulbe. go to www.windowsupdate.com 02:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

java

Tulika 99 16:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC) halow!! iv written a really long program.....it dosnt hav ne syntax errors. its thru input stream reader.....but im not being able 2 access 2 the window wer i have 2 enter all the variables. its gives me a list of object clone() boolean equals(object) void finalize().....[reply]

i donno what to do ahead... can u plzz hepl me out thnks!!!!

Just because a program does not have syntax errors does not mean it does not have errors. Because you wrote a "long" program, the chance of finding the error is going to be very small. However, fill your program with as many System.out.println("I am at section FILL IN THE NAME OF THE SECTION AND WHAT IT IS DOING HERE"); statements as you can. You will see where it is quitting. Also, if your programming is as pathetic as your spelling, you are going have a great difficulty in getting anything to run as you like. It isn't just being mean or anal. If you can't take the time to write a word like "any" and need to abbreviate it as "ne", then how could you be expected to write something as long as "for(i=0; i<a.length; i++)"? --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:35, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, a comma, period, or semicolon would be a far better way to separate clauses than an ellipsis. And some additional advice on the debugging side: 1) A flow chart or some pseudocode can help you work out the logic more easily. 2) It doesn't matter how good your logic is if you use the wrong symbol or variable somewhere, so go through whatever you typed with a fine-toothed comb. I wonder, Kainaw, how much of a correlation there is between the two. I've never had the slightest problem with the complexities of logic and syntax in my programs, and I've also always had a thing for grammar and punctuation. Black Carrot 00:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A quick calculation... I grade on average 52 programming assignments a year. There is an average of 40 students a class. So, I can safely say that I grade over 2,000 programming assignments a year. Because these are students, comments are required as 20% of the grade. I have found a strong correlation between grammar and programming. I'm not talking about words that are difficult to spell - such as correlation. I wouldn't think less of someone who used corelation or corellation. Then, there is teh in place of the. Very common one there when you are typing fast. However, a complete disregard for grammer usually results in a complete disregard for programming structure. --Kainaw ^(talk) 12:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

mIRC

I have several IRC-related questions. First, why is mIRC so popular? Second, I thought that mIRC was trial software with a 30 day trial period, so why is it that unregestered users are still using it years at a time? Third, I was wondering if anyone could recommend an IRC client to me for Windows, because I already went to the the IRC client comparison wiki and tried savIRC, but can't get it to use a SOCKSv5 proxy correctly. - Ridge Racer 17:30, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about mIRC, but about another IRC client. Do you use Firefox? (If not, you should.) ChatZilla is a great IRC client for Firefox. —Mets501 (talk) 18:24, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do use Firefox and was thinking of using Chatzilla, although I was slightly more interested in a stand-alone client. (so many programs have irc clients bundled in these days and usually the quality is somewhat inferior) However, I suppose I can give it a shot. Any other sugestions are appreciated as well. - Ridge Racer 18:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

mIrc is used for many thinks not just chatin for downloading movies etc. u can still use mIrc even if the trail period is over u just click continue. i think irc is Ok it is not the best.

you can browse Category:IRC clients for Microsoft Windows and Category:IRC clients (which contains multiplatfrom clients). Jon513 21:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Taking screenshots of DVDs

I'm trying to get a screenshot of a DVD I own. I'm familiar with the print screen option, pasting it into paint, and selecting the part I want and pasting it into another file. I've done it many times before. But every time I take a screenshot of the DVD, and after pasting it into paint and selecting what part I want, I paste it into a new file but all I get is the original image. Oddly (and this is really hard to explain, so bear with me) the original image is only partly shown, the rest is white background. My own cut out image still has the same size and dimensions, but instead I can drag it around and view the whole image. Also, I've noticed that when pasting the original image for the first time into Paint, there's a purple background on some parts of the image, and I can move the video screen (that is, the square that is playing the actual movie) around the canvas.

I'm really sorry that this is so complicated, but I've tried every player I have (InterActual, Windows Media, etc.). I'm using a Sony VAIO computer and playing the widescreen DVD, if that helps at all. Thanks.

That's because of the way software DVD players work. The windows GUI part just fills its display window with a special colour. They then set up somehardware registers, which map a chunk of the display adapter's memory as an "overlay" layer - the graphics hardware composits that overlay memory onto the screen just before it generates the final (usually analog) video output. So when you take a screen capture, all you capture is the "key" colour (our Chroma key programming makes a stab at explaining this). So you need a player that will generate the screencap itself. I think VideoLAN will do it. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:14, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I just verified VideoLAN's VLC media player does; you just pick "snapshot" from the context menu, and it saves a PNG in your "my pictures" folder. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:18, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, thanks a bunch. So, can I just download VideoLAN at their website for free?

Yes. It's free, open source, and fabtastic. It's multiregion, plays encrypted disks, lets you skip over those dull warnings and ads which the DVD maker marks as "non skipable", plays a huge range of other kinds of media, and (cleverest of all) you can set the client up to stream anything (even your playing DVD) over a network - so you can multicast the same DVD to every computer in your house or office. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for being an idiot, but you said to pick snapshot from the context menu. I downloaded the media player, but I can't find what you're talking about.

(I'm not 100% sure "context menu" is really the correct term anyway). Assuming you're playing a DVD (you did file -> open disk and picked DVD or DVD(menus) with the correct drive letter set. To take the screenshot, right-click on the playing movie, and pick "snapshot" from the menu that pops up. The screenshot is stored in your "My Pictures" folder - take multiple screenshots and they'll all pile up there. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, problem solved. In my book, you're a freaking genius.

Another way to get around this is to temporarily disable hardware acceleration on your video card. It'll force the video card to pipe the DVD output through normally and you can use the regular "print screen" command. --Fastfission 05:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

July 31

ICT

what are the advantages and disadvantages of 3D and illustrator inadvertising?

If you read the top of this page, you'll see we generally don't do people's homework for them, and this sounds very much like a homework question. You can start your own research by reading the articles 3D computer graphics and Adobe Illustrator. --Canley 07:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

python

Whenever I launch a Python script I make, it closes immediatley before anything (desirable) happens. What do I do to fix this? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 06:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

are you on Windows? 130.60.142.151 09:00, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In my PC at least, you got to open the program using the cmd line (Start->Run->cmd) or it will instantly close once it's done. fetofs ^Hello! 12:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The easiest way to avoid this is to make a two line batchfile - the first is "python foo.py" and the second is "pause", and then run that (from a shortcut or whatever). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...or you could put the following lines at the end of your program:

print 'hit a key to exit'

import msvcrt

msvcrt.getch()

-- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MSN Messenger

Are there any programs that allows you to send nudges without delay? (I send my first nudge, i wait for 1 second an i send another nudge, the second nudge couldn't be sent because there's a delay, can i get rid of that delay?) = Thanks

It might be because of your slow internet connection.....

Yes, there seem to be programs that allow this. No, I won't put in any links, as I can't think of any reason one would need this capability. --LarryMac 14:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I found this, but like most things on the internet... Iola k ana|^T 14:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MS/Windows Update

I'm on a really slow dial-up connection, but I also have access to a PC with a 10 Mbit/s broadband connection. Yesterday, I was about to download and install Office XP SP3, but I noticed that the download was about 50 MB (I don't have an original Office disc). This would take approximately 6 hours on my home PC (not factoring disconnects). Therefore, I was wondering if there is a way to install a MS or Windows update offline and manually (in the same fashion as DirectX redist).--Frenchman113 on wheels! 17:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I think so. I'm too lazy to check, but there should be a way to download update files from Office Updates. As for Windows Updates, definitely. Again, I'm lazy to check, but there is a mechanism for downloading update files from Windows Updates. Splintercellguy 03:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When you select an update, there should be a link named Details. This brings up a summary of the update. In that there should be a link to the download location for the Offline version. By the way, here's the link for Office XP SP3. [2] Scroll down to the Instructions section and select the full-file versios so you don't have to insert the installation cd to update. Harryboyles 06:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, I just noticed that there's no download resume on that... It just seems like MS is out to get me...--Frenchman113 on wheels! 13:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of free download managers out there that allow you to pause and resume the download. See the list of download managers. I'd suggest FlashGet. However you can't just right click and go Copy Link Location. So you'll need to start the download using the browser, pause it, get the URL from the dialog, cancel the download, and paste the URL into FlashGet before restarting the download in FlashGet. Harryboyles 14:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No no, that's not it. The MS download server is not resume enabled. A download manager won't solve that.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 19:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And for the record, Flashget free is bundled with spyware.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 19:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried using Download Accelerator Plus (BTW it has spyware as well) and it says that the MS download server doessupport resuming later. Even tested it myself. I wouldn't know why it wouldn't, but it does support it. Harryboyles 01:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tutorial for setting up intranets

Too lazy to write one, so is there a ready-made intranet tutorial somewhere? -- Миборовский 21:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

wow you're also to lazy to search, thats something. Jon513 21:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, I used the time to write some Wikipedia articles. -- Миборовский 22:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

gifs and jpgs

Hi I am TOTALLY computer illiterate,but I know I have found the right place to get this question answered because the answers to other peoples questions look like a computer is doing the talking so here goes.I recently bought a computer just to email my friends and look at e-bay stuff like that. My friend sent me a little animated cartoon as an attachment to an email. I thought it was SO cute. So I started going to all these websites and downloading them into a file I had made for them.When I looked on the web for them I typed in "Gifs" and found them that way. After downloading about 30 of them my computer started acting really wierd Well to make a long story short I picked up such a bad virus that it actually destroyed an anti-virus pragram I bought BEFORE I could run it. I know, I was supposed to already have an anti-virus program but I told you I am comp. illiterate but I'm learning. ok. so i get my comp. swiped and cleaned and AVG free anti-virus and AD-aware se and Advanced spyware remover installed.The guy that cleaned and fixed my comp. said that some of those sites are nothing BUT viruses and spyware.Is he right? Because a page in my anti-virus thing said that "Gifs and Jpgs are DATA and can do no damage" So my question is are these things safe to download or not? Also can you get a virus just by LOOKING at a site? Oh and one other thing. When I run my anti-virus scan and my spyware remover thing it always shows that I have "Tracking cookies" in my comp.I tell them to destroy them and they do, but what are they? Like I said I know you guys can help and I greatly appreciate it.I would LOVE to know as much as you guys do about these things.

I don't know about virus in gif but you can get a virus just by visting a page if there is a bug in the broswer. Use Mozilla Firefox which is much more secure than IE. Jon513 22:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just because a person says a download is a gif or jpg does not mean it is a gif or jpg. Last time I cleaned by father-in-law's computer, I deleted over 100 megs of files named things like "Cameron_Diaz_Naked.jpg.exe". It has jpg so it is a jpg, right? No, it is a virus/spyware installer. If you are searching for pictures, use Google's image search - click "images" above the search box. And, yes, 90% of the free downloads on the web are packed full of nasty junk.

As for tracking cookies, some websites use cookies (little bits of info they store in your web browser) to track you as you roam the web. It is perfectly safe to delete them. They will come back as soon as you visit a tracking site again. --Kainaw ^(talk) 22:49, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As shockingly idiotic as it may seem, some images on some systems can be extremely dangerous; see MS06-001 for example documentation. To the best of my knowledge, a genuine GIF is unable to pose such a risk; something else disguised as a GIF is a different matter. Also, all current versions of the Internet Explorer browser introduce a serious and unnecessary security risk just looking at dangerous sites; see this Secunia bulletin for example documentation. Other browsers are safer, more standards compliant, and nicer to use; for example, both Opera and Mozilla Firefox are good free browsers preferred by informed experts. Finally, a major source of risk is screensavers; best avoid the temptation. --KSmrq^T 00:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Theorotically, images can contain virus code, but the code cannot be executed. However, remember that all content on a web page, including images, was placed there with HTML, JavaScript, etc. Therefore, it would be possible to embed malicious code in an online image. Some virus programmers use HTML images with embedded code, so when you open the e-mail and the image loads, the virus programmer knows you've opened the e-mail. It may be possible, though I'm not sure, for a picture to have an OnMouseOver event handler that executes code that might harm the system.

Another possibility is that the JPG/GIF is not a JPG/GIF at all! It is possible for a file to have multiple extensions, and the last extension determines the type of file. Therefore, you may have downloaded an EXE disguised as a JPG (SOMEPIC.JPG.EXE) and opened the EXE, which may contain a virus.

It is possible to exploit security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer to infect your computer using the above methods (particularly embedding malicious code in images), so you should switch to another browser to keep your computer secure. According to the latest figures from Secunia, Opera has the best security record; it is the browser I use daily, and the browser I highly recommend. Another popular browser is Mozilla Firefox.

I'm a 14-year-old who has been using computers since I was 3, so I'm a computer whiz kid, though not a professional. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 02:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Minor correction: Images sent in emails do not have embedded code to let the sender know you opened the image. Instead of an image, the email has an HTML link to an image from a website with an added query string. For example, getting the image "http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/user.gif" will just get the image - no big deal. However, getting the image "http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/user.gif?user=kainaw" will get the image and tell the server that "user=kainaw", so the server can record that I specifically grabbed the image. One security tool is to omit query strings when images are fetched, but then a creative programmer can set up a server so any filename sends the same image - allowing him to embed user IDs in the filename. In the end, the image itself has no embedded code. It is the request for the image that does. --Kainaw ^(talk) 13:14, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately you do need to seriously keep your whits about you when using the internet, other things to keep in mind are:

Anything you post on any internet site will be indexed by a search engine and viewable for ever. Guard your personal info.
regard any email purporting to come from you bank with extreme suspicion. Con artists create websites identical to those of banks with adresses that look to a newbie as exactly that of the bank and then email people trying to con them into visiting th site. The moment the victim logs in they have the username and password to go to the real bank website and clear out thier bank accounts. Likewise emails offering you something that seems to good to be true always are.
Free software is great and there is tonnes of it about. Unfortunately some of it contains nasties like spyware. After a while you start to get a feel for whats likly to be safe but initially you need to be suspicous. I'm not saying don't use it, I use it all the time, but do a web search first to make sure it's OK I get advice from internet savvy friends.
Illegal or barely legal sites, such as those offering Warez are run by people who aren't that worried about breaking the law. Nuff said. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 02:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

August 1

Teaching yourself a programming language from freely available online resources.

Feasible? Easy? Recommendations?

Try Googling. I can find many resources this way. Splintercellguy 03:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

search for the resource per each language --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 06:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It really depends on what sort of a background you have, how hard you're willing to work and what language you want to learn. I'd say that the average person does not have enough intelligence, patience or persistence to learn a language without some form of human assistance (lots of people can't learn to program well even with human assistance). It can be hard to just find a development environment and compiler for a given language. There are tons of tutorials for any given language out there, but most of them are either too easy or too hard, it can be hard to find one that is right for you. If you're really interested, AIM me at Robinganemccalla and we can talk. Robin

A similar question to this was asked recently. If you havnt got any prior prefereances for a particular language I would suggest Python programming language. Its all free including tutorials for beginners and other resources. Also the language is here to stay, not a passing fad.

Although in many cases it's certainly possible to learn a language completely for free, a little money, if you're willing to spend it, can make a big difference. The only cash I spent to teach myself Perl was $30 (or $25, or something like that) for a copy of Programming Perl; I don't think I ever got so much out of such a small purchase. Seriously, books about programming languages are a good investment. —Saric (Talk) 19:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above assessment. A good book can make a world of difference and cost relatively little compared to what you can get out of hte language. Barring that, internet tutorials are sometimes helpful, though I've only used them for learning languages that were very similar to one I already knew and were relatively straightforward (such as Javascript). Many language books often "age" pretty well too—Javascript (and anything tied to web standard implementation) does not age well, for example (a book on Javascript from 5 years ago will not necessarily be completely up to date), but for many other languages you can often find nearly-free versions of their instruction books available at used book stores. --Fastfission 21:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...Wondering what a decent OS might be to experiment with while learning the basics for programming?

Bandwidth question.

Sometimes, I'll send a file to someone via IRC or FTP. I'll be downloading 0 KB/sec (or sometimes just the text and ping/pongs of IRC) and uploading at 25 KB/sec, but when I check my internet-details-box-thing (in WinXP), it says it's downloading at an identical rate -- 25 KB/sec. Why's that?

I think when you are checking the 'internet-details-box-thing' it isn't showing the speed of uploads and downloads, but it is showing network utilization. I am just guessing (and I'm a beginner at computers, too), so I would want someone else's opinion if I were you. But I'm still fairly certain it is just showing the network utilization, and not uploading speed or downloading speed. P.S. Don't forget to sign your comments with four tildes: ~~~~ --71.98.24.76 13:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

chkdsk and defrag

I can't defragment my disk drive (C:\) because it says chkdsk is scedule to run. Now i've disabled chkdsk (and even purged it from the registry) and it still won't work. Had problem for several months.

Also, I can't install Office 2007 because when I did a system restore, it landed me somwhere that was between the installation and reboot process of the older Office 12 and it corrupted the System Restore CAB files so I can't go back and restore to an earlier point. I susequently used crapcleaner programs and cleared the Office 12 registry files that were in the registry at the time. Please help me! --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 05:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about the chkdsk problem. But with Office 2007, there is one vital point that you need to know... It's a beta. It's not out in stores yet. That's because it's still in development and that means bugs, crashes, bugs, crashes, things not working right... Well you get the idea. Does the installation give any error messages. You could just reinstall from scratch, overwriting any remaining files and start again, seeing if that works. Good luck. Harryboyles 06:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation

Could someone set up an article called "Naul" which is a village in County Dublin Ireland and disambiguate it from the existing article called "Nauls" about some tribe. I have read the disambiguation page but cannot for the life of me understand how to do it. Thanks!

OK, I've done this at Naul, County Dublin and added a disambiguation tag to Naul. By the way, you should post questions about Wikipedia like this one to the Wikipedia:Help desk. --Canley 14:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cordless screen

I'm considering constructing a PC system so that I could hide the bulky CPU etc. and only have a cordless mouse, keyboard and screen visible. The question is: is there such a thing as a cordless screen or a way to construct such a system (using bluetooth or something)? Naturally a cord for powering the screen might be needed but I'm looking for a cordless connection for the video data from CPU to the screen. Thank you for any help and insight! -P.T.

Bluetooth won't be any use, as the bandwidth is nowhere near enough. There are some systems for sending VGA-quality video wirelessly (see here, for example) but they are designed for using in places like conference rooms, cost more than I imagine your screen does, and still have to connected to the screen with a cable. Since you're not going to be able to avoid having a power cable going to the screen, you may as well just use a regular cable to connect the screen to the PC, and strap the video and power cables together with cable ties or something to keep them tidy. -- AJR | Talk 13:44, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are two different ways to do this.

Run VNC on a tablet PC
Run VNC on a laptop where you detached the screen and flip it around so it's like a tablet pc

I have done both. The second one is what you want, any crappy laptop will do, just insert a wireless card and you're on your way. In adddition, you can use these to connect to your computer from any place on earth (if you want) --mboverload @ 08:33, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox short-cuts

Every so often when I type an apostrophe, this triggers a short-cut which activates a 'find whatever' bar at the bottom of the screen. Even after I close the bar, I can't type apostrophes any more- each time, they just produce the search bar again. How can I stop it? Henry ^Flower 14:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Click "Tools" and then go to "Options...". Go to "Advanced" and click on the tab "General". There should be a check box that says "Begin finding when you begin typing. If it's checked, then that might be the problem. --Yanwen 16:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This page shows the apostrophe is the keyboard shortcut for "Find As You Type Link", which presumably means it will jump to the next link that matches what you are typing. Here are some additional preference settings that can control FAYT, and here is the official documentation for the feature. --LarryMac 16:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks- the box wasn't checked, but I've followed the instructions for turning it off in the preferences. Hopefully that'll do it. Henry ^Flower 18:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Free software economics

I know that people who work on free software, such as those provided by GNU and the Free Software Foundation, are largely volunteers donating their spare time. However, I also know that at least part of these developers work on free software full-time.

I can understand that if all free software developers were part-time volunteers and each had a paid job, that the software developed for free can end up increasing the productivity of the industries that each of these part-time volunteers were involved in (since their companies could save money by using a free product). But I don't understand exactly why one would devote full-time effort towards free software development.

My questions: assuming they are not sitting on a pile of wealth, how do these full-time free developers typically support themselves? Is their free work just a way to get their names out there in order to attract companies to hire them? Do some companies pay some of their developers to work on free software projects? If so, what is the motivation for this if the software is free anyway?

Thank you in advance.

There's not a lot of room for ego in open source. Good projects die quickly if someone in charge has too much ego to let it develop. So, developers tend to program because they enjoy the project, or they found a bug that annoyed them so much they had to fix it, or they are trying to pad a resume, or they just like to program. It has been my experience that people who focus on money are lacking the ability to comprehend that some people don't care about money. So, explaining that developers are willing to put effort into programming just to give it away is useless. Those who can understand it already understand it. Those who cannot never will. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Over the last year and a half I've spent a lot of time on Wikipedia, which is also volunteer work. And yes, I'm sitting on a pile of wealth. It's called the Netherlands. I live off social security and with some effort I can make that work. Much of the rest of the time I spend on Wikipedia. I wonder how many people here and working on other free stuff are also unemployed. Must be a disproportionate number at least. DirkvdM 18:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I read an news article a long time ago about a homeless guy with a laptop and cellphone internet connection. He powered it with batteries he stole from construction sites - which is the reason for the article. He was finally found and arrested. --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you still have the source for that? That guy deserves to be internet-famous. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 17:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are ways to finance open-source software, be it through donations, selling of tech support, or selling distributions. I imagine that all projects with full-time support from the non-wealthy probably use one of these (Wikipedia pays its very few full-time people with donation money, I believe). Additionally as you note there are other things that can be gotten out of such activities, such as credit and experience, which can in turn be used to generate money. I am a student and often use my Wikipedia time as an excuse to synthesize topics I already know about which helps me to better familiarize myself with them—not quite the same thing but since I am paid to be a student, and the Wikipedia work does affect my student work (mostly for the positive, I hope!), one could see an analogy there. An interesting book the question of open-source economics and culture is Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Give it a whirl. --Fastfission 21:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Porting programs

One thing I never understood was why software has to be rewritten to be released on another OS or architecture. Why can't I just take my C code and recompile it, using a different compiler, on the machine I want to use it on? For example, why did all of the software that ran on Mac OS9 have to be rewritten when everything was moved over to the Intel architecture? What does porting a program entail doing? Thanks. Broken Segue 16:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most programs are written for the operating system, not the computer itself. For example, I have a BP monitor that has a Windows program to save the BP info to a text file. Problem - all of our database machines are either Unix or Linux. The Windows program, which I got the source code for, talks to the Windows USB driver. The Linux USB driver is completely different - nothing remotely in common. Then, the Windows file IO was different, so I had to rewrite that too. In the end, I had to rewrite the whole program. I'm sure there are programs to quickly convert common changes from one OS to another, but they aren't perfect. Also, for your OS9 example, if you do any register functions, you need to account for the fact that OS9 and Windows were opposite endian (see Big Endian and Little Endian). --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, thanks. So most of my programs (the simple ones that require no registry or driver control, just reading and writing to the terminal) will work if I recompile using a different compiler? Broken Segue 18:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's only really one way to find out. The compiler will kick up a fuss if you try and use a non-platform-existant function, or include a system-specific file that isn't there, etc. If it does compile and your tests look like they're succeeding, chances are you don't have to do any (extensive) porting work. If it compiles - you've programmed in C, you know what it's like. --Sam Pointon 19:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's also the case where the program isn't 64-bit clean (you are doing things which assume a long has the same size as an int, for instance, while on a LP-64 ABI they have different sizes); the case where the program isn't endian-clean (reading an int via a char* and expecting it to be either LSB first or MSB first, for instance); and several other non-portable things which are easy to do by accident. It's also hard to do a completely portable program without either having special cases for several operating systems or using a library which does the special casing for you, since the least common denominator tends to be a subset of ANSI C, which is too limited for some common situations (for instance, each major operating system has a different graphics API, with the exception of the Unix-like systems, which mostly use X11). --cesarb 21:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Several issues are mixed in the question. Programs are often optimized for a particular CPU, or CPU family. The early Mac software, for example, ran on the Motorola 68000 family, and hardware floating point was not always available. Later Mac software ran on the Apple/IBM/Motorola PowerPC family of CPUs, which eventually came to include AltiVec (aka Velocity Engine or VMX). More recent Mac software runs on Intel CPUs, with rather different optimization needs. An application like Adobe Photoshop includes compute-intensive code with performance that can be dramatically affected by the match to the CPU.

As the Mac OS evolved through Mac OS 9, the way a program communicated with the system to request file operations or screen display or other basic needs remained somewhat stable. Some facilities were added and some dropped, but the change was evolutionary. The advent of Mac OS X was revolutionary, essentially switching to a Unix system, with extras. One of the major extras is the Quartz Compositor, which provides a program with a connection to the screen.

Compatibility has been an issue spanning a broad assortment of hardware and software. If a new CPU or OS is compatible with another, the advantage is that porting is trivial. The disadvantage is that providing that compatibility may seriously cripple the potential of a new design. Designers have been delightfully clever in finding ways to have the best of both the new and old. For example, when Apple switched to PowerPC processors it provided emulation software so old 68k code would keep working. Since a great deal of the old Mac OS was written specifically for the 68k CPUs, and not performance critical, this was a lifesaver for the system programmers as well as for the developers. --KSmrq^T 22:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-compatibility between flavors of Unix

In general, to what degree are programs (whether in source-code or binary form— I imagine it makes a difference) made for one variety of Unix or a Unix-like OS compatible with other Unices and Unix-likes? When I hear of programs made for Unix or Linux or Mac OS X, I really can't tell what systems they'll actually run on. I'm especially confused because it seems like nobody uses pure, vanilla Unix, at least not on personal computers. —Saric (Talk) 19:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

vanilla Unix is that a new distro. I'll have to get it! To answer you question I am pretty sure that any program made for Unix or linux shoiuld work for linux distro or unix-like system. I am not 100% sure about mac OS, but my strong guess is that it would work. Jon513 19:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Binary form is really the easier to address -- binaries will work if and only if the kernel is the same or very nearly so (e.g., different versions of Linux are generally intercompatible), the architecture is compatible (note that Intel in particular values backwards compatibility: the x86 line of chips from the past 15 years or more all can run the same binaries (so long as the binary is at least as old as the processor)), and appropriate shared libraries are available (this is the easiest to lose out on, but also the easiest to fix, as it does not involve a new OS or computer!). For source code, stuff that adheres to one of the various standards — ANSI C, POSIX, XPG4, SUS, etc. — should go pretty much anywhere that's no older than the standard in question. There's also thinks like brk() and SIGEMT that are common to many versions of Unix, but which are not in the official standards. Beyond that are OS-specific things like clone() and (sort of) vfork(). Finally, there are the same sorts of library dependencies as with compiled code, only they apply to static and dynamic libraries when talking about source: ncurses, X11, etc. Did you/do you now have any more specific questions? --Tardis 21:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, thank you, I think that about covers it. I asked this question because I'm considering getting a home computer with Linux or something like that, and I was wondering if which software was available for whatever OS ought to factor into my choice of system. From what you say and what I've seen, though, it seems that what runs on one flavor of Unix can be made to work with any other, so long as you have a rudimentary knowledge of the appropriate language and you're willing to put a little effort into it. —Saric (Talk) 00:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uninstalling Windows Media Player 11

I've been looking for a formal way to uninstall this program all over my computer, but I can't seem to find one, even in the Add/Remove Programs menu. I'm assuming that just deleting the files wouldn't be a good idea; does anyone have any suggestions? I'm running Windows XP Media Center Edition if that matters. --Impaciente 20:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if it works in MCE, but in Windows XP SP2 (home and Professional) there is an option to Show Updates. Tick that. It should be there now under Windows XP Updates. Harryboyles 22:31, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting files might be the best idea...

It's not a good idea to delete files directly. This leave registry keys, files in the Windows folder and leaves other junk. Show Updates is in Add/Remove Programs. Just to clarify. Harryboyles 01:51, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A technique I've use to determine if I can delete a file without trouble is to just rename it by tacking "disabled" onto the end of the name. If this causes probs, I can then always rename it back. You could also put it in the recycle bin and restore it, if there's a problem, but I've found once something is in there it's far too easy to lose it forever (unless you go to an undelete program) by emptying the trash. StuRat 05:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This information might be helpful, but as it says "Windows Media Player is a feature of the Windows operating system and cannot be removed entirely." (That's what Microsoft would like everybody to think, anyway). You should be able to use "Set Program Access and Defaults" to make another player the default for various media files. --LarryMac 14:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks alot, everybody. I've managed to roll the program back to an earlier version, which is really what I wanted in the first place. --Impaciente 04:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a skype link/callbutton

hello could you please let me know how to add a skype call button to wiki software. I would like to add a call me button linking to my skype account. but i cant get the link to work. In standerd html it usually works like this,

callto://username

please could you advise, thanx

Goplett 20:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a bug. Report that Skype links aren't recognized by the parser, and it might get fixed. grendel|khan 09:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think callto is disabled on purpose: the opportunities for abuse are too great :

add an exlink called "naked Britney Spears" but it's a callto the cell number of someone the prankster is harassing
change a valid callto number to a expensive toll scamline
change a valid callto on a page that's being linked from a high-traffic site, and you'll be able to DOS someone corporation's incoming lines

So it's good that someone wnting to call Goplett has to cut and paste Goplett's skype name from the user page into the Skype client. If we really wanted this feature, someone could implement a Mediawiki extension which added "SIP call this user", "AIM this user", "Skype this user", etc., as we have "mail this user" now - and the opportunities for abuse are much lower, as only the person you're calling can change the number/address. Middenface 10:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

wireless power supply

where can i get a standard power supply but wireless (i think on teslas principles). Im trying to pick components to build my own computer but this is keeping me up. Thank you. 80.99.220.249 20:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Not sure. Have you read RFC 3251? EdC 20:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt such devices exist. Whilst it is possible (in fact, relatively easy) to transfer information wirelessly, transferring the large amount of energy required to power a computer can currently only be done using wires. If your concern is a tangle of wires restricting the airflow in your PC, I have found that cable ties are a good way of keeping the wires organised. Simply gather a large number together and tie them, and/or tie them to parts of the case, such as the slots in empty drive bays. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 00:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe a large amount of electrical power can be transferred wirelessly, but only a short distance, via electrical induction. However, I'm not aware of any current device that provides this type of power to a PC. Splashpower may be working on it, check out their web site. It would have the advantage of removing some moving parts (like the charging plug), which would increase reliability. I have a laptop where the plug for the power cord did indeed wear out after the plug was inserted a few thousand times, so it's a real concern. (Of course, if it had been properly designed and built, it could be expected to last for tens of thousands of cycles.) StuRat 04:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget lightning. Trouble is, PCs need a large current, not such a large voltage. Neither Induction or Lightning can provide that (V α I). Unless of course, every device in the PC has a massive great transformer on it. I'm really going to have to have another go at working out this Latex math coding... CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:33, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is completely unhelpful, but you could use solar panels combined with a bunch of high-power lasers. Wouldn't recommend it.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 21:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If this existed, do you honestly think we would still have wall plugs? Electrical poles carying hugely expensive cables? --mboverload @ 06:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you misunderstood. The idea is to take power from an outlet and then transfer it to a device without using a plug, and thus eliminate one area susceptible to wear and tear. Broadcasting electricity rather than delivering it by wire was an idea Tesla had, but is dangerous and completely impractical since there is no way to bill for it. StuRat 06:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The case of a Sonicare, the case as completely sealed and has no electrical contacts. The bottom of the toothbrush rests ~1 inside of a charger. The charger includes the primary winding of the voltage-reducing transformer and the handle of the brush includes the secondary winding. No idea why you'd want such powerful EM radiation near a computer, but hey, that's your choice =O --mboverload @ 06:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

putting a picture on a page...

How do you put a picture into an article?

That is a question for Wikipedia:Help_Desk. Anyway, doesn't your editor have the handy little toolbar on top where you can click the edit button and see something like [[File:Example.jpg]]? --Kainaw ^(talk) 23:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But before you ask there, have a look at Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial. DirkvdM 11:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

USB port

I know as much about computers as you know about Fijian poetry, so keep that in mind as I ask this query. I just bought a new laptop, and I am having trouble getting my mouse to work, which connects via a USB port. I'm not sure, but I think the computer reads that a USB has been inserted, but does not recognize what it is. I have installed the necessary software that came with the mouse, but still no luck. I ran a diagnostic test, and it said something about there being a problem with my USB port or driver or something, and I needed to access BIOS. However, another USB connection from another port was fully functional. Anybody know wtf is going on here? Assuming someone responds in the next hour, I'll be able to respond quickly with answers. Your help is greatly appreciated. AdamBiswanger1 02:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Who is the manufacturer and what is the model of your computer, and what operating system are you using? If a Windows OS, please include any details like "Windows 98SE" or "Windows XP Home SP2". Also, please state the manufacturer and model of the mouse. If you happen to know, can you confirm that your computer's USB is the newer 2.0 version? We can help more if you can write down exactly the messages you see. (In about a decade we're confident we will be able to read minds, including those of computers; but today such research is confined to a few secret laboratories, and not yet reliable.)

Meanwhile, visit the mouse manufacturer's web site and look for relevant material. There may be a newer driver, there may be a FAQ, there may be a help forum, there may be a support desk. --KSmrq^T 04:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't get your USB mouse to work, I suggest using a PS/2 or even a serial mouse, since that will leave the USB port free for all those newfangled devices that use them (like memory sticks). Why clutter up the USB ports with things that don't really require a USB ? StuRat 04:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He said it's a laptop; it's quite possible that it does not have PS/2 or serial ports. --cesarb 15:39, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting...I tried another USB device on the right and it does work--on both sides. So, perhaps the problem is with teh mouse itself. AdamBiswanger1 17:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your PC configuration is needed for best solutions to be provided.Maybe you can try uninstalling your USB driver completly first.There could be an error in one of your USB port since at the time of it's driver installation.You can check this by inserting some other USB device in the same port and check if that device works well with that port...The USB service might prevent you from further activating the response from that port...Restarting after uninstall,the OS opts you for new hardware found wizard either or suggests you some suitable drivers to be installed....Perhaps all USB port drivers are included in OS pack..,Then restart your PC again and try connecting your mouse.It should work.But be sure about what you're doing..Or simply have your mouse drivers updated or go for PS/2 as mentioned earlier....

I have a brand new HP pavilion dv5000 with windows XP. I have downloaded all Windows updates (from the windows updater). The mouse is a Kensington mouseworks something or other.The mouse connects on the right side of the computer, to a USB port, whereas the other USB ports, which are fully fuctional, are on the left. The mouse does no t work on the left, either. Adambiswanger1

Have you tried plugging the mouse into one of the left side ports? If it works there, but not on the right, it seems like there might be a hardware issue. Similarly, if you have another USB device (e.g. a USB flash drive) that you know works on the left side, what happens if you plug it in on the right side? --LarryMac 17:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting... it seems that the mouse does not work on either side, but other USB devices work on both. AdamBiswanger1 17:31, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The next (and with any luck final) step would be to try a different USB mouse. If it works, you're in business. Now teach us something about Fijian poetry!--LarryMac 18:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ubuntu system requirements?

What are the system requirements for x86 desktop installations? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.236.216.252 (talk • contribs)

Why not read the article? That's what we wrote it for. :) - Samsara (talk • contribs) 21:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see a reference to the HD & RAM requirements, but was curious if there was more to it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.236.216.252 (talk • contribs)

No, your processor speed only determines how slowly it will run, but not whether it will run at all. Ubuntu is not a video game. ;) - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:31, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, other OSes do have processor limits, so that's why I asked. BTW, could an older box w/ < 256MB RAM still work with a minimal install?

are you aware of Xubuntu? Jon513 15:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was not, but will check it out. Thanks!

August 2

Looking for an IRC client that meets the following criteria...

1. Open-source, or at least free; 2. Able to join multiple servers at once; 3. Able to be minimised to tray (so it doesn't appear in the toolbar); 4. Able to be locked by password when minimised this way (so once minimised, I can't read the channels or write anything until I enter the password); 5. Runs on Windows XP; 6. Does not cause cancer, pregnancy or gangrene. Thanks for any responses.

Gaim satisfies all those except possibly 4. I usually lock my whole screen when I leave, so I don't know. —Keenan Pepper 05:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

6. Does not cause cancer, pregnancy or gangrene.

::Sorry, did I miss something?

That was just a joke. I've tried Gaim, but I'm not really fond of its style (which is more like AIM or MSN than an IRC client). And no, it can't be locked by password. Thanks all the same.

mIRC does all you want, but it's none free. X-Chat is open source, but I'm not sure if you can minimise to tray or password protect it. Sorry if you already knew this. Incidentally, can't you just use the Windows XP workstation lock function to protect IRC? Or the other alternative is a program I used to use called Quick Hide Windows (I think), which allows you to hide and password protect any window. Darksun 11:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can password-lock mIRC? I haven't tried that. I was using Gaim, but it started locking up my computer, so I'm using Kopete now. Youth in Asia 14:56, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gaim started locking up my computer too. I switched to Kopete because it was already installed but I hate it. --Kainaw ^(talk) 23:10, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Java - Lightweighr persistence mechanism

What is the java lightweight persistence mechanism?

Thanks, Ciaran

Google for it. I'd guess many Java programmers would say "POJOs coupled with Hibernate (or another package similar to Hibernate)". Or perhaps they'd say "anything simpler than EJB that replaces most of EJB's database functionality". Weregerbil 17:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also for background see persistence. Weregerbil 17:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Win 2000 & BMP File Types

I use Windows explorer " Tools | Folder Options | File Types " to set my default action for BMP files to be paintshop. A little bit later it reverts to MSPaint. Anyone know what is reverting it to MSPaint and how to stop this happening? All other file types seem OK. -- SGBailey 12:51, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

uninstall ctor.dll problem

when i try to unistall a game, a message error like "c:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime\11\50\Intel32\ctor.dll", i know that if I install the game again and then try to uninstall, this will work, but i dont have the game anymore. What i do??

If the uninstaller fails, delete the files by hand and then remove the entries for the game in regedit. Youth in Asia 14:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

Last AIM sign in

How can you check when someone last signed into AIM? Many thanks, --217.42.132.207 16:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Using a client with logging capabilities (I use gaim, myself). digfarenough (talk) 17:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

GAIM has a hugely detailed logging ability, it can log anything that happens. --mboverload @ 06:22, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IRC question

I'm using Firefox 1.0. I tried clicking on the IRC channel links on the WP:CVU page, but I get a warning message saying, "irc is not a registered protocol." The article Internet Relay Chat did not help. Can anyone hear shed some light for me please? --Ginkgo100 ^{talk · contribs · e@} 20:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you need an extension such as Chatzilla. Any reason you are still on 1.0? There have been many bug fixes and security enhancements; I believe the current version is 1.5.0.5 (I'm at work, Firefox is at home). --LarryMac 20:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just laziness. I'll visit the Mozilla site and get all updated. Thanks for the reply! --Ginkgo100 ^{talk · contribs · e@} 21:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

August 3

It's really hot in here...

and the airconditioner isn't working. how hot does it have to be before a computer goes from sluggish to not working at all? it's already over 100 (^oF) in here, how much more can it take?--152.163.100.130 01:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it depends on what temperature it normally runs at and how close that is to its maximum running temperature. I know that I ran my PC in a room without AC (it was broken) this summer and the computer crashed saying that a fan was broken (it was confused). You might be able to keep it from crashing by underclocking, but I don't know. Broken Segue 04:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I use a program called Motherboard Monitor on my overheat-prone PC. It puts the temperature readings from the motherboard in the system tray. It can even be set up to sound an alarm. Get it from [3]. There should also be a listing at the website of your Processor manufacturer saying what temperature your CPU can take. I'd avoid hammering your computer until the AC is fixed. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be careful of high temperatures; even if it doesn't stop working, it can increase the wear on moving parts. And if it already became sluggish, it means it's already too hot (and the CPU has throttled the clock to compensate). --cesarb 19:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to install additional cooling. --Proficient 07:49, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

email

what do you mean by e-mail?

Try our article E-mail. Harryboyles 08:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Electronic mail. - THE GREAT GAVINI {T-C} 08:56, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"When I use a word [like e-mail]," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

Type code for truetype fonts?

If anyone is on a Mac OS machine, could they find the type code of TrueType fonts? Presumably there's a standard one, since the format is an Apple standard. I was looking to fill in the filetype infobox at TrueType. grendel|khan 09:06, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Geneva's TrueType, right? I think so. ResEdit says the type code for the Geneva suitcase is "FFIL", so I put that in the infobox for you. —Saric (Talk) 16:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to [4], FFIL is a "font suitcase", which is a bunch of fonts (presumably in the Geneva suitcase are a bunch of Geneva variants). The same page says a "non suitcase" TrueType font is "tfil". Do we have an article about MacOS suitcases? Middenface 16:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please be more careful with the code in the article; uppercase and lowercase are significant. The Mac OS didn't evolve out of MS-DOS. --KSmrq^T 18:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Resetting MBR on large drives

I need to reset the master boot record on a 300 GB hard drive (x86/winXP), since I'm restoring a system image to an old 2nd drive, and the old disk signature confuses the restored system.

Usually I've done this with FDISK/MBR, and it solves everything. However, I know theres a problem with FDISK on large (64 / 137+ GB) HDs, and on LBA 48 systems, and this is a 300 GB sata drive.

Question is, which version of FDisk (or what other MSDOS program) should I use, so that I don't screw up the hard drive, which has existing data partitions on it.

I dont actually want to create or change the existing partitions. Just a way to reset or wipe the HD signature in the MBR without loss of data, so WinXP has to resign the disk to a new (unknown) serial.

Ideas? 87.113.84.195 13:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if this will help, but I once had problems installing XP on a disk that had previously had bootable lnux on it. Although the XP installer was making the partitions ok, it didn't change the MBR, and on subsequent boots the windows bootloader wouldn't start. To fix that, I booted into a liveCD linux (Knoppix) and blanked the MBR with dd

~~dd bs=512 count=1 if=/dev/zero of=/def/hda.~~

That should zap the MBR for you (although I don't know if that's really what will fix your problem, and I don't make any representations that it won't cause windows to forget your drives ever existed). Be very careful, as such direct surgery on your drive's contents isn't something I'd recommend experimenting with when live, unbackedup data is at stake. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:16, 3 August 2006 (UTC) -- ignore this, it's not what you really asked. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other (less extreme) alternatives with dd - just use it to surgically change the field you want (as described in MBR). This is what I'd do:

dd bs=512 count=1 if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/myflashdrive/old.mbr backup the mbr to a flashdrive I'd already mounted

cp /mnt/flashdrive/old.mbr /mnt/flashdrive/new.mbr copy the mbr file

edit new.mbr in emacs' hexl-mode, and surgically change the bytes I wanted to alter

dd bs=512 count=1 if=/mnt/flashdrive/new.mbr of=/dev/hda write the edited MBR back onto the hard disk

This is all fun stuff to play around with, but if you're not familiar with linux, and particularly when you're using live data, this is probably a crazy idea. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...or try looking at this system-recovery-console stuff ("fixmbr") at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/ -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're right in saying that I don't want to play with live data. I don't really want to play at all. I just would like to wipe or reset the serial number in the MBR of a drive so I can use my system backup on a 2nd partition. Unfortunately I don't have a bootable windows drive right now (with or without recovery console). That's part of the problem. I have a single floppy drive and MSDOS available on that machine right now, which basically limits me to Fdisk or some similar program. I'm trying to find which version of Fdisk will be appropriate for resetting the MBR of a 300 GB 48 LBA drive. (I found KB69013 but it doesn't seem to address this issue or the warnings about using Fdisk on large drives with 48 bit LBA). Any hints? 87.113.28.86 17:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure it's the MBR unique ID that's confusing the system? AFAIK, there are other places where a unique ID can be found (IIRC, both NTFS and dynamic disks have their own unique IDs). --cesarb 18:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a problem with explorer.exe

I've recently obtained a fairly old laptop running Windows ME, and I cleaned it up a few days ago (deleted everything that wasn't needed) and had spent some time using it after I installed Firefox and all my other applications when all of a sudden I can't access "My Computer" properly anymore. Instead of bringing up my computer profile when I click in the icon, the "Search Results" window comes up. I have a handful of links to different parts of my harddrive on my desktop, and clicking on any of them gets the same result.

My first instinct was that one of the keys might be sticky, but it wasn't that and the problem consists after rebooting. If I use the run dialog from the start menu, the unknown file dialog appears and asks me to select the appropriate application to open such simple queries as "d:" or "c:". So them I obviously assumed there was a problem with explorer.exe (though it is currently shown running fine in the task manager). If I try to run explorer.exe through the run dialog it sometimes opens My Documents and it sometimes says that it can't find the executable.

The weirdest thing is that it suddenly started happening in the middle of a session, I hadn't deleted any files or changed any settings, and now no matter what I do I still can't access my hard drive through explorer. Does anyone know what the problem could be here? There's no other problems with the computer, I think it's a 4 year old IBM Thinkpad, 128mb and a big enough hard drive. Any help appreciated. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 14:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WinME is crap. I'd consider changing your operating system.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 15:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really have that option. The hard drive is too small for WinXP, and honestly, for what I'm going to use it for (mostly word processing) WinME should be no problem... in theory. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 15:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WinME offers System Restore, you might have a go with that. You should probably do a thorough check of the hard drive also; ScanDisk and Defrag at least, something like SpinRite if you have access to it. --LarryMac 15:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are no restore points defined, so unfortunately I can't use Sysrestore. I've WindowsUpdated and checked for any old drivers but everything seems to be working completely fine, except for explorer. I can't think of any reason that the computer would act like this other than sticky keys, and I've already counted that one out. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 16:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the pull-down menu I get when I right-click any folder in My Computer. It says "search" in Japanese, and the "open", "explore", and a couple other of the default options are curiously missing. I'm starting to get frustrated with this computer. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 17:25, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If what I have observed is correct, then explorer.exe handles the entire Windows GUI (taskbar, start menu, et al), so if that were a problem then everything would mess up. This sounds more like a virus infection, but whatever is causing the problem, the first thing you should do with a second hand PC is to format the hard drive and reinstall Windows (or an operating system of your choice, of course). That'll kill any viruses, and should solve any other problem. If it doesn't, then its a hardware problem. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't these options stored at the registry? If that's the case, and the relevant keys are missing/corrupted, it's possible that you have other things messed up on the registry. If the standard routine of running three different anti-spyware programs and a couple of antivirus doesn't fix it, and neither does running a registry cleaner, i'd say reinstalling is the easier option (unless you know enough about the registry to be able to fix it by hand). --cesarb 18:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It may be in the registry, I'm pretty sure the equivalent links for WinRAR and Winamp are. I've found a partial and really annoying solution by manually adding the file association to the Folder entry under file types. As expected the only actions under Folder (which is listed as an N/A file type) were find, and the Winamp shortcuts. I added an "open" instruction to the Folder and Drive item, but since I have to link it to "explorer.exe" it now opens a new instance of explorer each time I click on a folder. I don't believe it's any kind of virus, I haven't been loading anything strange onto this computer yet, and I don't get anything if I scan. I've cleaned up the registry, but that never seems to do much anyways. Because I was given this computer, I don't have the OS's install CD (and I definitely don't own a Windows ME CD) and so I'd rather just fix this.

I'm beginning to think that WinRAR or Winamp screwed up something when I installed one of them. I don't understand the timing though, because the problem didn't arise until long after I'd installed them. I can't see any other reason the file associations would get so messed up all of a sudden though. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 19:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would not blame WinRAR or Winamp; if it occurred that suddenly, it most probably points to registry corruption (or something equally unpredictable), which can be caused by a large number of things. I'd also suggest a chkdsk, just in case (and a memtest86+, if you have the time). --cesarb 20:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you're right. I'm making the mistake here of assuming that it's a relatively fresh installation of ME, when the truth is it's four years old and I had just personally freshened it up myself. Though nothing comes up in scans I'm sure the last owner of this comp had a lot of bad installation habits, so I guess it's best just to assume everything to some unpredictable corruption. Anyways, I managed to get a CD to install the OS fresh and of course the problem is gone now. Thanks for your help! freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 11:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

computer won't turn on: power supply issue?

Turned off computer yesterday morning via switch on PS because it wouldnt shut down properly. Tried to turn it on again, get no response from the computer whatsoever. Ive tried different power outlets, still no response, LED lights dont light up, nothing.

Do you think it is a power supply issue, and if so will it be remedied by swapping in a new power supply? What other causes can we narrow it down to? --Theprizefight 16:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Open the computer. There is usually an led on the board to let you know the power supply is on. If so - it isn't the power supply. If not - swapping a power supply isn't difficult from a technical standpoint. It is just a pain because there are so many cables. I'd start with the power supply. If you want to get very specific, swap the fan out on the power supply. Most bad power supplies I've had were just refusing to work because the fan was broken. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the motherboard got fried somehow the power LED probably wouldn't light up. I've found that no-response conditions are more often caused by motherboard cracks than by faulty power sources, but it could be either. If you have an extra/old power source around (of proper voltage) that you can temporarily swap you should do that first, and if it powers up you know that the problem is obviously your PS. If it still doesn't power up, and you know that the other PS is in working condition, it's most likely that you've cracked something on your mobo. freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 17:32, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and don't forget to turn on the power switch on the back of the computer too (the one on the PS). Even the best of us make that mistake once in a while. : ) freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 17:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I had exactly the same symptoms on my PC when the (cheap and not very good) power supply burned out. Get a good quality power supply (reputable brand, although it'll likely cost a fair bit) and swap the old one out. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Before you take the cover off the PC, make sure you have power to the outlet and/or power strip. Unplug the PC and plug a lamp into the same outlet as a check. It might be as simple as a fuse/circuit breaker/ground fault circuit interrupt. StuRat 17:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. If I had a pound for every time a highly vexing problem turned out to be something ludicrously simple... CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 18:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

website not opening

when ever i try to open this site , i get a 'TCP error'(what does it mean?),but a few days ago this site opened perfectly. could u tell me whyit is not opening and why is the error coming and also could u give me someother link to this same site. [www.globalis.gvu.unu.edu] thank you —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.72.14.239 (talk • contribs) .

If you can access other websites without problem, then it is likely a problem with that website, at their end. Give them a short time to fix it. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 18:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try it without the 'www.'. I was unable to connect to www.globalis.gvu.unu.edu but globalis.gvu.unu.edu is fine.

--Brie Aleida

GoDaddy email problem

Alright, here's my problem. I bought a domain an email account for that domain on godaddy.com. I decided to test it out before putting it on my business card. I sent an e-mail to my new address from my personal bellsouth account, a gmail account and from the account to itself. The bellsouth email never got there, but the gmail and send-to-self e-mails both made it through. Then I used another bellsouth account on another computer to test it again, still nothing. Is this a problem with bellsouth? Are there any ways to test if the godaddy email server is working properly? Should I just forget it and print the card? Broken Segue 20:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How do you delete/edit information that you found to be incorrect?

I noticed that the current description of Yankee Group is inaccurate. I tried editing the description by following the online directions, but it does not allow me to delete the current description.

Please advise. Thank you.--Coh 20:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Go to the page Yankee Group.
Click on "edit this page".
Change the information.
Click on "Save page".

That is all there is to it. --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried editing the description by following the online directions, but it does not allow me to delete the current description.

Thank you.--Coh 20:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, the nice folks over at Wikipedia:Help desk would be better able to help. But anyway, what exactly are you trying to do? The article isn't currently protected, and you are obviously not blocked. Are you trying to delete the article? Are there any error messages telling you why you can't change it? CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 20:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just experimenting, it works fine for me. This is a little silly, but which 'Edit' button are you clicking? The 'Edit this page' tab at the top, or the little 'Edit' links down the side of each section in the article? CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 20:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where can I download the free program "Blender?"

Please tell me what website I can download the free program, "Blender", that creates 3D graphics.

Thank you very much.

--139.168.175.228 23:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Blender and their download page is here. Broken Segue 23:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. I clicked on the top one (I have Windows Me) and Australia but it came up with an error. Does the same thing happen to you?

yep, looks like the link is bad. Try the US link, that one is up for me. Broken Segue 01:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a tonne! Never thought of trying that...you've been really helpful.

Have a beaut day!! :D

--139.168.175.228 01:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

August 4

media players and burners

ok, i have 2 questions, first is there a media burner that could burn different kinds of formats such as .mkv|.rmbv|.avi etc.? Cause i'm doing this project where i have to combine this 2 video, one is avi and the other is .mkv, and windvd creator 2 doesn't accept the .mkv one, any solutions for this?

Also, is there a media player that could play both files, so that you could group them into playlists... the only trouble for me is the .mkv ones or the matroska ones... thx in advance...

If memory serves, both .avi and .mkv are container formats, not video formats, so it should be relatively easy to convert one to another. It is said that virtualdubmod can perform this for you. Here is a random posting that seems to contain instructions in a sense of the word. But with a little toying around it shouldn't be hard... digfarenough (talk) 04:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For playback, try Media Player Classic or VLC media player. They both have playlist and MKV support. - mako 08:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

xms

what is xms for mobile?

I think several providers use this abbreviation, usually to mean an extention or enhancement for the SMS system. An example is Xecure Message Service, an encrypted version of SMS. --Canley 06:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

music file !!!

music file !!! hi, i have a music file that is a "CLASS.File". i've got no clue what software to open it with. what programme can download of the net that is not a shareware or a trial. thanks - DAVE

did you try mplayer?Jon513 08:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's been said that mplayer can play everything, and from my experience, it has. More details about the file in question would be helpful; if it is truly a *.class file, then what you have is compiled Java bytecode, not a music file. -- Daverocks (talk) 10:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, you might not want to run it unless you are sure it is a music file. You didn't, per chance, download it from a Peer-to-peer service did you? There are many viruses on those places which people try to make look like music files, often by using lesser-known scripting extensions (like .vbs). --Fastfission 15:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking that it a another type of media file that has accidently been renamed to .class If that is the case mplayer can still play it since it looks that the file header not the file extension. Jon513 15:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Open it in a hex editor. If the first five bytes are CA FE BA BE 00, you have a Java bytecode file. Congratulations, Dave. You're screwed. [5] --Optichan 17:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

SLA base pricing

Hello - I'm reviewing proposals for sourcing IT Infrastructure Services (Distributed Services, Help Desk, etc.). All potential providers used the cost model my company requested, but one stated that theirs is SLA based pricing. Can someone provide me with some background on this methodology and let me know what the trigger ponts are for negotiating? Thank you.

SLA = Service Level Agreement. SLA Pricing includes the equipment and people in an attempt to be all-encompassing. It can be good, letting you know how much support will be. It can be bad - telling you to go with the Windows server because the cost of service on a Redhat server will be a million times more. Youth in Asia 14:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

C# question

I'm writing a simple console application in c# which needs to handle very large numbers where every digit is signifigant. Does anyone know of a good arbitrary-precision class for c#. Efficiency is not an issue as I have lots of computing resources, but a very high (or none at all) overflow is critical. Thanks, 48v 17:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try looking at the BigInteger and BigDecimal classes. --Kainaw ^(talk) 17:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. The second part of the question is this: Is it possible to index a List (System.generics) or an array with something larger than the 32-bit integer? 48v 18:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It sure sounds like the data you're proposing to store is intrinsically sparse, so you probably want to use C#'s implementation of an associative array (a hashtable). You certainly don't want to be declaring a regular array with four billion members, never mind a bigger one yet. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. In fact, the 32 Bit integer in C# overflows around 2 billion, and yes, I'd like to have a list 5 or 10 billion elements long. Thus the difficulty. I can use an array if necessary, although using a list saves some complexity and code if it is possible to use a different indexer there. I do have non-default values for every entry; the data is not sparse, just a very large set. Thanks for the pointer to the associative array, I'm not clear on if that is still restricted to a 32 bit integer, but I will persue it further if a way to continue using the list or array functions does nto turn up soon. 48v 08:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If your dataset truly is that size (wow), then any kind of in-memory storage is going to explode - even 2 billion entries (assuming a fairly conservative 16 bytes per object, including all the inevitable overhead placed on it by the allocator) would take 32 gigabytes of RAM/swap. Even in the event that the OS does let you allocate all that, performance is going to be soul destroyingly bad. It's much better, surely, to use a smart storage manager, and if you just want "giant array" then you'll do no better than Berkeley DB, for which there is a dotNET wrapper. It handles vast tables (up to 256 TB, they claim) and is very fast. I can't speak for the programming paradigm they use for it on C#, but in python it's just the same as the associative array syntax - so once one has declared it, one can treat it as if its in memory, and the BDB engine takes care of swapping and caching (and in a much smarter way than the windows pager would do). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 09:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll try that. I didn't realise that the memory was quite that extreem. (apparently it isn't linear because of how it's alloted/wrapped?) Thanks for the help and patience! 48v 15:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Info from IP

How do you find a telephone number, street adress, or email adress from an IP. I can't find a whois that can tell me. Thanks *Max* 18:57, 4 August 2006 (UTC).[reply]

In general, you can't. IP addresses are often shared by many users. You can, however, find out who owns the block of IPs that the given IP is a part of, then attempt to contact the owner of that block (probably you can find something online to tell you, usually I just do a traceroute on the IP and see which network it ends up in). On a related note, for a registered domain name, that information for the person who owns the domain is usually available (e.g. through whois). Maybe someone else can provide better information... digfarenough (talk) 19:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fortunately for privacy, 99.9% of the stuff you see in movies is utter crap. --mboverload @ 06:20, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Converter WMA..............

Hi, can you tell me any free software which can convert formats into WMA formats ???

Thank you --Sangeeth 21:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You would be way better out redownloading the file. Converting from one format to another makes already crappy music files sound even worse. --mboverload @ 06:24, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Google for "WMA converter". Done. By the way, transcoding lossy files is evil.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 15:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Windows media encoder is freeely downloadable from the microsoft web site. If you are going to transcode, it's a fairly good tool (assuming you're running windows.) 48v 15:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Robots

I recently have become very intrested in robotics. My question is how I can get a robot to make decisions from video such as retrieving objects? I have heard of this done before in competitions where the robot retrieved cans and brought them back to a designated location.

It'll take quite a bit of work if you're starting from scratch. Let's try to make it as easy as possible. You don't want to actually use a hand or something like that to pick up objects, you're much better off with a magnet (an electromagnet if you want it to be able to drop things later). The arm the magnet is on should have very little freedom of movement, probably one degree of freedom is best (say, rotating in a vertical plane from straight ahead to angled down, touching the ground). Presumably this is a wheeled robot, because walking is pretty tough, so the robot will need to be able to move forward and backward and to rotate left or right. Finally, the vision. The simplest method is to have the target objects uniquely colored (e.g. cans painted red on a black floor). If you want to just preprogram things, you'd have the robot check its vision for a group of red pixels, rotating left or right to move the group into the center of its vision, then approaching until the magnet can pick up the object. If no group of red pixels are found, it should rotate in one direction until a group is seen (this assumes there are no barriers between the goal and the robot). The problem of deciding when the object is near enough to be picked up will be left to you. If you'd prefer the robot learns to do these things on its own, I'd suggest using an RL algorithm like Q-learning. The actions would be as above, and as for the states I'd suggest preprocessing the vision by dividing the visual field into vertical stripes and having the state be the number of red pixels in each stripe. There may be much simpler ways (I have a tendency to overcomplicate things), but, in general, robotics is a pretty complex thing, and vision even more so. Read lots, play around, and good luck! digfarenough (talk) 23:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See computer vision. --cesarb 00:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome this helped alot Thanks.

Another method to control the motion of a robot is to have it follow a colored line on the ground. I've seen this used in automative assembly lines. StuRat 07:57, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

August 5

Firewall

I just got my first wireless-enabled laptop and I'm concerned about security. I've always used a hardware firewall at home but I'm going to college in a few weeks and though I'm fairly confident that the campus is pretty secure from the outside, I'm concerned about intra-network security.

I refuse to pollute my memory and complicate life by using a software firewall.

Firstly, is there any particular danger in wireless networking without a firewall? Can an ad-hoc network be established to me without my knowledge (as a type of attack, not as a feature).

And secondly, is a firewall really necessary? Although I'm very "good with computers" - I'm a computer science major - I have very little experience with network security. What will a firewall do for me, technically I mean. An attacker can send as much information as he wants over any port he wants, nothing's listening to him to my knowledge.. is a firewall necessary?

Finally, what specifically does the windows firewall do?

Thanks

--Froth 05:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A router/firewall is the only kind of protection you really need (router is better). You can not control the spread of "worms", which are beyond your control of preventing (to a certain degree). Sygate Personal Firewall is a free, no-crap, lean firewall. --mboverload @ 06:19, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Answering your second question: while it's true that it doesn't make any difference for a closed port, it can make a lot of difference for a port that's open but you do not want anyone else to use. A common example would be the Windows RPC ports (which AFAIK are impossible to close, and were attacked for instance by the Blaster worm). A firewall can also block outgoing connections, if configured to do so; for instance, if a worm on your computer tries to connect to a SMTP server, and the firewall is configured to block these kinds of connections, the connection attempt will be blocked. --cesarb 14:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, yes there a danger in wireless networking without a firewall. Setting aside ad-hoc networks if you connect to an access point and acquire an IP your machine is now visable to everyone else on that access point, just as if it would be visit to everyone on a wired lan should you plug a cable in. This could mean that any folders you share, or services you run on your local machine that listen for connections on the local lan are now vunerable. Some services do this by default under Windows and a software firewall rejecting connections will stop this. I've not heard of ad-hoc networks being created as an attack, however it was demonstrated this week at Black Hat USA that drivers themselves can have vunerabilities.

Secondly what use is a firewall? Well can you be sure nothing is listening on any ports? Under Windows for example local networking listens. Media Player can listen. The games you play can listen. Instant messengers. Software firewalls tend to prompt you when software attempts to listen, and blocks incoming traffic to services you haven't cleared. The Windows firewall, after XP SP2 provides inbound packet protection and some output program protection.

If you are connecting to the campus LAN/WLAN you cannot be sure of any other machines inside the lan, (and I know as I student I hacked the university mainframe, I cannot believe that nowadays students don't try to hack each other over shared lans, heck when Ping of death arrived a few of us where I worked had great fun crashing each other) so you need all the help you can get. Use a firewall. --Blowdart 15:59, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remote Desktop Connection

I have two computers at home. How can I know the computer's IP address to be able to access the other computer?--203.124.2.6 06:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://www.no-ip.com/ + UltraVNC = Awesome --mboverload @ 07:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are on a home network, you can likely use the computer's names to connect. try that first. If not (assuming you are running XP or a similar version of windows) open the command line (programs>accessories>command prompt) and type "ipconfig /all". Among other things, it will give you the IP of the computer you run it on. Note that this is not the IP which you could connect with from a computer that is not on your local area network. If that still does not do the job (or you are in fact, not on a local area network) let us know what happened and we'll try to solve that. 48v 16:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Memory Upgrade

I would lke to upgrade the memory in my laptop. I know the specification is SODIMM 200 pin PC2100 256 mhz. CL2.5 unbuffered. current memory is 256MB. I would like to upgrade the memory to either 512MB or 1GB. Does the new chip have to have exactly the same specifications as the old one with the obvious exception of size or can I put any larger capacity chip in as long as it is 200 pins?

Computer Problem

Have a Dell computer with Windows XP Home edition Verion DSL with AOL membership Keep getting a dialogue box which asks if I wish to Debug gives a numerical line and list error as Ovject expected If I give answer yes the box disappears Later it reappears again same question different line

This is usually thrown by Internet explorer, but occasionally in other places. It generally means that a website or program you are running or viewing has been written in an error. There is not a whole lot you can do. In the options of internet explorer (and maybe on the dialogue itself) there is an option to not ask to debug. I don't know if there is an equivalent for regular programs. Furthermore, try contacting the webmaster/software author and ask them to fix it. By default, those dialogues should not come up (there is a more generic dialogue) did you by any chance install microsoft visual studio or a similar program? That may be why they got turned on. 48v 16:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Processor

what is Intel dual core processor?. give me full details?