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July 10

How to evaluate social networking sites

I had long dismissed Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc. as being overrated time-wasters and meant for people with Neurotypical Syndrome. However, I recently read that companies are posting job openings on Twitter and LinkedIn to avoid the high costs of posting at Monster and Workopolis. While I was still skeptical, a reputable business magazine confirmed the story. I'd been searching for a summer job for two months and had just given up. Now I feel like a dinosaur.

What's the best way to evaluate whether social networking sites, and any other Web 2.x or 3.x phenomena that don't seem interesting on the surface, are worth my time, and how to make the best use of them? NeonMerlin 00:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Try some; see what happens. Ask trusted acquaintances who have experience of them. Keep reading about them. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

You should probably get a Linkedin.com account - that is only just barely a social networking site - but it's a busy place for the jobs market. Very professional. It allows you to answer the question: Does anyone that I know have connections with someone else at such-and-such company? If you see that company advertising a job you're interested in - you can say "Hey Joe - could you recommend me to your buddy Jane who works at XYZ-Corp?" - that's usually enough to make sure your resume is at least carefully considered. Six degrees of separation says that you can reach anyone on the planet through a sequence of six carefully chosen connections - but even with just a couple of connections, you can get to a surprisingly large number. SteveBaker (talk) 03:43, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't "six degrees of separation" inherently devalue a recommendation acquired through a social network website? If by the logic that "anyone" can have a friend of a friend who works at a company, then what's the point of the "connection"? (It seems like an implicit letter-of-recommendation for anyone on the planet - so it's a devalued recommendation). Whether your true social network is electronified with XML and AJAX, or if it still resides in a paper book, the merit of the social network is independent of the means you use to represent it. Consider actual networking events - like company mixers, university-level short-courses, and conferences - as a better way to actually develop a network. Nimur (talk) 15:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah.com site

How come sometimes when I type in a Wikipedia URL, it takes me to a yeah.com error page? It says "The page you were looking for doesn't exist. You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved." And I'm quite sure it's not that I'm mistyping it or that the article doesn't exist. Not an urgent question, because it doesn't happen to me very often; just curious. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 06:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

In fact you did mistype part of the URL, and some loser company is paying for that domain name, knowing they will get a certain number of misspelled-URL hits per month and will be able to serve a certain number of ads and get paid. This is related to cybersquatting. Trying "www.wkipedia.com" (no link because let's not help them) sends you to a similar site, for example, claiming it is "Your Online Encyclopedia Source!". Like many of these "typo-only" URLs, the site itself only contains a bunch of links to various legitimate encyclopedia sites, claiming they are "related searches", which I believe is done in order to be able to demonstrate that it's a valid site, if ownership of the URL is contested. Or to fool the unwary into clicking them, I guess. Tempshill (talk) 07:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Some other possible situations may arise, if you are sure you are not typing the address incorrectly. First, and most worrisome, is the possibility that malware or some proxy server is intercepting your browser traffic and selectively redirecting you to this alternative website. Next possibility is the numerous (and very irritating) auto-completion features that many browsers have integrated into their URL bar (now more properly called a "browser input text field" because it is not exclusively used for URLs). Firefox, for example, will automatically prepend domain prefixes (like www.) and append domain suffixes (like .com, .net or .org) depending on your preferences (and if you hit ctrl-enter, for example). This is very troublesome if you have local namespaces (e.g. my local news server, http://news, should never be interpreted as http://www.news.com - two totally different namespaces, and defeating the purpose of hierarchical DNS lookup! It demonstrates to me that modern browser software architects do not respect the DNS system, and so they assume that every DNS entry should redirect me to a top-level site). Similarly, the browsers often default to search-from-address-bar, which I think is a terribly confusing feature (are you entering a search query, or are you entering an address - how do you know the difference - especially if your correct address is a short keyword like "news" ?) You can disable these browser annoyances, if they are the cause of your unwanted redirection. Nimur (talk) 16:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the other sites that prey on Wikipedia typos, but this yeah.com thing seems to be different. Sometimes I'll repeatedly type in the proper URL and it will keep going to yeah.com; last night I typed in the URL once, and it took me to yeah.com, then I typed it in again, and it took me to Wikipedia, then I opened a new window, and the same sequence happened again. It's happened to me on computers at home and at my college. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 19:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah.com is a known dangerous site that may distribute or have distributed CoolWebSearch. (Often called "CWS"; An infamous adware/spyware toolbar) If you are being redirected there often, it is possible you are infected with some form of adware. I'd suggest running scans with both Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware. What is your current security set-up? (That is, what applications are you currently using to protect your computer from the dangers of malware?)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 20:39, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I finally figured this out! I had been having this same problem, occasionally getting redirected to yeah.com, for a long time. Nimur's answer above is what helped me figure it out. I'm guessing you almost certainly use Firefox, like me. The site which redirects to yeah.com is "en.wikipedia.org.net". Firefox will automatically add ".net" to a domain name if, instead of pressing Enter, you press Shift+Enter. So, if you're typing a Wikipedia URL ending in a capital letter (for example, I often type "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock Band DLC"), you may still be holding the Shift key when you press Enter. You're welcome! LordRM (talk) 22:58, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Computer won't start - only beeps, no video

Yesterday my old XP computer was working fine. This morning I decided to replace the old PCI video card with an old AGP one, as I wanted to use the PCI one in another old computer. When I turned the computer on, soon afterwards I heard what sounded like a long beep follow immediately by three short ones. The CD-rom drive and floppy drive were busy for a while (probably the normal start-up sequence), then the HDD seemed to start up for a second but then stop. Unfortunately when I replaced the previous graphics card the same thing happened. I have a ECS P6BAT-A+ motherboard. I am using a public computer to write this. Does anyone know what the beeps mean please? Perhaps the first beep was the POST beep. The HDD was monitored by the computer - I forget the name of that - and had no problems. Thanks 81.144.199.142 (talk) 10:10, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

First, ensure you didn't unplug anything accidentally (it is very easy to partially unplug a drive cable). Second, reset the BIOS. There is a jumper on the motherboard that you connect to reset the BIOS. See the manual for the motherboard (you can download it online) for the exact location of that particular jumper. Third, if this is a Pheonix BIOS, which I believe it is, the 1-3 combinations are "Motherboard is dead" warnings. -- kainaw™ 13:59, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Make sure your video card doesn't require a separate power connection. Forgetting that is a common cause of this sort of error. (For me at least.) APL (talk) 19:05, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've got internet access through another computer, but a lot of my precious stuff is on the broken computer. I wil try the BIOS reset. I'm wondering if the video card has damaged the computer - I got given it with some other computer parts and I had not tried it before. If its a Killer Video Card I'm worried about trying it on anything else. Do you have any specific webpage that says that long short short short means a dead mobo please, as I could not find that when I searched? For what its worth I tried a Linux boot CD, no different. 78.146.20.248 (talk) 19:46, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't reset the BIOS just yet, that may be premature. The sequence of beeps you describe may specifically identify the problem. For example, for an AMI BIOS, one long and three short beeps indicates a memory problem, possibly a loose memory card. Try reseating the memory and reboot. If that doesn't work, try to identify the BIOS maker by scanning the motherboard for a chip labeled Award, Phoenix, or AMI. Then search the web for something like "xxx power on self test code", where xxx is the BIOS manufacturer. Somewhere in the results you may find a document showing what the error code means. For some BIOS manufacturers, such as award, many different versions exist and you may need to search by motherboard manufacturer. See Power-on self-test or [1] for some common codes. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:33, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

There are/were a lot of different beep codes, depending on the BIOS etc. Beeping instead of starting up is a common lack-of-video problem. You would have needed to set the BIOS setup to account for using the AGP slot. Depending on the model you might get it going without a video card, if it had on-board video, which I think those boards did. The AGP might be a bit too new for it; that board is about 4 years old. If it starts at all, check and change the BIOS settings to suit the card you propose to put in, then save the setting, turn it off, change the card, and it should pick up the setting on re-boot. Clean out the PCI slot before reinserting that card; optimally it should be the closest slot to the power supply. Cross fingers. - KoolerStill (talk) 03:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I found out that the beeps mean that there is a problem with the graphics card or with graphics memory. The BIOS is Award. I got this from BiosCentral which is now regrettably defunct, but accessable through the Waybackwhen Machine. (I hope someone harvests all the data from Bioscentral and makes it more obviously available somewhere). I think the problem might be something to do with the different AGP standards being incompatible, see external links at the end of Accelerated Graphics Port but I'm not sure. The mobo manual just says "AGP" so it must be AGP1.0. The graphics cards I tried are more recent. I may have damaged both the mobo and the graphics cards. The mobo does not seem to have any direct video output, unless it uses a non-standard plug with pins sticking out rather than in. The manual is rather ambivalent on this. The mobo is more than four years old - more like twice that. I think I may have to accept that the mobo is damaged, unless anyone has any other ideas. I may try mounting the old HD in a USB "cradle" which I understand are quite cheap. 84.13.50.242 (talk) 17:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

AGP cards are notorious for being difficult to seat properly. You really do have to press hard to get them into the slot - it will probably feel like you might break the card. Look to see how well the card is seated in the slot, and try pushing it in harder. Disclaimer - push at your own risk. I and Wikipedia cannot be responsible for you breaking your graphics card or motherboard. -- 128.104.112.84 (talk) 22:20, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I did press then in firmly. I think incompatible AGP standards probably damaged both the mobo and the graphics cards due to the different voltages of the different versions of AGP - the Wikipedia article ought to make this risk more clear. 78.151.124.180 (talk) 23:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, in the old days beeps would mean a ram issue, or maybe also a video issue. Also, the beeps aren't random. They have a code embedded in them, sort of a morse code. Find a manufacturer page or manual for your mobo, then find the beep codes for it. You might find out exactly what's wrong. Also, make sure your ram's seated right, or didn't get accidentally fried. Shadowjams (talk) 05:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Computer problems

File:BSOD.jpg

BSOD

Also can you help with a computer problem?

When I insert a quicktime disc I received the following BSOD

I have tried everything, reflashing the DVD and reintalling quicktime but no avail. PLease help asap!

--Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 12:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Question 2: OS? Seems to happen on Windoze 2003 Server and Vista. Xenon54 (talk) 12:13, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

My operating system is Windows xp pro sp3. Is this a common problem and how to fix it? --Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 13:38, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Please ask questions in separate threads. I've taken the liberty of moving your website virus problem into a separate thread below. On the BSOD, this is the search page for "bad_pool_header" at support.microsoft.com — do any of those look relevant? You might add "xp" to the search. Tempshill (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

reinstall your dvd drivers, run ccleaner Ivtv (talk) 21:09, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I already did that.--Tyw7  (Talk • Contributions) 10:40, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Then format/recovery Ivtv (talk) 02:56, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Zamzar

Is the website http://www.zamzar.com is virus free? Btw Norton sitesadvisor has flagged Zamzar as a red flag cause it senses two strains of viruses on the site.

Question 1: Yes. Philadelphia's KYW radio (article) did a story about it. SiteAdvisor rates it yellow for popups.

This sort of question is impossible for anyone to answer in a way that will be satisfactory to you — you may be asking us to claim that no file anywhere on the website has a virus on it, which of course none of us can do. Even the supposedly safe and virus-free website download.com has hosted at least one file that had a virus infection. Your best bet is of course to practice safe computing by running an account on your computer that has no admin rights (except when you have to install some software), use an antivirus program, don't run .exe files you don't trust, and so forth. Tempshill (talk) 19:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Zamzar is rather a pain: adverts, delays, more adverts. . . .

KYW radio brightly introduces it: Ever ask your friend to email you a picture, but instead of a jpeg, he sends you a targa file?

If I were using Windows, I'd get IrfanView to convert the file. No adverts, no delays. Indeed, I find that there's a free conversion utility to do most of what Zamzar does. -- Hoary (talk) 12:13, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Tor vs other proxies

Aside from not being web-based, what are the differences between Tor and web-based proxies? Acceptable (talk) 13:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Tor is just "several" proxies linked together as peers. At any given time, some proxies are available and some are not. Tor dynamically keeps track of which ones are available. Any given traffic is routed through one or more proxies. I believe that individual packets are may be split among different proxies, to make tracking more difficult. Also note that while you are using Tor, you are also hosting a proxy, which you might not have intended to do. Nimur (talk) 16:09, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, you only host a proxy if you choose to do so in the settings menu. It doesn't automatically make you a host —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 16:39, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure you end up as an intermediate hop, though. You do have to choose to be an end-point, though. Washii (talk) 19:10, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Stolen laptop (again)

After reading your advice in answer to my earlier question, it occurred to me that I should protect my Windows Live email account with a different password. I had in mind that the thief might access my emails by gaining knowledge of my password after opening up the files on my stolen machine. So I changed the password yesterday and accessed the account several times without any problem. Today, when I try to access my email account, my password is not recognised. Does this suggest that the thief has somehow hacked into my email account and changed the password, or am I being too paranoid? I also find that I can no longer access networking sites that I am a member of, again because my password is not recognised? Does this suggest the thief has hacked into these sites so as to read my private information?Maid Marion (talk) 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I think this is the old thread. Bus stop (talk) 14:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Before jumping to conclusions, are you sure that it is specifically your password that is not being recognized? Perhaps -- just a consideration -- your "user name" was stored on your old computer -- and now you have to retype in your "user name." Bus stop (talk) 14:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for trying, but I was able to access all of these things yesterday, typing in both username and password on another machine and having no problems. I'm wondering whether today the thief has been playing around and has accessed the sites, changing the new password in order to do so (because the new password of course would not be found on the old machine).Maid Marion (talk) 14:59, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It seems more likely that you have not typed the correct new password (Caps-Lock?). It should not be possible to use the old password to access the site and change the new password (if the thief even has the old password). Can you contact the Microsoft Live support? Nimur (talk) 16:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Nimur's right. How could he access your account if you've changed the password since the computer was stolen? Tempshill (talk) 17:51, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all. In that case, I just can't explain what has happened. I was aware of the caps lock possibility, Nimur, and it is not that that has caused this - I guess we just don't know. Anyway, I'm away on holiday in a few minutes, so I'll thank you all again and see you soon. Maid Marion (talk) 05:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

What happens when you click on "forgot password" or whatever? Does it ask you a "secret question"? And if so, is the secret question something whose answer the thief of your laptop would have been able to guess, or find among the files on your laptop? Mathew5000 (talk) 05:02, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

IP info

If someone knows your ip address, like for example my ip address (i'm sure sinebot will be along to post it shortly), what info can they find out about you? What stuff could they do, gain access to the computer, hack, DDOS me etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 16:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

If you google "ip lookup" you'll find websites that tell us where you're apparently at (the UK) and what your host apparently is (Virgin Media). Your city or town can be localized pretty well, too. There are some services like this which also purport to show where you are on Google Maps, though I doubt these are more accurate than the city or town level. A person who knows your IP address could actually find out who you are by telling your ISP the address and the time and date of the computer use of that address, and asking them who you are — depending on local laws, this may require a court order, or may not. As far as hacking into your computer, yes, it's possible for an individual person or a zombie PC or a botnet to take that IP address and try to use known exploits in popular operating systems to hack into your system, or simply do a DDOS attack, as you say — but an individual PC user is not a very interesting target for zombie PCs and the people who run them. There are many millions of IP addresses that are visible; why would they pick yours out for an attack? To be safe, of course, you should have a router between your computer and your cable modem or DSL modem; and you should always practice safe computing by not running untrusted .exe files, utilizing an account on your computer without administrator access as much as possible while surfing, keeping your OS up to date with the regular security patches that come out, running antivirus software, etc. Tempshill (talk) 17:08, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Nitpick - to be safe, you should have a firewall between yourself and the untrusted internet - but most home "routers" are actually gateway/router/NAT/firewall combination systems. The fact that the box is also a router serves little or no additional security benefit. Tempshill is correct - it is best practice to put this box between you and the rest of the world -[ without it, you are relying on your operating system to protect you, which is (debatably) a bad strategy. Nimur (talk) 22:20, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I know this isn't your actual question, but just to try and help, if you want to avoid having your IP posted then just create a free Wikipedia login with a username which in turn will hide your IP as long as you are logged in. Also, if you sign your posts with ~~~~ then SineBot won't come along either. To answer your actual question, in your case (and because anyone can do a whois I don't think there's a problem with me posting this) we can tell that you are using Blueyonder (Virgin Media) as your Internet Provider and because of how Blueyonders DNS works it says you're located somewhere in/around the Croydon/South London area. It doesn't identify you more any more than though, however different IP addresses will give away more/less information and in many regards could be completely wrong, for example an AOL address will often appear to come from the United States even if they're located in the UK. Trying to answering the "what can they do" is pretty hard though. If you've got a firewall/router in place between you and the Internet then as long as you haven't configured it really badly gaining access to your computer/network is extremely unlikely. However, if you have software on your computer (like trojan horse), possibly combined with a router that support UPNP then it's possible for an infected computer to allow someone from the Internet to access it. Finally, regarding DDoS's, it quite possible yes (as an IP address is a fixed point on the Internet), although that seems rather extreme for someone to do that on a dynamic residential address because in the event of a problem like that your IP isn't specifically assigned to you and Virgin Media could just give you another one just as easily (although they'd probably want to know why you're getting DDoS'd). Although it sounds slightly paranoid, ideally you don't want to give out your IP address if possible, just in case. Hope this is of some help? ZX81 ^talk 17:23, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Surely, if the IP address is dynamically assigned, it will only tell you where the ISP is located and not where that particular ISP customer is located. Your IP address says your ISP is Virgin Media but the only physical addresses given are for Telewest Broadband in Woking and Bradford (Telewest were taken over by Virgin in 2007). Since Virgin has customers all over the country, there's about a 1% chance that you live in either town. I really doubt the ISP updates their registration details at nominet each time one of their IP address is assigned to a different customer. Astronaut (talk) 04:00, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

For any other ISP I would agree completely, my own IP address being "located" a few hundred miles from where I actually am because of my ISPs location, but with Blueyonder all their reverse DNS on the IPs contains the region of the customer. For example in this case the IP reverses to 82-43-91-128.cable.ubr08.croy.blueyonder.co.uk and as you can see the full chart of their areas here that means the user is in the Croydon area of South London. ZX81 ^talk 05:18, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

And a quick search with google indicates for instance they may be applying to become a teacher. Dmcq (talk) 19:03, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Help!

I've got a gforce 4 videod card ruunning the latest version of XP. Ths screen goes blank all the time and I have to reboot and I have to run in 640x480 to minimize this problem. It acts like and Electrical problem but I changed the monitor and cable and it did't do anything. So is it my video card broken or is it a driver problem?

The easiest way to test the driver problem is to simply install/reinstall the latest version of the driver. The latest driver for the GeForce 4 series was 93.71 and can be downloaded from NVIDIA here. However, personally, it sounds like more of a hardware issue and the card is possibly even overheating, but these are just guesses you'd ideally need to try another card to fully rule out if it's the card or not. ZX81 ^talk 18:17, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It's worth noting that some newer versions of the Nvidia driver are claimed to be back-compatible, but I have found that 91.47 was the most stable for my old GeForce. I would definitely avoid getting the absolute latest driver (186.18), which is explicitly not intended for your card. Nimur (talk) 22:19, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I found that it was the fan on the video card that had failed, causing overheating. I replaced the card with another one which works. But, it's an old one that I found with no name on it, so I don't know how I could get drivers for it - I'm now using the default Windows driver. 17:20, 12 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.101.13.23 (talk)

Archiving old e-mails on Microsoft Outlook

So I've got a lot of old emails sitting in my inbox and I'd like to archive them. What I want to do is to be able to put my old emails on my external hard disk drive (which is always connected to my computer) so they don't eat up space on my C:\ drive and also put them on a flash drive/CD and transfer them to another computer. How would I go about doing that? Can I open Outlook mails in other email clients? Thanks in advance. 116.71.66.144 (talk) 21:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Assuming you mean Outlook (and not Outlook Express, which is an entirely different program, and not the cut-down version that the name might lead you to believe). I don't have one to hand, but you can export a folder, or an whole account, to a .PST file. You can then re-import that PST into outlook. Converting that PST so that other mail programs (Thunderbird, Eudora, Evolution, or even Outlook Express) turns out to be unpleasantly hard. I've used Aid4mail to do this; I've never found a free/OS equivalent that adequately handles Outlook's vexing formats. 87.115.94.112 (talk) 22:11, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

A possibly useful tip: After you create the new .pst file and create a new folder within it, when you go back to your Inbox to view the e-mails, sort the view of e-mails "by type". If your inbox is anything like mine, most of the items will be e-mails which will sort to the top, and some will be Calendar items that will sort to the bottom. Delete the Calendar items, then hit ctrl-A to Select All and then drag all the e-mails to that folder inside the new .pst file. When I archive my e-mails off in this manner, I usually forget to delete the Calendar items first, and then I get an irrelevant and undecipherable error dialog when I try archiving them all off. Tempshill (talk) 04:08, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Programming contests

I'd like to know useful resources for preparing a programming contest, especially lots of problems with judges. Thanks! --62.57.11.200 (talk) 21:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

This depends entirely on the programming contest. Which contest are you attempting to compete in? -- kainaw™ 22:06, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Nothing beats a good algorithms textbook. If you are a novice programmer, an intermediate programmer, these books are helpful. Practice coding up theory examples from textbooks, and become familiar with your favorite language's standard library kits (programming competitions often have a time-limit, so you don't want to burn hours redesigning a network stack or a linked-list collection). Nimur (talk) 22:30, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure, yet, kainaw. Maybe Google's? --62.57.11.200 (talk) 09:17, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

File:Botzilla screenshot.jpg

Most programming contests have unbelievably boring topics...seriously tedious stuff. If you are trying to get the interest of kids - or even people who program for a living - then you need something more exciting. What I wrote - and ran as a programming contest during "engineering week" at work for several years was this: http://botzilla.sourceforge.net/ - it's called "Botzilla" and it's free/OpenSourced. The idea is that there are giant robotic machines invading a city (Godzilla-style). Each player writes the software to control a 'bot - and then we toss the bots into an arena and have them fight it out until only one is left standing. The robot's are controlled via a fairly limited "API" which gives the robot reasonable 'sensors' to probe it's environment, means to control it's smashing, shooting and pounding equipment and a way to set the speed and direction they are moving. The graphics are fun - buildings get destroyed - the bots cause immense destruction and there are video-game style "Health" readouts so you can see how then are all doing. The actual programming is done in C or C++ and each player's bot. There are several example 'bot' programs included so everyone has something to use as a starting point. We ran the competition for several years at work - we used a large projection TV and a decent sound system to run the final rounds and had hundreds of people watching and cheering on the bots of the people in their teams. It was a complete blast - and everyone has a lot of fun. More importantly - in one-on-one battles, particular 'bots consistantly beat out their competitors - meaning that this is definitely a measure of practical programming skills. We would also run "brawl" events where we tossed a bunch of robots into the arena at the same time - that's much more a matter of luck - but also a bunch of fun.

The system has 3D graphics - with smart 'cameras' to allow you to view the action. The person running the event can switch cameras and get "bot's-eye views" - even switch the display into stereo mode (In which case you need to issue the audience with those red/cyan cardboard glasses!). There is a good music sound-track and a score-keeping system. You can pre-script which bots fight which and rehearse the whole event before you take it before a live audience so you don't have to fiddle around with mouse and keyboard while the event is happening beyond hitting a key to start off the next event, switching cameras, etc.

Alternatively - Lego robotic competitions are a lot of fun - of course there is a significant cash outlay to buy the Lego Mindstorms systems the first time around - but if you intend to run this competition over several years and have some sort of a corporate sponsor - that may not be an issue.

SteveBaker (talk) 03:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Is my computer good enough to run a game?

Hi all I want to get a game called team fortress 2 for my PC. Here are the requirements: Minimum: 1.7 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX® 8 level Graphics Card, Windows® Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0GHz, or better), 1GB RAM, DirectX® 9 level Graphics Card, Windows® Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection

I have a 2GHZ processor, 2GB RAM, I use windows vista, I do have an internet connection and my graphics card is a nvidia Ge Force 8400M GS. Is this good enough for the game to run properly? Thanks RichYPE (talk) 21:44, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but the CPU is rather weak so you may not be able to play the game to the full potential (i.e. you may have to leave graphics/performance settings a bit short). Xenon54 (talk) 21:48, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

How can you know if the CPU is weak? All he says is that it is 2 GHz. It could be a Intel Nehalem (microarchitecture) (which would blow a 3 GHz Pentium Dual-Core out of the water). We need more specific details on your CPU to judge it - do you know the model and series number? Nimur (talk) 22:19, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I think one needs to take into consideration the fact that it's a laptop. The graphics card may turn out to be the bottleneck. decltype (talk) 01:38, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

How would you know if it is? The OP actually said "for my PC"... -- Jokes Free4Me (talk) 15:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi guys thanks for the contributions. My processor is a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5750. Thanks RichYPE (talk) 09:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Decltype. CPU and RAM is probably not a problem (at all). Advanced games, however, really require expensive GPU's to run in high-quality modes (high-resolution, high texture quality, a lot of animations, perhaps anti-aliasing etc.). But often you can play them at moderate quality (low-res, low texture quality) even with cheaper (yet relatively new) GPU's. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:53, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the best way to be sure before buying the game is to test the trial version? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

No trial version of TF2. APL (talk) 18:24, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I suspect it would run albeit potentially only at low settings and with some graphics lag. I have run HL2 (same engine, I believe) on a very similar hardware setup, although on a MacBook and through a virtualizer (Parallels). Even with that major hinderance, I was able to get HL2 humming along basically decently. I imagine if one were running it natively on that kind of setup it would be a lot smoother, definitely do-able. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:54, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi thanks for the contributions. By natively do you mean with no other programs/windows open? Thanks RichYPE (talk) 09:57, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

No, by "natively" he means that you run the Windows game on Microsoft Windows (as you normally do!) and not on a Mac computer pretending to be a Windows computer. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 10:51, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

If I read our article correctly there's an older free version called Team Fortress Classic. There also seems to be a happy modding community. That makes it likely you might find some version/variation that will run on older computers. Worth some googling and forum surfing I'd say. Unless you insist on the exact features of the official release, that is. 71.236.26.74 (talk) 06:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking for a paper

I'm looking for “A Ray Tracing Algorithm for Progressive Radiosity” (J.R. Wallace, K.A. Elmquist, E.A. Haines) from the proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1989. Does anyone know where I can find it? I don't have an ACM membership, and I'm a little loath to sign up for a student one since I suspect I'll have access to ACM materials in a couple months. 94.168.184.16 (talk) 21:51, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It appears to have been published on this website in addition to through ACM. The direct link is here. It seems to be the same version as the ACM copy I briefly checked. --Kateshortforbob 20:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Created another user account, but it does not have MSWord

I have a second-hand XP computer. To get rid of the large amount of clutter from the previous owner, I have created a new user account with admin privelidges, so that I can delete the user profiles and user accounts of the previous owner. When I logged on as the new user, Windows seemed to load up various MS programs for me, but not Word. When I forced it to load Word, it asked me for the installation CD, which I do not have, even though Word is still on the computer. How do I make Word available to all user accounts please? 89.242.157.3 (talk) 23:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you can do that, but you can find excellent Word programs on the internet to download free, also, have you considered taking the computer to a specialist? Sometimes they will totally wipe out the computer for free. ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 01:14, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I assume that you already have tried to run "winword.exe". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:49, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I tried manually creating a shortcut and placing it in my menu folder, but when I click on them the computer tries to reinstall Office 2000 (which is what I meant rather than just Word) using its CD, which I do not have (although maybe I'd be justified in downloading a pirate copy to do this repair since I already own the program??). This article describes a complicated procedure which I have not yet digested: http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/39568/how-can-i-make-available-to-all-users-a-program-that-i-installed-in-windows-xp-or-windows-2000-to-be-accessed-only-by-myself.html Unfortunately no other user has access, otherwise I could try copying their menu enteries into my menu folder. The cacls command may be relevant, but does anyone know of a freeware program that would do this more automatically? Or have the enteries in their menus that I could copy (they will be files in the menu folder). I deleted the former users profile, and no user on the computer has Office use, although it is still there. Due to a virus problem I closed down System Restore and deleted its old files, so not luck there either. Thanks 78.151.124.180 (talk) 23:01, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a similar situation - I created a new user account on the old computer someone gave me, and when I try to start Word it says "Please wait while Windows configures Microsoft Office 2003." But, if I click the Cancel button when it says this, Word starts without any problem. The only difficulty this creates is that I have to start Word before trying to load a document - simply double-clicking a document in Explorer won't work. I don't know why this happens - possibly something to do with creating the new account after installing Office? AJHW (talk) 13:30, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm no expert but when you install a new program on a multi user XP system the installation procedure will ask you at some point whether you want to have the program available to all users or only on your desktop. (This may already be a pre-selected checked box if you use the installation procedure that came with the program.) I'm not sure how and where it registers and stores things then, but if you want to use that program from the other user window later on you usually have to re-install it. hence your system asking for the installation disk. If you don't have the product code of the word program already installed you're likely out of luck claiming ownership. If you do have the code, you might get lucky at MS. (Contact the previous owner if you can and ask whether he still has the code no./disk.) There may be workarounds via the system files and copying things to the other user directories. 71.236.26.74 (talk) 06:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit fuzzy on the details (never actually used it much, if at all), but there is such a thing called "run as", which only needs you to provide the original account's username and password, and i think it would solve your problem. It's in the context menu, IIRC. -- Jokes Free4Me (talk) 15:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

July 11

DVD drives

If you have a DVD drive, do you have to have some sort of software or hardware to go with it? Is there anyway you can use it without these? ---Scarce |||| Talk -Contrib.--- 01:05, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

You'll need a computer to plug it into (unless it's the kind that plugs straight into a TV), and you'll need driver software so the computer knows what to do with it. Algebraist 01:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're using Windows, you'll need driver software, which will probably auto-install for you once you hook up the drive and power the computer on. If you want to view movie DVDs, you will also need DVD playback software, like WinDVD or similar. This sort of software is often bundled along with the drive if you purchase a "retail version" instead of an "OEM version"; check the package before you buy. Tempshill (talk) 01:39, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course, you do not need any third-party DVD player software, for you can use Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:47, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

On XP, WMP/WMC doesn't ship with a DVD decoder, and depends on a third party install (so if you install WinDVD it installs the appropriate dlls, allowing WMP to also play DVDs); if no DVD player is installed, WMP can't do it itself. I don't know about Vista or Win7. 87.115.94.112 (talk) 12:55, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I know, but I do not think that this is the case in Vista and Windows 7. At least, on several different Windows Vista systems, I have always been able to use WMP and WMC to play DVD's, without having any third-party DVD player (GUI application) installed. But I do not know if the decoder really is included in Vista, or if the computer manufacturers have included any third-party decoders, although I do not think that that "sounds" right. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:12, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why people care about WMC when there are far superior players like BSplayer out there, or even the free Media Player Classic. Both of these handle DVD's just fine. Sandman30s (talk) 20:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, personally, I love WMC, and wouldn't want to live without it (yes, that was a POV comment, but I got slightly annoyed by the POV comment above). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:50, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The POV is from the angle of DVD support, not to mention other HD formats. Why bother with something that doesn't come with automatic DVD and HD support, and doesn't always succeed in downloading the correct codecs? I meant superior in terms of DVD format, which was what the OP was asking. We are also assuming that he uses Windows, otherwise all this advice was in vain. Finally, my POV was after evaluating many players over many years; was yours? Sandman30s (talk) 10:32, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Decorative 1 line ASCII art

On message boards, I've seen users doing creative things like

.ılılıll|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|̲̅̅=̲̅̅|̲̅̅●̲̅̅|llılılı. Boombox

°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸,ø¤°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸

(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.·(¯`·._.· hello!

,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-(_SURPRISE!_)-,.-~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸

What is this called? And where can I find some more examples? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 01:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

You named it in the section header: ASCII art. Tempshill (talk) 01:36, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Ironically, many of those in the examples above are not ASCII characters and rely on a larger character set (such as UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1. Some of the characters appear to be Turkish or Cyrillic Dotted and dotless I, while others are glyphs. Nimur (talk) 02:32, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

How to find web pages that contain a given phrase and link to some other given page?

I'm trying to better understand the Kasey Chambers/Shane Nicholson song "Monkey on a Wire", which I heard for the first time today. So I googled "monkey on a wire" (with quotes). One of the results was our article on the psychologist Harry Harlow, which does not actually contain that phrase, though he did do some experiments involving surrogate-mother monkeys made of wire. So I clicked on Google's cached-page link, where the header informed me that "Monkey on a Wire" appears only in pages linking to our article. Naturally, I want to see the page that both contains the phrase "monkey on a wire" and links to Harry Harlow. Google obviously has this information; how do I coax it out? Thanks! --Allen (talk) 04:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The Google cache says "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: 'monkey on a wire' " which means the terms (monkey, on, a, wire) are only in LINKS to the page, not the page itself (meaning links as in their own search results). This makes sense, as those were the search terms that first brought up our page. Near-identical results come up for the phrase without quotes, a rather nasty Google habit of considering shorter words insignificant. (Although you can see how a search for "on a" could bring up 98% of English pages on the World Wide Web, so be useless). Close inspection of the article shows all four search term words DO appear in it, albeit never as the single phrase you'd expect after having put it into quotes. Monkey wire and monkey+wire bring similar but not identical results, the Harlow article being in the top 15 items each time. - KoolerStill (talk) 16:07, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah. So there may not actually be a page that both contains my exact phrase and links to the Harlow article. (How weird that Google, upon my explicitly searching for an exact phrase, would give me a page that has no relation to the exact phrase.) Thanks for the help, KoolerStill. --Allen (talk) 19:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Cut up an MP3 stream

Hi I "record" an MP3 stream off the internet with mplayer (on ubuntu linux). As things stand at the moment I get a big and ever growing MP3 and to keep the size of individual files down (and so I can delete bits I've listened to or don't want to listen to) I kill and restart the streaming process regularly.

To make things easier I want to chop chunks of the file off every few hours, or otherwise end up with mp3s each covering a few hours is there a way of doing that automatically? --203.22.236.14 (talk) 06:27, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm assuming you're doing something like mplayer -somelongoptions > foo.mpg ? The standard shell way of splitting things into chunks is split, but you can't split mp3s so easily (because all the subsequent chunks won't have valid mp3 headers). You should, however, be able to have mplayer emit raw streams (just samples), split those, and have another process compress those into mp3s. So the main command line would be mplayer -somelongoptions -optiontoemitraw | split, and your encoder would run (say on a cronjob) that periodically found each file in output directory (but check that they're all old, otherwise you'll be encoding the one that's still being written), rename them (say to the date and time and channel they were recorded), mencoder them to mp3, and move them off somewhere else. If you tell us exactly what mplayer options you're passing, I'll have a go at actually doing this myself. 87.115.94.112 (talk) 09:25, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

If it would work for you to just record a giant mp3 and then split it up later, there are tools that can do that without re-encoding the mp3. That would be good because decoding and re-encoding degrades the audio quality. I haven't used any of these programs, but googling "split mp3s without recompressing" turns up several links. There might be one that runs on linux natively, but if not, I've heard that mp3DirectCut works with Wine. --Allen (talk) 14:34, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all, 87.115.94.112's suggestion looks like what I want. I'm using the following:

   mkfifo pipeline
   split -b 500M -a10 < pipeline & 
   mplayer -ao pcm:nowaveheader:fast:file=pipeline -vo null -vc null -playlist http://site.net/stream.m3u

--203.22.236.14 (talk) 14:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

google code

how do i download from google code, like this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 12:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Install Subversion (software), then run that command svn checkout http://drydock.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ drydock-read-only that they describe. 87.115.94.112 (talk) 12:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are using Windows, I would recommend installing TortoiseSVN. Once installed, the whole interface is available on the right-click menu: to start, you right-click on an empty folder and select "SVN Checkout". - IMSoP (talk) 12:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

text fitting boxes with html

I know that if I use wikimark-up tables eg.
{|
|
|} and I have text in the braces, the table will automatically fix to the text.
Is it possible to get this auto fit to text affect when using <tr> and <td>'s? If so, could I have an example? The reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to format this page and am having trouble making the tables auto fit the text. Thanks-- penubag  (talk) 18:43, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

It is apparent that the main problem is the fixed width and height attributes on the cells and the fixed positioning and size for the background images. Together with the Wikipedia side bar, the minimum page width of about 1200 pixels. I would start by removing all of the fixed width and height parameters and temporarily remove the background images. You can leave the 100% and 50% width specifications, since those will cause the table to fill the available space and to allocate the columns evenly. Once you get that layout you can try adding the background images back in. The trick will be getting them to achor in the lower right corner of each cell (assuming that appears is your intent). I am no HTML expert, so I am not sure the best way to do this. There should be a way to right align the image, but I'm not sure about bottom alignment. Perhaps when you get closer to your desired result, someone else can help. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:28, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

thanks for your reply but I'm still trying to figure out how to do this. Removing height and width makes the whole table blank-- penubag  (talk) 07:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

My computer won't restart!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!

I put my computer in hibernation mode yesterday, and now when I try to restart it, I get a message that says "The system could not be restarted from its previous location due to a read failure. Delete restoration data and proceed to system boot menu." I don't have a boot CD, so I don't want to proceed and lose everything! I'm panicking right now and I don't know what to do! This is the first time this has happened to me. I'm using Windows XP. Please, can someone explain this to me without using fancy computer slang? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!! 69.122.188.52 (talk) 22:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

You don't need a boot cd, and nothing is seriously wrong. Hibernation has failed for some reason, so your computer is going to have to restart (boot up) from scratch. All you'll lose is whatever stuff you left unsaved before hibernating. Algebraist 22:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, what do I do? 24.189.85.202 (talk) 22:29, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Just press enter when it asks you if you want to delete the hibernation data and reboot. Algebraist 22:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Whew, thank you. I nearly lost my head for a minute. 24.189.85.202 (talk) 22:48, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Glad you fixed the problem. Now back up your data in case something wrong with the PC caused the corruption. Just in case. 98.14.223.143 (talk) 23:05, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

How to change video cards in Linux Ubuntu?

I have an old computer that I have installed Ubuntu on. I wanted to see if another video card was working, so I removed the existing card and replaced it. The computer started up Ok, with no Bios beeps, but the LCD monitor just had a black screen, (It did have a signal, because otherwise the monitor would have given its "No Signal" message). When I unplugged the monitor plug from the graphics card and plugged it into the mobo video socket, I did get video although it was rather faulty. But when I put the original video card back again, it was the same as with the other card - black screen, no video except rather faulty video direct from the mobo video socket. How can I force Ubuntu to use the graphics card rather than the onboard mobo video please? 78.151.124.180 (talk) 23:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you see any video at all? Not even the bios boot stuff? If not, then the problem isn't to do with Ubuntu or anything Linux-ish. The way the bootup stuff works, initially, the BIOS uses the card in a default VGA-emulation mode that all video cards can handle. It's not really until X-windows starts up that the graphic card drivers really get involved. It sounds to me like you aren't even getting to that stage - so your problem is of a hardware nature. Perhaps you should describe what you see PRECISELY in great detail to give us a better chance of diagnosing things? Do you ever see any video at all after hitting the power-on button? SteveBaker (talk) 03:05, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are running a mobo with on-board video, plus an add-on video card, how is it to know which to use? when it starts to boot, go into the BIOS setup and tell it which to use. This may involve guessing, as I've known some that will only run a PCI card if told to use on-board only. But you can't see the screen once it's going....So try first using the on-board video only, with no other card installed. Then change the setting to use an add-on, and save it, before turning off and actually installing the card. Put the card into the closest appropriate slot to the power supply. - KoolerStill (talk) 04:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Just to re-iterate, the computer has a video output plug directly from the mobo AND also from whatever videocard is slotted in at the time if any. As I said above, ever since I removed the original videocard that came to me with the computer, I have only been able to get a blank black screen from either the original videocard, or another PCI video card I tried. The only video has been from the mobo output plug (only a max of 800xsomething resolution according to the Ubuntu display thing). What ever plug the monitor is plugged into, the computer starts up normally, but video can only be seen when the monitor is plugged into the mobo video socket, as the videocard sockets just gives a blank black screen. Even when the monitor is plugged into the videocards plugs, the computer still starts up.

The events after reading the two comments above: I now appreciate that the problem could have nothing to do with Ubuntu, but I would still very much appreciate some help. After some effort I got into the BIOS setup. The BIOS is EA81510A - this seems to relate to this mobo: http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d815eea/A3204910.pdf I then noticed that the AGP videocard could be pushed into the socket rather more, in other words it had been loose. When I restarted, the computer gave a beeping error signal, indicating a videocard fault. I removed the AGP card. (I think it must have been damaged when I tried it in another computer whose motherboard had in turn been damaged by an incompatible AGP videocard - but thats another story).

The bios only gives two options relating to video - AGP or PCI - nothing else. I changed the BIOS setting from the default AGP to PCI and inserted the PCI videocard. The computer started normally, but there was no video from the videocard, only directly from the mobo. Another point is - although the mobo manual indicates that you are offered the options of changing the priorities or whatever of the PCI slots, this option is MISSING from my bios setup menu. What can I try next please? 89.241.44.245 (talk) 18:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Update the BIOS. And your onboard video card shouldn't be limited to 800×600, but rather Ubuntu being safe and falling back on a low resolution because it's unable to detect supported resolutions. You used to be able to manually configure it by reconfiguring the X server but it doesn't work now; Otherwise I have no idea how to fix it, but someone else might know. --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:00, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The option to prioritise the PCI slot should be in the form of jumpers on the mobo, not in the BIOS. The default PCI slot is the one closest to the power supply. If in doubt, use the same slot that originally held the original card, but first thoroughly brush and blow it out.

A damaged AGP card should just plain not work, not ruin other things on the machine.

Updating the BIOS is not going to work...it was fine before the cards got changed around. But it would be worth finding the global Default Settings switch in the BIOS and setting everything back to factory, then changing other settings one by one. I'd do this with on-board video only. Also, the card(s) used should have a driver to let it be run in better resolutions; especially try to keep the refresh rate low initially. - 125.63.156.249 (talk) 04:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

From what I have read, using incompatible AGP stasndards can sometimes cause damge to the mobo and the graphics card, something not emphasised enough in the Wikipedia article although mention in the external links. My mobo seemed to have been made before AGP2.0 and AGP3.0 existed, so it had no defences against the different vottages they have. 78.149.198.158 (talk) 10:41, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. A few seconds ago I tried increasing the screen resolution on this working Windows computer, using an old monitor. When I did that, the screen went black. Until Windows reverted it after I did not confirm the new resolution. Could that be the problem - the old monitor I was using could not handle the resolution coming out of the video cards. How could I find out if that is the problem please? Thanks. 78.149.198.158 (talk) 10:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I have tried another more recent monitor - the graphics card is still just black. When I restarted the computer it unexpectedly gave a higher resolution display. Regarding the BIOS: there is no option in the BIOS to turn off the on-motherboard graphics. There are no jumpers on the motherboard either. Maybe its got missing drivers and I should re-install Ubuntu from scratch? 78.146.166.2 (talk) 19:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

July 12

red alert 2 yuri's revenge

Hi Wikipedians:

I'm currently having lots of fun editing the rulesmd.ini file of the game. I am wondering if there is anyway of making a soldier unit such as conscript deploy into a building such as the construction yard?

70.31.152.197 (talk) 01:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably. Look up the MCV rules and see what they say, however it accomplishes the same feat. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:21, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Safety of online RPGs

Do ourWorld and Spineworld allow for safe chatting? Although the kid in question should be fine, I still worry (and no, I'm not a parent). If not, any alternatives that I can suggest (besides Disney sites and Poptropica)? Vltava 68 02:57, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I realize you're not a parent, but you might still find ourWorld's page of information for parents helpful. They look like they try to be very accommodating. Spineworld also has some information in their FAQ (under Safety), saying that they take child safety seriously, you can ignore/block "unwanted communication" with other users, etc. Indeterminate (talk) 07:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Video games with background eye candy

I'm a sucker for high detail backgrounds, especially in a natural-type setting. Realistic rocks, plants, trees, etc. I've logged more hours on my X-Box 360 playing Oblivion than any sane person would care to admit and Fable was another favourite. Could anyone suggest other games (preferably available for the 360 or PC) that are similar, either in gameplay (love nonlinear gameplay) or background eye candy? Matt Deres (talk) 16:51, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I do not have any suggestion, but I can understand what you mean. Personally, my favourite game would be a completely non-linear (there really do not need to be any objectives at all) sandbox game set in the jungle of Ice Age 3. The jungle needs to be very large, so large that you "never" will get tired of it (not like The Simpsons Game, where you know the entire city after only a few minutes), and there should be an seemingly infinite set of different plants, animals and other natural objects, and you should be able to walk in the djungle, fly through it, or even dig you way through it in the soil. The vegetation is dense, and the graphics is detailed, high-resolution, truly high-end (at least as good as Crysis). And, of course, the main characters from the film series is there, and their activities and the player's interaction with them should never become repetitive. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:41, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

(For PC) At the risk of getting accused of POV by the above poster, a game similar to Oblivion, with the most gorgeous nature graphics and beautifully rendered fantasy locations: Sacred 2. Of course that is a medieval fantasy world. I do agree with Crysis for the best realism I've ever seen (Call of Duty in second place), providing your computer can handle it on high resolution. Oh, and Test Drive Unlimited has some spectacular scenery of Hawaii. Sandman30s (talk) 21:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I've got to add a word of caution to buying sacred2 - at least on the xbox 360 - it really didn't sit well with me - in fact I would say that it was a blood awful game - but I do agree that the background graphics were nice in places. Unfortunately it had other flaws.83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The PC version, with the latest patch, is running very smoothly for me. Diablo-type games are not everyone's cup of tea... Sandman30s (talk) 12:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It was the "when you attack or cast spells you stop moving thing" that killed it for me, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance did the mechanics much better last generation, so having played that I couldn't go back to something inferior - I was upset/bitter - because it had many good points.83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:01, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Potentially Assasin's Creed - anoyingly the roaming is limited until the game is half finished, and the colour palette is annoyingly grey - but once you get a chance to go climbing on the roof tops I think you might enjoy it - it does eventually get a really good "just wandering around because I like it feeling", and the views are great.83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Fallout III's wide open environment might qualify, but it's more about overgrown centuries old ruins and not so much about lush greenery. APL (talk) 20:13, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Get the PC version for the Elder scrolls. They come with an editor (Construction set) and you can basically create your own worlds/games. You can start creating your own thing based on the games and landcape/items they came with. With a few add-ons you can even design your own building elements, terrain patterns, animals, game play etc. (There are a few bugs and hick-ups that occasionally don't let you do quite what you want, though.) WARNING do that when you have some time off from school/work and make sure a relative/spouse will feed you and pull the plug occasionally so you can get some sleep. The mod forum [2] has lots of helpful people who'll lend n hand and swap mods. (OR: Try the birds!) 71.236.26.74 (talk) 07:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses everyone. My PC can't handle Oblivion in anything close to normal graphics (I've been spoiled by the 360 version anyway), though I'll consider the mod thing when I move on to the next PC. I wasn't aware of Sacred 2 at all, so that's one I'll have to look at further fer shure. The graphics for Crysis look amazing, but the subject matter isn't quite to my taste. Matt Deres (talk) 23:50, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Stolen Music

Basically, I know nothing about computers.

A while go I put some music onto an Ipod, somehow, and it worked for a while. However,recently that ipod stopped working, and I sent it to a mechanic to get fixed. Somewhere along the way everything on it was deleted, and I have had to put it all back. But some of the music in Itunes refuses to copy over because it apparently isn't on my computer any more. This has only affected the music I added to the collection more recently.

Where then is this music? I can't find it anywhere on my computer, I had assumed putting it into Itunes would save the files there, where I could get then back again if I needed to, but apparently it just saved the names and finds the rest somewhere else on my computer. What can I do to get this back?

HS7 (talk) 17:25, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I wrote out long answers to this question twice so far but each time got bogged down in trying to cover several OS's and music types. Could you help us narrow down a solution by telling us (a) how did you get the music in the first place? Did you buy it via the iTunes Store, or perhaps did you rip CDs? (b) What version of Microsoft Windows are you running? Windows XP? Windows Vista? Tempshill (talk) 21:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Name of simple one- screen game (Japanese)

Some time ago I remember that I saw some very simple but funny one screen games. It showed only one picture and you had to discover something. For example, it was a room and you got to go out of it discovering a saw or other tool. Is there any name for this kind of game? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quest09 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe I've heard a word describing such games. Ludomancy has several arty one-screen games. Many of the "I Spy" games are one-screen games. Tempshill (talk) 19:40, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you looking for the name so you can know the name, or looking for the name to go search on your own? If the latter, literally gazillions of such games (mostly titled "Escape the ...") exist on the Addicting Games site. Many of them seem to be little more than slap-togethers or ripoffs of one another, but they may be "good enough" for your needs.

(Now that they've added pre-game advertising in the form of videos that don't seem to be skippable, I've found the site to be a lot less addicting...) --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this information is good enough. I wanted to know both, the name and where to find them. I do believe they had a specific name. "Escape the ..." is what I was thinking at. --Quest09 (talk) 10:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Would the Crimson and Viridian Rooms be close to what you want? Washii (talk) 06:11, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Escape the room sounds like the genre you are after. Warofdreams talk 19:42, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

MHz - Help

I have just updated my recent hardware (gaming PC) but getting a problem in system. Sometimes my system gets hanged in the middle of operation.And even worse it is constantly happening while playing game with standard recommendation. I suspect about the bus speed of RAM. Here is quick view:

Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 (Frontal Bus Speed or FBS 1333 MHz)

XFX play hard 750i SLI nForce Motherboard (FBS 1333 MHz)

RAM Transcend 2 GB (800 MHz)

So, is RAM with lower bus speed causing this "hanged" problem? There's a 1066MHz RAM available in the market. Thanks in advance--202.56.7.153 (talk) 21:29, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

No it shouldn't cause the symptoms you've described. Can you elaborate more on your "hanged" state? Does the screen go black or just stay frozen for some time and then continue? Do you happen to have an ATI card? ATI cards (not sure about Nvidia cards) can reset the GPU through its driver when it encounters an error or overheats or becomes unstable due to overclocking, and that fits your description of it happening more often in games than in desktop. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:53, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

• Screen stays frozen for forever and I have to press Restart button. I have an ATI card (Sapphire ATI Radeon 4890 1 GB Cross Fire). It usually happens if my system runs for 5 to 6 hours. I am using 38'C PC Case recommended by Intel, but it's not branded. One more thing is that I am using XP service pack 2.But I found that Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 requires Vista 64 Bit Service Pack 1. Can it be PC Case which is not enough to provide better air inside the hardware (Motherboard, Graphics card, RAM) or operating system?--119.30.36.53 (talk) 09:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
  

Update: I have just tried to play Call of Duty 5. But within 10 minutes screen gets frozen again. I had no choice but pressing reset button. How can I rectify this problem without changing motherboard, processor and graphics card (because there's no possibility of changing them)? Should I get better PC Case or something else? --119.30.36.54 (talk) 10:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds to me like its overheating (running fine then stopping), though that more usually then not results in an auto shutdown/reboot. Try checking the fans on the CPU / Graphics cards. Also, try disabling any programs on startup. Look up memtest, 3dmark and prime95, they're used for stability testing for memory, graphics, and cpu respectively (tho 3dmark does also benchmark cpu). HTH PrinzPH (talk) 20:29, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Download CPUID Hardware Monitor and play games for a few minutes then exit before it freezes. It will record the maximum temperature each component reached during that time which would be really useful in diagnosing the problem. Also, make sure to revert any overclocking that you may have done. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:15, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

• • I have checked the fans on the CPU / Graphics cards. They are running fine even in frozen state. I ran CPUID Hardware Monitor. It shows the little difference though. One example is given below:
    

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series hardware monitor (before playing game)

• Voltage sensor 0 1.05 Volts [0x1] (GPU Core)
• Temperature sensor 0 63°C (144°F) [0x3E] (GPU Core)
• Fan sensor 0 1657 RPM [0x679] (GPU)

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series hardware monitor (after playing game)

• Voltage sensor 0 1.05 Volts [0x1] (GPU Core)
• Temperature sensor 0 64°C (147°F) [0x40] (GPU Core)
• Fan sensor 0 1807 RPM [0x70F] (GPU)

I never overclock my system and don not know how to do it. I just let the shop's hardware technicians to assemble all the components after purchasing them. I assume they did not do any drastic change to the system. After having this trouble I brought all the components to that shop and had the system checked by them. Surprisingly, everything seemed fine as they have air conditioner in their testing room which provided sufficient air inside the PC case. My PC Case does not contain any single cooling fan except the fans on CPU / Graphics cards. The shop suggested me to buy this PC Case recommended by ATI which has better ventilation then the current one. Can PC case be the problem of overheating? I have met some people who had this problem and they solved it by adding additional cooling fan or changed the PC Case. One more thing, how can I understand my system or graphics are being overclocked? How can I reset them to default condition?--202.56.7.151 (talk) 09:58, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I found the my computer would freeze while playing call of duty 4, and the problems were down to the graphics card (NVIDIA 8800GT). I used RivaTune to decrease the memory speeds on my graphics card by about 5% and that stopped my PC crashing. Rjwilmsi 17:16, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Are those temps from the max column or just the current temp? A screenshot of Hardware Monitor after you've left it open and played games will be more useful. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:59, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Best way to do graphics cards diagnostics in Linux?

I've recently installed Ubuntu Linux on an old computer. I've never used Linux before. How can I diagnose the problem that the graphic card does not give any video - only the on-motherboard video works. I'd like to find out if the computer is aware that the graphics card is there, why it is not using it, is the card giving any error messages etc etc. I have another working computer, so I can burn boot cds and so on if needed. Thanks 78.149.188.94 (talk) 23:30, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

lspci lists all the pci, pcix, and agp devices; if the card is listed there, then linux can see it. Have you simply tried disabling the onboard video - some (most) motherboards can't cope with two graphics devices active at the same time. 87.112.22.255 (talk) 23:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

[How to change video cards in Linux Ubuntu?] a few questions further up is about this subject, you may get some clues from that.

The graphics card may be one the Ubuntu has no drivers for; see if you can get one from the internet. But first check the BIOS and turn the on-board video OFF, if that's possible, to force it to look for the other card. If that fails, just run it with the on-board one.

I had two "identical" Win installations on two hard drives once; one would understand the on-board only, the other the add-on card only, no matter what I did with BIOS settings and drivers. To boot from the other disk I had to change the video being used.

Most newer mobos will run twoo sets of graphics, that's how you get to use two monitors at once. There may be considerations of similarity involved though. - 125.63.156.249 (talk) 05:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The mobo is old, the monitors are old. 78.149.198.158 (talk) 10:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

To troubleshoot video problems, the most helpful place to look is the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file. Specifically, look for lines that start with (EE) - they indicate an error that occurred. If it's an unhelpful error like "No screens found", try looking further up in the logs. Usually you can find a message from the video drivers that'll tell you exactly what the problem is. Indeterminate (talk) 07:42, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Please explain how to use these commands. How do I open a command box? Do I just type in the commands above as written and press return? Thanks. 78.149.198.158 (talk) 10:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I have now found out how to do commands - use something called the "Terminal". I typed the lspci command in, and I got eight lines of information in responce. Only one line mentions anything to do with graphics: "00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82815 Chipset Graphics Controller (CGC) (rev02)", and only one line mentions PCI: "00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Bridge (rev01)". Does that mean the computer is not aware there is a graphics card in one of the PCI slots? Using lspci -help I see that it has other sub-commands to access PCI: do I have to tell the computer to look at the PCI slot? I had an AGP graphics card in when I installed Ubuntu - the AGP card does not seem to work and may have been damaged in another computer.

I also tried the /var/log/Xorg.0.log command, but it gave the responce "Permission denied". Should I just bin the graphics cards and/or the motherboard? thanks 78.146.166.2 (talk) 18:30, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

That lspci is showing you that it sees only the motherboard's onboard graphics card, not the one in the AGP slot (which is presumably an nVidia or an ATI?). As I said above, I think you need to turn off the onboard graphics in the BIOS screen; I do not think your old machine can support two graphics adaptors. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 18:55, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clear: /var/log/Xorg.0.log isn't a command, it's a text file. If you browse to it, and open it with a text editor, you can read about why your X server (the graphical part of the Linux OS) isn't working properly. But yeah, it looks like it's not detecting your PCI video card; it might be broken, or it could be those BIOS settings. Indeterminate (talk) 07:56, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

July 13

Internet Explorer opacity support

Is there any way I can get IE7 to render opacity like <div style="opacity: 0.5"> or doubly -moz-opacity?

In a proper browser,

this text

is 50% transparent. Is there any possible way to get IE6 or IE7 to render that properly?-- penubag  (talk) 08:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

See http://www.quirksmode.org/css/opacity.html , which lists two different ways for two different ranges of IE versions. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 10:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that link, it help a lot! -- penubag  (talk) 20:38, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Open source Flash

1st: Is there any advantage for the end-users to use open source Flash instead of Adobe Flash? 2nd: If I develop a .swf using the Open source approach, but the client needs a .fla file. How can I get this .fla file? Would decompiling my open source .swf work?--Quest09 (talk) 11:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

1. no. 2. probably not very well. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 18:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

There are advantages of free SWF players. Both Gnash and SWFdec support non-x86 machines and SWFdec supports saving media files used by Flash (e.g. movies from YouTube or similar sites). MTM (talk) 18:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

doubt!!

The first programmed unix was written in which programming language?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.109.75 (talk) 13:15, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were assembly language programmers. After getting the basics of Unix running, and after Ritchie had developed the C programming language, C was used to write Unix. -- kainaw™ 13:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks .... a dumb friend of mine told me it was cobol !!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sushil shenoy (talk • contribs) 13:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

First computer language

In what computer language was the compiler of the first computer language written?--Quest09 (talk) 15:47, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps A-0 programming language? I'm no computer history buff but the article suggests it was the first Compiler ever developed for an electronic computer. ny156uk (talk) 15:51, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You may also be interested in History of compiler writing which is linked within that article. ny156uk (talk) 15:52, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The first compiler would have been written in assembler - before we had compilers - that was pretty much it. SteveBaker (talk) 02:41, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Unless anybody wants to start a messy debate about blurry definitions of "compiled code" on antique computer architectures, let's just all agree with Steve and move on with our lives... Nimur (talk) 05:02, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that it was written in assembler? The article Assembly language says assembly language was developed in the 50s, while A-0 dates back to 1951, but there's not much information about the implementation of A-0. Before assembly languages, programs were entered in numeric machine codes, and programmers would have to know the code corresponding to each instruction. --Boris straight (talk) 17:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hard drive failure?

One of my desktop PCs has suddenly started reporting "missing system disk". The problem is that the disk is either found at POST or it is not found at POST. If it is found, then the PC boots into Windows XP with no problem. Re-seating the IDE and power cables seems to have fixed the problem for the time being and I have managed to retrieve important documents. I am considering buying a new disk and reinstalling Windows, but I would like to be sure it is the disk at fault and not something else like wobbly cables. Is there a way of telling if the disk is actually faulty? Astronaut (talk) 16:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I've had badly kinked IDE cables that lead to intermittent connections (leading to weird behaviour), so swapping that is a first measure. Secondly make sure you're really getting enough power on the power rails running the drive (with a multimeter into a spare molex connector); new hardware (like more disks, or a fancier graphics card) can cause the power rail to be a tad low, which means things sometimes work and sometimes don't. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 16:46, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

But, apart from the cables, the disk could be starting to lose the boot record sector, which means one day it won't be recognised at all, and that's that. So rescue what you want from it right away. (Though I used one for 6 months like this before it finally totally died). If replacing the cables etc then stops the problem, you can feel safe using it.- KoolerStill (talk) 18:15, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

A bad boot sector won't prevent the machine from seeing the drive at post, just from booting from it. It's perfectly simple to wipe the boot sector off a drive (e.g. with dd) and the drive shows up in BIOS fine. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 18:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

How to enter comands in Linux Ubuntu

After a lot of internet research I eventually found out that you use the "Terminal" to enter computer commands. (I hope I'm not breaking any Linux rules by revealing this closely-kept secret. Of course nobody actually wrote anywhere on the internet that you use the Terminal - that would make it too easy - but I deduced it by implication). But, when I click on Terminal on my Ubuntu computer, all I get is a blank white rectangle. It is just pure white - no text, no graphics, nothing. Is there any other way of entering commands please? 78.146.166.2 (talk) 16:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Here are some beginning tutorials for using the linux command line: [3], [4], and [5] 87.114.25.180 (talk) 17:01, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Upon restarting the monitor now has a higher resolution and I can see the "Terminal", so its no longer a problem. 78.146.166.2 (talk) 18:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You can also get a console by hitting ctrl-alt-f1 (f2, f3...). Hit ctrl-alt-f7 to return to the X gui. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 18:13, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

HP laptop quick buttons with VLC media player

I have an HP Pavilion dv4 laptop which has quick buttons for play/pause, stop, forward, backward. They work with Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center but not on any other program. Is there a way to make them work for VLC media player, iTunes, Real Player and others? I'm mainly interested in using the buttons with VLC but others would be nice. 95.84.64.174 (talk) 17:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Why was download so slow?

This is the information about my computer.[6]

Over the weekend, I got one of these messages at the bottom of the screen saying I should download an update. I did, and while it slowed down all the web sites I went to (ESPECIALLY Wikipedia, but you were having a problem of your own), I continued to use the Internet during the process anyway. When I was ready to sign off the computer, it was still doing the second part of the process. So I clicked on the red X for the other stuff I had been doing and left the computer for a few hours. When I came back, nothing had changed (except I now got a "Welcome to Internet Explorer 8" message), and the screen that I thought I had clicked on the red X for was still sort of there. Parts of it were there. When I clicked on the red X again I got "not responding". A few minutes later, though, everything looked normal, and the downloading process appeared finished, and I felt confident shutting down. I knew that downloading new software requires restarting the computer, so I did that, and the third phase of the process was completed after I did that, so I shut down.

The next time I used the computer, I got a message saying I had new updates, and when I clicked, it showed "Internet Explorer 8", but it said "Failed". Now I have had that message appear, but the next time I signed on the computer, after a very, very slow download, the download went very quickly and was completed. I haven't had any such message this time. I don't know what slowed down the computer so much in phase 2 or why I haven't been told what to do for phase 4.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:21, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes Windows Update goes wrong, and doesn't seem to work. As you have found trying a second time (after a few hours) usually fixes the problem .

Question - is your computer ok now?

One thing to try is go to windows update (you can eaily find it by searching the internet), and make sure that there are no outstanding downloads (you only need the ones it automatically selects - the others are optional, and most people won't need them)

It sounds like the first download failed for some reason - when you restarted the computer it recognised this, and tried again - and by the sounds of it - worked.

Assuming the computer is working I'd put it down to experience - just a unidentified fault the first time. If there still is a problem please expand.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The windows update that includes internet explorer 8 is not an unattended install. A message about IE8 (for which you have to click 'next' 'next' 'ok/apply') failed to properly display (or opened in the background.) This hung-up the installation, which was manually aborted. Your computer successfully recovered from this error by error checking its first download against the server source (which is why the second download was fast, there wasn't much of one) and re-installing the patch. You can manually check for updates again, but it sounds like windows took care of itself. Taggart.BBS (talk) 18:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes that sounds far more likely than my above comment about a 'bad download' - though I still maintain that windows update has issues periodically.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:29, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if there was a "second download". But that comment about needing to say "OK" makes sense. It may be I was supposed to click on that second message, which wasn't there hours earlier. It still says "Failed" on the update history.

Other than that, the computer has been working fine today and so has Wikipedia.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Wait, there was another update today, and it says the same thing as the other one about Internet Explorer 8. It's just waiting for me to restart.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:57, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

What does it say ? Does it say that IE 8 successfully installed, and you need to restart for it to initialise, or something else?83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I got busy and never got around to posting this. I have restarted the computer and I got a special welcome inviting me to see all the features of Internet Explorer 8. It's done.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 13:38, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Recognising wireless cards by "noise"

Tin foil hat man changes his mac address very frequently, but he is worried if it's possible for the black helicopters to identify him by using a big antenna to listen to some unique background noise/errors in the signal/something you can listen to with an antenna his laptop with wifi generates? --194.197.235.56 (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

It would be very difficult. If someone tried very hard, they could probably distinguish between one 801.11x transmitter and another from tiny variances in the performance of analog components in the transmit circuitry, or drift rate of the transmitter's internal clock. But it's likely that these will vary over time, and due to external factors like temperature, making this a very difficult process. In practice anyone with equipment that sensitive can just sniff your screen with Van Eck phreaking and identify you 'cos you've always got the same Cindy Crawford desktop wallpaper. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 17:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

It's a lot more practical to distinguish between one model of card and another. Cards with different firmware will take slightly different times to respond to signals, which may be enough to distinguish them. The same analog electronic components mentioned above, which will be fixed for fairly long production runs, subtly shape the output waveforms generated, and different models will use different circuits. To use this in practice the snooper would have to have a very extensive library of signal traces from every card (and each time the factory specifies a different component the trace will change) - that's a huge amount of trivial work, but such is the lot of forensic scientists already, with their massive collection of shoe prints and button designs and bat eyelashes. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 18:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

They probably just look for people who's MAC address changes suspiciously frequently! SteveBaker (talk) 02:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

perl script

I'm trying to run [wakaba.c3.cx/ this script] on XAMPP server but I keep getting this error message:

Server error!

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.

Error message:
Can't locate config.pl in @INC (@INC contains: . C:/xampp/perl/site/lib/ C:/xampp/perl/lib C:/xampp/perl/site/lib C:/xampp/apache) at C:/xampp/htdocs/img/wakaba.pl line 16. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:/xampp/htdocs/img/wakaba.pl line 16. ,

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 500
localhost
13/07/2009 06:55:30 PM
Apache/2.2.11 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8i PHP/5.2.9 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.0

What do I have to do to fix this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Onesevensix 77 (talk • contribs) 17:57, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You must put a file called "config.pl" in C:\xampp\perl\site\lib\ or one of the other directories listed. The installation instructions will probably tell you how to find or create that file. --Sean 21:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

MS Excell (also star/open office)

Probably the ultimate dumbo question : Once a value has been entered into a cell I can't find a way to edit the value except by going up to the 'equation editor' - clearly this is inefficient as I have to move my hand at least 1" to move the mouse cursor there - is there a way to change a value in a cell once it has been entered into the cell.? 83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:14, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

At least in OpenOffice Calc, I move the "cursor" box around with arrow keys, and anything I type goes into the cell. If I move the box elsewhere, then back and type then that just overwrites the cell contents. I never have to go to the text field at the top. I'm pretty sure Excel works the same. 87.114.25.180 (talk) 18:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Click in the cell and overtype it??? To change only part of the content you need to use the top field, unless you look in tools or preferences for a setting that lets you "edit in the cell". - KoolerStill (talk) 18:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes overtyping is a right royal pain in the, I just want to edit one digit of many - you can imagine my frustration... I'll have a look and see if I can find a setting (I think I tried that before and couldn't find it) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In Excel it's Tools > Options > Edit > Edit directly in cell. I don't have OpenOffice. - KoolerStill (talk) 18:45, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In Excel, you can press F2 or double-click a cell to edit it directly. 95.84.64.174 (talk) 19:07, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure I tried double click, and it didn't work - will try it again. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You're all right - I think I was getting confused because I expected it to work like a browser box input window - one click to select all, arrow to move cursor inside box - that is of course impossible if the arrow keys are to navigate through cells as well.. It's official - I'm stupid..

Resolved

(Don't be so hard on yourself -- after all, you /are/ dealing with a Microsoft product! --DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC))

DIV with relative position still taking space

Hi Wikipedians,

I'm about to go nuts, I cant figure out how to make the extra space disappear! Oh yeah, here's whats happend. I had to use relative positioning to get a search bar where I needed it, and I declared this div above a table, and got it to show up in the right place, but I'm peeved to discover this has forced the table rendering lower than it should be (I suspect the height of the div is still being rendered on top of the table despite that the div being repositioned). I know its the positioned div 'cause when I comment it out the space goes away. I guess looking at it would make more sense: my frankenstein.

heres what I have for the div:

 <div class="pSearchBar">
    <form action="/SearchResults.asp" method="get" name="SearchBoxForm">
    	<span style="color: white; font-size: 18px;">Search <input style="width: 200px;" type="text" maxlength="30" value="" name="Search"/>
        	<img src="vspfiles/templates/Prince/myimages/images/gobutton.png" border="0" style="cursor: pointer; vertical-align: middle" onclick="document.forms['SearchBoxForm'].submit();" />
        </span>
    </form>  	
 </div>

 ... table goes here ...

Here's the CSS:

.pSearchBar {
	position:relative;
	width: 300px;
	left: 670px;
	top: 94px;
	height: 50px;
}

Any suggestions how I can keep the search bar there while removing the extra space on top?

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 21:29, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried it without the FORM element? FORM elements add space if I recall (though you can probably get rid of it by playing with its CSS). When debugging weird DIV things, always try it without the content of the DIV to see if that is causing the problem. (Obviously the only way to tell if that is the case is to add a temporary border to the DIV, but that is easy enough). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:03, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

You might try nested div span elements like:

        <div style="position:relative;">
          <div style="position:absolute; left: 400px; top: 50px; border:solid; background-color:yellow;">
            Sample text.
          </div>
        </div>

The outer div defines an empty box relative to the surrounding content, which serves as a reference to which the inner box is positioned. (You may not need this if you already have a suitable container such as a table cell or if you want the inner element to be positioned relative to the entire page.) The position:absolute attribute of the inner div removes its content from the normal flow, so it will not take up space. If you change the outer element to a span instead of a div, no break occurs and the inner box is positioned both vertically and horizontally relative to the surrounding content. There may be a better way, but this is what I came up with through experimentation. I would verify expected results across multiple browsers, and of course all of the style attributes can be moved to a CSS file. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:08, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Off topic but why do you need to define the position in the first place? Can't you just pop it in pScarletUpper2 next to your buttons? Your code is a strange mix of table and CSS based layout and is littered with <br> tags later on. Are you using a WYSIWIG editor? Also, naming your styles after its colour is bad practice as it will make no sense at all when the styles/colour change later on; name it after its purpose instead. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:25, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the inputs! :) @Tcncv - will try it out. @Antilived It's a mess I agree. I eventually want to learn to use pure CSS, I guess im still 'transitional' having to fallback to tables when I'm too dizzy with CSS. Eventually I'll man-up and pull it off! But seriously, thanks for the input, am beginning to learn a lot! :D PrinzPH (talk) 23:15, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Trojan

Anyone got some info on Trojan.Win32.Vapsup.uxx came across it on my system today thanks. BigDunc 21:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

McAfee's virus library is pretty good resource for these things. This page (http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_150856.htm) has the closest match I can find but not sure how much use it is info-wise. ny156uk (talk) 22:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

This page (http://www.pctools.com/mrc/infections/id/Trojan.Vapsup/) may also be of use. There is an e-how page on this but Wikipedia is stopping me linking (Something about blacklisted, but a google search term of 'Trojan.win32.vapsup' should return the e-how article ny156uk (talk) 22:21, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

July 14

Priority queue with same priority

How does the problem of a priority queue change when multiple elements can have the same priority, and those that do should be FIFO? NeonMerlin 02:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't have to change and it doesn't have to be FIFO. It is up to the implementation to make it FIFO if that is required. Otherwise it is just a sorted list of items in the queue. As with any sorted list, it is up to the implementer to decide if anything special should be done when to items are equal. -- kainaw™ 02:27, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Typically elements of the same priority will come out in some unspecified (and not necessarily consistent) order relative to each other. --76.91.63.71 (talk) 05:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

speech recognition for mutiple voices

Does modern speech recognition software works with one voice only (end user on a computer), or is it good enough for multiple voices (interview transcription, etc.)? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:40, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

There are companies which use speech recognition software for their phone support services...the user has to answer with words rather than push buttons, to make choices. For simple yes/no answers the software is trained to understand various accents and voices, as well as "okay, yep, that's right" and other common equivalents of the desired responses. For other replies, the software prompts to "say XYZ or ABC". These words are chosen to be hard to misunderstand for another possible choice. The system is "trained" on many voices (and still often doesn't understand the user).- KoolerStill (talk) 09:38, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Right, but does it meant that there is or there isn't a piece of software one can use to transcribe 2+ voices without training them? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You mean two voices at the same time? Well, Premiere Pro CS4 has a transcribe tool that is pretty amazing. It can detect multiple voices and will transcribe a separate text for each person. [7] --68.102.170.184 (talk) 12:19, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

A stupid question about moving a window off the screen in Windows

I recently dragged a window off the screen and cannot access this file as I cannot see it any more. The particular file program in question is the Winamp media player in Windows Vista. I was watching a video clip on Winamp and manually increased the attached video screen to the size of my monitor (I should of pressed F11 but didn't). Now the video portion of Winamp is the size of my monitor and the main GUI is off the screen. If I press the (x) to close the application, it only closes the video part but winamp is still running off screen and reattaching the video makes the whole thing go off screen. I've tried everything and given up. Since Winamp doesn't act like a normal window, the "Cascade Windows" doesn't work. The only solution I have in mind is to reinstall Winamp but is there a better way?-- penubag  (talk) 07:30, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried right-clicking the program icon in the notoifcation area, going to options, and playing with all the window sizing stuff? Maximising/minimising a few times? Ale_Jrb^talk 07:37, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

My usual method is to right-click the process in the task bar and select "Move". You can then use the arrow keys to move it back on-screen. Another option for Winamp is that it used to save its window position in its .ini file, I think. If you close it, open the file, change the position to 0,0 and then start it back up, that might work too. Indeterminate (talk) 07:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

When those suggestions fail, my last resort has traditionally been to move / resize the window programmatically using the Windows API. The following C++ program:

#include <windows.h>
int main()
{
	HWND h = FindWindowA(0,"Window title");
	SetWindowPos(h,0,0,0,0,0,SWP_NOSIZE);
}

should move the window named "Window title" to the top left corner of the screen. If you do not have a C++ compiler you can use an Excel macro or similar. decltype (talk) 08:11, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Ale_jrb and Indeterminate's solutions don't work. The "Move" doesn't work because of the size of the entire window fills up the entire screen so I cannot move it any higher (which is what I need to do to access the GUI at the bottom) the arrow keys and mMaximzing and minimizing don't seem to work either for winamp. I'm not sure which .ini file you're talking about (apparently not the one in the main Winamp folder since that didn't do anything). The mp3 file doesn't have any .ini files attached. Decltype's solution is very interesting however I know nothing at all about C. I have Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 which is a 1994 version! Vista says it has compatibility problems but maybe I'm just not compiling it correctly. I opened VS and went to "File>New>C++ source file" and entered your above code verbatim and pressed Compile. This is the output:

--------------------Configuration: mover - Win32 Debug--------------------
Compiling...
mover.cpp
C:\Windows\System32\mover.cpp(1) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '<'
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\excpt.h(36) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '{'
c:\program files\microsoft visual studio\vc98\include\excpt.h(36) : error C2447: missing function header (old-style formal list?)
C:\Windows\System32\mover.cpp(7) : warning C4508: 'main' : function should return a value; 'void' return type assumed
C:\Windows\System32\mover.cpp(7) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '<'
Error executing cl.exe.

mover.obj - 4 error(s), 1 warning(s)

I'm probably missing a step or two. -- penubag  (talk) 08:40, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I meant to try using "Move" after closing the full-screen video window. As far as the config file goes, this link describes where to find it and gives an exhaustive list of the options. Note that you need to close winamp before editing it. You can set wx and wy to 0, which should cause it to be in the upper-left corner the next time winamp is opened. Another option is to set "easymove" to 1, which will allow you to move winamp by clicking on any component window (which should include the video window). Good luck. Indeterminate (talk) 10:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The "missing ';' before '<'" errors are because you pasted in the <source lang="cpp"> and </source> along with everything else. That's not C++, it's Wikipedia markup. The "warning C4508" is because Visual C 6.0 wasn't very compliant with the C++ standard (which wasn't even published until 1998). You can work around it by changing int to void. -- BenRG (talk) 15:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

WinAMP does this a lot - they've got "fancy" window behavior, which doesn't always play nice. Here's what you can do, without having to write and compile code:

Windows Key + R   (Or, Start Menu + Run)
winamp            (to start Winamp)
ctrl+D            (command to resize WinAMP window)             

This will usually push the main window back to the main viewable area. Note: do not click the mouse, or do anything else, between calling up winamp and pressing (CTRL+D) - because you need keyboard focus to hold for the invisible (or non-present) WinAMP window. Some other things to try are the built-in winamp keyboard shortcuts (Alt+W, for example, can create and solve the mysterious "Winamp Disappeared But The Music Is Still Playing" feature). Nimur (talk) 22:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

@Interminate: Move doesn't work at all because Winamp doesn't act like a standard window. Bummer :( .

@Ben:Oh I get it now but that didn't work either

@Nimur: Thanks!! It works! I finally got it fixed :) -- penubag  (talk) 06:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

One more solution for you to try: Install Pitaschio (exact spelling, Google it). Amongst the other nice settings it has is an option to force windows to stay within the borders of the screen. I got it via a recommendation on this very RefDesk (for a different problem: making the desktop icons appear as a "list view"). Zunaid 08:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Apple Disk Image file

Is there such a thing as password protection in one direction only? I have in mind Apple Disk Image files. I use them to store things I don't want others to gain easy access to. (I use a password.) Trouble is, a password is required just to put things into it. I think it would be more convenient if I could put things into it without having to enter a password. I would still like the added security of the requirement to type a password in order to view or remove anything. Anything like that, or is it impossible? Bus stop (talk) 15:04, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you can do this with public key encryption, using gpg for example. Generate a public/private key pair and protect the private key with a passphrase. Then you can encrypt things using the public key without the passphrase and you will need to enter the passphrase to decrypt them. -- BenRG (talk) 15:19, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

What you want is some sort of encrypted drop box (a drop box lets anyone put things in it but lets only the owner read it). I would be surprised if there wasn't a program already to do it if you Googled around with that phrase. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:44, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses. Bus stop (talk) 21:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm looking for excellent headphones for listening to music WITH a microphone

Hi. I am looking for headphones which are excellent for listening to music but which can also be used for Skype, so it has to have a built-in microphone. The best I have so far found are the so-called "Gaming Headsets" from Creative but they just have one problem: their ear parts are too small!!!! I want to have something like a combination of a headset with BIG ear parts so that it covers but doesn't touch the ear and a headset with a microphone. Can anyone help me? Thank you in advance! --Tilmanb (talk) 15:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I can vouch for the sound quality of Sennheiser gear. The PC 350 gaming headset appears to meet your criteria; there are other headsets with smaller ear cups. Sennheiser is good (IMO), but pricey. The RRP of the PC350 is apparently $229.95 (Amazon US), although Amazon offers them with $100 discount. Searching Amazon (other online retailers are available) for headphones with microphone produces around-ear headsets from $5.99. I'm not sure where you are based - I've used the US as an example, but I would imagine similar products are available elsewhere. --Kateshortforbob 11:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I forgot to mention that I don't like behind-the-neck headphones but that it has to be an over-the-head headphone. So the PC 350 looks good otherwise but it seems to be a behind-the-neck model, right? The other Sennheiser models have too small ear cups. Can you suggest which brand or model is the best (has the best audio quality) apart from Sennheiser (as they don't seem to have over-the-neck models)? The Amazon search you mention looks great but I have no clue which model has the best (or good enough) quality. Of course I can judge by the picture whether it fulfills my requirement (big ear cups, microphone, over-the-head), but I'd like to make sure that it is also suitable for (serious) music listening. The $5.99 model LOOKS good but can it be good quality if it is so cheap? The price isn't as important for me at the moment... Thanks again for your help! --Tilmanb (talk) 06:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC) P.S. I am based in three countries: Finland, Germany and Costa Rica. I am intending to use eBay for buying the headphone of my choice.

Get one of these clip-on microphones, and use it with normal headphones. Best of both worlds. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:01, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Should I really? I have difficulties imagining that a clip-on mic would be as comfortable as a headphone with a pre-built mic. I am really afraid that the clip-in will fall off, be directed the wrong way, face away from me, catch the background noise rather than just my voice, etc... So, unless you can really tell me that I am wrong (for example by showing me good reviews and pictures of working arrangements), I don't like the idea of buying a clip-in. Thanks anyway for the idea! --Tilmanb (talk) 06:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Slightly more advanced database

Say I wish to store the animal kingdom family tree in a database (along with top-trumps type information such as length, max age, weight etc), or alternatively I want to store a list of football players, along with individual detailed records for each match they play.

What sort of database program would be up to this - it seemed to be that the common desktop database programs don't really go much beyond a table of values - much like a spreadsheet - am I missing their higher order features, or are they 'just shit'? (excuse my french) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like you're talking about a relational database. However I have no idea what desktop apps help facilitate this. Friday (talk) 17:14, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

For a relational database there are a number of programs you can use. All require some real time to get to know, and reading up on a few database design tutorials will definitely help out. (My general rule: keep it is as simple as you can. Elaborate, many-linked-table databases are a pain to use, alter, and maintain, and in most cases one doesn't need quite as much flexibility in such an area as one suspects one will.) Standard desktop, user-friendly solutions include Microsoft Access, Filemaker Pro, and the free-but-hard-to-use OpenOffice.org Base. Note that none of these are as easy to use as, say, a word processor or a spreadsheet -- they are not intuitive, they have their own complicated way of doing things, and they will all require substantial investment of time to learn how to use even at all. These provide tools to develop user interfaces that sit on top of relational databases, but because relational databases are very flexible, even with a lot of easy-macroing and things of that nature there is a lot of complexity involved in setting up even something quite simple. I recommend getting a "learn in 7 days" type book for any of these programs before attempting to use them yourself, just to help you get acquainted with them. Another approach is to use MySQL (which has no user interface) as a backend database and to write your own interface using any other language you are comfortable with (PHP does a pretty good job of this, and I know people who have done similar things with Perl). Once you have familiarity with a minimum amount of database theory and the means of making them, a decent home-made database can be constructed quite quickly, but it's a steep learning curve to get to that point. (I say this as someone who has done this sort of work for a decade.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 17:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Hypothetically I think I would need

The ability to store multiple data items in a field eg field_subspecies might contain "dog","cat" etc, each with their own database of (mostly) different fields.

It looks like somesort of "pointer to" in a field is necessary too.

Database_model#Hierarchical_model is probably what I need, and it's fairly clear that a relation database can emulate/simulate/be a tree type data base.

I was wondering about "object orientated" concepts as well - since things like inheritence/methods/classes etc might be useful here.

It's already clear to me that this gets complex rapidly, and you might be right about ease of use/access / complexity issues making the whole thing basically inefficient to implement (especially if no money is riding on it!)

I've tinkered with access and base, and it wasn't immediately apparent that they would be able to do a hierarchical model of the sort I might need - can someone confirm that they can/can't (I don't want to spend a lot of time learning only to discover that they are useless to me)83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:17, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Specifically I think the most important point is that I could make a database field contain more databases - I suppose this is done by the "keys" described in the article which would be the equivalent of "pointers to other databases" I described above.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

My personal preference for something like this is Filemaker Pro. You can create multiple tables/databases and relate them to one another. I once wrote a maintenance scheduling system for a college motorpool department using FMP. And this was the old version, where each table had to be in a different file! — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:43, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It appears that what you mean when you say "database" is what database people call a "table". A database contains many tables. The table can look like a spreadsheet, but doesn't have to. As an example, the database I use every day has one table with a bunch of people's names, birthdates, social security numbers, and stuff like that in it. Another table has an entry for every blood pressure for every patient. Another table has an entry for every prescription for every patient. This allows for freedom of having a person in the people table that does not have a prescription in the prescription table or a person in the people table that has dozens of prescriptions in the prescription table. It is called relational because the person's identifier in the people table is used to relate that person's record there with all that person's records in the blood pressure and prescription tables. -- kainaw™ 18:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes I don't want to be stuck with a Database_model#Flat_model. However I don't want to be 'pretending' I've got a databases when what I've got is in fact a collation of flat file databases in a computer filing system - ie/eg I would like the database program to be able to open a persons "prescription history" from the "patients list" within the same program - I haven't yet found out how to do this in access. It's the presense or absense of those links I'm interested in - ie I don't want to be the database management program !83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:23, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Filemaker Pro sounds quite good

Basically I'm looking for a database that allows a spreadsheet (probably as a specific templated type) to be allowable as a type in a cell (just as integers, text, date etc are allowable types)83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:41, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The easiest way to emulate a hierarchical structure in a relational database is to have parent/children fields. Let's say you wanted to do a family tree. It wouldn't actually be efficient to create a new table for each branch of the family, which is what you are suggesting. This would get out of hand and unmanagable very quickly. What you could do, though, is have something like this:

Id	Name	ChildOf
0	Erasmus Darwin
1	Robert Waring Darwin	0
2	Erasmus Darwin II	0
3	Charles Robert Darwin	1
4	Erasmus Avery Darwin	1

...And so on. This is very simplified but you can see how it works. Charles Robert Darwin is a ChildOf Robert Waring Darwin who is a ChildOf Erasmus Darwin, who is a child of no one. Siblings are identifiable by having the same ChildOf status. Obviously a real family tree requires more fields than this (there are no spouses in this chart) but you can see the gist of things. This sort of structure is much more scalable and easy to deal with than tables-of-tables. With the right user interface you could easily have the above structure mapped onto a simple TreeList control (like a file system).

A relational database can also be used to simulate very flexible structures. Imagine that you have Footballers and each of them has played in an arbitrary (and different) number of Games. The Games information (with fields like the team names, where it was played, the date, the final score, etc.) would be in its own table (Games), the Footballers (with fields like player names, numbers, teams, etc.) would be in their own table (Footballers). Each table would have a list of primary keys uniquely identifying the game and the footballer. A third, intermediary table could then link up footballers to games by collecting their primary keys in one place.

And maybe you'd want a fixed list of Teams for the footballers to be part of; this would be its own table with its own primary key, and the Footballs would have a field that pointed to the primary key of a team in the Teams table.

All of the above structures are very elementary. This is why I suggested a little database theory would go a long way -- thinking about how data works is not terribly difficult but most people are not very natural at it, because they are not familiar with the specific constraints that organized (computer) data requires. A relational database is almost infinitely flexible (though not infinitely efficient) in these sorts of things, but it requires a bit of either experience or poking around before you are going to figure out what the minimal structure it is that you need in order to get it to work the way you want it to. Rest assured, any of the programs I named can do whatever kind of data you want to do—the trick is not finding the "right" program so much as it is in your own understanding of how to efficiently create table structures that hold the data you need. Hope this of some use. Again, as you report with Access, it is not at all clear when you first start how to make this programs really do what you want them to do—I heavily, heavily suggest getting a simple "learn databases in 7 days" sort of book and working through it. You cannot just walk into database programming and expect it to make sense without some sort of basic guidance. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:27, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Your footballer/games example is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for - but so far in both access and base I've not been able to find any real way of doing this - I was at least expecting an abstracr pointer type (key) but I found no such thing. I'll keep trying.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Relational databases are able to store hierarchical data easily, but the problem arises when there is a huge amount of complex hierarchical data - the time taken to read and collate this information into meaningful reports using SQL queries can be quite restrictive. However, I'm assuming you're not going to have large amounts (millions of rows) of data. I wouldn't use Access for anything other than simple, small relational tables and joins. Use something that uses some sort of ANSI SQL. Oracle would be ideal, but there are any number of 'free' SQL RDBMS's out there. MySQL and Firebird are some that come to mind, or even cheaper single-user licences of Oracle or SQL Server. Alternatively, if you really want to start with an architecture more suited to handling hierarchical data, then something XML based might be the way to do. Sandman30s (talk) 08:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually the data is v. large, and intinsically hierarchical - so I wouldn't dream of attempting to store in in one massive 'spreadsheet' with relational pointers - in general most querys would be of small mostly intrinsically self contained data sets, so I would expect to be able to set up relational links between different files - I'll assume that's all possible with standard programs. (There could be statistical analysis of the whole set - which as the above rightly points out - would be time consuming, and potentially problematic) I don't need to worry about 'circular relational links' - which I expect is an advanced topic. I'll have a try and maybe ask another question later on.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and thanks everyone who responded - I really expected a very short and quick answer, but people did a whole lot of typing. Cheers ! :) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:19, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I find it very unlikely that you really do need some sort of radically different database structure than a well-thought-out relational database. Consider that Wikipedia is essentially just a very large relational database, as is probably every other dynamic site you use on the Internet. The trick is learning how to think in terms of relational databases and the languages used to manipulate them (e.g., SQL can understand that tables are linked to other tables quite readily, but it takes time to learn how to create complex SQL queries). Again, I recommend getting some sort of book on it. Database programming is not intuitive and requires a little disciplined study if you want to avoid just wasting a lot of your time on schemes that won't work. (You're free to do as you please, of course, but I speak from experience! I deal with a lot of people who decide one day, "I need a database!" and try to do it from scratch, only to find out six months later that really they have no idea what they are doing and their work has produced nothing.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You have sort of hit the nail on the head - in that nobody wants to start from scratch when a solution exists

- one thing I wonder is about browsability - specifically for an end user - not an expert database designer - eg will an end user be able to simply browse the database in a way that would be easily learn - ie probably using paradigms inherited from the internet - such as hyperlinks between data bases - eg suppose one set of data is "Mammals", and contains amongst other things a list of mammal families eg dogs, cats, cows etc. Will a given database program allow me to create a database that a non expert user can "browse" - eg expanding or switching to a "cows" database by clicking in some way on the "cows" field in "mammals". My first guess is that I'd need to implement the equivalent of a 'hyperlink' on fields in "report" or "query" mode, and have each sub-database identified by type (ie order,family,species,subspecies etc), with a record/query template for each type. Does that sound do-able?83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Or to put it another way - do these 'databases programs' actually support end-user access - or is it expected that the programmer write their own display routines using the windows API or whatever, search the actual database using SQL queries, and in fact only use the database program eg 'base'/'access' to create the database??83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe there is a different set of software programs addressing the problem of end user accessibility - do these 'database browsers' have a name?

After reading through this, it appears that the questioner simply has not discovered how to make foreign keys in Access. Make the key field in one table. I will assume it is an integer. Add a field to another table using the same type (integer). Now, go to the relations field. Use the mouse to drag the ID field of the first table to the key field on the other table. A line will appear that indicates you've created a foreign key. Now, you can easily create reports and queries that map data from one table to the other using the foreign key. -- kainaw™ 16:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes that's useful information for me. It's a relief to know they can do relational stuff - however I have another question about browsability for non-expert users. (see 2 paragraphs above)83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, again, I finally found the relationship manager screen - those db designers certainly know how to keep anything actually useful well hidden!83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Finding ip address in php

I'm trying to find the ip address of people who visit a web site using php, but all I'm getting is addresses like "hsd1.co.comcast.net" and not the actual ip address. The script is this:

//host check $host = gethostbyaddr($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]); foreach($badip as $value){ //Refusal hosts if(eregi("$value$",$host)){ error(S_BADHOST,$dest); }} if(eregi("^mail",$host) || eregi("^ns",$host) || eregi("^dns",$host) || eregi("^ftp",$host) || eregi("^prox",$host) || eregi("^pc",$host) || eregi("^[^\.]\.[^\.]$",$host)){ $pxck = "on"; } if(eregi("ne\\.jp$",$host)|| eregi("ad\\.jp$",$host)|| eregi("bbtec\\.net$",$host)|| eregi("aol\\.com$",$host)|| eregi("uu\\.net$",$host)|| eregi("asahi-net\\.or\\.jp$",$host)|| eregi("rim\\.or\\.jp$",$host) ){$pxck = "off";} else{$pxck = "on";} if($pxck=="on" && PROXY_CHECK){ if(proxy_connect('80') == 1){ error(S_PROXY80,$dest); } elseif(proxy_connect('8080') == 1){ error(S_PROXY8080,$dest); } }

I'm extremely new to php, and I would be so greatful if someone could look over this and tell me what I need to do. Thanks so much! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 18:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

gethostbyname 87.114.25.180 (talk) 19:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm utterly clueless what to do with that lol. If it's not too much to ask, could you modify the code I posted above to include the new function in the correct way. Thanks so much! :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 20:22, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

wow this script is fantastic. Thank you for this.! but to get the ip address of people that visit your site you just need this part. That is it.

$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']

to test this, visit any page you are creating with this:

$ip=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
print $ip;

It will display your ip address, if someone else visits it will display theirs. Now your issue is storing this information. you will need to know SQL to do this. create a table and store the values in it or use a flatfile. Ivtv (talk) 21:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys! I worked out what the problem was by removing "gethostbyaddr" from

$host = gethostbyaddr($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]);

so it's now just

$host = ($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]);

Again, thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 23:03, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

weather radar netherlands android G1 phones

Does anyone know of an android G1 app that currently gives weather radar in the Netherlands. I've installed imap Weather on the phone, but it doesn't seem to have radar and the website suggests that it has radar only in the US at this point. Thanks if you can help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.98.238.113 (talk) 21:33, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

July 15

Linux server. How To.

Ok, I am thinking on renting a server from host provider the planet. They are going to give me 2 500 gig drives. At first I never saw the need for a secondary drive because I really am not sure how to navigate with a linux OS on a server. I have used Cpanel and know it well which I will be getting. So, I realized I can use the secondary drive as a backup of my database and www directory. Or entire root directory for that matter. Ok, now my question...Is there anything in cpanel I can click, or a command I can use to make sure that my mysql database and my directory is backed up to the other drive? It will be a dedicated box with root access.

I know I am better off asking someone on a tech forum. But im at work and all that is blocked. its more of a general question because it will be a bit before I get the server anyway. Ivtv (talk) 00:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suspect you are getting 2 identical drives to set up RAID 1. Both drives will contain identical information. If one fails, the other still has valid data. That is a very common form of backup as it is handled by the drive controller and no software configuration in the operating system is required. As for navigating in Linux, forget the concept of drives. That is so Windows. In Linux, you have a root mountpoint. That is where you start from and it doesn't matter what drive it is on. All directories/folders are mounted somewhere under root. So, you don't jump from drive to drive. You just change from one directory to another and, if that directory is mounted on a different drive, it just happens automatically. It is also common to mount directories from one computer on another computer. For example, I have my computer's drive and I mount my personal fileserver, my work fileserver, my webserver, and my backup server as folders in my home directory. I can move, copy, edit files on any of those computers as though they are local since they are mounted right in my home directory. -- kainaw™ 00:37, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

well that is good news. yeah, I dabbled with Knoppix and Ubuntu back a few times so I have an idea on how linux works but forgot about the mounting jazz. Ill have to ask for a raid 1 configuration then if it is not default which now i am assuming it is. I would like some type of offline backup somewhere tho. For example, if users on my site decide to destroy a table or something I would not want the destroyed data to be mirrored on drive 2. I would want to go to drive 2 to get the data. you have given me some answers and I am thankful for that. Going to be awhile till i get the hardware. Thanks! Ivtv (talk) 01:18, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I use rdiff-backup for offsite backup. It saves the changes so you can get back an old version of a file (even a deleted file). -- kainaw™ 01:19, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

SSH for mobile phones

My son tossed my phone in the pool so I now have a smart phone. I like having email on the go, but 99% of my non-spam email is a request to fix a problem on a server. I need SSH for that. I've been searching (I even called Verizon support), but I cannot find an SSH app for cell phones. Does one exist? If I can find one, I can probably get from there to one that I can force to install and run on my phone. -- kainaw™ 00:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a long shot, but since you took the time to help me I thought I would return the favor. I personally had a look here: http://download.cnet.com/TouchTerm-SSH/3000-2352_4-10914575.html and my co worker stated look for a program called Token2Shell. Maybe you already looked, but I thought I would give it a go for you. Ivtv (talk) 02:13, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

What phone/platform is it? If it's Windows Mobile you can use PocketPuTTY which I find works quite well, the only real problem is the limited screen space, but that's more the phones fault than the application. ZX81 ^talk 02:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I've never tried it, but MidpSSH is a Java/J2ME ssh client for mobile devices. Indeterminate (talk) 04:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

You never mentioned what kind of smart phone this is. Since you're on Verizon I guess you're not using an iPhone, but the iphone does have a few ssh clients out there, and one of them is free. Shadowjams (talk) 05:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Shell in a Box exports a command line to a standard web browser using AJAX. It works pretty well. --Sean 13:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all. I'm going to use the free iPhone one's source to make one for my phone. It shouldn't be nearly as hard as messing with Thunderbird to get it working on the dumb thing. -- kainaw™ 13:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Best Way to Protect File

What would be the best way to protect a .doc or .odt file from other people viewing it even if they get a hold of it? I know that Word and Open Office both have password services, but how secure are these methods? Nkot (talk) 03:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Their methods are usually as secure as your password. You can also use programs like winrar or winzip to compress the file and add a password to it as well. I have never dabbled with open office or word password crackers but you can get around winrar ones if your password is something simple like a dictionary word. But a password like "hE$8*9_+=!!~389jHU**&@#$" needs more computing power to crack then something like the password "JamaCa1". You can also get thumb drives that have passwords on them as well. So, technically you could go with a password for the file, password for the .rar or .zip and a password for the drive it is being stored on. Just do not forget these passwords and make them secure and at least 10 alpha/character/numeric strings Ivtv (talk) 04:40, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Both Open Office and Word have a standardized encryption format, that if I remember right uses RC4. As the previous commenter says, they are only as good as your password, which should not be a dictionary word, and should be more than 8 characters, a combination of upper and lower case, and perhaps numbers and punctuation.

I don't think there are any public vulnerabilities in the most recent versions of these standards, but I haven't looked, and can't be sure. If you are really looking for single file encryption, there are a lot of programs out there for you. PGP and its implementations are obvious answers, but also check out List of encrypting file systems for other ideas. With these sorts of things you should always keep in mind that there is the issue of the encryption algorithm itself, (RC4, for instance, is still a very good method. it's held up well and although there are some small, academic issues with pieces of it, none of those translate to a vulnerability right now), and the system that implements it. It's this second part that gets most people in trouble. Could be a bad implementation, virus on the computer, weak password, etc. Shadowjams (talk) 05:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The latest version of Word uses AES-128, and I'm not aware of any attacks. decltype (talk) 16:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The password-protected Microsoft Office format does pretty strong encryption already. But, your best and most secure option is to wrap the .doc file in an encrypted archive with an unintelligible filename. By denying the viewer any information about the file-type and contents, they will have no starting point for decryption, and will essentially be reduced to brute-force guessing at decryption algorithms and passwords. (Knowing that the file is a MS Word .doc gives them a hint about what decryption method you used - and then they must only guess your password). Note that password-protection is not identical to encryption - you definitely want an encrypted archive file, so that the contents are unreadable. The ultimate question is, to what extent must you protect this data; and how much inconvenience are you willing to put up with when you want to legitimately open or edit the file? You can take data-security to an extreme; perform high-grade software encryption, and then store the encrypted data-bits on some obscure physical media (e.g. modulating the paint on toothpicks in a box that is locked in a safe inside of a secure facility). Attempting to decode this would be a pain; the information-per-volume is atrocious; but it would probably be impossible to brute-force attack, and would almost certainly be tamper-evident if anybody even tried to decrypt it at all. Nimur (talk) 22:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Custom animation in powerpoint

Is there a way to REMOVE all the custom animations(from all the slides) at once in MS powerpoint 2003?Shraktu (talk) 05:12, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but its not obvious ! In the Slide Show menu select Animation Schemes ... which displays a list of pre-canned animation schemes. Select a scheme from the Animation Schemes list - "Appear", for example - and click on Apply to All Slides. This overwrites any custom animation in all slides with the selected animation scheme. Then select "No Animation" in the Animation Schemes list and again click on Apply to All Slides. This removes all animation from all slides. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Internet connection farts out

I've noticed this at home with both DSL and Cable modem, and a couple times at work (Fiber Optic). But sometimes it's like the entire net is dead. The throughput meters on my computer show 0Kb/s. Even when I have several webpages trying to load. And then all of a sudden (usually 30 seconds or more of no traffic), everything downloads at full speed. The fact that it has happened on different types of connections at different locations makes me think it's something more than just my computer. --68.102.170.184 (talk) 13:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

This is not normal behavior. I suspect that the cause of your seeing this on multiple machines might be a piece of software that you run on all your machines. It might not be network related, either; it might be that the software sometimes maxes out your CPU, which becomes 100% tasked for 30 seconds or so; does the Task Manager indicate anything like this? What happens if you quit Outlook and all the programs running in the system tray, and just run a browser? Tempshill (talk) 16:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Tried not running the throughput meter? 98.14.223.143 (talk) 20:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Try safemode /w networking Ivtv (talk) 21:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, my Core 2 Duo stays pretty idle (around 8%) during the "blackout" phase. I'm on a Mac, but when I run Activity Monitor, there aren't any processes gobbling up RAM or CPU cycles. There's no VM thrashing. The computer is perfectly responsive -- except the network activity just farts out. (again, multiple machines, multiple browsers, multiple locations, both WPA2 WiFi and hardwired (DSL, Cable, Fiber Optic.) It's like the internet doesn't exist for 15-60 seconds and then it's back. --68.102.170.184 (talk) 12:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

So this happens with any type of internet connection you use, but just on this particular laptop? I can assure you that there is no such thing as "the internet doesn't exist", so in this case I can say without hesitation that there is something wrong with *your* computer. Are you sure that you are experiencing the same thing with both ethernet and wi-fi? Macs (in my experience) hare extremely fickle about wi-fi unless you happen to be connecting to an AirPort. In addition, the evidence of the problem you are looking for is probably in /var/log... --Jmeden2000 (talk) 17:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Assuming they aren't jet setting around the planet you could assume that this is happening in a fairly localised location - there's more to the internet than just 'your computer' - if you think about it..83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:46, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Happens a lot to normal people - I'd guess a problem at the local exchange. Question can you disconnect the connection, then reconnect, then try accessing the internet - does this give a short burst of activity followed by snail-net? 83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. This happens on all sorts of Mac computers at work and home. Laptops, towers, iMacs. Is it possible whatever backbone my area is connected to winks out or can't handle all the traffic (I work less than 5 minutes from my home, so they could be on the same trunk... or whatever you call it) --70.167.58.6 (talk) 00:15, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

It's worth asking - if possible (though it may not prove anything if negative) - does the same happen on windows/linux etc.?

It does sound like some-sort of bandwidth throttling on the surface, which may not be intentional, though other things (such as the macs itself could be the problem) (I have had vaguely similar experiences on windows - from year to year the connection sometimes seems to be crap for weeks, then fine for months...???)83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:07, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Computer chassis of sisal?

How likely do you think it is that a small computer which makes a computer case made of water-proofed sisal woven over a frame, will be adopted by major computer companies like Dell and HP? N.B. sisal would save energy by allowing heat to escape. (Cross-posted to science board) --Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 17:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Like it says at the top of the page: The reference desk does not answer requests for opinions or predictions about future events so I'm afraid you won't find an answer here and I'd recommend trying a forum instead. ZX81 ^talk 18:12, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The theory is that this would allow us to use less fans? I don't buy it. Computers with their cases left entirely open are fully capable of overheating. It's not enough to "let the heat escape". You need to actively get rid of it. A well designed case with properly installed fans acts sort of like a wind tunnel, blowing the air right past the areas most likely to overheat. APL (talk) 18:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The concept is workable (although most concepts are) - I'll give you an opinion : chance of adoption my major computer manufacturers = 0.

However chance of case using sisal fibres as a reinforcing agent is greater than 0

How about a bamboo case - they exist?83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:45, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Try stop creating the heat in the first place :) Ivtv (talk) 21:49, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

We're already trying! It's just a lot harder than you might realize... Nimur (talk) 22:41, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

If you have a question that covers more than one desk can you redirect to just one of them - like this:

see WP:RD/S#Computer_chassis_of_sisal? 83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:45, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Or rather, link them to the science desk instead of the science page. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Cell phone recharging contact erosion

I don't know what the part is called, but it's the port on the cellular phone into which you plug the non-transformer end of the charging cable into. It looks gold-plated to this ignorant user, but it's also been eroded, so much so that I'm have real problems recharging the phone. The charging cable is not at fault because other phones have no trouble with it. How much will a repair like this cost? 98.14.223.143 (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The price of a phone Ivtv (talk) 21:12, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Ivtv's brief statement is probably correct. Modern cellular phones (along with most other mass-produced electronics) have few serviceable parts; very rarely do any distributors stock replacement parts; and technicians are rarely trained in (even simple) hardware repair. Hiring a specialist to perform a custom repair-job with custom-ordered parts would probably be much more expensive than replacing the phone. Nimur (talk) 23:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I would try cleaning the contacts with alcohol, as a patina can build up on them (particularly if one lives in a humid clime). It's pretty rare for the gold contacts to wear all the way down such that they are entirely unserviceable; if this really is the case, Nimur is right - a fix is generally cost ineffective. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 02:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Lots of people use erasers for cleaning corroded electrical contacts. I first heard of it being used with the contacts on sticks of RAM, where it works pretty well. Anyway, yeah, if it's corrosion you can clean it off with baking soda or a pencil eraser, but if the plating is worn off, you probably need a new one. Indeterminate (talk) 06:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Existence+

Hi guys,

Look: I'm having some more trouble with existence+. I saw my friend the other day and he was hurt pretty bad. He was all bloody.

Anyway, I don't want to "destroy" anything. I want to represent what the FUCK I want to show to the user and let HIM show me whatever.

;kjfbgkdfb (talk) 21:43, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Reference Desk cannot provide psychological counseling or medical advice. Perhaps you should talk to your doctor about your concerns. Edison (talk) 21:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

[8] - yeah can you lose the riddles seriously - because any questions you have are just going to get deleted as nonsense aren't they. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:43, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Is there a computing question buried in there? Was this question entirely incomprehensible to everybody else? I can't find anything related to "existence+" as a software package or anything. Is it maybe a question about a user-interface? Nimur (talk) 22:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I think C++ programming has sent someone insane.. (I know the feeling) Try pascal instead ";kjfbgkdfb" .Good luck.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:58, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Pity...He could have learned java... Nimur (talk) 23:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

July 16

Sniffing BitTorrent Traffic

If I am using BitTorrent (Azuereus client) to download movies, will someone, say an ISP or a hacker, be able to sniff or find out the content of my traffic and hence, know what movies I am downloading? Acceptable (talk) 00:35, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

yes, this is very easy to do with each client. If you look at the piece graph/information of each torrent it will list your IP and anyone elses that is uploading/downloading. No need to packet sniff. it is public info Ivtv (talk) 01:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

This is true if the ISP/Hacker is taking part in the file upload/download. What about others who are not taking part in this way (such as the ISP providing internet access to the user)? --Jwoodger (talk) 03:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Any user can see this data. It is clear on any client. I use BitComet and Under your tasks there are menu's you can click. One menu, I forget the name at the moment because I am at work you can see every IP attached to the torrent either uploading or downloading and how much of the torrent you have accumulated and your upload/download speed. It is out there in the open. Then, if you really wanted too you can take those IP's and do a whois to determine what ISP it is attached too. The short of it, when you download or upload via torrents, your IP is CLEARLY visible.

edit: Ok, I think I mis read your question. To re-answer it, Anyone that is using a TORRENT program that has the same torrent as you can see your IP on it. so if you are downloading show X, and someone else is downloading show X, they can see in the ip list your ip and you can see theirs. But if you were downloading show X and they were downloading show Y, they cannot. Your ISP, if they wanted too(even tho it is illigal) can record what you are doing while you are using their service. Also, I know that when you download a torrent your ip can be stored somewhere. So, if people wanted too they could gain access to the information you are worried about

Ivtv (talk) 04:37, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Basically, if you don't want your ISP (or hackers, although that's unlikely anyway) to be able to view anything you're doing on the internet, you need to use some sort of encryption. Most secure websites (like banks and such) use SSL/TLS. BitTorrent clients, for the most part, don't have any kind of encryption. It would slow down your downloads, and all the other peers would have to support the same kinds of encryption. The pirate bay guys were trying to make an encrypted network with IPREDator, but it's still beta-invite-only. So, yeah, until something better comes along, anyone who can intercept your traffic can tell how much porn you download. Or whatever. :) Indeterminate (talk) 06:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

At least µTorrent supports protocol encryption and it's possible to set it enabled or forced. In the forced-mode it'll only connect to peers with encryption enabled. The torrent-files themselves aren't encrypted (unless you download it from a https server). Thykka (talk) 13:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that as the internet transitions to network switches instead of network hubs over more of the hops, "fewer" people can intercept your traffic. This does not mean "zero" people can intercept your traffic; especially if you do not trust the ISPs to respect the privacy of your data. As a general rule, you can not be certain which network(s) your data will traverse when you connect to the internet, so you must assume that it is possible for some untrustworthy third-party to intercept your data. Nimur (talk) 09:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

How does protocol encryption help? The way your ISP will find out what you're downloading is when the copyright holder (or the FBI, depending) logs onto the torrent themselves and saves the list of peers. You can encrypt your packets all you like, but that won't stop them from getting a list of everyone who has downloaded a particular contraband file. APL (talk) 15:28, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

APL, that's a valid consideration. With modern encryption (properly implemented), we can "guarantee" that no third-party can eavesdrop. However, as APL points out, the fallacy with peer-to-peer networks is that the "second" party (whomever you are connecting to) is an unknown individual - so it is technically meaningless to verify that you have a secure connection to an anonymous recipient. Nonetheless, this is a totally different class of network eavesdropping (in both the technical and the legal sense). Encrypting the protocol categorically denies eavesdropping capability to anybody who is not an active participant in the transmission. (This may actually be beneficial, from a legal point of view, because it forces the eavesdropper to actively participate in a protocol connection. In some jurisdictions, this can implicitly bind all parties to certain terms of service, etc., etc., and certain obtained evidence may be inadmissible in court, etc, etc. Of course, your local jurisdiction may vary and Wikipedia can not give legal advice. Nimur (talk) 18:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Playstation/PC

Kind of a dumb question... I recently bought a Playstation I game, and rather than drag out the Playstation my roommate has, I was hoping to play it on my PC. I run Ubuntu and have PCSX. However, my computer couldn't even mount the CD, quite possibly due to the black underside. Is there a way around this? I could just try to download the ROM from the internet I suppose, ha ha, suggestions? Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You tried to mount the disk through the emulation software correct? I've never been able to mount the disk in the traditional windows way of clicking on it in "My Computer" (Or the Linux way, for that matter), but doing it through the emulator software worked just fine.

Failing that, it could be a problem with your CD drive. I know that Playstations with slightly "misaligned" laser assemblies will sometimes read silver disks but not black ones, or vice-versa.

Incidentally, In my opinion a lot of PlayStation 1 games look a LOT better on an emulator than they do on hardware. It's amazing the difference you get drawing the exact same geometry on a modern PC video card. I was disappointed when I discovered that the PS3's emulator didn't work like that. APL (talk) 05:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all, you were right APL; I had to download a BIOS from the internet, and it opened, though it appears this game is not running correctly, and unfortunately I must drag out the old PS1 beast itself. Magog the Ogre (talk) 11:41, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

SATA hard disk for a 2006 MacBook

Hey guys, I have not been here for a while now ... I guess things have changed ...

I have a question, I habe a 60 GB hard disk on my 2006 MacBook and I am considering getting a bigger alternative. How does this http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Drive-WD2500BEVS/dp/B000SIG5QW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1247714298&sr=8-3 look? I don't think I need to get much bigger than this ... any suggestions? How about the price? Please respond ... :) Kushal (talk) 03:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

At 5400rpm, it might be a little slow, but it shouldn't be too bad. And that price is pretty good, those drives usually go for about $90. I did about the same kind of upgrade on my laptop (40gb -> 250gb) and it totally gave new life to my old laptop. Indeterminate (talk) 05:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick response, Indeterminate. I already have a 5400 rpm HDD (60GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA - http://support.apple.com/kb/SP31). It might be worth mentioning the model number is MA254LL/A. One more question, is there any reason I should get a SATA 3 Gbit/s instead? Will it even work? Thanks. Kushal (talk) 14:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, it'll be faster. :) But yeah, if your laptop is 3 years old, it might actually not be faster - it might fall back to 1.5gbps. If there's a big price difference, I wouldn't bother, but it's your call. Indeterminate (talk) 23:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

i think my memory card reader is disabled

i think my memory card reader is disabled (the thing that you put SD cards in). is there a way to re-enable it? it worked fine before I did a system restore, now it doesn't recognize any SD cards and doesn't show up in "My Computer".--Drawngray19 (talk) 12:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Go to the Device manager it may be that that piece of hardware has been disabled. Here's a guide on how to get to it if you don't know how to (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/f/finddevmngr.htm). ny156uk (talk) 17:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

i was looking there already, but i can't seem to find anything that says "memory card reader" or "5-in-1 reader" so i dont know what to do.--Drawngray19 (talk) 15:50, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

network adapters??

how do i find which network adapter i have in my computer (ie. wireless)?? and which driver do i install to make "airopeek" work on my computer??

sushil —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sushil shenoy (talk • contribs) 13:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I have never used Airopeek, but to find out about your network adapter, first open the Device Manager and then click "Network adapters". You didn't tell us what OS you are running on your computer, so for instructions on how to access the Device Manager, I'll refer you to our Device Manager article. Tempshill (talk) 16:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Sending huge files as time intervals

Is it true that if we had virtually zero latency across networks, we could send arbitrarily large files almost instantaneously? If we converted the binary value of the file into a number, x, and then sent two pings to another computer, x miliseconds apart, the other computer should be able to create the original file, right? (Idea from Dinosaur comics).

Even if x were very, very large, couldn't we compress it even further, by taking factors of that number and sending those factors all at the same time? Say for instance the factors of x were y and z. We could send the transmission like so:

ping!----[y]----ping!
  pong!--------[z]-------pong!

So we should be able to send any number, no matter how large, in a very short time, with enough factors, right?

Obviously, we don't have zero latency. But we could have some known time slice that was large enough that both computers could be sure they would both measure accurately, say "number of half-seconds" between the two pings. Two computers on the same network should at least get that kind of accuracy. Then if you broke down the factors so they were small enough, each one would only be a few "half-seconds."

Are people already using this kind of compression?

— Sam 14:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Comment : Why are you factoring the numbers? That's an expensive operation. Why not just break the file up into chunks of some number of bytes in the traditional way? APL (talk) 14:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Or that. I just figured factoring would allow the number to be broken into even smaller chunks, but I don't know which would be more efficient. Point being, either way you could break a large number down into many smaller ones and just send those smaller ones as very short time intervals, all at the same time (or very slightly offset). Would that work, and does it already exist? — Sam 14:30, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Your factoring is nothing more than a form of data compression. You are using a well-defined method to take a large data item and represent it as a small data item (two or more factors). So, you are asking: "Can we use data compression to transfer large files over a network faster than sending the large file itself?" Yes. It is used all the time. Most large files are compressed in some fashion before being transferred over a network. There are also programs for some slower networks that compress all traffic on one and and decompress it on the other. -- kainaw™ 14:34, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Using time intervals between pings is not a practical method of compression. Here's why. Let's assume we chop a document into kilobit chunks and turn each chunk into a binary number between 0 and 2¹⁰⁰⁰. Half of these numbers will have a 1 in the most significant place, so average value is about 2⁹⁹⁹ (give or take 1). Some of the numbers will be prime numbers, for which factorisation will not help. So at least some of the time intervals involved will be of the order of 2⁹⁹⁹ time slices which is 2⁹⁹⁸ seconds. Turn this into years, then compare it with the age of the universe.

Now you could refine the method by using smaller chunks, which makes the average time intervals shorter. Ultimately, you can use a separate pair of pings for each bit - say half a second apart for 0, one second apart for 1. Then what you have done is reinvent Morse code. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:46, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

This is why I was suggesting taking factors, and not just chopping up the number. Say we were sending a kilobit. That would be a number in the order of 2¹⁰⁰⁰, right? So if we take the hundreth root of that, we get 1024, So if we sent out a hundred pings in a row, and sent a hundred pings again 1024 ms later, then that would be read as 1024¹⁰⁰ = 2¹⁰⁰⁰. Now obviously I'm seeing that this is silly, since it should take much less than 1024 ms to send one kilobit of data. Is there any case where this might be useful? If the clocks were so synchronized that they could count the nanoseconds accurately, say, then 1024 ns would actually be very fast, right? And it would always be able to send the kilobit in 1024 ns no matter what the speed of the network (or rather, 1024 ns + initial latency) if the computers could confidently measure the time interval. No? (Well, I guess there are a lot of hypotheticals in that last thought, so I guess we're in hypothetical land now...) — Sam

63.138.152.238 (talk) 15:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

If such reliable clocks could be synchronized, they could be used for transmitting data directly. The flaw here is that the bit-rate is actually very low on the average. Assuming a uniformly random distribution of numbers to be sent, ranging from 0 to N, you need an average of N/2 symbols. It "seems" like you are sending very little information, ("two bits"), but in fact you are simultaneously sending "no information" (... zero-value bits) for the entire intermediate time interval. This must be counted as part of your coding scheme (because if you sent anything in the intermediate time, you would change the transmitted message). Like all perpetual-compression-schemes, this method cannot and will not violate the Shannon information theorem - the data transmission rate can be no faster than half the Nyquist-rate. You might be interested in other methods, like CDMA, PSK, and the like - these use chipping or symbol coding by methods other than "binary bit" - but in the same sense, they always must be limited by Nyquist criteria. (The Computer Scientist can invent whatever coding method he wants, but when he passes it off to the Electrical Engineer, it must have a hardware manifestation which is invariably going to be bound by certain physical law)... Nimur (talk) 18:50, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

If you have nanosecond accuracy in the timing of when you can send signals out on the wire, you're likely to have at least a 1 bit/ns throughput. That is, as you count off the nanoseconds, you can monitor the communication channel. If there's signal, it's a 1, if not, it's a zero. So in 1024 ns, you're likely to be able to transmit at least 1024 bits of information in such a fashion ... which is exactly equal to the kilobit you're trying to encode. The only possible application for something along the lines of your idea that I can envision is if you have some sort of system where the recovery time for the signal is much longer than the timing accuracy. That is, if you can initiate a signal with nanosecond accuracy in any arbitrary nanosecond, but once you trigger the signal, it suppresses further signals for a significant period of time. An example is a theoretical system transmitting signals with high intensity laser pulses. The signals can be very brief and timed to the sub-millisecond level, but it might take the capacitor bank several milliseconds to recharge for the next pulse. -- 128.104.112.87 (talk) 18:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You just can't win...the laws of information theory are every bit as rigid as the laws of thermodynamics (to which they are closely related). One law is that you can't compress arbitary data without loss. Your scheme MIGHT compress numbers that happen to not be prime - but prime numbers take MORE space to send because you have to send the two factors '1' and the full value of the number. When it all averages out - you lose. Perfect, lossless compression is like perpetual motion machines - it's DEFINITELY not possible. So, forget all of the compression...all you have left is "turn the file into a number - 'send' the number as a delay. Fine - OK - so let's send (say) the Declaration of Independance (of Lithuania as it happens!): it's 818 bytes. So if you send that as a number, it's 6544 bits long - making the length of your transmission significantly longer than the expected life of the universe! So you can't do that. How about sending each letter as a delay in the range 1-256 ms? Well that's only 209 seconds...but we can do better. If we chop each letter into two 4-bit numbers in the 1-16 ms range - then your system can sent the 1636 four bit numbers in a mere 26 seconds! If we go to 3272 two bit numbers in the 1-4ms range then it's only going to take 13 seconds...and (guess what?!) if you send each bit as a delay of 1 or 2 ms - then you can still do it in 13 seconds. But hold on - rather than sending "START....delay...STOP" why not just send "ONE" or "ZERO" - no delay is needed - and you only need to send one 'special code' instead of two. In fact, what we've just demonstrated is that the most efficient possible way to send the lithuanian declaration of independence is as a simple, uncompressed binary code. Boring, eh? Well - that's life. You can't do better - it's quite simply impossible - and that's as true as that perpetual motion machines are impossible. SteveBaker (talk) 01:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

regarding pointers

can pointers be declared using different datatypes? can a float value be stored using *ptr? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srividhyaathreya (talk • contribs) 14:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

What language? Pointer handling is different in different languages. APL (talk) 14:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure in most common languages the compiler will work out/require that the pointer is associated with a particular datatype, so the answer is yes in general, when you are using a high level programming language such as pascal, or if using C. In a lower level language such as assembler you have to do this yourself sometimes - ie the you need to remember what type of data a memory pointer is pointing to. Are there any exceptions?83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:18, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The obvious issues are if you try accessing data that might not actually be a float (or might be in a different byte order). In that case, you can still read it or write it as a float, but the actual value will be garbled if it is re-accessed as something else. Another worry is word-alignment. In C, for example, a byte* can point to any address; while a float* should point to a 4-byte-aligned address (on many architectures). Some machines will give you an alignment exception if you use a 32-bit float on a non-word-aligned pointer. Others will re-align the word at runtime. Nimur (talk) 19:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

And if you are using C, you could of course destroy yourself if you had used malloc to reserve enough space to store a 16-bit word, but subsequently you end up storing a 64-bit float. Tempshill (talk) 21:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't frighten the questionees - memory overflows do not cause one to physically disintegrate.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:21, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Also think of the questioner, we wouldn't want to frighten him or her either. --Anonymous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.254.170.8 (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

the damage has probably already been done ;(

Pointer (computing) might answer any specifics. in C I think it's

float *peter to declare a variable called peter used as a pointer for/to floats

in Pascal I think it's

var
 peter: ^float  different syntax, same effect

though you are obviously asking about something like C Pointers in this context are always pointing to memory locations so they are always integer types themselves - probably 32 or 64 bit. If you wanted the pointer itself to be a non-integer datatype that's a different question, and an odd thing to do.83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:03, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

HELP NEEDED

Hi All, the other day i inserted a flash drive in to my USB port and since i have open the drive, i can't see my "FOLDER OPTIONS" in "TOOLS" menu... and moreover i also can't use the "SEARCH" feature in "START MENU"...

Can anyone let me know how to overcome this problem?

Does this look like what is happening to you? Google is our friend. Kushal (talk) 15:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

autorun.exe

How do i see the autorun.exe of any flash disk/pen drive??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sushil shenoy (talk • contribs) 15:19, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The autorun.exe file is usually marked as "hidden", so the easiest way to do this is to tell Windows to "show hidden files". In Windows XP, do Control Panel->Folder Options, and then I think it's on the "Advanced" screen. In Vista, open Control Panel and then type "folders" in the search field, then choose "Show hidden files and folders". After this is turned on, the autorun.exe on a flash drive will be visible (and easily deletable, which I assume is what you're aiming for). Tempshill (talk) 15:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

COBOL Help

Hello. I installed OpenCobol, which uses Visual C++'s cl command to make binaries from COBOL source files. So, I made a COBOL hello-world program (TEST.COB), and compiled it, but it just creates (1) test.dll, (2) test.dll.manifest, (3) test.exp, and (4) test.lib. Anyone know how to make a .exe or at least use those files to output the message to standard out? I tried running the .dll using rundll32, but nothing happened. Here's the source for TEST.COB:

000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
000200 PROGRAM-ID. "TEST".
000300 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
000400 DATA DIVISION.
000500 PROCEDURE DIVISION.
000600 DISPLAY "HELLO".
000700 STOP RUN.

Thanks for any help.--H. Gutmans (talk) 18:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind. Sorry. I needed to add a -x to the cobc command to get it to output a .exe.--H. Gutmans (talk) 19:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Who am I connected to?

Is there any way of checking that I am connected (broadband) to the ISP I expect, and that my broadband connection has not been hijacked and put through some expensive thing? I know my anti-virus software will check for diallers, but is there any more direct way of checking please? 78.145.23.157 (talk) 19:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

If the hijacker is good enough, it is impossible to tell. The hijacker will inspect and fake all traffic so even something like traceroute will show you incorrect information to make you think you are on your network. It really isn't worth it do go to that much trouble for some random Internet user. So, just run traceroute on something like Google. You will see each IP address between you and Google. You can check to ensure that the ones closest to you are your ISP. -- kainaw™ 19:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Dialers affect users using dial-up, not those on broadband.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 20:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think the OP is asking: When he connects to the Internet via his laptop or iPhone or whatever, might he be connecting to the Internet via some expensive ISP that charges him a lot of money? Offhand I can't think of any way this could happen, because unlike with a telephone line provided by your local phone company, you have not authorized your ISP to charge you for services that are performed by other companies. At least, I haven't ever heard of such a thing. Tempshill (talk) 21:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Mathematica 6.0

Does anybody know what algorithm Mathematica 6.0 (student edition) uses when the Sort[list] function is called? --72.197.202.36 (talk) 20:34, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

It seems to be Quicksort which we also have an article about.-KoolerStill (talk) 23:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

How to compare two folders?

What would be the easiest way of comparing two folders and checking that their subfolders and the names of the files within them are the same please? I just want to confirm they are the same, not move files around. The folders may be on different drives. I am using Windows XP. Thanks 78.145.23.157 (talk) 21:29, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

command prompt: tree C:\path\to\folder1

command prompt: tree C:\path\to\folder2

put the windows side by side

Ivtv (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Get the free winmerge.exe (http://winmerge.org/). Wonderful tool! Saintrain (talk) 00:55, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree! We do have an article on WinMerge though. Jay (talk) 09:37, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Security

http://news.runescape.com/newsitem.ws?id=2003

How secure is this, really? Someone was claiming people would "work around it", but if you had such a key I can think of no way, beyond physical theft, to compromise the security of someone else's account. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding it entirely. Is it possible to hack someone's RuneScape account if they've got one of these keys? Vimescarrot (talk) 21:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

The security token article may be of interest to you. Tempshill (talk) 22:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I cannot access this page, but I am assuming that you order a physical device and through a random number generator every 10 seconds it matches the same number generator to your account. World of Warcraft does the same thing. if you implement this to your account it is next-to-impossible to crack it. each number generator is unique Ivtv (talk) 22:21, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

How to identify a running application in Ubuntu?

Say I have a GUI application running on Ubuntu, for example the tracker applet or the sound recorder or the screenshot application and I'd like to report a bug against it. The command ubuntu-bug <packagename> would take care of that but how would I know the name of the package in the first place? (This is also very useful if you would want to use killall <NameOfApplication> or simply want to know how to start the application with parameters from the commandline.)

Does it boil down to using top or htop to look through possible application names or asking at the forums or is there a smarter, better way? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Jarl Arntzen (talk) 23:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I usually use top or ps auxf. The tree organization of ps auxf sometimes help find the program, and if you just started the program, it's often the last item in the ps list. There must be some better solution, though. Indeterminate (talk) 23:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! That's certainly one possible way. Have anyone else some other, good technique to suggest? Jarl Arntzen (talk) 23:34, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Many window managers have an "identify window" widget. If yours doesn't, the following Perl script will change the cursor to a crosshair, you click on a window, and it will tell you the command line of the process that opened that window:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

`xwininfo` =~ /Window id:\s*(\S+)/ or die "could not find window";
$id = $1;

`xlsclients -l` =~ /^Window\s*$id:.*?Command:\s*([^\n]+)/sm
    or die "could not find client";

print "$1\n";

--Sean 14:28, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

JSON texts versus values

RFC 4627 says that "A JSON text is a serialized object or array.", and that "A JSON value MUST be an object, array, number, or string, or [one of 'false'/'true'/'null'.]" What reason is there for requiring that the top level construct be an aggregate? My impulse would have been to make the text be a value so that there was only one concept to address. Is it perhaps related to XML's restriction that the top level be a (single) tag? --Tardis (talk) 23:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with this javascript widget?

I have User:Henrik/sandbox/google-search installed in my monobook.js. It's supposed to put a google search box in the left menu column, which indeed it has done for ages. Today I found no such search box & am v.depressed since I make major use of google searches of wikipedia. Does anyone have a clue what's going wrong? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:VPT would be a better place for this question. Algebraist 23:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I can't see anything wrong with it, and it works fine here. Have you tried bypassing your cache? Algebraist 23:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It was a cache problem, or, was solved by clearing the cache. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:28, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Windows needs disc to boot

My PC with a Gigabyte motherboard and Windows Vista has an odd problem. It will not boot unless the Vista DVD is in my DVD drive. It then does not boot *off* the DVD — it just seems to need the DVD to get started, and then it proceeds to boot from the hard disk. I may have faulty recall here, but I think a similar problem occurred before I had installed the current hard disk and installed Vista — the old hard disk, with Windows 2000 on it, required a boot disc in the DVD drive in order to proceed to boot from the hard disk. Changing the boot device order in the BIOS does not seem to affect this issue, other than when the DVD drive is set to be the boot device, it boots from the DVD. Any suggestions? Tempshill (talk) 23:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

this does not seem to make much sense at all. Try resetting your bios to default, then boot to windows and update your bios. did you do a clean install of vista? Ivtv (talk) 00:00, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

This sounds contradictory (though I'm guessing you're pretty sure you're accurately describing the symptoms). Are you very certain that the system is not booting off the DVD? Maybe there is a broken bootloader; can you try booting off the DVD and reinstalling the boot-loader (or using a Linux CD to install GRUB)? Nimur (talk) 00:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Some more details: I'm very certain it's not booting off the DVD, which runs an installer. Yes, this was a clean install of Vista. Each time I boot the system, after the disks are listed and the memory check is done, it seems to hit the hard disk for a long time (during which the LED seems lit at half-intensity, telling me it's flickering fast), and then an error message appears saying, "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I have now clumsily tried installing GRUB from a Knoppix CD (I fumble with Linux) and after mounting the C: drive into /mnt/temp, and trying "grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/temp /dev/sda", it hit the hard disk for a while and then said "The file /mnt/temp/boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly." I also have booted the Vista install CD and tried installing the Windows Boot Manager, and got a file error that I didn't write down. I haven't tried re-flashing the BIOS; I guess I'll attempt that (and then reinstalling WBM) next. Tempshill (talk) 04:40, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Try shuffling your boot order. Sometimes if you have the optical drive as the first boot device the BIOS can be stupid and stop at that when it detects no disc in the drive. Set it to hard drive and make sure the drive priority is correct. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:59, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I found that my BIOS is a couple of revisions old, but the only BIOS flash utility from Gigabyte I was able to find on their website is for 32-bit Vista only (yay Gigabyte), and from the descriptions, it appears that the changes are some CPU ID additions and one added feature. I checked my boot order; it's HD first (always was) and I verified the drive priority is correct (SATA HDD, then a PATA HDD master). I stared at the drive light while booting, this time, and logged the following bizarre behavior, which does occur with 100% reproducibility:

1. Memory test completes on the BIOS screen
2. Drive indicator light turns "half-intensity" (which I interpret to mean it's getting accessed repeatedly but not continuously) for 25 seconds
3. The BIOS lists all the connected drives
4. The drive indicator light turns "half intensity" for 35 seconds
5. The BIOS lists all the PCI devices then says "Verifying DMI pool data"
6. Drive light is off for a couple of seconds
7. Drive light turns on, half-intensity for an amazing 122 seconds
8. Text appears saying "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD..." At this point I leave it alone and it boots Vista off the hard disk.

So, yes, it takes me 3 minutes to boot my computer, and nearly all of that time is spent accessing the hard disks, if my drive indicator light isn't lying. Could this be the root of the trouble? Tempshill (talk) 07:49, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Strange, indeed. (1) nothing to do with the BIOS version, if it ever used to work at all (2) looks like it is searching madly for a boot sector, as indicated by the "disk boot failure" error message. Having finally found the boot instructions on the DVD, it then proceeds to load these into memory and run the rest of the OS from the hard drive.

It sounds like the boot sector is corrupted. So stranger still if it did, indeed, do the same with another hard drive and OS. If it's done it with more than one disk, it is more likely a kinked or cracked ribbon cable to the drive. Triple check, flatten out and reinsert the cable, ideally replacing it with a new one. (I've had cable problems create Disk Boot failure errors with no other trouble once the HDD was running).

The DVD should have a Repair section on it. Fire that up and go to the Booting section, which should allow you to "fixmbr" (rewrite the master boot record).This will overwrite the Grub, which does not sound a very successful installation either. Or get a hand from this BCD repair programwhich works without the DVD. Leave the BIOS set up to start from the HDD. - KoolerStill (talk) 12:40, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

OK - I tried the Vista disc's "Repair -> Startup" process, and it went through a diagnostic and said that no problems were detected. Following a Googled tip, I did bootsect.exe /nt60 all from a command prompt after booting from the DVD; bootsect went through and stated for both my C: and D: hard disks that it had "Successfully updated NTFS filesystem bootcode." This didn't lead to any change in my 3 minute boot times or the need for the Vista disc in the drive. Thanks for the tip on the cables — I guess I'll take a look this weekend. I would have guessed that a cabling problem would cause ongoing HD access failures and wouldn't have expected problems only at boot. Tempshill (talk) 16:18, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

It's possibly a more insidious failure, e.g. failing hard-disk that is intermittently flaking out. By the time the OS boots, error-correction can make this seem transparent or nonexistent. It's also possible that there is a power brownout in effect - your hard-disk may be right on the edge of consuming more power than your PSU can supply (again, intermittently failing). I would treat this system very cautiously and back up all important data; hopefully a fix can be found, but these symptoms may indicate a more severe crash is imminent. Nimur (talk) 20:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

July 17

Using PC power supply for scanner

My flatbed scanner power supply (wall wart, 12VDC, 1A) went away. :-(

Any potential problems using a +12V line from my PC's power supply; ground loops, etc?

Thanks. Saintrain (talk) 00:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Does the PC supply have a 1A overhead ? (You know how cheap a new 12W power supply can be right ? ) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Kristin ITC font

I have the font "Kristin ITC" installed on a computer at work but not at home. Work machine is XPH and the home is XPP. Can someone tell me what software app comes bundled with this font? There seem to be several like that but this is a good start I think. ZabMilenko^{How am I driving?} 06:05, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Oops, maybe if I googled right the first time, this would have come up. Thanks. ZabMilenko^{How am I driving?} 06:06, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Database (MS Acess)

How can I have the value for a field be calculated automatically based on values in 2 other fields one of which is in the same table and the other in different table? --195.244.210.38 (talk) 09:31, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

If I understand the question correctly, for a particular table you want a particular column in each row to be calculated based on the value stored in another column (of the same row in that table) and a column in a different table? If thats right - then no; not possible at the raw table level. Can I assume you are actually referring to creating a form tied to underlying tables? If this is the case, complicated manipulations of data is possible... Jwoodger (talk) 14:00, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I thought they might have meant 'cells' when they wrote 'fields'.83.100.250.79

Yes, 'cells' is probably easier to write than my definition, but they refer to the same thing (columns of a row) Jwoodger (talk) 15:33, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

(talk) 15:21, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are using a Query, it is easy to do this with complicated functions. Set the value to one of the columns to something like =Table1.[Foo]+Table2.[Bar]. Syntax might not be exactly right but it is something like that. You can't do this with raw table view itself; it needs to be done in a Query. (Tables are just data, they don't have functions. Queries are basically tables+functions.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:21, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Are you certain tables are raw data - eg are spreadsheet functions like sum(a1:a10) lost when importing a table and converted to a number? This sounds like a nightmare. There's another way right??83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:21, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, to be precise tables are not just data, they include structural definitions as well (data types, relationships, other metadata). As for the rest of that question, I'm not sure what you mean... Jwoodger (talk) 15:33, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

From your previous questions, you appear to confusing the database and the application. The database is nothing more than a bunch of tables of data. The thing that you use to put data in the database and get reports out of the database is the application. Access is unique in that it combines a database and application into one product. Most databases do not include the application. So, understanding that Access is two things combined into one, the database should not contain data that is just a combination of two other fields. That is something you place at the application level. When a person fetches data, you add up the two columns and display the result. -- kainaw™ 15:25, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

There must be properly integrated database/spreadsheet systems out there though, surely?83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:27, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that the application (spreadsheet) must be customized for every purpose. For example, I have a field on my report (which you are calling a spreadsheet) that is a percentage. The denominator is the number of times a patient has a systolic blood pressure > 140 or diastolic blood pressure > 90 and the previous blood pressure was also > 140 or > 90 (unless the patient is diabetic, then I use 130/80, not 140/90). The numerator is how many of those occurrences coincide with an increase in anti-hypertensive medication. So, do you propose that MS Access (or some "properly" integrated program) include this special field? Of course not. It is the job of the database administrator to customize the application to the user's needs. It is not the job of the program to instamagically create the application because no matter what is available there will be requests for more application features. -- kainaw™ 16:32, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that the database program be able to handle the same form of data as the spreadsheet. So if the spreadsheet can handle your data - the database would be able to (sounds like you have 2 values per cell or something - I don't know medicine) and vice versa

I don't see what is so outrageous to expect that sort of commonality. It's not a case of application features - it's a case of expecting two closely related programs to be able to use the same data set, without loss of data (or functionality).

In other words "properly integrated" means the database accepts a .xls file or whatever as a (dynamic) table (keeping the interelatedness between values), not just a static 'snap-shot' of the numerical values. Obviously access can't do that - I have to open a spreadsheet to alter data that affects a third value, then reimport it to create a report or whatever. Or maybe write out the statistical functions twice - ones for the spreadsheet, and once for the data report in database mode - doesn't sound good.83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:55, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Comparing zip file to directory in Ubuntu

If I have a directory (and I have one) and if I want to compare it to a zip file (and I want to) to know what is different and add or remove stuff from the zip file, what can I do it in Ubuntu? This would be like a simple backup, but it is also useful for other purposes (like packing a set of up-to-date docs).--Quest09 (talk) 10:54, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Beyond Compare will compare a directory to a zip file. I have only used the Windows version but according to their website, they also do a Linux version. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:20, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

banning ip ranges in php

Hi everyone, I have another question about php, this time how to ban entire ip address ranges. This is the code I've got so far, but it only works on single ips:

<?php $blockip = array( '123.456.789.123'=> 'block reason', ); //'address'=> 'block reason', foreach($blockip as $key=>$val) {if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == $key) { die("You are banned because: $val"); } } ?>

How can I ban entire ranges in php? Thanks for your help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 11:13, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a tricky problem because of the syntax of IP addresses. Here's the simplistic solution: If you want to block, say, 12.34.xxx.xxx, you can add the key 12.34. to your block list and, if the incoming IP begins with 12.34., you block it. So, instead of comparing equality between the remote address and the key, you see if the remote address begins with the key. Here's the problem: what if you specifically try to block 1.2.3.4, so you make that key. Now, someone comes in with the remote address 1.2.3.45. That begins with 1.2.3.4, so it will be blocked. So, you are better off doing wildcard matching. So, instead of blocking 12.34., you block 12.34.*.*. Now, you have to write a comparison that matches "*" to any number. Regular expressions are commonly used for that. Another problem: the period is a reserved character in regular expressions (it means ANY character). So, 1.2 will readily match 152 (the period between 1 and 2 matches anything, including 5). So, what can you do? A million or so things. One is to not use periods. Use dashes. So, before the comparison, $key = str_replace(".", "-", $key) ... and the same with the remote address. Now, the period will be a dash and the address will look like 12-34-56-79 instead of 12.34.56.78. Then, if you used * to mean "any number", you have to change that to regex syntax with $key = str_replace("*", "{0-9}*", $key) ... no need to do that on the remote address as it won't have a * in it. Now, you can test: if (preg_match($_SERVER['REMTOE_ADDR'], $key)) { die... I know, it isn't as easy as you probably want, but it is one of a thousand or so ways to do it. Want a different example using the explode function on the IP addresses? -- kainaw™ 13:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Might it be better practice to block IP ranges at the HTTP server or even at the network level, rather than at the application level? I guess it depends on your application. If you are the server administrator, you can edit the web server settings. Even if you are not, you can create a .htaccess file (this works with most configurations of Apache). (Here's a quick and easy tutorial. Nimur (talk) 14:17, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

That would probably be better, but I'd really need this to work in php so that I can just transfer the entire web folder from place to place and run it in an instant without any server setting up. Thanks Kainaw, I'll give your suggestion a go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 16:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Just for your information... you can have an .htaccess file which specifies such IP blocks in the same directory as your PHP files; and you can move this .htaccess file around with the PHP source (as long as the webserver recognizes .htaccess files, which most standard-configuration servers do). Good luck with your implementation, however you choose to do it... Nimur (talk) 20:51, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Preventing background tabs from playing YouTube movies automatically?

When restart Firefox 3.5, it restores the tabs from my previous session. It's a great feature and I love it. But one problem is if I have multiple YouTube tabs, it starts playing ALL of them and I have to step through each tab to stop the movie. I don't remember this problem in the past. Is there a way to prevent YouTube movies from auto playing unless it's the frontmost, active tab? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 12:01, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I have added the Firefox addon "flashblock" which replaces all flash content with a placeholder. The flash will only load and the movie start playing when you click the flash object placeholder. -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 12:11, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

NooB wireless LAN question

For years I was happily connected to the net via wired LAN or (olde-worlde) modem. But these days I have to be connected via wireless LAN and I'm acutely aware of not knowing what the pluck I'm doing. The wireless router has instructions in Japanese only, which doesn't help, but I can't make sense of the en:WP articles either.

First, the OS I'm using isn't among those for which the manufacturer (Corega) of the wireless router provides idiot-proof instructions. A sticky label on the router tells me that its SSID or ESSID is such and such and that the "network key" is a certain eight-digit number. The OS wants the SSID (unproblematic) and also either or both of "BSSID" (which it glosses as "Only connect to the station with this hardware address") and "MAC address" (which it glosses as "Override hardware address"). Specifying an address that one then overrides makes no sense to me, or perhaps I should say that it makes even less sense than anything else does. Should I then use "BSSID"? Whichever I choose, I'm to supply it in the format "__:__:__:__:__:__": a twelve-digit number; should I type this in from the left, leaving the rightmost digits blank, or to the right, leaving the leftmost digits blank?

Secondly, is a WPA2/WPA-PSK -protected connection to a given wireless router in any way vulnerable to an unprotected connection to the same wireless router? I really don't care if others are freeloading off my LAN as long as they can't sniff what I'm doing. I did once manage to set up one of these wireless routers, protected and all; but I never could figure out how to disable the bonus unprotected network "cg-guest".

Thank you. -- Hoary (talk) 12:06, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

The BSSID and MAC are typically supplied only when one is building an infrastructure-mode wireless network (that is, a bunch of wireless router boxes all connected together). Clients typically need only the network key (and often maintain a mapping table correlating the right key with a given SSID; so when your laptop sees ssid="hoarynet" it knows which of its stored keys to send). So I wouldn't set either of those, but instead look for some other place in which to input the key. Regarding your second question - home routers are set either to allow only encrypted connections or only naked ones (not a mixture); but it sounds like this Corega thing might be a bit fancier than a basic home router (such as the kind found in hotels)? If so it'll have two (virtual) lans, one for the encrypted traffic and another for the naked stuff; if anyone can sniff the encrypted traffic then the router is very stupid, but whether broadcast traffic is visible between the two depends on how the router was coded. You might not think you're doing any (ethernet layer) broadcast traffic, but Windows' wins/smb service announcements ("hi I'm a printer... hi I'm a network share called "porn folder"... etc.) are incessant. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Decisions on pyramid of images

I'm unaable to guess the levels of resolution microsoft maps or similar websites possess. When making an image pyramid, How does one decide on the levels of resolution and even the size of an indvidual tile?. Can anybody throw some light please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.25 (talk) 13:21, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

If you'd like to view the individual image tiles that sites like Google Maps download, the easiest way is with an HTTP proxy that lets you save the individual downloaded junks as files. For similar tasks I've used HTTPripper, but there are lots to chose from. Google's tile size is 256x256, so that's a pretty big clue that zoomed in tiles cover either quarters or sixteenths (I'd guess quarters) of their parents. This article says there are 17 levels of zoom, and he says it's quarters. Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:48, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Reformatting my Compaq Notebook

My notebook is infected with a weird virus and so I wanted to do a clean format of the HDD and reinstall Windows. Compaq (which btw is now HP) did not give me a recovery disk (which I have used in the past) but instead has a recovery partition on the HDD. How then do I use the partition to reformat and reinstall Vista? Also, will I be able to backup my data before the reformatting is done? I do not want to connect a thumb drive or external HDD to my system to save my data because the external device may also get infected. Help needed. Thanks 116.71.75.2 (talk) 21:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay so I found out how to do it.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07145#bph07145_xp

But this means there isn't an inbuilt option to backup my data. Can anyone give me an idea on how to do this without letting the virus spread to my other devices? Thanks. 116.71.75.2 (talk) 21:14, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Tap F11 on boot will get you to the recovery manager. you can backup data in there with an external drive. contrary to popular belief you cannot 'infect' an external drive(anymore at least). Data can be corrupt yes, but as long as you avoid transferring over anything that can execute you will be fine. that and pdf files. Ivtv (talk) 21:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the last 2 sentences of Ivtv's answer help the OP much. 116, what you probably want to do is to indeed back up all your data to an external drive, and then reformat your internal drive, reinstall Windows, set up an account without admin rights for normal everyday use, install antivirus software, install all your applications you use, and then, while using your non-admin-rights account, copy your documents from the external drive to your internal drive and make the virus software scan them. There are several ways that documents can indeed be infected. Then take your external drive, put a warning sticker on it, and throw it in a drawer in case you need to get other files you didn't copy initially. Tempshill (talk) 22:12, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Freeware Calendar

I am looking for a popular freeware calendar application that I can use. I need one that allows me to create a schedule on one computer, then save it in a file that can be transferred to another computer (with the same app obviously) and then imported into the app on the second computer. Is there an application that will allow me to do this without distorting the original schedule of the second computer's app? 94.7.166.22 (talk) 21:28, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

why don't you just use goggle calender? --Cameron Scott (talk) 21:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

does it do everything i need? 94.7.166.22 (talk) 21:37, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it does — there is no app, and everything is stored on Google's servers, which you can access from anywhere (using any reasonable platform). It's free, so you may as well try it out. Tempshill (talk) 22:07, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Need help setting up a FTP server

Hey guys. I'm new with this whole FTP thing. I currently use BulletProof FTP Server v2.3.1. I followed many, many online tutorials and instructions on how to set it up, and I've almost got it... but ran into some problems. First of all, it seems that I'm able to connect to the server fine using PASV mode (I have a dynamic DNS name via No-IP), but for some reason I can't get the LIST working. I'm also a bit confused on some things concerning port forwarding. I think I've got everything forwarded correctly but I'm not too sure... Just to clarify, where do I need to forward ports 20 and 21 to? This question goes the same for the range (I'm using ports 50000-50100). If I need to forward them to the machine hosting BulletProof, how do I do that in my router firewall (2Wire 2071) and my software firewall (PC Tools Firewall Plus)? If there are any questions then ask, and I appreciate as much help as possible! Thanks. Vic93 (t/c) 22:31, 17 July 2009 (UTC)