Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

February 5

Elysium MIDI Sequencer on the PC?

Is there any generative midi software similar to the wonderful Elysium (Mac) that will run on a PC? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.82.79.175 (talk) 01:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Although far from a complete answer, you can have a look at this previous RD question. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 08:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

nameserver questions

I'm setting up a nameserver using BIND along with Apache for server-ing. I've got 3 questions:

1. Can I set up BIND to point to itself? i.e., can I run BIND and Apache on the same machine?
2. How do I set up a second nameserver? Godaddy requires one plus a backup, which means two nameservers are required (1+1=2). I only have 1 IP address. What do I do about this?
3. Can I make Godaddy's nameserver settings point to an IP address instead of the standard "ns1.(example).com"? flaminglawyer 01:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes you can run both BIND and Apache on the same machine, the two processes don't interact at all.
2. If you can get a second (Internet routable) IP address you could assign them to the same machine and have them both pointing to the same nameserver, although obviously this would defeat the redundancy that the 2nd nameserver is supposed to provide. Will Godaddy themselves provides either a master or slave DNS server?
3. Nameservers in domain records have to use DNS hostnames (ns1.domain.com etc) but you could always use something like DynDNS to create a virtual hostname, although if you have a domain already it might be just easier to set up ns1.domain.com in that domains DNS? (you can use the same domain for DNS, you just have to specify the IP/glue records at the point the nameservers are setup as well as the name - the process varies depending on the type of domain).

Hope this helps! ZX81 ^talk 15:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

There are also free secondary DNS servers, like [1]. MTM (talk) 15:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

HTTPS and Hotmail

When I log into Hotmail the login page is encrypted via HTTPS, but the page that displays the list of emails and the emails themselves are not. Does this mean that the email list and the email themselves are potentially readable by anybody between me and the hotmail web server? Thanks Middle Bug (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

If the message content was delivered by regular unencrypted HTTP then yes, potentially it's readable by someone between you and them. ZX81 ^talk

Yes, if transmitted using http your email is viewable by anyone between your computer and the server (and, potentially, someone who isn't directly between). You might check if Hotmail includes an option in user preferences to enable full-session SSL (https) encryption—some webmail services do. – 74  14:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

If every page were to be transferred by HTTPS, won't the page load very very slowly, if entire e-mails (and attachments) are to be encrypted? I would like to know the experience of anyone using a full-session SSL. Jay (talk) 15:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It's more intensive for the server which I imagine is why Hotmail only do the login via SSL and obviously there's more work for the client computer to do, but I've personally found the speed difference on the client side with modern computers to be negligible (this is using an Exchange server with and without SSL). ZX81 ^talk 15:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I use a VPN all the time and I have never noticed it to be a slowdown over unencrypted traffic. --140.247.242.231 (talk) 17:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Gmail allows permanent SSL. It doesn't feel any slower, but all that AJAX and prefetching probably help — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 18:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The SSL overhead is slight, and any content encoding should (not sure) happen pre-ssl layer, so it won't be any larger. I don't think hotmail has a constant SSL mode. I don't think yahoo does either, but gmail does. Hotmail does encrypt your login credentials, but that doesn't help for session hijacking purposes. Best advice is to either tunnel the connection as best you can, or just make sure to log out when you're done (this will help with session hijacking, but not your other concerns). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shadowjams (talk • contribs) 10:27, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Receiving a web-page through email

Is there any service where I can type an http address and receive the content of the page on my email? It may sound useless, but I need it sometimes to pass the filter of my proxy. Some legit pages are wrongly classified as 'racist' or 'violence' when they are only normal news about racism or violence. And no I have no way of changing the filter rules. Mr.K. (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Try webtomail.co.cc SN0WKITT3N 16:15, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Having problems installing Microsoft office communicator 2007

I bought it yesterday and whenever I try to enter product key it tells me:

The Microsoft Office Activation Assistant was unable to request your trial activation key. Please check your Internet connection and try again. If the error continues, go to www.microsoft.com/office/pctrial2007 to request a trial activation key. The Microsoft Office Activation Assistant was unable to launch your 2007 Microsoft Office release. Please re-enter your selection or open Microsoft Office from the directory. If the error continues, go to www.microsoft.com/office/pctrial2007 for additional information.

I am not sure how to install it from the directory and I can't seem to find any help on the aforementioned web page. It even told me the same thing when I downloaded the trial version from Microsoft. I figured I could just bypass the possible glitch on the disk and then add in my product key to that version, but that didn't work either. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 18:27, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

PC keeps restarting

What could be wrong with my PC? It keeps restarting whenever I open my computer, go to the C drive, or whenever I select something similar from a drop down list in, for example, a dialog box for saving or opening files. Whenever I do any of these something inside starts to make a loud "WHURRING" noise and then the PC just restarts. --RMFan1 (talk) 21:10, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

There are two primary sources of PC rebooting (and trillions of secondary sources - so you may have one that isn't a primary reason). The biggest reason is overheating. The computer gets too hot. You often hear the fans kick into high speed. And reboot. The other is power drain. Some device sucks too much power. The power supply can't keep up. Reboot. Overheating can be caused by many things - often a component that is breaking down. A device sucking too much power can be anything (nVidia video cards and Via bus controllers are notorious for this problem). So, it is impossible to say exactly what is wrong. The normal fix is to swap out parts one by one until you find the one that is bad. -- kainaw™ 21:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately I experienced one of these secondary sources last week. My power supply seemed the problem so I changed it. Still experienced random rebooting. Exchanged network, graphics and sound cards - no difference. In the end it had to be the motherboard - and it was. Sandman30s (talk) 10:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You can try running the computer with the case off and a fan blowing on it to see if overheating is the problem. StuRat (talk) 05:22, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

To add to StuRat's advice, take a can of compressed air and use it to clean the inside of your computer (my removing the accumulated dust); see if that brings any improvement. If not, you can take your computer completely apart, and reassemble it piece by piece: first only the motherboard, power supply, hard drive, graphics card (if your motherboard doesn't have integrated graphics). See if it runs without rebooting. Now add another component, and test again. It's a slow method, but probably your best bet for identifying the culprit. — QuantumEleven 11:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suspect it is PC over heating. The free software, PC Wizard, at http://www.cpuid.com/ can help determine that. That software can show you your processors temperature and you can see how hot the processor gets. I think my PC over heats at around 80 degrees if I remember right. Does your processor have a heatsink on it? I'd be shocked if it doesn't. Make sure the heatsink is making good contact with the processor. You may have to add some grease that is used for connecting the two and transferring heat. A small tube is available at Radio Shack for less that $5. If the heat sink and processor did get pulled apart and put back, there is a good chance you have to add grease.

Does the processor have it's own fan? Make sure it is working. That whurring noise you hear may be that fan kicking in. Maybe it's bearings are bad. PC Wizard also give you fan info. Processor fans are also pretty inexpensive. Some times the processor does NOT have it's own fan, but has a piece of plastic that diverts the air pulled from a fan on the back of the PC from off the processor. If the processor does NOT have it's own fan just above the processor, It probably is supposed to have one. If it has one, make sure that piece of plastic is in place. --Wonderley (talk) 02:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Web really slow

So I have one PC cabled to the modem, which also broadcasts the signal to two laptops. For several months all was fine; the PC (Vista Home Premium) got a slightly faster connection than the laptops. Now, the PC's internet connection slows down to a crawl. It's got a connection, but a very, very slow one. The laptops are fine, so it's not the supply. It just happened so fast - and not straight after I changed any settings. As a precaution, I'm running full virus scans. Any other ideas? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 21:21, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Spyware scans in addition to virus scans. Does Vista have a "boot in safe mode with networking"? That might let you see how the connection is without a lot of things starting up at boot time. Also, try a bootable CD of some type, e.g. gOS which will let you run a browser and verify that it's not a problem with the router/modem. --LarryMac | Talk 21:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Update: in short, it's got worse, to a point of having no connection at all. The router doesn't list the computer among its list of attached devices, yet if I plug the same wire into one of the laptops and turn off wireless, I can still access the net. This leads me to believe that the problem is with the port on the back of the computer, and I will probably order a USB-Ethernet converter later today. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 10:47, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Your going down the right path for debugging. But, I'd also look at Device Manager and Event Viewer for error messages. That's under (Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management), Then there is Device Manager and Event Viewer - System. --Wonderley (talk) 02:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Problem installing Linux

I have recently been trying to install Xubuntu 7.04 on my laptop and while the first steps on the text installer work fine I have been getting troubles when I reach the partitioning part; the installer prompts me to choose and option to partition and I have chosen "Resize IDE1 Master...", then it asks me for how much space to partition but when I fill that and go ahead, the screen changes to start the partition but the partition process never moves from 0% until an error screen appears which reads "Resize Operation Failure. An error ocurred while writing the changes to the storage devices. The resize operation is aborted." I have clicked continue and it takes me to a new screen that lists my partition settings and which gives me two options; a) Undo changes to partition, b) Finish Partition and continue. I know b) sounds like the logical option but if there was an error I don't want to go ahead and found out I messed it up. Does any know why this could be happening and/or how can I fix it? Any info is appreciated. Thanks! PabloClark (talk) 23:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

A resize (to a larger size) may only work if you have unallocated space available to add to the partition. Is this the case or has all disk space already been allocated to partitions ? StuRat (talk) 05:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

This is the first time I have partitioned the hard drive and it should have enough space available, however, I will double check that. Is there any other things that might cause that error to occur? Thanks! PabloClark (talk) 01:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe there is an issue with the units on the amount of space you typed in ? Perhaps it was asking for the number of GB and you typed in the number of MB, for example. What value did you type in ? StuRat (talk) 09:25, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you get to a console from the installer (through some menu or by pressing ctrl-alt-f1 or some other f key)? It's likely there's a more verbose error message in somewhere, at least on my 8.10 there are some logs in /var/log/installer/. --194.197.235.61 (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I will try to look for those logs. Now that you mentioned that StuRat, I think I might suspect what the problem is. I typed in 27 GB (that is 44% of PC HD, and 44% is also that amount of HD already occupied in my PC) which is the minimum it allows me; is that amount in typing in is the amount in giving to Xubuntu or the amount I am keeping for Windows? PabloClark (talk) 15:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

From the behavior that sounds like the amount it's keeping for Windows, although that certainly seems backwards from how I'd expect it to work. Another thought is that you may have a hardware problem with the hard disk. Perhaps it can't write the allocation info to the portion of the disk where that info is stored. Try running SCANDISK. StuRat (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I will try that. Thanks for the help! PabloClark (talk) 01:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

February 6

Switching keyboards in Windows Vista

I recently installed WinVista Business (32) on a computer in an office here. It's English-language Windows, with a standard US keyboard, but because "here" is Japan, I set it up to have the Japanese IME (i.e. the option of inputting Japanese), and of course to be in the Japanese time zone. Perhaps it's for this reason that sometimes Windows "thinks" it is or should be in Japanese; e.g. Gnumeric installed itself with a Japanese-language menu system, without my asking it to do so (and with no obvious way of changing to English). Today Windows announced that it needed various updates, so I stupidly agreed, and it downloaded and installed them. As a result it thinks that it has a Japanese-market keyboard attached. (Thus for example the apostrophe is Shift-7, which I only remember as I happen to have a Japanese-market keyboard right next to me. Just typing this message is a pain, as parentheses etc. are all in different places.)

I want to change back. But how?

Yes, "Regional and Language Options" in Control Panel does have the tab "Keyboards and Languages", which has "Change keyboards..." (and nothing else). But this is merely about inputting languages on your given physical keyboard. Meanwhile, "Keyboard" in Control Panel has "Keyboard Properties", and within this is "Hardware". This tells me that the "Manufacturer" is "(Standard keyboards)" (actually it's Compaq) but it says nothing about a Japanese layout. "Driver" offers "HID Keyboard Device", which lists kbdclass.sys and kbdhid.sys, which Explorer shows me as dated 2 February, which is when I set up the system.

Um, WtF am I supposed to do?

My problem isn't Japanese specific. If anyone knows how to change from a QWERTY to an AZERTY (or Dvorak) keyboard, or vice versa, that I think would answer my question.

(And no, I don't have a backup. I have a freshly burned Clonezilla Live CD ready for that job, and was going to back up immediately after updating Windows. Duh.) Tama1988 (talk) 08:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

There's Microsoft's own guide to switching to dvorak (applies to others too I think) at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/dvorak.aspx. Maybe somebody else here would know why vista decided to switch the layout in the first place? --194.197.235.61 (talk) 10:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit conflict! Thank you, 194.197! In the meantime. . . .

Extrapolating from the advice here (for installing Dvorak on XP), I installed an English-US keyboard. In "Text services and Input Languages" I now see:

EN English (United States)

Keyboard

• US
• United States-International

JP Japanese (Japan)

Keyboard

• Microsoft Office IME 2007

This seems to conflate hardware and software. And sure enough in reality it does conflate the two. I have a choice:

• Type as expected (e.g. ":" on the keytop brings ":") but not Japanese script;
• Type in roman letters or Japanese script (though plenty of characters are in the wrong places, e.g. ":" on the keytop brings "+").

Therefore typing Japanese script is most laborious (quite unlike the ease with which it was possible just 24 hours ago on the same computer, running Vista, with the same keyboard).

I have one [physical] keyboard. It's a US keyboard. I want to install Microsoft Office IME 2007 for it, and not for the Japanese keyboard that I don't have.

When I highlight either "EN English (United States)" or the line "Keyboard" immediately below this, the "Add" button is operable. However, I can't add "Microsoft Office IME 2007": this choice is bold, presumably meaning that it's already present.

I'm trying hard not to say rude things about Windows Vista.... Tama1988 (talk) 10:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. I definitely had exactly the same problem when I was in Japan last year. I know your pain. But I cannot seem to remember how I solved the problem... I'll keep thinking about it, and if it comes to me, I'll let you know. Good luck! がんばって！ LordAmeth (talk) 11:30, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! What irritates me immensely is that it was working well yesterday, and then Windows so "updated" it. And what I find bizarre is that all these menus seem to confuse two quite different things: (1) what physical keyboard you have and how it works for Roman letters, and (2) what extras (e.g. Japanese script) you want for it. (Surely French speakers should be able to type Japanese on AZERTY keyboards, etc.) Well, I have to leave the office now; I really hope I get a reply during my night, otherwise my fellow-users of this room will have it in for me. Tama1988 (talk) 11:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Once you get the update sorted out you might want to look at the Advanced Key Settings tab in the Language Bar settings. Certain key combinations can be used to switch keyboards. I had a similar problem with the language & keyboard settings apparently changing spontaneously, until I realised that I was sometimes lingering on some keys while typing. Astronaut (talk) 00:43, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but I have to get things sorted out first.

Four pages about installation for Vista -- first, second, third,fourth -- all show that once you've correctly installed the wherewithal for a non-Roman script you end up with two (or more) "Installed Services" (under "Text Services and Input Languages"), each of which has a "Keyboard"; for English and Japanese, you prototypically get:

EN English (United States)

Keyboard

• US

JP Japanese (Japan)

Keyboard

• Microsoft IME

As far as I can see, there's nothing indication there of which keyboard layout you have; I mean, nothing to tell you whether (for example) shift-semicolon is colon (US) or plus (Japanese).

What's interesting is that in the first and second of these links we see "Japanese (Japan)|Keyboard|Microsoft IME" being selected for the installation process, but not also "Japanese (Japan)|Keyboard|Japan"; in the third, it is selected (by mistake?). Anyway, the result of the installation procedures looks (in "Text Services and Input Languages") pretty much indistinguishable from what I have here.

(Oh, at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are rather more informative-looking pages about XP, if anyone's interested.)

I can't think that I can be helped by installing anything afresh. Rather, I want to uninstall whatever's specific to Japanese, and then to reinstall it with fingers crossed. Windows lets me uninstall, but for reinstallation I fear I'd need the distribution CD/DVD -- which I don't have, as the dual Windows system (you make a one-time selection between Japanese and English; the one you don't want is deleted) was placed on the hard drive by an IBM serviceman. Tama1988 (talk) 05:44, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Fixed (or perhaps resolved) thanks to Oda Mari's pointer (on my talk page) to this informative page. REGEDIT: it's one useful part of Windows. I think I shall now drink a beer. Tama1988 (talk) 07:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Voip

how can we implement mobile to mobile phone calls via internet —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nidheeshks (talk • contribs) 10:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Have you read our VOIP article ? What more do you want to know ? StuRat (talk) 15:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

ymmetrical face

is it ture that, Contrary to popular belief, if you actually encountered a perfectly symmetrical face, you would be repulsed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 11:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

What -- a face with its right side completely matching the left? Why would you be repulsed? Is this some kind of an urban legend? Let me put it this way: if it was true, it would be easy to reproduce such a face and make it look completely lifelike, and see if it repulsed people. In fact, faces like that have undoubtedly been produced already...

...in fact, I just made one myself, and it took me about a minute in Photoshop. Take a look. I used the image here as a source, simply because it was the first image that popped up when I did a Google image search for "face" -- it's not a photograph, but a composite image of 32 male faces, an "average" face, but that shouldn't matter. Do you feel repulsed? I don't. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I do, thanks for comfirming my theory. I'm sure it's just an urban legend for most other people though —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 13:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You're repulsed by that? Well, okay then. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

There's the theory that a minor imperfection in the appearance makes one look even better, as in women who put fake moles on their faces in former times. However, at least for me, it doesn't make them look more attractive. StuRat (talk) 15:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

This effect (well, not this exactly, but pretty much) is called the uncanny valley effect. flaminglawyer 21:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea why this is in the computing desk but anyway. AFAIK, nost studies show the more symmetrical a face, the more attractive it is. We even have an article Symmetry (physical attractiveness). I'm not sure whether a perfectly symmetrical face will problematic but I doubt it, there are various ways, e.g. highlighted above we can get a highly symmetrical face and I believe there are used in some of the experiments. I don't think the uncanny valley thing is that relevant, it's describing things we know and associate consciously as unreal. Actually more accurately it's desribing things which are almost human but not close enough for us to regard them as human. Edit, remind myself to always read article before linking

"Measures of human body symmetry correlate with attractiveness, but studies manipulating human face images report a preference for asymmetry. These results may reflect unnatural feature shapes and changes in skin textures introduced by image processing. When the shape of facial features is varied (with skin textures held constant), increasing symmetry of face shape increases ratings of attractiveness for both male and female faces. These findings imply facial symmetry may have a positive impact on mate selection in humans."

So it sounds like you were almost right. Facial symmetry is believed to be important, and perfect facial symmetry probably even better but imperfect facial symmetry is not and in fact worse. The problem is testing this. You can't do subjective modifications to try and improve the face to make it seem more perfectly symmetrical since it could easily be you're just making the face seem better in other ways. So it turns out the uncanny valley is more relevant then I guessed (I'm not that surprised that artificial symmetry isn't preferred actually just didn't occur to me it's what we're talking about). P.S. Obviously since most of the imperfect symmetry images were produced with computers the desk is more relevant then I thought but I still feel science would be better Nil Einne (talk) 13:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd wondered about why it was asked here as well, but it led to the interesting result of Captain Disdain creating such a face on a computer. I imagine if asked on the Science Desk we would have had answers about the evolutionary pressure to find fit mates, and symmetry of the face being one indicator of fitness. If asked on the Humanities Desk we might have had references to symmetrical and non-symmetrical faces in artwork, and aesthetics in various cultures. If asked on the Math Desk we might have had discussions of X- and Y-symmetry. If asked on the Entertainment Desk we might have had refs to famous actors with symmetrical and non-symmetrical faces. If asked on the Language Desk we might have had some foreign language words for beauty that also mean symmetrical. The Misc Desk might have produced some personal opinions on which is better. StuRat (talk) 15:31, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, honestly, I'd probably have created that mug on any desk. I, uh, didn't really even realize this was the Computer desk; if I had, I would've moved the question elsewhere... so really, that's kind of my mistake. In any case, I have a hard time believing that a perfectly symmetrical face would cause revulsion. I mean, they might feel unsettled, but the uncanny valley effect -- if it exists, and that's debatable (though I certainly feel stirrings of something akin to that when viewing things like this!) -- doesn't really cover that, I think. In fact, a further experiment: here's another version of the face. It's very slightly different from the previous one, and it's no longer symmetrical -- but chances are you can't tell the difference without looking very carefully or comparing the two. Is that less repulsive than the previous one? -- Captain Disdain (talk) 04:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Dial-up speed

Roughly how long would it take to download 1Mb of data using a 56 kbit/s modem. I've read the article and similar articles, but I still cannot figure out the speed in practical terms. Thanks.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

1 megabit is 1,048,576 bits, and 56k modem can download 56,000 bits per second, so the time in seconds is 1048576/56000 = 18.7 seconds (assuming by Mb you meant megabit - for 1 megabyte, multiply this by 8). That's the theoretical minimum - in real life it's likely to take longer — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 12:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

A couple things come into play that affect the real download time vs the theoretical maximum. In North America, most "56k" actually have a maximum connection of 53k, so that's about a 5% decrease in throughput right off the top. No matter where you are, it takes a very "clean" line to achieve the top speed. The protocol overhead must also be taken into account. Assuming some kind of TCP/IP connection, each individual packet will have a number of bytes attached to it which are used to control the transmission, so a 1MB file will actually result in more than 1MB of data being transferred. And of course there's traffic on the internet to consider, loads on the server and the client, etc. I Googled "calculate download speeds" and found any number of online calculators, two out of the three I tried came up with 2 minutes 29 seconds for 1 MB on a 56k modem, one of them was 3:09, but none of the three I looked at gave any information about their methodology. The 2:29 corresponds to Matt's calculation (18.7 * 8 / 60 = 2.49). So roughly two and a half to three minutes, given ideal conditions. --LarryMac | Talk 14:15, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

My old dialup used to run at 7 kbit/s, and that was near the telephone exchange. Thank goodness for broadband —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I was on 56k dial up until about a year ago and I remember it taking about 5 mins to download a typical 4-5 megabyte MP3 file. Astronaut (talk) 00:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite many of the at least more modern phone modems support standards for data compression on the fly, which could give actual linespeeds above 56 kbits/second if the information entropy is low. See ITU-T V-Series Recommendations#Error control and data compression. TERdON (talk) 02:04, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Technically, the actual linespeed is still limited by actual linespeed constraints, however the apparent linespeed can indeed be increased by compression (though this is generally less valuable on larger files because they are more likely to already be compressed). – 74  14:58, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

adobe flash player

From where can I download adobe flash player to install in another computer which has no internet connection. thank you. 124.43.56.205 (talk) 12:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/ — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 13:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Windows' emulation

Why is so difficult to run Windows' games using an emulator? (like Wine) Somewhere I read something about access to the hardware, but I want a more detailed answer. --Mr.K. (talk) 15:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

First of all, Wine is not an emulator. Second, it isn't that difficult to run windows games in wine; you just need the correct libraries installed in your OS (i am assuming you use linux) to run stuff. For example, running a DirectX game in Wine will use OpenGL/Mesa3D libraries to generate the 3D graphics. I'm not sure what difficulties you may be experiencing with running windows games using wine, most work perfectly (or with only small problems).  Buffered Input Output 17:48, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Windows APIs are undocumented and buggy, so it is hard for people to re-implement the exact behavior in open-source. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 19:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, coping Windows APIs is probably illegal or you have to have a Windows license... :(--Mr.K. (talk) 12:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Legitimate and legal FREE photo editing software download?

Hi, I am not an expert photographer but I do like digital photography and I am busy scanning my old emulsion pics into my computer. But quite a few need to be cropped in some way to eliminate unwanted people, buildings etc. None of my computer-supplied stuff will allow me to do that and I know I can go out and buy some sophisticated software but it would only get used for this one-off exercise as I don't ever intend buying expensive camera film again. Is there a legal download that I could access that would allow me such limited use? Thanks in anticipation. 92.20.48.243 (talk) 16:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

GIMP seems to be what you're looking for.  GARDEN  16:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If you have a PC, Paint.NET might be what you're looking for. It's a little easier to use than GIMP, and for your purposes should be fine. --140.247.240.142 (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

And the free software that is supplied with many printers often allows cropping etc. Dbfirs 21:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

If you want a photo manager with some built in editing tools, Picasa is a good choice. 118.92.150.115 (talk) 23:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's not as feature rich as GIMP, but it has some good basic retouching tools. ---J.S (T/C/WRE)

Have a look at Irfanview and Xnview although I dont think they do retouching - try GIMP. There is a lot of graphics freeware available. 78.146.185.139 (talk) 12:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

ASP alternatives

Hello Wikipedia,

i'd like to add a form to my website (nothing fancy, just a space where users can input some key information) Anyway, I'm told that the best way to do this (to recieve the imputted information) is by using Microsoft ASP which is available free on the more expensive versions of Vista. Sadly, my budget dictated that I bought the cheapy cheapy version whcih, apparently, doesn't support it at all.. Does any one if there are any alternatives out there which one might acquire without spending any money?

Thanks81.140.37.58 (talk) 17:40, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You don't need ASP yourself as such. The key information is whether your host supports it. There's tons of free software for developing ASP, but actually I think your best bet would be to get a simple email form script of the Internet - and that wouldn't require you to have ASP at all (yay). This one doesn't look too bad, but if you don't like that particular one there are thousands out there. Let us know how you get on! - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 17:56, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

There are a million other scripting languages out there that don't cost a thing. PHP is very popular; Ruby is popular amongst a certain section of geeks. I'd go with PHP myself—almost all hosts support it, and it's easy to use and learn. --140.247.240.142 (talk) 19:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

One other thing about ASP is that is it rarely supported by free hosting companies. Astronaut (talk) 00:22, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are using a free hosting company, they might have some pre-built solutions for you, which actually might be the easiest to implement. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 09:21, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Guys (Jarry -that form you suggested looks fine so thanks!). Just a quick follow up question then - the (not-free) web hosting company i'm using (123-reg.co.uk) supports 'CGI scripting'. I've done a quick google search and would i be correct in thinking that CGI is the generic name for all these langauges (PHP, ASP, Ruby etc....)? So if i used a form on my site using any of these languages, it would work? many thanks!81.140.37.58 (talk) 14:08, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, cgi just means they support scripting, but without more info you don't know what language of scripting they support. Looking at their website, they seem like they only support Perl unless you get a "WebFusion" package that can include PHP. As far as cheap servers go, that's what I'd consider to be pretty minimal scripting support. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't usually pimp websites, but if your host does not support the features your looking for you might find http://www.formmail.com/ as a useful low-cost alternative. The script they use is freely available from http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html and would possibly be compatible with the service you have. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:44, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

February 7

Multichannel audio from computer to amp

Hi. I have a rather basic amp that supports Dolby Digital. However, I am unable to get any audio from my computer to turn on the "Dolby Digital" mode of the amp. My sound card configuration has an area which allows one to test "which of the following formats your Digital Receiver is able to decode". It lists DTS Audio, Dolby Digital, and Microsoft WMA Pro Audio. When I test Dolby Digital, I see that my receiver goes into that mode (and that is the only test that succeeds). However, absolutely no media that I have played on my computer has put the receiver into DD mode. Is this because soundtracks are more often in DTS now? Is there some way in software to convert the audio signal for my amp (in real time?)? Does anyone have an example audio/media file they could point me to, encoded in DD5.1, that I could play on my system to confirm that my hardware/software will send the DD5.1 signal when it's available? Thanks...... Birchcliff (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, this is because your digital audio source has to be encoded using DD. There are some DVD's that have only the DD and some only DTs, some have both and some have only 2-channel stereo. I'm sure if you find a DVD that has DD-encoded audio, your DVD playing software (PowerDVD etc.) will send the correct signals to your amp to activate it. Sometimes this can even be forced using a setup function on your DVD content menu. Mass produced DVD players have this via setup functions that force one or the other, and I've even seem some that downsample from DTS to DD if your amp can't handle DTS. Of course, normal computer media such as mp3, wav, etc. are not DD-encoded and as such will only play 2-channel sources using a forced upsampling/emulation of 6 channel sound using software/soundcard setup. Certain divx movies (I think version 6 onwards) support 6 channel encoding, but I think you'd need some fancy AC3/FFD tweaking to actually activate DD on your amp... Sandman30s (talk) 13:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

What's the best way to share files between computers?

I'm not sure if what I'm talking about is a server, but I want to be able to have a continuously running computer at home which I can access from e.g. my school, my friend's place or China (I primarily use Linux, so naturally I would like to do this on a Linux OS). An example of what I'd like to do would for example be to be at my girlfriend's place and be able to access my music or movies from her place. If possible I also want to be able to add more files to my computer and changing existing files from afar. I heard you should use something like SSH for this but I know embarrassingly little about that. Can anyone tell me a good place to start? Do I need to pay money for a domain? --BiT (talk) 04:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a lot of question wrapped up into a neat little package. Starting from the "client" computer, you first need a way to identify your server (which is an appropriate term here). If your ISP supplies a static IP address then you can just use that ID; if not, you'll probably want to use one of the online dynamic DNS services, which allows your computer to post its current IP address in a known location. So, once you have the "address" of your server, you need to ensure that your messages can get through. If you have a router on your internet connection, you'll need to enable port forwarding of the port that you decide to use (which is related to which software you want to run). Now that you can send messages to your server, you need software on the server to listen for the messages. An ssh daemon is a good choice; ssh encrypts your communications, allows you to open a remote terminal on the server, allows you to ssh tunnel many other services, and has free clients for most any OS. Finally, we can get to the part where you install file sharing software on the server. Samba is a good choice for interfacing with Windows machines—it functions like a Windows "network share". From the client machine, you'll need to open an ssh tunnel for access to the samba service, at which point you will be able to access your shared files. Another option is to set up a VPN (some routers support openVPN with DD-WRT firmware), which, once connected, allows the client to communicate with the server as if they were on the same network segment (allowing, for instance, the use of Samba mentioned above). – 74  05:25, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite a lot of computer jargon you've got there :) even tough I'm rather computer literate I'm still a newbie at all this server stuff so posting some good tutorials or tips on how to do this would be helpful. Before some smarty pants gives me this link, I have looked for "How to make your own server", but didn't find what I was looking for. --BiT (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

An easier route might be to set up an SFTP server. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Easier in what way? --BiT (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest a portable hard drive. They come in big enough sizes to store all your music and loads of films, and are small enough to fit in your pocket.

I have a lot of portable hard drives and I do store all my music and films on them, but what's the fun in that. ;) --BiT (talk) 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The above "jargon-y" post, as you call it, is most of what you want to do. Instead of Samba, you might want to just enable ftpd (the FTP server) on your linux computer at home, and on your router, open up the ports that ftpd is listening on, so you can "get in" from the outside. Note your IP address. It'll be numeric. Then you can FTP to your computer from anywhere and upload or download (or delete...) files. A few bad things about this include (a) your IP address might change at the whim of your ISP. You might not care about this. You could also get clever and write a little daemon that runs continuously on your linux box and uploads its current IP address to Google Docs every hour or something, so you could always check the docs to find out the current IP address. (b) With your FTP ports open it's likely they'll be found by bots, which will try and hack the password. Be clever about your usernames and passwords. Tempshill (talk) 03:45, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Lets summarize the steps you need to take, and add some links:

1. First off, you want to install a Dynamic DNS client. Otherwise you'd need to know what IP-address your computer has in order to connect to it. Those can change often and are anyways hard to remember. If you use a dynamic dns service, your computer will have a web-address, like "something.no-ip.org" if you use the No-IP service (I've used it in the past and is very happy with it). A guide for setting up No-IP on your computer can be found here (if you use Ubuntu, otherwise google is your friend). It's very easy (the website has changed since the guide was written, but it's still not very hard), and very quick.
2. Now, you need to decide what service you want to use for accessing your files. To keep it simple just for now, lets use ftp. If you use Ubuntu, install the package "vsftpd" (type "sudo apt-get install vsftpd" in the terminal). Now, you will automatically be sharing everything contained in the "/home/ftp" folder.
3. Lastly, you need to forward the correct ports on your router. The ports you should open for ftp are 20 and 21. If you need help with that, let us know.

Now it should work. Go to another computer, type in ftp://[whateveraddressyouhave].no-ip.org (or whatever address your dynamic dns provider gave you) and you should see the contents of the folder /home/ftp.

You might decide that ftp isn't what you want, you want something else. You can try out SSH (which is a way so you can log in to a remote computer), Samba or even just installing a webserver, like Apache (it's much easier to do than you think on Ubuntu). You can easily google tutorials for how to install that stuff (it's essentially just a matter of installing the right package, it usually just works after that), there's plenty of them. If you need anymore help, just come back :) Belisarius (talk) 08:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to try this :) thanks for the extremely detailed comments, they're almost a complete tutorial. I'll ask again here if I run into any problems. --BiT (talk) 14:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

GIMP (zooming into selection)

In Gimp 2.6, is there a way to easily zoom so an area you have selected takes up the whole window. Thanks, 82.32.53.160 (talk) 09:26, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of a "zoom in on selected area" tool. It isn't very useful compared to the existing zoom tool (the magnifying glass in the toolbox). Select the magnifying glass. Then, click on the top-left corner of the area you want to zoom. Without letting up from the mouse button, drag a rectangle shape. When you let up off the mouse button, it will zoom in on the area you selected with the magnifying tool. -- kainaw™ 23:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If you hold down CTRL (or was it alt? umm) and move the track wheel on your mouse it will zoom in or out. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Desktop Auto-Refresh in Vista

Just since yesterday, my Vista (Home Premium) has stopped displaying new icons and files in the desktop. I have to right-click and refresh every time I make any sort of change. This is a sudden thing, as I have not played around with any settings, nor have I downloaded any new software (besides VLC Player - but this has been happening since before then). Can anyone help out here, and show me how to sort this out (I'll be honest and say I don't want to reboot - only as a LAST resort). TIA. --KageTora (talk) 11:27, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you want to reboot? This is the sort of glitch that probably would be fixed on a reboot, it's certainly not a Windows feature (there's a policy that that can hide all icons, but not disable the auto-refresh). However, you could attempt to restart Explorer, the main Windows interface. The easiest way to do this is to logoff and then log back on again, but if that's not an option for some reason you could take the more drastic option to kill it. To do this press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to get up the Task Manager and change to the "Processes" tab. Click "Image Name" to sort them alphabeticallly and right click any copies of explorer.exe and select "End Process". When you have killed them all DON'T close the task manager down, but instead from the File Menu select "File" menu and "New Task / Run". Type in: explorer - This will reload explorer. Some icons from the system tray may not display properly and I really would recommend rebooting as the primary method of seeing if this fixes it. ZX81 ^talk 12:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Database question

I`m interested in starting a database to keep track of my purchases. It is entirely for personal use, which means it would be preferable if I didn`t have to place it online somewhere. I would like to store it on my own HDD and access it directly, via a graphic interface. -- 58.89.206.76 (talk) 13:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

How in particular do you intend to use this data? A simple solution would be to track the values in a spreadsheet, but that would limit your ability to do data-mining and report generation (though such data could be imported into a database at a later date). – 74  15:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. A spreadsheet is likely a better option for most operations. If you want to do odd things like find the total of all money spent on lunches at one particular restaurant on Tuesdays, then a db might make sense. If you're using a Windows computer, you likely already have Microsoft Excel as part of the Microsoft Office suite. StuRat (talk) 15:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Even then, a little familiarity with Excel can get that kind of data (I use it for this purpose at tax time all the time—it's easy to say, "sort this by place I spent the money" and then take that smaller subset and say "sort by date"). Personally I think a db would be overkill for such a situation—the opportunity costs in learning how to use it and setting it up far outweigh the small performance benefits in this case. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:41, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

If you don't have Microsoft Office (or if you prefer to avoid Excel for some reason), there is a list of spreadsheet programs in the spreadsheet article, including several free alternatives. (The reference desk does not endorse any specific software.) – 74  15:46, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I sometimes try to use somehting for personal use just so i have the experience of using it. Maybe he wants to do the same thing so he set a simple goal of setting up and maintaining a database just for the sole purpoose of being able to say that he has experience in doing so. To answer your question; Off the top of my head i can only think of OpenOffice as being a free solution, but you can aslo try Microsoft Sql, But i quest it really all depends on your goals. – Elliott  20:10, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

You should use Excel. Microsoft at one point found that a primary use of Excel for most people is "keeping lists of things", which is what I mostly use it for, too. Or you could use the free, inferior equivalent that's part of OpenOffice. Tempshill (talk) 03:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Photoshop layers

The other day, I'm pretty sure I saw a "automatically select layer" option somewhere in Photoshop. It seems I've turned it off, and now can't find it to enable it. Can anyone help? Cheers. Cycle~ (talk) 15:33, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

When you click on the selection tool (or press v), a check box appears in the top panel for automatically selecting layers.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 17:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Aha! Cheers. It seems I'd turned it on, but wanted it off. That's probably the only place I didn't look – I couldn't think of any search terms (for using the help file) that weren't ridiculously ambiguous. Cycle~ (talk) 18:48, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Not a problem. Cheers.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 00:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

America's Army

Is it possible to play America's Army offline?--KageTora (talk) 15:52, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I dont think so, From what i can tell it looks like its an online game. – Elliott  20:02, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that way. You spend two hours downloading various files and installing them, and you end up having to play online, anyway.--KageTora (talk) 23:17, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Those files are for 3d rendering, you download them and install them so that you dont have to download and install them every time you want to play, it makes it easer on the end user(you) and the servers (to try and save on bandwidth) 01:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by E smith2000 (talk • contribs)

Mater to Energy conversion (Moved)

Moved to Reference_desk/Science#Mater_to_Energy_conversion

how good is pentium 4 at 3 ghz?

I am thinking of buying a used computer which is a pentium 4 at 3 ghz (with 1 gb of ram). What percentage of the performance could I get of a modern core 2 solo processor? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 19:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like my old computer. I use to have an emachine with a pent 4 / 3.06 Ghz with 1 gig of ram. I upgraded to a newer computer running an AMD 4200 / 2.4Ghz dual core with 2 gigs of ram, i did notice an increase in performance but that may be because i also upgraded to a raid 0, a better motherboard, faster networking card, and a much much better video card. I suppose it really depends on what you plan on doing with your computer. – Elliott  19:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

It's impossible to answer that question accurately since it will depend on many variables. What app are you talking about? What else are you going to change when you upgrade? Etc. However it is rather likely you will notice a big difference in performance if your app is CPU limited and this is even if your app is not multithreaded. Nil Einne (talk) 05:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

For anything short of gaming, graphics design and video editing the P4 3ghz will be an acceptable computer. Stick with XP or linux however. Vista won't be a good experience on a P4. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

transparent fill in Paint.NET

Resolved

In Paint.NET how do you use the fill tool with transparency? For example removing a white background when pasting an image over another image? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:29, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know Paint.NET very well but generally you don't fill with transparency; you use something like the magic wand selection tool (which selects based on color, just like Fill tools do), and then you delete the pixels, leaving transparency behind. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:42, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes that's exactly what I was looking for, thanks so much

would a pentium 4 era motherboard would have USB 1 or USB 2

I'm thinking of buying a used computer which has a pentium IV 3ghz processor in it. Would that motherboard have a USB 1 or a USB 2 in it? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 21:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC) also - it has 4 memory slots. What do you think the maximum amount of RAM is that it would support? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 21:30, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

We would need to know more about the motherboard or the computer, like a model number or something. But i can tell you that Windows supports a max of 4gigs of ram. If this computer does not have USB 2.0 you can always buy a PCI card that does have USB 2.0– Elliott  21:47, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Editing conflict :) Regarding the USB 2, probably, but it could go either way. Although USB 2 was out by the time the 3GHz chips came along, that doesn't necessarily mean the manufacturer put it into the computer. You could always add a USB2 PCI card if needed though. For the memory it could be anything from 512Mb to ~4Gb, quite probably around 2Gb. Without knowing the manufacturer/number there's no way to tell, but if you do have those details you can go to Crucial.com and run it through their site (or even better use the memory scanner if you have the actual PC). ZX81 ^talk 21:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Virulent?

My favourite media news site, IGN, and all its affiliates give me a "Warning, this site may harm your computer" message from McAfee (my antivirus program). I use IGN and Rotten Tomatoes for everything, so I was wondering if this warning actually has any merit, as in does anyone else have the same problem? Is IGN actually distributing malware? BeefJeaunt (talk) 21:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Probably not, but their ad servers probably do questionable things with cookies (tracking browsing behavior across sites, for example), which is probably what is setting it off. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:55, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

uTorrent Download Location

What is the default download location for uTorrent? I have just downloaded a file, and can't find it anywhere, even after using Explorer to search.--KageTora (talk) 23:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry. I found it.--KageTora (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

it was in the last place you looked, wasn't it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.124.81.87 (talk) 00:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, who'd have thought it would be in a folder called 'Downloads'? You'd think it'd be easier than that!--KageTora (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

February 8

mozilla firefox

hi can anyone please tell me if mozilla firefox has firewall and anti virus with it as people are say diffent things cannot get a straight answer thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raggy*123 (talk • contribs) 03:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it does not. It's a web browser, not an all-purpose internet security suite. Algebraist 03:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It does have a very basic virus scanner for downloads, but it's hardly adequate. Firefox is the safest browser while actually viewing webpages, and it blocks known attack pages, but I'd suggest getting something like AVG, if you're looking for anti-virus/malware/spyware software. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 03:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

If you want an anti-virus program, consult this PC World article first. AVG tends to rank near the bottom of comparisons, but I guess low cost and word of mouth have made it popular. I use BitDefender Free Edition. That's free and has good detection rates.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 03:43, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That article *is* a couple of years old, so I'm not sure how accurate it would be today... also, it didn't seem to take into account the way some scanners (like McAfee) hog system resources. I could barely even play solitaire with it on my (three-year-old) computer when it was scanning! --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 03:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That's true. I usually disable all the real-time junk and just scan manually from time to time. McAfee is especially bad. I read that BitDefender and Norton scan faster than it. I also read an article from Consumer Reports published in September, 2007 that ranked AVG and Avast at the bottom. You really get what you pay for when it comes to anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 04:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You do? But just a little earlier you yourself praised BitDefender Free Edition (for which you pay nothing), and I've seen Symantec utilities (which don't cost nothing, but which admittedly could have been misinstalled) make computers run painfully slowly. Morenoodles (talk) 05:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I've never used Symantec Utilities, but the key usually is disabling all of the programs that start automatically after you install an anti-virus program. It usually doesn't matter what anti-virus suite you use, because they usually add five or so services that start when the computer starts. I've noticed it with McAfee, Norton, Trend Micro, and BitDefender. You disable them inside services.msc and msconfig and then start them when you need to run a scan. The only good anti-virus program that hasn't done this to me is Kaspersky, which I liked very much. I guess BitDefender free edition is an exception to the rule I stated, but 99.9% of the free anti-virus programs I've encountered were either ineffective (e.g., AVG) or viruses themselves.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 05:39, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense. Yes, once in my life I got infected with malware and immediately I was advised by Windows [not!] to install such-and-such a piece of "antivirus software". Since there are limits to my stupidity, I responded by hitting Alt-F4 a lot of times. Morenoodles (talk) 05:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Since when did Firefox include a virus scanner? It can use another virus scanner, but it doesn't include one! --wj32 ^t/c 08:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hang on... OK, ignore me. You're right, I'm thinking of a certain very handy extension. Sometimes I wish the extensions would just be included with Firefox... FF does block some attack pages (emphasis on some), though. --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 20:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

white text-ifying...

The Memphis Tigers Wikia is having some problems. Sometimes, all the text (but not links) will randomly turn white. I haven't edited Monaco.css and Common.css, and no one else has either, but it still turns white. Then, a couple hours/minutes later, it'll (just as randomly) turn back to gray (the color that it's supposed to be). Clearing the server cache doesn't help. Clearing your browser cache doesn't help. Restarting your comp doesn't help. Can anyone solve this puzzle? Yes, I've confirmed that it's not just me seeing it, it's everyone. flaminglawyer 03:11, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, when I said "I haven't edited Monaco.css and Common.css, and no one else has either [...]," I meant that it wasn't caused by anyone actually editing those pages to make the text white. flaminglawyer 03:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... I don't know (looks fine when I look at it), but you might consider using something like the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar to diagnose the problem (it'll let you instantly view whatever styles are affecting any given element, which could help you pinpoint the problem when it happens). Off the cuff, it sounds like a stylesheet is not loading correctly/completely or something like Javascript is trying to dynamically play with a stylesheet declaration and failing. The fact that both the CSS and the Javascript trigger multiple errors in Firefox is not a great sign, off the bat. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Eh, I still have cache issues, but the white text is gone. flaminglawyer 22:22, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Limewire Alternative?

What sort of alternatives are there out there from Limewire? I've used Limewire a few times (by "a few", I mean three), but I've heard it's not exactly the safest thing out there. Why is it unsafe, and what safer alternatives are there? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 03:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

See the LimeWire article. One danger is that, according to that article, 30% of the shared files out there contain malware. Using a different client would not change this risk. Tempshill (talk) 03:47, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

An alternative would be FrostWire, although, as that guy pointed out, this doesn't change the risk of malware. flaminglawyer 04:00, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

If you download illegal programs willy-nilly, you run two risks. The first is that you'll get sued, which is a small but not non-existent possibility. The second is that the program you download will have a virus. Which is a much larger possibility.

Not that I endorse software piracy, but you're better off with systems like torrents that require multiple people to be constantly hosting it and have advanced commenting features, so that if something has a virus you'll probably have some indication way in advance. But that doesn't help you with the illegality problem. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 04:44, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Illegal doesn't mean unsafe. Legal doesn't mean safe. I don't even agree that you can say more "illegal" programs are unsafe than "legal" programs - aren't viruses illegal anyway? --wj32 ^t/c 08:11, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not trying to make the safety distinction based solely on the legal status. I'm just trying to explain it in a clear way so that someone who is not computer savvy understands the issues. But it must be admitted that you're going to find more viruses trolling in illegal programs than in legal ones (in legal ones, you're likely to find other sorts of malware—specifically spyware and things of that nature—but not so much viruses). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 16:05, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry about me not being computer-savvy, trust me, I just don't know much about file-sharing programs. That being said, what do you mean by "legal" vs. "illegal"? The actual programs are neither legal nor illegal, it's the files you're downloading that can be legal/illegal. (unless I'm missing something here) I suppose I should clarify a bit more, now that I've read everything people have said here... is there an option like Limewire (not torrents) that scans files for malware/etc. when you download it? Or is there a particular anti-virus/whatever program I could get that is particularly useful in that regard? --Alinnisawest,^{Dalek Empress} (extermination requests here) 19:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

And I agree that torrents are much safer than that Gnutella crap. Search for anything in Gnutella and you'll get BS results like "Windows 7 Crack shaking orgasm". --wj32 ^t/c 08:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Assuming P2P program is being used for legal purposes, I've found Bearshare to have more content than limewire. I also concur that bittorrents tend to be more reliable for specific downloads. — Ched (talk) 08:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Excel and negative exponential functions

Hi, I'm trying to fit a regression line to data exhibiting a negative exponential pattern (specifically temperature of a cold object versus time, equilibriating to room temperature), but Excel keeps insisting on a positive exponential function! Are there any workarounds? 199.111.183.148 (talk) 03:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, x^(-y) = ¹/_(x^y), so try that in Excel and see if it works. If you want to list the specific formula you're using, we can be more specific in our answers. StuRat (talk) 16:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You could subtract the temperatures from room temperature. Ctourneur (talk) 22:45, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

XP desktop icons

I have Windows XP SP 2 and the text field under the desktop icons are for some reason not transparent and have blue rectangles behind the text... I've seen XP desktops with transparent text backgrounds, so what do I need to do to make it transparent? 71.219.55.205 (talk) 04:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Control Panel + Display + Appearance tab + Advanced button + Icon is where you would go to change the background color for the icon text. The background color box is set to transparent and grayed out to prevent any change, for me, but perhaps it's not for you. StuRat (talk) 16:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It's been a while since I've used this, but I believe that what controls that option is something in the "Performance" dialog, which is a tab accessed from the "Advanced" button on the "Settings" tab of the Display dialog. --Tardis (talk) 00:10, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

OPENGL

Hi Steve I wa't to know that can game in opengl programming can be made using 3D image file only and if yes how —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.163.45.212 (talk) 04:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

LMAO - I can't understand what he's asking, but he sure does know who to ask :) flaminglawyer 05:58, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

No, if I'm right in thinking that you want to make a game entirely from a 3D model... --wj32 ^t/c 08:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

OpenGL is a library of computer programming functions. Think of it as an add-on to a computer programming language like C++ or Java. To use it you will need to already know how to use a computer programming language.

If you're not interested in learning a computer programming language, you might consider making a mod of an existing game. Many games like Halflife 2 come with an editor you could use to make your own levels, or even your own games. APL (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually I want to use image file for stationery objects so it as to make it easy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.163.45.88 (talk) 17:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle and Rollback

I have just recently downloaded the firefox browser and enabled twinkle on my preferences. I now notice that when I look at diffs there appears to be the choice of using rollback, yet I see that according to Wikipedia:Rollback feature permission is needed to enable this feature. I havn't actualy used the rollback and may in fact be unable to do so despite appearances. My feeling is I would be unable to use it but would appreciate it if someone could answer this puzzle for me. Titch Tucker (talk) 11:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't speak mater of factually, but it seems that TW uses a script that simply reverts to the previous version (perhaps restores is a more accurate description). I notice that when you do get rollback, it adds another rollback link though. When I first saw it (after installing Twinkle, I just went to a sandbox sub-page within my user space and tried it - it seemed to work, and I just went on from there. I think (but am not sure) that the difference is that when you use the "real" rollback, that the change isn't kept in page history. This is all my own original research, so take it with a grain of salt though. — Ched (talk) 12:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe that Twinkle gives you the rollback option, but there might be diferences, like Ched said. To use Twinkle, you don't need to be authorized to use rollback. I use it all the time, and can't use regular rollback. To use Huggle, you need to be allowed to use regular rollback. For future reference, questions like this should be asked at the help desk, or at the Twinkle talk page. Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 14:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses guys. Titch Tucker (talk) 17:14, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Strange device arrived with new TV

File:Strange lcd thingy.jpg

Here it is...

This strange item - a grey box with a single LED, and a headphone-like jack on the other end - arrived packaged with the cables etc. for a new Sony flatscreen TV. The picture is fairly hi-res... Does anyone know what it is? :-O Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 12:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

My first thought would be either an external ambient light sensor or an infrared reciever extension. Does it not tell you in the manual? Is there any indication on any likely sockets on the back of the television? A full model number of the tv could possibly help track it down. Nanonic (talk) 13:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

A receiver extension sounds like a likely option. For a TV installed in a public place like a bar, they have occasional problems when people bring in universal remotes and mess around with the bar's TVs for a joke. I've heard of TVs adapted for public use that don't have the front IR sensor, but only receive commands from an IR extension, the receiver element of which is positioned somewhere private, such as behind the bar. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 14:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

definatly for the remote controll i taken apart loads of romots and it looks just like that a clear led —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 15:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

In addition to the above possibilities (ambient light sensor, IR receiver), it could be a IR (remote control) transmitter allowing your TV to control an external device (a "cable box", for instance). Such a setup allows users to "hide" the controlled box resulting in a "clean" install, reduces the number of remotes required (while still maintaining access to any TV-specific functionality on the TV remote), and may allow the TV to do fancy things like an "alarm clock" set for a specific source channel. I would be very surprised if the function of this device wasn't described in the TV documentation or in a TV setup menu on the set itself. – 74  19:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

For additional help please post the model number and brand of your tv.– Elliott  01:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Twitter...I don't get it!

I have tried it out and I don't understand its use...

Is it like an RSS feed?

Also I cannot read the comments left for any famous people I follow, so they seem to be replying to messages I cannot see......(if I could read the comments left it would be more interesting)

Am I doing something wrong or is it not kind my thing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.129.12 (talk) 13:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but it seems to be popular with the younger users. More of a social networking thing than RSS I think, I guess it's the way they tell the world they are happy, bored, or going on vacation. — Ched (talk) 14:41, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You can only see the comments posted by the people you 'follow'. So if you only follow the famous people you'll only see there replies, not the questions that were posted to them. I follow a group of around 200 people, 20-30 of which are famous. If I see an interesting or intriguing answer posted by someone, it only takes a few clicks through to the questioner to see what the original question was. If you are already following the questioner you will see the question anyway. And with regard to 'popular with younger users'? I'm 36. That's pretty old.121.215.185.153 (talk) 10:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure there were any (or many) "famous" people using Twitter when I started, so I mostly follow friends and people I know from work (I work in a very techy job). I briefly followed Robert Llewellyn and Jonathan Ross, but swiftly unfollowed due to the vast amount they produce and the tiny proportion of it that is interesting to me. The only "famous" person I follow is Stephen Fry, and that because I genuinely appreciate what he has to say, not out of some bizarre celebrity fetish. I find it a little unfortunate that, due to the way it's been "surfaced" by well-known users, for many people Twitter appears only as some kind of celebrity vehicle. But then again, one of the beauties of the platform is that, dear Stephen apart, the celeb-followers' circles and mine need never intersect. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 00:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to remove all "search term highlighting"?

Resolved

 – $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 18:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

This article exactly describes my gripe regarding the phenomenon of "referrer search term highlighting". I'm using Firefox 3.0.6 on a Mac Mini with Mac OS 10.4.11, and my main search engine is Google Search. I'm trying to figure out whether there's any possible way to disable this "feature" on websites that do this with Google searches — through some sort of preference setting, Firefox extension, or whatever. Thanks in advance! $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 16:46, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Your browser sends the URL of the page that referred you when you request another page, and these sites look at that URL, notice it's from Google and pick out the search terms (so if you click a result for 'foobar', http://www.google.com/search?q=foobar is sent to the server hosting the result). You can disable this behaviour completely by following these instructions. Note that some pages use this data for other reasons, such as blocking hotlinking of images, so you may occasionally notice some strange behaviour - on the whole, though, it shouldn't make any difference other than getting rid of search term highlighting. You can always re-enable it if it causes problems. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 17:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Worked perfectly — thanks much! $\sim$ Lenoxus " * " 18:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Connection speed

For a good while now my connection speed seems to have slowed down to a crawl. I just recently changed to the firefox browser which seemed to speed things up only for it once again to slow down. My connection speed at the moment is 54.0Mbps with the signal strength being excellent. Is there something I'm doing wrong or do I just have to put up with it? Any advice would be appreciated. Titch Tucker (talk) 19:31, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

PS, I hope I've posted this to the correct page. Titch Tucker (talk) 19:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Assuming the signal strength mentioned refers to a wireless network, other devices in the same frequency block can cause interference and degradation in service. This typically includes cordless phones, other "wireless" tech, and electric motors. If you (or any close neighbors) are using such devices there aren't really any good solutions; you can try changing wireless channels, or upgrading (or downgrading) to a different frequency block, running a network cable, replacing the troublesome devices, or accepting that your signal will experience some interference. – 74  19:42, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I sincerely doubt your actual internet connection is 54.0Mbps, that's just the speed between the wireless router and your computer. You need to find out what speed your ISP is supposed to be providing, then check online at a site like [2]. If there is a significant difference between the two you should complain to the ISP that they are not providing the service you've payed for. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

You mentioned that switching browsers affected your speed for a while. This could mean that you might have spyware or maybe even some virus'. I would suggest that you remove all your cookies, browsing history, temporary files, and restart your computer, then i would suggest that you use an anti-spyware program and an anti-virus program to do a full scan(maybe before you go to bed?) if that fails try connecting to your router with a wire and see if that helps, if that does help then you have some interference. – Elliott  01:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I removed all cookies, browsing history and temporary files and had no improvement. Your mention of anti-spyware and anti-virus programs got me thinking that perhaps I should look for a better program. Have done so and it seems to have done the trick. Thanks to everyone for their advice, it's much appreciated. Titch Tucker (talk) 07:56, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Emerging computer technologies

Lately there has been many emerging computer technologies: chemical computers, molecular computing, quantum computers, DNA computers, etc. Which one of the technologies would have the most potential to replace silicon-based processors in laptops & PCs? --DocDeel516 ^discuss 22:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

In the short to mid term? None. I'm not familar with chemical computers, but quantum computing has severe problems when people try to scale it up beyond a couple dozen qbits, DNA computing is mostly a curiosity, and molecular computing doesn't have any methods for making chip-scale structures. In the long run, if silicon computing is replaced, I expect it to be with molecular computing. --Carnildo (talk) 00:45, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

February 9

Failed hdd, is there a way to salvage files?

Hello, my Samsung harddisk failed and it is no longer there under the BIOS. Is there a way to recover the files on it? I tried with it in vain as master on a system and then as a slave on another functional system. With this thing connected even Puppy Linux fails to boot. Any help? 59.91.253.181 (talk) 01:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi there, there are a couple of things that you could try, depending on how much you need those files you could go to a used computer parts store, buy a broken hard drive of the same model, take off the boards and but those boards on your broken hard drive, see if that works. another thing you can try is to take apart your hard drive, remove the disks and put those disks in a working hard drive(very risky as even opening the hard drive could corrupt the files) You might even be able to find a computer repair shop near you that can pull the files off of it (might get costly tho)– Elliott  01:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Do you hear the drive spinning up at all? (Disconnect other drives and things; listen or touch the drive when the computer is on and see if you sense the vibrations from spinning.) If it is not spinning up, it could be something simple like that the power connection is faulty; in that case try jiggling the power connector or apply pressure on it in various directions while the computer is on to see if you can hear it power up. This has happened to many of my drives.

Other pedantic suggestions: Check the cable and try another cable to see if it is a cable problem. Check the jumpers.

Is this problem sudden? or have you seen maybe lesser problems in the past?

What do you mean "With this thing connected even Puppy Linux fails to boot"? Do you mean that connecting it causes another drive on the same cable to not show up? That would usually indicate a jumper problem. --128.97.244.106 (talk) 01:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You could try putting the drive in the freezer for an hour or two, then hooking to usb bay or as slave, and see if it show - if it does, quickly dump the data to another drive. — Ched (talk) 02:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Key phrase there is "for an hour or two." Don't keep it in there overnight, as HDD's have been known to crack and/or not work properly when exposed to coldness. flaminglawyer 05:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you really need the files, the best course of action is to contact a professional data recovery service *before* doing any more damage to the disk. If it is not essential to recover the contents, you might as well try the suggestions above. – 74  00:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

How much RAM is there in Microsoft Word/Office

How much RAM is there available in Microsoft Word or Office? I have been writing a book in Word and all has been going very well until recently Word has slowed down very considerably and I am wondering whether there may be a RAM issue in Word? Overall I have 130 GB available free space in the computer. Should I download Publisher? Can anyone give advice? Dieter Simon (talk) 01:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

There is absolutely no RAM in Word, Office, or Publisher. Your question is equivalent to asking how much chocolate milk is in Microsoft Word. Also, Word will not slow down suddenly if you write too much in it. It handles available RAM in the computer nicely. The slowdown is most likely something else - what have you downloaded/installed recently? Seriously - what? I know, nothing. OK - now what? Nothing? I'll only ask one more time, what - ANYTHING - did you click the "download" link on lately? (guess how often I have to ask that on a daily basis) -- kainaw™ 01:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, not giving you more info, yes, I have installed and uninstalled a few programs but am not sure at what stage this slowdown first started. At the time I thought it would be most likely just temporary. Is there a way I can check when I have uninstalled these programs? I can't think at this stage what they were. Trouble is once you have removed it from the Add/Remove menu it just disappears. I am slightly older than most people, so this doesn't come naturally to me. Thank you for showing an interest, I appreciate it. Dieter Simon (talk) 02:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Time is now 02:30 in the morning here in England, so I'll check later after some highly necessary shut-eye, thanks. Dieter Simon (talk) 02:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Uninstalling software should not slow down Word. Have you installed any anti-virus software? Often, they will do "virus scanning" while you are trying to work. For example, McAfee loves to scan your drive only when you are trying to do your most work. It shows up as a red target in the list of icons next to the clock. When it is doing that, it sucks practically all of the computer's resources. You would think that the McAfee programmers would have it do virus scanning when you aren't using the computer - but that would be an intelligent thing to do. What you can do, when your computer is very sluggish, is press ctrl-alt-del. You'll get a monitor that shows how much processer and ram resources are in use. You can also get a list of all programs running (most of which you specifically didn't ask to run). They also show the percentage of resources being used by each one. Do you see one in particular that is used far more percentage than the others? Knowing the name of that program will quickly narrow down specifically what is causing the problem. -- kainaw™ 02:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the size of the document? Does it have a lot of images? How often do you close the document or restart the computer? Jay (talk) 08:50, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both Kainaw and Jay. My original question was that about RAM which Kainaw has kindly answered. As to your second question about McAfee, yes, they do their scan every Friday and I am aware when they are doing it. You are right, it does slow the system down. However, I usuall bear that in mind. I think now the problem is the nature of the work I am doing in Word, as Jay has hinted at. There are no images, and I work for a couple of hours without closing and restarting Word. What I am doing is, compiling my own dictionary which entails bulletting and indents, and I think now that is where the problem is. The whole consists of a separate article for each dictionary letter A - Z and there are some discrepencies in the formatting, I noticed. Of course, it means going over from one letter section to another - bearing in mind, they are separate entities within Word. Perhaps I should get rid of all the bullets and just use indenting for each item. I shall have a go and try sort that out, with your good hints in mind. I shall let you know how I am getting on. Thank you. Dieter Simon (talk) 11:43, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Vista must die!

My XP machine died and I got one with Vista. What would happen if I replaced the hard drive with the one from my old PC? Clarityfiend (talk) 02:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, Windows XP does not like it when it's hardware suddenly changes. You could try but you might get a blue screen of death. If that does happen use your windows xp instalation disk to repair windows, you might still have to re enter you Product key. Try it out and let us know what happens. But first make a backkup of any inportant files / programs. – Elliott  03:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

At best, you'd get a working computer with a worn hard drive that's probably smaller than the new hard drive.

External hard drives are cheap. Burn a "Clonezilla Live" CD, and for each computer boot off it and use it to back up the hard drive to an image on the external drive. Then use Clonezilla to restore the XP system onto the new computer. If it works, good; and it's on a new and probably bigger hard drive. If it doesn't, then restore Vista onto it.

Before copying XP, it might be a good idea to reconfigure XP to be as boring as possible. E.g. tell it that you have a standard SVGA monitor. The result will look horrible but thereafter it might be easier to upgrade from mediocrity than to sidegrade from something else. However, I don't claim to know about this; I'm just guessing here.

You may also wish to consider some alternative to Windows. They're free of charge. Morenoodles (talk) 08:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

• If your old machine died, it could well be caused by a faulty harddrive. Putting it in the new machine wouldn't help. If you don't like Vista, there are several websites that explain how to remove it and install XP. - Mgm|^(talk) 13:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Judging by your user name, I assume that you're only interested in what you asked about, i.e. what would happen if you replaced the hard disk, and tried to boot, and not in alternative solutions to your predicament. (BTW, guessing what would happen would have been easier if you had provided a bit more info on the mode of death). There is an easy way to find out - try it - it won't blow up or anything, and it's not very difficult, if they're both SATA disks. If the old one is IDE and the new one is SATA, you'll need a special cable to make the connection. When booting, you should boot in safe mode (press F8 when booting), to reduce the likelihood of getting a BSOD. If it tries to boot, but crashes in the process, I would have tried booting it with a linux live CD (Knoppix is my favourite), and see whether you are able to access the old hard disk. As Mgm noted, the hard disk itself might be the root of the problem, for hardware reasons or because of data corruption. Several other hardware reasons are of course possible, such as a defective power supply, defective ram etc etc. If indeed it boots, you'll need to enter your product key, which only works if you have a full version of XP. If you have an OEM version, Microsoft's "genuine advantage" software will refuse to accept the old drive in the new machine as a legit copy. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:47, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Rats! It's OEM. Thanks anyway. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:26, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Maxima/gnuplot issue

I occasionally make use of the very nice software Maxima to do math related things. If you want to plot things, it uses gnuplot. The problem is, that the plots are really, really ugly. The graph isn't antialiased, the colors are all ugly, everything is basically as unpretty as you could make them. It looks like a graph produced by a computer in 1994. But if I plot it directly in gnuplot, it looks great! As pretty as you'd expect them to be.

For comparison, this is what I get if I open gnuplot in the terminal and type "plot [-10:10] x**2", and this is what I get if I type "plot2d([x^2],[x,-10,10]);" in maxima.

Can I fix this? I'd really like to have the nice graphs in maxima. I'm using Ubuntu, btw. 83.250.227.11 (talk) 03:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The ugly one is the default "set term x11" gnuplot option, and the pretty one is the "set term wxt" option, which is a wxWidgets-based thing. You can set the gnuplot term option for a single plot with:

 plot2d(sin(x),[x,0,2*%pi],[gnuplot_term,wxt]);

or for the remainder of the Maxima session with:

 set_plot_option([gnuplot_term,wxt]);

and then just do:

 plot2d(sin(x),[x,0,2*%pi]);

as normal. --Sean 16:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, works perfectly! Thank you so much :) Is there any way you can set that to be the default option, so it's always on? It's not a huge deal, but it would be nice. 90.237.165.73 (talk) 16:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

There's a startup file where you can put arbitrary commands. On Linux/Unix you can do:

 mkdir ~/.maxima
 echo 'set_plot_option([gnuplot_term,wxt]);' >> ~/.maxima/maxima-init.mac

and then restart Maxima. FYI, I've never used this program before, and all this information is coming from the manual that I googled, here: [3]. --Sean 17:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ubuntu Networking

Resolved

Hi all,

I have a couple of computers in our LAN running Ubuntu (8.04 - LTS version), and I was wondering how I could get them to appear in 'My Network'. What I mean is when I go to 'Places -> Network' in Ubuntu, it lists all the windows computers, but not the other ones running Ubuntu. I can verify though that they are on the network (I can access windows shares on our network file-server from all the Ubuntu boxes).

Also, am not sure if its related, I can access remote desktops (VNC, Ubuntu to Ubuntu) using the IP, but not the computername (I tried both ubuntu-box-1 and ubuntu-box-1:0, no dice).

Thanks in advance,

PrinzPH (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Not sure if it will help but with a windows network when i want a windows computer to show up on the network i would first have to configure the firewall to allow it to be seen on the network...– Elliott  07:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe what you do is this: right-click a folder you want to share in Nautilus (your home folder for instance), click "Sharing options", select "Share this folder" and "Guest access" and press ok. It should now show up on your windows boxes. I don't think you need to do anything else, it works fine for me 83.250.227.11 (talk) 07:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

BTW, your computer will show up under the network name of the computer, and under that the share name you selected for the folder. So, for instance, me, I name all my computers after characters from sitcoms. So if I open my windows computer (Martin, old and a little slow) shows my two Linux boxes, Niles and Frasier. (and before you ask, yes, my router is called Daphne, as it facilitates communication between Frasier, Niles and Martin) 83.250.227.11 (talk) 07:54, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedians never fail :). *227.11 above pointed me in the right direction, attempting to share a drive Ubuntu prompted me to install the Samba (software) package and everything is working now. Thanks :) PrinzPH (talk) 09:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Relationship between compilers and OSes

I know that compilers need to be made to compile in certain ways depending on the OS: for example, the executable etc created need to be of the appropriate format for the OS. But it also seems that it goes further than this because when an OS is created system calls which are used to allow programs ways of doing certain things, am i right? If so doesn't this mean that if a new OS was made by someone they'd also have o create a compiler that knows how to make use of these system calls? --RMFan1 (talk) 08:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the definition of which system calls are which are provided by the header files you include (e.g. unistd.h for POSIX system calls), and so the library implementation and the header files may differ across different OSs. But I don't think the compiler itself cares. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 09:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, much of the work is done by the OS's loader, which is mostly concerned with interpreting the various sections of the ELF, COFF, ECOFF, MZ, NE, or whatever format it expects executables to be in. There's no reason why a given OS loader can't load from a variety of different formats (for a while Linux kernels could load both the old a.out and the newer ELF format), athough most don't. For most binaries getting the right format is mostly done by the linker rather than the compiler. 71.106.173.110 is correct in noting that syscalls, like library calls, should be called from the library rather than done by the compiler itself. The only things I know of where the compiler of a regular application does stuff that's OS specific are weird corners that depend on how a given OS arranges memory, stacks, and occasionally register usage - trampolines, exception handlers, and debugging support spring to mind. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 14:21, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

In windows for example, there are certain function in C for creating windows. What is it that happens when such a function is compiled in C: does the function compile into binary instructions that directly create the windows, or is it more like a reference to functions already in the windows OS that are called when the program is run? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RMFan1 (talk • contribs) 20:05, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The latter. If you look at the assembler output of your program, you'll see a function call like:

call SomeWindowDrawingRoutine

and not actual window-drawing stuff, unless you've written that yourself. --Sean 23:02, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This brings me back to what I was trying to ask: since functions like these are already compiled in windows, how can an application access it when it is run. When a compiler for windows is created, it must need to specify where in windows a function like SomeWindowDrawingRoutine is stored because otherwise the function call is meaningless, am I right? For example if I created and compiled a simple hello world program that used a HelloWorld function to output "Hello World" I could not expect to call the same function in another program. Thus, to me, there seems to be a relationship between OSes and compilers where before programs can be created for an OS a compiler must be created specifically for the OS to allow programs to call such functions as the ones described. I'm sorry if this is confusing but explaining my question is proving quite hard. --RMFan1 (talk) 22:37, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The program calls SomeWindowDrawingRoutine in a library which must be known to the linker (and to the compiler proper by means of header files). The SomeWindowDrawingRoutine then executes the actual system call which can be by interrupt or other means. See also Application Programming Interface and Application Binary Interface. Icek (talk) 09:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Laptop or netbook

I'm thinking of buying a laptop for school, what would offer the most ease of use a leptop or a netbook? I need it for web browsing, typing documents and playing the occasional game, such as Star Trek Armada. thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 11:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If it's "for school", consider how much replacing it would cost if it's stolen, and how you feel about carrying it around. The rest is rather a matter of taste. Me, I hate keyboards that are even slightly smaller than standard: my number of typos balloons. But maybe I'm unusual here. Morenoodles (talk) 12:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, if you get something that weighs more than a textbook you will not take it around—it'll stay locked at your desk your entire time. If you get something that weighs comparable to a textbook, and is about the same size, then you can bring it anywhere. This means you can't get the one with the mondo huge display, for example—you'll just end up not using it as a laptop at all. Just my experience with this stuff, watching how other students in school used (or didn't) their laptops. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 14:32, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're willing to forgo the playing games thing, personally I think that a tiny little netbook like an Asus Eee PC is great for this. It's very cheap (especially if you go with Linux) and it's very tiny, so you can take it with you anywhere. It's not perfect, it has some drawbacks. If you have big ape hands, it might be hard to type, but I've found that you get used to it pretty quickly (in fact, I'm typing this very response on an Eee PC, and I can type basically as fast on this as on any other keyboard, it's not really a big deal after a few days). It doesn't have stellar battery life, so you probably will have to find a way to recharge it between classes (this is more or less going to be an issue with most laptops). But it really is very useful for exactly what you want to do, pick it up from your bag, write some notes, check your email, etc. And if it does get stolen, it's not the huge monetary loss that it would be had you bought a MacBook Air. That is what I'd recommend (it's not going to be playing any fancy schmancy Star Trek games though) Belisarius (talk) 17:08, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Your best bet might be to buy a low end laptop (maybe off of ebay?) and upgrade that as you need it.– Vector Eng. Inc.  19:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If moneys not an issue you can get some very small laptops these days, almost as small as netbooks but with full features you'd expect from standard sized laptops. You might also like to look into Tablet PCs which can be less unwieldy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:13, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are looking for a gaming laptop, all the ones I've seen are huge and heavy. The things that are left out to make laptops small and light, are the very things that make for a good gaming experience. You might find games will run on a small laptop, but they will run slowly with poor graphics and sound. I would go with the advice above, get something small and cheap to take to school. Astronaut (talk) 12:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

dwight cavendish

Does an STB manufacturer chip manufacturer, or cable/satellite service provider has to pay a license fee for using dwight cavendish copy protection system. Krisfriend (talk) 13:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not know for sure, but it seems very likely. It is not an open source package, so there is likely some kind of pay-to-use agreement... since, you know, business are there to make money after all. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

VRML editors

Hi,

I need to build a simple city in VRML, to be used with Matlab.

Which VRML editor would be the best? Matlab's one isn't so much appealing... What about Google SketchUp Pro (expensive) or Flux Studio?

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.8.73 (talk) 15:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I used VrmlPad for a while when I did a lot of VRML, and found it worthwhile (but someone else paid for it). Nowadays I use Emacs for everything, and there is appropriately a VRML mode. It's old and not feature-rich, but it does the basics of indentation and commenting, which helps a lot. I find a version that seems to try to work with FSF Emacs, as well as a somewhat cleaned-up version specifically for XEmacs. I think I made my own version from one of those that had some improvement (at least to highlighting); if you're interested I can make it available, but I don't have it to hand just now. There is also an even simpler built-in vrml-generic-mode available in the generic-x package in FSF Emacs. The site I linked first there has a long page on tools for building VRML that you might find useful. --Tardis (talk) 00:05, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I will have a look at it, and, thanks for the offer about your improvement, but finally I think I will use Flux Studio anyway... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.194.8.73 (talk) 10:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Seemingly random underlining of letters in computer programs

Resolved

 – Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Various programs I use have seemingly random letters underlined - for example, Firefox uses:

File Edit View History ...

and I have seen a similar thing in Microsoft Word. Even websites are exhibiting this, such as our very own Bugzilla - what does this mean? It's not always the first letters of the words, and pressing the underlined letters on my keyboarddoesn't seem to do anything. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:34, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

They're keyboard shortcuts ... If you hit the alt key, then the underlined letter, it highlights that menu item. — Ched (talk) 16:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! Dendodge Talk^Contribs 16:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Hiding my screen with VNC

Within Ubuntu, using VNC i can connect to my home computer, the problem is that anyone at home will be able to see whats on my screen, is there a way that i can remotely hide this? Thank you – Elliott  17:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I have 2 computers, one at home, one at work, the one at home is running Ubuntu, i have already set that one up as a VNC server. And i can already connect using the computer at work (running XP). The thing i like about Remote Desktop Protocol is that i can access my home computer from my work computer and no one at home will see what i am doing, they will only see the log in screen indicating that a user is logged in. The only problem is that this is a Windows protocol and thus can not be implemented in Linux (that is, unless we want to start paying for Linux). Is there away that i can do this with VNC? Thank you – Elliott  18:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

To run an RDP client on linux use rdesktop and to run an RDP server on linux use XRDP. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 18:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thats spiffy! ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 18:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's the RDP behavior only on certain versions of Windows as the server, e.g. Windows Server 2003. On others, like Windows XP Pro, you only get to connect to the console session by default. And even on Windows Server 2003 there are ways to connect to the console session too.

I am sure that there are ways to start a separate login session on your Linux. It appears that Tight VNC server can do this[4]; and I am sure that other VNC servers can be configured to do this also.

However, I prefer the NX protocol for connecting to Linux. It is inherently secure and much faster than VNC. --76.167.241.45 (talk) 19:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

You could take your computer screen with you, or even take it's power cord / vga cable. – Vector Eng. Inc.  20:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. Ubuntu offers password protection for VNC. --wj32 ^t/c 07:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

CPU test

Resolved

Hey guys, I'm looking for a portable application that can go on a USB drive and will benchmark the CPU speed of the computer it's on. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:09, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

A quick google search turned up this, It sais it's a standalone program(meaning it can run off of a usb drive). But what i would do is install linux on that USB drive and install a CPU benmark program under linux, Then when i wanted to test a computer's cpu i would restart in to linux, that way linux has the CPU's full attention, as does the benchmark test. Hope this helps. – Elliott  20:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and heres the google search, if it helps.– Elliott  20:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, thanks.

Verizon Phones

Hi, my 2 year Verizon Wireless contract expires in March and I am planning on getting a new phone. I was looking at the LG VX8350 and I was going to get it. Verizon just came out with what seems to be its replacement, the VX8360. I would still rather get the VX8350, but does anyone know if I would still be able to get it on March 1st if its replacement is already out? Thanks a lot! Grango242 (talk) 20:49, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about Verizon in particular, but here in the UK new phones are initially available only to contract customers. Their predecessors then move down one step in the "rankings" to become free to contract customers and available for the first time to pre-pay customers. For a Verizon specific answer, it might be better to contact the sales dept. directly. Astronaut (talk) 12:32, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks.71.172.225.224 (talk) 02:18, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

How to use Process Explorer and Logparser?

I have the file logfile.etl on my XP Home computer, which rapidly keeps getting bigger although sometimes it goes back to 0kb. I think the file was created when I tried to use Bootvis and some other similar boot log program to try to see why my computer will only boot in safe mode (I have done several antivirus/malware scans etc etc).

How can I use Process Explorer to find out which program is controlling it please? I have not been able to find any simple step-by-step instructions anywhere. (I have tried using unlocker1.8.7.exe but it seems to require downloading a 20MB file and doing complicated things to make it work. WhatLockMe did not work either).

I would like to use Logparser to look at logfile.etl, in the hope that I will be able to see what makes my computer freeze during the xp logo screen in a normal boot. What would I need to do in simple step-by-step instructions please? 89.243.214.67 (talk) 22:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I have still not been able to find any instructions for Process Explorer - the Help file did not help. But I was able to stop the process, whatever it was, and rename the file using the tracelog fix on this page: http://mike-devlin.com/windows/ I still want to use Logparser to view its contents, but I'm still mystified by how to use it. 78.149.216.108 (talk) 20:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Find > Find Handle or DLL... Type in logfile.etl and Search. --wj32 ^t/c 07:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

February 10

e-books - free download sources -

kindly indicate what are the free download sources for e-books on chemical engineering other than gigapdeia.com 05:27, 10 February 2009 (UTC)~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sathyanarayanan.d (talk • contribs)

Do you have any particular books in mind? --76.167.241.45 (talk) 06:07, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Surely, the authors of specialist chemical engineering text books should be paid for their work. Why not go an buy the titles you want from a local bookshop or from an online seller. Astronaut (talk) 12:28, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The questioner may be in a third-world country where such books would be a) unavailable and b) fabulously expensive compared to the local incomes. 78.146.185.139 (talk) 12:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

wikibooks.org/wiki/Chemical_Engineering SN0WKITT3N 15:32, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

ADI Soundmax driver

Hi.

I work for a primary school, and I need to buy laptops with an uncomplicated sound-card driver. This is proving a challenge.

Most laptops come with a Realtek card, which has an almost unavoidable system tray application, with echo settings, pitch shift, etc - the kids change the settings, accidentally and mischievously, so that when it comes to a music lesson or a lesson using audio-books, by the time I've got all the computers back to normal the lesson has ended.

I've been recommended a machine with an ADI SoundMAX AD1984A card, but, frustratingly, no-one can tell me whether this comes with a system tray application or not, or if it does, whether it's optional. Does anyone have any experience with ADI high definition soundcards? --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 14:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Couldnt you just Disable the Tray icon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.133.226 (talk) 15:11, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

But not all system tray icons can be disabled. StuRat (talk) 15:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

One thought: The system tray is optional. I can kill it in Windows 98 with the Task Manager, by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL, and picking "Systray". Bill Gates seems to have "improved" this by making it much harder to find in Windows XP, and perhaps impossible in Windows Vista. However, if you can kill it, this implies you could also stop it from launching during startup, by commenting out a line in a startup file. Perhaps someone else can help you find that. Doing so would not only stop the kids from messing with those settings, but would also protect other system settings, like the screen resolution. Of course, they could get to them through the menu system, still, but that's more work.

Another thought is to get the kids themselves to check each setting at the end of each class. If they are set properly according to a page you have taped to the computer, they get a point towards their grade. If the next student complains that something isn't set properly, the previous student loses their point for the day. (You could check one computer's settings, the next time, if you suspect the second student of lying.) StuRat (talk) 15:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Unsigned: Thanks, but there are other things in the system tray which I do need, and anyway the program launches itself sometimes without the systray icon being clicked on, for example when headphones are plugged in.

StuRat: Your "points" idea is good in principle, but impractical. It would a take five minutes at minimum from the end of each ICT lesson, and it isn't reasonable to expect the teachers to be keeping a note of which child was on which laptop.

Aside from both those points, I don't want to find mechanisms to cope with poorly designed software, I want to find good software. It's been suggested to me that the ADI Soundmax driver might not have the same problems - all I need is for someone with such a card running under windows to tell me whether it brings a system tray program with it. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 16:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I certainly understand you wanting to find the answer to the original Q, and hopefully somebody else will help you with that. As for my points suggestion, I'd assign them automatically, unless the next kid who gets the laptop complains. Thus, you don't need to write down anything for them getting the points, but only record if they don't get them. You would need to keep track of who gets which laptop, though, and I suggest they sign them out at the start of each class. Alternatively, if you have assigned seating and one laptop at each desk, no sign-out is needed. I'd think you'd want to know which student used which laptop, in any event, in case they do something bad, like put dirty pics on the laptop or get food on it. StuRat (talk) 17:47, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I would say the problem is not poorly designed software (imagine - soundcard software that let's you control the soundcard - oh no!) but a lack of discipline and responsibility from the students. However I do live in the real world and realise kids will be kids. What you need is a little utility that will restore the 'default' settings at a single click - suggest you ask your IT department to write a script to do this and have it on every PC - the first task of every student will be to quickly run this before starting work. Exxolon (talk) 22:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

The youngest children using these laptops are three years old. Yes, the fact that children are childish is part of my problem, but the software unequivocally is badly designed. The driver has been conflated with an application, meaning that anyone who doesn't want the application can't get rid of it. Yes, to be able to turn on the karaoke settings will be useful to some users, and they should be able to install the application, but those of us for whom that application is a fundamental show-stopper should be able to choose not to install it. I have been explicitly informed by my one of my suppliers that the reason Realtek won't allow a vanilla version of the driver is that it would remove their advertising from all those system trays.

I am the IT department here, and as far as I can tell those settings aren't reliably scriptable - but even if they were, as I've said above, giving the teachers an extra thing to supervise at the end of the lesson isn't practical, as any primary school teacher will tell you.

Thanks to everyone who's given me advice on controlling children, but I'm not a teacher, and I'm really not interested in that - all I want to know is whether the ADI Soundmax driver comes with a built-in application, and if it does, whether it's optional. Does anyone have any experience with that soundcard? --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 09:43, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 8

Hello, I was wondering if it is possible to install IE 8 without uninstalling IE 7. I just upgraded my friend's browser from IE 6 to 7, and noticed that it immediately uninstalled IE 6. Is there a way to prevent this from happening when I install IE *. Does it being still in semi-beta mode help? Thanks, Genius101^Guestbook 15:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but as a beta it may give you the option during setup to backup your previous version in case you wish to uninstall. You could also try one of the portable versions, see here or just search on google. SN0WKITT3N 16:20, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

A few months ago, I installed IE8 on one of my computers, but since my online bank did not work with it, I successfully uninstalled it (going back to IE7) using Windows Vista's usual control panel applet. However, the "uninstallability" might have been due to the fact that it was merely a beta version. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 16:42, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Doing green screen in Blender

how do i do green screen stuff in Blender? i find plugins but no actual tutorials. can someone instruct me on how to green screen in blender (or at least a link to a tutorial). Thanks.  Buffered Input Output 17:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

You do not use Blender for that. Blender is used to create 3D vector graphics, not to manipulate 2D raster graphics. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I've never used it, but this tutorial is the first result when searching for blender chromakey — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:24, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

And another — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)}

More on Basic Linux / Ubuntu Administration

Greetings Wikipedians,

Hi, Me again. Have a couple more questions on basic administration with Ubuntu. We have around 10 systems on it now, with an 'Admin' account, and for normal users we have created 'Unprivileged' accounts.

1.) Back when we were still on XP, we used tightvnc for remote administration. It worked great. Now on Ubuntu, we've been doing ok with the built in vnc server, however, we came to 'discover' that we have to configure it with each account (that is, we login under each credential and setup the password and everything else). I was wondering if we could set it to run with our specified settings regardless of which user logs in. (Side note: the built in client on Ubuntu is awesome with its tabs/bookmarks)

2.) On a select few computers, we have to share a folder (on a second, partition, NTFS). We already have Samba installed, I made only 2 changes on /etc/samba/smb.conf (setting: usershare owner only = False, and the host description). Now same case as above, the share only becomes accessible when logged in as our admin account. Does it have anything to do with the fact that when the partition is mounted, admin/sudo privileges are required? We need it to be shared upon boot if possible. And how do we mount that share from other computers on login? How do we make mounts persistent across sessions?

3.) I realize that the menu items on the Panel are customizable, is a way to set the default menu items for unprivileged users (ie no System menu)?

Thank you ALL once again. Best Regards,

PrinzPH (talk) 17:12, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

4. (Edit, nearly forgot) When an unprivileged user tries to sudo, it says 'This incident will be reported', how do we check? PrinzPH (talk) 17:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

4. By default, sudo logs to /var/log/syslog (search that for "sudo"); see man sudo for configuring it to log to its own log, or not at all. Mimetic Polyalloy (talk) 17:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

First mobile phone launched in india

Please let me know about the First mobile phone launched in India in full details Please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.224.20.50 (talk) 18:28, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki look-alike

Is there a free wiki software that looks and acts like MediaWiki (if possible, using the same wiki-code), but is smaller and simpler to install and use? Thanks in advance, 99.224.117.66 (talk) 18:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

One of my uni tutors swears by DokuWiki. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 19:01, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

JAMWiki is one of the the closest I've seen to a MediaWiki, don't know if it's easier to install. I'd stick with MediaWiki though as there is plenty of support and it's actively being developed. For a simple way to install it, try MoWeS portable (formally WOS) and see instructions here —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:25, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Creating links in a channel design on YouTube

How can I create links in the header of my channel design like the ones on The Royal Channel? --217.227.97.200 (talk) 20:41, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Become a youtube partner. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 09:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Create a cross in 3ds max

Anyone any idea how I would create a cross shape in 3ds max? I remember SteveBaker mentioned modeling software tools a while back so tried this and Blender, dont like Blender steep learnig curve not many tutorials that I could find so have the trial version of 3ds max with plenty of tutorials. But I have been trying to create a cross and cant seem to get it right so any ideas or places I could find out thanks. BigDunc^Talk 20:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about that product, but can give some general techniques for building a cross:

A) Create a wire-frame cross and then extrude it to add depth. Add faces to make it a surface model. From there you can create a skin/volume and solid.

B) Create a planar face in the shape of a cross and then extrude it to add depth. This should produce a solid.

C) Create two intersecting rectangular solids to represent the two pieces of the cross, then perform a Boolean union to combine them into a cross. StuRat (talk) 22:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

XP Install from USB

I'd like to install Windows XP on a laptop without a cd drive (I lost it) so is there a way to make a USB stick bootable install? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 20:49, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Never tried it myself, but a quick Google search results in plenty of results: [5] . - Akamad (talk) 02:01, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Make XP like Gnome/KDE

I haven't used Windows for anything much since Windows 3.1. Unfortunately, I have to do work for a few months on a managed PC that has Windows XP on it. What customizations are available in XP to make it function more like Gnome and/or KDE, such as window snapping, middle-click pasting, multiple desktops, etc... -- kainaw™ 21:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Some of Microsoft's own Power Toys can give you some of what you want. --LarryMac | Talk 21:28, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

You might also want to have a look at Brico Packs for Theme Customization, and Deskspace for a compiz-like effect. HTH PrinzPH (talk) 22:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

This Google search may help. – Elliott  22:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Is there a way to make XP look and feel like Win 3.1? -- Toytoy (talk) 09:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

acer 1 wireless

hi i have just purchased acer 1 wireless,does anyone know the wireless site 'sitecom'. is it safe ?my acer is running linpus linux lite v1.0.7.e and i would like to add anti virus ,firewall,any body know of any good free ones.all replys greatly appreciated thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raggy*123 (talk • contribs) 22:28, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Well hi there! From what i can tell sitecom is a safe site. As for you wanting an Anti Virus, generly with linux you dont need one, but if you want one i suggest that you download ClamAV(you may also want the GUI ClamTK). As for a firewall, i dont know of any for linux (then again, i never looked for one). I hope this helped. – Elliott  22:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Photo Organizer

I heard recently of a picture organizer program with an unusual feature: you can search it by sketching the picture you can't find, and it will search for near-matches to your hapless scrawl. Has anyone else heard of this? Black Carrot (talk) 23:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia itself has: imgSeek. All the above, runs on most computers, and free as in speech and beer. Indeed, I installed it on one computer just yesterday, though I haven't tried the sketching function. -- Hoary (talk) 02:08, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Is that something kind of like Grafitti on Palm OS? 76.5.24.16 (talk) 03:44, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

February 11

Programs on Linux (advanced question)

I am interested on something called SFS Technology and other similar software. I am trying to make "portable apps" on linux, (and this program can do that by creating a self-contained executable), my question is: What does a program needs to run on most distros? I heard the worse problem to make "universal linux binaries" is the different versions of libc and desktop environment libraries, So... if I put all the dependencies into one file + desktop environment + libc and essencial libraries, would the file run on most linux distros? the kernel would be the only think to worry about, right? But as long as it is a recent one, it should work, right? Hope someone can clear up my ideas. Thanks SF007 (talk) 00:43, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Every linux distribution I've come across uses a Package management system to install software. If you want your application to work on different distributions, all you need to do is define your dependencies and document them properly. The problem with trying to pack all of your dependencies into a single file is that those dependencies have dependencies - you'd have to pack the entire system into a file. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 09:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Disable Auto-Paragraph

In Internet Explorer 7, when I click enter in a when editing a html form, it automatically creates a new paragraph. I know that I can press shift+enter to get it skip one line. How can I make it so that when I press enter, it automatically skips only one line? -Wiki131wiki (talk) 02:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Tracing a virus to an IP

How may one trace a virus which has infected a computer to an IP or domainin Windows Vista Home Premium? 76.5.24.16 (talk) 03:40, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

In general, it isn't worth the effort (and often it isn't even possible). If your computer is infected, the most important actions you can take are to clean it thoroughly and inform anyone you might have inadvertently infected. Other than that, you can analyze why your computer became infected and take precautions to prevent a recurrence. – 74  04:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Viruses spread. Although they almost always originate from one source, an IP address which you may have traced the virus to would usually be a normal computer belonging to a normal user - they've just been infected by the virus! --wj32 ^t/c 07:57, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Dwight Cavendish versus Macrovision

What technology is being used in Dwight Cavendish System (DCS). How it comapres with Macrovision wrt its protection capability, acceptance by content providers and cost of implementation for a chip / STB manufacturer, operator? Krisfriend (talk) 10:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Javascript pull down menus

Hello Wikipedia,

i'd like to use the functionality of this [6] menu, but format it so it comes to resemble my existing (beautiful) one. The style that they use is here:

.menu {position:absolute; font:12px arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color:#CCCCCC; layer-background-color:#CCCCCC; top:-90px} #fileMenu {left:10px; width:70px} #searchMenu {left:85px; width:100px} A {text-decoration:none; color:#000000} A:hover {background-color:#000099; color:#FFFFFF}

Essentially, i don't understand where its getting its top border from. (Perhaps the 'Top' attribute autmatically assigns a border?) As the I'm looking to create the 'tab' effect (whereby each tab has 4 borders apart from the 'current' tab, which has the bottom one missing), i'd really like to be able to play around with this -any ideas?

Many thanks,81.140.37.58 (talk) 11:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I didn't see a top border? Top does not automatically assign a border. I suspect the appearance of a border comes from the position of the element and its background or something along those lines. When in doubt, try using the Web Developer plug-in for Firefox to identify the styles affecting a given element. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

(And while I'm add it, can I say that Javascript pulldown menus rarely work as well as intended? I hate the damn things and find them usually to be barely functional, and their use makes it hard to do simple things like quickly search the page for the link I'm looking for. IMO they're not great design practice. Just giving you my unsolicited two cents!) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Array of array

• [7]

Even Applesoft BASIC, a 1970s language created for a 48 k RAM 8-bit CPU 1 MHz computer, has multidimensional array. Why do many recent and much more advanced languages use array of array? Even Cobol and Fortran have multidimensional arrays. Some may need jagged arrays. But most of us may need a simple and intuitive way to create rectangular multidimensional arrays. What are they doing? -- Toytoy (talk) 12:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This doesn't answer your question but in modern OO languages, you generally don't use either. Instead you create a class (or a structure) and then store them in some kind of collection. 216.239.234.196 (talk) 13:39, 11 February 2009 (UTC)