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[edit] June 28

[edit] bat files

Following no from the last question - if a create a bat file A that says

B.bat 
etc

and a file B.bat that says

A.bat
etc

and then click on either - will they just loop round and round until a stack overflow occurs, or is windows prepared for such foolishness; doing something else?

I'm too scared to actually try it :) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Why be scared to crash Windows? Back in the day, this kind of curiosity was the main reason computers existed.

I just tried it, and there was no ill effect, because when a batch file does "a.bat", the current batch file is discarded and forgotten. If you instead use call a.bat, however, it's remembered and the batch file resumes after a.bat has completed So after a lot of repetitions, under Vista, I got this cool error:

****** B A T C H R E C U R S I O N exceeds STACK limits ******

Recursion Count=599, Stack Usage=90 percent

****** B A T C H PROCESSING IS A B O R T E D ******

Tempshill (talk) 01:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - same thing. Didn't realise about call

Curiously (to me) when I try it without call, it still loops, but with no stack overflow message - but eventually just seems to give up - no error message - anyone know why this is? or doesn't do this, must have done something else83.100.250.79 (talk) 02:19, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] retrieving data from sites

1. Is there any site that gives RSS/ATOM type bare minimum data on stock market values of (induvidual) companies?.
2. Is it possible to retrieve that data/page using python (to feed another program written in C).
3. Is it possible with PHP? 59.93.6.7 (talk) 03:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If 1 is true than 2 and 3 are certainly true. It's not hard to get RSS data with any manner of programs, there are plenty of libraries written to do that. --140.247.10.133 (talk) 01:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] electronic devices that were commercial failures

what electronic devices were the hugest commercial failures?--Mr.K. (talk) 10:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Try the Sinclair C5 for size (a poor concept made even worse by working to a target price instead of a technological standard - pretty much finished Clive Sinclair). Or how about Betamax and HD DVD? Astronaut (talk) 11:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Surely the C5 doesn't count as an 'electronic device'. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 19:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Though there was the Black Watch, which was also a bad concept coupled with bad execution. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 19:18, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The original xbox made huge losses (though that is believed to have been expected as part of a bigger plan), Apple Bandai Pippin, 3DO, virtual boy - there are hundreds more, all forgotten. Don't know which was the 'most'.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The Dell/Sony/others battery recall in 2006- must have cost a lot of money see Product_recall#2006 also Sony#Batteries and http://www.infoworld.com/t/hardware/update-dell-recall-41-million-laptop-batteries-236 etc 83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:31, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The Apple Newton. Dismas|^(talk) 07:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Increase Upload Speed

Without contacting ISPs and all that, is it possible for an end user increase their upload speed on a fiberoptic cable modem? Currently I'm getting 700 KB/s download but only an average of 10 KB/s upload. Are there any software that could increase the speed, any techniques etc. Again I repeat contacting the ISP is not an option —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.90.6 (talk) 14:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

You could try compressing your upload, but then you would need to decompress it on the server. Why is contacting the ISP "not an option"? Surely, their tech support team are the first place you should ask (FWIW, 10K upload is damn slow). failing that, maybe it's time to look for a new ISP. Astronaut (talk) 14:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

There isn't a reason why the download speed should be so much less than the upload. I don't think there is much that an end user can do directly. Has the speeds always been like this - it could be a temporary server or website problem?

Have you checked that there the OS is not reporting any problems with the connections - such as 'limited connectivity' - it really sounds like something is fundamentally wrong in the setup you've got.83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't sound like a usual speed, see for instance [1], it is usual for upload speed to be much slower than download but for that download speed I'd have expected at 30kB/s upload at the very least. Have you checked the speed with a local speed checker site? Dmcq (talk) 16:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the help everyone :) I've tested on speedtest.net and get a upload reading of 0.13 Mb /s (I'm unsure what that is in KB/s) and download reading of 9.85 Mb /s. I'm pretty sure the speeds have always been like this, and it hasn't been a problem for normal browsing. It's just that I need to upload some large files to rapidshare and it's taking ages (400MB of files). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.90.6 (talk) 18:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I suspect the free service at Rapidshare is deliberately slowed (I've never uploaded but that's certainly true of downloading). It is done to encourage you to pay for a speedier service. Astronaut (talk) 18:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

If you divide the Mb/s by 8 you'll get an absolute maximum MB/s. Your upload speed is quite slow compared to your download speed - I'd expect perhaps four times the speed. I'd start checking what your ISP says the upload speed should be. They should say on their website. If what they say disagrees by a very large factor from what speedtest said then there's all sorts of thnigs that could be wrong. Your modem will have a page which shows figures like noise to signal ratio and there's sites on the web to help with saying if the figures are okay.

[edit] Location of files on computer

Hi, I've just got a new computer (as the old one suffers from periodic hard drive failures) and I want to transfer over my old e-mail correspondence from outlook express onto the new machine which has windows live mail. Can someone tell me where the relevant files are stored, what they'd be called & where I'd move them to on the new machine? I'm presuming that simply copying them over is the easiest way. Same question for mozilla bookmarks. Thanks. AllanHainey (talk) 19:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

This seems rather comprehensive. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that tells me how to get the message files from outlook express, any idea where I'd add them to on Windows live mail?

And how I'd do the same thing with Mozilla bookmarks? AllanHainey (talk) 12:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

From the link above I recommend typing "file transfer" into MS's search box - if you got a new PC there should be a file transfer wizard - usually involves a network cable, or USB memory, and a downloadable program from MS which automates the transfer - such things do exist.

Also if you can transfer the outlook express data to the new computer then windows live has an import method that will get the data.

No idea about mozilla bookmarks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Also search for "file and settings" on your computer - there should be a "file and settings import wizard" on MS computers.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:16, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

About the Mozilla bookmarks, they are stored in your profile folder. See this page from MozillaZine knowledge base and you can click on the term "profile folder" to tell you where the profile folder can usually be found. --Mathew5000 (talk) 12:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Excel function/macro

I have an excel worksheet with four columns A, B, C and D. A and C are text columns and B and D contain numbers. A has more entries than C but there are no entries in C that are not present somewhere in A (I hope you are following this lol). Is there a function or macro I can use to make the entries in C move within the column to the same row number as the identical text while taking the D value with it (to the same row)?

I will be checking this question regularly so if there is anything you need to clarify, please say. Thank you. 90.200.240.61 (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify: you have a pair of text/data columns and want one set of them to be merged into the other, yes? This should be doable with a macro though I'm a little rusty on my Excel VBA. You need to just cycle over the text column-to-be-merged, check where its corresponding entry is in the merging-to column, and then just copy of the value over. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

No, Let me try to show it here:

A B C D

Apple 2 Carrot 3

Banana 5 Egg 7

Carrot 3 Fig 1

Doughnut 1 Grape 2

Egg 6

Fig 5

Grape 3

I want this to change to: (for example)

A B C D

Apple 2

Banana 5

Carrot 3 Carrot 3

Doughnut 1

Egg 6 Egg 7

Fig 5 Fig 1

Grape 3 Grape 2

I hope you understand this. Column A is text, B number, C text and D is a number. 90.200.240.61 (talk) 21:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I see. So all you want changed is where dataset two aligns respective to column 1. Hmm. That should be doable (I would have it again iterate over dataset 2, and then put a copy in a third dataset, to avoid worrying about reordering correctly within the columns. Then you could just delete the old dataset). Again, it's definitely a macro/VBA sort of solution, not a function. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I was afraid of that. Does anyone know how I could search for such a macro? 90.200.240.61 (talk) 23:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the VLOOKUP function might provide what you are looking for. Using the sample data above populated in columns A through D, add the formula =VLOOKUP(A:A,C:D,1,FALSE) in column E and the formula =VLOOKUP(A:A,C:D,2,FALSE) in column F, then copy the formula down the length of the table. This will populate columns E and F with data from columns C and D where columns C matches column A. For those cells that do not match, you will get an "N/A" value.

A	B	C	D	E	F
Apple	2	Carrot	3	#N/A	#N/A
Banana	5	Egg	7	#N/A	#N/A
Carrot	3	Fig	1	Carrot	3
Doughnut	1	Grape	2	#N/A	#N/A
Egg	6			Egg	7
Fig	5			Fig	1
Grape	3			Grape	2

Note that the lookup table (columns C and D) could be anywhere in the workbook, even in another sheet, see the VLOOKUP documentation for more information. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you only need to do this once, you can do it in under 5 minutes manually. Highlight columns C and D and sort them alphabetically on col C. Do the same for A and B. Then work down column C, and anywhere A has a label that C does not, just insert a cell into C and D, to push them down far enough to match the label in A. For example, the top word in C is Carrot, you move C and D down by 2 cells, so they line up with Carrot in A.

If for any reason you don't want them alphabetical, but want to maintain the original order of column A, insert a new column to the left of A and auto fill it with numbers, starting with 1. Include this column in your sort of the original A and B, but still use the original A as the field to sort on. Once you've done the lining up, highlight all 5 columns and sort them on the number column, to put them back into the original column A order.- KoolerStill (talk) 09:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] jpegs

I want to combine two jpeg images together in one jpeg image while still retaining the first two. I want to do this for lots of images. Is there a batch file I can use to do this more easily? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.200.240.61 (talk) 20:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean, specifically, by "combine"? Do you want to blend one into the other, or join the two so that they are side-by side, or one on top of the other, or what? And you need to tell us what operating system you are using. 87.115.99.208 (talk) 20:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I mean sit them side by side and/or one beside the other. I am using microsoft windows. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.200.240.61 (talk) 21:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Use ImageMagick's "convert" function with the "+append" operator. Should be something like "convert image1.jpg image2.jpg +append image3.jpg". --98.217.14.211 (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] psplimewire

on my psp phat is there anyway i can put limewire on the home menu or can i put anything on the psp home menu without getting on a pc thank u —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubbafrogs (talk • contribs) 21:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Disappearing free space

On my mac, I get frequent messages saying there is little space left (generally less than 400MB, when I check it out). I'm not running any strange or high performance programs that I can imagine would cause it; it is as if I have a tapeworm that keeps on eating digested dinner before I absorb it into my system. I have to keep moving stuff around, deleting, rebacking up, etc. Suggestions invited.78.144.110.113 (talk) 23:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Use a visualization program like Disk Inventory X and it will tell you where the space is going. If you have a small amount of RAM, it could be getting sucked up as virtual memory (something that could be fixed by upgrading your physical RAM, which isn't usually very expensive or difficult, depending on the make and model). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you are running short of memory, and you are using nightly builds of WebKit to run Safari, be aware that they fluctuate between being too loose and too tight on memory management. Some will fail to release substantial amounts of memory. Firefox also tends to be a memory hog, especially if you run multiple tabs with long tab histories. Restarting them will force them to let go.

Listen to the machine...can you hear a large amount of hard drive activity most of the time? when you are not saving a file? this would indicate a lot of paging is taking place.

Clear out your internet caches,cookies and temporary files-- these can take up huge amounts of space. Clear out other files you don't need. Make sure you are not running any logging services you don't need. There is little point backing up to the same hard drive -- the purpose of backups is to have a copy if the drive fails. Write them out to a DVD-RW. Then defragment the hard drive. - KoolerStill (talk) 13:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, wikipedia is good value for money! I'll check that out. I've only got 1.5GB RAM, and only a few apps running generally - the like of web browsers and Mail.app. I can almost see it counting down at times, when I Get Info on the boot disc. EyeTV could be the culprit, it turns out; it auto-records whatever is playing, for a live rewind. You can put that stuff in the RAM or HD at choice. Whatever it is, it's eating memory like Hummers do petrol.78.150.233.242 (talk) 18:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, 98. Disk Inventory X was handy, it turns out there is a secret folder in the root directory called "private" - invisible in Finder until Disc Inventory X revealed it. Private>Var>Log>Asl folder grows like a Chinese economy. File names imply a daily log. Today is only 8MB, yesterdays is 170MB. The whole "asl" folder is 24GB, the "private" folder is 27GB. I've tried quitting random apps and it could be anything, from what I gather. Any suggestions for what could possibly be feeding that folder?78.148.74.124 (talk) 20:59, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

And I ran the whole mac through ClamXav (virus checker). No problems, except a few unopened email attachments.78.148.94.163 (talk) 21:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Tracking cookies?

While running my antivirus scanner, I noticed that it picked up some tracking cookies; after reading the article on computer cookies, I'm still confused — why would the antivirus (AVG) catch those? Is it simply set to catch these things because of the potential of an invasion of privacy, or is there some better reason? I don't know too much about this program — it was installed on my computer by friends whom I trust, and it's worked well since I began using it, so I've not had a significant reason to learn its details. Nyttend (talk) 23:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Imagine that ad company X runs banner ads on a a hundred totally different sites. If each ad puts a unique ID for you in the same tracking cookie, then ad company X knows something of your browsing habits and can construct a profile of what kind of person you are (and maybe even who exactly you are). But that's all. It's a privacy thing, that's all. Not a big deal, as far as things go. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:05, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] June 29

[edit] vista webpage

hello is there a webpage that looks like windows vista or xp is there a flash game for psp like vista —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubbafrogs (talk • contribs) 01:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I do not understand your question. Adding some punctuation might help. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

You can take a screenshot, upload it to somewhere like imageshack, and view it in a browser - that would make a "webpage that looks like Vista or XP". But there's no need to upload anything, there are plenty of images of Vista/XP desktops that people have uploaded to various forums. Astronaut (talk) 01:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Vista desktops

Answering the above question led me to see several Windows Vista/XP desktops which appeared to have a Mac OsX-like docking bar (see this guy's desktop for an example). Where can I get that kind of docking bar utility from? Astronaut (talk) 02:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe the one in the image is RocketDock. :-) There are other ones available including ObjectDock--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 20:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Another option that I use is Gizmos. The toolbar is highly customizable and can launch stuff besides programs (such as Webpages, custom scripts you write). It also comes with some other cool features such as Virtual Drives and a color coded text editor for writing in C, C++, and other stuff I don't really use such as databases —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.171.145.63 (talk) 05:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] CPUs

What is the fastest commercial CPU currently on the market? --128.12.77.85 (talk) 04:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Commercially I'm going to guess *probably* the Intel Core i7 975 3.33Ghz Extreme Edition, but I'll happily be proved wrong! ZX81 ^talk 06:51, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

for x86.64 [2] - I'm willing to prove you right.

Not quite what you asked, but in May, Fujitsu said one of their SPARC64 prototypes is the fastest CPU, at 128 gigaflops. That same link says Intel's top-of-the-line Nehalem Xeon is at 76 gigaflops. Tempshill (talk) 06:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

At the same time IBM's POWER range is rated at the highest MHz/GHz commercially available ~5GHz, whilst NEC's SX9 is the fastest vector processor at ~100Gflops. It looks like every company has the fasters by some measure (except ARM)83.100.250.79 (talk) 12:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

A related question that should be asked is "What is the fastest motherboard on the market?" Placing a fast CPU on a slow motherboard will kill most of the benefit of the fast CPU. -- kainaw™ 13:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Internet Radio Recorder

There used to be a program in Ubuntu that let you record internet radio. Do you know of any for Windows Vista, or should I just stick to a program that records my computers audio output? 24.171.145.63 (talk) 05:46, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Orbit Downloader records internet radio I believe and it comes with browser plug-ins that introduce context menus that make downloading a snap. They have a tutorial here. -ankØku- (talk) 19:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Who uses Java servlets?

I'm having a hard time finding any well-known companies that use Java servlets or JSPs. I'm sure Sun and IBM do, but are they're developers of the technology. Most of the sites I see use PHP, Perl, and ASP/ASP.NET. Can any one give me some examples? Come to think of it, I'm having a hard time thinking of many examples of applets out there! Most of the RIAs nowadays seem to be in Flash or AJAX.--Dfnggcb (talk) 08:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There aren't many around because so many end-users have been warned to turn off Java support in their browser for security reasons that big-name web sites don't want to touch Java if they can possibly avoid it because it's a tech-support nightmare. For small niche sites, you have a choice between Java and JavaScript - but Java can't do much that JavaScript can't do unless you use a "signed" server - that process is painful and incurs a significant annual fee to the web site owner. There are a bunch of cool things I wanted to do on my web site - but in the end, I'm not paying the signing fees - and if I have to restrict myself to the Java subset that can run unsigned - then I might as well just use JavaScript, PHP, Flash(Yuk!), etc. SteveBaker (talk) 14:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with Flash? I use Flash on most of my sites. As you just said, Java is hard to use. And I doubt you could make a Java applet that looks like this: [3]. That's not even taking into account problems with debugging across platforms.--Dfnggcb (talk) 22:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

SteveBaker, you are thinking of applets (which run on the browser) not servlets (which run on the server). A lot of companies use servlets or JSPs, though not all directly. We use struts/stxx for example, which is implemented as a servlet. I would go as far as saying almost all companies with websites running on Java will use servlets - the alternatives are either very low level (code using sockets) or niche like restlets. That is all companies using Weblogic, Websphere, Tomcat, Glassfish, JBOSS, and many more. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

To find some try googling for those advertising for "Java Web Developer", a couple I found were Barclays, General Motors, and British Airways. Of course I don't know if these are for niche sites or intranet only. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, SteveBaker's answer is way, way off here. There are important differences between server side and client side java. Server side java is very very widely deployed, but you can't necessarily tell who is using them just from seeing the website. Friday (talk) 14:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I ended up using Career Builder to search for the words J2EE and then servlet to find companies looking for servlet developers. It turns out that there are many well-known companies using them.--Dfnggcb (talk) 18:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There's also Tomcat (software)'s list of companies using their popular JSP server: [4]. Indeterminate (talk) 20:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Madden 07 Xbox 360 Controls

I got this game at the weekend at a bargain price but it came with no instructions. Whilst I can get the controls from the in-game menu does anybody know of any resource that has a full list of the controls so that I can print them out for quicker reference? A pdf of the booklet, or anything like that would be great. I couldn't find anything when I looked. Is there a site that's dedicated to game-controls or online (free) PDFs of game-booklets? (oh and I know the game is ancient but as a non NFL follower I just thought i'd give the game a go as I used to enjoy the old Madden games back in the day). 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:26, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Found it (http://www.gamesegment.com/XBOX360/instructions.cfm/id/9110375) ny156uk (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Good find! I wasn't turning up anything. Tempshill (talk) 16:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] My Computer is gone

On windows vista I accidentally selected "My Computer" or whatever it's called now and deleted it. I can't find it in the recycle bin, and I can't find any options to bring it back. How do I get it back? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 11:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I cannot be deleted because it doesn't exist. It is just a convenience link. By "deleting", you just removed the convenience. To replace it, click the Start button. You will see an entry called "Computer". Right-click on it and select "Show on desktop". -- kainaw™ 11:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't have "computer" on the start menu, all I have is shut down, run, help and support, search, settings, documents, programs, windows update, default programs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 16:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

If you right click on an empty area of the 'taskbar' - that's the bar at the bottom where the running programs and open files appear - you should see a dialog box. Press properties, then 'start menu', here you might need to change between different formats eg classic etc. Then select 'customise', then 'advanced' - this should get you to a box that shows a list of "start menu items" - from this list check the box for "display My Computer" or equivalent. Then press apply/ok. This should make the MyComputer icon appear when you press the 'Start' button. You can then get the link as described above. (Note this is for XP, though Vista should be very similar or identical method).

Once you've got the link you can go back and change 'start menu' to the way it was. Whilst you are there you might as well take some time to customise the start menu to show all the things you want - It's often useful, and you'll get familiar with the method. Hope this works for you.83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

That worked perfectly! Thank you :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 17:31, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Spoke too soon, it only works if I say on vista start menu, but as soon as I switch back to classic start menu My Computer icon is gone again —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 17:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Mmh, once you've got the icon on the desktop, right click on it, and select "create shortcut" - that should make a shortcut copy, probably named "shortcut to My Computer" on the desktop. Then you can switch back to classic view. The shortcut icon will definately not dissapear (I hope), then all you have to do is rename the shortcut icon to "My Computer" or whatever you want (another right click) - that should fix it.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:29, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thats worked, thanks. The icon is slightly different now, it's got a shortcut arrow on it. But it works so I'm happy :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 20:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know how to get rid of that arrow - if you find out - let me know :)

83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Just had the chance to look at Vista. Try this: Right-click on the desktop. Choose personalize. Do you have a Change Desktop Icons on the left menu? If so, click it. The possible desktop icons will appear and you can place a check next to those that you want to show up on your desktop. -- kainaw™ 21:03, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

THANK YOU :D Worked perfectly :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 21:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] IBM POWER6 Decimal floating point

According to POWER6 the processor has a decimal floating point unit. Outside the azure confines of IBM does this make any sense - I mean does anything actually use decimal floating point, and why? Thanks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, one of the things IBM made it's money on is backwards compatibility. The POWER6 is an enhanced POWER5 which is an enhanced...POWER. The POWER uses the 801 architecture - which is backwards compatible with the IBM System/370 - which is compatible with the 360...which was designed to emulate the 1400 - which was around in 1964! There is quite a lot of software that was written in the late 1960's and early 1970's on 'lumbering giants' that people still run. Very often, they don't even own the source code anymore - or the binaries have been patched so many times that the sources are no longer reliable. (This is one reason why concern over the Millenium Bug was such a big deal.) Being able to buy machines that still run that old junk is evidently still a good business model. Binary Coded Decimal arithmetic is still popular in financial processing because accounting systems have to be able to guarantee accuracy down to the last penny - even in calculations that might require millions or even billions of dollars/pounds/euro's. In a modern programming language, there are much better ways to deal with that - but so much of that old stuff is written in Cobol - so there you go. SteveBaker (talk) 13:49, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose they can convert the BCD to decimal floating point and use the floating point units then.

I'm still trying to come to terms with mending the binaries and not the source . ouch . Thanks for your answer - made me feel young (that doesn't happen so often nowadays!)83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

At SteveBaker: Surely the POWER6 cannot be compatible with the S/370... My understanding is that the POWER6 a new implementation of the Power ISA (formerly PowerPC); the POWER5 was an enhanced POWER4, itself a new implementation of the PowerPC architecture; the POWER1 was an implementation of the POWER architecture, which was based on ideas from the IBM 801, a RISC machine instead of a CISC machine like the S/370. The only microprocessor from IBM that has decimal floating-point and is compatible with the S/370 that I know is the z10, which is used in the IBM System z10 mainframe. Rilak (talk) 11:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Decimal floating point isn't just binary floating point with the base changed, it's more like a collection of numeric operations that are useful in finance. I don't think it's dying. A new standard came out just last year (IEEE 754r), and was incorporated into the C++ standard by a technical report. Intel published a high-speed software implementation of it for x86. Sure, you can use a fixed-point library, but every fixed-point library is different. How many digits should it allow after the decimal point? Are you sure? Can it calculate 1.0825ⁿ to within 0.5 ulp? The point of standardizing decimal floating point is the same as the point of standardizing anything else: it justifies putting extra effort into well-tested high-quality implementations, including hardware implementations for people who need the speed.

Binary floating point is unacceptable for financial calculations even if they involve small amounts of money. Try running the following program:

   #include <stdio.h>
   
   volatile float f = 0;  /* force rounding to single precision at each step */
   
   int main() {
       int i;
       for (i = 0; i < 20000; ++i)
           f += 0.01;
       printf("%f\n", f);
       return 0;
   }

My machine prints 199.969376. That's off by 3¢ after only 20,000 additions of amounts under $200. -- BenRG (talk) 15:52, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Of course you could make cents (or hundreths of centswhy) equivalent to 1 instead of counting in dollars - which solves that problem. Maybe I should email my CV to IBM :) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:11, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

More seriously, this brings me back to my original question which was why "decimal floats" - at my limited level of understanding it seems to me that only the mantissa is useful - eg if I have 10googlegooglebucks and spend 1 dollar then in a float representation it seems likely that the 1 dollar won't even register on the float representation. Wouldn't a fixed point decimal representation make much more sense?83.100.250.79 (talk) 16:28, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

It was precisely that type of "only 3 cents" fraction that was syphoned into another account to make the programmer very rich, in a famous early computer fraud case. If the program cannot be out by anything, nobody can steal the "mistake" and nobody has to account for it (either in the books or in a court). - KoolerStill (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed point is like floating point with a constant exponent. The trouble is what exponent to choose. Some financial calculations are required by law to be done in mills and I think some are done in tenths of mills. You also have to work with multiple currencies and I don't know how the conversions are specified to work. Most likely a single program-global exponent wouldn't be good enough. Your other options are (a) work with bare integers and use variable names and comments to distinguish the formats, (b) distinguish them in the type system (if your language has a type system) or (c) distinguish them dynamically by bundling format specifiers with the numbers. Option (a) is horribly bug-prone. Option (b) is probably not flexible enough in general. Option (c) is decimal floating point by a different name. With any numeric format of bounded size you are going to have cases where the output isn't exactly representable; $1 googol + $1 is one such case for floating point, but in a fixed-width fixed-point format $1 googol wouldn't have been representable to begin with. The computation that produced it might even have wrapped around, which would be even worse. IEEE 754 provides inexact-result and overflow exceptions that will catch these cases. A well-written financial library would presumably check these flags and redo the calculation in arbitrary precision where necessary. I suppose I should mention at some point that I've never written any financial software... -- BenRG (talk) 21:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, my example about 1google$ was meant roughly as an example.. (obviously) though from my reading of Decimal floating point it looks like the format includes expressions for number that have an accuracy of less than 1 integer: eg ~33 decimal places and an exponent that has more than 12bits (14 I think) that's > 2^4000 or ~>10^1200 --- way more than 33 decimal - It looks like massive overkill - the exponent would never be used ??

These number formats are just for accounting (not engineering) ??

I suppose the solution is as you describe - make it easier on the programmers (and harder on the chip designers) - it would/does minimise possible errors if there is only really a single (hardware) implementation of the numbers, rather than 100s of program specific implementations. I suppose that's the real answer then. Thanks.

Still I didn't think financial calculations would ever be extensive enough to require hardware acceleration - even if I had 2billion employees (literally) it wouldn't take a modern desktop PC long to calculate their end of week interest, wages, and taxes (10 seconds?) Maybe someone could shed some light on this, and answer my additional supplementery questions?83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Windows graphing program for excel spreadsheets

We have data in excel spreadsheets. We want graphs that excel is not capable of producing. What is available to produce good graphics from the excel data? -- kainaw™ 13:55, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Did you want a stand alone visualisation program? It's easy to output as CSV and then import into your favorite programming language (assuming it has graphics support for the output) - using that method gives you as much flexibility as you could wish for the graphs, and is probably quicker (and cheaper) than finding a special program.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sigmaplot comes with a 30 day trial, which you'd expect before forking out around $800. Probably more affordable is Dplot, an Excel add-on for $60. This too comes with a free trial.- KoolerStill (talk) 14:20, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, we're debating Sigma and Delta. Perhaps using the evaluations will let the users decide which one they like. The problem with evaluations is that they assume the users know how to use the programs. In reality, you lose most of the evaluation time just trying to make the program function properly. -- kainaw™ 14:47, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Crystal Reports is excellent at graphs, but run it stand-alone. It's horrendously slow in a multi-user datawarehouse or similar environment. Sandman30s (talk) 22:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There are graphing tools in Adobe Illustrator that will accept data from Excel. If you click with one of the graphing tools, a spreadsheet will pop up where you can paste data. After the graph is drawn, you can rotate it in 3D space, add shadows, reflections, and so on.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 22:48, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Replacing PS3 HDD... clone first?

I want to install a larger hard drive into my PS3 (it makes a great media hub. Game? meh.) How can I copy all my game saves and DLC to my new drive? Some game saves (like Rock Band) don't allow copying to a memory stick. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 15:43, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

You have to use the backup utility to an external harddrive. You can't just copy the files. -- kainaw™ 15:50, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Solaris 10 and open Solaris

I was going to try using solaris, but Sun gave me two options - I don't need to see the source code, but I can't distinguish between the two otherwise from the description on Sun's website. Can anyone describe what the difference is? Thanks83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Open Solaris is free to download and use. But you can't update it. If you pay for Solaris, then you can download updates. In either case, keep in mind that Sun will be releasing version 11 in mid 2010. So, you might be better off waiting a year if you want to get Solaris.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC).

OpenSolaris is free and you can get updates for free. Regular Solaris is free, and security updates are free, but any patches that add additional features require a service contract. Regular Solaris also is commercially supported by ISVs, so the software developers of any programs you may be specially running on Solaris will officially support your software - they may laugh at you if you tell them you're running on OpenSolaris, even if the program works as advertised. Solaris is better suited for commercial environments, and OpenSolaris is better for hobbyists. One is not necessarily better than the other. Alex (talk) 12:45, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I sort of had guessed. Apart from the updates - are there any major differences between the two distributions that are obvious and important - such as compatability issues (general use) - also are both ok with the javabeans ide + c/fortran development kit (on experience) - or would one be a better match. (I fall into the amateur category, not major server vendor , obviously) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ubuntu - still free after 18 months?

From the Ubuntu website "Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge." But elsewhere it says: ""....with the benefit of free updates for 18 months." What happens after the 18 months are up? 78.144.242.64 (talk) 20:42, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The ordinary releases are supported for 18 months, after which time Canonical stop making updates available for it. The LTS ones are updated for 3 years (5 for servers). All that happens after these times is that they don't send you any more updates. Almost everyone will, before those periods are up, update to a later version. Ubuntu also contains a distribution-update program which keeps your install at the latest version (unless you tell it not to). 87.115.103.157 (talk) 20:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

(In case somebody doesn't know Ubuntu aims to make a new release every 6 months.) --194.197.235.36 (talk) 21:16, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The information could be worded less ambiguously. Does it mean "we give you free updates for 18 months, but after that you've got to pay for them!" or does it mean "We do updates for 18 months, and then don't do any more. All the updates are free."? 92.27.159.22 (talk) 23:15, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The latter. It should be made more clear, but it does say it is and always will be free at the top, so that gives you a bit of a hint. Thanks, gENIUS101 23:59, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear you can keep using any version of Ubuntu free of charge for as long as you want. After a certain time you will no longer receive updates and security releases. It is probably in your interest to upgrade but you are perfectly entitled to stick with the old version. -- Q Chris (talk) 08:17, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Windows or Linux - which is technically better?

[edit] June 30

[edit] Need help with chess

I want to play both sides. I want an AI to help me out by advising what moves White should take, then I move the black pieces on my own. That way, I can simulate playing against a human (myself) that doesn't always take the best moves. Any help is appreciated.--12.48.220.130 (talk) 00:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Most chess programs allow you to set up the board any way you want and tell the AI to play from there so you could play black(human)vs white(AI) - but when the AI makes it's move, if you decide not to take it's suggestion then just move the piece where you want to play it - play your black move and then tell the AI to "play from this position". But many chess programs have a "suggest a move" feature. So I don't think that's a hard thing to do. SteveBaker (talk) 02:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Most GUI programs also have a "kibitzer" functionality that allows you to add one or more engines to observe the game without interfering. Almost all engines are capable of displaying the principal variation. Some may also be configured to display multiple variations. decltype (talk) 06:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Webmail and wifi security

Using Yahoo! Mail, I log in to my account through a https page, but then viewing and sending messages are done at regular http pages. Suppose I use my webmail from a laptop over wifi at a coffee shop, where I do not necessarily trust the owners. I assume the owners can easily see any messages I view, as well as the content of messages I send, while I am there. But can they do more than that? For example, can they call up messages in my inbox that I do not view while I am there? Can they send messages from my account unbeknownst to me? And can they continue to do this after I leave the coffee shop? --Mathew5000 (talk) 01:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

They can intercept traffic but your login credentials are encrypted when you use HTTPS to log-in. Assuming the Yahoo! Mail is designed even semi-competently, they should only be able to read unencrypted traffic, which would not give them the ability to actually influence the account. Presumably when you log-in to Yahoo! Mail, whatever authentication it uses is hashed with your IP address. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 01:52, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

After I log in, Yahoo must give me a cookie (over https) confirming that I’ve given the correct password. Then when I compose and send a message (over http), you are saying that my web browser does not send back the cookie itself, but rather a hash of the cookie combined with the message I’ve composed? That would make sense I guess. Thanks. --Mathew5000 (talk) 02:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know specifically, but either way, the browser identifies itself as having logged in with some sort of hash value. That hash value probably has the IP and other identifying data encoded in it. That means that even if you had the hash value, logging in would not work if the other data did not match up. (Hypothetically. Some of that data can be spoofed. Your IP, though, needs to match up correctly, or else the server won't know where to send the response.) That's all I mean. There are probably even more complicated and clever things going on; all I've described is the bare minimum for using an encrypted/unencrypted arrangement that doesn't let a man-in-the-middle issue arbitrary commands. I am sure others will have more elaborate and learned explanations, though! --98.217.14.211 (talk) 03:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yahoo mail services check your IP, your browser make, your OS make and version, your Mail software version and WebService version, all down to the minor version numbers. The session cookie would include some or all of these. If you try accessing the mail from another browser on the same machine, it will normally require you (or the nefarious cafe owners)to sign in again. - KoolerStill (talk) 06:43, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

KoolerStill, all that can be spoofed, since the café owners can get my OS version and so forth from the http data going through the wireless router. --Mathew5000 (talk) 11:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, now that you mention it, that's right. The router itself manages the IP to your individual machine. So obviously it could do all that. Bleh. Brain not working. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The real question is, why does Yahoo use HTTP instead of HTTPS for the email data? The contents of your email should be protected as strongly as the session login authentication data. Perhaps you should consider switching to a different service provider, or see if there is an option in the Yahoo mail settings to enable HTTPS for everything. Also, sometimes (for reasons I do not understand) a web page will choose to load some data with HTTPS and other data with HTTP (e.g. by using HTML iframes, or AJAX or similar "web 2.0" technical methods). In that case, it is possible that your email contents are securely transmitted with HTTPS even though the URL you access is prefaced with http:// . If Yahoo allows raw access to its IMAP server, you can use a client-side email program (like Alpine (e-mail client)) which will use strong protection for the entire session, unlike the web interface version seems to be doing. Nimur (talk) 16:09, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I often wonder about this too. All e-mail services should use HTTPS, really. It's an obvious and glaring problem to just send people's private e-mail in the clear. GMail can be told to use HTTPS for everything, though that is not the default option. Tempshill (talk) 18:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

If you want an actual reason, it's just money. Serving emails over a SSL connection is more intensive, computationally and bandwidth-wise, than plain-text HTTP. The mail provider can have less sessions per server, so switching to HTTPS would require them to buy more servers just to keep their current client base. Basically, it would cost them a lot of money for a feature that most of their clients don't care about. Indeterminate (talk) 20:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

And if you really care about e-mail security you don't use Yahoo! Mail. (I'm talking to you, Sarah Palin.) --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

See this from the archives: HTTPS and Hotmail. Jay (talk) 10:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Problem

With reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing#problem: Thanks a lot! I got the whole program and it's running properly except one thing.I didn't understand what the pointer const prompt is doing in the following function.

int GetRoomNumber( const char * const prompt ) { int roomNumber;

do { cout << prompt << " (1 - "<<MAX_ROOMS<<"): "; cin >> roomNumber; } while ( roomNumber < 1 || roomNumber > MAX_ROOMS );

return roomNumber; }

what will be the alternative if we don't use pointer prompt?--121.52.148.13 (talk) 05:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.52.148.13 (talk)

It appears that you are using the function like this:

GetRoomNumber("\nEnter Room Number to be Reserved");

That is, you pass a string literal to the function. The string literal has type "array of const char". The function call is valid because an array of const char can be converted to a pointer to its first element, that is, a "pointer to const char". Thus, inside the function, prompt is used to refer to the address of the first element in "\nEnter room...".

cout << prompt ...

will cause the program to write characters from this location until it encounters a null character.

a (const) pointer to const char is a perfectly reasonable way to pass a literal to a function. Alternatives include using basic_string, a reference to the array, or passing the array by value. decltype (talk) 09:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The second "const" is completely pointless, and should probably not be there. All it says is that in that the pointer variable won't be changed inside the function. But there is no point in declaring that, as since the variable is local to the function anyway, it will never matter to anyone outside the function. It's like if you declared one of your arguments "const int x"; well the const does not matter to anyone outside, so there is no point in declaring it. --Spoon! (talk) 09:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I considered commenting on that. It does not matter to the caller, but it might matter inside (in this case it doesn't), since it prevents you from inadvertently modifying it. While I myself prefer dropping the const, I don't mind the alternative approach:

// foo.h 
int GetRoomNumber( const char * prompt );
// foo.cpp
int GetRoomNumber( const char * const prompt ) { /* ... */ }

decltype (talk) 10:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to replace an old url with the new url globally in all pages

Hai,

I need to replace old url with new url in each page. I dont want to do it manually. I want to change globally in all pages whereever the old one is there. i.e for example : Replace http://www.doc.com with http://www.docum.com

With Regards, Chaitanya.

Since this is a question about links within Wikipedia, my advice to bring the question here was wrong: we'll discuss it back over on the new contributors' help page (though anyone from this refdesk who knows the answer is very welcome to contribute). Gonzonoir (talk) 09:53, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure the question is about links within Wikipedia? That's not clear to me from the question. -- Coneslayer (talk) 18:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The original question was specifically about a "wiki" - we can assume it is a MediaWiki install. This is just a repeat of the question in a different area. -- kainaw™ 20:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What product is this ?

This is bugging me I cannot remember what this product is called

1) think that microsoft is involved

2) User takes a picture of a nine by nine grid with their phone - the grid has black dots on it - phones with the right software then turn this into a URL and take the user to the relevant website. The idea is that those grids can be used on posters, packaging and so on - allow mobile phone users to quickly access content.

Anyone know what this is called? --Cameron Scott (talk) 15:47, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Something like a QR Code? -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Spot-on! thanks chum. --Cameron Scott (talk) 16:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft is more heavily involved in their own competing format High Capacity Color Barcode. APL (talk) 19:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Firefox 3.5

Just tried out Firefox 3.5 today. It's HTML5 stuff rocks! The <audio> and <video> tags work without a hitch to deliver seamless streaming media right inside web pages.

I'm wondering, since Wikipedia uses ogg exclusively, is there any plan at the present time for WP to incorporate HTML5 tags in some way?

70.31.154.75 (talk) 18:27, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Since this is a question about the direction of Wikipedia, it should be asked over at the Village Pump, probably in the "Technical" section. The reason: The people who help out over there are actually working on the software and configuration that Wikipedia uses. Tempshill (talk) 18:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll ask over there then. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.31.154.75 (talk) 19:37, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] machine code question

Is this doable in x86 or Power/PC machine code (not ARM) without involving a jump ? :

flag:=(x<y) !ie flag(boolean) is set of reset on the condition x<y
if flag=true z:=a ! ie a is some constant
if flag=false z:=b ! b is a constant like a

I'm trying to avoid a jump on condition instruction - is this easily done - a formula like z:=b+g(a-b) seems to be the answer so I guess I need to get g (integer?) as either 1 or 0 dependant on the result of (x<y) - ie convert a flag to either integer 1 or 0 for use in a maths expression. I'm not very familiar with either ISA so please excuse if this question is somewhow fundamentally ignorant. Thanks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

There's conditional move instructions on modern x86's, they were put in with Pentium II I believe. In the past one could use a much longer sequence of logical instructions after using one of the SETcc instructions. I don't believe the PowerPC has anything comparable but it isn't such a problem because it can separate a test and a jump much better. Dmcq (talk) 22:12, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! both setcc and move on condition were exactly what the sort of thing I was hoping for.

83.100.250.79 (talk) 23:58, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The PowerPC can copy a condition code to a register so it can do the work without a jump. And in fact I think people do this when assigning a boolean 0 or 1 but it isn't worth it in general. The original POWER architecture had a conditional move but it was removed as not worth the effort. Dmcq (talk) 12:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again. (going through IBM's pdf's is hard work for me I can never find anything) . Found the handle mfcr (introduced in POWER4 according to wikipedia). Now I know what I'm looking for, thanks again.

Resolved.

[edit] google question

ive noticed that google is indenting all my search results by about 3 cm. i find this very annoying but dont know how to fix it. any help?--24.109.201.127 (talk) 21:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Is this a new problem? and what browser are you using, that's probably relevent too.83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:07, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

yeah its new. firefox 3 on vista. --24.109.201.127 (talk) 21:16, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps click "Hide options" at the top? "Show options" indents the results. If it's really chapping your hide you could fix it with Greasemonkey. --Sean 13:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

This just started happening to me too. Firefox 3.0.11 on XP. Thanks, gENIUS101 19:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] B/W

I'm looking for a JavaScript/Flash/C soucecode/GIF/APNG file that swapping black screen to white screen as fast as possible over and over again so I can use it on Full Screen. If possible I want to control the parameters (time, colors, monitor Hz) Same thing about RGB. Something like This, but it's way too slow. Thanks. 85.250.88.35 (talk) 21:29, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ogg

How is Ogg pronounced? Is it similar to the pirate-ish exclamation of "Argh!" just without the 'r'? Or like the first part of the word 'auger'? Dismas|^(talk) 23:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I pronounce it simply /ɒg/. Wiktionary agrees. Algebraist 23:54, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone actually say it out loud? The only time I've ever even read about it has been on Wikipedia. There can't be a "right" (i.e., common) way to say something until people actually talk about it offline.--24.8.176.112 (talk) 00:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Believe it or not, some people in the internet age are still communicating with each other via speech. Algebraist 00:05, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Why? Are you trying to impress all your "friends" while you talk about OGG? I bet all the girls love you.--24.8.176.112 (talk) 02:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I have often had occasion to describe aloud files encoded with the Ogg Vorbis codec. I have always said "Ogg files". (Rhymes with "Dog Files") I have no idea if this is the 'official' way to describe a .ogg file, but everyone knows what I'm talking about and no one has ever corrected me. Neither the vorbis.com website, or the official format descriptions[5] contain a pronunciation key, or even a etymology, I figure we should just pronounce it phonetically. .APL (talk) 01:52, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Hah. The article says that it comes from Netrek slang. In a Netrek "ogging" refers to a kamikaze attack. Usually against an enemy starbase. I don't think that helps, though. APL (talk) 02:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just weird, but I've always pronounced it "oh-gee-gee." Whichever is more aurally pleasing to you! -ankØku- (talk) 04:25, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

A somewhat related question: what do we call acronyms that look unpronounceable but that a significant number of people have figured out how to pronounce? (Example: SCSI interface pronounced "scuzzy interface"). --Goodmorningworld (talk) 15:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I remember a very early Macintosh-enthusiast magazine claiming that for SCSI, PC users pronounced it "scuzzy" whereas Mac users pronounced it "sexy". Because that was how Mac users rolled, you see. Tempshill (talk) 04:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] July 1

[edit] Computer beep when notebook is off

Notebook unplugged, battery out, yet the notebook beeps every hour or so? I have never heard of this so I am asking help here. Does the cmos battery give off some type of alarm or something to cause this? is this even possible? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivtv (talk • contribs) 02:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

That's the tracking feature so they can find you. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:33, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Is the computer situated near a smoke detector by any chance? The smoke detector could be signaling a low-battery condition. --Mathew5000 (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Player which can play with maximum Sound

Picture this - You're in a room with a group of friends, and you want to watch a movie on your Laptop. Problem is, you don't have any external speakers, and the headphones just won't do. So you've got this movie file which is just about audible. My question is, which player do you use in this situation ? Which player can give you the maximum sound on any media file ? I know VLC player is able to give a higher volume than Real Player or Windows Media player, but which player gives you the maximum ? Rkr1991 (talk) 10:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

You will most likely blow the speakers in the laptop if you turn the volume too high. Get some external speakers, preferably with amplification and externally powered - decent ones are about £20 or more. Astronaut (talk) 11:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Rrk1991 is referring to a video or sound file that has been encoded with a very low sound volume, so that putting the volume to max everywhere would only produce, say, half of what the speakers are capable of. So I do not think there's any risk of blowing the speakers. I've been having this problem too, so I'd be interested in hearing some answers. decltype (talk) 11:55, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

In that sort of situation, I think Media Player Classic has settings in its options menu to boost the audio. (the "Normalize" setting might also work.) APL (talk) 13:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Yep, Decltype is spot on, that's the problem I'm referring to... I would love some answers...Rkr1991 (talk) 15:16, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] <video>

Are there any webpages using this markup currently? —SpaceFlight89 (talk) 16:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, here's one. --Sean 19:12, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks —SpaceFlight89 (talk) 07:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] intermittent monitor problem

My (HP) monitor is failing to display when I turn on the system. I can get it to recover by unplugging the power cord for a moment. What might be happening? Just curious. I have another monitor to replace it with when needed. --Halcatalyst (talk) 18:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the problem, but I had an old crt monitor that did the same thing. It would take up to 5 mins to turn on some times. Turning it off and on again usually did the trick after a couple of times, as did banging it with my fist. Very curious to know what causes this too —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 18:39, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Excel IF/AND problem

Right. I'm having one of "those days" and can't get my head around something.

I have a spreadsheet in which one cell is a university mark percentage (0-100%). Using an if/and statement, how could I have another cell display – in my case – the mark classification?

Example:

If the total is >70, the display will be "1st class"

but

If the total is >60 but <70 , the display will be "Upper second class"

but

If the total is >50 but <60 , the display will be "Lower second class"

but

If the total is >40 but <50 , the display will be "Third class"

but

If the total is <40, the display will be "Fail"

Thanks, I'm sure someone will nail this straight away – I'm just not in gear today! Fribbulus Xax (talk) 18:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

=IF(A1<40, "EPIC FAIL", IF(A1<50, "Third class", IF(A1<60, "Lower second class", IF(A1<70, "Upper second class", "1st class"))))

Just be careful in case they should be <= signs; your request wasn't specific about (for example) someone scoring exactly 60. -- Coneslayer (talk) 19:05, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, it works fine (with a bit of tinkering!). Fribbulus Xax (talk) 19:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Note that sometimes nested IFs have funny behavior (they seem to be bad with any kind of rounding?), and there is a maximum number of nestings you can do before it will just give up (however you can use multiple columns to extend it a bit). It's a pain that Excel doesn't, after all these years, have more flexible comparison operators for its functions (other than complicated nesting or slow/problematic VBA macros), but such is how it is... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Microsoft.com windows support

My hard disc crashed and I was told by a guy in a computing store that if I go to the microsoft windows website I can request a new installation disc and that this is free. Is this true? Where on the website can I find this? thanks in advance 79.191.22.69 (talk) 19:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

No, not true. If you bought your computer new, your copy of Windows was sold to you by your computer manufacturer (maybe it was Dell, or HP, or Gateway, or Lenovo, or whoever). In the old days, the manufacturer would include Windows installation discs in the box when you bought the computer. More recently, they charge $10 for this "service", or sometimes they have disc images included on the hard disk, and you are supposed to have the foresight to burn the images to physical discs right when you get the computer. In any case, the place to get a Windows installation disc is your computer manufacturer. The cost should be low - when you bought your computer, part of what you paid for was your copy of Windows (licensed to be used on that particular computer), so all you're buying now is a disc with a copy of that version of Windows. You're not required to go spend $150 for a fresh new version or whatever. Tempshill (talk) 20:17, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Am I able to use someone else's burned disc with my product key? I mean, I've already paid for the license.79.191.22.69 (talk) 20:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Generally not. What Tempshill describes above is an OEM-specific restore disk, and that goes with your OEM Windows licence. If you have access to another computer of the same model (not just from the same manufacturer) then its restore disks should work. Otherwise you'll need to follow Tempshill's advice and get a disk from the manufacturer. 87.115.71.220 (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say before that I have put in a new hard disc since. Does this change anything you have said? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.191.22.69 (talk) 21:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe so. Large-scale changes to the hardware might make a system restore disk fail, changing the hard disk shouldn't. 87.115.71.220 (talk) 21:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Look at your computer case for a serial number. It's usually on a yellow sticker from Microsoft. Then, you can download a copy of Windows, burn it to a disk, and install Windows using the product key on the case. It's perfectly legal to do, even if you download a pirated copy, because the license is still valid.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 22:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I certainly don't recommend this course of action because of the likelihood of trojans. Just call the manufacturer and see if they'll ship you the disc. It may even be free. Tempshill (talk) 22:19, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Trojans are found in keygens. If he already has a key, then how would he get a trojan? He wouldn't even run the keygen.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 22:21, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If he gets a "pirated copy" there is a little issue. --194.197.235.36 (talk) 22:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Trojans can be found in any software, including key generators, disc images, and just about anything else which you can execute. In extreme cases, they can even be found in non-executable files, (like media files), and can only cause an infection if there is a security vulnerability in the system which accesses those files. Nimur (talk) 04:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm a computer repairman, I know. But, I also download a lot of warez, and 99.99% of the time, it's just the keygen (or crack). If you're worried about it, you can scan the download with a virus scanner, or just read the comments on the download site. Attaching viruses to PEs is pretty rare because the programmers usually add code to the program that will warn you if it's been tampered with. I know this from experience.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 05:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Rrrriiiight, because it's unheard of to crack the executable to avoid the selfcheck. Tempshill (talk) 06:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I guess you're just too afraid to handle this kind of stuff. I, on the other hand, have complete confidence in my ability to detect viruses and disinfect my computer. I also have complete confidence in the OP, even though he's new to this. But, if you lack confidence in yourself, then there's nothing I can do to convince you.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 07:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

What you are calling "confidence", I call reckless blind faith, or wishful thinking. There are bad guys in this world who are slightly smarter than you, you know. Trojans or keyloggers embedded in a pirated version of Windows are not necessarily detectable by any of the software you have installed, especially if the trojan writer rolled his own. If you choose to put all your personal data at the mercy of an OS that you downloaded from a warez torrent — well, that's just foolhardy. Tempshill (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No amount of expertise, experience, or L337 computer skillx0rz can allow you to look at a windows .exe file and know what it does. These files can contain megabytes of binary code - even if you open it with a hex editor and are proficient in reading machine code, it will take you hours to scan the entire file. Anodeeven, are you claiming that you can, via sheer force of will and expertise/experience, decipher the execution path of a large binary file? It's hard enough to follow execution paths if you have documented source-code, let alone if you are trying to reverse-engineer something. Merely "trusting" an executable is not a matter of skill; it is a risk, every time; you must trust the originator of the program. If you are willing to trust every pirated source on "the internet at large", then you are not instilling a lot of confidence in your own critical-thinking. Nimur (talk) 19:18, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Take it easy guys, thanks for all the responses lol

[edit] July 2

[edit] Boolean as tinyint(1)

Why does MySQL make columns specified as "Boolean" tinyint(1)s when bit(1) is available? Is there any way to have a group of Boolean columns stored internally as a bit field rather than giving each one its own byte? NeonMerlin 04:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 400 bad request

I get a 400 bad request while attempting to access YouTube with Google Chrome. Internet Explorer works fine for the site. Has anyone else noticed this? --Blue387 (talk) 05:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Worked for me just now with Windows XP. Tempshill (talk) 06:29, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Chrome works now. --Blue387 (talk) 03:56, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New tab problems in IE8

Hi, whenever I open a new tab in Internet Explorer 8, I get a page that says

"The webpage cannot be displayed

  Most likely cause:

•Some content or files on this webpage require a program that you don't have installed.

  What you can try: 
    Search online for a program you can use to view this web content.  

    Retype the address.  

    Go back to the previous page. "

and instead if "about:Tabs" being in the address bar, it says: "tbr:res?id=tabs&rep=1"

I'm running Windows XP SP3.

How can I fix this?

Thanks 144.138.21.100 (talk) 06:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a default homepage set up? It may be that the default home page is not loading properly. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 07:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Even if I had a default home page set up, it wouldn't open if I clicked new tab, as a new tab goes to "about:Tabs". 144.138.21.92 (talk) 21:45, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Internet Connections and Topology

Hi friends, can u please describe for me the various methods in which intrnet connections are made possible? (2) what is network Topology? Bye. Kvees. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.178.188.221 (talk) 08:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think that you can search Wikipedia to find your answers. In addition, you could try to search the reference desk archives. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

From Network topology: "the study of the arrangement or mapping of the elements (links, nodes, etc.) of a network, especially the physical (real) and logical (virtual) interconnections between nodes." Hope this helps! Please try to use the reference desk search box at the top of this page or the Wikipedia search next time.-ankØku- (talk) 18:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misevaluation, but it is our policy here to not do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn how to solve such problems. Please attempt to solve the problem yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know. Thank you.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 19:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] USB flash drive/pen drive/stick drive failures

I have a number of pen drives which I use to transfer data from one computer to another. Typical use would be to fill one up for a week with data from one computer, then move it to the other computer, copy all the data to that computer, then delete everything on the pen drive. So, I figure that's one read/write cycle per week, so it should last for years at that low usage rate. However, they don't last for years, but only months.

At first I thought I just had a defective drive, but now it's happened again. So, why might this be happening ? One theory I have is that while the data area only gets one read/write cycle per week, the index area is being updated every time I write a new sector. Since these are 32 Gb pen drives, that would mean there are some 64 million sectors at 512 bytes per sector. So, if there's an index that keeps track of the "highest occupied sector address" (or "lowest unoccupied sector address"), this might update 64 million times a week. In that case I could certainly understand why they would fail after a few months.

So, is this how they work ? If so, this seems to be a major flaw in their design. Is there any way to prevent them from doing this (say by having them only update that index after the copy operation is completed, instead of when each sector is written). Are there some brands that don't do this ? Are there some brands that include a small portion of more stable memory for this type of index space ? Any other solutions would be welcomed (I'm considering using a portable hard drive if I can't get the pen drives to last longer). StuRat (talk) 12:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

What file system did you use for the drive? I'd guess fat16/32 are the best for flash drives. --12:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.197.235.36 (talk)

FAT32. Note that when you follow that link you get to a paragraph that says "...the boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count...". If that "sector count" is updated every time a sector is written, then the low bit would be changed millions of times a week, and that may be the bit that wears out first. So, would some other file system be better ? I prefer a format that's usable by both Windows and Linux. Or maybe there's a way to periodically change where the "sector count" is stored so it can wear out other bits ? StuRat (talk) 12:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Most modern flash memory controllers incorporate wear levelling into the flash controller, wherein there is a lookup table that maps logical block addresses with physical block addresses, and the PBA for a given LBA is shuffled around (on erase)(example(pdf)). So even a dumb filesystem that beats constantly on the same blocks will result in levelled wear. Now if you were using a unix filesystem with atime enabled, I could speculate that you'd be reading a lot, and updating those atimes would cause a large amount of writes you weren't immediately cognisant of. It seems FAT32 does store atime of a sort, one that (at least on linux) is honoured by the vfat driver (ref); so if I were planning on doing tons of reads on a flash drive on linux, it would make sense to make sure that it was mounted noatime.87.113.26.43 (talk) 13:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I did some experiments: by default Ubuntu does mount fat32 volumes with vfat with atime enabled, and it shows a proper atime (ls -lu) for files, down to the second - but remount the disk and the atime is shown with the HH:MM back to (UTC) zero. It's like the ref I gave above says, FAT32 only stores the day part of access-time stamps. So whether repeatedly accessing a file on a vfat volume actually causes a torrent of writes to the disk depends on how smart the vfat driver is (and I guess the same is true for its counterpart in Windows). If the update_atime() logic checks that the file's current atime(.date) is the same as that which we propose to write, and doesn't bother writing, then the wear from reading is trivial. If the driver is dumb, then what I wrote above is a real concern for read-heavy write-light flash devices. 87.113.26.43 (talk) 14:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

But, in my case, the use isn't really read-heavy or write-heavy. I write maybe 100 files containing perhaps 32 Gb of data over the course of a week, then read them perhaps a few times each, then delete them. How can I find out if a given flash drive has the wear leveling feature, and does this apply to the index space/"sector count", as well as the data area ? StuRat (talk) 17:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Open it up, figure out which usb<->flash controller chip it has, find its datasheet on the website of the semiconductor company that made it (lsusb -v might help, particularly for a sealed drive). As a simple block-structured device, it doesn't have any concept of the index or the fat or the data area; it's all just blocks of bytes. Failing that, I can't think of an easy way to figure it out only in software; much of the point of these controller chips is to hide the complexities of LBA<->PBA, wear levelling, and NAND flash's vexing rewrite characteristics. 87.113.26.43 (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I'm willing to "open it up" quite yet, as I imagine them being even more fragile than a laptop, and I managed to sever a paper cable (yes, paper !) the last time I tried that. My Puppy Linux doesn't recognize the "lsusb" command at all. Under Windows XP I looked for "scandisk" and the help informed me that it's no longer supported and I should run "chkdsk" instead. I'm running that now. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

quote "One theory I have is that while the data area only gets one read/cycle per week, the index area is being updated every time I write a new sector." - that would explain your problem - but would be a massively shortshighted way fo doing things - I doubt flash would have ever made it to market with algorhthyms like that - I give a better way below - but it is a guess - I'd like to know the answer too.. 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I can easily imagine it happening, say if the manufacturers only concerned themselves with hardware issues and those that set the standards for the FAT32 file system didn't think about it's use on flash drives. In such a case, there may not be anyone who actually worried about the implications of having a FAT32 file system on a flash drive. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

As a related question - a perhaps close to what the OP was asking: The wear levelling of the LBA (the data) is I think easy to understand - but what of the PBA (the pointers or references to the actual data) - how are they wear leveled ? (I understand that a PBA will point to a relatively large block of data)

My guess: linked lists with several pointer fields per PBA that can be 'crossed out' as used seems like one option - (coupled with a binary tree referencing the PBAto prevent the flash chip turning into a vast tape drive - also with 'cross outable fields') - but how exactly in practice - that was a guess - could someone give a simple(ified) example? Thanks?83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood what a PBA is, and you're conflating how flash works and how fat works. An LBA is just the linear block address of a hypothetical block; all the data on the drive is addressed using LBAs. LBAs are the chief part of the interface between drives (over SCSI,USB,SATA, or IDE), and really they're a bit abstract - you think about them actually being blocks in a row on the surface of a disk, but there's no guarantee that they are (and sometimes they aren't). IN the case of wear-levelling flash controllers, the controller device (I really mean the device, not the device driver, and certainly not the filesystem layer or OS block layer) has a translation table that maps 1-1 LBAs to addresses on the physical flash chips that only it can see. The OS/fs/blockdriver doesn't know anything about PBAs, and it can't see or manipulate that table. When filesystems manipulate storage, they do so solely by dealing with logical blocks, and they don't care if those are blocks of ram or flash or areas on a magnetic disk or blocks in a storage-area-network (wherein blocks get translated a bunch of times). So the fat driver doesn't know anything about flash (and doesn't do anything special for it) and the flash device doesn't know anything about FAT (and doesn't have any special support for it). 87.113.26.43 (talk) 20:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Not at all - I was taking about the underlying(overlying?) structure of the data+extra stuff for wear leveliing in the flash - independent of the data structure imposed on it by the OS. You prompted me to point out that there is more than one way to do this - including a method that doesn't included separate pointers (an index) - one which springs to mind would be a doubly linked list, containing blocks of data. In either case the idea of having more than one pointer field (ie the pointer to previous and next data items in the doubly linked list case) is still valid, maybe even more so.

ie the idea of having more than one slot for a specific pointer per data block so that as the pointer slots are used, they can be marked 'dirty', and the next slot used - preventing the movement of whole blocks because of the change of a single pointer (particularily necessary if a doubly linked list were used).

I get the feeling I haven't explained my response to the OP very well - maybe someone else could give it clearer. (Did I mix up LBA and PBA in what I said - it's summer - the heat may be affecting my clarity) 83.100.250.79 (talk) 21:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

All the above doesn't explain why you are getting such poor value from your drives - you should expect that say for a 1GB drive with 10,000 average time to failure that you can write 10,000GB to it before your expectation of failure becomes 50/50. One possibility is that you are immensly unlucky. Another is failure due to static (maybe) - they have static protection built in (not sure about USB)- but if you work in a high static enviroment eg lots of polyester seat covers and carpets - that might affect the lifespan - I've no data on this - it's a unlikely explanation - unless you are constantly getting staic elctricity shocks every time you touch an earthed object.

Some devices do contain some normal ram that can be used to store acceleration data (either cache or lookup tables) - but that won't(shouldn't) be related to the lifetime. Are you doing standard read/write to large files eg documents/pictures - I doubt the standard thumb stick is configured for bitwise access?83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No static electricity problems around here, as it's usually quite humid. The typical usage is to use Windows XP File Manager (or, as they call it, "Windows Explorer") to copy large files (maybe 500 Mb each) to the flash drive, and then later off the flash drive to another Windows XP computer, followed by using Windows XP to delete the files. Puppy Linux may also sometimes be used to copy or delete files. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

In case it will help, let me describe some of the errors I get. On one flash drive I can write to about half of it, then it says "Device is write protected" and won't write any further. On another it says "File not found" when I try to write to it or read from it at all. I assumed these errors were the typical nonsense errors you get and that the actual problem is bad sectors on the flash drive. But how could I actually confirm that this is the real problem ? StuRat (talk) 23:49, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, "chkdsk" completed on the "file not found" flash drive, after a very long time (good flash drives are usually very quick). No errors were found except that it said "Cannot write boot sector". I take that to mean that the boot sector is bad. What would cause the boot sector to fail before the rest of the flash drive ? Is there any way to designate a new sector to be used as the boot sector ? StuRat (talk) 01:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Maybe more info might help - is the card totally broken - is it possible to re format it and get it to work again (ie corrupted or just bust), vista? (sorry ms), works on other OS?, also card make - internet suggests FAT corruptions is commonplace on certain devices.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

chkdsk has issues of it's own with boot sector (see search) - also if you are using chkdsk to do write read tests to check for bad bits on the disk this would just hammer the flash data structure.. and wouldn't detect a bad bit properly.

(Some computers automatically perform a defragment every day - is there a chance that the OS has been doing this to the flash drive if it's left plugged in?)83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:00, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

There's supposed to be a backup boot sector [6] "If you have a corrupted primary boot sector..", but see also [7] 83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Reformatting the flash drive doesn't work. That info about the backup boot sector is interesting, but unfortunately it looks like it just copies the data from the backup boot sector to the primary and continues to use the primary boot sector to boot. This won't help if the sector itself is bad, as opposed to the data stored on it. What I really need is the ability to designate some sector other than sector 0 as the boot sector, since sector 0 is apparently bad. Also, your links are for Windows 2000 and I use Windows XP. Does this info also apply to XP ? Defragmentation definitely doesn't happen, since the flash drives are only plugged in when the data is being written or read, then are immediately unplugged. As for the brand names, one is Micro Center, and I can't tell what the other one is. StuRat (talk) 19:19, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the 2000 didn't notice- don't know if it's the same in XP (ie has it been fixed?) - but as a format doesn't fix the drive I suppose it is irrelevent.

If the microcentre drive is like this one [8] you've got a 3 year warranty - perhaps you will enjoy knowing that

We use only the highest quality components from the leading manufacturers to give you many years of worry free use

Sorry couldn't resist. Honestly I'd be blaiming the drive and returning for a full refund, receipts??. I've no reason to believe that USB drives are fundamentally short lived. It sounds like you are nowhere near to the level of use for failure.83.100.250.79 (talk) 20:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It says a "limited warranty", which might mean it excludes "normal wear and tear", which they would claim caused it to fail. I don't know how to prove it was only lightly used. StuRat (talk) 11:37, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you're still within 'normal wear and tear' - unless the dog chewed it, or it was struck by lightning, or you ran over it with a truck..

I am within normal wear and tear, yes, but how would I prove I am ? Won't they just say I used it constantly until it failed ? StuRat (talk) 02:45, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way this discussion raises the issue of static vs. dynamic wear leveling [9] - which could cause the drive to wear out faster if you have it full to 95% of files, and are only changing a few files a lot. It's not an issue if the drive occasionally has a lot of files deleted.83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

No, I pretty much fill it up (or half up), then copy everything to another computer and delete everything. StuRat (talk) 02:45, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How do I make my USB flash drive last as long as possible ?

As I described in the section above, my flash drives die at an unacceptable rate. So, how can I make them last longer ? Should I use something other than the FAT32 file system ? (Remember that I need to access them in Windows XP and would also prefer to be able to access them in Linux.) Could heat cause them to wear out prematurely ? Would pointing a fan at them while in use help ? StuRat (talk) 19:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ajax with Scripted Content

Is there a "standard" method for handling the following problem: Going modern, you decide to pull page content using Ajax. You place the content in some div's innerHTML. The content you pull is dependent on some JavaScript. However, the page is loaded. So, the browser won't load anymore scripts automatically. The content fails unless you load the script when the page loads, before the Ajax-pulled content is loaded. In other words, if you have 30 content pages, each with a unique script, you have to load all 30 scripts on page load just in case the user requests to pull one of the content pages. -- kainaw™ 12:33, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I guess I should point out what I am doing... I'm using regex to locate instances of the script src=.... tag. Then, I have an array of scripts I've loaded in the past. If the script in script tag is not in the array, I create a script node, set the src, and insert it into the head element. This functions but has the problem that once you hit a page with a script, the script is permanently loaded until you close the website. -- kainaw™ 14:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

When the user clicks to pull a page, set the head element and auto-refresh the page to run that script, whether it's a separate one or in the array. Each call for a new page should overwrite the src in the head; perhaps a graceful closing of the previous script would also be in order. - KoolerStill (talk) 15:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, this project is doomed to failure. The scripts, it turns out, are not all in separate files. Some is embedded in the HTML. Also, some of it must be run when the page loads (body onload option) to function at all. So, Ajax appears to be a bad tool. I'm suggesting they just load the whole page (content and all) per link instead of just trying to load the content. -- kainaw™ 19:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the crucial point you've hit at here is that you really, really need to think through the overall organization of something like this. In any case in your scenario it is hard for me to understand why you are using AJAX in this instance ("going modern" is the worst reason ever—doing it just because it is current is an awful idea, you should do it because it works better for your situation), but I understand you haven't fully described that end of things. AJAX should not be used to just load pages that could otherwise just be served up regularly. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:59, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

The product functions fine. Management got it in their head that using Ajax will reduce data transfer, decreasing network costs, increasing profits. So, I was asked to make it Ajax-based. The deeper I delved into it, I realized how extensive the javascript was. So, I use Ajax to dynamically change content on non-scripted pages, but loaded the scripted pages directly. -- kainaw™ 14:36, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Data transmission speeds

I've been trying to understand how data is transmitted via modulation. Am I right in thinking that for short-distance transfer as in computers and USB (and ISDN for some reason), data are transmitted by serial/parallel digital communication - simply on-off-off-on etc.? But telephones, DSL, cable, optical fibres and radio all use modulation?

Am I then right in saying that DSL, for example, uses Discrete Multi-Tone Modulation and that this works in a way similar to that mentioned under Modulation#Digital_modulation_methods?

Why then is this not much faster than serial communication? Why is USB2 so much faster than ADSL (and even Fibre-to-the-home) when each symbol in ADSL can represent many bits compared to one bit in serial? And this is without going into the complexities of Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing and Quadrature amplitude modulation. Why not have a serial internet given that USB3 is 5Gbit/s and presumably a robust signal as it is only binary? ASmartKid (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The trick is, you can send data as fast as you want - but if the signal gets corrupted, you can't receive it. USB can make some assumptions about the signal integrity - the cable will only be a few meters long, and the wire will be inside a house with reasonable, homogeneous temperature; etc. etc. All these mean that there is an implicit "guarantee" that a certain quality of signal will be received on the other end. (Specifically, high frequencies will not be attenuated). DSL, however, must travel for kilometers over an uncontrolled, outdoor cable. Along this signal path, the analog details start to matter, and the signal will become distorted. (It's going to get distorted; the only question is - how much?) So, the engineers must be a little more conservative with the amount of data that they put on the long-distance cables, given that they have an expected signal integrity. Depending on the particular transmission method, the signal degradation might be quantified as a total power loss ("dB of attenuation") or it may be a particular frequency-response. This analog error creates a loss of digital information. One option is to slow the amount of data so it is always below the distortion threshold. This severely throttles the network speed, though. Another option is to push data as fast as possible, right on the edge of the "lossy" part - so that there's a particular statistical likelihood that the data gets through undistorted. If there is an error, the network controlling software and hardware must request re-transmissions (which of course slows things down a little). If properly designed, based on a realistic bit error rate, this is the fastest way to transmit data over an analog channel with a known amount of expected distortion. This is the reason for the OSI model of networks - where a variety of interoperating abstraction layers all have certain understandings and assumptions about the end-to-end connection. Nimur (talk) 16:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] SQL Server 2000 & 2005 Residing on the same server

Does anyone know if it's possible to run two different versions of SQL Server on the same physical server if they are installed in different directories? Thanks in advance for your help.

Yes it'll work just fine (you shouldn't even need to specify a different directory as the default locations are already slightly different). Install the 2000 server first AND updating it to service pack 4, but after that just install 2005 as normal. From memory it'll either ask you if you want to upgrade the 2000 server (if it can) or if you want to install a new instance and you just want the new instance option. ZX81 ^talk 19:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm currently running both versions on the same machine at the same time. Yes, they are installed in different directories. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:38, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Linux keyboard issue

I have a Linux home computer (not sure about details) and the backspace key has started making this symbol ( ç ) but the keyboard configuration says it should be backspace... If anyone could shed some light on the matter that would be greatly appreciated. 83.50.42.15 (talk) 21:59, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

It sounds to me like Linux may think you have a foreign language keyboard, perhaps Spanish or Portuguese. Hopefully others can provide details of how to check and change that setting. StuRat (talk) 00:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah it is set in Spanish (I live in Spain) but it used to be absolutely fine and it just decided to go haywire with the backspace key for unknown reason 81.32.39.224 (talk) 11:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

What distribution of Linux are you using? If you are not sure, open up a terminal and type uname -a and tell us what the output is. - Akamad (talk) 22:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Done.. The message that comes up is Linux casacaracol-desktop 2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP Thu Nov 20 21:57:00 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux 81.39.56.119 (talk) 10:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

That didn't help unfortunately. What's the output from cat /etc/*-release? - Akamad (talk) 00:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] July 3

[edit] Does anyone know of a good macro program?

I would like a simple program thats free and accurate. The program should be able to record and play back macros for keyboard and mouse. Im looking for something with a low file size, but its not a neccessity. Does anyone have any good programs for this?

I use Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit version, if that helps.

209.240.240.230 (talk) 00:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Morphing

I just purchased morpheus morphing software because I want to take two pictures and ad the nose or eyes of one person and replace the nose and eyes on another person and make it look like another person as a picture. But so far all I can do is make a movie of the two pictures transitioning one after the other. How do I change the features of a person's face and body and make it look like another person without looking all cut nd pasty? Is this called something else besides morphing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.137.242.85 (talk) 00:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Just to confirm, Morphing is literally changing one image into another so I'm afraid you're looking at the wrong sort of software, but I don't know if what you want to do actually has a name. ZX81 ^talk 11:45, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Attempts to access TCP port 445 and 135

Today, someone with a residential DSL IP kept trying to connect to ports 445 and 135 on my network for an hour or longer, and I'm not running any kind of peer 2 peer software. My router's firewall continued to block the attempts to access the ports. I've had my IP address for a couple of months. Apparently ports 445 and 135 are commonly abused by hackers. What are the chances that the IP was trying to hack in? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 02:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, 100% or so. See the ShieldsUP 445 page for some information/ranting about it. I'm glad to see you have a router; keep it between your computers and the wall port, and you have nothing to worry about. Tempshill (talk) 04:26, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Note Steve Gibson, the Shields Up guy, is pretty kooky and you shouldn't worry about his constant fearmongering. This was definitely a hacking attempt, though. -- BenRG (talk) 22:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

That IP address isn't necessarily owned by a hacker. It could well be a PC that is infected with a virus or worm that tries to infect other computers at random IP addresses. Lots of worms out there that do that. E.g. the somewhat famous Blaster worm spread through port 135. 62.78.198.48 (talk) 09:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Right. It's likely not a "hacker" in the sense of a guy in a basement looking to get your secrets anyway. It's an infected machine, trying to infect you. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 13:43, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] editing firefox add-ons

How do I edit the .xpi files? -- penubag  (talk) 07:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Change the extension from .xpi to .zip, then you can open the file in a program like WinRAR or 7zip. 8I.24.07.715 (talk) 08:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I do not know anything about .xpi files, but if they really are simple .zip files (but with a strange extension), Windows Me and later versions (e.g. XP, Vista) can open them as well. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] help regarding the asteganography project

i want to do my project on "steganography on vedio containers" can i get any source code for image container steganography —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sandeepborra (talk • contribs) 10:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Facebook's insides

Sites like Youtube have the videos "available" for download (if you know where to look) in formats resembling the original formats (though probably converted and compressed to a certain degree). Is anything known of this for Facebook? I'm mainly wondering about the images, which I sometimes want to download from a profile but the visible resolution is incredibly small, even when the upload was quite large (images are resized after upload, though obviously the originals might be deleted). Any help is appreciated, thanks! 210.254.117.186 (talk) 10:29, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I afraid I don't think any higher resolution images exist (it's just not in their interest to store them because of the amount of disk space it'd consume and there's no wording in the privacy policy to say they're storing a higher resolution version), but I'm afraid I disagree with you on the part about images being resized AFTER upload. If you do the "simple file upload" then yes that's correct, but if you use the Facebook Photo Uploaded ActiveX control, all the resizing is transparently done before it's uploaded. This is easily verifiable because in my case I take my pictures at 10 megapixels (~4Mb each) and it will happy upload ~300Mb of images in less than a few minutes and my ADSL upload speed is nowhere near fast enough for that (should take well over an hour). ZX81 ^talk 11:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Hard to argue with your empirical observation about the ActiveX uploader, that's good data. I'd argue against your claim that it's not in their interest to store higher-res photos. Big disks are really cheap. Cheap enough for YouTube to have decided, before their recent "HD format" player, to keep the original higher-res uploaded videos around, at the time when they were recompressing the crap out of every video that got uploaded. When they eventually debuted the "HD format" player, bang, they suddenly had all this content in a higher resolution and did not have to just be "the video site of low res". Tempshill (talk) 16:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes you are quite right, I forget how cheap disk space is these days (I've got 4 x 1 Tb disks in my workstation and it really didn't cost all that much). I suppose thinking about it that it is possible they're storing a slightly higher version of the images for future use (although not necessarily as high as the originals), but if they are they haven't mentioned that and it doesn't seem to be web accessible. ZX81 ^talk 17:30, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I've used both the Java uploader (Firefox here, so didn't even know an ActiveX uploader existed) and the regular file uploader, and probably simply because I've never thought about it, I never noticed a difference; I'll keep that in mind next time. Mind you, all of my photos are ~5megs, and I resize them to a more reasonable size anyway, because Facebook never lets me upload photos that large. Thanks for the comments! 210.254.117.186 (talk) 08:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What happened to my Copy Response Body option in Firebug's Net tab?

Using Firefox 3.0.11 on Jaunty (Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu; canonical - 1.0) and Firebug 1.3.3. I know it was there a week ago, but it just disappeared! I can no longer right-click on a link (or the Response tab or whatever) and select Copy Response Body. The option isn't there. There's only Copy (doesn't do anything), Copy Location and Copy Response Headers.... --205.174.162.243 (talk) 19:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Turning off DEP

I am having a problem in which DEP keeps attempting to shut down IE8. I have added it to the list of exceptions, but it continues to pop up. All anti-Internet Explorer statements aside, how can I fix this once and for all? --74.46.74.205 (talk) 19:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

See : http://www.bing.com/search?q=Data+Execution+Prevention+internet+explorer+8&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC

Plug ins seem to be a major cause of it triggering. including java flash etc - you may need to add those to the list of exceptions? (someone should clarify this)

Alternatively you can turn it off. [10]

83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Before starting it might be a good idea to check the boot file to make sure DPE is set to "opt out" [11] - might be different for vista - see also BCDedit - below. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

(If it's vista this [12] to check what is and what isn't using DEP. In XP DEP can't be shown in the task manager.)

If it's behaving erratically one suggestion is to reinstall IE8, or you could just use IE7 [13] 83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

As a last resort see [14] , [15] which describes what BCDedit.exe is, and how to use it to totally turn DPE off. Don't do this - try other options first. If you get this far, and nothing works (including the reinstall) - try microsoft support - but search the index first.

Hint try uninstalling your plugins (shouldn't do any harm and they are easy to get back) eg java, flash, google toolbar are probably there. See if that fixes it, if it does add them back one by one to see which is problematic.83.100.250.79 (talk) 19:42, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Delphi Debugging Tips?

I am currently debugging a rather complicated piece of Delphi code. Placing a breakpoint before the most interesting part of the algorithm, I step the code one line at a time. Eventually, I end up on a while expr do statement, and the expr expression is obviously true, for it is or'ed with a trivially true statement. Yet, the program appears to skip the entire while block, as if expr had been false. I have experienced similar odd behavious previously, and, if I remember correctly, this has been due to some sort of "silent access violation", e.g. trying to access s[4] in a string s with length(s) = 3. This time it is rather difficult to pinpoint the source of the problem, due to the complexity of the code. Is there any debugging trick I can utilize to find the (potential) problems? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:26, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Resolved.

While...Do loops test at the top of the loop....are you certain the condition is true before the first pass of the loop? is there any need for the ORing? it seems you always want this loop to happen, but it eventually counts down to a False condition that stops it. So replace it with a Repeat....Until, which must always execute at least once, as it only evaluates the condition at the end of each pass. When a pass has just turned the condition to False, it will evaluate as such and not run again.

To test your variable, put a Watch on its value immediately before the While loop and at every line of code thereafter. Or put code at every relevant line to display the value of the variable on screen, with a Break after the non-working loop, and run the program.- KoolerStill (talk) 08:35, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it did not run the block even though the condition certainly was true. I traced the code line by line, and it just skiped the block. However, it works now (even though I have not changed anthing in the code!). Perhaps the debugger displayed the current version of the source code, but ran an older version of it, or something like that... --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:54, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Spider Web Evolution Program

Hi, I remember reading quite a while ago about a computer program that mimicked the evolution of spider web designs. Essentially you started off with "spiders" who drew random designs of "webs", then "prey" items were thrown at the "webs" and if sufficient were caught the spider could survive and breed with a random other surviving spider, but the "webs" of their offspring would be some kind of cross between the two initial successful designs. Each generation had to catch more prey items to survive. Apparantly from a completely random start within about 20 generations the webs were basically identical to real spiderwebs and as efficient.

I'd be very interested in runnning this program - does anyone know if it (or a clone) was publically released and/or available online? Exxolon (talk) 21:06, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

A search for "spider web genetic algorithm" turned up Analysing Spider Web-building Behaviour with Rule-based Simulations and Genetic Algorithms from 1997 (the download link is broken but the CiteSeer cached copy works). The program was written in Smalltalk on a Power Mac 8100. Nothing about a public release, but you could try asking Vollrath, who's now at Oxford. -- BenRG (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Could be that. Googling isn't helping me much as I'm getting a lot of irrelevant web spider type results. I was hoping for some kind of free version to run on a pc (I don't own a Mac) - thanks for the info anyway. Exxolon (talk) 12:33, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm - looks like they haven't released it to the public according to [16] - oh well. Exxolon (talk) 12:56, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Seriously, email Krink and/or Vollrath and ask for a copy. They will probably send you the source code if they still have it, and you could probably get that working on a modern PC Smalltalk like Squeak. -- BenRG (talk) 10:56, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Use PSP for both music playback and GPS?

As the map data on my satnav is quite out of date and the map update for it is both itself quite old, and quite dear, I'm thinking about buying a new one

I'm quite drawn to Sony's Go!Explore, as I already have a PSP, but I'm dithering over it. One thing that'd make my decision easier is knowing whether I can still use the PSP for playing back music at the same time as navigation - that'd mean one less thing cluttering up the car.... does anyone know if it can?

Cheers, davidprior ^t/_c 21:19, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] LCD vs CRT VGA ouput

Just a quick question: Using the intel software for the 945 graphics chips I find that when examining the properties of an attached LCD TV it has its display type as CRT. (Another device is LFP - liquid flat panel)

If the chip thinks it is a CRT will that effect the output? (the default display is a little bright, but otherwise seems well set up)

Also in the same properties box the gamma is said to be 2.2 or something, but in color correction the gamma is clearly 1.0 - is the colour correction gamma applied on top of the of another unseen gamma?

Also I'd like (for fun) to be able to make the display black and white - I can only find gamma brightness and contrast settings - is there a way? Thanks.83.100.250.79 (talk) 22:09, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

To briefly summarize, before going in to horrible details, the answer is: "Probably, the mis-identification has no effect on signal quality or anything else." But, there is always a slight chance that it may, so here are some gory details.

The video system you are using is VGA over a DSUB cable. (If you are using a DVI or HDMI system, most of the following still applies, because the DDC channel is logically identical to the VGA-DDC version). This connector cable actually contains two "separate" information channels:

1. VGA video data, (unidirectional, from computer to monitor); and
2. Display Data Channel, the digital link that provides text and other information about the monitor to the computer. This is the system responsible for identifying the monitor to the host computer (and it is the monitor's "fault" for incorrectly identifying itself to the computer). The DDC controller can be either unidirectional (monitor-to-computer) or bidirectional (able to identify the monitor and receiver commands from the host PC).

LCDs or CRTs that accept VGA input signals accept the same type of signal, but you should be aware that there are several "allowable tolerances" for VGA control signals. CRTs, in my experience, are more lenient about the timing errors allowed (they will display with glitches rather than fail to display anything). Many LCDs (and some CRTs) will detect such borderline-allowable timing glitches and perform a safe shut-down (or display a "Bad video signal" or "invalid frequency" error message). In any case, this should not be a problem if you are using a 945 (which should put out video control signals that are right in the center of the allowable ranges at all resolutions and refresh rates - see below about possible, simultaneous-pathological-design-flaws).

I'm not familiar with the Intel 945 specifically, but most modern VGA controllers separate out the video control from the monitor's digital report (that is, the analog VGA hardware is completely distinct from the Display Data Channel system). The operating system may "choose" to believe the reported data (typically, monitor type, manufacturer, and acceptable resolutions and refresh-rates). However, the "contract" of VGA does not require this, and the operating system may prefer to disregard that DDC identification (or merely display it to you, the user).

If the operating system (or video driver) chooses to believe the DDC data, it will typically use that information to "guide" the video options available (such as only allowing the user to switch to acceptable resolutions). These are often manually overrideable (depending on your video device driver). This is the most common mode of operation. Most likely, your system falls into this category - an invalid monitor ID was sent to the host PC, but your video system didn't change anything or care.

It is also possible, however, that using bidirectional DDC2 with command interface, that the hardware will automatically and directly send resolution changes or other commands to the monitor. This requires that the video driver (or hardware) on your PC chooses to send commands; and also requires that the monitor accepts those commands. The monitor is not responding properly (clearly, it is misidentifying, so we can assume that the monitor DDC controller is not 100.0% correctly implemented). Hopefully, this means that it will not listen for commansd; and also, hopefully the 945 will not send any invalid commands; and hopefully, if commands are sent anyway, the monitor will ignore them. I'm not specifically familiar with the 945's behavior contract (here's the Mobile 945 Express datasheet - you can search for your particular chip - it appears that the 945x will allow a device-driver to issue bidirectional commands to the monitor). So, it can't be guaranteed whether these "hopefully" statements are true or false - (it depends on your device driver software and your monitor). In the pathological case, where several engineering teams from several manufacturers (OS, video driver, chipset hardware, monitor hardware...) all simultaneously failed to design error checks in their products, it is possible that a bad DDC command can be sent to the monitor and cause invalid output and/or irreparable damage. But, this is very unlikely). You can read about the 945's DDC2 mode on pg. 373 of the datasheet.

So - in conclusion, you probably have nothing to worry about. Most likely, your PC will simply ignore the incorrect monitor ID, output a standard acceptable VGA signal, and you will never notice any difference.

As far as the output of only black-and-white, you have many options for this. The easiest way to do this is to write software which only uses black and white (or grayscale) on screen. If you want all software to show up in grayscale, you might be able to write a simple video driver (but this is not easy or fun for most people). Or, you can buy a graphics card or a monitor which allows you to turn the saturation (color) all the way to zero. Or, if you're handy with a soldering iron (and particularly brave), you could splice up a VGA cable that combined the RGB analog voltages in this fashion:

       ____________             
R ----| +1/3       |           /---R
G ----| +1/3       |-- (out) ------G     (to monitor)
B ----| +1/3 Adder |           \---B
      |____________|
          

where the box in the center is a 3-input analog adder circuit like this one. Have a look at VGA connector for the default wiring diagram. This will cause all VGA monitors to see a black-and-white (grayscale) signal, by literally hardwiring the R-G-B values to be always equal. Nimur (talk) 18:44, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

(If you haven't had enough, here's the Display Panel Debugging with the Intel Graphics Memory Controller Hub. It's for the 800 series including the 845 which is "almost the same" as the 945 ... this app note "may" be too technical for your needs. Nimur (talk) 19:05, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] July 4

[edit] Neurotypical computer scientists/programmers

What famous computer scientists or programmers, if any, have been conclusively determined not to have ADHD, autism-spectrum disorders or Pervasive Developmental Disorder? NeonMerlin 00:07, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Normal people don't need tests to determine normality - your question is kind of weird in that respect - however as far as I know Niklaus Wirth, Edsger W. Dijkstra, Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup have never been suggested to be neuro-socialially challenged.83.100.250.79 (talk) 00:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Which means to say, they've never eaten pieces of skin off their foot during a class lecture. --156.34.71.129 (talk) 01:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Being famous implies that the person will be assumed to have a disorder. When a normal person does something such as state a preference for banana and peanut butter sandwiches, it is just considered a taste preference. When a famous person does the same thing, it is considered a weird eccentric result of some deeper psychological disorder. Therefore, all famous people are believed to have a disorder of some kind. -- kainaw™ 14:34, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Kainaw....you have to be kidding. Some famous people have their eccentricities blown out of proportion, but by no means are "all famous people...believed to have a disorder of some kind." You're just plain wrong. And more to the point, a "famous" computer scientist or programmer probably isn't famous enough to have the kind of media-visibility required for the type of (non-existent) phenomenon you described to occur. Your distinction between "famous people" and "normal people" is a bit strange in itself. Famous people ARE normal people (for the most part), they're just really well known. --Shaggorama (talk) 17:16, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I think there's a distinction between 'famous in the field' and 'famous in the public eye' to be made here.

We're here My boyfriend has Asperger's Syndrome, and now I think I might have it as well. How do I talk with him about this? are we not? 83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Unable to Login Into Wireless Router Configuration Page (Using Firefox)

Hello everyone! I hoping you could help me with a problem I'm having. This computer (connected via Ethernet) cannot login to configure the network but any of the computers in my house connected wirelessly can login. (Yes, I am using the right user name and password) Could anyone offer an explanation for this and some solution(s)? Thanks. [I just discovered this today but I haven't attempted to login for several days so the problem may have appeared anytime within the last week]--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 03:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

For some reason I can't login using Firefox [3.5] but I can login through other browsers like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. Strange... Does anybody have any possible explanations for this? And hopefully some solution(s)?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 03:15, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't know. You didn't say the brand of the router or what it says when you can't log in.--WinRAR anodeeven (talk) 03:43, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Apologies; it's a Westell router and the message it states is "Login failed, please try again: " Though I just tried it and another error message appeared mentioned cookies being disabled. (I have third-party cookies blocked but cookies from sites are still allowed; I tried to login again but with third-party cookies enabled and the login still failed)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 05:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm - if you know when you were last able to login you could use system restore to roll back your pc to that point. Maybe you installed/changed something that borked your connection - this might be faster than trying to dig out the exact problem? Exxolon (talk) 12:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Resolved.

--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 17:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] geforce gt220

I recently bought a new PC with a GeForce GT220 graphics card. Do it have a 40nm chip?
This is the PC: [17]. As far as I had known, the GT220 was not supposed to come out until after this summer ends, so you can imagine my suprise when I saw a retail computer with it! --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 05:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably (yes) see http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=6229 , sounds like you got number 1 .83.100.250.79 (talk) 15:07, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] YTMND audio loop problem

OK, so I was browsing some YTMND sites, but one thing that bugs me is the broken looping sound. Sites that are supposed to loop properly, i.e. LOL, Internet and many others, pause at the end and cut a bit of the beginning part. I'm using Firefox 3.5 and Quicktime 7.6.2; there had been at leat one thread in the forums describing the problem, but I couldn't seem to track it down and resolve it. Even other browsers don't loop wave and MP3 files properly. Any thoughts on this? Blake Gripling (talk) 06:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] VPN w/o tweaking router

Can I set up a VPN on a home compuer without making any edits to the router? I share itnernet use with a few others in the hosue and I don't own the router, so if I could set up a VPN on my terminal with just a software package or something like that without making any edits to the router, that would be ideal. Right now I'm looking at Gbridge. --Shaggorama (talk) 17:03, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

All traffic into your local network goes through the firewall. So, assume you set up VPN on your computer on port 5252. If I try to use it, I will hit your router on port 5252. It won't know what I want and I won't get anywhere. You have to configure the router to forward all traffic on port 5252 to your computer. Then, when I hit your router on port 5252, it will forward me to your computer and all will be great. This goes for ANY service you want to run on your computer, not just VPN. If you want someone outside of your local network to access your computer, you must have the router forward the traffic to your computer. -- kainaw™ 00:47, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually there are a bunch of ways of doing this (see NAT traversal#See also for a list) and probably most VPN software supports some of those ways. The Gbridge web site seems pretty dumbed down and I couldn't find anything about NAT traversal, but chances are good that it will just work. -- BenRG (talk) 09:52, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Steve Ballmer - lifestyles of the rich and famous

Without wanting to get in to the realms of invasion of privacy - I was wondering if Steve Ballmer has used any of his wealth on the usual stuff millionaires do - like a 4gigagallon swimming pool in the shape of the windows logo or something? The biography says nothing - not even a football team.83.100.250.79 (talk) 18:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

That would indeed be a freaky pool --Ouro (blah blah) 09:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

... and probably be leaking and generally unsafe to use ... 95.112.189.234 (talk) 14:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edits

I got nothing for the title, but this is my question, is there a page that can tell me how many edits were made to Wikipedia on a certain day and then on that day what was the most edited article? Ever since MJ crashed Wikipedia I've been wondering what other days had a similar problem. Rgoodermote  21:25, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Check out all the links at Wikipedia:Statistics. Tempshill (talk) 15:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode - Related Characters

Let x be a Unicode character (or, a codepoint). Is there any simple way of obtaining a list of all characters similar to (or related to) x? Of course, often similar and/or related characters have codepoints close to each other, but this is only the case in a very restricted way. For instance, among the mathematical operators, you have "∫", "∬", "∭", ..., but the characters "⌠", "⌡" are found in Miscellaneous technical. An even more striking example is "-" (Minus-hyphen) in Basic latin, where you can also find "‐", "‑", "‒", "—", and "―", but we have "−" (Minus sign) in Mathematical Operators, "─", "━", "┄", "┅", "┈", "┉" in (Swedish:) Ramelement, and "－" in Fullwidth forms, and "﹘" in Small forms. It would be great with a website, where you can enter a character (or a codepoint), and a list of related characters is returned. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:41, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Like this ? http://www.unicode.org/unibook/ it's a program not a webiste - but it definately seems to return all the different dashes, if you supply it with "-" , and has delete issues if you try to get rid of it.. :(

This works better and much easier:

or this http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/index.htm - select search, enter "-" and get the similar characters?83.100.250.79 (talk) 01:16, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Here's the result for "∫" : [18] Seems to work..83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

A bit restricted for hyphen-minus [19], though. But thanks for both suggestions! --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:29, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] July 5

[edit] How do i play the games stored on the hard drive of my chipped Xbox?

i have a chipped Xbox with several games on the hard drive, however, when i select them, the only options i get are; 'delete', and 'copy'. how do i play these games? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.28.43.197 (talk) 05:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

You're probably not going to get any information on how to play illegally copied games here, sorry. Exxolon (talk)

[edit] Play speed

What media player would enable me to play music and video files at a faster speed than normal, but also let me adjust the speed? All the increase speed functions I've seen so far go too fast and distort the sound too much, and don't have precise settings, it's either "fast" or "slow" etc. -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.128 (talk) 08:58, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

In Windows Media Player 11 (maybe 9 onwards) - select enhancements, play speed, it's fiddly to adjust though.83.100.250.79 (talk) 14:28, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

See [20]

[edit] Jsp custom tags

I need to have a custom tag that has access to its inner elements. Actually I want a tag to be used instead of the HTML select. I would like to keep the structure of the inner option-tags unchanged but be able to read them, look at their attributes and modify the final output according to the specials of my application. I have lots of ideas for workarounds but I would like to do it the obvious way: in the doStartTag-method read the inner elements in a DOM-like way and then do what is necessary.

I have searched the net for two days now. Is there really no way to access the body elements of my tag? (I haven't tried evaluating the bodyContent into a string, write a parser and retrieve the object this way, I still hope there is a more straight approach.) 95.112.189.234 (talk) 12:19, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] running a c-programm

i have used turbo c for running my routine c-programms,now i have studied microcontrollers as well.in microcontrollers we burn the programm first and then controller runs the code picking instructions 1 by 1 from its rom.but what happens when i run a c-programm on turbo c.is it first saved (burnt)then its processed?i mean running of c-programm on pc involves how many stages! 119.152.53.191 (talk) 18:37, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the answer that you're looking for is that the Turbo C compiler compiles the C source code into object code, and saves it to a file on the hard disk, called perhaps a.exe. Then when you use Windows or DOS to run a.exe, the a.exe file is loaded into RAM and then the processor picks instructions 1 by 1 from RAM and executes them. Does that answer the question? Tempshill (talk) 18:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

A crucial distinction is that most microcontrollers are hard-wired to begin running the executable stored at a particular location in memory. As soon as the system turns on, the microcontroller automatically jumps (sets the program counter) to that memory location and begins executioin. While PC microprocessors typically have similar hardwired logic for boot-up, you rarely design your programs like this. Instead, your system is already alive and running, with an operating system. The operating system handles the low-level tasks like loading the executable and jumping to its location; Windows and Linux and most other modern systems also use multitasking (which is a big difference from a simple microcontroller code, though you can multitask on any CPU or microcontroller). You interface with the operating system, and when you are ready to run a program, you request the operating system to load the executable and jump execution to it. (You might perform this request by typing the command into a shell or terminal; or by clicking on an icon; but ultimately, you are asking the operating system to do the program-load for you). Depending on your operating system, the method of that program load can vary. On Windows, the program is loaded into virtual memory, and then the operating system assigns a hardware thread to it (or emulates a hardware thread with software). This allows the program to run "simultaneously" while the operating system is still alive and in control of the CPU. If your program finishes successfully, (or if it crashes or does something that is not permitted), the operating system should resume control. Because Windows has an interruptable time-sharing kernel, you can multi-task - meaning that your executable program can run side-by-side with other programs that also need the CPU. The exact method for this type of scheduling is very complicated, but it boils down to this: at all times, one program is running (the operating system's thread scheduler or "Process Manager" on Windows). This program is a great big while(true) loop. It runs as long as the computer has power; and it checks if there is any work for the CPU to do. Your program, as well as any other programs or system tasks, get allocated a time slot, and are allowed to run for a little bit, and then are stopped. Their intermediate state is saved somewhere (usually in main memory in the kernel's thread table). The next program that has work to do is re-loaded, including any half-finished work from the last time it was allowed to run. This continues until all programs finish, and/or the computer is powered down. Nimur (talk) 19:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] WiFi, iPod and Email

I will be creating a temporary email for travelling use to send emails on public Wifis because i don't want hackers potentially sniffing and stealing my password to my real email. I will be using an iPod Touch and its default Mail application to check my email. With the application, my email and password is stored and each time I start the application, it logs into my email and retrieves all my mail. My question is, if the iPod does this, will this be the same as entering my email and password onto gmail or Hotmail in terms of being sniffed by a hacker? Hence, does this mean i should "remove" my real e-mail addresses from the Mail application on my iPod and leave only my temporary email account turned on? Acceptable (talk) 19:23, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

If you use gmail access over IMAP (I forget about POP3, but it's probably the same) the whole thing goes on secure sockets. I've used gmail+imap+iPodTouch quite a bit, and it's a nice combination, and pretty safe. I'd consider not entering your password in the config screen, which makes it ask for the password when you connect - that way, if your iPodTouch is lost in darkest Peru, someone can't (easily) know your password or read your email. 87.113.26.43 (talk) 19:48, 5 July 2009 (UTC)