Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

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Computing #eee #f5f5f5 #eee #aaa #aaa #aaa #00f #36b #000 #00f computing Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing Computing WP:RD/C

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March 7

Contacting UEFA

What is the email address through which I can contact UEFA? They haven't specified one at their contact-us page. --62.204.152.181 (talk) 03:34, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It's odd that they hide it -- probably because they were getting spammed. (It happens fast. After putting out my dedicated Slashdot e-mail address without any obfuscation, 30 minutes later I had gotten enough spam to justify deleting the e-mail address and making a new, slightly different one.) After some Googling I found http://en.archive.uefa.com/uefa/contacts.html, which does list an address. If you want to contact them about something specific -- for example, their fantasy games -- check the applicable section of the website first to see if there is a dedicated e-mail address. Xenon54 / talk / 03:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

What would happen if I submitted forwarded domains to Google?

One of my sites has five domain names. All of the domain names point to a single IP address. I purchased four of the domains yesterday. They simply give the browser a 301 redirect pointing them to the primary domain name, which is hosted by another company. I was thinking of submitting the new domain names to Google for indexing. Would that improve my search-engine rank? Also, would Google consider this to be black-hat SEO? Thanks.--Chmod 777 (talk) 06:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Google doesn't let you increase your search rank unless you pay them. Your search rank is determined by how many other websites reference your website and the relevance of your website to the original search query. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ApplePie456 (talk • contribs) 11:33, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

"Google doesn't let you increase your search rank unless you pay them" - I don't think that's even remotely correct - was it a joke? - page rank isn't achieved through payments at all.87.102.67.84 (talk) 11:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Google uses PageRank - so since your dummy domains will have close to zero ranking - it won't help your page rank.87.102.67.84 (talk) 11:43, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not possible for me to say what google would think of your plan - perhaps you could contact them and ask - maybe they will reply. On the surface though it would appear that your purchase of the 4 domains will be wasted unless you can extract some other use from them.87.102.67.84 (talk) 12:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

ok. Thanks for the reply. It's not a big deal. They were only $10 a piece.--Chmod 777 (talk) 21:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7 Updates Problem

HI THERE! I have a very strange problem with windows 7 update.when i download the updates ,installed them correctly,it restarted automatically but fails it configuration phase every time it takes 3-5 time reboot at this phase, so how i can install the updates correctly i have done it before correctly. thanks......usman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.71.220.35 (talk) 07:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Have you got the update numbers - also try searching for those update numbers and see if it is a common problem.

It might be something on your machine, or the update - but it's impossible to say.

As a possible solution - do not install the update. Wait a few days. Then try again.87.102.67.84 (talk) 10:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Try downloading the updates manually —Preceding unsigned comment added by ApplePie456 (talk • contribs) 11:31, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

There is a "Windows Update Support Center" site which has a "Get Help" now link over to the right; it'll tell you how to get e-mail support for Windows Update. To my shock, I received free support for a Windows Update problem I had several years ago; the tech sent me an exact list of steps to follow and my problem was fixed. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:11, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Dell hard disk

My Dell laptop has just gone brick. When I press the power button, absolutely nothing happens. So I've taken my hard drive, and placed it into my mother's Dell laptop, and it was fully compatible. My question - will my hard drive be portable to another manufacturer's laptop?

And while I'm at it, if anyone has any tips on what to do with a laptop that won't even start, when it's clearly not a power cord or battery issue, let me know. Magog the Ogre (talk) 08:30, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really offering an answer here, but just out of curiosity, what model is your laptop, as well as that of your mother's? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 08:47, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Dell doesn't make hard disks. The biggest factor in portability is the interface (SATA or PATA). Older drives use PATA. Newer drives use SATA.

As for not starting, how do you know that it's not a power issue? Does the light illuminate on the charger? Did you test for an appropriate voltage on the end of the power cord? Is the battery dirty? Does the laptop turn on when you remove the battery? Have you tried plugging it into a different wall socket? Is the power jack in the laptop loose? What does the laptop's power jack look like with the laptop's case off?

Also, what changed before the laptop died? Did you do anything to it? Take the thing apart. Check for loose wires or loose parts.--Chmod 777 (talk) 08:54, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, as long as it's a similar computer with similar specifications it should work. As for the laptop itself, it's probably an issue with your Motherboard. There's nothing you can do with it to fix it on your own, you'd need to take it to a repair show. Probably not worth it —Preceding unsigned comment added by ApplePie456 (talk • contribs) 11:29, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

That's what I figured, ApplePie. I know it's not a power cord issue because I plugged the same power cord into another computer, and it worked, then another's computer's cord into mine, and it didn't work. Additionally, I've run it without the battery and with the cord before so that's not the issue. Finally, in the past month or so my computer was acting oddly if I started with a low battery, even with the power plugged in: it would not give any power to the peripherals, evidenced by the fact that my ethernet, wireless/bluetooth, and USB all didn't work. Magog the Ogre (talk) 13:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Laptops aren't meant to be user-serviceable, unlike desktop computers. So, professional repairs might be in order. But, if it's an older laptop, perhaps it's not worth it. Thus, if the choices are tossing the laptop or trying to fix it yourself, go for it. When I had a similar issue on my laptop, I was able to fix it, but also broke the paper ribbon cable used for the track-point mouse (I now use an external mouse). In my case, with an IBM ThinkPad, the problem was that the place you plug the cord in wasn't properly secured, so it broke loose after repeatedly plugging and unplugging. A little soldering fixed this. If you have the same problem, perhaps you had an intermittent power level coming from the cord, and were using battery power when that failed (which would explain the probs when the battery was low). Eventually, it may have either developed into a permanent failure to get electricity from the cord, which in short order discharged the battery, or perhaps the battery was damaged by this chaotic charging and discharging pattern, and finally failed. Try swapping batteries with the working laptop, too, if they are compatible. Note that on my laptop, changing the angle at which the cord connected to the laptop helped for a brief period, before it broke completely. StuRat (talk) 14:57, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

How to remove Skype logo and other annoyances.

I use Firefox as a browser. Since installing the latest version of Skype I have a Skype quick start icon on my menu bar which I don't want. (on the principle that I decide what's on my menu bar) I also have another associated irritation that when I am browsing sites Skype highlights any groups of numbers that look vaguely like a telephone number with a Skype link and a national flag (UK). Can someone advise me how I can get rid of these irritations. Richard Avery (talk) 08:58, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you know if you have the Skype toolbar installed on your browser? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 09:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I have never used Skype, but I know that sometimes when you download a program, you are offered the option to have a toolbar installed as well, so unless you made it clear that you don't want to have the toolbar during the install wizard, it will install itself. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 09:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

This website might help. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 10:12, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Uninstall programs -> Skype —Preceding unsigned comment added by ApplePie456 (talk • contribs) 11:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey, thanks guys, like it says on the mydigitallife site it can be a little buggy to get rid of but tools > addons >Skype did the business! Richard Avery (talk) 22:12, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Chatzilla

Can Chatzilla be run independently of Firefox? I want to use chatzilla but I don't want firefox. ARe there any chatzilla clones? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moairity (talk • contribs) 10:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

You can look up IRC clients that run independently of web browsers. Try Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients, there's a list of all sorts of IRCs for every OS. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 11:06, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Threshold

If I put a Hard Drive in a Fire box and then there's a fire, will the drive be protected? What is the maximum temperature they can withstand before then are damaged beyond help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chime444 (talk • contribs) 11:11, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess you mean a Fire safe? It depends on the safe - different safes are rated to maintain different internal temperatures during fires (and for different durations of fire before they start to fail). A popular standard for firesafes is the Nordtest Fire 17 standard (Nordtest is a standards and testing agency that's co-owned by the governments of the Nordic countries). This specifies a maximum of 170°c for paper, 70°c for hard disks, and 50°c for floppy disks. You'll see different safes advertised by their compliance to this (and other) fire resistance standards. In my limited experience the price of "data safes" (those with the lower numbers) is very much greater than the ones suitable only for papers and jewels. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:22, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Google auto-suggest discriminating against lesbians

On google when you start to type it gives suggestions. I've noticed that when you begin to type "homosexual" it auto-suggest the word, as does "gay", "faggot" and "man on man". However, "lesbian" and "girl on girl" do not auto-suggest. Why is google discriminating against lesbians? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.23.66.25 (talk • contribs) 14:19, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I believe Google runs its autosuggest based simply off metrics and what people type into the search engine. What you are seeing is a compilation of what people sometimes type in; therefore it is a reflection not of the discrimination of google but of the attitudes/patterns of internet users. Magog the Ogre (talk) 14:52, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

You're saying more people type "man on man" into google than type "lesbian"? I find that a bit hard to believe, but even if it's true there must be millions of people typing the word "lesbian" into google every day and yet even if you've typed all but the last letter or the word it still won't auto-suggest it. It seems more likely to me that someone at google has disabled the word "lesbian" from appearing on the auto-suggest feature, the same way the word "fuck" or "shit" doesn't appear.

You're right, auto-suggest does have some sort of filter against "offensive words", I doubt its discrimination, that's not exactly googles style, i think its just to stop people finding content they don't want to --Jac16888 ^Talk 15:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

^{[citation needed]}. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:34, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

So why is homosexual acts between men acceptable in Googles eyes but homosexual acts between women not acceptable? Surely if it was to prevent people finding content that might be inappropriate they would have also removed phrases related to male homosexuality, but they haven't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.156.14.103 (talk) 15:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think Google is denying anyone the use of their services even if Jac16888 is correct. Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:34, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

You can read briefly about how search suggestions are generated for google here [1]

If you have issues with google, or the web search suggestion, or want to report inapropiate results - take it up with google (we can't do anything about it) - there is a link on the page I provided above.87.102.67.84 (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Mine, incidentally, does not suggest "faggot", or many other "offensive" terms. "Shit" won't come up, though, "shitmydadsays" will. Anyway, my guess is that this is a "don't shock grandma" sort of auto-suggest filter. It doesn't affect search results. If you type in "lesbiaaaan" it'll then ask if you mean "lesbian." I don't consider "lesbian" offensive, personally. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Want to stop auto suggest, set this as your homepage http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en.—Sandahl (♀) 05:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows "calling home"

I've read a bit about Windows Vista and 7 "calling home" to microsoft every now and then, telling them stuff about the computer. Do older versions of Windows, like 98, 2000 or XP do this? Does Microsoft still care about older versions of Windows or do they just ignore the calling home from those computers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Goington3 (talk • contribs) 14:53, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

XP uses Windows Genuine Advantage if you don't have a genuine copy of windows you can't get updates, or downloads from MS - later they introduced 'Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications' which starts to downgrade non-registered copies of windows XP [2]

Vista and 7 use Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications [3] - which has similar effect to the updated XP method.

According to [4] Win2000 is also covered, as for any other versions - I don't know if they are covered by similar but differently named programs.87.102.67.84 (talk) 15:29, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Solid state hard drives

Do solid state hard drives have a shorter lifespan than normal hard drives? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uosipes (talk • contribs) 18:15, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Flash drives, which if I understand solid state drives are very similar, do have a certain amount of times they can write and delete. I don't know what happens once you get past that point. Maybe it becomes read only, but I haven't had a solid-state drive equipped on this computer. ArchabacteriaNematoda (talk) 19:29, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Solid state hard drives will have the same life span as other solid state devices (e.g. USB flash drives and SD Cards used in cameras). These devices can be written to an almost unlimited number of times and do not seem to deteriorate. A solid state hard drive should last a long time. --tb240904 ^{Talk Contribs} 20:55, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I've had about half my USB flash drives fail on me, despite fairly light usage. StuRat (talk) 22:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Depending on its usage, a SSD will last roughly 51 years ^[5].– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 22:07, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It actually depends on the type of SSD. SLC SSDs last longer (and are faster) than MLC SSDs. The 51-year figure would only be relevant for an SLC SSD. MLC SSDs only last only about a tenth of that, and they get slower as they age since the drive controller tries to level the wear out across the drive. MLCs are more popular because they are cheaper and have larger capacities. In my experience, traditional disks with platters also go bad after about five years, although some go fail sooner (as early as one year) with heavy use.--Chmod 777 (talk) 22:38, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

It's perhaps worth remembering the 51 year figure and similar figures are usually an extreme situation involving overwriting the entire disk multiple times per day. If you're a home user and not using the entire disk for some sort of swap file or something and presuming good Wear levelling and you don't allow the disk to get too full, then the disk will almost definitely last a lot longer. In other words, even with MLC SSDs the write cycle limitation shouldn't be great issue particularly if you avoid putting the page or swap file/space on the disk.

Of course as I mentioned wear levelling is important as is not allowing the disk to get too full. I don't own any SSDs other then memory cards and USB sticks and I'm not really sure what the current state is but if there's no current implementation of some sort of 'optimisation' to ensure adequete wear levelling on existing data then that could be a problem. For example, if you have 95% of data is consistent and never overwritten and 5% frequently used, e.g. for temporary files and swap space I can imagine the 5% failing prematurely. Also I'm not sure how well wear levelling is implemented even on disks with adequete free space.

In any case not surprisingly according to [6] manufacturers reserve free space which they use to help wear levelling. In fact, if I understand the last comment correctly, the reserved space is often the difference between the actual capacity (which would often be in GiB or whatever, i.e. 1024/binary based since the memory cells are in GiB) and the advertised capacity (which would nearly always be in GB or whatever i.e. 1000/decimal based). Perhaps that applies to memory cards and USB sticks as well, if so that would explain why they're always GB which I never really understood. BTW I gather from that and then later reading the article that, in terms of maintaining performance [[TRIM] I believe is important regardless of SLC or MLC.

In any case, other components could cause failure. I believe SB has posted some data from Google before (which I found it here [7]) that may be of interest when it comes to normal hard drive failure.

Nil Einne (talk) 07:33, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Dell d520 Laptop

I was about to purchase this item on ebay, and put the old parts from my (broken) 1525 Inspiron in it. I noticed it will accept another 2GB RAM slot, which is good, but will this motherboard be able to accept a 250GB SATA hard drive? This looks like a great deal for me, but I do not want to purchase something that will be incompatible with my current hard drive. This page makes it look like it accepts such a hard drive, but it also doesn't mention that 2GB capacity for RAM that the purchase page seems to imply. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a decent laptop. Dell's website seems to think it can take a 500g hard drive, but recomends you upgrade to a 160g. This site seems to think you can take a 250g hard drive. And this site doesnt say anything about hard drive sizes at all. I hope this was helpful. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 22:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the above and the hard drive should be fine, but you'll need to check more about the memory. According to Crucial (who are usually pretty accurate) the D520 has 2 memory slots each capable of holding 2Gb for a total of 4Gb. On the eBay link though it doesn't say how the 1Gb is broken down. Is it 1*1Gb or 2*512Mb and what memory do you have already? Because they're (according to Crucial) individual memory banks you don't need to have matched memory, but you are limited to 2 slots. Hope this is of some help! ZX81 ^talk 23:10, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I have two 5300s from my 1525, 1 GB and 2GB respectively. I will take the memory from that. 98.235.170.210 (talk) 23:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Searching for raw graphics

Is there GPL software for displaying a binary file as raw graphics? Something like Gimp's "raw image loader" (Open - Raw image data) would be ideal, where you can input the width and offset of the file. I am looking for images in older video games (sprites, textures, or other images), or hidden in other files. Unfortunately, looking for information on Google almost exclusively yields results about a camera's RAW image format, which is not what I am interested in. Daram.G (talk) 22:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Photoshop can do this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AdaptionCube (talk • contribs) 23:05, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

That does not answer his question. Photoshop is not GPL. APL (talk) 23:15, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that AdaptionCube has been blocked an abusive sock puppet; his reply is nonsense and I'd recommend Daram.G ignore it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Imagemagick imports a variety of unformatted binary types, including RGB,UYVY, and (headerless)DIB. The trouble is that many very old games (particularly 8-bit ones) will work off a palette, so simply importing the pixel array doesn't give you a picture (you'd also have to locate the palette and provide that too, at which point you're essentially having to reconstruct a palettised BMP. If you're at the level of digging through a ROM image trawling for images, I think you'll find that you'd need to write your own code (either an importer for something like SDLimage, or a translator that emits a BMP). You may find the MAME people helpful, as they've got tons of experience of digging out images from obscure places. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you everyone! Daram.G (talk) 02:58, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 March 8

March 9

Recovery disk

Can a recovery disk fix an infected Vista Home Premium notebook? It seems to be a particularly nasty virus. A neighbor asked me to fix it. When I booted it the first time, I had no trouble running Antivir, which reported no problem. The next time I booted, all heck broke out. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:47, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Please describe what you mean when you say "all heck broke out". – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 02:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It seemed to boot okay. Then, Antivir started to run (by itself?) and I kept getting all sorts of messages popping up from all over the place, from Antivir and from the taskbar, that files were corrupted, with different viruses being "identified". Clarityfiend (talk) 03:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Anyway to boot into safe mode and run antivir from there?– Elliott(Talk|Cont) 03:32, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Addressing the Recovery disc part of your question, if it is for the notebook in question then yes, it should fix the problem, but at the cost of all your neighbours data. Recovery disks that come with computers usually restore the computer to the state it was when you first received it, i.e. without any data - It should warn about this before it starts to do a recovery though. If the disc is for another computer then whether it works or not is anyones guess although since all the drivers would be wrong I really wouldn't recommend it! ZX81 ^talk 03:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

If you would like to know what i would do, please read on. I would download Ubunut from here, and burn that to a CD. Then i would boot that virus infested computer from that CD. After booted i would download and install Clamav And Clamtk (GUI for clamav) by typing in "sudo apt-get install clamav clamtk" in the terminal. Then while holding alt i would tap the F2 key. then i would type in clamtk and click run. Once that opens i would click on every check box there. After doing that i would click the button labeled "directory" and point that to the laptops hard drive. After selected i would wait while it scans the computer. Once it finishes scanning i think it will give you options to remove said virus'. If it doesnt i would just go though the list and remove them my self. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 03:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I doubt it's even an actual virus at all. I think it's far more likely that it's some kind of malware, like Antivirus 2009. In which case... good luck. They're almost never detected by antivirus programs. The worst of those malware infections will prevent you from installing or running MBAM or any of the standard anti-malware tools. If it's bad enough, you might have to use an Ubuntu LiveCD (as described above), but just to copy the important files off the drive onto an external drive. Then format and reinstall. Indeterminate (talk) 03:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. The recovery disk seems to have worked [cross fingers]. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

School computer help

Back in the mid-nineties, before the computers at my school switched to Windows 95, they had a different operating system installed. All I can remember about it is that it was that you had to type in your name to get to your own personal account, and the color scheme was red on blue. I'm curious as to the identity of this "operating system". Thanks in advance.

Americanfreedom (talk) 02:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a timeline of operating systems. Have a look though there and see if anything look familiar. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 03:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Do you remember what the keyboards were like? The most relevant question is if it was a mac or a PC, because most PCs prior to the windows systems would run dos with some sort of graphical manager on top of them. Those could have looked like a lot of things, and I can't remember what the one I knew was called. I'd think before 95 though that most machines would have been Windows 3.1. But I suppose it's possible they were still dos. Shadowjams (talk) 06:22, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It depends on your age, but could it be some pre-PC computers? For example, my old school used to have an Elliott 405 (a predecessor to the Elliott 803), which was replaced by a suite of Apple IIs in 1980. After the Apples got retired, I believe they bought some BBC Micros before moving to PCs. Astronaut (talk) 09:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The OP said in the mid nineties before they switched to Windows 95 (I presume this means they changed from these computers to Windows 95 based computers). It's possible that some schools kept their Elliott 405s until 1995 or so and then replaced them with Windows 95 based computers, but I doubt there were many Nil Einne (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It's possible those were Mainframe computer terminals. IBM and DEC seemed to be the most popular. Was there a "box", or just a monitor and keyboard ? The lack of a box would tend to indicate that they were mainframe terminals, although Apple did make some personal computers where the "guts" were part of the keyboard. StuRat (talk) 17:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

DOS, CP/M, Unix? 78.146.202.143 (talk) 17:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Mid-1990s conjures up memories of OS/2 Warp, Windows 3.1, System 7, and my elementary school's ancient Apple IIe's running Apple ProDOS, I guess. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget Netware ;-) -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 15:48, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

javascript
color

I have this function in my monobook.js on another site:


function consermonElement(enabled) {
    var id = 'consermon-element';
    var s = document.getElementById(id);
 
    if (!s) {
	var p = document.getElementById('p-personal').getChildren()[1];
	s = document.createElement('li');
	s.id = id;
	p.getChildren()[0].appendChild(s);
    }
 
    if (enabled) {
	s.innerHTML = '<a  href="http://www.conservapedia.com/">'
	+ 'account creation enabled</a>';
	s.style.color = '#00ff00';
    } else {
	s.innerHTML = '<a  href="http://www.conservapedia.com/">'
	+ 'account creation disabled</a>';
	s.style.color = '#ff0000';
    }
}

but the color does not change despite setting it. Why? Using s.style.backgroundColor = 'blah' works as intended. This is probably something obvious I just don't know about. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 10:58, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Well of course it was. I need to set the color of the <a> element (s.firstChild.style.color = 'blah'). --194.197.235.240 (talk) 13:53, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Duplicate Installations of Same Software

I'm running Windows 7 and I was wondering if its normal to have duplicate installations of some software. When I look in programs and features, it shows Windows Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable is installed and also Windows Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable. Can I just remove the 2005 version? Also, for java, it shows several different updates. It shows Java 6 Update 12 and Java 6 Update 18 and some others. Can I just remove all the old ones?

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 10:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I would say, unless you are desperately short of space, leave them. Older software specifically looks for distro versions and older DLLs etc. - Visual Basic is notorious for this, and yet there are other development platforms that allow everything to link into the EXE therefore not needing support files (depending what the app does). If these development distros were fully downward compatible, they would have removed the older versions on installation. Or, you could have installed something that didn't understand there was a higher distro and went ahead and installed the lower version. AFAIK java is downward compatible but perhaps someone else can comment. Multiple .NET framework distros are often needed, on my computer as well. And don't worry, it's most often the case that there are multiple registry keys to handle these "duplicate" versions as well, and your applications would either target the registry or look for specific DLLs. Sandman30s (talk) 12:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

You do usually need multiple Visual C++ redists since these are not backwards compatible so whichever one software needs it needs (in fact some will need more then one). However at the current time, you should only need 2 (or 3 if you have a x64 version of Windows) since 3.5 includes 2.0 and upwards. 1.1 is not included and may be required by some applications. However you should not have to worry about this and there's no need to uninstall anything.

But when it comes to Java, unless you need Update 12 or some other version for a specific reason, I strongly recommend you only ever use the latest version. In particular Java 6 prior to update 15 includes as severe XML vunerablity [8] [9] which allows remote code execution. Generally speaking, unless your a developer there's no reason why you would need an older version of Java and unless you know what you're doing, there's a risk you may use the older version if you have 2 versions installed. This is particularly the case for the same basic Java version i.e. it's more likely you'll need Java 5 (and these will usually remain supported) although if you do you again should keep up to date (Java 5 prior to version 20 is also vunerable to the XML bug for example) although again it's generally unlikely you'll need an old version if you're not a developer. Of course again there is the exception that you may want both the x64 and x32 versions (both up to date).

Of course the above is not much different from other things. For example while you may need different versions of the redistributables, you'll always want the latest service pack if one exists. Similarly you generally don't need multiple versions of Firefox and if you do, you should generally only use the latest update for each version. Or a more extreme version, if you dualboot multiple OSes you should keep each one up to date at least within the version. Except in specific cases there's no reason to have Vista RTM and Vista SP1 (although this isn't quite so bad since Microsoft usually releases security updates for the non SP versions for a while).

Nil Einne (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the great answer! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 00:18, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Just want to add that you shouldn't need to worry about most Microsoft redistributables particularly if running Windows 7 (or Windows Vista). Even if you think you already have it, if something wants to install, let it, generally speaking unless very old, the installer is smart enough not to overwrite new versions with old versions or install something you don't need. These should also integrate to Windows update, so if you use Windows update, you will automatically be offered critical security updates and the like (or if you choose to let it automatically install, it will automatically install), you don't really need to manually look for updates.

When it comes to Java, Sun does include an automatic updater, I don't actually use this for various reasons however it may be useful if you're not in the habit of manually updating. You can choose so it only notifies you. As I don't use it, I'm not sure how this updater handles updates, I would hope it overwrites existing versions rather then installing in a new location and leaving the old version. I know that by default, when you install Java does choose a directory that has the full version including update which is great if you do want multiple versions but does mean you will tend to end up with multiple versions if you don't automatically specify a different directory. I tend to use a directory only specifying the base version e.g. jre6 which avoids ending up with multiple versions.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Swedish letters in Facebook messages

How can I type Swedish letters (å, ä, ö) in Facebook messages? DuncanHill (talk) 11:09, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I have never used Facebook, but I assume they use normal edit fields. You probably have a ¨ key on your keyboard. Press this one, followed by A, O, a, or o, to insert Ä, Ö, ä, or ö. Å and å can be inserted by using Alt+0197 and Alt+0229, respectively. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope, don't seem to have a one of those. I've worked out how to use the character map to copy/paste, Alt only seems to work if I use numlock too. DuncanHill (talk) 14:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

In MacOS, å is option-a; ä is option-u a; ö is option-u o. —Tamfang (talk) 18:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what OS you are using. In Windows (at least XP, the most recent one I've used) it is possible to install several keyboard layouts. I believe this is done through right-clicking on the icon labeled 'EN' in the system tray. You can then switch between the different layouts. This assumes that you know where on the Swedish keyboard letters Ä, Ö, ä, or ö. Å and å are - you will have to type them blind. If you do this a lot you will get quickly used to it. Same method works on Linux (and I assume MacOS).213.160.108.26 (talk) 22:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

In Windows: Alt+0228 = ä, Alt+0229 = å, Alt+0246 = ö, Alt+0196 = Ä, Alt=0197 = Å, Alt+0214 = Ö. If numlock is on, you can use Alt+<numeric keypad numbers> to enter many characters from common European character sets, including Swedish. In the Character Map utility, the codes appear to the bottom right of the window. Astronaut (talk) 13:00, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Deleting a desktop file that is there but windows says it cant be found?

I have a file on my desktop of a program I was trying to download. The download never completed sucessfully in firefox. The size is 0 bytes, attributes "A" (not sure what that means) and when I try to delete it, windows says "Could not find this item. This is no longer located in C:UsersmyusernameDesktop. Verify the item's location and try again. I have tried this several times and it wont work. I am running windows 7 and I am logged in under the only username that I have created. Thanks for your time! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 11:09, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Firstly - have you rebooted your PC? A cliche but a likely reason in this circumstance is the system not 'letting go' of the file from the failed download. Next up if that doesn't resolve it would be to try navigate to the desktop through your C-drive (that is my computer - documents and settings - your username - desktops usually) and try deleting it from within the file-window there. Failing that not sure what else to try, system restore is always an option if you've got it turned on but seems a bit drastic for this. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I indented the previous answer You could try running in Safe mode (assuming Win 7 has one) - that might allow you to delete the file, or whatever traces of it are left. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Ccleaner may help, and is easy to use and reliable. 78.146.202.143 (talk) 17:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I have tried CCleaner, rebooting, and going to the actual folder where the file is located (desktop folder) and no luck. I will try the safe mode option. Thanks for everyone's help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 00:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

WMV file in Powerpoint, define 'where' opens

I have a large 30-min video that I want to use in a powerpoint presentation, but I want the file to open at a set point (say 27 mins and 30 seconds) rather than just at the beginning. I cannot download software to do this (i'm at work you see) so what i'm looking for is to understand if there is any way to do this? Software wise I have Windows Media Player (version 10) and Powerpoint (2003) with no access to anything more (well apart from your usual MS Office programs). Cheers peeps. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

What I would do is, before the presentation, launch the WMV file with Windows Media Player, queue it up to 27 minutes and 30 seconds, then launch PowerPoint, and then in the middle of the presentation when it's video time I would alt-tab over to Windows Media Player. Then alt-tab back to PowerPoint (or maybe close Windows Media Player) when the video is done. Is there a reason this won't work? Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Even if you only have standard Windows, you may well still have Windows Movie Maker installed and can edit the video down to just the piece you want? --Phil Holmes (talk) 15:47, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

This might not help you much, but you can do this in Powerpoint 2010. [10] 121.72.196.8 (talk) 08:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Ubuntu 9.10 Update Manager Help

Recently, instead of getting 'Package information was last updated less than 1 hour ago' after every update, the message itself seems not to be updating itself. At the moment I am getting 'Package information was last updated 41 days ago'. Can anyone see what the problem is here and (in laymen's terms, please!) help me out? Thanks a lot in advance. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure it's actually attempting the updates ? And are you sure that they are succeeding ? StuRat (talk) 17:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, it downloads the packages, installs them, then has a blank window with no more updates to install, as usual. The only difference now from the way it used to be is the '41 days ago' bit. It does tell me that certain servers could not be located, but this is for software which is no longer supported on those servers. Could this be what the problem is? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 20:59, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Try opening a root shell (should be in the admin or system menu), and enter

apt-get update

This is the low-level way of updating ubuntu's idea of what packages are available. It will spit out the progress of fetching each package-index. If this reports errors, then enter

nano /etc/apt/source.list

which edits the list of package lists and remove the line corresponding to error. CS Miller (talk) 22:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Linux dialog command is driving me crazy

Hi everybody,

when I run the following bash script #!/bin/bash FOO=$(dialog --menu "foo" 0 0 0 "1" "o n e" "2" "t w o" 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3 3>&-) echo $FOO everything works as expected:

foo
1 \| o n e
2 \| t w o
OK Cancel

However, when I try to insert the name/value pairs as a variable, it acts in a different way:

#!/bin/bash
STRING='"1" "o n e" "2" "t w o"'
FOO=$(dialog --menu "foo" 0 0 0 $STRING 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3 3>&-)
echo $FOO

The result is:

foo
"1" \| "o
n   \| e"
"2" \| "t 
w   \| o"
OK Cancel

Obviously this is not what I want. Is there any way to feed a string to dialog in a way that it acts like in the first example? -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 14:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm no bash expert, but it looks like it's parsing the spaces in your variable. Mess around with escaping the spaces with and see if you can get it to work that way. Something like...

STRING='"1" "o\ n\ e" "2" "t\ w\ o"'

That may be more complicated than it needs to be, though. I'm sure the Linux-friendly folk around here will correct me shortly. Coreycubed (talk) 15:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC) _{edit: silly me put a few too many in there.}

You can tell the shell to evaluate that variable as if you'd typed it by using "Eval":

FOO=$(eval dialog --menu "foo" 0 0 0 $STRING 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3 3>&-)

That can also lead to madness, but it works in this case. Eventually you'll want a programming language that's less convenient. --Sean 20:53, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Replacing the shebang with

#!/bin/bash -xv

will show the commands bash evaluates before and after any expansion. Its very handy to tell why your script is misbehaving. CS Miller (talk) 23:58, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Letting people on local network access a server on my computer

Hi all,

I'm using an application that is setting up a server on my computer. If I navigate to http://localhost:8001/ on my computer, I can see a web page and interact with it.

How can I have other people on my local network access this same page? I'm guessing I can do http://{my-ip}:8001/ -- is that right? If so, how do I find out the ip address? I used "ifconfig" on my command line (I'm using Mac OSX) and it gave me a whole bunch of stuff.

Thanks! — Sam 63.138.152.155 (talk) 16:04, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

When you use ifconfig, the 4 numbers following "inet addr:" is your IP address. You will also need to ensure your firewall is open to allow incoming traffic on 8001. -- kainaw ™ 16:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Also note, the "lo" has an address of 127.0.0.1. You don't want that one. You probably have an eth0 or eth1 address. That is the one you want. -- kainaw ™ 16:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) You are correct. From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Click on View, and then Network. Select the interface (Ethernet, Airport, etc) and your IP should be displayed under Status. If you're running OS X 10.4 or lower, select Location from the Apple menu, then Network Preferences. Click on Network Status to see your IP address. If other computers still can't access the page, check to see if you have a firewall blocking access. Coreycubed (talk) 16:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I found it after seeing my ip address here, and then checking the results of ifconfig. It shows after "en1: ... inet [my ip address]." — Sam 16:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Email - outlook - smtp

Where do I set up smtp on outlook 97? - Kittybrewster ☎ 17:34, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Have you got either the Internet Mail Enhancement Patch or Office 97 Service Release 1 installed? Outlook 97 was originally designed for connecting just to corporate mailservers and didn't come with POP/SMTP support, but the patch above added some basically support (and was also included in the service release). ZX81 ^talk 18:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I have downloaded and installed the patch. The SR-1 seems to be just a fact sheet. Kittybrewster ☎ 22:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Folder encryption

I'm using WindowsXP. Is there any free encryption/security software that will require me to enter the key once, but after that allow unrestricted access until the computer is restarted? I want to keep my correspondence and so on confidential if the computer is stolen. The folder will be accessed by OpenOffice etc. I've read the Truecrypt article, I do not know if it will do that. Thanks 78.146.202.143 (talk) 17:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes TrueCrypt will do exactly that. You can create a volume which you have to type in the password once and it'll open it into a new drive letter. Simply store your files on that like any other drive and upon shutdown/restart it'll close the volume and you will need to type in your password again to access in once more. ZX81 ^talk 18:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I also recommend TrueCrypt, but you should know it does almost what you are asking about. It won't actually be a literal folder you are accessing. TrueCrypt creates a "volume file" which is a file on your hard disk. The file is encrypted and indecipherable without the correct password. When you double-click the volume file and enter the password, TrueCrypt mounts the volume file as if it were a separate disk. Right now I have one mounted as my N: drive, so within the N: drive, I have created folders and organized my files as you would on a USB key drive. It will indeed keep your data within that volume confidential if the computer is stolen. Note that a very technically oriented hacker may be able to find some of your data anyway, because all Windows OSs and many applications have a Paging file and various temporary files where parts of your data may be stored temporarily for the software's convenience. Your C: drive is not going to be encrypted in this scenario, so even when the temporary files are deleted, the hacker may be able to scan the disk surface and reassemble your data. If you're paranoid about that, too, TrueCrypt has some whole-disk encryption solutions, too (which I have not used); or, alternatively, you could instead use BitLocker, though that will require an OS upgrade to one of the more-expensive editions of Windows Vista or Windows 7. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that you can always mount a hard drive (or, in this case a virtual Truecrypt hard drive) as a ntfs folder. – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 07:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I also have a removeable HD that is accessed through USB - will it work for that too? And how would using Truecrypt affect backing up? Thanks. 78.146.202.143 (talk) 18:39, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

1. Yes; TrueCrypt can encrypt an "encrypted file container", which is its name for the "volume file" I discussed above; or it can encrypt a non-system drive, which is your USB drive; or it can encrypt the entire system drive. I have never done the latter two. Note that for that external USB drive, you could either use the full disk encryption, or create a great big encrypted file container on the drive; there are good arguments for each approach. 2. If you use TrueCrypt to create an "encrypted file container", you get to choose how big you want the file. Suppose it's 100MB. Any time you write to that volume, the 100MB file will be marked as "modified", so your backup software will want to back up the whole 100MB. Details: Even mounting the volume will write to it, so every time you use it at all it will be marked as having been modified. If you use a sector-level backup program like recent versions of Norton Ghost, only the modified sectors will be marked as needing to be backed up. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

You can also password protect folders with NTFS —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 19:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

True, and far simpler than using TrueCrypt; but it doesn't help with the original poster's concern about a stolen computer, if the thief boots from an external drive. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I presume the OP is talking about Encrypting File System. The caveats are somewhat discussed in the article and the references and external links should be helpful and there must be plenty of useful sources on the internet. But as I understand it, booting from an external drive doesn't help (why would it? If the content is encrypted and you can't decrypt it, it doesn't matter if you can boot the computer.) provided EFS is properly implemented and you don't leave the recovery key if it exists somewhere where it's easy to steal (the stupidest thing would be on the computer, which Windows 2k did as our article mentions and discussed here [11] for example).

Of course the typical caveats for any password protection applies, using a weak password, leaving it somewhere where it's easy to steal (again unprotect on the computer) etc. Since the password is the same as the user's password and the content is mounted as soon as you login some additional risk exists depending on how you set up the computer (although these apply more to long term and external threats rather then stolen computers).

However only the content stored in the encrypted directories will be protected and in particular unlike with whole disk encryption there's a strong risk that temporary files and the pagefile may contain data you are trying to protect (including the possibility it may be in unencrypted form in deleted files). Of course this isn't that different from using a file container or invidual partition to store the data if you similarly don't ensure that temporary files and the pagefile are stored on the encrypted container (and on Windows it's my understanding it's rather difficult to ensure nothing is leaked).

There is of course BitLocker on Vista and Windows 7.

The biggest caveat with Microsoft solutions (other then only being available on certain versions and to Microsoft OSes) is perhaps that they're closed source, so you can't evaluate the code which is often/usually consider poor security practice (security by obscurity), although Microsoft does use standard algorithms.

Nil Einne (talk) 20:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The original poster is obviously unfamiliar with EFS, so simply password-protecting NTFS folders won't offer him any protection against an external boot. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Apologies I presumed we were talking about EFS since even though it's not called password protection (although is linked to the account password) it's the only built in form of protection I'm aware of in NTFS. Well there are access controls, but those aren't called password protection either and while linked to the account are not really linked to the the password so seemed irrelevant since they were never mentioned. In fact, other then account based password requirements (which are unrelated to the file system), the only password protection I'm aware of in Windows is the ability to turn on and off password protection for network shares, but that seemed irrelevant since we were never talking about network shares and again is more of a system level issue rather then an NTFS one (although linked to the access controls and user). Is there some sort of non-encrypting password protection in NTFS I'm not aware of? A quickish search doesn't find anything. If not, I feel my answer addressed the issue of password protection on NTFS, whatever the dubious nonsigner may have meant. Nil Einne (talk) 03:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Instead of having one enormous TrueCrypt thing that had a tree of folders (including their files) within them, could I have a tree of folders with an encrypted thing in each folder? 78.146.202.143 (talk) 20:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you can have your C: drive unencrypted as usual, and have a tree of folders, and put a TrueCrypt encrypted file container in each folder, if you want. Each encrypted file container will mount as a separate drive. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:18, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Sort in Excel - blank cells first

Resolved

By default, Excel sorts blank cells below non-blank cells. Is there any way to alter that behaviour? By way of example, suppose I have a 6 row by 2 column table of single digit integers:

1 1

2 2

3 3

If sorted on column A then B (whether B is ascending or descending) I end up with

1 1

2 2

3 3

which just happens to be fatal for my (slightly more complicated than this example) application. Excel 2003, if it matters. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I am embarrassed to suggest this, but here is how I just did it using Excel 2007. First I control-clicked each empty cell and marked its font color to be red. Then in the Sort dialog box I sorted:

By column A on values, smallest to largest
By column B on font color, red on top
By column B on values, smallest to largest

The disadvantage is that you have to mark all your empty cells as having a red font color, but this may be OK with you if you're doing something quick. Also you can probably use conditional formatting to have Excel mark all the empty cells in the column as red to make this (probably) work without having to manually mark all those empty cells. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Another way of doing this is to enter zeroes instead of empty cells, if that doesn't screw you up in some other way (like if you will have some zeroes in your data), sort by A then B; and then in another part of your worksheet, or on another page, fill up the cells with statements like =IF(A1=0,"",A1) in order to change all the zeroes to empty cells. You do all the sorting on the raw data and then the area you look at is the part of the worksheet with all the IF statements, if I've explained this intelligibly. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:46, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks CT. Sorting by colour would be an excellent way to go, but is unavailable in Excel 2003. Your second suggestion works fine in my application, though; I can use 0 and then, as you note, parse it out with an IF statement; better, I can suppress the display of the zero figure. I'm very grateful; I had come up only with a solution involving a couple of sorts and an additional index column inserted before the second sort; but that would be much more clunky and less elegant. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Convert to mhtml

I need to save 2,000 html files as mhtml every day. Currently I open them in firefox and save them that way. I was wondering if there is a simpler solution, perhaps a program dedicated to saving links as mhtml? Having 900 tabs open is slightly draining on my system. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 19:43, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

MHTML is unfortunately a pretty idiosyncratic format. And it's not clear to me exactly how this works. But if it were me, I'd probably try to find a way to do it with scripting of some sort. But giving advice as to how that would work would require more knowledge of your workflow. Are you given a list of links and then you are to save them? Do you have to search for them in Google and then save them? Depending on what the full task is (not just saving at MHTML), there will be better ways to do this. Rest assured, there is probably a better way than what you are currently doing! --Mr.98 (talk) 02:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Major Google trouble

_{moved from Wikipedia:RD/M}

I am using Firefox 3.5.8 and have been having trouble with google links. this has been going on for a while, and it does things from redirecting to something called search.pro, to just displaying the entirely wrong page. (i was looking for a place to buy a bass guitar bridge and instead got redirected to a youtube video of an AC/DC cover...wtf?) has anyone encountered this problem too, and, does anyone know how to fix it?? 71.223.216.139 (talk) 19:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

First, download and run a Malware scanner and Antivirus software. There are known pieces of malware that hijack your URL entries and redirect you elsewhere. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:47, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Once my computer was doing something just like that and it ended up being a virus. Mine was a Windows XP computer and another thing at the same time was I could not open a command prompt. If you have a Windows machine, try clicking on the start button, clicking Run... and then entering cmd in the little window that pops up. 20.137.18.50 (talk) 19:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the above. You have a virus redirecting your connections from google. There are two easy ways to get rid of it; look in Task manager for any programs that aren't yours, "kill process" on them and then delete the source file. Your second option is to use a anti-virus scanner / remover, I suggest combofix —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 19:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

out of the 144,000 objects it scanned, Malwarebyte found 3 trojans. i removed them, and im still getting redirected to some weird search site. also, the Command Prompt works fine. any other suggestions? 71.223.216.139 (talk) 20:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

some malware is sneaky and will not be killed from some programs. I had a virus once and it took 4 different antivirus/antimalware programs before I finally got rid of it. Googlemeister (talk) 21:04, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately Googlemeister is right. The first thing to try is to download additional anti-malware programs. Don't have multiple antivirus programs running simultaneously, but run several anti-malware programs, one after another; each is a little different and you may luck out. If this fails, try uninstalling your web browser and reinstalling with a fresh download. If this fails, then I would take the drastic measure of backing up your entire hard disk, reformatting it, and installing everything from scratch, and then restoring your data files from the backup. And this time set it up so there's one account with Administrator rights, used only for installing new software; and another account with no administrator rights, which you use for your everyday computing. And stop running executables you download from other websites. This reduces the probability of another Trojan or virus infection. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Where exactly are you getting redirected? Can you get to Google and then get re-directed after querying or can you not get to Google at all? Moreover, is Google your homepage? Some malware resets your homepage to the bogus one they want you to go to. If that's the case, the solution might be as easy as typing in google.com in the address bar and resetting the homepage yourself. 64.235.97.146 (talk) 21:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Online forums/portals

Mean before foundin and/or comin here? Is it me that we are treated as we are still babies/kids? Is it me that there are owner/s, admin/s, mod/s whom have no clue on how to run forum?

Above is both of an question and rant from me. Know that I'm not the only one whom has experience this before. Its hard even though they all know and we have talked about it. Mostly there are other factors which I can't think of at moment. Somehow I never could avoid this when lookin for new forums for myself. Hope being here is goin to stop this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mybodymyself (talk • contribs) 23:51, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Here is not going to stop this, since the wikipedia reference desks are not a forum. It is more than unclear from your question what problems you have had on other fora, and that being the case, I'm uncertain that we can tender you much help, other than to advise that you think critically about why the problems continually arise - is it, in fact, because of something you are doing rather than something that these diabolical owner/s, admin/s, mod/s are doing? And then reading Wikipedia:AGF and applying it to pretty much any situation is beneficial. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

March 10

(Win XP) How to forbid XP from accessing one particular wireless network?

I work in an office with several wireless networks. I only have access privileges to one, but it happens to be the one with the weakest signal. Annoyingly, my XP relentlessly tries to "help" me by connecting to any of the other networks preferentially. Is there a way to tell my Win XP wireless interface to always ignore certain networks? I don't have any third party wireless software, I'm just using the XP default UI. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 00:43, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally speaking, XP should not be connecting to any network that you haven't previously told it to connect to. Right click the network icon in the system tray (next to the clock) and hit "Status". In that window, hit "Properties". (Or, go to Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections, and right click the wireless connection and hit "Properties".) You should get a dialog box titled "[Wireless Connection Name] Properties". This box has 3 or 4 tabs across the top ("General", "Wireless Networks", "Authentication" and maybe "Advanced") and a "Connect using:" box just below the tabs that lists the network device that is currently in use. Click the "Wireless Networks" tab. On this tab, there should be a box labelled "Preferred Networks". XP will connect to these networks in the order they are listed once one or more of the networks are detected. Make sure your network is the only one that is listed, and it should be the only network XP will try to connect to. Xenon54 / talk / 01:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! That did the trick! 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Can't Install Windows XP from Within Windows 7

I am trying to install Windows XP on a parition of my hard drive from within Windows 7 and it won't let me. In other words, I booted from Windows 7, made a new parition, and I put the Windows XP cd in and it does not give me the option to install when the welcome menu comes up. Its dimmed out. How would I go about doing this? I am trying to quad boot. I tried booting from the Windows XP cd and installing it and it did work, but my computer would only boot from Windows XP and it would not give me a list of operating systems to choose from on startup. Does anyone know a solution? Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.39.243 (talk) 01:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Ideally you should install Windows XP before you install Windows 7, since Windows XP is old and does not know about Windows 7 nor the new bootloader so overwrites it with its own (Windows 7 should recognise any older version of Windows and add it to the bootloader). However you can do it your way. Well not installing from within Windows 7, that will never work (with Windows but I strongly suspect most OSes you can only ever overwrite the existing OS from within an existing OS which obviously means you can only install a newer version i.e. upgrade the existing install) but a simple search will find plenty of links helping you to fix the bootloader [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]. Incidentally, since Vista & 7 use the same bootloader and are fairly similar in many ways, searching for help doing Vista followed by XP would be useful if you can't find 7 specific advice (some of these are for Vista). Alternatively if you intend to quad boot and given it's not clear to me what ther other OSes are, using some other bootloader may be a better option Nil Einne (talk) 03:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Windows 7 installs its boot loader on a separate partition, unlike Windows Vista. Also, since I intend to give the OP meaningful advice, I recommend that they boot from a Windows 7 DVD and do a startup repair. If they do not have a Windows 7 DVD, then they can install EasyBCD inside Windows XP and use it to repair the Windows 7 bootloader.--Chmod 777 (talk) 09:44, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

By default yes, you can disable it however (and some people really hate this for various reasons as illustrated in an earlier question). In any case, while your clarification may be useful, and is something I didn't make clear enough, I don't believe it makes much of a difference to the end result. The fact it's on a seperate partition doesn't mean Windows XP won't overwrite the bootloader. I haven't tested it but I would have presumed it does since it would likely just install the bootloader to the active partition which in the Windows 7 case would be the recovery partition if available. Even if it doesn't overwrite the bootloader, it obviously normally would set the Windows XP partition (or whereever it dumps the bootloader) to be the active partition so you still have a similar problem although it would theoretically be easier to fix (since you just have to change the active partition rather then reinstall the bootloader) although as illustrated in your suggestion and in the earlier links, the simplest way to fix it is probably just to allow the Windows 7 DVD to fix it then add Windows XP if necessary to the Windows 7 bootloader. Nil Einne (talk) 15:58, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I have done this exact process myself, and Chmod and Nil's advice is sound. Install XP on a separate partition like you have, and then run the repair installation from your Win7 disk so you can restore the Win7 bootloader. Then you can use EasyBCD to enable booting from both Win7 and XP. Alternatively, you can use VMware Player to create a virtual machine inside of Win7 that you can install XP on. Depending on your hardware and what you plan on using XP for, it may run a little slower this way, but depending on what problems you run into while installing XP (though it sounds like your installation went fine), VMware may be a little easier to implement. —Akrabbim^talk 16:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

network upgrade question

I currently have three desktops and a laptop on a wired 10/100 network. The laptop has 208.11g. Two of the desktops have 1Gb ethernet connections and one as 10/100. I'm planning to upgrade to a wireless 802.11n router with 1Gb ethernet ports. The laptop will then be used wireless.

Will the two desktops with 1Gb ethernet connectors be able to communicate at 1Gb/sec, or will the fact that there is a 100Mb machine on the network slow the whole network down to 100Mb/sec?

If all desktops have 1Gb/sec ethernets, will the wireless slow them down, or will they be able to communicate with each other at 1Gb?

Will Cat 5e cables be OK? (The longest run is 25 feet, I think.) Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 04:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The desktops with 1Gb connections will be able to access the other desktops at 1Gb speeds. But while accessing either the desktop with 100mb or the wireless laptop the speed will be reduced to the max speed of the computer being accessed.Your whole network should not slow down. Cat 5e cable will be fine for gigabyte networking, but I'd recommend you going with cat 6 if you can. Source – Elliott(Talk|Cont) 08:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 16:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I got the 1GB network going, but transferring large files is only between 2 and 3 times as fast as the old 100Mb router. I tested files roughly 300MB in size. The router shows that both computers are getting 1Gb connections. Could the Cat 5e cables be the problem? Or what could it be? Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 06:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Turns out, one of the cables was only Cat-5. (One was Cat-6.) I'm replacing the Cat-5 with Cat-6.

Resolved

Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 08:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Removing Atdmt Cookie

I've just started getting a window pop up asking me if I want to allow acces to an atdmt cookie. I've googled and found some spyware removal stuff but I'm sceptical. Is there a simple way of removing it with my current McAfee protection or maybe Windows Defender?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.124.236 (talk) 09:14, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what browser you use and on your operating system. If you use Internet Explorer as a browser, the cookie is stored as a text file. To delete it in Windows XP, you'd go to Start --> Run... and type "%USERPROFILE%cookies" and then press ENTER. Then, you'd select the file and delete it. If you use Firefox as a browser, you go to Tools --> Privacy --> Show Cookies, select it, and click "Remove Cookie."

By the way, cookies are pieces of text. They're not spyware, although they can be used to keep track of the web sites you visit. Anti-virus programs like McAfee and AVG make a big fuss about them to make their programs seem more important. Most cookies aren't used for market research but to allow you to log into web sites, among other things.--Chmod 777 (talk) 09:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I've found the cookie folder (Windows) and deleted the atdmt one. That place is FULL!! Can I delete everything or will it have a negative effect on operation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.111.124.236 (talk) 10:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

You can delete them all but anything you've asked your browser to remember (logins, passwords, autofill boxes etc) will be lost and you'll have to re do them all. Another easier way to delete all the cookies is to (1) on firefox go Tools -> Clear recent history, and select the cookies checkbox, or (2) on internet explorer go Tools -> Internet options -> General and select Delete browsing history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 11:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Laptop Mousepad Mouswheel Not Working In Games

The mousewheel on my HP G60 laptop's mousepad doesn't work in some games I've been playing recently. Usually it's not a problem, but I've found that more and more games these days seem to be using the mousewheel for ever more important tasks, like zooming in/out for example (the reason I say it's getting more important in this case is because the play areas are getting bigger and bigger, c.f. Ubisoft's R.U.S.E.) I am testing the public Beta of RUSE at the moment but can't really see the details of the game (something it is well-known for) as I can't zoom in. I am unable to map other keyboard controls to zoom as the game won't let me change the controls. In any case, it's not just this game (that was just an example). Is there any way I can find out why my mousewheel is not working on this (and other games - Battlefield 2142 being another I can think of off-hand) and find out what I can do about this short of reinstalling drivers? Cheers. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Plugging in an external mouse (to see if it's mouse wheel works in those games) might help to diagnose the problem. StuRat (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I plugged in an external mouse and found that that works perfectly. I would really prefer not to use an external mouse, though, as my workspace is somewhat prohibitive (enough room for a laptop and a coffee!). Any help would be appreciated. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:34, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that gets us closer to figuring out the problem. It sounds like the internal wheel is mapping to different "Mouse Wheel Events" than the external wheel. An event monitor (what, no article ?) should help you determine if this is actually the case. Perhaps someone else can describe how to do this. Also, there may be some software on your computer for setting up the internal mouse wheel, so you might want to search the help files for that. And, if nothing else works and you are stuck with an external mouse, they make tiny ones just for laptops. StuRat (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I've looked at the help files, and they basically just gave me links to the software that sets the mouse up. The only options I have in the mouse wheel tab are the number of lines to scroll up and down, and the option to waggle the mouse wheel sideways with the same effect (which doesn't apply to my computer anyway, because it's not an actual wheel, just a flat metal strip like most laptops). I would be interested in finding out about this event monitor you mention, so I shall keep an eye on this thread. Thanks again. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

is there a mobile device that takes a 3G sim and exposes it over local WIFI?

I have a data-only 3G sim card nominally for use in my netbook, but it also goes just as easily into my iPhone. However, then I have to take out my voice-only SIM card from the iPhone. I was wondering if there is a portable device I can carry with me that I can put the sim card into (instead of into my netbook) which will expose the internet connection over Wifi, ie the iPhone can connect to it over WIFI, then I can both receive phone calls on my voice-only sim and use the net from my wifi. thank you. 82.113.106.94 (talk) 12:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

This device from Solwise seems to do what you are asking for. There may be others depending on your price range and location. Coreycubed (talk) 14:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Does your netbook have a WiFi adapter in addition to the SIM card? You may be able to use the netbook to expose the SIM connection over WiFi: [17]http://tameyourpc.blogspot.com/2009/07/windows-7-as-wireless-access-point.html. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:23, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks, guys. but the point would be a mobile device, more mobile than a netbook, something I can just put in my other pocket... I guess you would have found already it if it were out there... Thanks anyway. 82.113.106.94 (talk) 14:26, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Something like this [18] ? --Phil Holmes (talk) 14:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

N800 + USB adapter (or any other portable linux device with usb and wifi but I believe n800 is the cheapest as of now). --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

A cheap (second hand) Symbian/WinMo smart phone with the appropriate software (eg. Joikuspot for Symbian) will also do the job, although it does tend to drain your battery rather fast. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:25, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Setting up a whitelist for email

Is there a way to set up in gmail so only messages from specified senders is allowed in my inbox? Thanks! 20.137.18.50 (talk) 13:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If the whitelist is not very long, the simplest way is to set up a Gmail filter. From your Gmail inbox, click on Create a filter. In the Has the words box, paste the following:

-from:{ address@one.com address@two.com }

Replace the above addresses with the actual addresses you want to whitelist. You can add as many addresses as you want, just make sure each address is separated by a space. Click on Next Step, then check the box marked Delete it. Click Create Filter and you're all set. Let us know if this works for you. Coreycubed (talk) 14:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

One thing to be aware of when using a white-list, however, is that it will tend to block e-mails from people you know, such as when they get a new e-mail address. Also, sometimes people you know may send you something from another website, like an e-cards site or even Wikipedia. StuRat (talk) 15:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Quantifiers in bash shell expression?

Regular expressions (in perl, at least) allow the use of quantifiers like

([0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3})

to match an IP.

Is there a similar way of using quantifiers when dealing with bash shell expressions?

Imagine matching all files in a directory that have an IP address as file name, without the use of perl, grep or other external tools. Going the brute force way like

ls -1 [0-9].[0-9].[0-9].[0-9]
ls -1 [0-9].[0-9].[0-9].[0-9][0-9]
ls -1 [0-9].[0-9].[0-9].[0-9][0-9][0-9]
...

doesn't seem right, even though it would probably work. -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 14:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Shell globbing is more limited than Regular expressions, and I don't believe bash has quantifiers. The solution is, of course, to use "perl, grep or other external tools". The whole Unix philosophy, especially shell scripting, is centered on the toolkit approach. -- Coneslayer (talk) 14:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

In particular, you could pipe ls through grep in order to get a list of files: ls | grep "..." | ls -l should take the list of filenames, filter it down, and then give you a long listing for each of the filenames that remain. (It won't work if there are files with newlines in their name, but that's a very unlikely problem.) Paul Stansifer 15:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you mean something like ls -l `ls | grep "..."`. You can't pipe things into ls to control what it lists. However, I think switch the OP used was -1 (one), not -l (ell). That switch lists only one filename per line. When ls is piped into something, its only lists one file per line by default, making the -1 switch unnecessary if you're piping into grep or something for filtering. -- Coneslayer (talk) 16:09, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, duh, you're right on both counts. ls -1 | grep "..." is all that the OP should need for this task, where the -1 is optional, but nice for clarity. Paul Stansifer 22:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, this line works: ls | egrep "[0-9]{1,3}.[0-9]{1,3}.[0-9]{1,3}.[0-9]{1,3}" 83.250.239.198 (talk) 15:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Software cheat prevention

Where does a computer store the memory to prevent uninstalling and reinstalling trial software to use the trial period again?--Mikespedia is on Wikipedia! 14:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It varies depending on the software, but I've seen some applications store this data in tiny hidden (and seemingly unrelated) files in the Windows directory/other system folders, but most commonly it seems to be stored in the registry in keys that aren't actually related to the product and aren't named accordingly either. Although I've not seen it happen I would imagine some bits of software possibly even "dial home" with a hardware ID of the computer to check if it's previously had a trial running on it or not. ZX81 ^talk 15:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It will be different for different types of software. So if you are trying to reset a trial period, there is no single place to look for it. I'm not sure if the Ref Desk is willing to give you advice on specific programs or not (it is piracy of a sort). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:07, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

In addition to registry keys, some programs will use Alternate data streams attached to innocent looking files (or even folders). Process monitor is a useful tool for investigating program behaviour, though in the spirit of the arms race, countermeasures can be expected! 94.196.85.114 (talk) 17:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7 – sound keeps dropping

Hi, I'm using a Dell Inspiron Windows 7 laptop. Every time I put it on stand-by, then bring it back, there is no sound: regardless of the volume, online videos, system sounds etc. play as if it's muted, and in Windows Media Player, it refuses to do anything (the bar doesn't move along, no video plays etc.) – anyone got a solution? Thanks! ╟─Treasury Tag►Not-content─╢ 16:15, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The sound driver may be defective; it's one of the responsibilities of the sound driver to re-initialise itself and the sound hardware when the system is coming up from standby. If the supplied driver is defective then it may be failing to discharge this responsibility properly then you'd get no sound after coming back up. You should make sure you're running the latest driver that Dell supply; failing that, Dell's online support service may have a fix. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Link checking

Hi, I'm looking for a quick and effective way to check the validity of URLs (i.e. - do they 404 or not?) in an Excel spreadsheet. Is there a program / plugin that would systematically go through each cell containing a URL and tell me wether it returned any data or not? I can put the URLs in a text file if possible.

The link checkers I've investigated so far seem to only accept single URLs, and doing each one manually would take forever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.255.225 (talk) 17:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

The following code works with AutoIt, freeware scripting software that I use to automate everyday tasks. All you'd need to run the code would be to install AutoIt and save this as a text file with the .au3 extension.

#include <IE.au3>
$file = FileOpen("C:\URLs.txt", 0)
$file2 = FileOpen("C:\results.csv", 2)
$o = _IECreate("www.google.com")
While 1
	$url = FileReadLine($file)
	If @error = -1 Then ExitLoop
	_IENavigate($o, $url)
	$d = _IEPropertyGet ( $o, "title" )
	If $d = "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" Then
		$result = $url & ",Invalid"
	Else
		$result = $url & ",Valid"
	EndIf
	FileWriteLine ($file2, $result)
WEnd
FileClose($file)
FileClose($file2)

It's simple code, I tested it with a few URLs and it worked just fine. Feel free to modify the paths to suit your needs. This was run on Windows XP with Internet Explorer 8. If you run this and it doesn't work quite right for you, let me know what's wrong. (Alternatively, if this is too technical in nature to begin with, please say so!) Coreycubed (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

"wget" has an option, --spider, which will do this. It's a standard tool on Linux, and probably the BSDs and Mac. Its also part of cygwin if you use MS-Windows. An example is

wget --spider --no-verbose http://www.google.co.uk/    www.google.com/foo ; echo $?
200 OK

http://www.google.com/foo:
19:42:39 ERROR 404: Not Found.

FINISHED --19:42:39--
Downloaded: 0 bytes in 0 files
1

The first line is the is command, the rest, apart from the last line is from wget. The '1' is the errorlevel returned from wget, '1' means an error occured, '0' means no errors. wget can also read the URLs form a plain-text file. CS Miller (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thankyou both for your contributions, I will review this and attempt to implement it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.31.58.156 (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Google search

Is there a way when searching on Google to only find recent events if for example as I was doing, looking for security threats on social networking sites, I am finding lots going back to 2007, now I assume these threats are no longer valid today but maybe wrong, so is there a way to find the latest security threats for online social networking sites, thanks Mo ainm~Talk 17:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

You can use Google's advanced search to specify how recent the page is (you may need to click on the plus sign near the bottom to display the field that lets you select the date). This may not be 100% reliable. --Normansmithy (talk) 18:05, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Good tip thanks. Mo ainm~Talk 18:47, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, Google News Search lets you limit a search to news articles about security threats after a specific date. -- kainaw ™ 20:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

How to make an mp4 file

I have a sequence of svg images. I know how to make an animated gif from them, but I need to make a Mp4 file. How can I do that? If possible please with free software (Linux or Mac OS X), this is just a hobby and I can't pay lots of mony. Thank you. Hevesli (talk) 20:35, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

This article discusses how to do so with Ffmpeg. You may have to make the SVGs into a bitmapped image format like PNG first (which you can do with Inkscape or Gimp, and which Imagemagick's convert program can do wholesale); experiment a bit with this, as different SVG renderers do subtly different things, and they all seem to have nontrivial bugs. I haven't tried this process myself, so I'd be interested to know how you get on - please let us know. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:40, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If you're animating SVG files, Synfig Studio might be the tool that you want to produce the animation in in the first place. It's got a steep learning curve, though. Paul Stansifer 22:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Java 2d graphics

If i have method as such


	public void PaintComponent(Graphics g){
		g.drawString("test",50,50);
		repaint();	
	}

How can i call this from another class? Assuming i have created an object of the class. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.254.106 (talk) 20:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused about what you're doing, and I think you may be too. paintComponent() (note the lowercase initial p) is a method of a Swing component which is called (by the system repaint handler) to actually do painting. repaint() is a method that anyone can call, which doesn't do any painting, but instead enqueues an event that requests the system repaint handler to, at some later time, call paintComponent on that control (technically it enqueues and event which is handled asynchronously in another thread). I'm confused because you're calling repaint() inside your paintComponent(), which will enqueue a fresh repaint event, which will re-call your paintComponent() again, ad infinitum. I think what you want to do is to remove the call to repaint() in your paintComponent() method, fix the name of that method, and then call repaint() in your other class. I'm sorry if I've only served to confuse things; if so, this article might explain things better. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:10, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Maps

Is there any good software for making maps? Software that has customized tools for things like cities, watercourses, roads, borders, topography, etc, not like Photoshop where you have to make everything yourself. Thanks, Shannon ^talk _contribs 21:38, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to make maps of the United States, you're in luck. There is a ton of freely available GIS data. The Census Bureau provides most of the data you would need -- water, cities, roads, railroads, etc. You can also search the website of the state's Department of Transportation (usually http://dot.state.[ab].us where [ab] is the state abbreviation, though there are exceptions) for more complete data. (If you were to use state data you must be careful not to run afoul of copyright. State data may be copyrighted, while federal data by law must be public domain.) You feed all this data into a program such as Quantum GIS which then spits it out for you in a nice map. All you would need to do then is customize how you want the map to look and export it as an SVG. (You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Maps task force/Tutorial for basic instruction. Although that tutorial specifically targets road maps, the basic process remains the same.)

I dunno whether there is freely available data for European countries. I think there is some for Germany from the Bundesamt für Kartographie and Geodäsie, but I haven't been their website in a while so I don't know if they still provide it. I think there might be some for the UK, as well, but it might not be free. Most likely, you would need to Google third-party data if you were to focus on Europe.

Feel free to contact me if you have further questions (I wrote most of the linked tutorial for USRD). Xenon54 / talk / 22:40, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

No, not premade maps of an actual place, just software that can make features on maps without a basemap, i.e. just free to make any map whether of a real or nonexistent place. Shannon ^talk _contribs 01:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

So you're looking for, as an example, something that can take a blank canvas and just draw a river, a road, and a border, that does not necessarily have a relation to somewhere in the real world? I am not aware of any such software, although you could try going into Inkscape and using the freehand pen tool... Xenon54 / talk / 01:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant that. I make most of my maps with Photoshop but feel it's not good, sufficient, professional enough. Wonder if the people who make the atlases such as Earth Concise do it; I have a feeling they all have some sort of special software. Shannon ^talk _contribs 07:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a LONG shot. Some games (especially 3rd person perspective Role-playing games) come with a map/terrain editor packaged in e.g. Heroes of Might and Magic II or Warcraft III World Editor. It MAY be the case that some companies offer the map editor as a free download. It MAY be the case that you can export the created maps as jpegs. It MAY be the case that the graphics look realistic rather than cartoony. This Google search brings up a few results. Good luck. Zunaid 07:54, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

avi player for win mobile 6 on htc p4530 (herald)

Can you suggest one? I've tried pocket dvx and sompyplayer but don't work.. thanks in advance --87.5.31.44 (talk) 21:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I used TCPMP for quite some time and loved it. It's not compatible with all builds, so mess around with it and see if it works. There are custom builds for certain phones, you may want to check PPCGeeks' HTC Herald forum for suggested media players. (There's a paid version called of TCPMP called CorePlayer which I didn't like as much.) Coreycubed (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

What a nifty connection problem.

On my Windows Vista computer (the one I'm using now), it seems that I lose my Internet connection every few minutes, for all of two or three seconds, before getting it back. It's unnoticeable during general use, but it can get annoying when I'm, say, going to knife someone in the back only to be told that I'd lost connection and I'm actually lying comatose on the floor.

I also have Ubuntu on this computer, which I'm extremely unfamiliar with. I tested out the problem the only way I know how; by playing a game - specifically, RuneScape. The problem didn't seem to exist on Ubuntu, though with a game as slow-paced as RuneScape, it's difficult to be certain.

This is a connection problem that I've never heard of before. I don't suppose anyone has any advice? Vimescarrot (talk) 22:12, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Rather than saying you "lost your Internet connection", is it possible it's just delayed by some other process ? Automatic updates, for example ? Or some malware reporting your porn-viewing habits back to base ? :-) StuRat (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I've no idea. Is it? I wouldn't know how to check. This problem has been persisting for a year and a half now. Does anything update every two minutes? I use Windows Live OneCare for all my security "needs"...For anything that actually needs safety, I use Ubuntu. Would OneCare pick up a porn-reporting malware? Wouldn't that malware be bored senseless by my lack of original taste by now? Vimescarrot (talk) 01:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, you could try using the Task Manager to kill every non-vital process, and see if that solves it. If so, reboot and kill processes selectively, until you find the culprit. StuRat (talk) 06:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If I was to kill all my protection, how much risk would I be putting myself at? Just playing BF2142, not using a browser. That seems to have worked, at least a little bit. Vimescarrot (talk) 15:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think you'd be OK as long as you just play that one game, provided you trust them not to send you any malware. StuRat (talk) 15:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Turns out to be wishful thinking. I killed OneCare entirely and the problem still persists. I don't know what other programs in my task manager are actually safe to kill; I don't know what most of them do...I'll still give it a go, but it'll take me a while; the game is the only way I know of to test it, and I don't play that often (twice a day, maybe). Vimescarrot (talk) 17:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's not too technical for your comfort level, you could grab Wireshark and run it while you play your game. When you see the big pause, note the time and go see in Wireshark what was happening on the network at that time. Hopefully you'll see something suggestive like a lot of traffic to useless-updates-for.some-crap-I-installed-and-forgot-about.com which could lead you to a solution. Of course, there are many things that could be going wrong besides network congestion. Maybe some large background process is starting up, maybe the cat sitting on the router at your ISP is licking himself furiously and getting static in your packets. --Sean 18:37, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

...while licking his packets. StuRat (talk) 18:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's a bit obvious, but this would also be a good time to make sure you have the most recent drivers for your network card. If the probably really doesn't exist in Ubuntu, a glitch in the windows drivers would definitely be a possible explanation for this. Indeterminate (talk) 10:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

JPEG Image won't display in IE6

Can anyone help me figure out why this image will display in Firefox but not IE6? [removed] Helpful replies only, please. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 23:37, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Whoever made the image saved it as a CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) JPEG, rather than an RGB (red-green-blue) JPEG. Printers understand CMYK. Monitors display everything in RGB. CMYK JPEGs will not display in any version of Internet Explorer and look very odd in Apple's Safari browser. Is this your image? Whoever made it needs to open up the original again and then save it again as an RGB JPEG. Do not open the current JPEG -- open the original AI, EPS, PSD, etc., file used to create the logo.--Chmod 777 (talk) 23:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, that is very helpful -- now I am able to tell the person who made the image what to do to rectify the situation. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 23:56, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Why are all my rar downloads corrupt?

I used to have no problems downloading. Now almost every RAR file I download is corrupt. Even small rars. Some of them are fixed by RAR repair, a lot aren't.

I downloaded a more recent version of winrar, it didn't help.

What do you think is causing this? How can I fix this?--Gary123 (talk) 23:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, one thing to try is to use a different browser. If you are using IE, see if Firefox does anything different. If you are using Firefox, try IE, or Safari, or something else. Additionally, are all these RARs from the same source? Because it could be the source website that is messing them up. You could try downloading them to a different computer and seeing if those are still corrupt or not. Figuring out tech problems is primarily an issue of eliminating possibilities—finding the one variable that indicates the source of the problem. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I've used both firefox and seamonkey. I have the problem at multiple download sites. --Gary123 (talk) 02:25, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Could you give us a link to test? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 04:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Back in the olden days, viruses used to append themselves at the ends or beginnings of files, thus rendering them corrupt. Still, weird error. --Ouro (blah blah) 07:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

For example one librivox zip, I downloaded recently was corrupt the first time, but I re-downloaded and it was fixed. Do you think it might be a connection problem? Except that when I check the size of the corrupt files, it is often the correct MB size. Also for corrupt audio rars, often some mp3 are extracted but not others. --Gary123 (talk) 07:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Make sure you're extracting from the beginning file and not one of the subsequent part files, otherwise it will always show corrupt. Also try extracting with 7zip —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 13:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Bad Internet connection? Maybe it is not only RAR files that get corrupt, but all (big) files (in which corruption is easily detected). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 14:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The size of the file does not affect whether corruption is detected or not. Corruption is detected using a Checksum on the file. On of the following is most likely the cause: your connection is poor (and you are dropping packets), the server isn't serving the files correctly, the uploader didn't compress them correctly, or your unzip program isn't working. Or of course, it could be a "ghost in the machine".=DSmallman12q (talk) 22:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

March 11

"&" in command line

Does & mean anything when used at the command line in Windows? Apparently in Unix it makes a command run in the background, is this the case on Windows as well? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 06:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It is usually used to put two commands onto one line. The following example moves to the root of a drive and lists its contents:

cd \ & dir

It is also used to duplicate a handle (e.g., standard error [A.K.A. STDERR or 2] or standard output [A.K.A. STDOUT or 1]). Say you wanted to list the contents of a folder and output any errors to a text file. You could type this to do that:

dir > .\list.txt 2>&1

The above example redirects the output of the dir command to a text file named list.txt. It also puts any error messages in that same file by redirecting STDERR to a copy of STDOUT.--Drknkn (talk) 06:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't exactly answer the question, but might be useful: Microsoft's command line reference list [19] It doesn't include operators though.

In bash a single & will background the command, but a && is an "and" operator so it works to execute commands in succession, but maybe the more straightforward way to do it in bash is to use " ; ", which is the command separator. I'm not sure if there's ever a practical difference though (except the &&s will actually evaluate). Shadowjams (talk) 07:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Bash's && short-circuits like in C-derived languages: if the first command fails then the second command isn't tried. With ;, both commands are run regardless of their exit statuses. —Korath (Talk) 07:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The one I was thinking of was the one I've seen used at the end of a command, as in

xdvi foo.dvi &

(for previewing DVI files on Unix); judging by Shadojams' comment, it sounds like the command-final & has the same function in Windows. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

In DOS (and the command prompt for Windows), the '&' serves the same purpose as the ';' in Linux, it's an unconditional sequential execution operator. DOS isn't multiprocess aware, so it can't run background processes. All the & says is: "When the program to the left of me finishes (whether or not it succeeds), run the program to the right of me." —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for the help! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I posted a detailed explanation of what the ampersand does in Windows. Posting detailed explanations is not something I will do again for you.--Drknkn (talk) 17:04, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Was that necessary? Nothing he posted asked you for an additional "detailed explanation". Thanks, gENIUS 101 21:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I shouldn't have said that. He did nothing wrong. I apologize.--Drknkn (talk) 23:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

RAID stripe data recovery

I purchased a Apple Intel Tower which subsequently had a hard disk fail . The hard disks (2) in OSX (10.6) were set to a Raid stripe(?) config - now that the main Hard disk is dead... is there any way to recover any data from the 2nd striped HD ?--Boomshanka (talk) 10:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope. If any hard drive in a striped array fails, all the data is gone. 121.72.196.8 (talk) 11:07, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Striping RAID 0 is often referred to as "not a RAID" because there is no redundancy in the data. That is why losing a drive loses the whole thing. RAID 0 is not used for handling drive failure. It is used for drive speed - dividing large read/tasks among multiple drives at the same time. -- kainaw ™ 13:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista

I would like to disable users from using USB ports. How do I go —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tajadi (talk • contribs) 10:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That depends on the purpose. If all you want to do is keep someone from plugging a random USB device into your personally-owned computer and getting it to connect, some scripting/ADM templates and creating a user account with limited privileges for everyday work is a simple approach. If the computer in question is part of a company network where several users need to log on, and some might even have elevated or full administrative privileges, things get a little bit more hairy, and you might want to look into one of the commercially available solutions. -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 11:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Or you could physically disable the ports, by filling them in epoxy, clipping the leads on the motherboard, etc, assuming you don't need any USB access at all (say, for keyboard and mouse). Again, purpose-dependent. —Korath (Talk) 12:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That's a bit drastic. Most likely OP just wants to block mass storage devices from being used. You can do this from the control panel when logged in as administrator —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 13:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You can lock it down/configure what is allowed using Group Policy. The Microsoft page here has more information on this. Another option is to use 3rd party software such as DeviceLock which allows a lot more control over what is/isn't allowed and also locks down Windows XP machines (which Group Policy can't do). ZX81 ^talk 18:23, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Limiting Ubuntu Hardy Heron's use of CPUs / Cores

Is there any way of telling Ubuntu that unless specifically requested otherwise, it should only use the first core (core 0) in a multi-core machine? The reason I'm asking is that I want to run virtualization software on it, and the two virtual machines have different CPU needs, so my plan would be to run the CPU-intensive VM on the second core (core 1), while running the host system and the less CPU-intensive VM on the first core (core 0). The virtualization software allows for such a setting per VM, I just haven't found a way to make the host stick to one of the two cores. Is that possible, and if so, how? -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 11:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Kinda. You can use the taskset program to set the Processor affinity of a given process. So you could, with a bit of labour, set all the CPU-intensive processes in the host to CPU-A and set the virtualisation program (VmWare or whatever) to CPU-B. You can't completely banish the host from CPU-B, but this procedure should be enough to give the VM essentially all the cycles on it. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

But I don't think this will, in most circumstances, turn out to be a terribly good idea. The scheduler is pretty smart, is cache aware, and knows a great deal more about the real-time characteristics of your running system than you can. This IBM article lists the very few reasons where setting processor affinity might be a worthwhile idea. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 11:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately reason #1 from that article is "I have a hunch", which I believe is what 78 has. 74.212.140.226 (talk) 17:33, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

What? It's not that complicated. You can pass the number of cores to use as a kernel parameter at boot time. Just edit your grub menu.lst and add maxcpus=1 to the end of your "kernel" line. (Alternately, if you use maxcpus=0 or nosmp, SMP will be disabled. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, for your purposes.) If you want to boot into full SMP mode, just reboot without that kernel option (ie, keep at least 2 menu entries in grub). If you want to do it without rebooting, well... that's complicated. Indeterminate (talk) 10:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

The way I understand the article you linked, that would completely disable the CPUs with higher numbers than the number specified on the maxcpus=n line. Which would mean they are out of reach of the VMs as well - obviously not what I want. :-/ -- 78.43.60.58 (talk) 15:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, right, this is for a host OS, my mistake. In that case, perhaps isolating the second core from the scheduler is a better option. The description claims that this works better than manually setting the affinity of all the processes. The boot option for that is isolcpus=1 (since it starts at 0). Then when you create your VM, you can move it onto the second core using taskset. The isolcpus option has apparently been superseded by dynamic scheduling domains, but that's getting way out of my comfort zone. It'll probably remain in the kernel for the foreseeable future. Indeterminate (talk) 21:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Upload speed

What is the minimum upload speed a server should have so that loading pages won't take too long on the other end, and a small number of users won't consume all the bandwidth and make the site unreachable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 13:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

That depends on how many users is "small" and how much data each one is expected to consume. For a half a dozen users looking at purely static HTML pages of a KB or two in size, consumer grade DSL (768 Kbps upload) would be more than sufficient, but for fifty users on an AJAX enabled site with constant communication, or a Flash video server, it won't be nearly enough. Basically, you need to work out the peak expected upload rate (total size of X number of users download Y KB of data at the same time, divided by the number of seconds you consider reasonable for responsiveness). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Were can I find Debian 5.0.0 CD/ISO?

Resolved

Can anyone point me to an ISO of Debian 5.0.0? I spent many time searching and I find nothing. I really need version 5.0.0 and not later versions like 5.0.4. I know I can mess around with repositories and change them to older ones (or later one) and do all sort of fun things, but what I need is really the installable ISO. Thanks --SF007 (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Just found it here! http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/archive/ --SF007 (talk) 16:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Secret Web Page

Is it possible for me to upload information to the Internet and not have it show up in a Search engine? Or, are the search engines so thorough that they will find and catalog anything I post? Hemoroid Agastordoff (talk) 20:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, with a proper Robots.txt, well-configured search engines can be told not to index a site (or specific pages within the site). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 20:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If you don't link to the page, it will never be found (short of an intrusion or guess); but if you don't link to the page, some might consider the entire endeavor pointless. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if you have the page at a complex random URL never mentioned anywhere, not linked to from anywhere, and not linking anywhere (or at least not being used to go anywhere - otherwise the referrer field can give you away), search engines are extremely unlikely to find that page. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)In addition to robots.txt (which legitimate search engines respect, but which the spiders than scammers and spammers use ignore) you can exploit how search engines find your pages. Search engines collect web pages using a Web crawler, which traverses the network of links inside sites. If there is no link to a page, a web crawler can't find it and won't read it. So long as you (and, crucially, anyone you tell about the page) doesn't post a public link anywhere, a crawler won't find it. In theory someone could guess the page's url and speculatively try that (bar a few common and legitimate examples, no sensible spider will resort to guessing), but you can avoid that by giving pages an essentially unguessable name (e.g. http://agastordoff.net/320894503984309482304983.html); and you need to make sure that your web host's auto-index feature is disabled (or provide a blank index for that folder). Strictly, if the content is secret or illicit, this amounts to Security by obscurity, which is really no security at all - so anything that you want to protect more than just casually you should at least hide behind a password, or better yet a proper login (and transmit over ssl). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:04, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could always encrypt the content itself, rather than require an SSL login. Anyone can get your data, but without the decryption key it's worthless. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 21:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This may surprise a lot of people, but most of the information on the Internet is actually not available through search engines. It's called the "Deep Web" or "Invisible Web". A search engine can't index something it can't find, so as is said above, if a page is never registered with a search engine or linked from anywhere else, it won't show up on a search engine. A website without any links that is never registered in a search engine is kind of like a pond that isn't connected to a river or any other water source--no matter how hard you try, you can't swim from any other body of water into the pond, because there's no connection. For all intents and purposes, that pond doesn't even exist to you. That's kind of a bad analogy, I know, but hopefully it makes sense.

Some other reasons why a site/information wouldn't show up in a search engine is if it's part of a password protected site (so the search engine "spiders" can't scan the site), a dynamically generated site, or if it isn't in a textual/HTML format (for example, the contents of a picture or video can't be indexed by a search engine). 24.247.163.175 (talk) 22:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Many ways:

Set up a Robots.txt file that tells search engines to exclude the content (relies on search engines to obey it... many/most do, though)
Put the content behind a password
Set up some kind of simple CAPTCHA
Don't link to it from anywhere else (relies on nobody else linking to the page)

Which of these makes the most sense depends on who you want to view the page more than it does who you want to keep out. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Google also uses Sitemaps to find and index sites. If you have put one on your site, make sure that your "hidden" page doesn't appear in the sitemap list. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:23, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Another way is to use in the header of the HTML file. With "noindex,follow" you probably cause search engines to follow links from your page but don't index the page itself - I think that's the classical way "google bombs" are created. Icek (talk) 18:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Addendum: I meant to say that google bombs are probably created by having many pages with "noindex,follow" which link to the page you want to "bomb", with the bomb keyword as the link text. The pages then can link to each other too, without appearing on Google's results page. The linking of bomber's pages to each other may increase the PageRank. Icek (talk) 18:43, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The safest way to go would be to password protect it, or put it behind some type of authentication firewall.Smallman12q (talk) 22:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

March 12

Computer unable to renew IP Address

I have until recently been successfully using a Dynalink RTA1025W wireless router for an ADSL2+ connection. It was used wirelessly for my laptop, running Ubuntu 7 and through ethernet cables to an XBox 360 and a pc and laptop running xp. I recently had the router replaced under warranty due to an unrelated hardware problem and the replacement unit will only interface with the wireless laptop and the xbox. When attempting connection with the windows computers, it says they're unable to renew their ip addresses. I have looked for this problem extensively on the Web but have never found an example of where the problem was a new router of the same model. Does anyone know of any settings for the pc or router that I should try in order to solve the problem? Help would be greatly appreciated and I'd be happy to give further details Mix Lord (talk) 07:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The first thing to check is whether the DHCP server on the router is turned on. If it is, we'll see what else we can think of... --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

DHCP is on, thanks for your help

203.219.227.72 (talk) 09:28, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

best free fire-and-forget antivirus for Win 7 Home?

We just bought my computer illiterate mother-in-law an HP desktop with (legit) Windows 7 Home. What's the best free antivirus that I can install and set to regularly run/update itself on a regular schedule? In addition to the usual Admin / User account split, I want to make this desktop as bullet-proof as possible (for free) so that I don't have to be constantly going over there to do recoveries and such. I think most people with tech un-savvy parents can relate. I was thinking Spybot S&D would be a good start due to its realtime registry protection. Anything else? 61.189.63.188 (talk) 10:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I've used AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition for quite a while, and it fits this purpose nicely. I set it up for my in-laws a few years ago and they have been happy with it, and more importantly I do not get calls about viruses. It's quite unobtrusive; the only issue I've found is that when a new version is released, it suggests you go ahead and buy the paid product (much like their website does) with small links to upgrade to the newer free version. This is fairly harmless. In my case, I told my in-laws that if it ever asked them to upgrade to a paid version, to look for the free version or to give me a call. (They actually ended up buying it anyways, but not because they forgot; my mother-in-law saw the notice, actually researched the difference between the paid and free versions, learned what the new features meant on her own and decided whether or not they justified the purchase. I was quite proud of her for this.) Coreycubed (talk) 15:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd say Avast!. You have to get a code via email to use it, and then in 6 months or something it makes you get another one... I'm sure some people could accidentally convince themselves they need to buy the non-free version at that point. <shrug> If you want super free, you should check out ClamWin. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:09, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

61, you are an excellent human being for doing the admin/non-admin split. 74.212.140.226 (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I use Avira, and they have a free version. Nod32 gets consistently high ratings. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:17, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials (download link). Unlike AVG, it doesn't nag you to buy a paid version. You'll hardly notice it at all, actually. I also like NOD32, but it costs money. Indeterminate (talk) 10:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Truecrypt error?

I get this message in my Ubuntu terminal when I use Truecrypt:

(truecrypt:8647): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.12.9/gtk/gtkwidget.c:8547: widget class `GtkPizza' has no property named `row-ending-details'

What does it mean?Quest09 (talk) 11:39, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a bug in the software library that displays your buttons and things on the screen (called WxWidgets). It was fixed a couple of years ago so you may be able to get an updated version of the wxWidgets package that will fix it. I'm not sure of the effect of the bug, but it's discussed a bit here and here. Apparently changing themes might help. --Sean 13:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Simple Python program

I have a very basic knowledge of Python and I am working in a simple program, mostly to myself and to learn the language.

I just want it to open a text, display it and if you double click a word, it should show the definition (from a dictionary) of the word in a separate window.

I know how to do things like opening, the dictionary with the definition and simple stuff. But how do you associate a double click on a word to an action?

Furthermore, can you have a Python window with drag-and-drop properties? Like you drag a file into it and the program opens it? --ProteanEd (talk) 17:30, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

All of these things are possible, but doing stuff with windows and clicking and drag-and-drop is probably not a very good learning exercise. I've been programming in Python for a while, and the thought of building a GUI program in it (or in any other language) is kind of terrifying. Things like Project Euler or 99 Prolog Problems (you don't need to know Prolog to solve them, though it might be hard to understand some of the examples) are more suited to training at programming. GUI programming (especially GUI programming that needs to interact with the outside environment, like drag-and-drop) tends to involve an awful lot of wading through manuals and tedious tweaking. I'd much rather try to find the best solution to "P09: Pack consecutive duplicates of list elements into sublists" than to figure out how to recognize a double-click event, and I'd learn more from the former, too. Or you could try to make your program a command-line program that gives the definition of a word that the user types in.

Even if you one day want to write GUI programs (a noble goal), I'd recommend getting the fundamentals down first. The reason that Python, and Scheme and other such languages are good for learning is that they don't give you a lot of extraneous trouble most of the time. In my (limited) experience, GUI programming is a lot of extraneous trouble.

That said, if your heart is set on this particular task, there's a list of GUI toolkits on the Python wiki. Good luck! Paul Stansifer 20:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Countering virus infection without antivirus program

Resolved

1. Does My Computer essentially mean your whole computer where ALL files are located? Which means, if I wanna do an extensive search through the whole computer (in my case, for virus), selecting "My Computer" as the location would mean my whole computer?

2. Another computer is infected by virus (NewFolder.exe), on 12 March 11:20PM GMT+8. I have already rebooted it to Safe Mode. If I am to conduct search with the following criteria:

location: My Computer
to include searching "hidden files and folders", "system folders" as well as "tape backup")
Date created: from 12 March to 13 March (it's already 13 in my place)
type of file: Application
file size: at least 20,000KB (the virus size is 24,713KB or something around that number)

Is it safe to assume that the result will show ALL the virus files in my computer? Due to some reasons I don't have an updated antivirus program, and since the computer has plenty of important stuffs that aren't mine, I can't afford to reformat it.

Quick reply will be very much appreciated. Thanks in advance. — Yurei-egg tart 19:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

No, this is pointless. Viruses very often aren't individual files, but are instead changes done to several pre-existing files. You can't make assumptions about the sizes of files, because many viruses are polymorphic (they change with every infection, to evade detection). You can't assume they're applications, because many aren't. You can't trust the creation date, because that is trivial for a virus to forge. Viruses can lurk in places that a simple search like this can't find (the boot block, for example). Worse, some advanced viruses install a Rootkit, which thwarts all but the most sophisticated attempts to detect them. You need an up to date anti-virus obtained from a trustworthy source; there is no substitute. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:08, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of free anti-virus programs (e.g. Antivir, Avast!, AVG). Clarityfiend (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I heard that there are many unreliable free antivirus programs, but I guess I'll try AVG out of desperation... But is it possible to download, install then execute it while being in Safe Mode? — Yurei-egg tart 20:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit Looks like AVG has issues with other antivirus programs on the same computer? The infected computer has expired Norton antivirus program, am I supposed to uninstall it just in case (is it possible in Safe Mode?), in order to install AVG without problem? — Yurei-egg tart 20:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

You should never use more than one anti-virus software on a computer (and you should always have an updated anti-virus software). So uninstall the expired Norton, and then install AVG. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 20:56, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

More questions raining down... I don't see any Uninstall file for Norton. I've googled around and it says I should use Add/Remove program. There's the Norton Removal Tool, but I can't find the product key anywhere and updating it is impossible, what can I do if Add/Remove program doesn't completely work? And again, are all these possible via Safe mode? Thank you guys for the quick replies, really needed it (still needing it ._.). — Yurei-egg tart 21:14, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

They tell you to save your key so you can reinstall Norton again; if it's expired then there's nothing to worry about. If that doesn't totally remove it (after at least two reboots after running the uninstaller) then Revo Uninstaller is pretty thorough. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh God, I can't Add/Remove programs without going back to Normal mode. It's nearly impossible to operate with the virus lagging it. plus the fear of it corrupting any essential windows component. wwwhat am i supposed to do if AVG fails to help me? Reformat? Oh that's the worst thing I can do. Please enlighten me with ANY, ANY tip that may help in my situation. Oh my kudos to Wikipedian for swift replies... Uhh what will happen when the virus finishes duplicating folder-named .exe files? Time to corrupt the system files? As much as I don't want that to happen, I'd like to hear if theres such a possibiltiy — Yurei-egg tart 21:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Edit: the uninstallation of Norton is still ongoing but Windows is warning me about low disk space, thanks to the virus duplication. ~~What will happen when the disk space is completely full? Anything I can do to slow it down or whatever?~~ Okay it has already reached its limit, now the uninstallation process hasn't been moving. Any method to improve the fast or something? — Yurei-egg tart 22:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I start by pulling the drive and connecting it to a clan PC using a USB adapter. Scan it with Avira (AVG rates about the same), Superantispyware, Spybot – Search & Destroy and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. If I get a hit for Vundo / Virtumonde, then there are other tools. Pop it back in the system and it is usually workable to where you can install all those apps and scan again. You may need fixes for bits that can get disabled: MSInstaller, regedit, winsock and the like. If in doubt, call a prof ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess Gadget850 means a "clean" PC and an USB Disk enclosure. That's good advice - there comes the time when things are so broken that you can't really get it to run well enough to fix itself. Before you run those programs (I agree that they're all good) you should backup the data from the victim to the clean "medic" PC; with a system this badly mangled (and frankly I find uninstalling Norton often adds to the mangling) you can't discount the possibility that the files, or even the filesystem, are in jeopardy. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:12, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea what "USB adapter" or "USB disk enclosure" is so I don't know if there's one in my house. Will be it possible if I download, install and run Malwarebytes free version on the infected computer in Safe Mode with Networking, at the same time having expired Norton around? I have no knowledge of removing any component from the CPU so if my proposed method will work as fine, I'd love to do that instead.
Assuming I'll go with Gadget850's method, I'm kinda confused: cleaning up C drive essentially means cleaning up the whole infected computer? Well, there's only C drive in the computer; D is CD ROM one and E is.. unused. — Yurei-egg tart 09:52, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

CHEERS EVERYBODY, thank you for all the concern, my brother came to the rescue and got it done in 20minutes, no reformat required. He reckoned it was a weak virus. I got scolded, but not as bad as expected :'))) There's still rootkit left in the computer, but it should be okay from now on. Thanks again for all the help! — Yurei-egg tart 12:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

what is the name of the task manager executable on windows 7? (I'd like to start it with a shortcut)

Resolved

What is the name of the task manager executable on Windows 7? (like taskman.exe, taskmanager.exe, or something like it). I'd like to be able to start the task manager via a shortcut. Thanks.82.113.121.104 (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

taskmgr.exe (which I discovered using taskmanager) -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:31, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

thanks! that was it. I've added a resolved template... 82.113.121.104 (talk) 23:36, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Why can't you simply use Ctrl+Shift+Esc? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:49, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Not answering the question, but Process Explorer is much better —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fire2010 (talk • contribs) 20:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

March 13

Best inkjet printer for occasional use and refilling

I have a 5 year old Canon Pixma IP3000, which I used about once or twice per month. The current set of cartridges may be about 3 years old; I refilled them regularly. Now they are clogged, and deep cleaning doesn't help. I would have bought a new set of cartridges, but since I also begin to get paper jams, it's time to buy a new printer. I checked out Consumer Reports (to which I'm subscribed), but they only look for print quality, speed, and price per page. I don't care about price per page, and speed isn't much of an issue for me, either. Is there any review for what matters in my case, or does anyone have a recommendation? — Sebastian 01:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much every printer I've ever had has had problems with paper jams, but feeding in paper one sheet at a time solves the problem, for me. Many have also had more serious problems, so I consider myself lucky when I get a printer that only jams. StuRat (talk) 01:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, StuRat. Actually, the jamming is pretty bad now; I went to the local hardware repair service with it, but they said they couldn't fix it for the price for which you get a new one. I do want to avoid waste, and it goes against my grain to buy a new product instead of fixing the old one, but in this case it looks like I have to bite the bullet. Also, I do want to look out for a printer that takes better to the occasional use. The Pixma kept saying that it's low on ink just from sitting there, and I kept refilling it almost every time I used it, which freaked me out because I don't know where the ink went, if not on the paper. (The printer has a sponge that collects ink, but I'm not sure if that's where it went as it's hard to reach and not meant to be emptied or replaced.) — Sebastian 02:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

So feeding in one page at a time doesn't stop the jams ? As for the disappearing ink, I'd guess that the cartridge isn't properly sealed, leading to evaporation of the liquid component. The small solid component then probably dries on the sponge. Ink drying and clogging the ports is likely to be a problem with any ink-jet printer, so you may need to bite an even bigger bullet and buy a laser printer. While the purchase price is likely to be much higher, not having to continuously replace dried out ink and cartridges may make it cheaper in the long run. StuRat (talk) 13:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Hex line numbers

How can I add hexadecimal line numbers to the beginning of each line in a text file? I know that nl can do this for decimal line numbers, but is there a way to use Awk, Sed, or some other command to do this? I'm hoping to take a text file like this: First line Second line Third line ... Ninth line Tenth line

And turn it into something like this:

0x01 First line
0x02 Second line
0x03 Third line
...
0x09 Ninth line
0x0A Tenth line

or this:

01 First line
02 Second line
03 Third line
...
09 Ninth line
0A Tenth line

Daram.G (talk) 15:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

awk 'BEGIN { n = 1 } { printf("0x%X %sn", n, $0); n++ }'. I don't know if there's a way to force the number of digits to be a multiple of two. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 16:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that worked like a charm! Thanks a lot. Daram.G (talk) 18:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki LocalSettings.php -- setting up Guest read-only account.

I'm setting up a wiki which requires being logged in to view any page except the login screen. In addition to the ordinary editor and admin accounts, I would like that there be an account called "Guest", that is allowed to view any page, incuding its source, but not to edit anything. How do I accomplish the last requirement? Here's what I've got so far:

# Prevent new user registration except by sysops. $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false; # Require login to view anything $wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false; $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false; $wgWhitelistRead = array("Special:Userlogin", "-", "MediaWiki:Monobook.css");

Thanks, --NorwegianBlue^talk 15:29, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Dell function keys

My new Dell Studio's default behaviour is for e.g. F5 to increase the screen brightness and Fn + F5 to be the 'real' key, opposite to every other laptop I've used. This is very annoying. There was a thread on here recently talking about how to toggle this to the reverse, but I can't find it. How? Thanks 94.168.184.16 (talk) 20:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Single page PDFs > Online accessible format

My local archives did a massive project a few years back, scanning a dozen Tweedsmuir Histories. They're saved as individual PDFs, and each is high-resolution. (300 dpi, 18" x 24" or so, 100%.) Similarly, the local library system scanned a whole series of books by a 1930s historian. In both cases, the scans are somewhat useless, it's easier to just pull out the real book.

Is there any sort of website that these could be uploaded to, to be viewable in a format similar to Google Books? I've found various sites where people can publish magazines online, complete with the whole flippy page bit, but nothing free or cheap... they'd have to apply for a grant if it cost too much. -- Zanimum (talk) 21:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Scribd; that article also links to some of Scribd's competitors. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:48, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

You can also upload them to Google Books; it seems to need to sign up to be a Google Books partner. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Both options are only good if you have only one file to upload. Sadly, all 300 or so pages of each of the dozen books is a separate PDF. I can find a merge program easy, but the resultant file would crash a supercomputer. (I exaggerate, but it would be unwieldly.) -- Zanimum (talk) 22:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've merged some very large PDFs (full of scanned images) with PDFTK without issue. PDF readers are fairly smart (and one would assume those used by Scribd and Google Books are smart too) - they only load so much of a document into memory, so you can have a very large PDF without breaking things. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

(Granted, I suppose I wouldn't actually need to open the merged PDF, if its only reason for being was to be uploaded.) -- Zanimum (talk) 22:11, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Are they somewhat useless because the files take so long to load, and because they haven't been OCR'd? Because the simplest solution to that is to OCR them, and reduce or eliminate the photographic data itself (offer separately / upon request?). If they're not encumbered by copyright, etc., you could upload them to Wikisource or Project Gutenberg. I'd probably remove the photographs from the PDFs beforehand. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:01, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

All of the OCR programs I've tried don't work. And as far as I know, I've tried all the free licensed ones mentioned on Wikipedia, plus more. Any recommendations? As for copyright, the 1930s books will be OK in a year or two, but the Tweedsmuir histories are a mess of orphaned works. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I've uploaded old books to the Internet Archive before. All you have to do is create an account and you'll be able to upload them in whatever format you want. Also, when you say they didn't work, do you mean that the OCR program interpreted the characters incorrectly? I've found ABBYY FineReader does better at mitigating that than other programs. Also, I've found that it helps to increase the resolution beyond 300 dpi when the characters are very small.--Chmod 777 (talk) 22:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

If it were me (and I've been in a similar situation with my own records), I'd first 1. try to find a way to download all the PDFs at once (maybe using a spider), 2. use PDFTK+ImageMagick to compress the individual PDFs into something reasonable (e.g. reduce the colors, to black and white if possible), 3. use PDFTK to combine the resultant files (takes forever, but won't crash a supercomputer, no—probably would take an hour or five on a modern computer), then, 4. maybe try an OCR program (whether it works depends on a lot of factors relating to the originals), 5. upload them to ScribD or something like that. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Note that Scribd has an API which can do uploads; you should be able to find a library that talks the API for several popular programming languages (there's certainly a python one) which would automate the upload of your many files (heck, add an os.walk() call to the python example and you're mostly done). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

And Google Docs has an API likewise - here -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Categories: | Wikipedia resources for researchers

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

March 7

Contacting UEFA

What would happen if I submitted forwarded domains to Google?

Windows 7 Updates Problem

Dell hard disk

How to remove Skype logo and other annoyances.

Chatzilla

Threshold

Google auto-suggest discriminating against lesbians

Windows "calling home"

Solid state hard drives

Dell d520 Laptop

Searching for raw graphics

March 9

Recovery disk

School computer help

javascript color

Duplicate Installations of Same Software

Swedish letters in Facebook messages

Deleting a desktop file that is there but windows says it cant be found?

WMV file in Powerpoint, define 'where' opens

Ubuntu 9.10 Update Manager Help

Linux dialog command is driving me crazy

Letting people on local network access a server on my computer

Email - outlook - smtp

Folder encryption

Sort in Excel - blank cells first

Convert to mhtml

Major Google trouble

Online forums/portals

March 10

(Win XP) How to forbid XP from accessing one particular wireless network?

Can't Install Windows XP from Within Windows 7

network upgrade question

Removing Atdmt Cookie

Laptop Mousepad Mouswheel Not Working In Games

is there a mobile device that takes a 3G sim and exposes it over local WIFI?

Setting up a whitelist for email

Quantifiers in bash shell expression?

Software cheat prevention

Windows 7 – sound keeps dropping

Link checking

Google search

How to make an mp4 file

Java 2d graphics

Maps

avi player for win mobile 6 on htc p4530 (herald)

What a nifty connection problem.

JPEG Image won't display in IE6

Why are all my rar downloads corrupt?

March 11

"&" in command line

RAID stripe data recovery

Windows Vista

Limiting Ubuntu Hardy Heron's use of CPUs / Cores

Upload speed

Were can I find Debian 5.0.0 CD/ISO?

Secret Web Page

March 12

Computer unable to renew IP Address

best free fire-and-forget antivirus for Win 7 Home?

Truecrypt error?

Simple Python program

Countering virus infection without antivirus program

what is the name of the task manager executable on windows 7? (I'd like to start it with a shortcut)

March 13

Best inkjet printer for occasional use and refilling

Hex line numbers

MediaWiki LocalSettings.php -- setting up Guest read-only account.

Dell function keys

Single page PDFs > Online accessible format

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