Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

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

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

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

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

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

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

June 11

Ubuntu programming

What programming tools does Ubuntu have?--71.185.140.19 (talk) 01:46, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

There's tons... See here. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 03:02, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, then click on "Development". If you want any more details, you'll have to be a little more specific. Are you interested in a particular language? Do you want an integrated development environment, or are you just interested in finding out what gui toolkits or libraries are available? Maybe just a rich text editor? Indeterminate (talk) 04:49, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Opera Master Password

I have set a Opera Master Password and have forgotten it. How can I get rid of it? It doesn't matter if I also get rid of all my other passwords. GoingOnTracks (talk) 03:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Delete your wand.dat and opcert6.dat files from your profile directory. You should probably do it with opera closed, then re-open it afterwards. See here: [1] Indeterminate (talk) 05:01, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Program

I remember seeing an old computer program called "Goldie". It has an animation of a naked lady dancing. But I can't find any mention of it anywhere on the internet. Anyone have a link? Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 06:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Internet porn... :p HardDisk (talk) 17:58, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard protector

Yesterday I purchased a new Toshiba laptop and I was flipping through a catalog of accessories and noticed that they offered a "keyboard protector" which resembles a plastic transparent sheet. While I am interested in it, do you recommend I buy it? Is it worth the money doing so? I don't know anyone with a laptop having one. Also, do I remove the plastic strip over the integrated camera? I think I should. --Blue387 (talk) 07:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

It depends on whether you plan on spilling your tea on the laptop's keyboard ;-). Seriously, if your environment is dirty or dusty or you do have a proclivity for spilling your drink, the protector may help. But it does impede keyboard action somewhat. And after several years accumulation of crumbs (which really do accumulate, even for the most fastidious user), most keyboards can be vacuumed clean with good results.

Meanwhile, regarding the plastic strip: If it is simply a piece of almost-clear vinyl or the like, surrounds the lens and the surrounding plastic/metal bezel, and it has an obvious pull-off feature, then yes, remove it. Such strips are used to prevent scratches/crate burn during shipment and in the case of your camera, will definitely impede the functioning of the camera if left on.

Atlant (talk) 11:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Ipod Touch/WinSCP

When I delete applications off my ipod touch through WinSCP it doesn't seem to actually delete the application because I can still see it on the spring board. Is there something I need to do to delete the application in another way? Possibly delete it from another location? And if you guys are wondering why I am using WinSCP to delete applications it is because my installer keeps crashing on me. Yer so I'm wondering can you fix that through WinSCP also? Thanks. 220.233.83.26 (talk) 07:54, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Dynamic IP for WebSite

Hi, I am thinking about making my own website, and I have the option to choose a static IP, my question is: Would it be less safe to use a static IP than a dynamic IP? Thanks in advance. SF007 (talk) 13:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

• You would want to use a static IP. A dynamic IP changes periodically. Which means that every so often the URL will change. A static IP is fixed, so it doesn't change. As far as security goes, it isn't going to make a big difference, except in the sense of Security through obscurity - if people can't find your website (because the IP keeps changing) they won't be able to attack it - but if people can't find your website, you might want to wonder why you have one anyway. :) Plus the value of security through obscurity is debatable, (it certainly shouldn't be seen as sufficient on its own, even under the best circumstances). - Bilby (talk) 14:39, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

• • URLs can use domain names, and domain names can change IP (e.g. DynDNS), so URLs can be constant with dynamic IP. MTM (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

• Technically that is possible. However, domain names need to be registered through a DNS, and it takes time for changes propagate - I normally quote about 24 hours for a change in the IP address to start working for all users. So while you could do it, there would be a period during each changeover during which you would get inconsistency, with some people going to the correct IP, and some going to the old one. This would also loose most of the advantages gained via security through obscurity, as the domain name would be consistent for attacks, and could be used to resolve the IP if needed. - Bilby (talk) 22:42, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

• The only reason why I use a dynamic IP is that it is cheaper in Poland. Since my IP changes once per several weeks or months, I did not think about security implications of this. MTM (talk) 21:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

yeah, I think a static IP will do fine, better to focus on trying to keep the software up to date and stuff like that. Thanks. SF007 (talk) 23:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Most advanced file compression?

What's the most advanced file compression method available to an end user? My preliminary searches point to 7z, but I just wanted to check in with you experts. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 14:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Define "advanced". Fastest? Most compression? Both? --LarryMac | Talk 15:16, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

maximumcompression.com has benchmarks of a lot of different lossless compression programs. PAQ8O10 and WinRK win most if not all of the compression ratio tests. PAQ is free (GPL), but it's a research compressor with no GUI or fancy features or support, and it's very very slow. WinRK is commercial and has a GUI etc., and I think it's faster, but I've never used it. Unless you have unusual needs you should go with 7-Zip (or WinRar). -- BenRG (talk) 17:38, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah, I should have specified I need cross-platform and no CLI! :) --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:24, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe one of the PAQ derivatives or front-ends such as PeaZip might fit your needs, then? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:55, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

By cross-platform, I mean Mac and Windows. Thanks for your suggestion, though! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 13:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Most advanced video codec?

It seems that h.264 seems to be the most advanced, most widely available codec (that also isn't under the control of one company). What is next? Is there a more efficient h.264 successor in the works? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 14:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

• VC-1 - better known as WMV3/WMV9
• H.265 - not really started yet

--tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 18:23, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

And eventually maybe Dirac. -- Q Chris (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think VC-1 is intended to be a successor to H.264. It's more of a contempory (and in fact performance worse in most visual comparison tests) with the advantage of being easier to decode. Dirac may be a next generation codec. Or it may simply compete with H.264 (i.e. MPEG-4 AVC). One of the key advantages is it's (believed to be) patent free. Theora the current primary patent free codec is not particularly good. It doesn't even compete with MPEG-4 ASP currently. One of the key problems I've heard is that the developers have been severely restricted in what they can do given how heavily patented the field is. It's obviously going to get better, but I personally have my doubts it will achieve quality/bitrate comparable to H.264 for a long while. Dirac may have an advantage there as wavelet video compression is still relatively new. Nil Einne (talk) 18:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

language support for internet explorer of windows mobile

Can anybody please tell me how to enable indian language support for internet explorer of windows mobile ?59.93.196.42 (talk) 17:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

iphone unlocking

Now that iphone comes with a 2 year contract, will iphone unlocking continue? I think such two year contract was there last year also. Then how did many American citizens unlock and sell phones in other countries when there was a contract? was there a contract last year?

On the previous version of the iphone you could buy it without a contract, and purchase a contract later. The new pricing and availability strategy will reduce the motivation, as the initial cost for the phone will be lower, but you will be locked into paying, and also the phone will be available in many countries. Nevertheless you may want to change the SIM when traveling to avoid roaming charges. For example in Hong Kong local mobile phone charges are only 1% of the cost when using a foreign SIM. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I read in some blog that previously it had a no commitment price and now it does not. Any idea what is that?59.92.107.231 (talk) 03:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

fragmentation

Can fragmentation of a hard drive be good in that it ensures not the same part of the drive is always used and its use is spread out randomly across the drive? JessHalie (talk) 19:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I doubt it. If anything, the increased need for seeks will accelerate degradation. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Fragmentation really has no benefits. It uses more disk space than a nonfragmented disk. It takes longer to read/write files. Both of those put the drive to more use than it would in a nonfragmented system. As for using the same spot of the disk over and over - there is no harm there. It doesn't degrade the disk (unless the drive is broken). It merely alters the magnetization of the block. I know of no risk for disk damage through magnetization. However, I should point out that the popular flash-media USB sticks are not the same. They do degrade and have a limited number of read/write operations before the fail. At that point, they truly fail and are unusable. Therefore, they have a sort of built-in fragmentation to spread the work around the internals of the disk in an attempt to get the maximum amount of use out of the whole drive. -- kainaw™ 00:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Fragmented files do not use more disk space. A defragmented file has all of its parts next to each other in order on the disk. A fragmented file has one or more parts spread out on the disk. Either way, the file will use the same amount of space on the disk. See file system fragmentation. --Bavi H (talk) 02:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

So, how does the OS know it hit the end of the file or the end of a fragment and the rest of the file is elsewhere? It has to store the information about the fragment on the disk. That takes space that wouldn't be used if the file was not fragmented. -- kainaw™ 12:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure to what degree it varies across filesystems, but in the old FAT filesystem, the actual FAT was a table of cluster numbers, with as many entries as there were clusters. If j were stored in slot i, that meant that i was followed by j in a (hopefully the) file that contained both. There was a special cluster number that meant EOF — perhaps the cluster number for the FAT itself, since nothing could be continued there. (The OS knew where within the cluster to stop because it knew the total length of the file.) So the space really was constant; an unfragmented file just had entries that looked like (@4b00d) 4b00e, 4b00f, 4b010, …. In general, I suspect that this pattern is common; if you can either store a fragment pointer or something else in a given space (thus saving space when you don't need the pointer), you have to have some way of "escaping" real disk data that happens to look like your pointers (however you store them). The added complexity and wasted space (for, say, a bit that indicates whether a pointer or data follows) may not be justified. --Tardis (talk) 14:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I vaguely recall from days gone by it being a linked list or such. back then you could use norton edit or similar to just go and look at the FAT. boy i'm oldGzuckier (talk) 20:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Kainaw: The operating system knows how to find all the clusters of a file by using the directory entry to find the first cluster, and the file allocation table to find all the rest. The file allocation table of a particular disk is always a fixed size (it has an entry for every cluster whether it's used or available), and is really a special reserved part of the file system, not a part of any particular file. I explain a little more here, because I couldn't find any brief explainations online. --Bavi H (talk) 03:00, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

A related discussion on file sizes, clusters, sizes on disk, and fragmentation was here. I got so frustrated with the incorrect explainations I wrote quite a bit to try to clarify. --Bavi H (talk) 04:38, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Isn't it rather misleading to use a defunct filesystem that isn't the default filesystem on any modern operating systems as an example? How about using NTFS instead? I may very well be wrong, but my understanding is that it stores everything in metafiles, which are files in the root directory beginning with $. As fragmentation grows, information about the fragmentation is added to the metafiles - making them larger. -- kainaw™ 11:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

but as for the original question, for quite a few versions of windows now the OS has been smart enough to keep moving forward through the unused disk space while writing rather than just rewriting the beginning of the disk over and over as you suggest. although i don't know if it's specifically to reduce wear, it was presented to me as a way to reduce fragmentation, since obviously when it finally comes around to writing at the beginning of the disk again, there will be more continuous open space after more time has passed and more files have been deleted, and less need to cram little pieces of file into little holes. Gzuckier (talk) 21:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Making a symmetric matrix

I have a matrix A and a symmetric matrix B, and I'd like to calculate $A^{\top }BA$, which is obviously symmetric. Using such tools as GSL and/or BLAS, how can I go about doing this efficiently? Neither of the intermediate products $A^{\top }B$ and $BA$ will in general be symmetric, so the normal routines that read or write (slightly more than) half of a symmetric matrix won't work. The general routines will, of course, wastefully calculate every entry in the final result. If it matters, A is typically not square. --Tardis (talk) 19:42, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Go through unique pairs of columns of A (e.g. do a loop to find i<j), and do the inner product defined by B? In the end, though, I'm not sure whether this much optimisation is worth it.--Fangz (talk) 00:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

You can check the matrix chain multiplication first to see if you should do (A^TB)A or A^T(BA). However, it seems to me that many of the operations you perform will be highly repetitious. So, memoization may be use to shortcut the operations and return the answer. -- kainaw™ 00:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The (direct) multiplication has the same expense in either order because of the symmetry. Perhaps the best thing is to simply do the first multiplication normally; then do the final multiplication "by hand" (without calling into a library), skipping the terms above/below the diagonal (as Fangz suggested). I think the "correct" answer for large matrices (when it's worthwhile to recognize the symmetries) is to factor $B=Q^{\top }DQ$ (D will have all positive entries if B is positive-definite, which it is for me) and write $A^{\top }BA=A^{\top }Q^{\top }DQA=C^{\top }C,\;C={\sqrt {D}}QA$. The standard packages know how to deal with $C^{\top }C$, so efficiency is had; the required Schur decomposition is $O(n^{3})$, so it's not necessarily more expensive than the matrix multiplications. --Tardis (talk) 15:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

In case anyone's implementing this, the general Schur decomposition is really overkill; the precise function I'll use (if I need it) is gsl_eigen_symmv. Thanks for the input. --Tardis (talk) 15:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Posting a file without exposing myself to spambots

I need to temporarily files for other message board users -- what are some good sites? By good, I mean easy to use, no porn advertising, clean interface. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:16, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Temporarily what? I am ahving difficulty understanding your question. Astronaut (talk) 23:04, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Temporarily file? You mean upload a file for temporary use? Try Microsoft SkyDrive. Just create an account, upload the files and set them to public or semi-public. GoingOnTracks (talk) 23:15, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

You want a website to place a file? you can use MediaFire, I think it is a good site because:

• No registration required
• upload files up to 100 MB
• Files are not deleted
• you can registrate and organize files in folders
• the person that download the file don't have to wait time, or enter any CAPTCHAs, (unlike rapidshare and it's kittens....)

link: www.mediafire.com SF007 (talk) 23:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

June 12

Lightweight desktop Linux

Can anyone recommend a Debian based (preferably) Linux distro for an old(ish) laptop (Dell Gateway 2000, Solo 9100). Its for a friend who isn't exactly a computer expert, so it should be easy to use and configure. He'll be mostly using it for homework and the like.

System requirements are pretty tight. It's from the Windows 98 days. 233mhz Pentium II and 64mb's of RAM, 4gb hard drive (in two 2gb partitions).

Has some maybe strange hardware, like a combination DVD-ROM/floppy drive, but I'm mostly sure It's just two ATA devices in one box. Floppy boot capable, but haven't tried. Supposedly CD boot capable, but not booting of my Ubuntu CD-RW (hardware not powerful enough for it anyway) though Win98 can read it.

I can provide any additional information. Thanks in advance -WikiY ^Talk 00:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried Xubuntu? I've had luck using that on old laptops. -- kainaw™ 00:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

If you really want to dig into it, you could go Linux From Scratch and install the X-Window packages afterward, then the packages for any desktop you put on it. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 06:49, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I've recently used Puppy Linux on a 400MHz PII, with 128MB RAM and 8GB hard drive. I then upgraded it to 640MB RAM and 40GB hard drive and tried Vector Linux. Both Linuxes worked well. However, neither would work on my really old 200MHz Pentium MMX with 64MB RAM (I think the 1st gen Pentium architecture didn't suit them). Anyway, I'll probably give Damn Small Linux or Xubuntu a go next. Astronaut (talk) 10:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

DLLs

Someone told me that even after uninstalling programs, there are a lot of left over DLLs that may take up space that could otherwise go towards something else. Is this true, and if so, how much space would these files typically take up? Would it be a noticeable difference if I was able to get rid of them if there were enough of them? And is there a program that could accomplish this?--十八 00:37, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

If these were shared DLL files, you would get into some inconveniences. Kushal (talk) 00:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the program. Some uninstallers only pretend to uninstall a program. They just remove the entry for the program from the Add/Remove Programs list. Others will remove all traces of the program. As for space, the most a DLL will take up is a few megabytes, and they are usually smaller than that. The thing I'd worry about would be old DLLs loading themselves into memory, which would slow down your computer. I tried a program once called DLL Toys but it didn't catch most of them. I also hear that Registry Mechanic will delete useless DLLs. But I've gotten the best results by going into the C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder and switching to the Details view. Most DLLs are stored in that folder. Then, I sort the files by company. So if you uninstalled Zone Alarm, for example, you would look for any files made by Zone Labs. You can see what DLLs are being used at any time by opening up a command prompt and typing tasklist /m. That's only scratching the surface, though. If you want to do a more thorough job, you'd have to run a registry cleaner and look through your C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers and C:\Documents and Settings\ and C:\Program Files\Common Files folders for other pieces of the program.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 01:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. When I opened up the command prompt and typed in tasklist /m, it says that "'tasklist' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file"; what did I do wrong? Nevermind, I figured it out by downloading the required application.--十八 02:45, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you using Vista? It may be that tasklist isn't included in it. I'm using XP.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 04:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I have XP. Tasklist wasn't included for some reason, so I downloaded it, and it works fine. Thanks for the tips.--十八 09:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. :)--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 09:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC) [banned user user:Primetime ]

GoLive Woes

Hi guys,

I was silly enough to lay out a page in GoLive. Unfortunately, that program used pixel co-ordinates to position text on the page. It looks OK in Internet Explorer, but Firefox and Opera mess up the formatting. I'm not sure how to move the "your computer" line away from the "I can help" one without doing a massive rewrite of the code. The bullets are in Wingdings, but I can't get those to display outside of IE, either:

Thanks,

Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 01:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Your link doesn't work. Preemptively, though, I can think of one thing to check. Look at the css pertaining to the DIV or SPAN tag corresponding to the misaligned text. If it's positioning says position: fixed, change it to position: absolute. Fixed doesn't work in every browser, and I've had that cause problems like what you're describing. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 02:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. The link is fixed. I tried messing with that, but it doesn't seem to work.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 03:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking at it, and I'll post if I find anything, but that's the most jumbled, mangled mess of HTML I've ever seen.

I notice the picture isn't working in Firefox, either. I think I know the problem there. The line that begins with DIV name="22F", at the end of the line is z-index:-1" there needs to be a semicolon between the one and the quotation mark.

Check the line starting with div name="155"; it's also missing a semicolon at the end. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 06:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Tell me about it. It was even worse before I tried to clean it up! I haven't been able to get the placement right, though, so I'm trying to code it in Notepad. Thanks for looking, Jeremy and Antilived. I never was a fan of CSS, anyway. I just use tables.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 09:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC) [banned user Primetime]

I suggest you just start over and code it the hard and elegant way. It will take more effort to make it standard than to rewrite it. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

WebSite with WWW or without?

I am considering making a website, but I don't know if I should choose www.mysite.com or just mysite.com, what is better? if I choose with WWW, will it redirect to the other one (www.mysite.com redirect to mysite.com)? and vice-versa? Is the WWW really necessary? should I go for it? thanks in advance. SF007 (talk) 03:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The version without really is still www.mysite.com. It just has to be setup on the server to have an alias of some sort to make mysite.com go to www.mysite.com (which is why some sites don't work if you don't put the www). When you register a domain, you're usually registering a second-level domain, where the "www" part is part of that second-level domain's subdomain. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 03:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd add that the www doesn't serve any real purpose from the technical side of things, and most of the time I just make sure that www.mysite.com and mysite.com point to the same place, as Wirbelwind suggests. The main reason for keeping the www (other than the chance that some people will type it in anyway) is that it indicates to a reader that we're talking about a website - when you see www.mysite.com on a billboard, you know that it is a url, while mysite.com isn't as blatantly clear. :) - Bilby (talk) 11:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd go as far as to say anything with a ".com" is ubiquitous of a website, so the www is not needed as long as the ".com" is there; or .edu/.gov/.org/.etc. :P--十八 10:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

.. and the www version actually involves less typing as (in Internet Explorer and Firefox at least) you can type "mysite" in the address bar followed by Ctrl-Enter to get http://www.mysite.com. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Or in Opera, where it automatically adds it. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 16:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

yeah, with WWW people know immediately that is a website. Thanks for the answers. SF007 (talk) 02:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The "www" prefix came about in the years before the Web was as ubiquitous as it is today. Back then, an organization might have their online presence spread around, say, www.example.com, ftp.example.com, gopher.example.com, telnet.example.com, irc.example.com, etc., and those might well be different hosts with different IP addresses. Meanwhile, the unprefixed domain name example.com might be only configured for mail delivery, with only a MX record and no A record at all. (In hindsight, it might've been more convenient to have separate DNS record types for all these protocols, not just for e-mail. Of course, this wouldn't have been very practical unless the DNS architecture was made much more flexible than it actually is, to the extent that people could effectively invent their own non-standard record names.)

In fact, you're still likely to find such setups around: for example, universities, free software vendors and others who still distribute large files over FTP are likely to have a dedicated FTP host which is not the same as their main webhost. On the other hand, it has gotten to the point where, these days, one can pretty much expect every second-level domain name to have an A record and respond to HTTP request, even if only to redirect the browser to the actual webhost. Meanwhile, even as older protocols like Gopher have been outcompeted by the Web, the naming convention continues to be used for newer protocols: for example, the Wikimedia Foundation, who run Wikipedia, have svn.wikimedia.org, which, though it does respond to plain HTTP requests, is really meant to be accessed via the SVN version control client. They also have irc.wikimedia.org, which, while it responds to HTTP requests too, only redirects the browser to a page on Metawiki.

Meanwhile, for "vanity domains" that only serve web pages and maybe receive e-mail, there's little point in using the "www" prefix. It's still worth supporting it, though, if only as an alias, since many people (and some software) will assume that the prefix should be there. For example, www.vyznev.net redirects you to the corresponding URL without the "www". Mind you, I had to set up the redirect feature myself using mod_rewrite in an .htaccess file; with the default configuration provided by my webhost, the two hostnames would've just served up identical copies of the site. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

KDE 4 in Kubuntu 8.04

Hello I have install Kubuntu 8.04 but it is in KDE 3.5 and I need KDE 4 how can make kde4 default .thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.125.143.74 (talk) 04:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Heading added — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 09:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

KDE 4 is a work in progress, and doesn't yet have all the features the average user expects -- I'd recommend waiting until KDE 4.1 or 4.2 is available. --Carnildo (talk) 23:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Just type "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop" in the terminal. 89.164.204.160 (talk) 15:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Help me debug this program please!

I’ve written the following program in C++ which is supposed to convert a given string of ASCII values into coherent text. Whenever I run the program in Borland C++ environment, I get the message “Conversion may lose significant digits” and the code that is emboldened in the following program gets highlighted. Please help me debug it!P.S—The output is supposed to be James Bond if I give the input as 10665771011153266797868.

Code

#include <iostream.h>

#include <conio.h>

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#include <ctype.h>

  

void main()

{

  char a[50];

  char b[50];

  int l, k, i, n, j, c, s=0, f1=0, f2=0;

  int N[50];

  

  cout << "Enter code \n";

  gets(a);

  cout << endl;

  

  l = strlen(a);

  for (i=0; i<l; i++)

  {

    n = a[i] - 48;

    N[i] = n;

  }

  

  j = 0;

  while (j<l)

  {

    k = j + 1;

    c = (N[j] * 10) + N[k];

    if ((c>=65 && c<=90) || (c>=97 && c<=132) || c==32)

    {

      f1 = 1;

      b[s] = (char)c;

      s++;

    }

    else

    {

      c = (N[j] * 100) + (N[k] * 10) + N[k+1];

      if (c>=100 && c<=132)

      {

        b[s] = (char)c;

        s++;

        f2 = 1;

      }

    }

  

    if (f1==1)

    {

      j = j + 2;

      f1 = 0;

    }

    else if (f2==1)

    {

      j = j + 3;

      f2 = 0;

    }

    else

      j++;

  }

  

  l = strlen(b);

  for (i=0; i<l; i++)

  {

    if (i!=0 || b[i]!=' ' || b[i-1]!=' ')

      b[i] = tolower(b[i]);

    else

      b[i] = toupper(b[i]);

  }

  

  cout << b;

  getch();

}

Thanks. 117.194.226.179 (talk) 05:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I see it- the "else" above the bolded line should be braced out. As it is, it's executing both the upper and lower commands on the inputs. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 06:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that doesn't help much. I just ran the corrected coding in my system, and the same error message appeared on the screen. By the way, I thought that if there are no braces after an "if" or "else" statement, it only executes the immediate next line?? 117.194.225.130 (talk) 07:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the if-else is okay as written, but the code is hard to read because of the lack of spaces. The message “Conversion may lose significant digits” sounds like a compile-time warning meaning that you've implicitly converted from a wider integral type (the int returned from toupper) to a narrower one (char). It's a spurious warning in this case; the code is fine (at least that line is). It shouldn't prevent the program from running unless you've configured the compiler to treat warnings as errors. -- BenRG (talk) 09:19, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I took the liberty of spacing it out a bit to improve the readability. Yes, toupper (and tolower as well) will return int sized values. There is an implied cast to fit the result into a char and you are being warned about the potential to lose accuracy with the cast. Astronaut (talk) 11:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Your program flow is rather tangled and unclear. You should have five separate steps:

1. Read in input string
2. Convert input string to array of single digit integers
3. Convert array to list of valid 2 or 3 digit ASCII codes (simplify your logic here - for your purposes, a 3 digit ASCII code always starts with 1; a 2 digit code never starts with 1)
4. Convert list of ASCII codes to character string
5. Apply capitalisation rules to decide whether each character in final output string should be upper or lower case and convert as required

Prorgram each step separately and insert debug statements to print out the result of each step before it is passed to the next step. After step 3 your array of ASCII codes should hold (106,65,77,101,115,32,66,79,78,68) and after step 4 your string before you apply capitalisation rules should be "jAMes BOND'. And adding comments will help you to clarify your own thinking as well as being a big help to anyone else who is expecetd to read your code. Gandalf61 (talk) 11:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

And while on the subject of improving your program, you could use more descriptive names for the variables. Astronaut (talk) 13:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Google Maps error

I'm using Firefox 3.0 on Ubuntu and when visiting Google Maps there are always specific tiles that it cannot display and instead says the "we don't have maps at this zoom level" error message, no matter what my zoom level is. The tiles changes from use but there seems to be a pattern for it, whether it be diagonal or skip one or things like that. What could be causing this? --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Ad blocker? As far as I can tell, the "we don't have maps at this zoom level" can mean either "we don't have maps" or "there was an error downloading the image". --Carnildo (talk) 23:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I get that sometimes (Firefox 2 on Windows XP); I just thought it was Google Maps screwing up. I'd noticed that G-maps and Wikimapia would lose map background at the same time (Wikimapia uses G-maps for its backgrounds). JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 01:05, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

mountmgr.sys

what dose it mean when your lap top says " the file mountmgr.sys is corrupted —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.35.45.66 (talk) 14:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

mountmgr.sys has a link to [[2]] where one of the posters point to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=297185 (I get Network timeout on the microsoft page). AFAIR, I have never seen this error myself. file mountmgr.sys is corrupted may have more information as well. Please give us more information on your case. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. Thank you. Kushal (talk) 00:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

SATA HDD for this board?

Hi, Does this motherboard support SATA HDD? [3] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.91.254.43 (talk) 14:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I think not. It would have appeared under "Internal I/O Connectors". -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 14:49, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the image, I don't see any SATA connectors either. Useight (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Ditto those above, I don't see any SATA connectors in the picture. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 18:10, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Quantum computer hardware for videogames?

Quantum computer technology can one day be used for videogames right? ScienceApe (talk) 16:36, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. What makes you think they would have any advantages over traditional computers for this purpose? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea. Do they have advantages for videogames? ScienceApe (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

None that I can think of. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:21, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Graphics won't be processed faster? ScienceApe (talk) 20:51, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is any evidence that they will. Quantum computers don't really do anything "faster", they just have a wider range of basic operations available. They are famous for being able to factor integers effectively, but I see no application of this for gaming. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:00, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, Ray tracing (graphics) could benefit from the wider range of basic operations if games (or their underlying packages) were modified to take benefit of the options quantum computing gives. Kushal (talk) 22:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Everything is possible. But last I've heard, the largest computation performed by a real quantum computer was factoring the number 15. This means that by the time these mature, classical computers will probably have developed to a degree that any further improvement will not be distinguishable by our feeble eyes. The bottom line: Don't hold your breath until quantum computers come along and turn your gaming world around, it's not going to happen for a long while, if at all. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

A lot of newspaper and magazine articles have created the misimpression that quantum computers would run classical algorithms faster than classical computers do. As Meni Rosenfeld said, they don't; what they do is run a larger class of algorithms called quantum algorithms. For certain specific problems, the best known quantum algorithm is significantly more efficient than the best known classical algorithm. But for the vast majority of problems the best known quantum algorithm is the classical algorithm, and in those cases you're better off running it on a classical computer. I think there are fast quantum algorithms for some path-finding problems which might be relevant to computer game programming, but it's hard to believe that you'd get any practical increase in frame rate from offloading such stuff to a quantum coprocessor. I don't think any known quantum algorithms would help with 3D rendering. Even if we all had quantum coprocessors in our machines right now, they probably would see very little use. -- BenRG (talk) 23:40, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems a fair bet that, if quantum computing ever works in practice at all, it will, somehow, be used for games. Or porn. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

open-source free maintenance tools

I need two of them:

-first a program that monitors my connection to the internet and tells me what program is connecting to what port, what speed, etc.

-the second is to find duplicated files on my HD.

GoingOnTracks (talk) 16:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

If you are on Tiger or Leopard, you can use iStat for the first one. Kushal (talk) 00:30, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I am on Windows :(. GoingOnTracks (talk) 01:11, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I know there are core utils for Linux that can be used to test for duplicate files. I'd use something like:

find . -exec cksum {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort >~/fileCksums.txt

Then look for duplicate checksums on consecutive lines in ~/fileCksums.txt. Maybe try doing that with Cygwin or something. --Prestidigitator (talk) 07:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd recommend md5sum (or sha1sum) over cksum, just to minimize the (admittedly small) chance of false positives. Also, xargs would probably be more efficient than -exec. Oh, and you don't want to checksum directories. And the non-duplicates can be filtered out with uniq. So:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum -b | sort | uniq -D -w32 >~/dups.txt

Note that some of the options I've used are GNU-specific (but if you use Linux or Cygwin that's what you'll have). For sha1sum, replace -w32 with -w40. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Escaping stuff in bash

I have a path like:
$ MYPATH="/some/path with spaces in it/somefile.dat"

I'd like to create the directory in another spot and copy the file there (I'm aware there are easier ways to do this but this is for illustrative purposes only). How do I properly escape everything in the following:
$ mkdir -p /home/me/$(dirname $MYPATH)

As-is, dirname gives an error ("extra operand 'with'"). So I double-quote $MYPATH:
$ mkdir -p /home/me/$(dirname "$MYPATH")

Great, so now I have /home/me/some/path, ./in, ./it, ./spaces and ./with. If I play stupid and pretend like bash will know what I'm talking about (and stick double-quotes in, even though they then become nested):
$ mkdir -p "/home/me/$(dirname "$MYPATH")"

It actually works, but it doesn't seem like this is the correct way. I would have thought "/home/me/$(dirname \"$MYPATH\")" was the correct way, but the inner, escaped quotes end up becoming part of the directory name.

--Silvaran (talk) 17:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks like bash is smart enough to use the parentheses that are part of the $(...) notation to nest the double quotes also. (Perhaps this is one of the reasons people like -- and invented in the first place -- this newfangled $(...) mechanism.)

Me, I've always used the universal (if perhaps a bit dated-looking) backtic mechanism for command expansion. I just tried this, and it worked:

mkdir -p "/home/me/`dirname \"$MYPATH\"`"

Here, I did have to escape the inner quotes, for exactly the reason you suggested. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I've always wondered why good shells don't extend the nestable $() syntax to quoting as well. I agree that letting bash figure out what you meant with the double quotes is icky. In a script I'd do it in two steps:

mydirname() { dirname "$MYPATH"; }
mkdir -p "/home/me/$(mydirname)"

--Sean 00:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with "/home/me/$(dirname "$MYPATH")" at all. It may be surprising that you can include a pair of quotes within a command substitution that's within a pair of quotes, but the recursive parsing necessary to correctly match them up is required by the unix standard[4] so it's a pleasant and portable surprise, not a bashism. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is nothing wrong with mkdir -p "/home/me/$(dirname "$MYPATH")". It is actually the preferred syntax. Although the bash documentation doesn't specifically deprecates the backtick syntax, many expert shell programmers discourage its use. --Juliano (T) 15:00, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Search keys

In search engines, "" helps you to define your phrase and search for that exact one. I think ~ or maybe three of them or something has a similar function. I am wondering if there are any keys\symbols\etc that can be used to exclude things you are searching for to make the search more refined. Simply south (talk) 18:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you can generalize search engine behavior. Google allows you to use to '-' character to exclude items. For example, I live in the state of Virginia, and when I search for state government information, I used to get a lot of results for West Virginia as well, so I use something like Virginia Lemon Law -"West Virginia", which will filter out the WV results. --LarryMac | Talk 18:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, the ~ is used (by Google) to search for synonyms, this is described here. That Google Guide site is packed with great tips for getting the most out of Google searches, and I'll repeat, you can't necessarily apply those tips to other search engines. --LarryMac | Talk 19:14, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for these. Simply south (talk) 19:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

You can preface a search term with a minus sign. Some engines, which includes google I think, use boolean words (AND, OR, and NOT), which you can also use. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 21:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

There's also inurl:, intitle: and site:. There's a list of advanced operators here. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 12:46, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

USB-to-serial converters, and drivers

Does anyone know why, when you plug a USB-to-serial (RS232) converter into a Windows (or Mac) machine, it's useless until you obtain and install the proper driver, but when you plug the same converter into a Linux machine, it tends to work automatically? (Me, I'm zero-for-three with several different Mac and Windows machines and several different converters, and I think three-for-three with Linux.) —Steve Summit (talk) 20:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

My understanding has always been that since the Linux community can't trust hardware manufacturers to supply Linux drivers for their products, they write their own drivers for all common devices and include them with the kernel. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows enjoys a large enough market share to force hardware manufacturers to write their own drivers. I don't know whether Microsoft does or should include every single device driver written for its operating system with its default installation. Some say that the modern operating systems are already bloated as they are. Kushal (talk) 00:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I suspect Linux is able to support these devices out-of-the-box not because it has 2,574 handcrafted individual drivers bloating the kernel, but because it has one generic driver which supports not only the 2,574 USB-to-serial converters already out there, but also all the ones that haven't even been built yet. See also Juliano's answer just below. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:56, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

If you haven't thrown out your old RS-232 devices by now, you must be a unix geek anyway. You refuse to get on the upgrade treadmill? You will be punished... --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a mystery. The USB standard defines a set of "device classes" that have well-defined behavior. One of them, class 02h, is USB communications device class. The specification clearly defines how a "serial port" is implemented. This is an open specification, see http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/usbcdc11.pdf, sections 3.3.1 and 3.3.2, and the rest of the document (a USB-to-serial converter is trivially implemented, it is just a very small subset of this specification).

USB intends to provide an extensive protocol that supports many kinds of devices without requiring specific vendor drivers. Check the first paragraph of Universal Serial Bus: "[...] and allowing many devices to be used without requiring manufacturer specific, individual device drivers to be installed."

This has nothing to do with the Linux community not trusting hardware manufactures to supply drivers (although this may be true for other situations, it is not the case for USB CDC). It is part of the USB standard, just like mass storage is (this allows you to plug a USB flash drive into your computer and it just works). Windows doesn't provide a USB CDC driver because whatever reason Microsoft doesn't want to. --Juliano (T) 16:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I was pretty certain there was a generic (device- and vendor-independent) specification; thanks much for the confirmation and the references.

(It's interesting you mention mass storage, because every time you plug a different USB thumbdrive into a Windows machine for the first time, it tends to do its little "searching for new hardware" dance, and it may even warn you that it "couldn't locate an appropriate driver and that your device may not work properly", although in that case, at least, it almost always does.)

One more reason to loathe Microsoft, I guess. (But it's not like I needed any more!) And it's certainly not a merely theoretical concern: it cost me and four other people a very expensive wasted hour of time last week, which is what got me thinking about it. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:56, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

sound cards; bipolar?

i know i should just go try it, but does anyone know beforehand any reason why a sound card shouldn't be able to feed the output from the audio out into the input to record it? Sort of a D to A to D thing? Gzuckier (talk) 20:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Make sure you check your recording levels- if you have the "stereo mix" option, mute it or things could get ugly. Other than that, I'd think it would be okay. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 21:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Depends on if your sound card supports full duplex operation or not. If it doesn't, it can't record and play at the same time. --Carnildo (talk) 23:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Sharepoint 3.0, Internal and External Sites

We just set up WSS 3.0 on a system running MS Small Business Server 2003 in a small office.

We would like to use sharepoint to host both internal project-management type workspaces, and an external site for clients and/or other professionals.

We are concerned about security, and ensuring that hosting a sharepoint site from here doesn't open up our network in any way.

How do you recommend we go about doing this? Are there any tips that can be offered? NByz (talk) 22:55, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Just a word or two of warning without getting into the sharepoint technicalities. If your users are used to using MS file systems and networking (such as workgroups) to share files, get used to a major paradigm shift when implementing sharepoint. Be prepared for a lot of resistance. We implemented sharepoint at the corporate where I work and I can tell you although there are disk saving and file sharing advantages, sharepoint is quirky at best. It requires some intense setup and at least one full time person to support MS SQL server that it uses and often loses connection to, etc. I would seriously reconsider before using it. Sandman30s (talk) 23:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

June 13

Javascript and Opera

Although I have Javascript turned on in Opera some sites do not recognize it. Firefox has sometimes the same problem. Should I stick to IExplorer? What can I do? GoingOnTracks (talk) 00:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Opera never gets any love. However, what problem do you have with Javascript in Firefox? We are very eager to help but it helps if you could provide more information. Is it a specific website that you are having problem with? Kushal (talk) 00:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that means that the problem with Opera is not solvable.

www.alternate.de didn't show properly in Opera or Firefox some weeks ago. GoingOnTracks (talk) 00:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Please don't get me wrong. Opera is a fine, polished, and rock-solid application. Its just that most people have a bias for a certain application (and change is hard). When I think of Opera, I remember that silly old "banner ad". With Firefox 3 release candidate 2 out, I don't think anyone needs to work with any proprietary web browser. I did not want to sound absolutely dumb by asking which OS you are on (I assumed you are on a version of Windows, since you mentioned Internet Explorer --by the way, there is a lot of hype about IE8, but I am getting off-track). It could well be you are on one of Mac OS, Mac OS X etc. I have a small problem with kantipuronline.com on my mac with nightly builds of Firefox 3. This problem does not exist on my Windows machine with the release candidate. Therefore, it could be a platform specific problem. Please tell us which OS you are on. Kushal (talk) 22:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I prefer to work with Opera or Firefox (for the plug-ins). I am on Windows. And I know of a further site where Iexplorer works fine but Opera or Firefox not. In this one, when you want to place a bid, you have a rule of tools to format the text. In the IE it works, and in the other two it will not load. GoingOnTracks (talk) 13:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Increasing my paging file

I have Windows XP SP 3 installed, with 1GB of RAM and 1.5GB for my paging file now. If I increased my paging file by 500MB, what adverse effects can I expect? Also, I have about 60 processes running in the background after my computer starts up from shut down (plus my browser, and other programs I use a lot like mIRC or iTunes). Is 60 too high, and if so, how can I be sure I don't turn off something at start up I really need? My task bar on the lower right only has 9 icons at startup, and most of that is essential like mousepad, McAfee, and volume control. My goal is to make my computer run faster without buying new RAM.--十八 01:35, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

To see exactly what your processes are and what they are doing - have a look at the excellent Microsoft utilities at sysinternals. With 1G of RAM it depends what you're doing on your computer - you should not be paging all that much if you're using it for lightweight tasks; if you're into modern games or high-res digital editing for example, then yes you're going to need a larger swap file, or more RAM which is cheap nowadays! Sandman30s (talk) 04:48, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It might slow down a little bit due to the hard drive being slower to access than the RAM. You can tell this right away if it's constantly accessing the hard disk. A couple of ways you can speed your computer up: 1) defragment the hard disk; 2) defragment the virtual memory paging file by turning virtual memory off, restarting, turning it back on, and restarting again.

Buying RAM can do a lot more to speed your computer up, so don't be too closed to doing so. One big thing that I've found is bumping up your swap file if you're low on memory usually makes it go slower, because it will be constantly accessing the hard disk. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ram Cleaner

What exactly does a ram cleaner? Which data does it clean? Could it delete what you have saved? --Omidinist (talk) 06:03, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd never heard of a RAM cleaner before, so I googled the term. Those programs look pretty dodgy to me. There was a big scandal a decade ago when people noticed that the best-selling "RAM compression" program SoftRAM95 actually did nothing at all. That product at least claimed to do something that made technical sense (make a compressed swap file in RAM), though it didn't actually do it. The CyberLat RAM Cleaner page seems to make no technical claims at all about the product they're charging $5 for. I doubt it's worth the money. -- BenRG (talk) 14:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

A typical "RAM cleaner" works by allocating a huge amount of memory. This forces the operating system to discard things like the disk cache and other caches (pre-rendered fonts, and possibly some other things), and move inactive programs and memory areas to the swap file. Occasionally this will speed up programs you start after running the cleaner, but it's far more common for it to slow everything down. Unless it crashes your computer, it won't delete anything important. --Carnildo (talk) 21:33, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm a little curious what a RAM cleaner would be expected to do. Every time you restart the computer, what is in RAM gets discarded anyway. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows Media Player 11 codec missing

I try to play .avi files using my version of Windows Media Player 11 on my new laptop but everytime I try, there appear to be missing codecs. I've just installed Media Player Classic but it does not work. Not sure where I can download the codec, what can I do? --Blue387 (talk) 06:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Try this? http://www.cccp-project.net/ It's built to play .avi(s) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.156.83.85 (talk) 06:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You might also try the K-lite codec pack with Media Player Classic, if you haven't already. It can usually fix this problem. Leeboyge (talk) 21:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I also recommend K-lite codec pack, it may be hard to believe, but with that codec pack and the program The KMPlayer, to this date, I played 100% of the "regular" media files I encountered (and I do a lot of internet browsing, exotic formats, etc...), you can also try MPlayer and VLC (with the codecs installed), if none of them work, it is very, very likely that that media file is currupted or it is not valid... (or requires an exotic codec...) SF007 (talk) 03:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP Service Pack 3

Ever since I downloaded this a while ago...I, for some strange reason, can no longer see some special characters. Why is this & how can I get them all back?

Well, what are these "special characters"? If for example they're Hangul (and thus special to non-Koreans), then I'd start by checking if you have a Korean font installed. Morenoodles (talk) 09:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Compare java performance between Unix and Windows

I know that java programs perform faster in Windows than Unix. And tuning can narrow the gap. But is there any document comparing java performance between these two OSs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Isaiah5818 (talk • contribs) 08:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

ePSXe

Now that I have gotten ePSXe to work, I need to know where I can download games for it. Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 09:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, those games are more or less illegal, and we can't point you to anywhere. However, there are very good search engines out there on this interweb thing I hear about. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It works just fine at reading Playstation CDs in your CD-ROM drive. You can usually get games at extremely low prices from garage sales and used-game stores. You could also try eBay, but the prices usually aren't as good. --Carnildo (talk) 21:35, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hacking an .exe file

Hi. I have an .exe file (the executable of the game Deadlock: Planetary Conquest). All the text of the game is stored in it as plain text. I suspect that it also contains all the data in plain binary. I would like to make changes in this data. I have a hex editor, but I have no idea where are the relevant pieces of data located. Is there any effective way to find out? For example, is there a way to monitor which locations of the file are accessed at given points in time when I run it? Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Try ResHacker or newer XN Resource Editor. --grawity 12:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, the numeric data I'm after doesn't seem to be among the resources these programs deal with. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I've hacked .exe files using a Hex editor (beav, in my case). The only changes I was able to make was changing text strings to others of identical length (possibly including blanks). Any additions or deletions presumably threw off address offsets used in the program and would cause a crash. Still, I managed to have some fun. For example, I changed the standard Windows Free Cell game into Nazi Free Cell: "Nein, Das Move ist Verbotten !" StuRat (talk) 23:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks to me like you need the Cheat Engine. — Shinhan < talk > 05:02, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. This certainly looks interesting, but I haven't been successful in trying to use it for my purposes. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:46, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

editing with Mac OS X Preview

Preview (software) tells us that Preview is Mac OS X's application for displaying images and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents (my emphasis), but clearly it does more: you can use it to resize, to fiddle with color balance, etc. (I'm talking about Preview version "4.1 (469.1)", as supplied with OS X 10.5.2.) So can you also copy and paste selections? There is a copy option (rectangle, ellipse, lasso), and I use it to copy. I then move elsewhere in the same image and either (a) click the cursor and choose the "paste" option or (b) define a rectangle with the cursor and choose the "paste" option and -- either way, nothing seems to happen. Or anyway what was red before is not overwritten with yellow. There's no error message, and I am offered the option of undoing my paste, but the whole operation seems to achieve nothing.

Can Preview do this? I can hardly complain if it can't; but if it can't, then just out of interest what is "paste" for?

If Preview can't do this, do I have any freebie options other than Gimp? (Gimp had a rather disorientating interface the last time I tried to give it a go.) Morenoodles (talk) 09:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You might have a look at Seashore. I don't recall exactly what Preview can do, but it's pretty lightweight. Fletcher (talk) 13:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! I've just spent about two hours battling with it to get it to do something I could do in five minutes with Windows-95-era Lview (as installed from one diskette), but that's progress in software, isn't it, heh heh. Anyway, it did work in the end. -- Morenoodles (talk) 08:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

web languages

Hello, Can anyone please tell me the difference between ASP, .NET and ASP.NET? Thank you in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.255.171.250 (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

ASP is Microsoft's old web scripting thing. .NET is Microsoft's name for a framework of program libraries, inter-program communications, and such. ASP.NET is ASP with the .NET framework. You can see ASP, .NET, and ASP.NET if you are actually interested in learning about these topics. -- kainaw™ 12:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Which filesystem I can choose

My requirement is that, data write / read to disk should be as fast as memory write / read. This filesystem can also take the advantage of a fact that at any point of time memory will not be filled up by writes too quickly, before it is getting written into disk. If at all this fails, graceful degradation is expected in this case.

I would like to use this filesystem as a RDBMS datastore.

Or, simply caching would solve most of these problems? :) --V4vijayakumar (talk) 13:41, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Because of the structure of the motherboard itself, a disk will be slower than memory. You may find a motherboard with some weird configuration where memory is as slow as disk access - but that would make memory pointless. Everything could be done on disk. The best answer I can give is to use a hardware RAID0 (striped) with a lot of fast drives that have a good on-drive cache. I do this for my database servers. I use the maximum number of drives, all striped. Each drive has a large cache. So, disk read/write is very fast. Of course, it isn't as fast as memory. So, I avoid disk access by maxing out the memory. I specifically asked all the server dealers "What server do you sell that has hardware raid and the most memory possible?" Now, I can do rather large table joins without ever swapping to a disk. -- kainaw™ 13:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, RAM caching is normally handled independently of the file system. Some file system drivers may do a better job than others of laying out data on the disk for faster reading later, but even in the best case this will be far slower than reading from the RAM. If all your frequently accessed data fits in RAM, the choice of filesystem shouldn't matter much. This should be doubly true of a database store, which will probably maintain its own virtual filesystem inside a single huge file, making the container filesystem basically irrelevant. (But I know next to nothing about databases.) -- BenRG (talk) 14:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems to me the OP is talking about a high-end file system. Proper RDBMS's don't use one large file; rather their datafiles are split not only physically but logically at the table and index level at least, for a very simplistic summary. If you're talking about data getting written as fast as memory, it doesn't quite do this; database writes are flushed to datafiles and "redo" logs asynchronously. So if you use a high-end disk subsystem such as EMC, which uses fast disks and ridiculous amounts of disk cache, these writes are performed from cache to disk asynchronously therefore allowing other operations to happen in memory while disk writes are going on in the background. EMC works well with the Veritas File System (vxfs) but this is all high-end stuff really. Sandman30s (talk) 22:58, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

lan networks

Hi...we hav a lan in our hostel with which about a hundred comps are connected...I'm planning to create a sort of bulletin board thru which anyone can be able to post any news or event list also it must be able to work like a website...is there any way to do so?? if yes how??? plz explain in detail...any link which can help will be gr8...thanking u all in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushbehera25 (talk • contribs) 15:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Note: If you need very high performance, use a separate computer for this.

1. Install a web server, such as Apache with PHP and MySQL (or simply XAMPP)
2. Install bulletin board software, such as phpBB, punBB or [UNB].
3. RTFM.

--grawity 18:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

stereo sub

this might not fit in the computer section but its the closest thing to technology matters. I blew the sub on my stereo and am wondering how specifically to fix it. yes i know i can take to a proffessional at some store or whatever but we happen to not be going into the city for quite awhile. i can't go one day without listening to it. what should i do about it?Jwking (talk) 19:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

HOW did you break it? They aren't something that's easily broken, mechanically... --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

If this is a traditional speaker with a paper cone attached to an electromagnet, the paper cone is probably torn. You could patch the cone, I suppose, but it will never sound as good as new. It might sound good enough, especially with the volume low, until you can manage to get a replacement, though. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You could cover the tear in the cone with hillbilly chrome and it might not rattle, but chances are, you'll need a new speaker. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Game resolution suddenly decides it doesn't like me.

I have a 1280x800 laptop and I'm trying to play Age of Empires II. I've had the game for ages and it's always played fine, filling the whole screen no matter what resolution I set it on. Today it screwed up, filling a small rectangle in the middle of the screen, and even if I play it on the highest resolution it can go (which is the 1000xsomething; it won't let me click the 1280 one) there's still big black lines to both sides.

I noticed it when I booted the computer up - randomly one of the 'Windows resuming' screens was small like that. It's annoying me, I haven't added, changed or taken anything away, it's just 'happened'. What's going on and how do I slap the game back to working properly?

Lady BlahDeBlah (talk) 21:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Under Accessories | System Tools use the System Restore to restore your system to a point in time when the game last worked. Sandman30s (talk) 23:02, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Nope, that's not fixing it. I don't think there was a point for that time Lady BlahDeBlah (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You said "Today it screwed up" so restore your system to yesterday, or last week! If that doesn't fix it then you have a hardware problem I'm afraid. Sandman30s (talk) 23:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I'd guess the graphics card needs to be replaced. But, just to make sure it's not the monitor, try hooking up an external monitor. StuRat (talk) 23:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Before you rush out to buy a replacement laptop, have a close look at all of the display settings before you start the game.

Also, in both XP and Vista I have seen it where the screen resoluton is set to something like 800x600 by default when it cannot read your personal settings because you are logged out of your user account (it was annoying as hell because it moved my icons around to fit the new resolution). All these different modes are stored somewhere in the registry and are built up each time the computer encounters a new setup like being in "Windows resuming" mode for the first time. Looking in the registry on my Vista PC, I stringly suspect it is something to do with the data stored in HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO, but I'm not sure what you should do here. You could try the searching the Microsoft knowledge base, or maybe someone who know more about the different screen resolution will add further answers here.

Edit: BIG REGISTRY WARNING... deleting the wrong thing in the registry can seriously mess up your PC - so much that you will have to reinstall Windows. The registry editor has no "are you sure?" questions and has no undo feature. Use it with great caution. Astronaut (talk) 18:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Photo story 3 temporary files

Hello I am using Photo Story 3 on Windows XP SP2 on a Toshiba Satellite M55-S135. I am working on a project right now but for some time, the application is not responding to Windows. I was wondering if I could salvage any work out of it. Does it save its files in a special format (like Audacity does)? If yes, where can I find the temporary files? The project contains voice-over which I will have difficulty in persuading the people to do the re-recording. (I was dumb enough to do the recording on Photo Story, so I have no back up of the audio.) Please help. Kushal (talk) 22:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Kushal (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Never use Microsoft software for anything of importance. That's my general advice. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ubuntu/Debian?

From a desktop user's perspective, what are the main differences between the two distributions? (I know Ubuntu has a faster release schedule). Fletcher (talk) 22:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Debian and Ubuntu are very, very similar because Ubuntu is a fork from Debian. Aside from the release cycle, the ideology is different. Ubuntu seems to be focused on helping non-technical users and achieving mass market appeal [5], while Debian focuses on developers (for its "unstable" releases) and servers (for its "stable" releases). Debian is very focused on making sure most software is free software (developing the DFSG); while Ubuntu it is prepared to make some compromises with nonfree software vendors if this helps the end user. This may be because of their different revenue streams: I think Debian's main funding is through SPI, a trust for funding free software projects; while Ubuntu is funded by Canonical, a company selling software support. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, ubuntu is probably more suited for most users, more easy to use, more easy to install some software, more hardware support, more easy to get support (since is probably the most used distro), and all that stuff... unless the question of "Free Software" really matters to you, you sould be better with ubuntu... (just my personal opinion!) SF007 (talk) 03:36, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I hear that Debian is much more stable and has better performance (not newbie-friendly, though). Ubuntu development is funded by a company that makes a living from people having trouble with it, so I don't trust them to make any sort of effort to make things work. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:18, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't share that kind of conspiracy-theory-minded point of view; in fact I have had a good experience with Ubuntu, which has gained a reputation as one of the best or the best desktop linux experiences. Canonical doesn't have a monopoly, so intentionally making Ubuntu difficult would simply drive customers to another distribution. I posted my question in consideration of the fact that Debian continues to officially support my architecture, PowerPC, while Ubuntu maintains only an unofficial port. Can anyone elaborate on how Debian is more difficult? Is it simply more work on the command line (which I don't mind), or does it really require a lot more knowledge to get it working? Fletcher (talk) 14:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Mac OS X - Raw data to /dev/audio using 'cat'

On UNIX computers, I sometimes like to mess around and cat data files to the audio device to see what kind of industrial music I can produce. How can I do the same thing on Mac OS X? I have tried using /dev/audio, /dev/dsp, and /dev/mixer, but they all produce the error "Operation not supported". I have heard that OS X has a higher-level audio system than /dev/audio, so is there another device I should try to cat or pipe to, or should I just pipe to a program like mpg321 and save the hassle? Freedomlinux (talk) 22:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

This program looks usable. ~~ N (t/c) 07:37, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't think that's what the OP wants, as he/she wants to pipe any random file to /dev/audio to listen to their funky sound (mostly static for compressed files, but the .ko file I had lying around had a few tones in it), not play music files through the command line. To the OP, have you tried sudo cat instead of cat, in case it's a permission thing? --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:53, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

If it's anything like the common UNIX play command, it can accept raw audio files, for the same effect. ~~ N (t/c) 20:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Nickptar, while that is not my preferred solution, I may be able to do some creative piping to achieve the same result using your program. I suppose the problem lies in the abstraction of the sound system normally used by /dev/audio. Antilived, I do believe I was root when I tried to do this, due to the inherent administrative nature of accessing the hard drive and outputting to the system audio device. Thank you both for your tips, I will try and see what I can do. Freedomlinux (talk) 00:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

June 14

Problems with torrents and other P2Ps

I have been having a lot of problems with torrents and other p2ps forming a comection with peers. I think it has something to do with my port(s). How do I solve this problem. When I download a torrent I open it with utorrent and the availability is 0 even if there are a few thousand seeds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dalakoi (talk • contribs) 01:47, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Networking is a complex field, particularly diagnosis & trouble-shooting of problems. Details of your environment, network configuration, applications used & their configuration (with regard to port(s) used), exact symptoms (including error messages etc.) would be of great help in order to offer some kind of assistance towards a solution. Unfortunetly, a vague description is not enough in order to provide anything more specific.

Pre-emptive suggestions: check the configuration of your applications, firewalls, routers etc. There should be a forwarding path from your external connection all the way to your application. Try testing with Wireshark. However, doing so may require reading/learning about networking concepts. Like I said; it's complex.

Don't be put-off by the title, there is a vast amount of useful information within: I kindly/gently point you to Eric Raymond's How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, which may help you in the art of asking questions which elicit useful answers. — Lee Carré (talk) 18:14, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps your ISP has blocked your p2p ports. GoingOnTracks (talk) 18:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

2 questions, front panel connections pins, UPS

I had a hard time finding the correct front panel wires inside the chassis of my PC. I had to look behind the front panel to determine which is which. Now, although I have been able to recognise the right pairs of wires, I am not able to determine the correct polarity for each pair. Are they interchangeable? The manual of my motherboard specifies each pin of a pair for two LEDs. Like this: HD (IDE Hard Disk Active LED) Pin 1: LED anode(+) Pin 2: LED cathode(-) But I have no idea how I am to find which is anode and which is cathode. Can somebody help me? —Genuee (talk) 05:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

The White/Black one is the cathode, and the brightly coloured one is the anode. You can always do it the trial and error way though. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

BTW, The wires on LEDs are not interchangeable. If you pass voltage the wrong way, in most cases they won't light. (Some bi-color LEDs will get the colors reversed.) JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

---

Second question is related to UPS. My UPS's manufacturer says that their product would support the computer only if there is a certain level of load. At least 100 Watts is the required load. In my case, when there is a power failure when the monitor is off/in sleep mode, the UPS will fail. Is this the case with all manufacturers? —Genuee (talk) 05:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In response to your second question regarding your UPS: I have an APC Smart-UPS 1500 which does not exhibit this behavour. Personally I would consider the symptom you describe as a significant fault; there should be no minimum load needed for it to operate correctly. My UPS supplies power from battery no matter the load attached, even if there is nothing attached.

The only reason I can think of for this sort of behavour is to preserve the battery when there appears to be no load (in which case the UPS should look for any load, rather than something greater than 100W). Batteries used in UPSes only have a limited life, governed mainly by the number of discharges, particularly if they are deep discharges. — Lee Carré (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

At my school, we have a rack to TV equipment and computers backed up by a 30amp TrippLite lead-acid UPS. About 1.5years ago, I determined that it did not require any particular load to discharge, as it sat there giving off a warning beep and powering a small test lamp while we went to lunch. While it may preserve battery life, I can't think of why 100w would be chosen as the load limit, especially when many small, but delicate devices would draw less than 100w. Freedomlinux (talk) 00:18, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of a UPS requiring 100 watts (that's quite a lot). JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Non linear curve fitting in Matlab

I have been using Matlab for fitting a non-linear curve(the model is known for sure) which depends on three parameters and one variable: I have been getting results which look somewhat like this :

c =

    General model:
      c(z) = newtransmittance(wav,ipow,opow,w,b,g,z)
    Coefficients (with 95% confidence bounds):
      b =        5.17  (-5.018, 15.36)
      g =          10  (-74.81, 94.81)
      w =       12.52  (5.814, 19.22)
    Problem parameters:
      wav =        1064
      ipow =          90
      opow =          80

gof =

          sse: 0.007544015427389
      rsquare: 0.824078213449844
          dfe: 37
   adjrsquare: 0.814568927690377
         rmse: 0.014279086415046

As can be seen I am getting a large uncertainty in fit results. What shall be my approach to minimize the uncertainty in the coefficient values?The plot shape that I am getting seems to be descent enough.I have been trying to change the lower and upper bounds on hit-and trial basis which sometimes helps and sometimes not.

What should be my general approach while solving such ?I mean, how do I know which bounds will be giving me the best fits apriory? I am finding it very difficult to try hid and trial method (I have a lots of data )for finding the best bounds that suit my fit. Is there a better way?If, yes could you please help me out with the same?

I tried reading the Matlab documentation help, but couldn't find a good way to deal with such problem. Thanks in advance...

I've never used Matlab but have done curve fitting before, using polynomial parameterized arcs and splines. The higher the number of constraints you supply, whether point constraints, tangency contraints, or curvature constraints, the higher the degree of the arc needs to be for an exact match using a single polynomial parameterized arc (the degree has to be at least the number of constraints minus one to fit all exactly). However, an arc with a high degree will also be "lumpy" and may bow out unexpectedly. Therefore, you might want to lower the degree and accept more deviation from your constraints to ensure a smoother curve. A similar effect also occurs when using multi-arc splines. Alternatively, you might just want to remove many of the constraints, and only leave a few "representative" data points. StuRat (talk) 00:59, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

computer gives out continuous beeps and won't boot

I unmounted a Combo drive (DVD R + CD RW) from a computer. The drive was connected to an IDE cable along with a hard disk. After removing the Combo I connected the HDD at the end of the IDE Cable (It was connected to the middle connector earlier). When I switched on the system again, it gave out continuous beeps. The motherboard is Gigabyte. The continuous beep indicates power error according to the manufacturer's manual. I did everything I could do but the system wouldn't boot or enter setup, it just gives out continuous beeps. It did enter setup just once though, which gives the impression that the motherboard has no serious defect. I removed the SMPS and installed another one. Changed memory, removed and reset all connections,took out the CMOS battery to clear CMOS etc. but nothing helps. Any suggestion? --Genuee (talk) 11:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Check out the jumpers on the back of your hard drive - there should be a guide to the jumpers on a label somewhere on the drive casing. If "CS" (cable select) is selected, you can't just move the drive to a different connector on the cable. If this is the case and you still want to use the end connector, you have to move the jumper to "MA" (master).

A little background info: There's usually 3 sets of jumper pins, "MA", "SL" and "CS" (master, slave and cable-select). Master is set to ID the first/primary device, Slave is set to ID the secondary device, Cable-select sets the drive ID (master or slave) based on which connector is used. Occasionally, there's a fourth pair of jumper pins (sometimes labelled "SP") used to indicate to a master, that there is a slave present elsewhere - if the drive is the only device on the IDE cable, then the "SP" should be unselected.

Astronaut (talk) 13:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

It would help if you specify which motherboard you are using ("Gigabyte" doesn't quite cut it). Try disconnecting the power and data cables of everything that isn't required for the BIOS to run (that includes all hard drives) and making sure that what's left is connected properly. If it works, reconnect parts until the problem recurs. If the hard drive is the culprit, you need to mind the master\slave issues raised by Astronaut. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

• After a lot of fumbling the long howl has stopped. When I switch on the machine floppy drive is continuously lit and the DVD drive is checked. I can’t still enter the setup. The monitor shows nothing. Seems that no signal goes to the monitor. The keyboard is not recognized. No beep at all now. My board is GA-8I845GV of Gigabyte. The manual describes about auto recovery of corrupted BIOS from a special partition of the hard disk. I don’t have the hard disk this system used to have. I purchased a 160 gb and wanted to install OS. The board has two pins to short to clear the CMOS and go back to defaults. But there is no BIOS recovery as such. What can I do now? --Genuee (talk) 09:58, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Do check the pins for primary/secondary on the drive, but the beeps and inability to get to setup sounds like you knocked a memory chip loose. Make sure they're seated right, and make sure all the cables are tight, and see if that fixes it. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I checked all connections and jumpers. Nothing wrong. The system turns on, looks up devices, first floppy drive, then DVD drive and after that HDD. But keyboard's led is never lit. Nothing on monitor. No BIOS beep. I removed memory and switched on. Continuous beeps. I had earlier tried another RAM to see if memory was the faulty bit. Does searching for devices mean the motherboard is OK? I tried writing a BIOS upgrade on a CD ROM. The manufacturer's manual vagues suggests recovering the BIOS from CD (when the attempt to recover from a hidden file in the hdd fails). However, the LED on the drive lit for some time and nothing happened. Expect more advice. Genuee (talk) 01:00, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

What type of connector is this?

Does anyone know what the connector shown in this picture: http://www.xanthos.se/~joachim/pmagb-b.jpg is? Thanks Rilak (talk) 12:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I suspect it's some variety of RGB component video. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:41, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

A google search for "PMAGB-B" suggests that board is a DEC framebuffer video card, perhaps for a DECstation or AXP3000. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

You're right, this card is a frame buffer. I think the PMAG-B is called the CXT, or Color Frame Buffer. I have the specification document from Digital that I found at a ftp site for a BSD variant, but it mentions nothing about the connector type used. It is a variety of RGB component video connector, and the monitor side has three BNC plugs. But I want to know what the connector type is. I did some more searching and I think it may be a 3W3P, but other than that, I haven't found anything. Can anyone confirm this? Thanks. Rilak (talk) 06:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

This .PDF file from ITT Cannon will answer your question. [6] Note that your connector is shown in the photo at the top of the first page. In much more detail, see page 49 of this catalog [7]. Your connector is called a "3C3" in the "DA" style housing. You might also enjoy our article about the family of D-subminiature connectors.

Atlant (talk) 13:20, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks! Rilak (talk) 06:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

disk image emulator

Is there a disk image emulator software for windows, which could mount simple hard disk images? There are programs, which can mount optical disk images and there are programs, which can mount encrypted hard disk images, but none of them mounts simple, unencrypted hard disk images. (Something analogous to linux loop device). -Yyy (talk) 14:22, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

See Daemon Tools. --Russoc4 (talk) 15:22, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

It was the first program i tried. (i also tried truecrypt) It cannot mount hard disk images. -Yyy (talk) 16:16, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Try WinImage. It can't mount HD images, but it can edit them. --grawity 16:29, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Acronis True Image supports mounting of hard disk images made by itself... There is also VMware Workstation, that can open some formats of hard disk images (it also supports real partitions) to run them inside a Virtual Machine... And there is also WinMount, that can mount lots of archives types (.zip, .rar, .iso, etc...), ... What do you mean by "simple hard disk images"? What program created those hard disk images? What are the types of files you want to mount? maybe then we can help a you little more SF007 (talk) 03:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

This image was created by ubuntu wubi installer (ext3 filesystem of ubuntu installation). Vmware workstation has image mounting tool for virtual machine disk images, but it works only on virtual machine disk images (i already tried)(i have not tried to attach this image to existing virtual machine). I will check out winimage and winmount. -Yyy (talk) 04:32, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

It was not possible to attach this image to VMware workstation virtual machine (vmware version 5.5.4)(it complained as it was an unrecognized format). Winmount (version 8.1) did not recognize the file (cannot open the file). Winimage (v6.1) could not open the image, but version 8.1 could and it was possible to extract files from image. Thank you for answers. -Yyy (talk) 06:31, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, it was created with Wubi, now it makes sense, yeah, that is one of the prolems with wubi: it is difficult to open the hard disk images created by it, since there seems to be no official tool for that... didin't knew WinImage would open that... Cool, have to try it some day... SF007 (talk) 13:58, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Firefox text-search mystery

I've got one tab where command-G has stopped working. Command-F still searches for a string, but command-G won't search for the next occurrence of it. I wonder how that happened? (Command-G still works in other tabs in the same window, and other windows in the same session.)

(Firefox 2.0.0.14 under MacOS 10.4.9. When I say "command-G" I mean "apple-flower-key-G"; the rest of you can think "control-G".) —Steve Summit (talk) 16:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I've had that happen a couple times before, but it is rare. I believe the only way I could get it to work again was to open the location in a new window, though I might have had to restart the whole browser (can't remember specifically, but it was one of those). Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); ; Alexa; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13 --Prestidigitator (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

X11

I have a black MacBook and when I downloaded the OS X 10.5.3 update, X11 and all the programs that used it stopped working. I tried downloading an older version but that didn't work either. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix it? Jkasd 17:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Ubuntu help

I'm the same guy as before. I managed to download the .iso Ubuntu file rather than buying a cd. I have a cd burner but no blank cds. Is it possible to install Ubuntu without burning the .iso file to a cd?

I've also been using Windows Vista for a few days now, and I don't know how to mess with partitions or anything. Regardless of the answer to my first question, how do I install Ubuntu without screwing up Vista or my files or anything? I also want to be able to access my files from both OS's if I can.--71.175.125.178 (talk) 18:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly suggest NOT doing this because it appears you are in a bit over your head at the moment... What you want is a dual-boot system with a shared file partition. So, you will need four partitions. One will have Vista and likely be NTFS formatted. Two will have Ubuntu and likely be ext3 and swap formatted. One will be your shared file partition and will need to be FAT32 formatted. That part of the process is difficult itself. You need a program like Partition Magic to resize your current Vista partition and allow three more partitions. The largest should be your shared file area. Then, install Ubuntu using the ext3/swap partitions. Once installed, both Vista and Ubuntu will be able to mount and work with the FAT32 partition. As for installing from an iso, the difficulty is that you have to install from boot. So, you don't have an operating system running. Only BIOS is running. I don't know of any BIOS capabilities that allow you to mount an iso off a hard drive. You must put the iso on a bootable media (ie: a CDROM). -- kainaw™ 19:36, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I would avoid PartitionMagic like the plague. Ubuntu's install has GParted built-in for partition purposes. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Vista doesn't seem to respond well to partitioning. I have tried it using Ubuntu's partitioner (gparted) and Vista wouldn't boot. I also advise against using Partition Magic! It hasn't been updated since 2004 and it ruined an XP partition of mine. The best partitioning program out there is from Acronis and some have even reported problems partitioning Vista with that.

As for the ISO, it depends on your BIOS. My BIOS supports booting from a USB flash drive, so if you have one of those, that might be an option. Ubuntu will mount your Windows drive automatically and will allow you to modify files on it. To access your files on a Linux drive from Windows you will need to install a program like ext2ifs.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 19:50, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

How can you tell if your BIOS supports booting from a USB flash drive?--96.227.31.211 (talk) 00:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

When I restart my computer, I press the DELETE key to access my BIOS settings. (You press one of the function keys on some other computers to do the same thing.) I then go to the screen for my hard disks and it lists my USB flash drive on the third line. So, it lets me make the USB drive the primary partition since I can move it to the first line.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 19:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

FYI, Kainaw, Linux has native NTFS read and write (ntfs-3g) support now. --antilived^{T | C | G} 03:19, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Try Wubi. No CD, no partitioning. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Does your BIOS/motherboard use PXE? If so, you may be able to set up a server to host the ISO image for you over the network and boot it via PXE. Freedomlinux (talk) 00:23, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Per User:Consumed Crustacean, just mount the iso using something like Daemon Tools and install Ubuntu through Wubi, nice and easy. -antilived^{T | C | G} 01:25, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I think Wubi is a separate .exe file which is unrelated to the iso. I tried running it just to see how it works. The installer itself is tiny, and it downloads everything it needs when you run it (making the effort the OP invested in downloading the ISO go to waste). Unless, of course, it crashes, like it did for me. Somehow I don't feel comfortable having an unstable program mess with my boot loader. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:39, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Nope, he can use the ISO he downloaded. So long as he downloaded the Desktop version of Ubuntu (and he should have anyways), he just puts the ISO in the Wubi folder, runs Wubi, and voila. As for instability - I haven't noticed it; however, all Wubi does is puts in an extra entry in the boot.ini (or Vista's equivalent). Even if that's messed up somehow (unlikely in the extreme) it is easily fixed; Vista's setup CD has a bootup repair utility that's easy to use, and XP's setup CD has the fixboot command. 206.126.170.20 (talk) 22:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Zelda DX

[This question moved from Wikipedia talk:Reference desk by Steve Summit (talk) 20:13, 14 June 2008 (UTC)]

Okay, so here's the story: I own Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, but I don't own a Game Boy Color or Advance. So I ripped the rom to the computer. I discovered a cool glitch that was enabled when I pushed 2 or more directional keys at once other than diagonal movement. I had a file where I was at level 8, but I couldn't find the fire rod, so I gave up and deleted the file. However, I'm now interested in that glitch again; one cool function was that it could launch the Hookshot in a half-parabola. I'm trying to find a SGM (save state) file compatible with VisualBoy, the emulator I'm using, preferably at the end of the game. The problem? I can't find one anywhere! Please help. 71.220.217.201 (talk) 19:44, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Addressing your comments in order

1) I'm interested in knowing how you ripped the cartridge without the gameboy. It can be done, but the only inexpensive ways I know to rip a gameboy cart involve a gameboy and a link cable. And even then, nowadays the special link cable probably costs more than the GBC itself!

2) Yea, a lot of old games have weird glitches if you hold down opposing d-pad buttons. (Which can't easily be done on authentic hardware.) I don't recall which one, but one of the Zelda games allows you to fight Gannon in the first five minutes by this method.

3) There are a couple of saves here. I haven't played the game, so I don't know how close these saves are to what you want. Hope it helps, though.

APL (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Valve Sprays

I need help importing sprays to use on Team Fortress 2. I know that you need a .vtf file, but i don't know how to get it to work or how the game to regonize it. Also, I want to know how to convert JPEG's into .vtf. Any suggestions? --69.127.64.22 (talk) 20:50, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I found this on the Steam tech support pages. Any good? CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 21:29, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. I tried exactly that, and it doesn't work. Maybe the picture has to be in a specific folder? I don't know if the desktop counts. --69.127.64.22 (talk) 13:48, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The desktop should be fine, just navigate to your desktop and open the file. If you are unable to work out how to navigate to the desktop from TF2, I suggest you try a different directory (folder). The easiest may be to create a new directory in C:\ called Temp and put the file there. Nil Einne (talk) 16:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

computer security ?

Is it possible for someone to "tap" a landline phone remotely. A friend of claims some guy on a AIM chat said he was tapping them . Or is that bs. --Rio de oro (talk) 23:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Since all phone calls are routed through a great deal of equipment before they arrive at their destination, it's possible to tap the phone at any of those locations, or anywhere (cable or air transmission) in between. The US National Security Agency did such phone taps all the time, apparently illegally, since they didn't get a warrant first. However, "some guy on AIM" isn't likely to have such access, or to brag about it if he does. Therefore, it's the people who don't claim to be tapping your phone you need to worry about. :-) StuRat (talk) 00:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

That said, if you're using a wireless phone on your landline, you can be heard on a shortwave radio by your neighbors. If the frequencies are too close together, it may even be picked up by their baby monitor. With that in mind, you should always have sensitive discussions (such as credit card transactions) on a physical, corded phone. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:40, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Shortwave radio won't work for a DECT or other digital cordless. That said, usually digital phones are either not encrypted or have weak encryption. 206.126.170.20 (talk) 22:24, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

From back when I used my parents' AOL, I can tell you that you hear a lot of crap that people can supposedly do. Somebody told me once that they could kill my internet connection through a chat room. Knowing that they'd need my IP for that, and couldn't get it if I didn't give it to them, I told them to go ahead. Nothing happened. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Even if the attacker have your IP he can't do jack, with today's NAT and stuff. He might be able to pull of a DDoS attack but that requires way more than 1 computer. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Also what I herd from my friend that "guy" claimed he "can tap into the phone line, and charge your phone 10 bucks a min". Or something , that guy is probaly some wana be cyberpunk that lives with his mom --Rio de oro (talk) 16:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Video file Conversion

I'd like to know how to convert video files (i.e. Windows Media or Quicktime) into a format readable by run-of-the-mill DVD players (not HD or Bluray). Please help. BeefJeaunt (talk) 23:56, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

You may want to try DVD Flick [8] . It will take many types of media files and produce an ISO image and/or burn directly to a DVD using ImgBurn. DVD Flick is only available for Windows, but the source is GPL and also available for download. I would highly recommend DVD Flick due to my personal satisfaction and its reliance on the stable ffmpeg and ImgBurn programs. Freedomlinux (talk) 00:28, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

June 15

Balancing a network

If I have a DSL, UMTS or whatever network conection, I experience different speeds. I suppose that these speeds are determined by the server and by the use of the network at the moment. But, is there some sort of administration (from the side of the provider) to balance the network or it "just happen"? Is there some sort of traffic central that provides more bandwidth for user that have downloaded less or are requesting less? Do some ports (like http or VoIp ports) get preference? GoingOnTracks (talk) 01:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, see traffic shaping. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:22, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

AT&T telephone compatibility

can I use a at&t post paid cell phone set on the at&t go phone network? Kushal (talk) 03:10, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

They use the same cellular network. All you have to do is put a GoPhone SIM card in your phone, and activate it on their website or in a store. Unfortunately, I don't think they sell the SIMs by themselves, so you may have to buy a cheap GoPhone and use the SIM that comes with it. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 17:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. If its true, its a bummer. :( Kushal (talk) 23:57, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Online TV guide

Is there a website where I can see all the upcoming over-the-air digital broadcasts scheduled for the week for Detroit, Michigan, USA ? StuRat (talk) 03:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

There are quite a number of them, in fact. Try entering terms like "television", and "program schedule" into Google. Some of them seem to handle local listings (channel selection) better than others, but I can't remember enough offhand to be able to make a specific recommendation. --Prestidigitator (talk) 03:31, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I use titantv.com. I don't see why it wouldn't have broadcasts for Detroit. -- kainaw™ 13:04, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

That site's pretty good, but it doesn't list the Canadian stations we get in Detroit; Channels 9 (CBC) and 32 (TVO). StuRat (talk) 05:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Audio file

I have an MP3 file on my computer that I downloaded. However, the audio only comes from 1 side (speaker or headphone) when I play it. I'd like to be able to listen to it on my ipod. What is the easiest way to equalize the audio so that sound comes from both sides? I am on Windows XP. Thanks. Nadando (talk) 05:34, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Go to Control Panel --> Sounds and Audio Devices --> Audio tab --> Volume button under Sound playback, and a window pops up. Move the icons in the Balance fields to be in the middle. This also may be due to your speaker (or headphone) chord being partly unplugged; this has happened to me a few times.--十八 07:55, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

No, he's trying to re-equalise the file so that both channels have sound. Download Audacity and play around with it. If you still need help post them here. --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:41, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Audacity seems a bit of a waste to me. Presuming you are willing to completely discard one channel and it is not joint stereo, there may very well be a way to losslessly convert one channel to a mono MP3 Nil Einne (talk) 16:07, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

A waste? i don't get it. You mean overkill? Kushal (talk) 23:47, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Save video file from MMS source with Linux?

With Linux, I can use Xine to stream a video file directly from an Microsoft Media Server (MMS) source. But how can I instead save it to disk so I can view it later at my leisure? JIP | Talk 10:45, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

mmsrip --Juliano (T) 12:23, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

MiMMS --h2g2bob (talk) 13:01, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

algorithum key?

Is there such a thing is a algorithum key on the pc that can mess up the fan or something. A certain "person" on a MSN chat made a threat saying he knew my encribiton algorithum key , which is bs. Btw, I did report it to MSN. Is that bs or what . That guy is probly just some punk that has no life.--Rio de oro (talk) 14:49, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Encryption algorithms have keys. In particular, anything on your computer that is encrypted will have a key, and that includes your communication with secure web sites via SSL (or has that been completely superseded by TLS?). I doubt there is any particular one that can be referred to as the encryption algorithm key of your computer, that your fan is encrypted, or that a random person will have access to any of the keys associated with your computer. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice, it makes "breath" more easier at night now. That guy started to run his "mouth" , saying some bs that he knew the key , to "make my fan slow down",and to cause "your pc to slow down". I know its bs because I have Zone Alarm on.--75.24.66.226 (talk) 21:33, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the above post was made by rio(myself) . For the record. 75.24.66.226 (talk) 21:35, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The Canadian Encyclopedia Search Toolbar

Hello. How can I get The Canadian Encyclopedia search toolbar if possible on Internet Explorer 7? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 17:32, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Fastest speed data

What is the world record for the fastest speed data has traveled?

The speed of light... If you expected a different answer you will have to be more specific. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

They may be talking about the speed of data transfer, that is, number of bits per second, which really isn't speed at all but if i were to hazard a guess the "fastest" would be the transfer systems they use at the LHC (or at least the fastest actually deployed) at over 300Gb/s (see LHC Computing Grid) -Benbread (talk) 22:17, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

The OP undoubtedly did mean data transfer rate, but that's still ill-defined since data transfer is additive. If you have two lines transferring 1Mb/s each, together they transfer 2Mb/s. If you have many lines going from the US to other parts of the world, with varying rates, then together the transfer rate is probably measured in TB/s. And you can, of course, sum all forms of data transfer all over the world, and probably go into the PB/s. If the OP is not interested in such quantities, he should be very specific about what he is interested in. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:29, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

With some very rough calculations, I figure that a semi-trailer carrying hard drives can easily make the PB/s over a distance of a few kilometres. That doesn't take loading time into account, but I'm pretty sure I underestimated capacity as well. (And you've got to put some data on the hard drives first, too.) Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:34, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I've given that answer before (and even right here on one of the Reference Desks) and it's still almost-certainly the right answer, especially when you consider that a modern 3-1/2" disk drive now stores a terabyte of data.

Atlant (talk) 13:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

IP over Avian Carriers has the potential for very fast transfer, but is susceptible to high losses. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Particularly if you select the Errol transport medium!

Atlant (talk) 16:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Forget birds. Snails are where it's at. Check out this paper from the Annals of Irreproducible Results APL (talk) 18:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Is the Blue-Ray HD Film Storage Format already obsolete?

... with the recent release of a 32gb SD card (which presumably can hold a full HD film file in one of the several native video file formats (ie .AVI or MPEG4)) .... am i right in thinking that (from a theoretical point of view) the device manufacturers/film distributors could easily leapfrog the entire Blue-Ray Player/Disc technology framework right now (effectively making Blue-Ray redundant) by producing players that could read such a file off an SD card????

(ps ..... i know the price of these larger cards has to come down and i know the content providers will probably force Blue-Ray only formatted films on everybody until they get their money back but i am really eager to know if there are any technical reasons why SD cards could not be used in such a way?)

Grazer1 (talk) 22:45, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

How will the movies be distributed? Suppose I want to go to the store and buy a movie. Will it be given to me in the form of a 32GB SD card containing the movie? These seem to cost 100's of dollars, and that's a sum I, for one, am not willing to pay for a movie. The point of optical discs is that they are dirt cheap per unit storage. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:54, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

hi meni - thanks for your reply but you have not really answered my question regarding SD card file format capabilities .... as mentioned in my ps ... i am fully aware large gb SD cards are currently v. expensive but so were 256kb SD cards when they came out and now they are worth pennies ... the blue ray optical disc with its four layers/lower wave length light etc was the ONLY option at the time for cheaply storing 30-50gb of content but this simply will not be the case in 12-18 months time ... solid state storage is the future and as for distribution ... 100mbps broadband is already readily available in some countries! Grazer1 (talk) 23:16, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a good question, but a couple of things need to be considered. Blu-Ray is great as a read-only format, due to the resilience of the media. One of the reasons they became popular though was that existing DVD manufacturing plants could be re-tooled to manufacture Blu-Ray discs relatively easily. As the film industry already had working relationships right the way through the distribution chain, I guess it made sense to use what was already in place instead of radically redeveloping your manufacturing and distribution process. Going on to your other points though, there's no doubt that solid-state media does offer huge potential benefits in the area of rewritable media, so it's possible that HD camcorders will emerge that will use these cards as a medium. As for distribution via broadband - this method is already being trialled for movie rentals and other 'on demand' products. The risk with buying a permanent copy of a movie as a download is what happens when your computer fails - will the DRM allow you to make a backup copy, will you be able to re-download the movie and will your movie still play if your online store closes? After the difficulties consumers have had with their music becoming unplayable when their online stores have closed, I think consumers would be more comfortable with physical media for the time being. Gazimoff ^Write_Lesen 23:31, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I need to correct Gazimoff for a sec. It was HD-DVD that was easy for DVD duplicators to convert to, not Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray is extremely comparitively expensive as it requires all new technology to manufacture. The scratch resistant coating and the thickness of the base layers all require a different manufacturing process and all contribute to completely new and more expensive duplication machines. If you've touched an HD-DVD, it looks and feels like a regular DVD as its made using the same fabrication process. If you've touched a BD disc, they are slightly thinner, smoother and are also bound to a more flexible base polymer. Blu-Ray duplication is tightly controlled by Sony. If memory serves, there are only four Blu-Ray duplicating companies in the United States. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 13:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

(after ec) As Meni pointed out, cost per unit will continue to be Blu-ray's selling point for the short term. As for the long term (beyond eight years or so), even Sony realizes that Blu-ray will not be enough for ever. 100 mbps or 12.5 MBps is not yet readily available in a significant portion of the market, either because of the prohibitive cost or simply because they are not available. A small telco that I know recently announced it upgraded its network to 400 MBPS. Grazer1, your vision is perfectly accurate. However, it will take some time for it to be widely feasibe. By the way, if we can ever get beyond the stupidity that some ISPs are showing, we could have BlockBuster, Apple iTunes, Netflix and so on providing HD movies over the Internet to the lucky ones of us. Kushal (talk) 23:42, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, the price of flash-based media and broadband transfer will decrease. But so will the price of optical discs, and at the same time the expectations of consumers will increase. By the time 32GB SD cards become affordable, consumers will expect 400GB movies, and there will likely be an affordable optical medium to provide it. It all boils down to which happens faster and what technology reaches its foundational limits sooner, and this requires greater soothsaying skills than any of us possesses.

The bottom line: No, blu-ray is not yet obsolete. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

An earlier application might be to record 1080i or 1080p broadcasts. It would be nice to put them on an SD card. And, unlike the incredibly expensive equipment one would need to record onto Blu-Ray, no special recorder is needed. Also, being able to reuse the SD card once you no longer need the original contents is nice. Finally, SD cards fit in my shirt pocket, while Blu-Ray disks don't. StuRat (talk) 05:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

hi all - many thanks for your contributions - was hoping to also get the definitive update on Mpeg4/AVI I/O usage but will keep fingers crossed - note - the cost of BlueRay discs as a component of the overall film cost is already pennies but to move to the next level (ie triple layer disc sides? / UV wavelength resolution micropit reading?) using optical discs to me would take a significant time to develop and will again be highly expensive to the user in terms of the need for a reader - the SD card apparently can go up to 128gb in capacity and at the rate of current development i'm pretty certain it will catch up with the more sluggish 1080i tv standard and HD film back-library content capabilities by the end of next year - i do not think i am alone in this view - the already seen proliferation of SD card readers in nearly all new devices (tv's/set-top boxes)to me shows that the SD card will soon be the de facto standard for re-writable digital content transfer between digital devices - going down the optical disc route made sense when there was no solid state alternative but as we speak this is clearly not the case for HD films of a size 30gb - presumably - the 64gb SD card is already in development and it will be out well before the 1080p display (and therefore content) limit is expanded again given current user uptake/content production inertia - even if 100mbps broadband takes time to roll out the volume use of 32gb SD cards is possible right now and, as StuRat has commented, would obviate the need for special readers or format wars! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grazer1 (talk • contribs) 15:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I also believe the film studios are very afraid of anything that's a downloadable file. No matter how hard the DRM is, it'll be cracked. By having content locked away on a physical disc that they can control, they don't have to fear cracked files (or at least not as much). I can envision a licensed, encrypted memory card that you drive down to Best Buy to "refill" with content at an ATM type machine. But even if they allowed downloadable content to flash memory, I would imagine studios would create a custom memory card that would not be able to fit into any standard SD device (similar to the Nintendo DS Cartridge). That special card would only be playable on a special movie player that would be connected to the net so studios could monitor for illegal content on your card. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 19:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

As I recall, current trends are that the price of flash media is dropping at about 1/2 every 12 months. In other words, in 12 months a 16gb will cost the price of a 8gb now. The price of a 8gb flash disk (the cheapest per gb) is currently about $37 here. This means that in 24 months, the price of a 32gb will be about $37. While this is retail, even if the wholesale price is say $15 this is still a hefty price when the price of producing a bluray disc is likely to be in cents (particularly by that time). Given that the studios are going to want a profit of say $20 at least, this implies a price tage of $20 versus $35, I know which one I bet the consumer is going to choose. All in all, I don't see it happening in the immediete future. And as 70.167 says, the idea this will eliminate the need for special readers completely ignores the fact the studios are not going to accept anything without DRM they have complete control over. A lot of it depends on how important HD ends up being to the consumer, and how quickly it's taken up (and how willing the consumer is to accept the DRM restrictions imposed). As to the ATM style device, I also don't see it having much success, consumers still like to keep their content when they pay for it. I'm not going to pay $20 for the privilage of downloading something to a card and then delete it a few days later. At best this will work in the rental market but thats IMHO not of sufficient interest to the studios for them to develop something specific like this. Nor are consumers likely to be willing to buy a special player (let's not forget this will need very fancy DRM for the studios) just for rentals and let's not forget DIVX failed. Although BluRay DRM is onerous, it doesn't require a permanent connection to the internet or a phone line for example I believe Nil Einne (talk) 03:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

  hi neil - you have some very good points - personally - with SD card slots appearing in many more standard devices i'm wondering (hoping!) that an increase in general usage (and size) of these 
  cards will drive the unit cost down at an even greater rate compared to the current depreciation gradient you are observing - of all the feedback so far - to me DRM rather than cost appears to be 
  the key factor limiting this format's uptake by the content providers - it's a real pity that the ease of (re)use of these mini-hard drive type devices is the very feature halting their general 
  use by the studios! - presumably - taking the whole thing even further - laptops may become obsolete eventually as we all start carrying around our own apps/files/OS on such cards and insert them 
  in the nearest (free?) viewer/I-O devices (on the back of aircraft seats or in cafes!)Grazer1 (talk) 11:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

June 16

Webcrawler

How can I copy websites to my PC (for backup reasons and offline reading)? I find it to be annoying to take several hours for nice websites. I know, webcrawlers can do this fast (or at least automatically) so do you know of a good software? It should support graphic downloads (pictures and videos like: jpg, bmp, gif, avi, wmv) but not allow JavaScript (for security reasons). Also the original website structure should be retained. For example, it should not copy all sites with an own folder but rather maintain the original website folder names. Example: The website http://example.com/page.htm embeds the file http://example.com/images/image.gif so I'd like to download the files /page.htm and /images/image.gif (not /image.gif and not /page.htm files/image.gif). Hopefully you understand what I mean. --Con^structor 01:18, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

You may want to try wget, which is a command-line program with a Windows version available. A direct link to the Windows download is [9]It has an option specifically for mirroring a website to your local disk, which is intended for sharing web site load, but is also functional for getting pages for offline reading. You may also want to get a GUI for wget so you don't have to use the command line. I like the GUI available at [10] . Freedomlinux (talk) 04:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks! By the way, here's another necessary file. --Con^structor 04:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I use it and it works very fine. You really helped me a lot! --Con^structor 05:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I am glad you found this tip useful. I was unaware that the TABCTL32.OCX file was required. I tend to use wget on Linux, and every Microsoft Windows computer that I have used it on had it pre-installed. Freedomlinux (talk) 03:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok! Somehow it seems to lose data, though (maybe it's just 404 Errors which don't download separately). On a big website (9 GB, 155K files) it seems to have lost 600 files with 1 KB each. If you also want to try: http://terror.snm-hgkz.ch/mirrors/thegia/sites/www.thegia.com/ --Con^structor 20:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows index.dat file

Hiya, I'm on WinXP, and I'm clearly not the first person to have "issues" with Microsoft's index.dat file. Yes, there are several of them; I'm mostly fed up with the browser history one, down in <User>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\.

Usually after our monthly software upgrade, I take the opportunity to remove that file along with our regular cleanup/defrag. Killing explorer.exe, deleting index.dat, and restarting explorer has worked fine up to now. This month, though, apparently something is different -- something is still using the file, and it's not iexplore.

Anyone out there have any additional suggestions? I've read our article, and its talk page, and several of its outlinks, and the consensus seems to be "this can't happen." Who knows better?

Thanks! --Danh, 70.59.115.72 (talk) 03:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Try safe mode and see if that disables what is using it. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 04:06, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Skype Question

I recently got stationed in Seoul, Korea. I want to cancel my U.S. cell phone with Sprint but keep the number in order to forward the number to a Korean cell phone number using Skype. That's pretty much it. From what I read on Skype's website, I can pay $10 for Unlimited World subscription and forward all calls to my Korean cell phone for free. Anyone dialing my old cell phone number in the US will cause my Korean cell phone to ring. Can I do this? Thanks --Antsoup (talk) 08:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

You're likely to get a more informed answer by asking on the skype forums. — Lee Carré (talk) 14:56, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

how to find a QTP software downlaod link?

hi any one kwow how to find a QTP trial version download link form a site —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beki182 (talk • contribs) 09:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

VB or Java in ASP?

Hi, could anyone please tell me which ASP Scripting Language should i go with? VB or JScript? i.e. which one is more Happening nowadays? Thank you 89.148.23.12 (talk) 09:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

VBScript is simplified VB, which is very easy to learn. But it gets very annoying to do complex tasks in when compared to JScript or PHP. JScript is a little but more complex and harder to learn, but can do more with less code. PHP is a hybrid of JScript and C++ in terms of syntax and structure. It can do far more than both JScript and VBScript, and is easily extendable with libraries, is free and open source, but has its peculiarities of its own. Spending many years playing with all three, I'd pick PHP. 64.91.153.136 (talk) 13:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

For the record, JScript (Microsoft's dialect of JavaScript) has little to nothing to do with Java, whose Microsoft "versions" are J# and C#. --Tardis (talk) 15:08, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

That is true. To expand, JavaScript has little to nothing to do with Java. It was originally named ECMAScript, but was renamed JavaScript to cash in on the "Java" phenomenon. Microsoft "embraced and extended" both languages individually, making JavaScript into JScript and Java into J#. Both of the JavaScript and Java languages have more to do with their respective Microsoft spin-off versions than with each other. JIP | Talk 18:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

D'oh. I meant to say that JavaScript wasn't any closer, and originally I did, but then I revised it out of my comment before really posting it. Thanks. --Tardis (talk) 21:16, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Problems finding the right button on the keyboard !

Hey

I just don't find the ~ key on my keyboard. It's meant to open a so-called command/message-line in a program, but I have tried and tried to find it, but I just can't. I have even tried all the buttons on my keyboard, all of them just to try and find it.

Which one is this button? And what shall I do to find it? I only see one button with this ~ mark - The button that also have the ^ and ¨ marks on it. But it doesn't work...

And maybe it's important to say that I have a laptop. Before on my stationary computer I have not had this problem, and i have heard that the buttons can sometimes be slightly different on laptops, a bit confusing. Often I have to press the NUM-button to be able to use the buttons correctly. Not really a problem usually, but as you can see, it is now...

Hope someone knows how to figure this out. Probably quite simple I reckon. Would be grateful :)

Krikkert7 (talk) 14:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Not all keyboards have the tilde key as an obvious feature. On a standard PC or Macintosh keyboard wth the United States key arrangement, it's near the upper left and paired with accent grave. On a Sun Microsystems U.S. keyboard, it's at the upper right of the main keyboard array but still paired with accent grave. There's always some way to type it, though it may be cumbersome on your particular international keyboard layout. At the worst, for a PC, see Alt code; for a Mac, see Option key; for some other systems, see Compose key.

Atlant (talk) 16:16, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

On my keyboard I can write ~ by pressing alt-gr and that ^¨~ key, next to enter. But I have to tap ^¨~ twice if I want to have a lonely tilde, or otherways it goes on the top of the next character. --212.149.217.163 (talk) 16:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Your keyboard is implementing tilde as a dead key. This is presumably because you've selected to operate the keyboard in a language where tilde is an important accent mark for many vowels (rather than just a way to tell vi to flip the case of the character under the cursor). Our article about Internationalization and localization scratches the surface of this whole problem; Input method editor goes a bit farther about the specific problem at hand with Keyboard layout providing some great specifics.

Atlant (talk) 15:47, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I have managed to get the ~ (The tilde-key) by combining ALTgr and the ^¨~ key and then Space... but this is only in Microsoft WORD that it works, and here I actually write the tilde key... But In the actual game where i need it only to open the console, nothing happens tho, and I can't open the chat-line/command-line/console by pressing this combination... Krikkert7 (talk) 18:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The game may be scanning the keypresses instead of looking at the keyboard buffer. So, the programmers may not be looking for that specific sequence of key presses. They hard-programmed the check if you are holding down shift and pressing the ` key. If you have a ` key, try holding down shift and pressing it. -- kainaw™ 19:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

For that matter, the software may not understand keyboard layouts -- in that case, hold down "shift" and press the key to the left of the "1" key. --Carnildo (talk) 21:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, what game is it? Leeboyge (talk) 07:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

groups on my MYSPACE profile not listed

Okay, first off I did send a message to the CUSTOMER SERVICE over at myspace but I guess they dont reply ASAP. I was just asking the millions and millions of people here on WIKIPEDIA if they assist me on this issue here. Okay, on my myspace profile page I dont see all of my groups that I'm in is that a bug or something. And yes, I did check on the box "DISPLAY groups on profile". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rio de oro (talk • contribs) 16:46, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

ZONE ALARM question

I installed Zone Alarm on 14 June 2008 to block out intrussions from hackers and all that bs. Is it normal for it to block OVER 461 intrusion attempts in less than 96 hours or what. --Rio de oro (talk) 16:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm fairly sure those 461 intrusion attempts aren't serious. It's really just a block log, and doesn't take into account unique IPs, so it could be just 461 pings from one IP that it blocked for all you know. I wouldn't be alarmed unless it tells you it's a high risk one. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Hackers and infected PCs scan entire subnetworks for computers that are accepting connections. An example would be a PC trying to connect to the SMTP port of every computer on a network to send anonymous spam. Another problem is PCs trying to send Messenger spam. You can change your IP address if the popups are annoying. Let me know if you want instructions on how to do that. A better solution, though, would be just to disable the notifications and to check your log every once in a while. If you're running Zone Alarm, then I doubt anyone would be able to hack into your computer, unless a virus messes with your security settings. Most hackers go after servers, not home PCs.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 17:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is "normal"... the internet is infested with malware, botnets, all that stuf... SF007 (talk) 21:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

BOOT problem on my pc

I got a question. On my pc the boot is screwd up or something since GEEK SQUAD did a number on trying to fix my pc last year. The only way my pc boots "correctly" is with the WINDOWS OS CD on my pc to "start it up". I got a message saying to PRESS F1 F2 bs. Anyone know a way to fix it or give me step by step stuff to fix it , I dont want to screw up my pc more or anything. Rio de oro (talk) 16:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

What's the exact error message you see? One solution might be to boot from the Windows CD and start the Recovery Console, then type fixboot and fixmbr. That's assuming you're running XP, though.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 17:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Resource usage in C/UNIX/Solaris

Is there a way to find the total memory and processor usage with C in a UNIX based system? All I know is by process or by user. I need something like the CPU usage percentage and memory usage like you see in the task manager tabs. Thanks. Searching for unix c top doesn't really give me the results I want, unfortunately =P Worst case, parse the output with Python or Perl, but that seems to me like a roundabout way. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:12, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

There really isn't any standard unix API for that sort of information. Parsing top output will probably be the most portable and easiest. You could also check out Libgtop, but I dunno if it runs on Solaris. --Sean 19:12, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Our article on the Unix tool is called top (Unix). EdJohnston (talk) 19:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll have a look at Libgtop, but I would probably go with your original suggestion for portability. Good thing I picked up Python recently. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 20:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure Python has a module to get that information, à la Perl's Sys::MemInfo and friends. --Sean 23:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Viewing Flash video in Linux

I have a Flash video file (.flv). How can I view it in Linux? I tried Xine, but while the audio is all OK, the video starts out jumping all the time, and then degenerates entirely. Is there a stand-alone player or do I have to use a Flash plugin for Firefox? JIP | Talk 18:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

FLV files contain video, and the Flash plugin isn't needed. (Or at least I think so.) If I remember correctly, mplayer supports FLV. Here's a list of players that support FLV. --grawity 18:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, MPlayer works fine. JIP | Talk 19:05, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Introduction to Computers

Any component, inside or external, that adds new hardware capabilities to the basic design of a computer. For example, what is a hard drives, printers, mouse? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.22.192 (talk) 18:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I did not understand your question. What are you actually asking? JIP | Talk 18:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

A Hard drive is a mass storage medium that holds your files, operating system and other vital information to the working of your PC. a Printer is a product that takes text/images and prints them onto paper/other specific media. A Computer Mouse is a device for controlling a cursor on screen and allowing you to navigate easily and quickly across the file/menu structure of your PC - often referred to as a GUI (Graphic User Interface). For an introduction into how computers work you'd do worse than looking on www.howstuffworks.com and specifically their section on computers. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ . They are generally easy to understand the basic operation, but nigh on impossible to appreciate the geniuses that it took for them to be able to exist in the first place. ny156uk (talk) 18:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

What was the cause of the 3GHz CPU ceiling?

I remember the Pentium 4 reached 4GHz many years ago. And only now are the AMD/Intel multi core processors back up to 3GHz. Was specifically happened that caused the industry to plateau at around 3GHz? Why don't we have 4, 6, or 10 GHz processors today? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 19:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Each core runs at 3 GHz, despite only being a 1/4 the size. A 3 GHz quad core is about the same as a 12 GHz single core. Moore's Law is still going; it's just doesn't look like it. Paragon12321 (talk) 19:43, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I was under the impression that multiprocessing is not linearly additive. Two 3 GHz cores ≠ One 6GHz CPU. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 19:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It depends on workload. But, yeah, 2 cores at 3 Ghz won't automatically solve a single problem as fast as a single one at 6 Ghz. Heat is one big factor here- more clock speed generally means more heat. Clock speed can be compared to displacement in a car engine. In the old days, a fast car meant a big engine. Now, they focus on efficiency and less on "brute force" methods of attaining better performance. Friday (talk) 19:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

(after 2 ec) The reason in the past is because of heat, mainly, and diminishing returns for cranking up the clock. We don't have 4, 6, or 10 GHz processors today because clock speed is not a good measurement of performance at all. In some sense, for some applications, a 3 GHz quad core can execute as fast as a 12 GHz single core in the old style "frequency is everything!!!1", but I don't know what they're planning on doing after 3 GHz quad cores, since it's prettttttty darn hard to utilize 4 cores as it is. The PS3 has 7 cores and it's already a pain in the butt to program for, from what I hear. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 19:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

[ec] Ok, let's try to put things in order.

1. In terms of performance, for a non-parallelizable (serial) computation, 2-core 3GHz = 1-core 3GHz. For a completely parallelizable computation, 2-core 3GHz ≈ 1-core 6GHz. Actual usage will be a mix of parallelizable and serial computations, thus a 2-core 3GHz will have an effectiveness somewhere between 3GHz and 6GHz - where exactly depends on the usage pattern.
2. CPU manufacturers are probably having a difficulty obtaining higher stable frequencies, and found it easier to increase performance by adding cores. Those who rely on serial computations suffer.
3. GHz is not in itself a good measure for the performance of a CPU. Different CPUs have different architectures which allow them to perform different instructions in each clock cycle. I can say from my own experience that my Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz significantly outperformed my Pentium D 2.8 GHz (both dual-core). Again it boils down to adding instructions and improving efficiency turning out to be a better route than simply increasing the frequency. I believe the main reason for this is the large amount of heat generated by a circuit running at a high frequency.

-- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:06, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

A few more words. To some extent, typical computations tend to fall into the two extremes I mentioned. We have a fair share of applications that can run roughly 100 times as fast if you have a 100-core system. Since parallelism seems to be the dominant trend in hardware, we will likely see more such applications in the future. Thus I see no problem in manufacturers coming up with CPUs having more and more cores. However, I do wish they never forget that some computations just can't be parallelized, and that some users rely mostly on those. To them, 3GHz doesn't quite cut it, and it doesn't matter if they have a gazillion cores. I hope the trend will be one of the following:

1. CPUs improving steadily in both serial performance (which again, cannot always be quantified in terms of mere frequency) and number of cores.
2. Multi-core CPUs having different frequency per core (or group of cores). This way we will have both a high-frequency core for the serial computations, and a multitude of little-demanding cores for parallel ones.
3. Separate offers of low-frequency, many-core CPUs for those who need parallelism, and high-frequency, dual-core (you can always find a use for that extra core) CPUs for those needing serialism.

-- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like you need a v. small proc to run an OS (ie schedule programs etc) and a massive one to the the computations - like a fiddler crab eg 87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and another personal note - I was wondering about the exact same question a few months ago. When I purchased the E4500 I had no intention for it to surpass the D820. Only after the fact have I realized that clock frequency can only be used to compare performance between processors of the same family. Other than that, it's better viewed as a technical specification of the operation of the processor. What you really should be interested in is benchmarks measuring the performance of CPUs under typical usage scenarios. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

There is a maximum switching speed for transistors of a given size running at a given voltage (ie the 95nm / 65nm see 65_nanometer figure you see quoted) - this relates mostly to the capacitance - which is related to the area of the junctions in the transistors.. The switching speed can be considered to be roughly proportional to voltage. So increasing the voltage increases the speed.. But the resistive load is V²/R ie the resistive heat loss is related to Voltage squared.. This means that as the voltage is 'cranked up' the heat produced just gets much worse and worse - so there is a design that finds a compromise between these two factors. Also try to make the thing go any faster than 'what you get' and it becomes increasingly difficult to remove the heat. ie as mentioned above heat produced is the primary limiting factor.

Also note that for energy efficiency it's better to operate at a lower voltage ie a processor operating at 1V runs half as fast as the same at 2V but uses 1/4 of the power - this is one possible reason why the clock frequency game has become less important. Nevertheless it is possible to go higher eg POWER 6 processors can run at 4-5GHz - but need extra cooling. There's no fundamental limit at 3GHz.

Other factors include increased induction at higher frequencies - which add to the heat losses.

It's also possible to go faster by building smaller but leaving more space between transistors eg take a chip made at 95nm and build it at 65nm - but keep the die size the same - the transistors can be more spread out (since they are smaller at 65nm) and so heat is more easily dissapated - so it's easier to 'overclock'.

Apologies to those who where annoyed by any simplicfications they saw abvoe. Don't give up hope for 100GHz single CPUS.. They may still happen.87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Music Programs

It seems Reason is like a more inclusive program, let's say, compared to a Digital audio workstation like Pro Tools. Are there any other programs like Reason, and if so, could you provide a list? My other question is if there are "higher-level" programs", than Reason, as it seems like Reason can do everything Pro Tools can do, and I'm wondering if there are any programs that are "higher-in-level" than Reason, and if so, could you provide a list. Thank you!

Pro Tools only mixes and records, but Reason mixes, records, reverberates, etc. etc.. That's what I mean by inclusitivity.

Yes, I'm after the software which does the most things. Hmmm, what's the difference between Pro Tools and Reason? And what exactly is a rack?68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Reason was originally a sequencer, which meant it had loops built in, and you would drag them into a timeline and make songs. Pro Tools is for recording a studio environment, with mixing desks and lots of inputs and outputs. It can mix and add effects too.

A rack is traditionally equipment used to process sound, which can be EQ, compressors and effects units. However, there are now sfotware rack units which do the same signal procesing, but within your OS. 81.152.82.72 (talk) 21:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Is there a program that does both what Reason does and what Pro Tools does? Are there any other programs that do more?68.148.164.166 (talk) 21:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

This is totally a personal opinion, but Ableton Live does ALOT of stuff for your money. Also Logic ( apple platform only im afraid ) is packed with options too. 81.152.82.72 (talk) 10:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Choosing a language

Which (programming) language would be ideal for a first-time programmer, or is it just a matter of opinion? Xenon54 21:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a matter of opinion, but there are certainly languages you shouldn't start with -- APL, COBOL, and Malbolge come to mind. Common suggestions for a good first programming language are Java and Python. --Carnildo (talk) 22:06, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't use Malbolge; it doesn't support spawn.

Atlant (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Carnildo that it's a matter of opinion, with the shallower opinions advocating a particular language, and the deeper opinions advocating whether you should start by gaining a deep understanding of nuts and bolts and moving up to trusses and spans and eventually bridges, or whether it's OK to start out with only an abstract ideas of how bridges work and letting the language handle the details below. Both approaches have merit. If you're unsure that you really want to be a career programmer, I'd start at the abstract bridge level with a language like Java or Perl so that you can have the instant gratification of writing useful programs almost right away. If you're dead sure you want to be a programmer -- a really good one -- I'd start with the nuts and bolts in assembler language or C (programming language) and then move up the abstraction hierarchy so that you know what the hell's going on under the covers when you do something very high-level like print a list of people's names sorted by age with:

print for sort { $students{$a} <=> $students{$b} } keys %students

, which is actually doing many thousands of computer operations. Good luck! --Sean 23:40, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Sean and Carnildo both have excellent ideas. :) If I can add a bit, though: when choosing a first language (and, oddly enough, this is an issue that comes up a lot for me) the debate tends to be between languages good for learning in and languages good for programming in. In the former category you have languages like Alice and scripting languages such as Game Maker Language, which may have limited practical application, but provide a comfortable "in" to programming. In the second category, it really depends on what you want to code. If your aim is to be a professional programmer, Sean makes an excellent point, but keep in mind that Assembly and C are inherently scary (although the fundamentals they teach are wonderful if you want to be a really good programmer) - so you might also want to give higher level languages, such as Java and C# a shot. I'd lean towards Java and C# over Perl, simply because it is easier for a new programmer to learn object-oriented programming and then pick up procedural/functional/whatever coding, than to learn procedural coding and then move to OO. (Noting that OO is harder than procedural, but many people find it even harder to unlearn the other paradigms while they work to pick up OO). For web development, Perl, Ruby and PHP are all great choices, and JavaScript certainly won't go amiss. All are relatively easy to get into, have good online sources, and have immediate practical application. Other than that, I'd stay a tad clear of Visual Basic at the moment- the move from VB6 to VB.NET is tricky, and I think it is probably better to pick up C# in .NET and then move to VB.NET if needed than to try and do things the other way around. - Bilby (talk) 01:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows Live Messenger: Error 2771

Hello. I recently installed Windows XP Service Pack 3. When I login to Messenger 8.5 using Windows Live Sign-In Assistant, I get error 2771. I unsuccessfully tried reinstalling Messenger. How can I fix this? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 22:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

http://www.vistax64.com/live-messenger/129663-installer-error-2771-a.html

Looks like a common problem. Most of these people say reinstalls have worked (and that 2771 means a component is missing). Maybe you need to do a clean wipe (uninstall then install)? 24.68.246.113 (talk) 23:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Clean wipe? You don't mean a hard disk format, do you? 67.173.249.88 (talk) 23:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC) PS: I am not the OP. and I now see that you meant uninstall and reinstall. 67.173.249.88 (talk) 23:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

LOL, yeah maybe a hard disk format would help... Nah, try uninstalling, then going into the registry editor and taking out any reference to it, then reinstalling. 24.68.246.113 (talk) 00:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

WARNING: Editing the Registry should be done with utmost care. Please be very careful! Kushal (talk) 02:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling without luck. I went to Add/Remove Programs to find that there was no uninstall button for Messenger. I tried simply to reinstall it but the error is still there. --Mayfare (talk) 14:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You could try installing a third party app that emulates Messenger. Exxolon (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Firefox

In Windows XP, how do you make Firefox add-ons work on all user's accounts? Thanks, *Max* (talk) 22:45, 16 June 2008 (UTC).

Just a guess, but try installing Firefox and all the add-ons as Admin. 71.164.115.161 (talk) 01:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Using the same user profile for all the users should almost certainly do the job. However, you might not want to do it for privacy reasons. If you are willing to share your user profile with all users of the computer, please let us know so that we can walk you through the process. Kushal (talk) 02:39, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I want to let other users use add-ons that I downloaded without having to re-download them. *Max* (talk) 22:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC).

Making a Sharepoint document repository

I'm setting up some sharepoint workspaces for a small company (only 4 employees). It's WSS v3.0 (the newest one).

We'd like to host our documents on sharepoint because of things like version control and check in/out etc.

I've heard that taking a straight backup of the sharepoint files doesn't allow you to actually restore the whole site (all of the functionality and embedded stuff) very easily, and that if you want to do a good backup, you've gotta grab a Norton backup suite (or similar) for business, in the $500 range. Too expensive for us guys.

Is there an easy way to set up sharepoint to either use a document library or a list that saves the documents in a specific folder that can be easily backed up, but maintains all of the sharepoint functionality around those documents? (run-on sentence...) 24.68.246.113 (talk) 23:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

June 17

Installation disks

I'm switching to Comcast cable internet service and I bought some new gear to work with it. In the Comcast startup kit, as well as with my new Linksys router, I recieved CDs I'm instructed to run. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think these disks will run on my computer which has ubuntu. Do you think either of these disks has anything I'd really need (or want)? ike9898 (talk) 01:36, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You may not need either. I put the Ubuntu live CD in and it boots right up into Ubuntu with full internet access. You might have to configure your router to work with your cable modem, but this can be achieved by logging into your router after you connect the wires and turn everything on. Try http://192.168.1.1/ ... all the information you need for that will be in the linksys quick start guide most likely. Good luck. 71.164.115.161 (talk) 02:32, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

71 is correct. You will not miss any of the junkware. Please do yourself a favor and just store away those CDs in a safe place, though. You might need it when you cancel your cable Internet service. Kushal (talk) 02:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The reason I'm still a little wary is that the router has a big sticker over the ports that says 'run the disk before plugging anything in' and the inserts in the package say the same thing. I don't know if this is relevant, but I intend to replace the router's firmware with DD-WRT. ike9898 (talk) 14:24, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Some broadband providers rig their routers so until you do the magic installation procedure, the router won't go anywhere useful except for the provider's "Hello! Welcome to our crappy excuse for broadband!" page. Verizon DSL is currently definitely like that, although Comcast cable broadband wasn't like this when we installed it several years ago. If this is the case, a phone call to your broadband provider's tech support (probably second-level or better tech support) should be able to get this squared-away for you. Your router can probably be "talked to" at 192.168.1.1 or some similar address.

Atlant (talk) 15:32, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The modem does not require you run any software. It will trap you at a "welcome page" unless you do, but you can call the tech support line, tell them you have an unsupported OS, and they should (are supposed to) register it quickly and without any issue. The router also doesn't require you run the software either; they put that there for less-than-knowledgable people who tend to go headlong into things and screw them up. Just connect to 192.168.1.1 with a browser, set it up for DHCP or Automatic/Dynamic IP, and you're good. And, may I recommend Tomato Firmware as an alternative to DD-WRT; I find it to perform better, it's more stable, and the interface is nicer (plus it has a bandwidth monitor built-in, which is very useful). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

RSS Feed

I'm beta testing my RSS reader software, and I need an RSS feed that updates very frequently--once every few minutes or so--to see if it is working properly.

Thanks, 71.164.115.161 (talk) 01:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

With FeedDemon you can modify the update options through Tools->Synchronization Options->Check feed for new content every X minutes. I would be willing to guess most readers have similar options.--droptone (talk) 12:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You could grab the feed of a Summize search of a very common term - something like this. That should update whenever someone makes a post on Twitter containing "the". — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:36, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Second Life has stopped loving my MacBook

When I first started using Second Life, it would immediately crash on login. But I found a fix via the Internet that involved changing a couple of settings through the preferences menu, and after I succeeded in doing that, it didn't give me any more trouble than it gives everyone. Today, I tried to log on, which required uploading the new version of the program. "Yay," I said, "I'm curious to see what Windlight looks like." But I didn't, really, because after I log in, I have perhaps five seconds before I crash. But this time, when I try to search the Internet to see if I need to do that same fix again, or if something else is the problem, I can't find anything, because the first ten pages of search results are related to crashes of MacBook Pro's new graphic interface, which I don't have. Am I doomed to never again enjoy a live concert in a virtual pub? Can someone direct me to a fix that might work, ideally, one that assumes I am an idiot? -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 02:33, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

My own graphics thing is Intel GMA X3100, if that helps. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 02:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Not Second Life specifically, but have you made sure your drivers are the latest available and Mac OS X has all the latest updates? Nil Einne (talk) 02:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

That's a little embarrassing. I assumed I was up-to-date because I have it set to automatically update every week, but when I ran the updater, I found assorted un-updated things. And now, I'm in a virtual pub, listening to a depressingly mediocre singer. Thanks for not assuming that I'd already tried all the obvious things! -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 03:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard troubles

I've been trying to troubleshoot this forever, but I can't seem to find anyone with the exact same problem as me. It's a bit difficult to explain. I bought this laptop about a year ago, and it still works perfectly fine. When I first bought it I noticed that sometimes letters wouldn't register, and I assumed that the keys weren't quite as lite as I was used to, so I took a little more care with my typing and that solved the problem. Gradually it became obvious that it wasn't anything to do with the keys themselves, as the problem got worse and worse, and it seemed to be that keys were getting dropped from the buffer at a pretty unreasonable rate. I can type at about 50-60 wpm with no problems, but as soon as I speed up to my normal typing speed (about 80-90) letters stop appearing, and I have to keep correcting.

I'm running Vista (on a very capable computer), and I've got your standard array of processes running in the background; messenger, skype, uTorrent, gmail notifier, avast, etc. I think it might be a memory problem, I'm not really sure. Has anyone ever come across a problem like this? 210.254.117.186 (talk) 02:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure you don't have some sort of spyware or other malware (in particular some sort of keylogger)? Is Windows Defender or someother spyware detector running? Also are you running on the battery or is the laptop plugged in (or does it make a difference). BTW do you have SP1 and all the latest updates (including hardware drivers)? BTW, have you checked to see if there is a keyboard buffer option in the bios? And have you tried disabling all background processes you can to see if it solves the problem? Nil Einne (talk) 03:22, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I've always been pretty careful (or lucky) with virii and spyware, but I am running defender and avast! anyways. The laptop is usually plugged in, and I've never noticed any difference. I wasn't aware that there was an SP1 for Vista, but I do have Windows Update running automatically, so I should have all the latest fixes (and I just checked, the last update was yesterday). It's possible that some hardware driver could be out of date, but there is no news about it on the manufacturer website, and I can't think of a piece of hardware that would be conflicting with the keyboard. I just tried running Vista in safe mode, with nothing running, and there is still problem with the keyboard buffer, or typing at least. There is no option in the BIOS concerning keyboard buffers, and in fact it's a surprisingly bare-bones BIOS. I notice now that when I hold down a key and make it type the same letter in repetition, I can see it lag every 10 letters or so, as if there were memory hiccups. It's odd though because the mouse cursor never skips, and neither do any games or other applications, just the cursor. 210.254.117.186 (talk) 05:00, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd boot off a Linux CD and type fast in a Linux text editor. If that doesn't drop characters then the problem is Windows-specific and if it doesn't then it isn't. Even if you're not interested in using Linux in the medium term it's a useful diagnostic tool in the short term. Morenoodles (talk) 07:22, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd say the problem is that the process reading the keystrokes has too low of a percentage of system resources to keep up with you. As already suggested, you could reduce the number of other processes running so, hopefully, your process will get more resources. Also, Vista is a notorious resource hog, I bet you'd do a lot better under Windows XP. StuRat (talk) 14:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I was planning on putting the new Ubuntu on this machine soon anyways so I'll give the gparted boot disk or something a try tomorrow. Still, I even have problems typing in my password properly at the Windows login screen so it can't be anything to do with the processes I'm running, and this is a new computer, and Vista runs perfectly smooth on it, so I don't think it has anything to do with Vista taking too much resources, though I guess it's likely it is Windows-specific. I'm not going to switch back to Windows XP though, it's not really practical for me to do so (especially after I've just payed for a new computer). 210.254.117.186 (talk) 18:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think system resources (or a lack thereof) should be a problem as far as input like keyboard is concerned. Any decent operating system normally gives the process real-time priority. I would suspect something with the hardware. However, go ahead with a Live version of Linux or a Wubi Install if you want to. Kushal (talk) 21:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Know thy processes in windows

In the Windows Task-Manager I see a list of processes like: svchost.exe explorer.exe, ... How can I know what these are? (besides googling them). 80.58.205.37 (talk) 09:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

You could try killing them off one by one and seeing what no longer works. Expect strange behavior, and save any work beforehand. Morenoodles (talk) 09:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft offers for free a more advanced tool than Task Manager: Process Explorer. You can know more about what a certain process is doing using it. It's nifty, but you won't go very far unless you want to deal with technical info. If that's not the case, Googling is the way to go. — Kieff | Talk 09:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

ePSXe again

Now that I know how to play games on ePSXe, I need to know how to save my progress. Because everytime I save, then quit, then come back in again, my file is gone. Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 09:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

In the top menu, click Run, then you should see "Save State (F1)" and "Load State (F3)". Each "state" is like a save slot. By default, state 1 is selected. When you press F1 it will save over the state that is selected. When you press F3 it will load the state that is selected. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

But now I have another problem: even though ePSXe worked perfectly before, everytime I try to load a game, I get a meesage that says something like "ePSxe is not completely configured; fix it by going to config --> video." I do exactly that, but the video plugin list is empty! How can I fix that? Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 11:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like you have a problem with the path ePSXe is looking for its files in. What platform are you on?--Fangz (talk) 01:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Writing Tests in Open Office, and Filling With Dots

Hello,

I'm trying to write a test with open office writer, and I have a quick question. Is there any way to get open office to fill the remainder of a line with dots? I need a space for the students to write on. I.E. Define refraction: .........[Until the end of the line].

Thank you for any help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.226.54.26 (talk) 10:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

This is normally accomplished with underlines. Turn on underline (ctrl-U). Press the tab key until you get to the end of the line. Do this for each line that needs a "blank" to fill in. Because you are using tabs, you can stop just before the end of the line and each tabbed blank will end at the same distance from the side of the page. Once you do that, you can change the underlines to dots or dashes. Highlight the underlines (you can use your mouse - I hold shift and move the cursor over the whole underline). Right-click on the underlined section and go to "character". Select Font Effects and set the type of Underlining that you want. -- kainaw™ 11:26, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

In OO.o 2.0 Writer - double click on the ruler bar to open the paragraph format box (or select Format/Paragraph). On the Tabs tab, set a right tab at the right margin, or wherever you'd like the line to extend to. In the lower half of that window, select the Fill character (default is None, the second radio button give you dots). --LarryMac | Talk 13:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Displaying ♥ and other uncommon characters in iTunes

My iTunes is unable to display the ♥ symbol, and certain other uncommon characters, when I put them into the various fields (Track name, album, artist, etc.). Instead I see the rectangular box character that replaces

I have Windows XP SP3, and these characters did not display with SP2 either. Is there a file I could download that would allow such characters to be seen in iTunes? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC

If you see a rectangle, that usually means that unicode is supported, but the font that the program is using doesn't have an entry for that character position. If there is a way to change the font used in iTunes, or an option to change the language that all of the menus are displayed in, then you can probably remedy the problem, but if you can't then you may be out of luck. That is unless you're willing to reprogram parts of it. 210.254.117.186 (talk) 18:20, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

explain properties and methods of generic unordered list ?

explain properties and methods of generic unordered list ? generic unordered list means? is it binary tree ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.110.211.149 (talk) 12:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

A list is inherently ordered. The closest thing to an "unordered list" is usually called a bag or just a set. --Sean 16:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

linux os

Hi,

I have SUSE 10.0 and windows xp installed on my laptop. I dual boot using the GRUB boot loader. The problem is I am not able to access(or for that matter see) the windows partition through linux when I have 'hibernated' from XP...but when I boot into suse after shutting down (or restarting) XP, I am able to access the windows partition completely. Also SUSE does not allow me to write into the windows partition. Please help. I am a complete newbie in Linux so please explain the steps in detail...Thanking u... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushbehera25 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Recent versions of SUSE use the ReiserFS file system instead of ext3. Because writing to an NTFS drive from a ReiserFS one can potentially damage it, NTFS drives are mounted as read-only in SUSE Linux. You can change this by editing your /etc/fstab file. Find the line with the XP partition and change ro to rw and reboot your machine. There are applications that can do this for you, too. Just search in YAST for NTFS and they should come up.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 19:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

As for not seeing the drive, I'm not sure. Check to see if it's in FSTAB, /dev/ and /mnt/. It should be named hda1 or something like that. It might work if you mount the Windows drive from the command line:

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/xp

But you might also have to use mkdir to make the XP folder in /mnt/.--Hello. I'm new here, but I'm sure I can help out. (talk) 20:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Adding a page to the site

Question moved to Help Desk Astronaut (talk) 21:28, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

The answer was at Wikipedia:Requested articles. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Strange problems with some links.

A friend of mine has recently had this strange problem with some links here in Wikipedia and in other websites, especially forums: whenever he clicks on a link that supposedly should go to a, for example, science article, the link immediately takes him to a porn website. Now, I'm pretty sure that the link actually doesn't go to a porn website, because it takes me to a science article whenever I click on it. I'm wondering why it always takes us to different websites, maybe he got hacked or something else, anyone know what could be happening? If you need an example, this is one of the links that we're having problems with; in my case, it always goes to a blog, but as I said before, my friend is saying that he's taking him to a porn website. Oh, and for the record, I don't really think he's joking. --Nkcs (talk) 17:19, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like he's got some kind of malware. He should disconnect from the internet, you should download copies of AdAware, Spybot, and the virus checker of your choice (perhaps Avast) and give them to him on a CD so that he can clean up his pwned machine. --LarryMac | Talk 18:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Larry. Unfortunately for us, we don't live near each other at the moment, he's actually living in another country, so until we meet again, I can't give him a CD with an anti-spyware program and a virus checker. Any other ideas? --Nkcs (talk) 18:47, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, his computer seems to have survived being connected to the internet so far. So he should try downloading the software himself. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 18:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

He can try to download all that himself, assuming he can get to the appropriate sites. I'd still disconnect from the 'net once they're downloaded and installed (and updated) to prevent ongoing problems. If he can't get to the download sites while in Wondows, another approach would be to boot from an Ubuntu live CD (assuming he can get his hands on one) which would most likely provide a working browser for him. --LarryMac | Talk 18:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Memory Timings

Hello Wikipedia

My computer Bios has a menu for memory timings.

1) I was wanting to know the specifics on how each memory timing works ?

2) How to correctly calculate each timing for any DDR2 Clock when setting timings to manual.

3) How to correctly calculate each timing when overclocking the memory ?

4) Explain how each timing can have a performance impact if not set correctly ?

5) Then also any other important tips & tweaks you may know of when setting these timings ?

Cas Latency Time Precharge Delay (tRAS) Dram Ras# Precharghe Dram Ras# to Cas# Delay Bank to Bank cmd (TRRD) TRC TRTP Write Recovery (Twr) Write Read Command (Twtr) (Influnces Stability) TRFC0 TRFC1 TRFC2 TRFC3 Trdrd Trwtto Twrrd Twrwr CS/ODT Pin Fine DElay Bank Swizzle Mode Auto Tweak Performance Optimal Performance Mode

Thanks Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.12.147.201 (talk) 18:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Nobody knows. Seriously, I think only the engineers working in RAM manufacturers have this level of technical knowledge, but CAS latency should give you a start. You can use software like CPU-Z to find the default values for your module; if you go manual, you should set them close to these. Basically, any of the parameters will reduce performance if set too high, and reduce stability if set too low. My suggestion would be to leave timings altogether and simply increase the frequency as much as you can. If you do choose to change them, you should stick to the "major" ones - CAS Latency, RAS to CAS, RAS precharge and tRAS - and set them in the ratio 1-1-1-3. The only way to determine the effect on performance and stability is to run benchmarks and stress tests. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 18:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

What determines processor efficiency?

In a previous question, I asked what the cause of the 3GHz plateau that CPU manufacturers seem to be experiencing. The responses were very helpful in that clock frequency isn't a good method of measuring performance. Today's chips, are faster at executing instructions, even though they have a slower GHz rating? That seems a little counter intuitive. So what makes a chip more efficient (besides adding cores) if speed is not a factor? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 19:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Such details require technical expertise beyond what you are likely to find here. The processor is a complex beast, with many circuits that can perform different tasks. Some tasks require a single clock cycle to execute, some require more. The frequency ("speed") quantifies the number of clock cycles per unit time, but processors differ in what they can accomplish in every cycle. In particular, better processors have more transistors and circuits, thus more capabilities.

I'll give a simplified example (which could be wholly incorrect; the specific quantities are certainly way off. the ideas should be valid, though). Suppose my program wants to multiply two 64-bit numbers, but the processor only has a circuit for multiplying 32-bit numbers (and assume it takes one cycle to do it). The processor would possibly cut the digits of each number to two parts, and multiply each half by each of the other halves. That is 4 multiplications. At the end we will need to add all the results appropriately, which could take another cycle. Thus we have used 5 cycles for this operation. If the processor had a circuit capable of multiplying 64-bit numbers in a cycle, the operation would take a single cycle. Thus if all we do is multiply 64-bit numbers, the latter processor will be 5 times faster than the former, if their frequency is identical.

Other improvements could be some sorts of small-scale parallelism. This doesn't mean adding more cores which are duplicates of the original, but rather having one core execute several of its functions simultaneously. Suppose I write code asking the processor to do some action A and then some action B. If the processor can determine that there is no importance to performing A first, and that the two actions utilize different circuits, it can do both actions at the same time. Thus the two actions will require only one cycle.

If you're in the mood for some marketing material, you can go here and click "view the demo" to hear about the imporvements in the upcoming Nehalem. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to be able to recommend the book 'everything you need to know about what makes computers go faster' - unfortunately I haven't written it yet.. Back in the real world key background reading is cache, Pipeline (computing), Superscalar, Instructions Per Cycle amongst others. I'll assume you know what each is and does - If you don't please read though I can't guarantee that the wikipedia articles will be particularily clear for your purposes... Now back to the question: going from say a 3GHz Pentium 4 to a 1.6-2.6 Core 2 Duo there haven't been any major inventions that changed the processor world. In fact a new single core may still be slower than the pentium 4 part, however one of the major factors of modern processor speed is 'pipelining' (different manufactures use different names) - this feature has the effect of doing individual instructions in parallel (or pseudo-parallel; meaning that two or more instructions are being carried out at the same time, but they don't start at the same time.)

For the old pentiums the pipeline was very long, the new core 2 duos etc have shorter pipelines. But for a doubling of pipeline the 'speed' does not necessarily double - this is due to various reasons but the main ones are that (simplified)

a. branching instructions tend to disrupt the pipeline

b. instruction dependancies (see Superscalar#Limitations) have a similar negative effect.

So making the pipeline longer makes the computer faster, but eventually the law of diminished returns kicks in. What the Core Duo etc chips do is to have shorter pipelines which are therefor more effecient than the longer pipelines of the pentium chips.. Having more cores means that overall the multicore chip is faster than the single core chip it replaces..

(This doesn't mean that the core 2 chips are simple - they still are 'speedy' but not to the same extent as the old pentiums.)

I've used the term 'pipelining' here to describe any pseudo-parallelism technique. There are key differences between different versions but the idea is usually roughly similar (again apologies to those who feel I've used the 'wrong' term or over simplified)

Other factors do come in such as decreasing feature size (the 65 or 45nm length you'll often see quoted), changes in cache design, etc in general the chips would have been better anyway even if they stuck with the old design - this can't be ignored.

I assumed you where asking about current x86 and similar designs, in fact the most energy efficient designs are also the simplest - eg 500 1FLOP non pipelined, in-order processors will use (much) less energy that 1 500FLOP processor. The current desktop trend is simply to trim the excesses of previous designs, add the year in improvements and then reap the benefits. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.102.86.73 (talk) 21:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Something in your description must be wrong, as the core 2 processors are definitely much faster than older architectures for given frequency and core count, as confirmed by both my own experience and this (e.g. Pentium D 3 GHz = 752, Core 2 Duo E8400 3 GHz = 1988, both are dual core). -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

LCDs

Is it possible to use an LCD television as a computer monitor? Failing that, is it possible to use an LCD monitor as a television? I'll tell you why I ask. We basically never watch broadcast television in our home - if the cable company cut us off, we would likely never find out. That said, we do watch DVDs and play on our home console (currently an N64, but possibly and XBox360 in the near future). Now, DVDs can be played in our computer, so we'd like to get a nice big computer monitor on which to view them (and other computer graphic type stuff); LCD TVs come a lot bigger and have more selection than big LCD monitors so using an LCD TV as our monitor would be nice. Ipso facto, we may want to plug in our console and play on the big screen. Is there any hope for me in this cruel electronic world? Matt Deres (talk) 20:52, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes and yes. In order to use an LCD television as a monitor, you need to be able to plug it in -- if your television has a DVI or HDMI input, it will work with a computer that has a matching output, and most do these days. If the television only has analog inputs -- composite video, component video, or radio-frequency -- it's a bit harder: you may need to find a video card with an appropriate output.

The problem with using a television as a monitor is resolution: a typical computer screen has a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels or larger, while except for high-end 1080p versions, televisions usually have fewer pixels.

Going the other direction is easier: you just need to add a TV tuner card or USB tuner to your computer. Again, the problem is resolution: a computer monitor will show a much crisper image than a television, but it's much smaller -- a typical computer monitor is only 17 inches across the diagonal, while a television is often 30 inches or more. --Carnildo (talk) 21:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure most computers today either use an integrated graphics card or an old discrete card, and in both cases only have a VGA connector. If you're using integrated graphics, you can get for 50$ a card with several times the performance and at least a DVI output. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:56, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

SpySheriff

Why is the SpySheriff website allowed to continue running. It is a malicious program with false information. Why isn't it shut down? Thanks, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 22:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Firefox 3 bookmark problems

I updated to FF3 today, but my bookmarks have been replaced by the ones I had a few months ago. It's probably no coincidence that these are the same as those I had when I installed and later uninstalled FF3 Beta a while back. I don't know where FF3 is even getting them from, because the correct bookmarks, rather than the incorrect old ones, are listed in bookmarks and bookmark backup in Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\. Does anybody know how to fix this problem? Thanks, --MagneticFlux (talk) 01:19, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, try editing your Firefox shortcut so that it points to

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p

Then you can try switching between different profiles. --Kjoonlee 01:34, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

If that doesn't work, then you can probably import your correct bookmarks from your bookmarks.htm file. --Kjoonlee 01:35, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Going to "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" isn't working (I only have one profile anyway). Importing the correct bookmarks would probably solve the problem, but I'm curious how FF3 got a hold of the erroneous, outdated bookmarks in the first place, and where it is storing them (since it's not in the bookmarks.htm file). --MagneticFlux (talk) 02:04, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe I've found the answer here. Thanks for your help. --MagneticFlux (talk) 02:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)