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September 14

Cable TV

Sometimes in some channels there is an ephemeral appearance of an alphanumeric code.There is no set top box.What is this?Have other people noticed this in their colour television sets with CRT picture tube?Pachyobs (talk) 05:42, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you told us what equipment you do have and which country it is in. Astronaut (talk) 09:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you have to describe when and where this code appears, and give some examples. One possibility is that it's the serial number (or whatever they call it) which appears at the start of each episode of a TV show. They don't intend to broadcast this, as it's only for internal identification purposes, but they do occasionally screw up. StuRat (talk) 21:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Hard Drives

What about if the Yellow light problem is fixed on that particular PS3 by an indepenent console repair shop? Not a new PS3 (or refurb) but the same PS3 with the same HDD still intact?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 08:28, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

You'll be far better off asking your nearest independent console repair shop. The outcome of repairs will depend on what facilities the shop has and what the precise fault is. Most shops will be happy to explain their services, and may give a free quotation for repairs. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:38, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Quote

The outcome of repairs will depend on what facilities the shop has and what the precise fault is.

But will you lose what's on the HDD if it gets the YLOD?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It will depend on the repair shop and the exact cause of the yellow light. Do you really think that someone here has the PS3 you are talking about sitting in their lap and can provide a clear answer - of course not. You're just trolling. -- kainaw™ 16:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

To go in to more specifics, our article mentions the content is encrypted. It's not mentioned where the encryption key/s are stored. If the encryption key/s are spared and the shop don't wipe the disk (and as you said, the PS3 is returned with the same HDD which I presume means the HDD was not defective) and the PS3 doesn't have some sort of security where it refuses to read/decrypt the disk because it detects something has been changed then your data should be fine. If you want to know more on the probability of this happening for general interest, you'll have to look in to each of these elements (e.g. where is the encryption key/s stored, does the PS3 have some sort of security where it refuses to decrypt the data if it detects something has been modified etc). If you want to know for a specific case, your best bet is asking whichever shop's you're looking in to. Note that some shops may wipe the HDD as a matter of course or at least make no attempt to spare the data so you will have to discuss it with them if this is a real world case. BTW, relying on any single device to store your data is an incredibly bad idea, even more so for a hard disk. In other words, you should not be concerned about the YLOD and your data because of what may happen in the future since if you don't have any problems now, you'll want to look in to some sort of backup solution before you have problems not worry about how you will recover your data if your PS3 dies. If the PS3 doesn't provide any sort of backup option, don't use it to store files you don't want to lose. Nil Einne (talk) 20:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

What about game saves that cannot be copied to USB?--213.107.74.132 (talk) 08:46, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

If the PS3 doesn't provide any sort of backup option, don't use it to store files you don't want to lose. Either don't play games that don't allow their saves to be stored in another location (whether USB or online or whatever) or just don't even bother to use a computer which restricts your ability to copy your content for backup purposes. (From some earlier searches there may be some complicated ways to disable encryption which would probably mean you can copy the content out for backup purposes but from what I read it's the sort of thing you shouldn't try if you have to ask.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:30, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What if you don't even own a PS3 and you just overheard someone mention the Yellow Light of Death and you are supposed to be in lecture at Denbigh, but instead you just feel like being a dick and trolling the Wikipedia reference desk and you still want someone to answer a question that has been thoroughly explained as being unanswerable? -- kainaw™ 13:56, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Disks the same?

I heard long ago that the installation CDs for Windows XP were identical, you could therefore reinstall XP Home on a Dell PC using the XP Home product key off the Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) attached to the PC, but using the XP Professional installation CD from your other Dell PC.

Is the same true of Windows 7 installation disks? ie. can I reinstall Win 7 Home Premium on a Dell PC using the Win 7 Home Premium product key off the CoA attached to the PC, but using the Win 7 Professional installation DVD from my other Dell PC? Astronaut (talk) 09:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No one knows or has any insight? I'm surprised. Astronaut (talk) 08:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I do know that any particular flavor of Windows installation disk will be identical. SO you can use any Windows Home disk, or any Windows Pro disk. I've never personally tried installing using a different type of disk than I have the license for, but I have heard secondhand reports that it can be successful. I also know that things will go wrong if I use my Alienware disk on a regular computer, things get strange with the installation, but I believe that has more to do with the included drivers. Caltsar (talk) 14:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Flash drives are going to replace traditional hard drives in about 3 years?

I was in my computer class yesterday and the professor said that flash drives are going to replace the old traditional hard disk drives in 2-3 years. Is this true? Have they worked out all of the flaws detailed here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Limitations) yet? ScienceApe (talk) 13:32, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

That's just his guess, my guess it will take longer than that simply because of the constricts of price vs storage. --Cameron Scott (talk) 13:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Have the flaws been addressed? ScienceApe (talk) 14:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm assuming he meant SSDs, since (at least to me) "flash drive" is a USB drive/thumb drive. KyuubiSeal (talk) 14:31, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It isn't as much a "flaw" as a "design". They are handled by increased speed and size. For example, if I know I have to do two writes for every write request, I just make my writes happen twice as fast and everyone is happy. If I know that my drive will wear out after 10,000 writes but I am expected to handle 100,000 writes, I just load it up with 10 times the memory required. Then, I do 10,000 writes to each one until I've done 100,000 writes in total. Everyone is happy. -- kainaw™ 14:42, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

So isn't the article calling those things "limitations" kind of misleading then? ScienceApe (talk) 14:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No. "Limitations" does not mean "flaws". Cars can't drive underwater, and submarines can't go on the road. These are limitations, imposed by their design and their intended use. They are not "flaws". Your initial question, about whether one kind of storage will replace the other, is essentially a matter of when, or whether, the two technologies will converge. It may be that they will, or that flash will surpass hard disks (as removable optical media has essentially surpassed removable magnetic media). But there's no reason to think that this convergence is inevitable, and it's impossible to guess when it might happen. Just like a convergence between cars and submarines. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Lol well yeah but our articles on cars and subs don't have a limitations section saying that they can't fly. I dono, it's a bit misleading to dumb people like me. :) ScienceApe (talk) 15:34, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that is because people tend to know that cars cannot fly, but most people hear "drive" for a computer and assume that all drives are basically the same thing. -- kainaw™ 15:37, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Who knows about the exact year, Your teacher is either guessing, or quoting someone who was guessing. But eventually? I'd bet it'll replace spinning-disk hard-drives in most applications. Already many portable devices work that way. Flash memory has some limitations, but traditional drives have other limitations and problems that can be just as infuriating.

The real driving factor is cost. A quick check of NewEgg tells me that $100 will get me 30gb of flash, or 1.5tb of traditional drive. APL (talk) 06:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What format should I save a C.V. as to make it compatible with XP?

Yo. Someone cant read a CV I emailed them, and has asked for it in a format that's compatible with XP. It was sent in a format with the suffix .docx The document was written with Microsoft Word 2007, and saved in the default format. Many thanks in advance. Willy turner (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

They probably want a .doc file , which is word 2003 compatible. - Q Chris (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I know you aren't in the position to say so, but the person can open a docx file. The person just doesn't realize that he or she should install updates. Both Office XP and the free things like OpenOffice or LibreOffice can open docx files if the updates are installed. -- kainaw™ 14:22, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok well if it's correct that they want a .doc file, what is that format called in the list of options? I apologise for my near absolute ignorance of computer-related things Willy turner (talk) 14:39, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Click on file - then Save as - and select the file type "word 97-2003 document" - otherwise, if you want to send people copies that they can read but not alter check if 'PDF' is available in there. --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

A million thanks everybody. Willy turner (talk) 15:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

RAM

Does the page file contribute to the 4GB RAM limit on Windows 32-bit computers? Or could I set a 20GB page file and it would work? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 14:51, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It's not taken up from RAM, so you can set it to 20GB, if you like, provided you have that much disk space free (or if you have it page to something else, like a flash drive, make sure it can handle that size). StuRat (talk) 21:10, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it will not remove the 4GB limit. 32-bit programs can only access 2^32 addresses, which comes out to 4GB. Adding a 20GB pagefile to 4GB of physical memory is like putting in 24Gb worth of physical memory in the first place, the system will not recognize it. Anonymous.translator (talk) 23:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

hmm, two conflicting answers. Anyone have a source? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

We've each interpreted your question differently. I thought you were asking if paging space is subtracted from the available RAM. Anon thought you were asking if paging space allows you to go beyond the 4GB limit for the amount of memory your program uses. So, both answers are correct, they are just answers to different questions. (The words "contribute to" seems to be the point of confusion. If you meant it the way Anon took it, perhaps "ease the restriction on" would have been clearer.) StuRat (talk) 00:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused now. I'm asking if you could allocate 20GB of page file. If you installed 20GB of actual RAM, 32-bit Windows would only see 4GB of it. Does the same limit apply to the page file? Obviously each individual program could still only use 4GB each. Sorry if I wasn't clear 82.43.90.142 (talk) 01:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that should extend your total memory capacity. However, keep in mind that paging space is MUCH slower than RAM, so the need to continuously move data between RAM and the paging space will slow your computer to a crawl. StuRat (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

free service to monitor a page for changes and e-mail you

is there a free online tool that will monitor a page for changes (like every minute or five minutes) and e-mail you if there are any?

p.s. yeah I know I should become an elite unix hacker, then a simple script on one of my "boxen" would do it, with curl and sendmail and whatnot, but I don't have 10 years for this sorry. 82.234.207.120 (talk) 16:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

See Change detection and notification. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Most of these services only check once a day or something similar (changedetection.com says they do it once a day). --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Returning inverses of time intervals in SQL?

At work, we have a database table, let's call it VALIDITY, containing two columns, TSTART and TSTOP. These columns are of type DATE and represent time intervals. The intervals are guaranteed not to be truly overlapping (i.e. the start of one interval can exactly equal the stop of another, but there are guaranteed not to be any overlaps of non-zero length). I can easily find a set of time intervals from this table with a query such as this:

SELECT TSTART, TSTOP FROM VALIDITY ORDER BY TSTART ASC, TSTOP ASC;

But now I had to find all sub-intervals of a given period not belonging to any interval in the table. I haven't found any way to do it in SQL, so I did it by fetching all intervals within the period from the table, and then counting all intervals between them (i.e. from the stop of one interval to the start of the next one). Is there a way to do this in SQL? JIP | Talk 18:01, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

In general, SQL is not very efficient at finding first, next, or last items. I work with hospital data. I regularly have requests for things like the last blood pressure from everyone seen in a certain time period. The only way to do it efficiently is to first make a table of patients (selecting the patient's ID) and the max visit date (selecting max date) limiting by the time period. Then, rejoin the table I made to the original table on patient ID and date to get the blood pressures per patient on that date. What you apparently want is a Next Start Date column for each record. I assume you don't want to add that. You need to make a new table that contains each record and the next start date for each record. Filling it will be a bit of a trick. You want, per record, the minimal start date such that the start date is >= to the records end date. Then, join that to the original table and you have intervals from stop to start (you can omit the ones where stop=start). -- kainaw™ 19:01, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd think you'd want to create a VIEW using the sorted SQL statement you provided first:

CREATE VIEW VALIDITY_VIEW AS
SELECT TSTART,TSTOP 
  FROM VALIDITY 
 ORDER BY TSTART ASC, TSTOP ASC;

Then use the ROW_NUMBER in the view for the follow-up SELECT, something like this:

SELECT A.TSTOP,B.TSTART 
  FROM VALIDITY_VIEW A
   AND VALIDITY_VIEW B
 WHERE B.ROW_NUMBER = A.ROW_NUMBER+1
   AND B.TSTART > A.TSTOP;

StuRat (talk) 21:03, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

InterGlobe Technologies Logo

File:C:\Users\kundan\Desktop\igt.jpg according to my knowledge this is the InterGlobe Technologies logo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kundan.hit (talk • contribs) 19:08, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

We have an InterGlobe Technologies article, which has a small copy of their logo there. The logo shown in that article matches the one they show on their website. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

(EC) We can't see a file on your computer, you will have to upload it to somewhere, probably not here until details on this likely copyrighted logo are sorted out. Anyway are you suggesting File:InterGlobe Technologies logo.jpg is not the correct logo for InterGlobe Technologies? Because the logo seems to be the same one as on their website [1] albeit at a lower resolution (which is required by our copyright policies) Nil Einne (talk) 19:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

cross platform line breaks

I'm sharing text files (using dropbox) with people using macs. I'm using windows. The problem is that line breaks created on the macs don't show up at all in notepad on windows. Is there anything I can do on my end to correctly view these files with linebreaks? 209.147.145.88 (talk) 20:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Use Wordpad instead of Notepad. It supports the Unix/Linux/Mac-style line endings without any hassle. -- kainaw™ 20:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Notepad++ is a decent free Notepad replacement that supports Unix/Win/Mac line endings. It's a text editor, not a word processor like Wordpad. Pretty much any other Notepad replacement would work as well. -- BenRG (talk) 03:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Which Linux rescue disc and which prompt?

I have a gateway NV78 with a 64 bit Intel Duo Core processor running Windows 7 which has crashed due to downloading a file which has apparently rewritten my registry. The system will start to boot prompting me to use normal or safe booting, but neither will reach a running windows screen. An acquaintance used a Linux OS rescue disc to boot the computer and to transfer a few files from the computer's hard drive to an external iomega drive I own, which worked great. But he wants to charge me $250 to save all my files.

I am not a total idiot, and successfully created a rescue disc from http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page which will run on my PC, but I can't seem to get to an interface from any of the prompts which will let me access the files on the crashed PC's hard drive so I can save them to my external iomega. (I know these files are accessible, my acquaintance moved 15G of them successfully to the Iomega and I have accessed them on my Mac, no problem.)

Should I have downloaded some other rescue disc than the www.sysresccd.org one? Does anyone have a url for the iso image file of a better Linux rescue disc? Or am I just missing the appropriate prompt on the disc I have? My thanks for any help. Do be aware I have searched the archives here, but find no obvious solution. Again, my thanks. μηδείς (talk) 22:00, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

At what point in the quick start guide are you having trouble? If you get yourself into the graphical environment there's a pretty good chance it'll let you just click on things to mount them and so on and so forth- should make life easier. Nevard (talk) 01:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I did, by brute force of trying every boot prompt, get to a graphic environment with that rescue disk. But once there I was totally lost--primarily because the icons were neither intuitive nor plainly labeled in idiomatic English. But what I did find, using this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_live_CDs#Rescue_and_repair_live_CDs, was the link to the Bootmed Live CD (actually large enough in the 64 bit version to require a 770MB CD or a DVD) where I successfully downloaded the live Ubuntu rescue disc, which is just like a graphic windows interface. Just a few minutes ago rescued my small movie collection from my disabled PC, and transferred the files to my external hard drive, and then to my Mac, where I celebrated by watching the Giedi Prime sequence from the extended version of the 1984 Dune. The answer for a 64 bit Windows 7 user seems to be to go directly to the 64 Bit Bootmed download. It works elegantly. Thanks to all for the help offered.μηδείς (talk) 04:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A 32-bit boot CD can recover files from 64-bit Windows (and vice versa). I'm not sure why they even offer a 64-bit version of BootMed. Maybe there are newer PCs that don't support 32-bit operating systems at all. If you have a Windows 7 install CD, booting the Windows 7 CD and selecting "repair" might fix your Windows installation, avoiding the need to start from scratch. You can also use a Windows 7 install CD to rescue files from your hard drive, though you have to do it from a command prompt. -- BenRG (talk) 04:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

It says in the boot splash how to start X from sysresccd. I suggest you read more carefully in future. ¦ Reisio (talk) 15:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I simply went with the 64 bit version since I knew the Gateway had a 64 bit processor. Had the Bootmed live CD not worked, I'd've tried the 32 bit version. It did work. As for Reisio's ever so helpful advice, I can read Estonian. No problem. It's written in the Latin alphabet, Doesn't mean I know what it means. Your advice is like telling an Englishman who wants to be understood by monolingual Frenchmen to speak louder. μηδείς (talk) 19:35, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

It's more like telling you to read more carefully in future: Graphical environment¦ Reisio (talk) 01:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

September 15

Character entity reference for brackets

I'm trying to find the character entity reference for simple brackets [ and ] but cannot. List of XML and HTML character entity references doesn't have anything, and &#91 (the HTML entity, according to bracket) appears as the ampersand character, the number sign, and the number ninety-one, rather than as a bracket. I've also tried Google, and I found how to type an extensive list of references, including a long list of extended characters (e.g. Õ), without using the ALT0___ code that Windows supplies, but it doesn't tell me how to get a bracket to appear. Any ideas? FYI, I'm trying to use a bracket as part of the anchor text for an external link in a citation: the original document has a typo in its title, and I want to include [sic], but that coding will cause the link itself to malfunction. Nyttend (talk) 01:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

If you chuck a semicolon (';') on the end of what you were using, it oughta work fine. Nevard (talk) 01:46, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Testing. [ ] Does this work? Nyttend (talk) 02:10, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

That's what I wanted; thanks. I knew that some types of references had the semicolon, including the non-breaking space, but bracket didn't include it, so I figured that it wasn't part of this reference. Nyttend (talk) 02:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

They're all supposed to have a semicolon, as it signals the end of the entity. It's an easy thing to forget though. Reach Out to the Truth 23:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Warm computers

At home, I use a nice laptop for everything. A problem, though, is the heat. I've got it attached to a cooling pad, so it's only 44 degrees celsius inside, well within the normal range. But after an hour or so on, it feels warm to the touch, and the whole machine seems to give off heat, making me warm and uncomfortable myself. It's OK for typing at my desk, I guess, but it's not pleasant if I want to use it in bed or on my lap.

Is there an alternative device that can be used for simple word processing and web-surfing that stays cooler? Do netbooks stay cool? What about iPads -- if one can type reasonably on them? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I have a simple solution: point a fan at both you and the laptop. It should keep you both cool. Another option is putting something between your lap and the laptop, like a pillow. Or, best yet, do both. StuRat (talk) 04:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Um, no. Don't rest a laptop on a pillow, because firstly this is likely to block the air vents, and secondly, pillows make good insulators - you risk overheating the laptop, and damaging it. I'd find something rigid and flat (a tray perhaps) to put the laptop on, allowing the air to circulate, and then rest that on a pillow. Unfortunately, computers aren't particularly efficient, and do produce a fair amount of heat - even a netbook can get quite warm. As for IPads, I'd think you'd find using them for word processing awkward, without a keyboard. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

To clarify, the cooling pad would still be between the pillow and the laptop. I believe those are designed to be used on insulators like a wooden table, so an insulator like a pillow under it should be OK. It should also keep the vents clear, by extending beyond them some distance. StuRat (talk) 04:12, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Some netbooks stay quite cool. I don't use an iPad, but my GalaxyTab 7" also stays nice and cool. Typing on a tablet or a netbook can be an uncomfortable experience if you're used to touch-typing on a full-sized keyboard. It can be gotten used to, but you'll never achieve the same speeds you can achieve on a full-sized keyboard. APL (talk) 06:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This news story made the rounds a year ago, about a boy who got permanent skin discoloration by "toasting" his leg with the laptop day after day. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:20, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I can't believe you chose the Daily Mail, of all things, as your source. But apparently this is real—it's called erythema ab igne (warning: mildly disturbing image). I may never put my laptop on my lap again. -- BenRG (talk) 00:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I use a Rolodex® laptop stand, which not only allows good air circulation under the computer, but improves the keyboard angle.— Michael J 01:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Cross platform shared libraries

I'm a fairly experienced C (not so much C++ but I can get by) programmer, and I suddenly find myself needing to build a shared library (for audio file conversion, but that's not important, I hope) which links to executables and runs under both Windows Vista/7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard/Lion. Help! Are there any toolkits, templates, or other facilities which allow for production of such cross platform shared libraries with a minimum of overhead and a maximum of shared source code? Thanks. 70.91.171.54 (talk) 02:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

From what I gather, and some IBM people seem to agree (maybe a few tips you haven't heard of in there, and here), just stick to using IFDEF's. Nevard (talk) 06:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It could be a lot worse! 70.91.171.54 (talk) 21:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

How to you add support for new video formats to an HTML5-enabled broswer?

If you're developing a player for a new video format and you want to add support for the new format to HTML5-enabled browsers, is there a way you can package your player so that it can be added to and used in any browser that supports HTML5? Thanks. --71.185.166.51 (talk) 12:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

You want to develop your own file format? As in, replacing .mp4, .ogg, or .webm?. Support for these are built in to the browser. It would never be worth it to develop your own format. See HTML5 video format support table. TheGrimme (talk) 18:02, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Partition unallocated unformatted after merging

I freed 5gb from my c:\ and 5gb from my d:\ with disk management. then i used some other program to merge one of the 5gb free spaces with d:\. then, d:\ became unallocated unformatted and it could not be assigned any drive letters. Help! Thanks. 218.102.197.250 (talk) 13:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What program are you using to do this ? You may need to define the format for that 10GB space, before it can be allocated a drive letter. Also, are the C: and D: different physical disks ? If so, I don't believe you can join them like that and assign a drive letter (there's no theoretical reason why this shouldn't work, but current software doesn't support it). StuRat (talk) 16:13, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. They are in the same physical disk, and the two 5gb spaces were separate. But how do I define the format without erasing the disk? Thankyou. Again: now what was once D: is now unformatted and has no drive letter. 218.189.203.89 (talk) 07:23, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

What program are you using to do this ? StuRat (talk) 05:38, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Excel 2007 - Numbers in Cells

Resolved

I want to put a number in a cell in Excel 2007, and the number is, for example, 012345. The problem is, Excel is deleting the first 0, leaving me with 12345. This is a problem because many reference numbers begin with 0. How is it possible, in Excel 2007, to have the 0 included? I have looked around and only found information for Excel 2003, which all say 'delete the General', which is not possible in 2007. Cheers. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

When entering your ref number, put a single quote (') before it. Excel interprets that as being text rather then a number. Astronaut (talk) 13:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)You can format the cell as text before entering the "number", or you can precede the "number" with an apostrophe when you enter it, e.g. '012345, or you can format the cell as custom format 000000 if it will always be 6 digits including the leading zero. There are other options, but that's a start. - David Biddulph (talk) 13:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - I went with the 'formatting as text' option, and that worked perfectly. Cheers. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Note that the disadvantage of storing a number as text is that you can no longer manipulate it as a number. So you couldn't easily have it add 1 to that number in another cell. In cases where you need it to look like a number but have leading zeroes, you should use a custom format. --Mr.98 (talk) 02:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Do you want to check that, Mr98? Put the text string '012345 into cell A1, then put the formula =A1+1 in another cell. Doesn't that add 1 to the number? Admittedly there are some functions which won't treat text as a number, but an arithmetic operation will convert from test to number. Hence the trick of using a double unary minus (such as the formula =--A1) to convert from text or boolean to an equivalent number. - David Biddulph (talk) 17:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

help me in text speech

Hello i am new and i want to ask something.

My computer when i go to control panel and then click on text speech it brings to me one tab only what is Text To Speech.

My question is: is that's normal in other computers? or it is a virus?

i want answers please.

Note: please make answers with no bad words.

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scorpion 1665 (talk • contribs) 14:09, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Microsoft Speech API. It's normal and according to that article is part of every Windows OS since Windows 95 82.43.90.142 (talk) 14:18, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Remote computer

Resolved

I remember a while ago seeing sites which offered remote Windows (and linux) computers which you could connect to via the internet and use like remote desktop. Sort of like having a virtual machine but hosted on their server which would keep running even if your internet or power went down. I've tried searching but I can't it. Does anyone know the name of what I am talking about? 82.43.90.142 (talk) 14:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Are you perhaps thinking of a Virtual private server [2] [3] [4] [5] Nil Einne (talk) 14:33, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I was thinking of. Seems very expensive though, would be cheaper to buy a second internet connection and host it myself using an old computer 82.43.90.142 (talk) 15:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Capturing video from VCR

What equipment do i need to get the video from my vcr SCART socket? Do they make scart input capture hardware? I tried some SCART to video adaptor plugs, but they dont work (maybe theyre for input not output) I have a Belkin device but that has an Svideo connector and a phono connector. I do not have svideo connector on vcr.--92.28.81.140 (talk) 14:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

SCART is a bit nasty, because the exact signals in the connector can vary - potentially it can have RGB, S-Video, and Composite video, but it doesn't always have all of those. You can get SCART to S-Video adapters - is that what you've tried? You can also get a cheap composite-to-s-video converter[6] which you might be able to use with a SCART-to-composite adapter to convert the composite into an s-video signal you can use in your card. There are capture cards that take RGB input that you could connect to a SCART output (Googling throws up [7][8]). --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Re-installing Office 2007

I had Office 2007 installed on my PC which has since finally died. I want to reinstall it on my new PC but am worried that Microsoft Update will not recognise it as genuine software as it has already been installed and registered on a different PC. Is there any way round this problem so that I can install the Office suite and have it accepted by Microsoft?

Thanks in advance. Gurumaister (talk) 15:05, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I've reinstalled office (2003, I don't know about 2007) in just this circumstance, without issue. In the off chance that it does object you can phone them, and they're usually pretty okay about this kind of thing. Their activation limits are mostly designed to stop someone installing the same licence on dozens (or sometimes hundreds or thousands) of PCs. Anyway, you've lost the old install, so there's nothing further to be lost from reinstalling. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:31, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks, Finlay, I'll give it a try.Gurumaister (talk) 15:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC) PS: Happy 8th Wiki-birthday for yesterday  :)) Gurumaister (talk) 15:54, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The installation and activation (registration) of Office 2007 depends on the license under which it was purchased. If the Office 2007 software suite was purchased either under Volume Licensing or as a Retail Full Packaged Product, you will have no problem activating it on a replacement computer. However, if it is an OEM disc, the software license lives and dies with the computer it came instlled on; you will have to buy a new license for a new computer. Rocketshiporion♫ 19:45, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

iPhone

um... stupid question, I know, but how can I delete songs in my iPhone...........?--Irrational number (talk) 17:02, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The only way I know is to connect it to your computer and, in iTunes, select the "Manually manage by device" option. Then, you can delete the songs on the device. -- kainaw™ 17:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

thank u!--Irrational number (talk) 18:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Why does a WoW city appear to slow down around me, but not a real-world city?

If I'm in a major city in World of Warcraft, everything slows down around me.

However, I was in downtown Seoul in summer 2008, and everything kept going as fast as in any smaller city.

What causes this, and how do I fix it??? --129.130.99.18 (talk) 18:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The more objects there are to draw, the longer it takes for your computer to draw them. Further, the more people there are to update, the longer it takes for a network-based game to update them. In the real world, we don't see the Universe hitting maximum update limitations for objects and characters. To fix your computer, get a better video card and faster Internet connection. -- kainaw™ 18:30, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Reboot first, and don't run anything else at the same time as WoW. Most games also have options for slower computers. You can turn off some less important objects, like maybe insects and smoke, and simplify others, so buildings don't need to draw each individual brick, for example. Allowing fewer colors can also help, as can a lower frame rate, although that will make things look a bit "jumpy". StuRat (talk) 18:35, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

WoR (World of Reality) runs on faster servers than WoW. Looie496 (talk) 23:02, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

In point of fact time does run slightly slower in large cities because of additional gravitational time dilation from the higher concentration of mass. You don't notice this if you're in the city because your brain runs slower too, but if you were remote-controlling a robot avatar it would be noticeable—if the effect were a bit larger, at least. -- BenRG (talk) 00:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I think your latter qualification is meant to actually just negate what you said before it, right? The dilation caused by the mass difference in a city is not likely to ever be measurable, is it, unless you change the laws of physics, right? --Mr.98 (talk) 01:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I was being silly, but the effect might be detectable. The Pound–Rebka experiment detected a shift of one part in 4×10¹⁴ in 1959. This would be a shift of one part in 10²⁰ or 10²¹ or so. -- BenRG (talk) 17:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate that the OP is having a bit of a larf with the question, but there's an important insight to be had in the matter nonetheless. Modern games run the rendering engine asynchronously to the world simulation (physics, ai, etc.). Objects fall, missiles fly, and robots think, at the same speed if you're in a flat boring plain (and getting a huge frame rate) or in a super-detailed city (and getting a really low frame rate). The renderer is like a stroboscope, sampling the underlying "reality" periodically and showing the results. Usually a "second" in the game takes a real-world second to transpire, but even that's a convenience for the human player; for non-realtime simulations (like simulations of weather or nuclear explosions) there's no such relationship, and a simulated second might take much longer or much shorter to actually happen in real time. From the perspective of scripts running within the simulation, none of this is visible - they've got no exposure to the renderer or to "real" time. A simulation "second" is just N iterations through the think() loop. It sounds like the OP is thinking about the simulation hypothesis; if that were true, scripts (including ourselves) inside the simulation would perceive "time" as generated by the simulation, and any non-uniformities in the "real" computational cost and duration of generating that time would be wholly invisible to us. Only slightly more prosaically, this brings us to a significant difference between how real physics works and the simulated physics of games or weather forecasts. In reality every massive particle interacts gravitationally with every other (in its light cone) and any photon can potentially interact with any particle in its light cone - that's a combinatorially vast number of interactions (which, if you were simulating reality perfectly, you'd have to calculate). Simulated physics is tractable because its designers try very hard to limit the interactions they model (e.g. if you fire a rocket down a passage in Quake, the game doesn't try to model the gravitational attraction between the rocket and other players' bodies or model the relativistic momentum transfer due to the light from the rocket's glowing exhaust hitting the walls). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 14:28, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Use HP recovery disk on a Gateway computer?

I cannot find the recovery disk I created for my Gateway NV78 running Windows 7. I have an HP running the same version of windows. I have successfully saved all the files I want to an external hard drive using a Bootmed live CD. Is there some reason why I should not attempt to create a disk image and recovery disk from the HP and install it on the Gateway? μηδείς (talk) 19:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

It might be missing critical hardware drivers[9], it might be hardcoded to work only on that mobo[10]. There's no rescue partition? Gateway might send you a reinstall disc for a minimal fee. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

From my experience recovery disks are specific to the manufacturer of the computer, sometimes even down to the exact make and model number of the original hardware, and will refuse to install on different hardware from another manufacturer. There is technically no reason why it shouldn't work, but it is prevented from doing so for licensing reasons. 82.43.90.142 (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like what I expected. Computing is a hell of a lot more like a combination of alchemy and Freemasonry than chemistry or linguistics. I have a system backup file on the PC I made in the spring. Will have to see if that is rebootable, or, as I suspect, just a copy of the user files from that time. Will also check with Gateway about the reinstall disk. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 22:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Grabbing graphic images from within a PDF file

I want to grab graphic (raster) images from the PDF file they're embedded in, so as to maximize quality and prevent me from having to do things like screen captures in an effort to get the images alone. I only need to do this a few times for a PDF file, so I don't mind manually operating software that does this for one image at a time; I don't have to do some sort of batch-unrolling to save every single image. Does anyone have recommendations on Windows software to do this? I read List of PDF software but of course the article doesn't offer opinions on the software's suitability or quality. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

You can easily do this with Acrobat proper (but it's not free). I'm almost certain you can do it with Inkscape (I'll go check as to how). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, not trivially (not without essentially resampling the image), as far as I can tell. dumppdf.py says it should do it. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Nah, forget that. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Will this program meet your needs? Looie496 (talk) 22:59, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Tried them; looked ideal but didn't end up working for the PDF I'm using. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, this does work: pdfimages (which is part of Poppler and on Debian/Ubuntu system is in the poppler-utils package) does it easily and automatically. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Um, just using Adobe Acrobat Reader (admittedly a 5 year old copy.. they may have removed this functionality) and using the 'Select tool' seems to work fine for me. I'm pretty sure older versions of FoxIt, a Windows PDF reader that's a lot less bad than Adobe, had this feature, as do many Linux and Mac OS X PDF readers. Obviously this is very manual indeed, but when couldn't life be easier? Nevard (talk) 23:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

This advice made me actually look around in my version of Reader (9.4.6) and I found the Snapshot tool, which worked for me! Thank you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Evince is even easier - just right-click the image and "Save Image As...". It's a Gnome app, but there is a Windows version too. AJCham 00:04, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

On the particular PDF I've been testing (a very primitive one that's just a single image alone in the PDF) neither evince nor okular offers a "save image as". I fear this functionality may be contingent on some weirdness in the formatting that I don't understand. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:15, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

How odd, looking a little deeper I see I too have some PDFs where the option is missing - they're all ones produced by Cairo (webpages I have 'printed' to a PDF file), whereas those produced from other software give me the option. AJCham 00:26, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

PDF is a very complicated format. Not all "raster"-images are equal in a PDF document: some are JPEGs, some are embedded files, ... if the image is included as a embedded raster image, it's straightforward to extract the bitstream and recode it as a JPEG or image file. But, the image could also be convoluted composition of clipping planes, vector graphic elements, and sub-images. If the image is stored in that way, taking a screenshot is probably less lossy than trying to re-render and recomposite the image and then transcode it to an image format. Ultimately, the way the imagery in the document is stored depends on what software and techniques were used to produce the PDF in the first place. Nimur (talk) 02:42, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

In Acrobat Reader 8.1 it's: advanced -> document_processing -> export_all_images -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 00:09, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

In Adobe Reader, you can usually select individual images and then copy and paste them into a paint program. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

September 16

rotate an image

Hi. I have a ppm file and wish to rotate it by any angle (ie any angle, not just multiples of 90 degrees). I want the pixels to be in the same place but the image to be rotated. I don't care about edge effects. But I want to do it gazillions of times, quickly. I also need to scale the image by shrinking it about its center (again, edge effects don't matter: areas that originate from outside the original image can just be black, no probs). Is there a C or C++ library of routines to help me do this, or do I have to write it all from scratch? Robinh (talk) 08:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You can use Imagemagick: convert -rotate 13 -resize 50% in.ppm out.ppm will rotate by 13 degrees clockwise and downscale by 50%. If you need to drive the whole process from C you can use imagemagick's c library libmagick. Other libraries should work too - an example of rotation using cairo is here, for example. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this. It works, but I didn't get the speedup I was hoping for. How do I make convert give an ascii file instead of the binary it gives? cheers, Robinh (talk) 09:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Add -compress none to the list of options to make an ASCII ppm. But this file will be more than twice the size of its binary equivalent, so your file write will be slower, not faster. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 10:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

got it. thank you!

Resolved

Robinh (talk) 19:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, ImageMagick has an API that can be used in C or other languages -- if you wanted to go to the trouble, you could write a single program to process large numbers of files with startup and shutdown costs. Looie496 (talk) 20:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Analog And Digital Signals

What is the basic difference between them as well as the exact definition of each?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Encyc lover (talk • contribs) 09:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Analog signal and Digital signals are the Wikipedia pages about these. If this is too complex, there's a simpler description of analog signals [here]. Basically, an analog signal is continuously variable, while a digital signal has a certain number of different levels or "steps"; this means a digital signal only encodes an approximate value. Computers, being digital devices, can only handle digital signals. If you have further questions, please ask. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:38, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Not to confuse the issue too much, but there are analog computers :) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Google is getting too "smart"---what can I do about it?

I have been trying to find old news items on Google, in the way it has been possible to do in the past. I tried with google.co.uk and google.com, switched to "News" and then to "Archives" and expected to find mostly English results, but would in fact welcome results in any languages available.

But the only results I get are in Swedish. OK, I live in Sweden and Google knows this, but I am not looking for Swedish results primarily.

If I search for, say, "Margaret Thatcher" or "Richard Nixon" I expect to get results mostly in English and mostly from UK and US sources, respectively. That is the way the Google News Archive search used to behave. I searched for some topic and, unless I intentionally added a language filter, I got results in all languages but mostly in the most relevant languages and in the news sources represented in Google's News Archives. I could get hits from US newspapers from the 1800s when searching for certain things, thanks to the availability of these in Google's news archives.

That is all gone now. Despite my use of google.com or google.co.uk (rather than google.se), Google seems to assume that I only want hits in Swedish. I see no way in the "advanced search" page to filter by language to get results in English or some other language. (I think there used to be, but I may may be wrong.)

This is not the only way in which Google is getting annoyingly arrogant and presumptuous. Its constant changing of my search terms or showing me results for something other than what I searched for is another. Google used to meekly suggest alternative searches, which was very helpful when I was uncertain about the exact spelling or name of something or someone. It has now gone past that into simply assuming that I have no freaking idea what I really want and ignoring my real search term. Increasingly, I find myself having to making a second search simply to get Google to search for what I originally asked for.

Sorry for the rant. Getting to the actual question: how do I get back the good old Google? Is there any workaround for getting search results in English when this is what I want, or in any other language for that matter?

This is the URL I get for my news archives search result for "Margaret Thatcher", starting from google.co.uk. All the hits are in Swedish and from Swedish sources. Could someone in the UK check to see if you get different results when you put this URL into your browser? If you get the same Swedish results I get, there is presumably some element in the URL that controls language. Which is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nonsensical username (talk • contribs) 10:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

No, I get results in English if I click your link. There is an circular icon in the top right of the page with eight protuberances (representing the tentacles of the Google octopus). If you click on this you will reach the preferences page, and can set a "search language". When I tried to select Swedish this way (to try and achieve the opposite of what you want), I made the following observations: Firstly, although I could select "Swedish" I was not allowed to de-select "English". Secondly, on returning to the search page, a new option appeared in the toolbar on the left, where one chooses whether to search the whole web or search locally, called "custom". Thirdly, clicking this option made bugger all difference and the results were still all in English. Still, it's something to try. Update: I tried searching for Margaret Thatcher politiker. This returns mostly German results without "Swedish" selected in the preferences, and mostly Swedish results if it is selected, so I think it works a bit. Clicking the "custom" option still seems to change nothing at all.  Card Zero  (talk) 11:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I found an advanced news search page with the option to specify which country you want hits from, but when I tried it did not appear to work. 82.43.90.142 (talk) 12:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting a bit annoyed with the way Google substitutes search terms as well. If you're looking for information about, say, an illustrator with a fairly common name, you would expect a search of "Joe Bloggs" illustrator to target him quite accurately, but as well as pages with "Joe Bloggs" and "illustrator" you also get pages with "Joe Bloggs" and "artist", and as well as visual artists, musicians and actors are often called artists as well, so it hardly narrows the search at all. It's getting to the point where you have to put every single word in quotes, or it'll drown what you want in all sorts of stuff you don't. --Nicknack009 (talk) 12:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

@OP: Maybe you will find the solution if you take a look at the section: Control personalized predictions a bit down on this Goggle help page (entitled: Autocomplete: Explore Google Search - Web Search Help).
--Seren-dipper (talk) 12:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've got the impression from similar situations, that adding a plus character before the search term tends to suppress fuzzy matching like substituting "illustrator" with "artist". For me (located in Norway), the link above that searched for Margaret Thatcher on google.co.uk resulted in links in English only (at least for the first couple of pages), whereas a search on google.no results in a mixture of some results in English, some in Norwegian. To bias the results more towards results in Norwegian, I searched for "Jens Stoltenberg" on google.no. In the first page, all but one of the results were in Norwegian. A trick I've used to get results in the target language, is to add a common word from the target language preceded by a plus character. Searching for "Jens Stoltenberg" +that on google.no yields results in English, and is far more effective than adding a language requirement on the advanced search page. The problems discussed in this thread illustrate what is called the Search engine filter bubble. An interesting search engine that has as a goal to avoid such biases, as well to protect your privacy, is DuckDuckGo, which may be of interest to the OP. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 15:36, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that if I select a language in normal google search, then switch to a news search google tries the search in the selected language. Also you could insert "&lr=lang_en" (english) in the url and I would guess this would work. (You are right that there is no language selection in news search) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.239.6 (talk) 23:11, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

OP here: Thanks for all the replies! Here is something I should probably have thought about before: today I checked Google's search behaviour with a couple of alternative browsers (I usully use Firefox, but tested IE and Chrome) and it turned out that they didn't have this issue. I guessed it might be some cookie saved by Firefox and cleared all cookies---and voilà, now the problem is gone! (I still don't know which cookie created the problem, but I'll worry about that if it reappears.) --Nonsensical username (talk) 17:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Program to activate Hibernation in Windows7

Resolved

I have a programmable key on the front of a computer. I would like to make it invoke hibernation mode.
Is there some standard Windows7 program, maybe somewhere under C:\Windows, that will activate hibernation?
-- 46.15.251.168 (talk) 11:53, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Custom things like that require the manufacturer's program. For example, if you have an HP computer with a custom button on it, you need the HP settings program to set it. -- kainaw™ 11:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The manufacturer's program only lets me assign a filename to the button, so my question still stands: Which file, on a computer with Windows7, will activate hibernation?
--46.15.251.168 (talk) 12:08, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I found a VBscript which triggers hibernation via a series of simulated keystrokes:

If you create Hibernate.vbs containing:

       set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
       WshShell.SendKeys "^{ESC}uh{ENTER}" 

 Card Zero  (talk) 12:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

That is the key sequence for Windows XP: I don't think it will work for Windows 7, as requested by the questioner. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Do the following:

• install AutoHotkey from http://www.autohotkey.com
• in the default script that it creates, add the line F11:: run shutdown /h
• press F11 to hibernate

-- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:22, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want to use F11, but the special key on the front of your computer, you need to figure out its key code. A description of how to do this for AutoHotKey is here. It sounds like you may have a program that already binds that key, in which case you don't need AutoHotKey, and can have that program just run shutdown /h itself. If it won't, you might need to remove that program to make the special key detectable to ordinary programs (that hook the keyboard) like AutoHotKey. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 12:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you all! It turn out that a simple file shortcut did the trick (instant hibernation) when I set it to target: C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /h
-- (OP) 89.8.227.104 (talk) 15:44, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Win7 recently opened programs

Why do some programs not populate the automatically updated list in the Windows 7 start menu, but others do? It also looks like there is some sort of hidden selection criteria that favors Microsoft-affiliated programs, putting them towards the top with much fewer executions. I've tried using my friend Google, but most of the results are forum requests for how to disable it or refresh it and all that, and none about how it actually behaves. —Akrabbim^talk 14:01, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

[11] claims at least in XP there's no priority given to Microsoft (or any vendors) applications and the code was reviewed by US? government appointed regulators. In any case, I don't know how well it is documented how items are chosen. According to someone here [12], MSDN in fact claims an item is not reordered once it appears in the MRU/MFU list. This doesn't concur with my experience in Windows 7 Ultimate and I think Windows Vista. Perhaps it was the way things were in Windows XP. Perhaps Ultimate users are considered smart enough to not get confused by reorderign of the items in the list. Perhaps Microsoft planned to do that, then they realised things would be just as confusing when things drop on and off (as they wouldn't necessarily be from the bottom in that case). The MSDN article might give some clue and perhaps it's clear it doesn't apply to Windows 7 Ultimate but if not, then it does highlight the fact the documentation may not be great.

You can use [13] to see the info MS has stored on the programs you use although if you go thru that and his? other related posts it's clearly he's largely reversed enginered the info since it isn't documented. [14] mentions an important although perhaps obvious point, MS likely doesn't want programs manipulating their order. [15] does mention there are some poison words (largely to avoid things like installers and helper apps showing up) although the associated KB article seems to be gone, and also mentions Vista has some more tricks to stop unwanted programs appearing.

Nil Einne (talk) 00:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Apartment Door Openers

At a friend's condo building there is a console in the lobby. Keying a three digit code there rings the telephone in his unit through some kind of interface. He and I can talk through this "hybrid system" using either his wall phone or his portable wireless phone. However the important feature of "press 6 to release the building door lock to let me in" only works at the wall phone.

One theory is that the portable phones do not have enough power to trigger the door release. Another is that they only send a brief tone when the 6 key is pressed and held, whereas the hard-wired phone sends a tone as long as the key is held.

Does anyone know a way around this problem? It is a real problem for him due to limited mobility. Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 19:24, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

You can test the theory that the wireless phone's DTMF tone is too brief by putting the dtmf 6 tone on a media player and playing that through the wireless phone. That sample is nice and long, so if its a DTMF detector on the other end that will open it. It's not certain that the lock works by DTMF detection, but (with some filtering to prevent the person on the stoop opening it) it's a reasonable way someone would consider for implementing this. Failing that, try an ordinary wired phone (not the special condo phone) and see if that opens it (I'd imagine it would work, or not work, just like the wireless phone). It may, however, be that the existing wire line phone is special, and does some (non telephone standard) in or out-of-band signalling. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and make sure the wireless phone is set for tone dialling (DTMF) and not pulse dialling. There's often a little switch on the base. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've seen some systems like this with phones with extra wiring to activate the door opening. The ones I saw used a RJ14 connector with the phone line wiring working as usual, and a 'second phone line' used to activate the door opener. If this setup's like that, the phone plug into the intercom phone would have four metal contacts on it (where usually you'd have only two). Of course, seeing four contacts rather than two doesn't mean the system's like that, but two is cheaper, so that's what you'd expect to see. Nevard (talk) 06:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

September 17

Signature tracing

many Wikipedia articles contain good, clear examples of signatures that have been somehow traced out of historic documents. What method/program is used to do this? Rmhermen (talk) 03:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

You would use a image scanner, which creates a pic in a raster format and sends it to the PC, then upload that to Wikipedia. StuRat (talk) 05:32, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Not sure exactly what you're looking for, but there are programs that can convert bitmaps into vector graphics. After conversion, shapes in the picture will be described geometrically by smooth outlines (rather than as a matrix of black/white pixels), and can be scaled up or down without losing quality. Here's an example [16] of an outline tracing program. --71.185.179.84 (talk) 15:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Lithium-ion battery charger

I lost the charger for the Lithium-ion battery of my Digital SLR camera. A friend of mine offered his camera's Lithium-ion battery charger. But its battery output is 7.4v and mine is 7.2v. Can I use this charge if it fits ( the slots, etc) with my battery? 14.139.128.14 (talk) 08:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The output of a battery has very little to do with the charging voltage. What you should really be looking up is the output voltage of the charger for your camera, you'll find that 5 volts DC is usually the standard for chargers for most devices (cell phones, MP3 players, etc.) but you should double check. If the output voltage is the same you should be fine. HominidMachinae (talk) 21:32, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

If I understand this note, a charger with an output of 5 volts can charge a battery up to 7.2 (or 7.4) volts. Can this really happen? Wanderer57 (talk) 04:15, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

You can try, although make sure your friend's charger doesn't output a voltage higher than your old charger. You can go lower, but if it outputs more volts than your camera can handle, you will terminally damage the device. You can go higher with the amps, though.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Win7 Behaving Oddly

I got a new Win7 laptop a few weeks back, and I have noticed that it is using my computer name for some products, rather than the name that I specify when I register the product. A notable example is MS Word - it says all my documents were created by [computer name] rather than by [my name]. Is there something I should be doing? It's happening with a lot of applications, so it's not a problem with MS Word. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Um.. there's a pretty obscure system setting that influences this, which used to be sorta possible to get to in 2000/XP, but it appears to have been disappeared in later Windows versions to 'make life easier'. Start->Run, regedit, navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion' in the tree and change the 'RegisteredOwner' value. Nevard (talk) 00:43, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Protecting BIOS flash against modification

Let's say you want to make sure that the BIOS of your computer is not modified without user intervention. How can you tell if your motherboard has a jumper or switch for enabling/disabling BIOS reflash? If you don't care about warranty and are willing to risk bricking the motherboard, is it easy to modify a typical motherboard to add a switch that must be set before the BIOS can be reflashed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.227.49.58 (talk) 14:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The easiest way will be to find the manual for the motherboard. If you cannot find the exact board a similar one by the same manufacturer may have the same features. Even more tricky will be to identify the kind of chip that the BIOS is stored in and then find the data sheet for that chip, which will explain how to program it. If you trace out the connections from the relevant pins you may be able to find a jumper. Cutting a PCB track to prevent modification will probably void any guarantee. Don't expect there to be enough space in there to solder in a switch as 1 it may be a multilayer board with the track you want embedded inside the board, and 2 the track may be very close to others and not have enough space for a hole for a lead, or a blob of solder. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

HTML and Java Plug-ins

I'm using a PBworks wiki to create a mock website. When I edit, I get a window with an options bar along the top that allows me to make basic formatting changes, like alignment and text highlighting. I can also add tables and insert HTML and other plug-ins. I've added an image, but I don't like the way the text is in relation to it. As it stands, I just cut-and-paste the image and it appears in its own line. I can add text to the end of the line, but then the next line starts under the image. I would like to have the image on the top left and then have several lines of the text running down the right edge of the image. Just like you get in newspapers, or you get on Wikipedia. I've added an image to this post so you can see what I mean. I can just type and the text fits nicely at the side of the image. Does anyone have any idea how to get this effect in PBworks? Is there some HTML code I can use, or some other plug-in? — Fly by Night (talk) 14:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The CSS for that is float:left

To get that for an image you'd say <img src="foo" style="float:left"/> or something like that. If you want the image to have a caption, like the wikipedia one, you'd wrap it in a DIV and put the IMG and caption text in there, and you'd float the DIV rather than the IMG. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 15:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

That's great, thanks! — Fly by Night (talk) 17:40, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

One other thing that I would like to do is have collapsible sections. So I'd have a list of section titles and if I clicked a title or an icon then the section would open, a bit like when you access Wikipedia from an iPhone or an Android phone. It has the Expand buttons next to the sections. You click it and the information appears and the Expand button changes to a Hide button. — Fly by Night (talk) 17:58, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

You'd use Javascript for that. Clicking the expand button calls a little piece of code that sets the "display" CSS property of a given section's DIV between block and none -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 18:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

A super-simple example (built using jquery) is here. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:17, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea how to do that. Could you supply some code, or link to some? — Fly by Night (talk) 19:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

"view source" for the page I linked to above. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Magnet in floppy disk drive

As seen in the accompanying picture, the spinning hub, which is folded back at the right, has a magnetic tip that mates with the metallic part of the floppy disk. The magnet is strong enough to hold onto and move the disk, so it's not incredibly weak. The body of the disk passes right over this magnetic tip as it's being inserted and removed. The shutter cover is not metallic with this particular disk, so it would not provide any magnetic shielding. How does the passing of this magnet so close to the disk not mess it up? Peter Michner (talk) 15:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The strength of a magnetic field drops off exponentially with distance. The magnets you are referring to do not have to be strong because they are making physical contact with the disk case. The read/write head is almost making contact with the disk itself. The disk isn't designed to completely fail in the presence of a magnetic field. Electricity flow causes magnetic fields and, after all, a floppy drive is an electronic device. Care is taken to ensure that the magnetic field that is near the disk itself is not strong enough to alter the data. -- kainaw™ 18:00, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure that you mean "…drops off exponentially…" ? In gravitation, electrostatics and electromagnetism (or more generally most forces that propagate in three dimensional space) the inverse square law plays a staring role. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

If something is reduced by a squared quantity it is indeed exponential, because the numbers will follow a multiplicative curve (IE 64, 32, 16...) HominidMachinae (talk) 21:35, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

No a power law is not the same as an exponential decay. For example, there is no exponential function, $y=A\,e^{-b\,x}$ that is equivalent to $y={1 \over x^{2}}$, e.g. (1, 1), (2, 1/4), (3, 1/9), (4, 1/16), (5, 1/25). Dragons flight (talk) 22:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Because there are no known magnetic monopoles, static magnetic fields will always fall off by at least the inverse cube power of distance once you are far from the magnetic source. Some magnets, such as many fridge magnets, often contain alternating magnetic domains with the intent that the field should decay even faster than the cube law. Of course if you are right next to the magnet, then the shape and intensity of the field will depend of the details of the spatial configuration of the magnetic sources. Dragons flight (talk) 22:20, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

That's very interesting. Is there any geometrical justification for this? I can see why the ISL holds because the force is "spread out" over the surface of a sphere and as the radius of the sphere increases, the surface area increases as a function of the square of the radius. I'm a mathematician and work in differential geometry so a geometrical explanation would be great, although I realise that one might not exist! — Fly by Night (talk) 22:31, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

For electric charges we imagine lines of forces flying out as straight lines in all directions, e.g. File:Inverse square law.svg. At greater distances, the same lines are spaced more sparsely over the surface of the surface. That explains the inverse square law. However, as far as we know there are no comparable sources of magnetic field lines, i.e. magnetic monopoles. Instead the fundamental field configuration in magnetism is not a straight line, but rather a closed loop resulting from a dipole field. All known magnetic fields can be described as a combination as dipoles. As one increases in distance from a dipole, two things happen. First, the area per field line increases in the same way as one would expect by considering the inverse square law. However, there is an important second effect. Since each field loop has a limited extent, the number of field loops present also decreases with distance. Qualitatively, these two effects combine to give an inverse cube law. Dragons flight (talk) 05:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Free 3D CAD program

I am looking for a free 3D CAD program. It doesn't have to be to advanced. I just want to put my smartphone designs down on "paper". --Melab±1 ☎ 21:21, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

You could try SketchUp - I've not tried it myself, but it looks capable of being used for basic CAD work. Most proper CAD software (as opposed to simple 3D modelling software) seems to be proprietary, and expensive (see Comparison of 3D computer graphics software) AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:32, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Try DAZ 3D. This is free (mostly). Or Blender (software) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 22:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I've used Blender; it has a considerable learning curve (its interface is highly unintuitive if you haven't used these kinds of programs before). I've also tried SketchUp — honestly, I preferred Blender. SketchUp is more immediately intuitive, but I found it very hard to do the kind of careful creation that I was accustomed to in Blender, once I had learned how to use Blender. But they're both free, so give them a shot. I preferred Blender, but it took working through a "how to make things" tutorial until I felt comfortable enough with it to really do very much. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Wings 3D may be a good choice. It's not as powerful as Blender, but it's easier to get used to, and in my opinion, it's slightly better for precision work (which is a big plus for CAD work). --Link ^(t•c•m) 11:11, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

If all you want is to draw a design, you can use Inkscape, Gimp, or another computer drawing program. Technically, Blender falls into this category: it's a surface modeler, not a CSG CAD program. If all you want is to draw a 3D shape, Blender is probably a suitable choice.

If you want to use CAD for modeling and manufacturing design, you need to use a CAD tool that exports in a standard CAD file format (e.g., a .dwg file) - like OrCAD or SolidWorks, (which are not free). BRL-CAD and FreeCAD are comparable and free; but in my opinion, they are just not as ... good ... as SolidWorks, which really does set the standard.

Remember - CAD is not just "drawing with snap-to-grid." It's putting geometry into a format that a computer program can use and understand - for thermal and mechanical simulations; manufacturing analysis, stress simulations, ... these are not "user-friendly" tasks, and they require advanced knowledge of computer programming and engineering concepts. Do not expect a "fun and easy" user-interface to a CAD program: it is not just a fancy paint-program. Have a look, for example, at BRL-CAD documentation: particularly the industry overview, which shows the "intended use-cases"; and the Principles of Effective Modeling. You will quickly see that CAD is much more complicated than just drawing pictures. Nimur (talk) 19:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Trying to play or convert .ogg files?

First, sorry Im new the the english language, I'm playing Dungeons a PC game and I go into program files and find the music tracks for the game but theyre .ogg files. Perhaps anyone would know how to play these files? Or convert them? Thanks much CHRISTIANgamer97 (talk) 22:45, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Your files are in Ogg Vorbis, an open source music format. See Vorbis#Application_software for some of the software that supports it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:03, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The VLC Media Player from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ will do it. It's free to download. HiLo48 (talk) 23:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to convert them by opening them up with Audacity and saving them as MP3 files. TheGrimme (talk) 19:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

September 18

Google alerts and Google Books

Hi,

Does Google Alerts provide results from new content in Google Books?

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 00:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

No. See Google Alerts for more information.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

computer languages

Suppose I wanted to write my own computer programs, maybe starting with this idea I have for a simple drawing program, before moving on perhaps to games, even an entire operating system incorporating several new ideas I have been developing in that area, which I am not about to reveal all over the internet. Question is, though, what programming language would I be best off learning to do this, and also where would I go to study it and to download the software needed to run it? (And before anyone suggests it, I cannot simply start a university or college course in the subject.)

148.197.81.179 (talk) 08:47, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

If you want to write your own operating system, it doesn't really matter what language you learn, because you will have to write a compiler for that language for your operating system. If you didn't think that task through to its logical conclusion, I might suggest you should learn a bit more about computing before starting the daunting task of systems design. It isn't impossible - it's just very difficult. I also suggest that you research operating systems. They have existed for decades, and it's very probable that somebody has already implemented your improvement ideas.

In the mean time, I recommend C and Java as the best languages to learn for novice programmers. Other regular contributors on this desk have their own opinions, and you can search through our archives for similar previous discussions. Nimur (talk) 15:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I always recommend Microsoft's XNA Game Studio, in which you can write programs (including games) in the C# programming language. The Visual Studio Express IDE/compiler/debugger download is free and awesome. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

C++ is widely used for games, but can also be used for operating systems. Generally operating systems are written in C, C++ and/or assembler, because you need the low-level facilities of those languages. If you only want to learn one language for all these purposes, C++ is the most suitable of commonly-used languages, although not the easiest to learn (C would also work but is more limited). C# or Java as already mentioned would be better for making drawing software or other simple graphical applications, but aren't used for operating systems because they require virtual machines to run. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

A drawing program is simple to get started with, and nowadays it's possible for one person to write a very successful game (like Minecraft). However, an operating system is a very different kettle of fish. Not even the wildly popular linux was written from scratch - the kernel was based on a lot of previous development in Unix/GNU/etc. and then they relied on a large community to write the rest of the software that sits above the kernel. I think it would be impossible for one person to develop a commercial OS - you would have to make it open-source and have the backing of a large community for starters, and it's always work-in-progress. I suggest you implement your ideas as third-party applications or plugins and hopefully one day sell them to the corporate that owns the OS. Sandman30s (talk) 13:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Free Windows HTTP server for learning

I'm looking for a good, free HTTP server for Windows, for learning how to put together a website. I need something that's easy to get started with, meaning you don't need to read a lot of documentation before you can try simple things. It should support common open-source server-side scripting technologies. It's not for "production" and really advanced features are not needed. I've looked at Lighttpd but I couldn't find a good tutorial. The full set of documentation is a little intimidating. Any suggestions? --173.49.19.109 (talk) 11:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Usbwebserver AvrillirvA (talk) 11:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Apache web server is free, and is widely used. On Windows, Internet Information Services is the official server provided by Microsoft, though it is only free on certain distributions of Windows. I would not waste time learning any other system: there are thousands of web server softwares, but very few are widely used. Nimur (talk) 15:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I strongly suggest Apache. It's what you'll likely encounter if you ever try to use a production server remotely hosted, and it's also very easy to get the binaries going under Windows. Shadowjams (talk) 22:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I will third the recommendation of Apache. You can easily instal it, along with PHP and MySQL with WAMP server. TheGrimme (talk) 18:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

youtube and networks

Two questions that might be related. Firstly, having moved back to university, I have signed into their internet network, I have to put in a password at the start of the year and otherwise it seems to have no effect on my internet use, but I am wondering, can they see what I am doing here, find out what I am downloading or uploading, which sites I am going on and such like? Secondly, could this then interfere with attempts to upload something to youtube. it worked at home, but I tried something else here and rather than uploading and then processing the film, it uploads, claims to be processing but sits there doing nothing a long time, whilst at the same time, half the film has already been uploaded and people are watching it and wondering where the other half is, whilst I am still waiting for it to process. If it is not something university related trying to stop me uploading anything, what else could be wrong here?

148.197.81.179 (talk) 13:25, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, never mind all that, a simple question, why can I not upload anything to youtube longer than 4:33? Both things I have tried to upload longer than that is has suddenly cut off there, whilst nothing shorter is affected at all.

148.197.81.179 (talk) 14:54, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Strange. Can you upload the video to a different site without the same problem? Or, to test if it is the Uni's network, try uploading it from somewhere else - e.g., a Starbucks or a public library?

Also, have you tried uploading to youtube in a different browser, just to see if that has any effect? ^Avic_ennasis @ 16:13, 19 Elul 5771 / 16:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

To answer the other original question, yes, of course the school's upstream computers have logs of every Internet connection you make. The university will have policies about those logs: who gets to view them, how long they are kept, and so forth; you can ask them for their policies about logs of your Internet access, and they'll give you the policies. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Problem getting PS3 to recognize external HD

I bought an external 2 terabyte drive[17] to use with my PS3. I pretty much followed the directions here:[18]

1. I reformatted it to FAT32
2. I created my GAME, MUSIC, VIDEO and PICTURE directories and copied some music, video and pictures files to the appropriate directories. (My GAME directory is empty.)

I hooked it up to my PS3 but it does not recognize my external HD at all. I cannot access any of the files on my HD and I don't even see any icon for an external HD anywhere in the PS3's menus. I've tried hooking it up to two different PS3s and both have the same problem. Does anyone have any ideas what could be wrong? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:38, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Wireless Printer

Resolved

I've just been out an bought a Kodak ESP C315 printer. When I got home, I realised that there was no USB cable in the box. It turns you have to pay extra for the cable to connect it to your computer! The only option is to use the wireless option. The manual says that I need a wireless router; which I don't have. I have an HTC Wildfire S, and I connect that to my laptop with USB tethering to share my phone's mobile network with my computer. When the printer searches for a wireless network, my phone doesn't show up. Does anyone have any idea how I can get my laptop to talk to my computer either directly or via my phone? — Fly by Night (talk) 16:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree the recent trend to not include a USB cable (even in some low cost wired printers!) is annoying. USB cables cost a fiver. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:57, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I bet they don't cost Kodak a fiver. When I've just paid £100 for a printer, and they can't give me a free cable… Any way, I've got my phone acting as a wi-fi hotspot now, so all's well. — Fly by Night (talk) 16:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Windows 7 explorers jumping back pages

This is a repeat of this. It is happening again. Has anyone else heard of this or had it happen to them? How can I fix it? Does the Windows installation CD come with a recovery facility to restore just the operating system? --Melab±1 ☎ 19:40, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I saw this happen on a Windows XP machine. I fixed the issue by running msconfig (by going to the Start menu and typing msconfig, then ENTER) and unchecking a bunch of programs under "Startup" that were starting automatically. I also ran services.msc and set a bunch of unused services from starting automatically. Then, I restarted the computer. In other words, it was certainly a third-party program that was causing the issue. But I disabled so many programs that I was unsure which one was causing it.--Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

September 19

Why HTML content and CSS presentation rather than XML content and XSLT+HTML+CSS presentation?

The universal theme of web design is the eternal struggle to make a page look right using CSS without sacrificing the semantic meaning of the HTML describing its content. Frequently, we could make a certain section display exactly the way we want it to, if only we could use tables without committing a sin against the heavens good design principles.

A solution seems evident: send your content as arbitrary XML of your design, and transform it into whatever crazy thousand-nested-divs-with-inline-CSS you need to make the page look right using client-side XSLT, imbuing the rendered HTML with no semantic meaning whatsoever. (And XSLT is Turing complete, so you have way more flexibility than with just CSS selectors.) Yet, hardly anyone actually does this (in the real world, as opposed to W3C wonderland). Is there a reason for this? « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 03:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

In my experience, comparatively few people are familiar with XSLT - especially considering the minimal technical training for the generic "web designer" profession. Though XSLT is more powerful and flexible than HTML/CSS, it's also harder to use; there's less support in web browsers for it; and there are fewer good design tools.

I think XML / XSLT would be a huge step forward toward enabling semantic web; and it would make it much easier for individual users to customize their display and content-presentation preferences; but this doesn't seem to be the direction the actual internet mainstream is evolving towards. Nimur (talk) 05:57, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I only used XSLT briefly, and I have a strongly negative visceral reaction to it. (The funny thing is that it's not all that dissimilar from the Scheme macro system, which I love. I think that XSLT's syntax simply prevents comprehension on my part.) In any event, the web developer is free to write a backend that stores XML (or whatever) and uses XSLT transformations (or whatever) to generate the HTML/XHTML that gets sent over the wire. It means that whatever gets sent over the wire is ugly, but browser developer tools need to operate on the thousand-nested-divs in order to correspond to reality anyways, so I don't think there's any great loss. Paul (Stansifer) 16:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Advice on Upgrading PC for Gaming

Hi,

Here is my current setup:

CPU: AMD Athlon 7750 Dual-core 2.7 GHz

RAM: 3 GB PC2-8500
Video card: ASUS EAH4670 (512 MB VRAM, 750 MHz, 128-bit memory interface, 320 stream processors)

Motherboard: ASUS M4A78 Plus

I'm considering getting a new ASUS EAH6850 (with 1 GB VRAM, 790 MHz, 256-bit memory interface, and 900 stream processors). Would that, by itself, improve my gaming performance? Or, would I need a new CPU, too, before I notice a difference? I just got a couple new 1680x1050 monitors and I'd like to play games at full resolution on one of them. I'm going to be getting Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 when they come out. I had to play Grand Theft Auto IV on medium quality at 1024x768 to prevent stuttering. If I re-installed Grand Theft Auto IV, would the new card help with that? Would the CPU prevent the GPU from operating at peak capacity?

Thanks,

Best Dog Ever (talk) 04:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

why do domain registry fees differ so widely?

I've looked at NetRegistry and Melbourne IT for Australian domain name registry (.com.au), and the prices differ markedly, yet I can't figure out what one is offering that the other isn't. In what ways do services generally differ? I'm not asking people to tell me what I get with the specific providers mentioned (if you know anyway, please go ahead), but rather, the sorts of things I should look out for, so I know how to make an intelligent comparison. Thanks in advance, It's been emotional (talk) 06:18, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Variable number of nested loops

For example:

for a=1 to n
   for b=1 to n
      for c=1 to n
         (do whatever←86.155.185.195 (talk) 13:54, 19 September 2011 (UTC))
      next c
   next b
next a

is some BASIC with three nested loops. The pattern could be extended explicitly to any number of them, but is there a construct in basic BASIC to permit the number of such loops to be variable in the program, i.e. dependent on something and not fixed at the time it was written?←86.155.185.195 (talk) 13:54, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes. See Recursion_(computer_science). Basically you make functions that can call themselves. A common function of this sort is one that looks through a directory tree for a file. The first instance of the function looks for the file its current directory, and if it doesn't find it, it looks to see if it has other directories in its directory. If so, it calls another instance of the same function (itself) on each of those directories. Done correctly, it can run arbitrary number of loops as it searches through every directory for the file. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

My recollection is that "basic" BASIC does not allow recursion. You can however, at the very least, put your loops inside "if-then" statements or skip over them using conditional GOTO's. Looie496 (talk) 14:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

You can do it, but it isn't easy, and it's pretty ugly. See e.g. this article. Either way, though, recursion is the answer to the question. Implementation is a separate issue. Googling "BASIC recursion" or "BASIC recursive" comes up with a lot of different implementations. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:54, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

If you don't have access to recursion, you rewrite the algorithm to use an explicit stack. In general, the stack keeps track of partially-completed work. This is, of course, a case where Greenspun's tenth rule looms ahead. Paul (Stansifer) 16:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

This specific case can be done with an array and a while loop. The number of for loops is the number of elements in the array. While all of the elements are <n, keep doing the function. At the end of each iteration, add 1 to the last element of the array. If it equals n, reset it to 1 and add one to the previous element, etc... You'd obviously do that in a for loop. -- kainaw™ 16:44, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added an implementation of that far below.. In the absense of recursion the idea above of using a stack is better than using an array (since not all basics allow the size of the array to be determined compile time) - however not all basics let you play with a stack either...Imgaril (talk) 18:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

In cases where recursion isn't allowed, I've sometimes resorted to multiple copies of the same program, each of which calls the next in the series:

PROG1:
for a=1 to n
  if (...) then 
    call PROG2 ()
  else 
    (...)
  endif
next a

PROG2:
for a=1 to n
  if (...) then 
    call PROG3 ()
  else 
    (...)
  endif
next a

Of course, this only provides for as many levels of "recursion" as there are programs, but recursion is always limited in some way, anyway (CPU time and memory, if nothing else). StuRat (talk) 16:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I've had this problem - a solution for almost all programming languages (even those without recursion) is to use a loop over arrays eg if you want 10 loops create an array n[10] . You need an index variable "i" so that you can tell which loop you are in. It is necessary to replace those "for nexts" with "if-thens" or "repeat-until"

I'll also add two more array variables "min[size]" and "max[size]" which you should be able to guess what they are for, and I'm assuming you've preloaded them with the bounds you want

for a=1 to size: n[a]=min[a]:next a  size is the number of for next loops, initiate the start values for the loops

n(i)=n(i)-1 because of the way I wrote this start the first loop with value minus 1

label loop2             this is a GOTO point
i=1
   
label loop1             another GOTO point
 n(i)=n(i)+1                    increment the for-next loop variable
   if (n(i)>max(i)) then       check for end of for-next loop
     n(i)=min(i)               if end of loop found reset previous loop variable
     i=i+1                      increment loop index
       if (i>size) then end     this bit checks for the end of all the loops
         else
           goto loop1           this is the equivalent of the NEXT bit
         endif
     else 
       do some stuff HERE - YOUR MAIN LOOP CALCULATIONS HERE
       goto loop2              this is the equivalent of a NEXT instruction after the a previous NEXT has finished
     endif

This works (checked) -you should be able to replace the GOTOs with "repeat untils" or similar. This method is good for simple compilers since it readily converts to machine code. However a recursive method (recursion) is easier to write and maintain - it well work spending the time and effort learning how to do recursion (and how to write this program recursively) - bugs are easier to find, though a compiler may have a harder time of it making it into fast code. If you need an example of this written as a recursive program now is the time to ask..

I've never seen this impemented as a keyword in basic - but it may exist (possibly in other more modern languages)

The suggestion of using the stack (Stack (data structure)) to store the values of the for next variables is a good one - and well worth learning - it has advantages over having to pre-define an array to store the "for-next" loop values (especially when your basic doesn't allow you to redefine array size on the fly) - however I don't think many basics will support stacks. Imgaril (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Letterboxing at Lower Resolutions (Win7)

Resolved

Just the last two days, my Win7 laptop has been letterboxing fullscreen applications when they play at lower resolutions than my native one (1366x768) - i.e. the application plays in the middle of the screen and I get black regions on either side. I have no idea why this has suddenly started happening, and I would like to change it back so that these lower-rez applications are scaled up to play fullscreen without letterboxing, like they did up until just a few days ago. Does anyone know what I should do? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 13:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Letterboxing would show mattes above and below; your issue is pillarboxing. 1366x768 is 16:9 ratio so it appears that your applications are using a different aspect. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Pillarboxing, ok, cheers. And, yes, I know what the problem is. I am looking for a way to solve it. :) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I would guess that either your software has had an update or the video is now provided in a different format than previously. What software are you using to play the videos ? Most software would have settings for display preferences. However, if yours doesn't or you can't find it, another option is to lower the screen resolution on the laptop to more closely match the video. You may still have small black bars, but hopefully it will be improved somewhat. And, as a bonus, not having to scale up the video may make it look better and play with less lag. StuRat (talk) 16:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, when I said 'fullscreen applications' I meant programs like games and game editors and whatnot. Anyway, the problem seems to have been fixed as I rolled back my NVidia driver. No idea why the problem started in the first place, though, as my driver wasn't updated over the weekend.

Google query

Is there a thesaurus prefix function for Google that works along the same lines as "define:"? Thanks much in advance! Scarian^{Call me Pat!} 14:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Not really. Google does have synonym capability. Place a ~ in front of a word and Google will use all synonyms of the work in the query. However, it gives precedence to the word you typed. You can stop that by using - to remove that word. So, searching for "~short -short" turns up listings featuring small, brief, etc... -- kainaw™ 14:54, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

video editing

A little while ago I asked about simple free downloadable video editors, intending to make a few simple changes to certain films before uploading them to youtube. I was refered to Avidemux, which seemed to work well, however, I have since discovered that anything edited in that program will no longer play in any other program, and though it uploads to youtube quite well, for some reason the sound always disappears somewhere, and all the films are now in silent, though they play with sound in the editor still. So, is there anything I can do to fix any of this? Also, is there any way of arranging for a particular film to run backwards in this program, or would I be better off downloading something else instead? Finally, can I upload the unedited version into the place of the one on youtube now, or would I have to delete that and start again to get any sound?

148.197.81.179 (talk) 17:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

computing: python

How do I come out with an algorithm to check if a number is a square number, prime number and a Fibonacci number using python? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.69.2.13 (talk) 18:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to the Wikipedia Reference Desk. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.

Start by reading the definition of prime number, square number, and the fibonacci sequence. There are lots of algorithms that can implement sequence-generation; and you can just use a straightforward brute-force check: create a list of all prime numbers (square numbers, fibonacci sequence members, etc), that are smaller than or equal to your input number. Then, if you find a match... your number is a prime (or square, or a member of the fibonacci sequence). Nimur (talk) 18:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)