Easier to answer than the reverse question. I was surprised to see an Amazon reviewer from Yemen, although I do not know if they were based there. Are there any countries where the internet has not spread to? And is there a list anywhere of the proportion of the population using the internet for various countries? Thanks. 78.147.245.100 (talk) 12:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See List of countries by number of Internet users and http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm for some info. Nanonic (talk) 13:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Internet in North Korea may also be of interest Nil Einne (talk) 14:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are certainly internet websites hosted in North Korea, and there is internet infrastructure there. The extent to which it is freely available is debatable, but there is absolutely physical network connectivity. There are also internal data and voice networks which are not connected to the globally-administered network system with global IPs assigned by ICANN and its collaborators. At this point, it's worth making a critical definition: "the" internet is just the largest interconnected network. There are dozens of other large networks - some even using identical IP-based technology - which are not connected to "the" internet. Nimur (talk) 18:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nimur: could you give a couple examples of such a large network which is not connect to The Internet? Enquiring minds want to know! (I'm assuming you are not just talking about large company or university intranets, right?) DaHorsesMouth (talk) 01:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Large intranets are not really independent, because they use globally valid IP addresses and rely on the outside internet infrastructure for connectivity. NIPRNet has some connection to the Internet - however, its network infrastructure is entirely redundant to the civilian internet (it does not rely on any routers that constitute The Internet to get data from point A to point B). SIPRNet comes to mind as one entirely redundant internet that specifically does not connect to the globally addressable internet. How big is it? Where is it? You'll never know... But seriously, this is used for many in-country and out-of-country data connections, including things as diverse and benign as emails, telephone calls, and web sites, as well as things that we can only speculate about. Small regional and local independent and unconnected SIPRNets almost certainly also exist, but the likelihood that we will ever hear about them in public is close to zero. JWICS claims to be "worldwide." Surely other large organizations with sensitive networks, both inside and outside the United States, have similar systems. To some extent, any large LAN with more than one internetworked subnet can be called an internet, provided that it has a globally managed IP scheme, at least one or two routers (especially if they are peering using a border gateway protocol), and a unified domain name service which can be entirely unrelated to "the internet" DNS scheme. Nimur (talk) 02:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I get it -- thanks! DaHorsesMouth (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have been trying to print some work out from my computer, but all the colours are coming out rather different to they are on screen, mostly rather paler than I had wanted, but also dramatically bright, particularly the browns which look orange instead. At the same time, the print quality is rather bad, but the printer is pouring so much ink onto the page that the paper has been bent out of shape. And the margin on one side has gone, the pictures go right to the edge, where there is a row of smudgy triangles, presumably something to do with the way the ink moves back and forth over the paper. Is there any way of fixing all of this rather soon, such that I can get everything printed out nicely?

148.197.115.54 (talk) 12:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing you have an inkjet printer— the manufacturer and model would really help to evaluate the issues. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently it's a Canon Pixma printer. 148.197.115.54 (talk) 14:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You may be able to find an option on the printer menu to clean the print head - try that. Or go to the Cannon website and see if they say anything about your problems and how to fix them. 92.29.31.202 (talk) 17:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pixma is a series of several printers. Try searching for Canon Pixma smudge or check http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/ ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a fan of Microsoft, but. Microsoft Office 2000 is 128mb in size, OpenOffice is 401mb. Internet Explorer is 4.7mb, Mozilla Firefox is 26.4mb. Why the huge difference in sizes? I've heard it said that Internet Explorer is smaller because it is integrated into Windows, but I should'nt think it makes that much of a difference. 92.29.31.202 (talk) 13:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Um why are you comparing a 10 year old version of Office to (I presume) a modern version of OpenOffice? Also it's not clear to me where these sizes are coming from. I have the IE8 download for Windows XP x32 on my computer. It's 16.5mb. I also have the download for Firefox 3.5.3, it's 7.5 mb. Of course such sizes are not particularly useful since it depends on things like optional components, compression used etc. Are you referring to RAM usage when running? If so it'll vary depending on a number of factors. For example, what component of Office? For the browser, did you just open it with a single window, no tabs and no page open? P.S. The integration can make a big difference because the various components can make up for a substanial proportion of the size or memory usage. For example, if I could program, I could surely design a special version of Firefox with a download size of say 250k and memory usage of a few mb even with many windows open but it requires the 'Firefox support component' which is always running and is an additional download of say 10 mb with memory usage in the hundreds of mb with lots of windows open. Would you say this special Firefox is 'less bloated' then the normal Firefox? P.S. I hope you're not considering a version if IE older then IE8 considering what buggy POS they tend to be, particularly IE6 or older. Before someone says IE8 is the same, that may be partially true, but ignores the may point which is that however bad IE8 may be, IE7 and particularly IE6 and older are far worse Nil Einne (talk) 14:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The size is the size of the program. MS Office 2000 is the only one I've got. Internet Explorer is version 8. Now I think of it Firefox may include the size of some plugins, but I recall the plugins were small in size. Let us not let hysteria triumph over an objective consideration of the facts. 92.29.31.202 (talk) 15:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep in mind, OpenOffice and Firefox ship not just their executables, but all their support code in one package. By contrast, many elements of IE are common controls in the operating system; you paid the cost for them when you installed the OS in the first place. IE8 is less tightly integrated, but in older versions of IE, IE was just the menu bar and frame encapsulating an instance of the HTML rendering DLL that shipped with the OS, so you couldn't get an exact "size" of IE. Beyond that, we've reached the point where even small flash based hard drives are 32 GB in size or larger. A difference of a couple hundred meg is very little; most people only use a dozen programs or so, so even if you "wasted" 200 MB a pop (and keep in mind, the software may be providing additional features with the space used), you'd still only use up an extra 2.4 GB. My home machine has 1.7 TB of storage space, and maybe 10% of that is programs (and most of that is games, not productivity programs). If Firefox used five times the space I'd still consider the features to be worth it. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 15:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My Firefox version 3.5.6 is 17M. I don't have a single size for OpenOffice because you can download each part you want separately. The core that is always needed is 220M. After that, the word processor is 73K, the spreadsheet is 61K, and the presentation program is 58K. If I download everything, I'll never get to 401M. -- kainaw™ 14:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean the word processor is 73M, the spreadsheet is 61M and the presentation program is 58M? Nil Einne (talk) 14:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to the download packages, each one is K. I double-checked because I couldn't see it being so small, but it says K. I figure you are downloading them in the core and then doing nothing more than downloading a launcher for each one with the separate packages. Rather stupid way to do it in my opinion. -- kainaw™ 15:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In defense of the OpenOffice design philosophy, here's the Technology Overview - Component Interoperability whitepaper. Kainaw correctly points out that the ~50 kilobyte packages are separate launchers - formally, these are the "Application Layer." On account of the nature of modern digital documents, there is a System Abstraction Layer below this - effectively there's no difference between the software which runs the spreadsheet or the word processor, except for the user interface toolbars. This is necessary - what would you do if you had to open a document which contained a chart or table? You need the software subroutines which handle those components. Similarly, if you had a chart or spreadsheet with lots of text in one cell - that would be handled by the Text Processing routine. So, you need the entire core (technically, though, there are two sub-sets of the System Abstraction Layer, you can install separately). Nimur (talk) 23:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On my Mac, MS Office 2004 is 524 MB, OpenOffice is 345MB. I would count these as being pretty much in the same range. Firefox is 50MB, Safari is 102MB. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually a good illustration of my point: On a Mac, the OS doesn't ship with the support DLLs Microsoft can rely on in Windows (for example, the Edit and RichEdit controls), so the program has to include them in the installer, so you see the cost of MS Office more accurately. That said, my point about hard disk space being infinite stands; the only way you run out of space on a home machine nowadays is media files (video in particular); programs really don't enter in to the equation. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 15:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice includes the Java Runtime, which increases the file size. Also, OpenOffice is significantly slower than Microsoft Office because OpenOffice is written in Java and MS Office is written in C++.--Drknkn (talk) 18:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

^{[citation needed]}! That's a very harsh statement - do you have a benchmark or dataset to back that claim up? What exactly runs slower in OpenOffice? And is it because the implementation is in Java? Unless you can verify this, you should avoid making the claim. Nimur (talk) 02:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Be careful when measuring the speed of MS Office - if you are thinking about the time it takes to load, you need to make sure you don't have it loading most of it at startup (I'm not sure what the default is now, but it always used to default to loading at startup). If it is loading at startup then obviously it won't take long to load when you actually click the icon. (If you use Office all the time, then you may want it to load at startup, otherwise you should stop it (Start->Run->"msconfig"). --Tango (talk) 02:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On my Mac, incidentally, both Office and OO.org take about the same time to load up, but OO.org is noticeably slower, almost impossible to use on a regular basis. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't the place I originally read about it, but here is one comparison. It is common knowledge that programs that run inside a virtual machine and that are compiled into bytecode run slower and startup slower than programs compiled into native code. It'd be the same if MS Office were written in .NET and compiled into MSIL. So I'm not picking on Java.--Drknkn (talk) 09:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible to create a .htaccess file that redirects while keeping the original URL displayed in the browser's address bar, even across filenames? 202.10.91.153 (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid not, any redirect will literally redirect them and the browser will show the new URL. The only way to do what you want is to have an HTML page on the server using a frame or iframe to point to the "real" site. ZX81 ^talk 17:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Yes, at least as long as the URL you're redirecting to is on your site. What you want is what Apache calls an "internal redirect" (as opposed to an actual HTTP redirect). With mod_rewrite, you accomplish that by not using the "R" flag in your RewriteRule (and making sure that the redirect target is not a full URL, or at least not one pointing to another site).

If you have both mod_redirect and mod_proxy installed, you can also use the "P" flag to issue an "internal redirect" to an URL on another site, at least sort of: what Apache does in this case is act as a proxy server, fetching the content of the URL from the other server and sending it back to the user as if it had come from your site instead. Ask yourself twice if this is really what you want to do, though: usually, it's not. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good information, but those really strain the definition of "redirect". --Sean 19:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think it works pretty good if you don't know it is called "mod_rewrite," which isn't exactly intuitive regarding what is going on. That's basically what a redirect is if you want the URL to stay the same in the title bar—not a real redirect, but a rewrite. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many years ago I was told that a CD would outlive a CD player if played constantly 24/7. Is this true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 17:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the statement, but can't find a reference for the expected life of a CD in our compact disc article. (Anyone feel like remedying this?) Even a recordable CD, though, which is expected to experience disc rot way before a regular (non-recordable) CD, is expected to last from 20 to 100 years, according to the compact disc article. By contrast, I don't think a CD player could be expected to run for 20 years continuously without breaking. Again, though, I have no actual reference to cite. This situation is the reverse of a record player, where the vinyl record becomes scratched as the needle scrapes across the pits; a CD player only physically touches the CD on the inside rim, where there's no data stored. The data is read "touchessly" via a laser that just reflects off the CD's surface, so there's little opportunity for the CD to get scratched or degraded like a vinyl record in a record player is. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense to me. CD players have moving parts—moving parts break down pretty quick. The CD in the CD player is not doing anything but rotating—reading data off of it causes no wear. CDs do certainly "die" after awhile but it's not from being used in the player. They can, of course, get damaged when being put into a player, or being outside of the player. But once they are in, nothing really happens to them. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec w/autosigning bot) My mic sucks, and I'm waiting for my new one to arrive. In lieu of my voice, is there any way to make windows built-in TTS feature speak for me through a driver or something? Like if I type in something then play it it will play in Counter-Strike Source. This is more curiosity if something like this exists and not really life-or-death.  Buffered Input Output 20:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.100.221 (talk) 21:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll have to elaborate on your question before we can answer it. Is Model Mayhem a particular website? If it's returning an HTTP 404 error, either you are accessing resources which don't exist, or the site administrator is derelict in their duties. Maybe you can contact the responsible party. As far as Model Mayhem (the Wikipedia article), we don't have one by that name - it is technically redlinked, not 404'ed. The technical distinction is that the resource is returned with an HTTP 200 code, but the Wiki software has no wiki content to deliver under that name. Nimur (talk) 23:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps he means this website, but it seems to be functioning normally from where I am. So far as I can tell, anyway. APL (talk) 23:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec)Are you referring to the website itself being down, or the article that has not been written? In the case of the website it could be any of the reasons stated in the 404 article, or perhaps a mistyped address. I hope this helps. JW..[ T..C ] 23:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At what color subsample does Blu-Ray movies use? Is it 4:2:0 like DVD or higher quality 4:2:2 or 4:4:4? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This forum says 4:2:2 Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For the graphics (that's menus and stuff) Blu-ray Disc Format, 2.B Audio Visual Application Format Specifications for BD-ROM says those graphics are 8-bit palletised looking into an rgb8+8+8 CLUT. Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve rented a hosted dedicated server running Windows Server 2003 Web Edition for several years now. The server is mainly used as a web server (with Tomcat), but it’s also running e-mail (James) and SQL (MySQL) services. Starting sixteen days ago, the daily bandwidth usage skyrocketed according to the web hosting company, but the Tomcat log files don’t show a significant increase in HTTP bandwidth served. Furthermore, at the moment the network utilization shown on the Task Manager is low, so the super high bandwidth isn’t occurring all day. I suspect that maybe someone’s trying to hack the server using an attack that uses high bandwidth, but the attack isn’t going on all day. It would be very helpful to at least figure out which service is using up the bandwidth, so it would be very handy to be able to see the bandwidth over the course of a day broken down by how much of that bandwidth is going through each port. It would also be handy to see which remote IP address is using up the most bandwidth over the course of a day. Is there a more-or-less standard tool that would let me figure those two things out? I can’t find a tool built into Windows Server 2003 Web Edition that does what I need.

I happened to see a somewhat related thread above that mentions WireShark, so I’ve been reading some about that, thinking perhaps that would do what I need. But I’m concerned that for security reasons, my web hosting company might not be happy about me using a tool that puts the network card into promiscuous mode. Plus, I don’t have any need to see all the traffic passing through the network; I only need statistical information about packets that are addressed to my server. Since it sounds like there are ways of detecting a network card that’s in promiscuous mode, I’d prefer to not use a tool that uses promiscuous mode, to avoid any possibility of getting in trouble with the web hosting company. Red Act (talk) 01:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wireshark only puts the adapter into promiscuous mode if you tell it to; if you tell it not to, it just captures all the packets to and from this specific MAC (and broadcast and multicast packets). Wireshark is built on pcap, and the page for that lists a number of monitoring tools that might be more suitable for your purpose than Wireshark. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 03:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My notebook is not showing the accounts on the welcome page, you can move the mouse, but there is no windows account icons to click. When i try to boot in safe mode, the notebook shows those account icons and so i can enter in safe mode. I tried to disable some things in MSCONFIG to see if that helped, but that didnt helped my notebook. What can be the problem? 189.99.75.225 (talk) 03:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What OS? Did this occur after you installed some new software? (If so, try uninstalling the software while in safe mode.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Windows xp 187.89.87.206 (talk) 00:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The problem was the mouse, someway it was creating this problem.187.89.101.82 (talk) 22:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to use the public domain panel of drawings from this newspaper article in an article I am writing. I use Paint.NET for cropping/cleanup. I want to get the cleanest copy of the image I can, which I could if I could download the image and then manipulate it with the program, but the newspaper image (see previous link) provides pdf and "JP2" (which I think is JPEG 2000). I don't have Adobe Professional, which I think would allow me to save it as a different file format and then I could import that into Paint.NET. When I tried the download option, nothing on my computer supported opening the JP2 format, and I'm not how I could import that either even if I could download. Using print screen I need to make the image far too low a resolution to capture the six panel image with the descriptive text legible. I thought maybe I'd break it into two three panel images but the resolution still sucks. The only way I could do it is to zoom in on each of the six panels and print screen from there, resulting in six images, and I don't want to use them in that way. So, can anyone tell me what I can do? Maybe some free program I can download that will accept the JP2 format and allow me to convert it to a file format Paint.NET will recognize?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can open the pdf version in GIMP, crop/edit it, and save it in any format you like. -- kainaw™ 04:08, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Imagemagick should convert JPEG2000 fine: convert foo.jp2 foo.png -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 04:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can't remember which version it is (I'm borrowing someone else's computer), but I have Adobe Acrobat Professional (I think version 9) on my computer. What about using Special:EmailUser/Nyttend to send me the file? I'll be happy to try to help you when I get back to my computer late tomorrow. Nyttend backup (talk) 06:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do realise, BTW, that you can't attach images; but once I have your email address, I'll send you mine for you to be able to attach the image. Nyttend backup (talk) 06:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I've tried a few things none of which have worked. I tried downloading Imagemagick but the program downloaded without a wizard. Instead it had readme documents for various platforms which describe how to compile the program. Not a task I'm up to handling. I downloaded Gimp (which I'm keeping) but when I import the pdf (using "open location") with the URL of the PDF, the downloaded version doesn't have anywhere near the resolution that the image on the website does. In other words, if you use the "zoom box" on the Chronicling America site, you can get crisp resolution over one panel of the six panel image. When I try the same with either the pdf version download using adobe reader, or the GIMP import of the download, when I zoom the same way it pixelates, leading me to believe the pdf version they are allowing is fixed at a much lower resolution than the original. So I think downloading the JP2 is the only workable solution. Thanks for the offer Nyttend! However, as I said the pdf isn't viable. I'll try to figure something else out. Going to go try some JP2 google searches for a free program.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For ImageMagick: What OS are you running on? If it is a Windows-based, all you really need is the executable, convert.exe, that comes with the download package. If you are on anything Unix-based (e.g. OS X or Linux), then yeah, welcome to free-software hell, you might as well ignore it because it'll take an entire day to compile even if you don't run into trouble compiling the secondary packages. (Am I bitter about this? Yes indeed.) --Mr.98 (talk) 15:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On linux instead of compiling from source you'd use a package manager like the overwhelming majority does. I hope you haven't got all your info on linux from this study. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 15:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Running Windows XP. I looked for an executable in the download but didn't see one (and already trashed the download and emptied the trash).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have another issue. Now. When I click on the download JP2 it tries to open using Quicktime, and what I get is a screen opening with the Quicktime logo with a question mark overlayed. How do I make it so that the program I download to open the JP2 is the actual program that is used by my computer to attempt to open the JP2 when I download it from the Chronicling America site? (yes I know, I'm needy).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One workaround is that instead of clicking the JP2 file, right-click it, choose "Open With", and then choose whatever app you want to use instead of the QuickTime player. (BTW, I use Irfanview for all graphics conversion needs and recommend it; it works with JPEG 2000 also.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tried but it doesn't give the option for "open with". Here's a screenshot.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You need to download it to your computer first (select "Save Link As..." from the menu shown in your screenshot). Then open the folder you saved it to, right-click the file and select "Open With..." and then pick the program you want from the submenu. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all. With all the various help I received, not only did I learn a few things, but was able to download the file in its full version and upload it in high resolution glory, here. For closure, I was able to download and use Irfanview to recognize the JP2 and convert it to a format Paint.NET/Gimp both recognize. Thanks again.Fuhghettaboutit (talk) ---07:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1. What is a computer virus? 2. How can we build one? 3. What does an antivirus do to protect a pc from viruses? 4. How is a virus healed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chetanbasuray (talk • contribs) 06:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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.

It seems that you might want to read the computer virus article. The term "virus" is sometimes (incorrectly) used to describe any type of malicious computer software; really, to qualify as a virus, it needs to self-replicate. You can design such a program using a programming language and a compiler. Antivirus software uses numerous methods to prevent a virus infection - most commonly, the software has a database of known bad programs, and prevents the computer from downloading any file which contain those programs. You'll find some information about repairing a computer from malware in the malware article. Nimur (talk) 07:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a few password protected pdf files that I want to remove the passwords from. I have the passwords. I can read these files and print them, but there is no longer any reason for them to remain protected and I'm tired of looking up passwords whenever I want to open one. I already tried printing them to a pdf creator. I don't understand why that didn't work, but it didn't. Any other ideas? 69.208.0.74 (talk) 07:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Download PDFSharp. Create a tool based on the following code:

static void Unlock(String filename, String password)
{
	PdfDocument document = PdfReader.Open(filename, password, PdfDocumentOpenMode.ReadOnly);
	document.Save(filename);
}

The newly written PDF will contain all of the same contents but will not be password locked. I use this technique quite frequently. 124.214.131.55 (talk) 07:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

pdftk can do this. The command line would be something like pdftk [protected pdf name] input_pw [password] output [unprotected pdf name]. -- BenRG (talk) 00:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

difference between html server componemts and asp.net server components .can i use the html server components in a asp.net web applications ?

HTML components are sent directly to the browser as is. ASP.NET components are converted into HTML by the server, then sent to the browser. So, no matter what component you use, they'll all end up as HTML in the end. You can mix them up. It doesn't matter.--Drknkn (talk) 18:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tryin to manipulate pascal and u can helpme tanks thanks

this is the question insertion sort in a chained linear list of n elements can be formulated as follows: power p: = 1 to n-1 1 = CONSIDER the sorted list formed by the first p elements 2 = delete the P +1 th element 3 = insert this sublist has its proper place without creating a new link 4 = write the sorted list

and this is my code

program EMD;

TYPE
Typeelem = INTEGER;
Pointeur = ^Maillon;

Maillon = RECORD
Val : Typeelem;
Suiv : Pointeur
END;

{ Définition des variables }
VAR
Tete : Pointeur;
p,q,L,nouveau:pointeur;
pos:integer;
{ Définition des opérations du modèle sur les listes linéaires chaînées }

PROCEDURE Allouer ( VAR P : Pointeur ) ;
BEGIN NEW(P) END;

PROCEDURE Affval(P : Pointeur; Val : Typeelem );
BEGIN P^.Val := Val END;

FUNCTION Valeur (P : Pointeur) : Typeelem;
BEGIN Valeur := P^.Val END;

FUNCTION Suivant( P : Pointeur) : Pointeur;
BEGIN Suivant := P^.Suiv END;

PROCEDURE Affadr( P, Q : Pointeur ) ;
BEGIN P^.Suiv := Q END;

{ Module de création d'une liste linéaire chaînée à partir de N nombres lus se trouvant sur un fichier TEXT }

PROCEDURE Creer (VAR L : Pointeur );
VAR
I, N : Integer;
Nbr : Typeelem;
P, Q : Pointeur;
BEGIN
WRITE('Nombre d''éléments de la liste à créer : ');
READLN(N);
write('values are:)');
READLN(Nbr);
Allouer(P);
Affval(P, nbr);
L := P;
FOR I := 1 To N-1 Do
BEGIN
READLN( Nbr);
Allouer(Q);
Affval(Q, Nbr) ;
Affadr(P, Q) ;
P := Q ;
L:=p;


END;
Affadr(L , NIL);
END;
procedure recherche_s_l(var L:pointeur;var pos:integer);
var q,p:pointeur;

trouv:boolean;
begin
pos:=0;
p:=L;
{trouv:=false;}

while suivant(p) <> nil do begin if valeur(p)> valeur(suivant(p))then begin p:=suivant(p);
pos:=pos+1;
Q:=p;
end
else begin
q:= nil;
{ trouv:=true; }
L:=q;

readln;
end

end
end;

procedure acces_pos(var L:pointeur; var pos:integer);
var nouveau1:pointeur;
i: integer;
begin
i:=1;

nouveau1:=L;
while (nouveau1<>nil ) do begin
{ nouveau:=suivant(nouveau); }
nouveau1:=nouveau1^.suiv ;
i:=i+1;
if ((i= pos) and (nouveau1<>nil ))then nouveau := suivant(nouveau1) ;

{ if suivant(nouveau)=nil then writeln('maillon n''existe pas');}
end



{nouveau:=nil; }
{ if suivant(nouveau)=nil then writeln('maillon n''existe pas');}
END;
{ Affichage des éléments de la liste }

PROCEDURE Lister (L : Pointeur );
VAR
P : Pointeur;
BEGIN
P := L;
WHILE P <> NIL do
BEGIN
WRITELN(Valeur(P)) ;
P := Suivant(P)
END;
END;

procedure insertion(var L:pointeur;var nouveau:pointeur);
var courant: pointeur;{pointeur local servant a parcourir la iste}
begin courant:=L;
writeln('hello from insertion');
readln;
while (suivant(courant)<>(nil ))and (((valeur(nouveau)))<((valeur(courant)))) do BEGIN courant:=suivant(courant);
if valeur(courant) > valeur(nouveau) then begin
affadr(courant,nouveau);
courant:=nouveau;
affadr(suivant(courant),nouveau);
{suivant(courant):= nouveau;}
L:=courant;
{lister(L); }
end
END

end;


{le programme P}

begin


creer(L);
READLN;
repeat
recherche_s_l(L,pos);

{ lister(L);}
acces_pos(L,pos);

insertion(L,nouveau);

lister(L);
L:=L^.suiv;
readln;
until L=nil
end.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.88.34 (talk) 13:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And what is your question? Marnanel (talk) 15:19, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:Reference desk/How to ask a software question tutorial may provide the OP with useful guidelines. With this question and source code in its present form, it is unlikely anyone here will be able to give you a meaningful answer. Nimur (talk) 07:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

the programme doesn't work !it doesn't show the complete final list —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.88.34 (talk) 08:10, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That still isn't a question. Marnanel (talk) 17:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The question is clear isn't it - what is the bug - (my weak french and 'hate' of pascal prevents me from giving a definative answer), there's no dead for whatever character trait you are displaying :)87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried using a debugger in a pascal IDE - maybe something like free pascal / lazarus. Free Pascal , Lazarus (software)

I think it's worth asking - have you tried testing the program in parts? ie test the individual subroutines for correct behaviour? Also do you know if steps 1 to 3 have worked correctly? 87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some trail programs allow say 30 days of use then stop working a demand payment. If the program is uninstalled, then reinstalled it still remembers that the 30 days have been used. Obviously the uninstall process isn't a complete clear of all changes; something remains in the windows system. I want to clear this "remember" information to ensure the system is cleared of ALL traces of the previously installed program. How? Many thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It no doubt varies program by program. Usually such things are hidden in the Registry, but exactly where that info is stored, is probably different for each program. --Mr.98 (talk) 16:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They deliberately leave Registry entries and small files in different places to prevent what you are proposing to do. In theory, you could edit (or restore a backup of) your registry, and delete any small data files, but you will need to find out where they all reside. Formatting your hard drive and reinstalling your operating system is a very drastic solution to your problem. Dbfirs 08:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An easier way would be to set up a small virtual environment just for using the program (e.g. with VMWare). You could then wipe and restore the virtual environment after 30 days. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:00, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a much neater solution! I've never used VMWare. Does it create its own copy of the Registry .dat files? Dbfirs 07:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. Some programs even go to the extreme of hiding data in an used sector of the HDD, sector 32 being a common one (used by Macrovision Safecast for example used by numerous Adobe products among other things). I didn't include any links because I couldn't find a safe one (most discuss how to remove specific copy protections). In such a case, even formatting and reinstalling often won't be enough since much software won't touch that part of the HDD. Something like Darik's Boot and Nuke will do of course. Nil Einne (talk) 09:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What layer in the osi model does a server work with? I would guess Session and application, but does it know anything about the other layers.--Dbjohn (talk) 16:18, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It would depend on the type of the server (e.g., DNS, application, etc.). I think that application servers and web servers are unfamiliar with the details of the lower layers. The operating system would handle breaking up the data into packets and resolving addresses (with the aid of other servers and routers, of course). The application server would simply perform method calls using the operating system's networking API. It does not care how those methods work. It only calls them and the OS knows the individual instructions within those methods.--Drknkn (talk) 18:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting that a lot of modern "Web 2.0" servers are streaming multimedia over proprietary protocols (RTMP comes to mind). So, the server software must be aware of at least OSI layers 4 through 7 (since it's probably spewing out UDP packets with custom payloads). Most other stuff on the "web" uses TCP and HTTP, allowing the server software to only care about Layers 6 and 7. Nimur (talk) 20:08, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

None of the cited examples use a network protocol that follows the OSI model, these are all TCP/IP based systems.

Currently wide screen monitors are cheaper than the full screen computer monitors. Not only that, some stores don't stock monitors with a 4:3 aspect ratio. My own 19" acer monitor died recently and I'm using a ViewSonic widescreen TV/monitor as a makeshift screen. Using this monitor there are a couple of things that bother me. 1) some programs force the screen resolution to 800x600, 1024x768, etc. meaning it looks stretched on this widescreen. 2) this monitor does not have a way to adjust aspect ratio. Sure, I can adjust adjust the desktop resolution to make things proportional, but that ONLY works for the desktop. Yes Widescreen is how human eyes naturally see the world and its good for watching movies, but its really bad for games and programs built for 4:3 (i.e. anything older than two years). Of the wide screen monitors out there, are there kinds that can switch between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios? Preferably something that can automatically adjust aspect ratio based on the input resolution. — Kjammer  ⌂ 21:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many video cards let you choose how to handle scaling when displaying a resolution lower than the LCD resolution. For instance, my nVidia driver lets me choose between "Use nVidia scaling", "Use nVidia scaling with preserved aspect ratio", "use the LCDs built-in scaling", and "do not scale". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 21:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are either out of date or confused as to how programs handle wide-screen monitors these days. Every game I run that has a 4:3 aspect ratio just puts black bars on the side—it does not warp the image. They are far more flexible than you think they are. I have a wide-screen monitor and a wide-screen laptop and have no problem at all playing older games on it. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Don't have a widescreen monitor either, but I know some (can't recall brand) have a button on them to switch between 16:9(wide) & 4:3(normal) ratio. Some games allow you to select wide screen as well as 'standard' resolution/ratios, without any bars or distortion. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 23:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mr.98, your video drivers may be fancier than mine — my games don't do that; Warcraft 3 is an example of a game that just stretches wide to fit my monitor. Kjammer, I agree, it drives me nuts, too, that my local large-chain electronics store seems to stock 95% 1080p resolution monitors, which is just lame. I have started to buy monitors from Newegg or other online electronics retailers, but this seems to be some sort of wave of the future, unfortunately. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, if you send a non-widescreen image to a monitor, by default it'll stretch it UNLESS: A) The video driver is set to add the black bars/keep the normal proportions (as mentioned above NVIDIA cards can do this, but it's not on by default) or B) The monitor is set to diable scaling/streching in it's options, but then it'll also introduce lines above and below too (a 1024x768 image on a 1920x1200 monitor would result in a smaller squarer image in the middle of the widescreen monitor with black borders all around). ZX81 ^talk 00:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mr.98, I'm sure you mean well, but your post comes across to me as being pompous and arrogent. Just because you don't have a problem, doesn't mean you are right. Not all computers are created equal. I don't know about nVidia, but ATI cards do have the "maintain aspect ratio" option, but it is dependant on the kind of monitor being used. This works for brand name DVI monitors but it doesn't work with analog signals (VGA). Kjammer, if you have an ATI card with DVI-out, get a widescreen monitor with DVI-in, and find the appropriate settings in the Catalyst Control Center. Or if you're lucky to find an affordable 4:3 screen in working order, go for it! 137.229.82.44 (talk) 19:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can still find professional 'old' monitors on sites like B&H. Certain professionals still need them, apparently. Navigate to monitors and, on the left, select "standard" monitors. Mxvxnyxvxn (talk) 20:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes try an office supplier - 4:3 is still common - just not for the 'consumer products' side of the market.87.102.67.84 (talk) 17:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a computer with 2 hard drives, one IDE drive and one SATA drive. I installed a kind of old version of Windows XP (without a slipstreamed SATA driver) in the IDE drive and now I have a fully working Windows XP, however, the SATA drive is not recognized, neither by the OS, neither (apparently) by the BIOS.

What's the problem?

Thanks in advance. 85.244.155.144 (talk) 22:19, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hm — if it really isn't showing up in the BIOS screen then the problem is of course irrelevant to your OS. First you need to see that thing in the BIOS. Switch the SATA drive to a different physical SATA connector on the motherboard; or disconnect the IDE drive and see if the SATA drive starts showing up; or try a different SATA cable. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not testing right now, but I'm almost sure the computer booted from the SATA disk the last time I tried without the IDE one. Actually, the former operating system was installed on the SATA drive. Perhaps the board recognizes it and I didn't notice. Or can the IDE disk be causing some problem? 85.244.155.144 (talk) 23:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just to confirm, did you have both drives working with your previous operating system? Or is the IDE drive a new addition? If it's a new addition it might be that your motherboard supports an IDE emulation mode for SATA disks (which is what you are using) but that only works as long as you don't have something plugged into the IDE ports. If this is the case you'd need to into the BIOS and either turn off the SATA->IDE emulation (so it is truely seen as SATA and IDE) or experiment with the different physical ports. Bewarned that changing these options may result in Windows no longer booting due to the "boot drive" having changed physical location and you'd either need to reinstall again or edit the boot.ini file with another boot disc. ZX81 ^talk 00:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I had both drives, however, since there was valuable information in the SATA drive and the OS was malfunctioning, I preferred to install the new operating system in the IDE drive. 85.244.155.144 (talk) 11:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I have a couple of SATA 3.0 Gb/s disks on my elderly (SATA 1.5 Gb/s) motherboard, and neither disk is recognized by the BIOS when I first power on the system. I have to push the reset button after it's been on for a few seconds, and then it sees the disks. Worth trying if you haven't already. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although 3.0 Gb/s disks are in theory backwards compatible, some SATA 1.5 Gb/s have problems with them for reasons I can't remember. Some drives have a jumper you can use to limit the disk to 1.5 Gb/s, the OP may want to look into this Nil Einne (talk) 09:07, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does standard HTML provide, or are there plans to expand it to provide, a number-entry field with spin buttons, equivalent to the .NET Framework's System.Windows.Forms.NumericUpDown or Java's javax.swing.JSpinner? NeonMerlin 02:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No. You can do it with Javascript but there is no standard control for it. (If you Google, "Javascript spinner control" you get a bunch of pretty straightforward ones.) --Mr.98 (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a set of speakers with the sort of cords that plug into a computer sound cord. My tv/dvd only has rca inputs. Can I connect them using some sort of adapter? I found one review saying the speakers were good except they cannot be connected to a tv easily. Is there hope for me, or should I give up and just use them with my computer? Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If your TV only has RCA inputs, you can't connect that to a speaker. Your TV needs outputs. If it does have RCA outputs, you can buy an RCA-to-3.5mm adapter cable for anywhere from $5 to $15. This cable may be called an "A/V-to-Stereo" cable, an "RCA-to-Stereo", "RCA-to-1/8 inch", or "RCA-to-3.5mm" cable. Here's one from Amazon, and a similar one with a male 3.5mm connection. Do these look like they would plug in to the input/output combination you need? Nimur (talk) 04:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The [ http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Adapter-Rca-Mini-phone-Stereo/dp/B000A3GPIS first one] looks good, but my speakers have three of the speaker cord things (black, green, and orange). Is there a cable for that? I'm so helpless because I don't know cord vocabulary. Calliopejen1 (talk) 04:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you can photograph the back of the TV or DVD player; and the speakers, with cord(s). Do you need help uploading images? If there's a black/green/orange set of cables, usually this is a 5.1 system or a subwoofer connection - you'll need a source device (like a DVD player or Blu-Ray player) that supports surround sound to connect everything, but you can use the Green for just standard 2-way stereo. But I'm confused - I was under the impression you said the speakers plug into a "computer sound cord" (i.e., like a headphone jack - a 3.5mm stereo cable). Can you clearly describe or upload an image of how many speakers you have, how many cables they connect to, and what jacks you have available on the TV or DVD? Nimur (talk) 05:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, sorry for the confusion.... My TV has three holes. They take cords that look like this (I think these are RCA cords). My speakers are these and have three cords that look like this. I read somewhere on the internet that these plugs go into a sound card, so that's why I wrote that... They do plug into computer but I only have one speaker jack on my computer. When I plug the speakers into my computer, the black one makes the sound go to the back speakers, the orange one makes it go to the center speaker, and the green one makes it go to the front speakers. Calliopejen1 (talk) 15:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first image is of RCA connectors, the second is of TRS connectors and is probably the 3.5 mm version. You can get adapters at most big box stores. The Creative Inspire T6100 is a surround sound system— to fully use them, you need a system that has outputs for front, center and surround.

What model and brand is your TV? What are the labels on the RCA connectors? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My TV is an older Sylvania, I don't know what model. The labels on the RCA jacks are just L and R. I have two DVD players. (I could just hook the speakers straight to the DVD, because I don't need surround sound for normal TV.) They each have L, R, and coaxial RCA jacks. One also has an HDMI jack. Any thoughts? Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, if you want to have surround-sound, you'll need to get a DVD player which actually outputs 5.1 (i.e., has the electronics and software to generate separate signals for each speaker). In the meantime, you can do a few things. First, as I mentioned before, you can use the green cable only (which connects to the two front speakers) and one of the adapters linked above. This will produce sound, but most of your speakers will have no signal and will essentially be "off." Or, you can get an adapter like this, ($13), which "fakes" a 5.1 setup by feeding the single stereo signal from your DVD player to all of your speakers. This isn't really generating the full effect of surround sound, but it will make sound come out of all speakers. Is this what you're looking for? Nimur (talk) 04:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help! I ended up with these speakers because I got them for free to replace a 2.1 set of speakers for my computer I lost the power cord for... Then I found the power cord, so I was trying to put the new ones to use with my TV. But my roommate already has a 2.1 set for the television, so it doesn't really make sense to use these if I can't get 5.1. I don't really want to invest in a receiver or expensive cables because I rarely watch TV/DVDs anyways. So I guess these are probably heading to craigslist!... Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:16, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Helo sir This is tarak nath choubey from west bengal.

Sir i am a handicaped person and i find a Genuine homebased data entry job for high Earning.

Sir now i am lossed my both legs, that's Why i need this type jobs for high earn To join my artifitial legs.

Sir need your great response as soon as Possible.

THANKING YOU. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nirmalbaba (talk • contribs) 05:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tarak. This is the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk. We're able to help answer your questions related to technology problems and computer-related issues. But, we're staffed by volunteers; we're working on a non-profit encyclopedia. It's possible that somebody who reads this desk may know of online job opportunities, but in general this isn't a great place to post job-seeking requests. Have you tried searching the web for data entry jobs? There are lots of commercial job-finding websites which are better equipped to help you find a job you're qualified for. There are also non-profit and government organizations that can help you specifically, whether you need medical care, financial aid, or job/occupational advice/placement, because you are handicapped. Here are some organizations which might help:

• National Institute for the Orthopaedically Handicapped (NIOH), Calcutta - Rehabilitation services including occupational therapy
• Disability India - information on facilities and benefits
• Centre for Services and Information On Disability (CSID), Dhaka, Bangladesh

Further contact information, including address and telephone numbers, are available in the links I provided. Good luck with your situation. Nimur (talk) 05:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That was a nice response Nimur, I hope that it helps him Regards,--85.210.90.232 (talk) 12:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

is there any concept of grid is in php as like asp.net data grid ?if not , then what we can used for the same in php . —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rahjos4 (talk • contribs) 09:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is no built-in functionality for this, but you can use PHP to build up a datagrid-like control. Google "datagrid php" and you'll find lots of code that others have used to do just this. E.g. phpGrid looks pretty snazzy and straightforward, though I haven't used it personally. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to use Wireshark but I keep getting the error The capture session could not be initiated (failed to set hardware filter to promiscuous mode). Please check that "\Device\NPF_{30841233-ED1D-4C6E-9CF1-440DB4D01588}" is the proper interface.

I've tried with Belkin N1 Wireless USB Adapter and D-link DWL-G122 on Windows 7 and Windows XP. How can I solve this problem? Thank you! :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 15:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're trying to set the ethernet adapter to promiscuous mode and its driver is saying it can't. Promiscuous mode is rarely supported by wireless ethernet adapters (and is meaningless when the connection is encrypted) and usually doesn't work with modern wired network equipment (even the cheapest hubs really work like switches and don't send all traffic to each port). So you need to set the capture session to not use promiscuous mode. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note that even if a wireless driver claims to support promiscuous mode, it may be lying. My Belkin USB 802.11g adapter (with the Microsoft Win7 64 bit driver) accepts a request to go into promiscuous mode, but you still only see traffic for the same machine (and broadcast stuff). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 16:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

kismet (program) could be of interest. home page --91.145.88.228 (talk) 16:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See the Comparison of open source wireless drivers#Driver capabilities for a list of open-source drivers that support monitor mode (virtually all of them do). That page only lists drivers for Linux and BSD, though; not Windows. --128.97.245.117 (talk) 01:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You might never get this working in Windows. The driver framework for Windows will crash if you succeed in putting a wireless device in promiscuous mode. I would suggest to try Kismet on a linux-based OS, as then you'll be able to use promiscuous mode as you wish. NeoThermic (talk) 11:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To which precision could the value stored on older British credit cards? --84.61.165.65 (talk) 19:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand the question. AFAIK, credit cards do not store values on them. However the account to which they are attached produces statements accurate to 1 penny (0.01 GBP). I'm not sure what the banks' computers do about daily interest which is probably calculated to more precision - no idea what though - likely to differ from bank to bank. -- SGBailey (talk) 21:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interest usually isn't paid daily. It may be compounded daily, but it will be paid monthly or annually. --Tango (talk) 02:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, they do the calculation daily based on the balance in the account each day - so yes computed. But to what resolution do they store the result? They certainly don't put 8 decimal places on a statement, but they may well store the balance to that accuracy. -- SGBailey (talk) 15:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's been some time since I read the article, so I don't know if it addresses the question, but Salami slicing may be of interest to the OP. Dismas|^(talk) 20:07, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is the OP thinking of Stored-value cards or a prepaid debit card instead of credit cards? And in particular those that use a magnetic strip instead of a chip? In both cases, I don't know if the precision stored is particularly relevant. Even if the card could store the value to 8 decimal points, they would usually only work with the normal precision that people use in daily life i.e. to the penny in the UK. In other words, when someone subtracts or add value, it would only be to the penny, it may not even be possible to subtract to a greater precision. Nil Einne (talk) 08:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because of Floating point#Accuracy problems, any system designer would be foolish to store currency values as a real number/floating point number. The only rational method of storing currency values in computers is as fixed point numbers - that is, as an integer representing the smallest possible denomination. Conversion to the printed denomination then happens at the computational level. For example, the computer would do all the calculations with number of pence/penneys/cents, and then divide by 100 to compute the number of pounds/dollars/euros. The original questioner may have had pre-decimalisation British currency in mind. In that case, a reasonable design would be to store the amount in farthings, and then divide by 4/48/960 to get the number of pence/shillings/pounds. If you're confident the system would never encounter a farting, you would be able to store pence, and do division by 12/240 to get shillings/pounds instead. Note that even with a fixed point scheme, you're still going to have rounding issues with compounded interest. -- 174.21.224.109 (talk) 05:47, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The OP appears to be a known on RDL for asking non-sense questions and has been blocked. I suggest this question be ignored Nil Einne (talk) 08:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What does "4G Network" mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.249.193.88 (talk) 22:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It probably means the next (forthcoming) generation of cellular telephony and data services and equipment - see the 4G article. -- 22:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I have some CSV records of my bank accounts, or checking accounts in American-English. The CSV files have the fields of a record delimited by commas. ",," would be an empty field. Is anything available (preferably easy to use and quick to learn by the non-programmer please) that could look through all the records, and for example where it finds an entry for "567.89" in the seventh field, will put the text string "mortgage" in the empty third field? Something to insert an empty field in the right place would be useful too. Thanks. Update: I have found and installed CSVed dot exe, but I do not think it can find in field X and place in field Y. 89.242.94.72 (talk) 23:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OpenOffice.org has a spreadsheet application similar to excel called Calc which can do all sorts of fancy things to CSV files. Doesn't sound like it would be too hard to work out how to do it, you might even be able to do it with the find and replace tool. Vespine (talk) 00:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on how many distinct substitution cases you have, a spreadsheet such as in OpenOffice will enable you to use a series of nested IF statements in column Y, acting on values on column X. So, in cells in column Y one might write:

=IF(X3=567.89,"Mortgage",if(X3=100,"Cash withdrawal",if(X3=123,"Very large pizza","Not sure what this is"))) --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(Note that Excel will do the same thing, if you have it.) --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since BASIC was built to use CSV, I wrote something in that. I had to change the 0A character to 0D in the CSV file to get it to work though. 78.149.231.228 (talk) 02:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What's the etymology of the name for software wizards? I can't find any sources with Google, and our article on the subject doesn't help me either. Nyttend (talk) 02:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You might find our article on expert systems helpful. I would guess that the term "wizard" predates its use in software, meaning any (human) individual who is a subject-matter expert. The rise of expert systems and knowledge-based systems was motivated by a desire to encapsulate the human knowledge of such experts in software form - a sort of special-purpose, domain-specific artificial intelligence. In the early 1970s and 1980s, these sorts of ideas were really impressive, novel concepts - an expert system computer software could provide information to the user in full English sentences! It could guide the user through very complex tasks! It'd almost be like having a real human present to do the hand-holding. I'd guess that this is the source of the terminology - software that fulfils the role of the office 'wiz'. The Wiktionary entry, wikt:wizard has an etymology, but not for the specific meaning of a talented, non-magical individual. Nimur (talk) 02:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

According to the OED, the meaning "wise man", etc, is the original, from which the magician meaning is derived. Warofdreams talk 15:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It might be from British WW2 slang perhaps. 89.242.40.192 (talk) 12:47, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have a telephone address book in excel.I want to have a program which records the calls made by me and sorts the address book entries in such a way that the most frequently dialed numbers are always at the top.Is there any idea? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.199.164.48 (talk) 02:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Do you use your computer to make phone calls? If not, you'll need some way to synchronize your telephone system with your computer. A lot of smart phones can do this sort of thing. I'm not aware of any smart-phone synch software which can analyze voice call logs, but it seems like it might be a feature in at least some systems. Nimur (talk) 02:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to Nimur's idea, you might be able to enter in data from your phone bill every month if they itemize your calls. If you can get your data into the computer in a uniform way, then we could help you work with that data to itemize your list. But ultimately you're going to have to get the data into the computer. Shadowjams (talk) 02:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, can anyone point me in the direction of where to go to find a list of graphics cards that would fit a HP G60 laptop computer, as I am thinking of upgrading to a better one than the one that came with it. Alos, in the UK, how much are these things usually? --KageTora - (影虎) (A word...?) 09:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Laptops and notebook computers rarely have modular graphics cards. It looks like the HP G60 is no exception. So, it's probably not possible to upgrade the graphics without replacing the entire motherboard (e.g. essentially replacing the entire computer). Nimur (talk) 09:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

lemme start from the begining.

I installed xp on my pc but i installed it on drive D: So D was my local disk. On Drive c i put movies and my own stuff. Then i installed windows 7 on my pc just last night. I installed it on that same drive D; and it created a windows old folder on that drive. Now i later deleted it after installing windows 7. Now windows 7 has renamed drive D to local disc C: and the initial drive C has disappeared all my movies and music are all gone. In fact that partition has vanished. So what can i do to get my old drive c: —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.88.34 (talk) 11:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the partition has been deleted and then overwritten with the new operating system, there's no way to recover the data. The "C:\Windows.old" folder might have contained your files, but it's unlikely since your files and Windows XP weren't on the same drive letter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 11:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Try going into Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management and then click on Storage/Disk Management. With any luck the partition is still there and you just need to Right-Click it and "Change Drive Letter" (and add a drive letter) and then you'll be able to access it. Either way you'll be able to see the partition table though so that'll explain what has happened. ZX81 ^talk 13:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is rather alarming that Windows 7 would decide that by deleting the old OS, you no longer want what is on another partition. Were there any extra questions like "Are you sure you want to remove/overwrite this partition?" Astronaut (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks man. Got it and you are a genius. Totally awesome..i rechanged the name of the drive and got my stuff back. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.191.226.2 (talk) 16:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Whenever i try to delete a particular mp4 video file the dialog box says "this action cannot be completed as the file is open in another program ".As there are no programs running is there a way to delete the file? Shraktu (talk) 12:07, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First, you should make sure there really are no processes accessing the file. You can use Process Explorer[1] to do this, just press CTRL+F and enter a portion of the file name. Depending on which process is holding the file, you can just kill it from Process Explorer and proceed to delete the file.All this assuming you're running Windows decltype (talk) 12:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried that and also tried after restarting the computer but still can't delete the file. Is there any other way?Shraktu (talk) 12:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that sometimes OSes try to "preview" media files and whatever process is involved in previewing it (e.g. as a thumbnail or icon or whatever) sometimes seems to crash or hang mid-way, leaving the file open. In such a case deleting it through DOS is probably the best way, after rebooting. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Try this —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kv7sW9bIr8 (talk • contribs) 17:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think Mr. 98's answer is your culprit. If you let the image preview settle for a moment I think you'll find you're able to delete them. Shadowjams (talk) 20:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks ,that software suggested by Kv7sW9bIr8 above totally worked.

Resolved

Some Intel architectures have special instructions/optimizations that greatly accelerate virtualization tasks; is the intel Atom architecture one of them? (this is not homework). Thanks! 84.153.196.92 (talk) 13:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on exactly which Atom processor you're looking at... see Intel's list of processors supporting VT. -- Coneslayer (talk) 13:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the links! Unfortunately, my processor (n280) is one of the ones that doesn't. Oh well.. 82.113.106.95 (talk) 14:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For some background, the Atom was designed to be an ultra-low-power laptop/mobile processor. The inclusion of virtualization on some new models suggests that Intel aims to target the same ultra-low-power technology towards the server market. Here is a blog reporting on Microsoft Research's efforts toward that goal. Nimur (talk) 17:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

--20.137.18.50 (talk) 16:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but it's like asking "how long is a piece of string?". There are many websites which give different results based on what you click on, what time of day it is, what a particular Lava Lamp is up to, so the answer is essentially "infinitely big". --Sean 16:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How about this: what is the estimated cumulative size of the storage capacity of all the computing devices which comprise the Internet? That would at least be an upper bound.20.137.18.50 (talk) 16:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Except, of course, that not all internet content is ever stored anywhere - how do you want to count the size of dynamic content? Total hard-drive space is not actually an upper-bound for that. Nimur (talk) 16:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, not including dynamic content.20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Google estimates that the portions of the internet they index are 5 trillion megabytes in size. This was in 2005, but is probably as accurate as any modern guess, and almost certainly much larger now. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 17:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 20.137.18.50 (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I may ask, "5 trillion megabytes" thats 5 million million megabytes? 5 x 10¹⁸ bytes? Which could easily be x 4 by now, 20x10¹⁸ bytes, 20 exabytes? Is that correct?--220.101.28.25 (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the source is Google, the notation is most likely short scale. That would put a reasonable estimate in the 20 x 10¹⁵ byte range. What would be an interesting side question is how much unique data is out there, which would count the latest software-giant's bloat-ware product, the Wikipedia mirrors, and all the illegal Avatar videos once each. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 00:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As per the first response above, that's a damned long piece of string! --220.101.28.25 (talk) 01:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Theres a lot of different Net Statistics here, unfortuntely way out of date (2003) 220.101.28.25 (talk) 01:30, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

when were the satalite photos taken?Accdude92 (talk to me!) 17:07, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They're taken, and updated, on a continuing basis. There are plenty of places where the image is 5 years old or older, but sometimes they update much more frequently. I don't believe that they say when any specific image was taken. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would the year they copyrighted the images be some of guide? Chevymontecarlo (talk) 17:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, maybe not. A typical screen of Google Earth shows a fusion of several images (sometimes many) - they're very skilled at blending images together. So that alone means there's a range of dates possible for a given screen. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was surprised to see that the answer to this pretty obvious question was not in our very long Google Earth article, according to my skimming. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you use the Google Earth client (not the web-based version), there is an option to enable overlays that explicitly render boxes and text around each source image. This makes it clear when they are mixing/blending images - you can see multiple images used to generate same viewable area. Nimur (talk) 17:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To add on a new question to this one, is anyone aware of exactly what sources Google and Microsoft and the others use? Obviously they are pulling from GEOS satellites, and probably some commercial ones too, but does anyone have any more detailed information on their sources?

On that note too, I know there are recent (usually within 24 hours) satellite images of North America available here from the MODIS system, but the resolution is only good enough to make out cities (250m resolution). Is anyone aware of any relatively recent (within a weeks) imagery sources with better resolution? Shadowjams (talk) 20:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

At least some Google imagery comes from GeoEye. -- Coneslayer (talk) 20:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't directly know but the images for Haiti have been updated within the past week. I was looking at the Presidential Palace and the relief efforts for the earthquake with Google Earth last night. Dismas|^(talk) 20:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's kind of what I'm getting at. The news media often gets updated images when there's some disaster, but in a few cases I know these images come from NASA or some other government source, because either they retasked the satellite for it, or it was a part of the normal image flow. I'm wondering if there's a public source for what must be thousands of images taken each day (obviously many of these aren't public). [I'll check out geoeye too, thanks.] Shadowjams (talk) 20:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's not just satellite images either. A lot of it comes from airplanes. APL (talk) 21:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When all else fails, they use Landsat images (ref). You'll mostly only find those now in remote places where the commercial imagery providers haven't found it profitable to collect and process images. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This Google posting discusses, in brief, some of the sources for Google Earth images. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since downforeveryoneorjustme.com seems to be down, what other similar services are there? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 19:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

googling downforeveryoneorjustme brings up some candidates, http://isthatsitedown.com/ is one --194.197.235.240 (talk) 19:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've got a desktop with an optical drive, and a notebook without one. I've got some software on disc that I want to install on the notebook. Is there a way to connect the notebook to the PC, so it can use the optical drive on that? Both run WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 20:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the software does not use copy protection to verify that you have an original disc in the drive, and if both your systems are on a network, then you could turn on file sharing on your desktop, insert your disc, share it (double-click My Computer, right-click the optical drive, choose "Properties", then click the "Sharing" tab and share accordingly), then find the drive from your notebook. You'll be able to open it; run the "autoplay" file to begin. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Or, Duncan, were you thinking of physically plugging the desktop drive cable directly into the notebook? Unfortunately the interface(connector) on desktop PC drives is usually(always?) incompatible with notebooks, as the notebook connestors are far smaller and different type (in my experience) than 'standard' size drives esp. Parallel ATA. If it was a SATA (Serial ATA) drive then it might be possible. 220.101.28.25 (talk) 01:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Side Question. Do laptops or notebooks nowdays use SATA internally? 220.101.28.25 (talk) 01:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I was hoping there was some way of doing it with a USB cable between the two. Hey ho, looks like I'll have to find a friend with an external optical drive and borrow that. DuncanHill (talk) 17:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually USB should be possible, thought perhaps quite slow compared to a more direct connection. I assume your notebook has no Ethernet or other networking connection connection? Also, how large are the software files? It may be possible to copy to, and then install the software from a USB Flash drive.--220.101.28.25 (talk) 18:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's got an ethernet connexion. The biggest of the programs needs 1.5GB disc space when installed. DuncanHill (talk) 18:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I use TOR inside a LAN, can the LAN admins see which websites I'm visiting based on the network traffic? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 00:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, all they see is the IPs of the Tor nodes that you communicate with (which doesn't tell them much). But you don't set things up correctly, they can see the DNS lookups you do (see Tor (anonymity network)#DNS leaks) which of course can itself be very enlightening. In addition, the operators of the exit nodes, where your traffic leaves the TOR network, can see everything you're doing (and as you don't know who they are, why should you trust them). See Onion routing#Weaknesses. Oh, and are you sure that the Tor client you're using is really the real Tor client, or a hacked one that the LAN admins have substituted instead? If you're concerned enough to use Tor, you should be concerned enough to worry about that kind of thing. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to the above, if the machines are installed/managed by people other than yourself then it'd be safer to error on the side of caution and say "yes they can". It's completely possible they might have monitoring software installed which might log keystrokes or addresses typed into the browser or anything at all really. They could even have something like VNC installed and simply just "watch" your screen without you even knowing ZX81 ^talk 01:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And note this. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:13, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also (as the linked articles above say) Tor has very limited resistance to traffic analysis and timing analysis attacks. Some kinds of traffic have very distinctive patterns, which you can discern even when the content of packets is encrypted and their IP addresses intermediated. p2p traffic does lots of traffic, is roughly symmetrical (about as much is sent as is received), and opens lots of sockets. Email tends to be periodic, and if you get as much spam as me then you download much more than you upload. The same is true for online video like Youtube, but that consists of lengthy runs of downloads with negligible upload. So if your intention is, for example, to do p2p on a network that forbids it, Tor will only be of some use. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:13, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'd be running Tor on my own hardware (laptop) hooked into their LAN. The copy of Tor I have is legit, coming directly from the Tor Project. So that excludes keyloggers and screen monitors. Everyone uses the internet here, so I figured the traffic would look just like any other user's except that the IPs would be other computers, not websites, right? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 01:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to you know it came from the Tor Project website? Did you check the binary checksums, and did you verify those checksums were the same when viewing the site from several unrelated networks? Detecting Tor traffic is trivial: firstly it's all encrypted (something almost all traffic done by non-tor users isn't), and secondly (as most Tor nodes are run from someone's home cable or adsl connection) most of your traffic will be going to random addresses in BT and Pacbell and Telstra address blocks, and not to the big providers like Google and MSN and BBC. I know to an absolute certitude that my own ISP notices connections from my adsl connection to other home-or-small-office connections (they're looking for zombies phoning home) so evidently existing network monitoring systems already check for that. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the persistent explanations, Finlay! 218.25.32.210 (talk) 02:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. In practice whether Tor is sufficient for your purposes depends on what your purposes are. If you just want to edit your secret Facebook account, or download the odd video from veryhairychicksallegedlynaked.com then Tor is sufficient. If you want to plot revolt against an autocratic government, probably not. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 02:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I want full information about data structures —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.118.113.50 (talk) 06:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whole university courses are given on this topic, so you are unlikely to get full information in a reply here. Our article on Data Structure won't be of much help for the detail, except that it might have some useful links. There is a Wiki Book on Data Structures[2] that gives an outline of each structure. You will need to read several text books if you want to study the subject in detail. Dbfirs 10:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are 2 types of CD. The most popular is "green" CDs, whose bottom's color is green (not exactly green), which we usually use to burn data to. The other one is "white" CDs, whose bottom's color is white, which we may obtain from offical software publisher. The white CDs often are the original CDs, and the blue one are always pirate. There is the same thing with purple DVDs and white DVDs.

Some wise one plz explain the difference of these to me. All I know is that the white CD/DVD lasts longer than the other, and that it can be play even if it is quite rough, but the green/purple won't. What are exactly purple DVD and white DVD? Why do they have different colors? Why does the white one last longer? The time it lasts also depend on burning speed, is that true?

Besides, I hear that all white DVDs work well on PlayStation 2, but the purple DVDs don't -- it depends on purple DVD type, some work, some not. Is that true? And, they also say that to get a DVD work on PS2, I must burn it at the slowest speed possible (ie: 2x). I always burn CDs with 52x speed and it work well on PC but high speed burning shall make the disc cannot be play on PS2, why? The console has so much... troubles. -- Livy the pixie (talk) 09:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard the white, green and purple terms, but anyway ... CDs (and DVDs) that are produced by the publisher are generally stamped, not burned. Areas called "pits" and "lands" which are roughly analogous to the 0s and 1s that make up all binary data are stamped into the molten plastic, which is then coated with metal. See the Manufacturing section of Compact Disc and the more detailed article linked from there. Discs which can be or have been burned contain layers of dyes which change reflectivity during the burning process; these areas of differing relectivity can be interpreted the same way pits and lands can be. See the Recordable CD portion of Compact Disc or CD-R. One reason that your "white" discs last longer is that the dyes used in recordable discs may deteriorate. See Disc rot.

I can not comment on the PS2 considerations, I'll leave that to somebody more familiar with gaming consoles.

Finally, though, I wanted to point out that CD-Rs (at least) are available in many colors - here is one example. It's not completely clear from the product image on that page, but the five colors they show are on the recordable side of the disc (as well as the top, if I recall correctly) --LarryMac | Talk 13:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Stamp? I've never heard of this term before -- I'm a noob indeed. In my country, holding a disc in hand, we always say that all data (in the disc) is already "printed" to it as if it is a paper. It is a habit since it is easy to understand. If you say "burn a CD", then they will think of setting fire to a CD to burn it into ash, lol. The term "burn" is used rarely by teenagers only. We use it in original English, not translated, and it means "write data to disc", no matter that disc is stamped or burned, so that I really don't know what is "stamp". I have no knowledge 'bout such aspect. Stamping and burning are two different methods of writing data into a disc? Can you explain further? If true, then the green/purple discs I mention above must be burned discs and the white ones must be stamped discs. -- Livy the pixie (talk) 14:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See our articles on Compact Disc manufacturing, Compact Disc, CD-R and CD-RW. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Stamping and burning are in the end different ways of putting data onto a disc. In 'stamping' the data is put on during manufacture of the disc, in 'burning' the disc is made first, then the data is put on the disc by the laser in a CD/DVD drive. The end result is much the same, a disc that can have data read from it. Stamping means to press one thing onto another with force, such as raising your foot and stamping your heel on the ground.
• I think when you say 'white' you actually mean silver, which is the colour of mass produced stamped optical discs due to the layer of silver an alloy of (mostly) aluminium that is put on them during manufacture. This will deteriorate far less than the dyes in recordable discs so should last much longer. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My thanks. Now that I got it. The alloy of aluminium makes the silver color of stamped discs, which burned discs do not have. But what about the burning speed problem with PlayStation 2? Many say that if a PS2 DVD is burned at above 4x speed, it is hardly to run properly. The loading time of the game is awful long, and the disc even does not run. It sounds odd, but they claimed that they had tested themselves -- many said that. I kinda doubt it. How does burning speed affect the disc? -- Livy the pixie (talk) 17:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Livy, I too don't know much about the PS2 side of things, theoretically, as you are talking about game discs, then I expect this is a deliberate move by Sony to help protect the copyright of the game manufacturers. That is they make it hard to make good copies by a copy protection scheme. Going back to stamped vs. burned discs, I recommend that you read through the Compact Disc manufacturing article and other articles as suggested by Gandalf, as I got a few things wrong before I checked it there. ie. I believed that silver was used to coat the discs. --220.101.28.25 (talk) 17:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"articles as suggested by Gandalf"... harrumph! --LarryMac | Talk 20:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whether you burn a DVD at 1x, 2x, or 4x should make no difference if you have a properly working DVD writer. Actually, when recordable CDs were new, Sony's big external SCSI 2x CD burner came with instructions saying that you were supposed to burn CDs at 2x and not 1x, because at 1x there was increased disc wobble, and the number of uncorrectable errors burned to disc was expected to be higher. Based on that, I would speculate that burning at low speeds probably does not help. Anyway, you are asking for advice about a PlayStation 2 that has obviously been "chipped" or "modded" so it can play pirated games — you don't say where you're from, but in some countries, I understand, all available PS2s are chipped — so I would expect unreliability would be due to the chipped PS2, rather than being due to the pirated game discs you are trying to play. It could be that the PS2 copy protection system is actually functioning here. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comet Tuttle has a point, although some suggest to burn CDs and DVDs at the lowest possible speed, this is often poor advice. In fact this is usually a bad idea with modern burners and media. Very commonly they will perform very poorly when burning at the lowest speed. I'm not saying to burn at the highest possible speed. With CD & DVDs, we've started to reach the level where sometimes burning at the highest speed can generate poor burns, even worse if you have shitty media to begin with (which makes up most of the media). However I wouldn't recommend 4x. 8x or 12x perhaps. Certain drives enable you to do error checking on the CD/DVD with the right software. E.g. Nero CD/DVD speed. These can give you an idea of the PI/PO errors of your burn on that drive (basically how many errors the drive gets on reading that it auto corrects). You may want to check out MyCE formerly known as CDfreaks for more info on how burn quality can vary with speed and other factors. Nil Einne (talk) 06:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are actually 3 different dyes that are used with CDR which give different colours. These dyes may also sometimes be mixed. And the precise colour you see will depend on whether silver or gold or gold & silver are used for the reflective coat. And according to our article, some manufacturers may colour the dye anyway. These provides more info [3] [4] CD-R. The colour of the top side can of course be whatever you want since you can just print on it. DVD dyes also vary, but this doesn't affect the colour you see much Nil Einne (talk) 06:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way to set your computer to execute a file when it has been inactive for certain number of minutes?  Hamza  ^{[ talk ]} 09:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It would be trivial to write a Windows application that restarts a timer at each key or mouse event, and then ShellExecutes something when the timer has reached a certain value. But perhaps you can use Windows task scheduler for this - I do not know. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I now checked, and you can use Windows Task Scheduler for this. Simply create a new task and select "Inactivity" as the triggering event. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 11:30, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see that option in Windows XP. Actually a program that executes after a certain amount of inactivity is usually called a Screensaver - maybe you can cheat by renaming the exe file with an extension of .scr and setting that as your screensaver (in Control Panel/Display/Screen Saver). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've already checked Task Scheduler in XP. As Andrew said, there is not inactivity option in it. Is there any freeware that can do it?  Hamza  ^{[ talk ]} 15:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just created a scheduled task in Windows XP and found a relevant "When idle" option. It's not shown in the "Add Scheduled Task" wizard, but is available if you look in the properties window of the task. --Bavi H (talk) 02:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I send emails to myself so I can be on any computer when I send them or when I receive them. I could store documents on my own computer but I never have, since I didn't have one for so long.

But this is a new problem. I used my Yahoo address to send an email to myself, and the email containing the information I wanted to send was in the sent folder. This meant when I replied to it with additional information, I replied to the same address. Believe it or not, this ended up in the spam folder!Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many modern anti-spam techniques use heuristic techniques like Bayesian spam filtering, which weigh a number of factors when assessing each candidate email. Some anti-spam systems (such as Spam assassin) add email headers to emails as they process them, which explain the statistical reasoning used for assessing a given email (so get your email client to show you the headers for the emails in question). Common reasons are magic words like viagra (I guess this isn't the case for you), HTML emails, mostly or entirely binary (that is radix encoded) emails (which does sound like what you're doing), forged (or forged-looking) sender or from fields (if you're sending to yourself or an account that looks almost like yours, that might trigger it), lots of non-ascii characters (particularly an odd mixture of characters found in different alphabets, in a manner that you wouldn't find in real human writing in any language). Any decent anti-spam system should have a mechanism to whitelist a given sender, so you should be able to avoid this happening again. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, you triggered a false positive on the default spam settings. You may have to change the filter from the default settings, (adding yourself to a whitelist is the easiest way to do this, as Finlay suggested). This Yahoo Help page, and others linked from it, may help. Nimur (talk) 14:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's right. By the way, if you're wondering why Yahoo hasn't configured their e-mail system to automatically place "e-mails from me" in the Inbox and never in the spam folder: It's because many people (including me) get a lot of spam that forges the "from" address to look like it's from themselves. It's a common attempt to get you to read the spam. Unfortunately this also means that when you whitelist yourself as suggested above, you may get a little more spam in your inbox that appears to be from you. One last recommendation: I know you have said in the past that you prefer to stick with the familiar, but Google Docs is a way better way to work on documents from multiple computers, compared to eternally e-mailing stuff to yourself. You just sign in with your Google account name from wherever you are and work on the documents. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ok, I have IE8 and windows basic vista and a slow (uk typical) internet connection of 1/2 mb.

I think this is now equivalent to surfing with an old style modem.

Here is an example, I go to bbc news.....lag of 7 seconds.Then I go to facebook ...freeze....shoutdown browser. restart go to another forum... lag... then it all works perfect for 1/2 hr. I make a cup of tea and come back ... lag,freeze,shutdown restart ... wireless signal lost.

Then it all works the next day.,,,,, then.... the cycle of bullshit is repeated.

my questions are:

1) Has the net slowed down in general? 2) Are stupid flash designers the cause... overdoing there web design? 3) No Im not switching OS so what can i do about it!!!

Whoa — wireless signal lost? I think that's the problem. If you want to verify that this is the problem, hook up your computer with an Ethernet cable to your router for a few minutes and try surfing; wired connections are fast and reliable. If you find your Web surfing to be 100 times better, then we've narrowed down the problem to wireless connectivity. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) From what you've said about "wireless signal lost" it suggests to me that the problems are not necessarily to do with your Internet connection, but rather your connection to your wireless access point/router. What signal strength does it show you as having? If you have an low/poor connection then it would drop out frequently and you would experience pauses like you have described. Is it possible to position yourself closer to the access point (even temporarily) and see if you have the same problems? ZX81 ^talk 17:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to the above, the freeze on Facebook is likely caused by the wireless going down. Facebook uses AJAX to enable a lot of its functionality, and if the internet connection is lost, the code that pulls updates from the site may go hinky, possibly looping infinitely trying to acquire the data and crippling the page responsiveness. Of course, using IE8, each tab is a process, so a freeze in one shouldn't affect the others, but if your wireless has gone down, that won't do you much good. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually IE8 isn't guaranteed to use a seperate process for each tab. I was under the impression they use up to 3 processes total for tabs because according to Microsoft their research suggests most people don't use more then 3 tabs however it seems I was wrong. They may use more but it depends on your computer. Look at both the blog entry and the comment from Andy here. Note also that if one process/tab is using very high CPU (and you have a single core CPU or it's multithreaded) or very high RAM, you could get slowdowns for the whole computer including every other process. I have had this before due to unknown bugs (probably Flash or Java) Nil Einne (talk) 08:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I opened one of my documents and made a quick change, then tried to close and save it. However, Word informed me that "Word cannot complete the save due to a file permission error," including in parentheses the location on my hard drive. I haven't done any meta-file mumbo jumbo with the document since I last edited it (last night), so what could have happened? How should I solve it? I already tried to check out the permissions for the file, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was able to edit a document in the same folder as it...--The Ninth Bright Shiner 22:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

File / Save As seems to be the way out of the immediate problem; and if not, then a cut and paste of the content into a new file. Do you by chance make use of Live OneCare? Long discussion here, seems to be anti-virus products and/or an acer driver not getting on with an MS product. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Our office computers have Adobe Standard 6.0 installed on them -- more than the Reader, but less than the full Acrobat Professional suite. With this version, I can not only view PDFs, but also highlight, make minor text changes, and I have "Adobe PDF" as a system printer, which allows me to create PDF files from anything that can print. (This was once known as the Distiller; it may have a different name today.)

Q1: When I use those additional features, am I using the same executable of Reader as I might have downloaded, but with permissions to do the other stuff, or am I using a completely different executable to do the other features? It appears to be acroread.exe, but I'm not sure if that's the whole story. (Maybe there are different DLLs that enable the other features?)

Obviously, V6 is two releases out of date. I really should upgrade one of these days. The answer to Q1 probably impacts the answers to the rest of these:

Q2: If I download/install just the V7 reader, and I use the PDF printer, will I generate V6 or V7 PDF files?

Q3: If I download/install just the V7 reader, will I lose my capability for highlighting and markups? Or, in order to maintain those features, do I have to download something more than just the reader?

Q3a: If I have to install "something more", do I have to pay for the whole enchilada again, or is that considered a free upgrade?

Many thanks to those who have trod this path before. DaHorsesMouth (talk) 23:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A1: It's a completely different executable. You can have both Acrobat and Reader installed on the same machine and they will operate independently of each other, however whichever one was installed last (probably Reader) will try and take over the default "pdf" file association (which you can swap back) as well as be the reader in your browser (which you probably want anyway) (and you're actually 3 versions behind as V9 is out now)

A2: The PDF printer won't be upgraded and will still create exactly the same same V6 files it did before.

A3: No, you can still open Acrobat as before and do editing as you did before, but watch out for the file associations as mention in A1.

On my work computer I have Acrobat 8 Standard and Reader 9, they work just fine together, but I had to change the PDF associations back to V8 ZX81 ^talk 01:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I think I get it. Any advice on whether upgrading Standard is fee or free? Thanks!
Wow, I could have had a V8? DaHorsesMouth (talk) 03:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but all upgrades of Acrobat to a newer version require payment. They offer free updates within the same version number (i.e. 8.0 -> 8.2) but anything else is considered a new product. They do offer cheaper upgrade pricing though for existing customers. ZX81 ^talk 03:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can a range encoding's decoding function, applied to a hardware RNG's output stream, be used to generate random numbers in an arbitrary discrete probability distribution (e.g. an implementation of percentile-roll tables such as these in an online game server) with a minimum of wasted entropy? NeonMerlin 03:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could you further explain what you wrote before your 2nd comma? If I understand correctly, you're suggesting writing a decompression algorithm that intentionally has no checksum or other error correction methods, and feed it random data. The output of such an algorithm will inevitably be less random, so I'm going to say "no", assuming randomness is valuable to you. Even though I don't know much about arithmetic data compression or range encoding. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

'Kay, I have here something I have no idea what it is (except for maybe perhaps a Memorex audio device of some sort). It's black, has a clip on the back, is roughly hemispherical with a port on the left/top end for a headphone jack, play/pause, seek, and stop buttons, and a long cord coming off the right/bottom end that terminates in a jack. I've no idea what it is; could someone ID it based on the description? —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Boribori!)} 09:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a toaster. See our article on Toaster for more info. Good luck. :) Shadowjams (talk) 09:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh. as much fun as it is to leave my above comment, you really should post a picture. And I have to wonder how you got some device you have no idea what it is.... perhaps some context would make us feel a bit more at ease. I know you're not new here, but come on... every walkman made in the last 30 years qualifies for what you described if you turn it upsidedown. Shadowjams (talk) 10:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a CD player; it's no bigger than my ring and index fingers and just as wide. My father found it in an apartment he was turning and brought it home. As for a picture, I don't have a digital camera I can use. —Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Boribori!)} 10:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly a headset cord with an integral remote control for a CD Walkman or MP3 player. 220.101.28.25 (talk) 10:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I asked this before but I'd like to try again, in case someone who didn't see the first question knows something that could help me

I desperately need a program or a scrip or anything that can monitor an rss feed every 60 seconds and open every new item into a new firefox tab. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.91.83 (talk) 11:36, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]