Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 September 9

=September 9=

what is the biggest country in the western hemisphere
what country has the largest area of land in the western hemisphere?
 * Depends on what "western hemisphere" means (west has no meaning in the context of a sphere rotating on its north/south axis.) If you mean the Western world as in the geopolitical sense of the term, it also has several meanings.  What do you mean, and why does this question sound like homework?  For that matter, what is this question doing in the computing section?  ColourBurst 00:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * By western hemisphere I think you are talking about the countries west of the prime meridian. The biggest country would be Canada.--Taida 01:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * ColourBurst, "western hemisphere" means what Taida said. Always. And this is clearly a computer problem. — [ Mac Davis ] (talk) ( Desk | Help me improve )


 * why did you ven ask this under computers/i.t


 * how else do you add up all the number?! you may want to see List of countries and outlying territories by total area.  Jon513 12:18, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

"Net" Commands
Does anyone know the windows dos command to list all the computers on a network with their ip addresses? I remember doing it once before, but have no idea how I did it. Thanks --Russoc4 02:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * netstat — [ Mac Davis ] (talk) ( Desk | Help me improve )
 * There are different answers:
 * Impossible. Secure computers will not advertise themselves to your computer.
 * Ping a suitable address range or do port scanning. Again, secure computers will refuse to answer, and scanning may give your a visit from your "friendly" network administrator.
 * Packet sniffing. Only detects hosts that send or receive packets to your network segment.
 * "netstat -an". Shows computers that have (or recently had) open ports to your computer.
 * "arp -a". Same as above except different.
 * "net view" (or something like that). Lists Windows Workgroup hosts. Google for windows net command for help. I'm guessing this is what you mean.
 * There are probably lots of other ways. But there is no complete "list all computers near me" command. And that's good for security reasons. Weregerbil 09:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Nmap is a popular and capable scanning tool, which has lots of great (and entirely legitimate) uses - checking if machines are on, if they have unexpected IP ports open, if someone has intruduced an unauthorised device into your network, or figuring out the address of that weird old device you found in the cupboard and plugged in). Of course it has plenty of illegitimate uses too ("It's a poor atom blaster that doesn't point both ways"), and as Mac notes above, if you run it on a network without the network admin's permission (being what Cheswick & Bellovin call a "volunteer system administrator") you're liable to run into problems that vary between getting yelled at and doing some jailtime. Middenface 10:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm on a university network. My friend has already gotten a temporary ban from the network for port scanning computers and I got one from using bittorrent. I've also gotten 5 bandwidth usage warnings, and signle-handedly crashed the student webpage server. With that said, is Wireshark sufficient enough to find who's online, yet non-intrusive? It's kinda hard to use.--Russoc4 13:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Wireshark might help - it depends what you want to do. These days pretty much every ethernet network is a star-wired cat5 (or better) topology - gone are the days when it was a loop of co-ax with crufty BNC connectors.  The etherswitch will be set up so that ordinary ethernet packets are only sent on the particular wire that the station is on (the switch remembers). But some traffic is broadcast, which means it'll go to everyone.  Machines without static IPs send requests (now DHCP, formerly BOOTP, and before that RARP) hoping there's someone around with a server that can assign them an address. In the case of windows machines (or at least windows servers) there's more broadcast traffic - servers (that's anything that provides a networked volume or shared printer) broadcast ("advertise") that service.  I don't remember if windows clients also advertise.  Other protocols (UPnP, JINI, JXTA) also do broadcast or multicast discovery.  And of course you'll see all the other little monsters who're also running port scans and "network cartography".  So turning on Wireshark won't see general traffic going from one machine to another (you can't see what other people are websurfing, or read their emails) but you'll see the broadcast traffic. If you're just trying to figure out what's turned on or off, that might be enough.  But beware - Wireshark will put your ethernet adapter into promiscuous mode (unless you tell it not to), and this can (subtly) be detected - see http://www.oxid.it/ca_um/topics/promiscuous-mode_scanner.htm and http://www.securityfriday.com/promiscuous_detection_01.pdf.  I've heard that some Cisco switches have support for this kind of checking (but I honestly don't know if that's true). Middenface 14:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * You can also try arpwatch, which will, given enough time, build a database of all the active IP addresses on your network, even if it's switched. --cesarb 14:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Changing Start......
Hii..

There is way to change the Start on the taskbar. By changing Start I mean the text on the Start button so that it displays my name or something else. Anyone know how to do it? And also is there a way to display text at the spot where the clock usually is in the taskbar? Thanks a lot. Jayant, 17 Years, India  • contribs 05:54, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds like you really should try the freely downloadable TClock Light software, which includes the ability to change the Start button text and alter the clock display. For the button text alone, on Windows XP you can use these instructions, and on other systems these may work. However, the manual adjustments are for experts only; you can seriously damage your system if you make a mistake. See also the "Start menu" article. --KSmrqT 07:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for that. BTW, I have Windows Xp. Thanks again. Jayant, 17 Years, India  • contribs 07:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * TechTV did a spot on this a couple years back - I changed the text on my mother's laptop to say "stan". She still hasn't noticed.. it looks almost identical to what it did before, except for the very top of the t is missing (because it's not a t :p) --Froth 17:10, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Joomla
Would it be possible to use Joomla on a Freewebs webpage?

If so, any help would be appreciated.68.39.175.57 16:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

You will not be able to run Joomla on a freewebs page...However you may like to try other free web hosters that support PHP4..such as Awardspace. i have done this before and can help you if you need. Ronaldh 13:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Mac
My MacBook is to come in in the next week or so. I've been using Windows all my life, so everythin i've ever done on a computer is Windows/Microsoft based (except iTunes and Quicktime). How can I get all my stuff I have saved on my Dell Optiplex on to my new Mac (not ALL the stuff, but important document, etc.). I have a 1G flash disk, but this seems like it may take a long time to treansfer everything, and I don't know how I would even be able to open them on a Mac since it's Microsoft Word, etc. documents. If I got Microsoft Office for Mac, would I be able to open my old Word documents? Thanks for any suggestions. On a somewaht seperate note: I have been using Firefox on my PC for some time now. My question is, should I use Firefox on my new Mac or just use Safari. schyler 17:19, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know for sure about opening things, though I'd assume Office for Mac should open "Office for Windows" files, it would seem to pointless to create two copies of Office which are unable to communicate. As for transfering files the best way would be to do it over a network. If you don't have your Dell connected to a LAN or WLAN, then the cheapest option is to use a Ethernet crossover cable. I recently did this with a new computer and paid only about £5 for the cable and got a fast transfer rate. --Kiltman67 19:28, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Well you never know with Microsoft products if one will work with the other. We do have a network in my home, but how can I transfer it? schyler 19:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * It depends on the version of Windows but on XP (Since that's what I have in front of me) it's probably easiest to move everything you want to transfer into the Shared Documents folder. Unfotunately I don't have enough experience with the Mac OS to tell you how to access the Shared Documents folder so someone else will need to finish the instructions. --Kiltman67 20:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Moving your stuff - You haven't said how much stuff you want to move, but it is obviously more than 1 gigabyte (haha), so I recommend borrowing a friend's external harddrive and copying all your files onto there, then copying them from the external harddrive to your new MacBook. I don't think I could figure out how to do the Ethernet cross-over.
 * Switching over: To open your word documents, you can either use Office, Pages (from iWork) ($40 if you don't "steal" it), or OpenOffice (free).
 * Firefox/Safari: Personally, when I got Firefox, I thought it was the best thing in the world. Nothing could beat it. I tried Safari—wow, it was better. Safari does not have the near-total custumizability, although, it is twice as fast as Internet Explorer in HTML rendering, supports tabbed browsing, RSS feed browsing are completely and seamlessly integrated, and there are plenty of extensions to get. My favorite are AcidSearch and Safari Stand—invalueable. Be back later with more. Congratulations on the new lapotop! I'm getting a new iMac before Christmas. :D— [ Mac Davis ] (talk) ( Desk | Help me improve )

Thank you. Wow, Open Office is amazing. I never knew that existed. So Safari it is. No biggie there. Again, thank you for your help. schyler 21:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * For compatability, I suggest a few plugins. Flip4Mac, PDF Plugin (On my computer integrated Adobe viewer didn't work), Word Plugin, AcidSearch, and Safari Stand. Download whatever it is that you need at . — [ Mac Davis ] (talk) ( Desk | Help me improve )


 * seriously dude bad choice with the mac..... the only thing i like about them is the handle on some of the desktop screens........so i can use it as a BOAT ANCRE!!!!!!
 * Show, don't say, is one of Wikipedia's guidelines. Macs haven't come with handles for 7 years. — [ Mac Davis ] (talk) ( Desk | Help me improve )

Windows XP Automatic Login
I have Windows XP, and I want to skip the welcome screen and automatically log in to my username. I searched online for how to do this, and I clicked Start, Run..., and then typed "control userpasswords2", clicked OK, and unchecked the box that says "Users must enter a username and password...". However, next time I turned on the computer, it tried to log me in, but a dialog box came up sayting "The system could not log you on. Make sure your username and domain are correct. then type your password again...". When I clicked OK, then it logged me on. I didn't have to click my username, but if I have to click OK every time, then that defeats the purpose; it's the same as having to click my username. So, I reverted (wikipedia pun intended) back to my original settings. What can I do (besides deleting the other accounts on my computer) that will allow me to automatically log in? &mdash;  Ed Gl  18:16, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I take it you read this page. If you didn't read all of it, it says at the bottom "You will be requested for the username and password of the account you wish to automatically logon as for following reboots of your system." schyler 19:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I did that before, but I did it again just to make sure, with the same result. My guess is that the password was set up with my username. This is possible, since I did not set up my own account. If my hunch is correct, is there a way to find out what my password is? &mdash;  Ed Gl  19:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

  One way to do this is by modifying the registry. Add or modify the following keys:   HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon   REG_SZ - AutodminLogon = 1  REG_SZ - DefaultDomainName = {domain name or local computer name}  REG_SZ - DefaultUserName = {username}  REG_SZ - DefaultPassword = {pasword}   Remeber that this is very unsecure because if someone is able to get into your registry they can gain access to your unencrypted password. User:tgsssl 9:27, 4 May 2007 (EST)

ImageMagick C code
Could someone explain what the #define region in this code is doing? What's with the slashes? Why not make it a seperate function? I understand everything else though. BrokenSegue 18:32, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The slashes escape the newlines that follow them - only by using slashes in this manner can one define a multiline macro. I guess they use a #define so the code is inlined because they want address or __LINE__ information reported to be for the location that refers to the macro - otherwise you'd get exceptions that appear to come from a function called "exception", which wouldn't be very helpful. Middenface 18:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)