Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 February 26

= February 26 =

End user suport
What's the meaning of the End User Suport which is using in computer networking?


 * I'm sorry, but we are no longer offering End User Support on this question.172.146.58.73 10:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Support here means technical support. A networking company (e.g. a router manufacturer) will often receive questions from both end-users, for example someone setting up a home network or having trouble with a network card they purchased, and from network administrators or network engineers, for example an engineer setting up an industrial-strength router. Their end-user support division will be the one providing technical support to the end users' questions. --Delirium 10:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

help me buying un upgraded (assembled)PC with only $600
I recently visited HP homepage and find the price too high for the pc i want with audio and video composite input output capability, now i am wondering to minimize cost by building an assembled fast pc but with a brand name case, Like an HP case and Capable Motherboard above all which is capable to run AMD athlon dual core starting from x2 5000 and with a total of 4GB memory capacity ( for which i am going to need for now 2GB), DVD writer and TV tuner. I am mainly going to use it for Video and audio editing with the addition of DVD authoring. the total price i can afford is 600 U.S dollars. So please help me where to locate some one who is able to assemble like this pc for me, or if there isn't such like that any information where i can get the components in USA cheaply so that i build the pc myself.

thanks. ese Esete 08:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You don't really get detailed, hand-holding support here, just so you can save money. I assemble all my computers from parts, but that involves many hours of study, some hundreds of hours of experience, and at lot of time with those twiddly little connectors that aren't meant for humans!  --Zeizmic 13:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

You can usually customize a high-end PC for a lot cheaper through smaller companies; my favorite has been CyberPower PC; my last 2 computers were through them, I'll be getting another one later this year from them, and a couple friends have also bought repeatedly from them. They offer more choices for customization than any other site I've seen. I'm trying to customize a high-end video editing system (Q6600 quad-core processor, 2GB PC6400 DDR2/800 RAM, ATI X1950, WD740ADFD boot drive plus a large storage drive), and it comes out to about $2600 through them, while it's nearly $4000 through Dell and almost $5000 through Alienware. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2007-02-26 18:54Z
 * Also, if you wait until April, the Q6600 should drop in price by about $300 making it a lot more affordable, and definitely better than anything AMD can offer for video editing. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2007-02-26 19:03Z


 * 4GB of memory on 600 dollars is going to be a tight squeeze for other components --⁪froth T 20:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Unless he means 4 gigs of HDD to store the files he needs for image editing, but I somehow doubt it, considering image/video editing systems usually have loads of RAM. But it's true, 4 gigs of RAM alone will cost about half your budget, then add on to that a good video card, you're pretty much already over. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 22:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Half? More like almost all --⁪froth T 00:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's about $360 for 4 gigs of corsair RAM, so definately not all. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 03:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * ---Well, sorry for the misleading i wrote about the RAM, what i mean was to say the capacity of the motherboard to the maximum it can hold, and i have corrected that and i only need 1 or 2 GBs this is related with the price.

I will have a look to Cyberpower and also i will be glad if some one can point me if there are other sites that offer like cyber for cheap and customizable pcs. thanks Esete 10:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Help with javascript
Hi, is there a client-side function in javascript that can imitate the clicking of a button?

For example something like: "clickbutton(document.form_name.button_name);"

My experience with javascript is very limited!

Thanks for any replies!
 * If you just want to submit the form, you can use document.FormName.submit — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 11:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Use document.getElementById("FormName").submit where FormName is the ID on the &lt;form&gt; tag. There are one or two cases where this doesn't work, for example, if the form is submitted using a &lt;button&gt; rather than an &lt;input type="submit"&gt;, then there may be problems. If so, use document.getElementById("ButtonID").click (it may be onclick rather than click, I forget for now). But this may not work on all browsers anyway. --h2g2bob 12:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * element.click should simulate the click. onclick refers to the event.  Where element is the element in question - in this case, document.form_name.button_name.   x42bn6  Talk 14:00, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Slipstreaming software in WinXP
On the web you find many (illegal?) distributions of Windows XP that come pre-compiled with Office, Firefox, Adobe Reader, hotfixes etc, so that once the OS is installed (unattended of course) these programs are already loaded. There are also nifty distros like TinyXP which rip out all but the most basic functionality to give a much leaner and meaner OS, useful for older PC's or special applications. How do they do it, and how easy/hard is it to do yourself? How would you go about it? And is it legal if you've got a legal Windows license? I tend to FFR my PC every six months and it would be handy to create a slipstreamed copy of XP.  Zun aid  ©  ®  15:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * nLite is your friend. Splintercellguy 15:59, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The legality depends on where you live, and I'm cautious to provide any legal advice here (see the header on the top). It's certainly not wrong morally. Our nLite article could also be useful for a quick summary of it, and the http://www.winaddons.com/ site has several addons (as does the nLite site itself, and a few others). has post-SP2 hotfixes and such. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

ADSL & Cable
Is it possible to have an ADSL wireless router connected to a Cable Modem, and have my laptop running internet from the wireless, AT THE SAME TIME as my desktop running internet from the cable? If so, how should I connect them up? I have found I can only get either one or the other to work at one time (PLUS, after the laptop has been on the internet, the desktop cannot be connected without hours of trial and error reconnecting.

I have a Buffalo AG54 AirStation Wireless Router (plus card for the laptop) and a Motorola SB5100 Surfboard Cable Modem. Both PCs are Win XP.

Any help would be appreciated! CCLemon-ここは寒いぜ！ 18:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I presume your wireless network is connected via a wireless-router with built-in modem? If this is the case you will just need to connect the desktop to the wireless-router with an ethernet cable and configure the internet settings. Alternatively you can buy wireless-cards for desktop computers for around £10 ($20?) and solve the problem that way. I suspect it is not possible to have 2 modems connected to the net on one line (even with a line splitter) but i'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong. ny156uk 19:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Debranded or fake?
I just got home, from an independent but fairly established electronics store, a replacement USB cable for my iPod that resembles the original but does not bear the Apple logo anywhere. Also, its UPC (EAN?) of 8-276245-658623 apparently does not belong to Apple. The only text on it aside from the barcode is "Dock Connector", "USB 2.0 Cable" and "White." Is this a counterfeit cable, or has it simply been debranded? If it is counterfeit, are there safety concerns and/or should I expect it to fail sooner? Neon Merlin  20:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds to me like it's just a cable. Did it purport to be from Apple? Did the packaging try to give the impression it was from Apple? I don't see why you should need to use an Apple-branded USB cable - it's just a cable! --Seans Potato Business 20:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's probably just a generic USB cable. Cable is cable :). Splintercellguy 03:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Reinstate disk image to different drive
Is it possible to take a drive image from my RAID 0, switch to RAID 1 and reinstate the image, so long as the data on the RAID 0 does not exceed 50% of the RAID 0 (i.e. 100% of the RAID 1) capacity? Or will the image include "deleted" data that is not in the file system or will the drive image expect to be able to use the exact same sector/block locations for all of the data?

Also what free liveCD/DVD solutions are available to take this image and place it in the spare space that I have on an ext3-formatted partition. It's important that it can store the image like just another file, 'cause I don't have any spare drives, just spare space on a drive already containing other data. --Seans Potato Business 20:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I am not familiar with RAID but I think you want to dump an image of the filesystem, not images of the drives. The filesystem is agnostic about any RAID stuff you have going on underneat it. Any live cd with RAID support should let you use dd to copy the filesystem into a file in another filesystem quite easily. Or you should just copy the files over if you don't want to waste any space. -- Diletante 20:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, the thing is you don't want any of the RAID metadata. Just take an image of the filesystem, which will be processed through the RAID controller so you end up with a copy of all of your files. like diletante suggested, use dd to stream the image over to your spare drive so you don't run out of space while building the image. Then reconfigure the controller or whatever and re-image your drives based off of the image you built. The data will be processed through the raid controller for writing, and the raid controller will now mirror it. Since the image you made doesn't contain the same sector/block information as the original hard drives (images aren't of the same format as a physical disk) it's completely transparent to the new RAID array --⁪froth T 21:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * No, the image would have the full size of the RAID 0 (it includes not only deleted data, but also the free disk space!), unless you shrink the filesystem to the target size before dumping (and image only the space used by the filesystem). It's much simpler to dump the filesystem contents (for instance, using tar), create a new filesystem, and restore to it; as a bonus, doing that will also remove any leftover filesystem fragmentation. --cesarb 15:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

E-mail obfuscation
I've seen a gaggle of sites which use variations of "name(at)domain.com" or "name at domain dot com" and so forth to deter spam.

Does this actually work? I know that one could easily write an address harvester that picks those up as well (it would take a single line of perl to filter them out pretty easily), but do spambot creators bother? It seems like it would be an easy thing to test using some honeypot addresses -- has this been done? What's the best way to do e-mail address obfuscation? I know that one could post them as an image, but that seems clunky and would not allow the blind to access the page. I've seen some schemes that use javascript to encode the addresses in some way though these too would not be too difficult to defeat depending on how the bot was getting the page information.

Any thoughts as to whether these work and what one ought to do? I'm interested in particular in low-skill, low-hassle approaches -- things that would not take much time per address to implement. --24.147.86.187 20:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It may or may not work; it's a lazy webmaster's way of trying to avoid spam bots. You're right that one could easily write bots to look for obfusicated email addresses, so it's best to be safe than sorry. I would suggest creating an image in paint with the email address written in it and then just "My email address is " or whatever. Alternatively if you want a quicker way, write in MS Paint a "@" sign in the font you're using on the site. Then just write "my email address is billmicrosoft.com". Josh Holloway  20:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Images won't work for anything which requires 1. the ability of the visual impaired to view the page, 2. the ability of those who don't load images to view the page, or 3. the mass-production of said addresses, unless you automate it which is a big additional pain in the neck on top of #1 and #2. --24.147.86.187 03:19, 28 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well if you make your javascript obfuscation engine complex enough (like not just escape) that the harvester can't easily rewrite it in perl or something, then if he's too stupid to use rhino he won't be able to use your actual javascript code and stay efficient --⁪froth T 21:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Ethical Hacker Network uses some crazy javascript obfuscation, if you need an example. Another answer I've seen is to do "name@doBUSHmain.com without the fool," or some other more humerous version. --h2g2bob 00:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Slashdot does this too, my email is currently shown as oskarsigvardssonNO@SPAMgmail.com (I'm confident in providing my email since it is obfuscated ;) It's pretty fun to come back each week to see what crazyness CmdrTaco is up to know ;) Oskar 17:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * See this old report; I don't know if any followups have been done, but the kind of people who spam are quite deliberately looking for the very easiest pickings. --Tardis 18:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a great report, thanks. I wonder if there is anything more recent? --24.147.86.187 03:19, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Downloading file in IE > garbled letters to look at
I uploaded a file to my own webspace and when I tried to download it by suppling IE with the address (in the address bar), IE (stupidly) tried to open it and display its garbled contents). Is there any way to download this file with IE. It's a .rar file and I do not have administrative privileges on the computer I'm downloading to. --Seans Potato Business 20:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It sounds like the content-type is not being sent. If it's an actual rar file then it's not that you haven't programmed it to print the program type, which is weird. I suggest you ensure that the upload mode is in ASCII mode rather than binary mode. Other than that, I wouldn't be able to help (but will give that advice as my two cents!). Josh Holloway  20:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't you want to ensure binary, not ascii? Anyway, just make a hyperlink to the file (or use an existing link) and right-click it then Save target as --⁪froth T 21:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe the wrong Content-type is sent by the web server. Maybe you need to reconfigure it to send the right one. --Spoon! 23:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The remote server is sending the wrong MIME type. If the address is a hyperlink somewhere, right click the link and select Save As. Or just wait for the page to load do File, Save As. --h2g2bob 23:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * If the file isn't linked from a web page, make your own link. --wj32 talk 09:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)