Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 May 22

= May 22 =

Moving GIF images
How can you copy a moving GIF image? When I tried to copy one it became a normal image.

203.88.224.110 06:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Try saving the image somewhere and opening it up / pasting from the file. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:22, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

What if you're copying it from the internet?

Dudforreal 06:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Most web browsers let you right click, then click Save Image (or something similar). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * It'll look still unless you view it in Windows Fax Viewer or similar. Josh Holloway  06:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

How can you create a moving GIF image and put it on powerpoint?

Dudforreal 06:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Powerpoint slide design
Dudforreal 06:26, 22 May 2007 (UTC)How can you use your own image/s as a design template for the slide design for the slide?
 * Put them on the slide master. — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 08:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Send e-mail from alternate address to Google Groups
How can I send e-mail from my alternate e-mail address to Google Groups? Currently, Google Groups accepts e-mail only from my GMail address. --Masatran 06:50, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Time stamp in Microsoft excel .xls files?
I'm writing a windows command-line utility for deleting duplicate files within directory trees, and have a problem with excel files. Microsoft excel appears to change a time/date stamp within the file whenever it opens a spreadsheet. Here's sample output of a binary comparison of files that I believe were identical, except for having been opened at different times:

E:\SomeDirectory>for %d in (*.*) do fc /b %d ..\OtherDirectory\%d Comparing A.xls and ..\OtherDirectory\A.xls 00008E6C: B0 30 00008E6D: 0A 3C 00008E6E: 22 04 00008E6F: 35 29 Comparing B.xls and ..\OtherDirectory\B.xls 0000A26C: 50 30 0000A26D: FA F2 0000A26E: 10 16 0000A26F: 93 97 Comparing C.xls and ..\OtherDirectory\C.xls 00008C6C: 60 C0 00008C6D: 25 81 00008C6E: B0 86 00008C6F: A9 AD E:\SomeDirectory>

In the example, the time stamp appears to occupy four consecutive bytes, but at different offsets within the files. I've noticed previously that the time stamp somtimes occupes more than four bytes (six?). Does anyone know how to locate and interpret this time stamp? --NorwegianBluetalk 07:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you sure it's really a timestamp or just information such as which sheet is opened or which cell celected? The latter does get stored; I doubt that you want to keep files just because of such trivial differences. Possible workarounds for that include manually selecting the same cell or exporting the content before the comparison. &mdash; Sebastian 22:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm reasonably sure it's a time stamp, because
 * opening a copy of the file and immediately closing it, without selecting a different cell, leads to such differences as shown above.
 * When doing this with older files (like, a couple of months since they've been opened), the differing region occupies six bytes. When the file has been recently opened, it occupies four bytes. --NorwegianBluetalk 07:43, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, I'm not sure that this is what you're looking for, but if you go into File->Properties then onto the 'Statistics' tab, there is a buncha information like that. For example, the "Created" and "Modified" datetime stamps on this tab aren't the same as the MS-DOS stamps on the 'General' tab.  There is a 'Accessed' Field - NByz 01:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * They aren't user-editable in excel, but you can test this theory by editing them in binary, and seeing if it changes on that page. Are you up to some forgin'? - NByz 01:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I think indeed that you are right in that it's the "accessed" field that's causing the trouble. I was hoping someone knew some shortcut way of looking up its offset. Some googling led me to the OpenOffice documentation of the excel file format and of the Microsoft composite document format, of which the excel format is a special case. Excel files have several internal "streams", two of which might be candidates for the location of the time stamp, "SummaryInformation" and "DocumentSummaryInformation". However, solving this based on the docs plus fiddling with a binary file editor will require a lot of work, overkill for the app in question. I think I'll just settle with allowing the program to ignore a single difference in six consequtive bytes in an excel file, without actually verifying that those bytes are at the right location. Thanks! --NorwegianBluetalk 16:48, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Screenshot in Internet Explorer 7
Hello wise wikipeople, is there some way of taking a screenshot of the contents of an Internet Explorer 7 window (ideally without downloading new programs). thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 * Yes, and you don't need to download any new programs. Somewhere in the top-right of your keyboard is a key labelled 'Print Screen'. Open the Internet Explorer window and press Alt and Print Screen at the same time. The screenshot will be placed on your clipboard; you can now go into Paint or any other image editing program, press Ctrl+V to paste the screenshot and do whatever you want with it. — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 08:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool thanks!
 * Er, just for curiosity's sake, but ALT printscreen? I just use printscreen, and it works fine. Is there a reason for using ALT, or is it just ignored? --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント  (talk) 07:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * ALT printscreen copies the current window only. Quite useful. Printscreen copies the entire screen. --NorwegianBluetalk 07:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Sap Bw
I am new to sap Bw. I have some doubts about Performance tuning. So please explain about this topic.


 * SAP BW is such a massive piece of software that your question is hopelessly overscoped. I suggest you call up your SAP vendor and request some consulting services, read a book or two on this topic, or have your company send you through some SAP training classes. -- mattb 23:58, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

What hardware should I put in my server?
I would like to set up my own server. I have a server hosting at present but I'm dissatisfied with price/yeild. I have no experience setting up servers - I have only made programs/applications in the past so this is new to me.

My needs: I have an application with some 500 users with the potential to go up to 2000-3000. The application is text based, interspersed with medium-sized (30-40 kb) images. It needs to run a rather extensive database as well - MySQL - and do so swiftly. The whole thing is .NET (C#) based.

- What issues should I consider when I invest in hardware for this purpose?

- What hardware is important for this purpose?

- Is Linux the best sollution when I need the .NET framework?

Regards Stan


 * .NET is a Microsoft framework, so linux will probably not work with it. You might be interested in LAMP though -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 11:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You should think carefully before setting up your first system when you have 500 users to keep happy. Perhaps you could hire a consultant who has done it before to help you out?  --TotoBaggins 14:22, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I've probably built a couple of hundred servers in my time, and basically it's all about what you want that server to do. From you description, it sounds like your key considerations are I/O. Modern CPUs are now so fast they are rarely a performance problem (particularly Dual-Core). I normally favour 1GB RAM per CPU. The real nuts and bolts are your connectivity and I/O throughput to your database. You need to consider how users are going to connect (ie over a LAN or ADSL etc) and whether you require two adaptors (a for failover and b for throughput). On a database server your hard disks are the key. Firstly do the disks need to be fast SCSI or can you use SATA? This is bascially a question of cost, as the real performance benefit comes from the disk layout. For best performance use RAID1 or RAID1/0, the downside is these layouts only give you 50% total disk capacity as usable space. If your I/O is mainly reads and not writes I would go for RAID5, which provides good protection and performance, and allows 75-80% usable space from the total capacity. Obviously to run this system you need a RAID controller. So another thing to consider is how many PCI slots your server has and how fast the bus speeds are.

Broadband speed notation
Hmmm. When a broadband internet speed is expressed as something like "2048kb/384kb" - which are the download and the upload speeds? Thanks!


 * Traditionally the speeds are given as download/upload, so your example would be 2Mbps down, 384Kbps up. -- LarryMac | Talk  13:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * thanks to you!


 * At any rate, the lower one will always be the upload speed for consumer broadband, since they don't want you hosting services without buying a more expensive contract. --TotoBaggins 14:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * And don't forget, those are in bits, not bytes, so divide by 8 to get the more normal kilobytes. So in your case, 256KB down and 48KB up.  --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント  (talk) 07:11, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

windows 3.11 games
I'm trying to remember a game i used to play on 3.11 (though it may be very early windows 95, it's certainly from 1st half of the 90s), which was set in the future and involved racing around sort of floating tracks in futuristic metropolises in very fast cars. each race was like it was televised, and before each race there was a sort of build-up with a presenter called Lance something, but that's all i can remember. it may even have been like a game-show format where Lance was the host and you had to win the race to stay in it. can anyone help me? --Alex16z 13:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds like F-Zero. --TotoBaggins 14:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It is similar, but was for PC. --Alex16z 14:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, i remember this, my dad had it. MegaRace? ~ lav-chan @ 03:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

MegaRace"! oh my god, thank you so much! that has been bugging me on and off for years!¬ --Alex16z 08:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

php email problems
I am trying to send an email from php in html. The email looks fine in thunderbird but it comes up in code when viewed in outlook express. What could the problem be? Thanks, 89.127.160.227 13:47, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Send the shortest email you can that still exhibits the problem, and post it here (raw!) for diagnosis. --TotoBaggins 14:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say you're not doing the content-type correctly. A dude from php.net/mail says: I just spent a few hours working on getting a simple html formatted email to work on outlook. This is the end result:




 * Should do it for you :) (look at the source of this page [edit] to view the code with line breaks). Josh Holloway  15:13, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, consider using as_mail instead of mail. It helps avoid email injection by spammers. --Kainaw (talk) 00:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

What is the frequency of Paradise?
I have an old MS-DOS pc, 386sx circa 1993, with a Paradise VGA card. It is an early Paradise VGA model, I think, with only 256k memory, I think. The VGA has 4 different selectable horizontal frequencies. Two of the 4 are the standard IBM-VGA-compatible 25 MHz and and 28 MHz clocks. These correspond to bit values 00b and 01b in the VGA's miscellaneous register. The other two are Paradise specific. I want to know the frequencies of these two. The pc has a VGA monitor which is *not* multi-sync, so to compute the correct values for setting the VGA chip registers to generate the correct timings for the VGA monitor I need those frequencies. Can't find it through Google. (I am experimenting with this old system as a hobby, doing some assembly programming etc.)

195.35.160.133 13:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC) - Martin -

P.s.: pun intended in the title of this question.


 * If you get the model numbers off the actual chip(s) on the card, Google might be more forthcoming. --TotoBaggins 14:26, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It's a bit of a long shot, but if you could borrow a frequency counter or an oscilloscope from somewhere, you could measure it. Btw, what would happen if you fed your monitor with the wrong frequency? —Bromskloss 14:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Martin responds: if you feed the wrong frequency to a *non*-multisync monitor, the monitor will not sync, or if the frequency is close it may sync, but overstress/overheat(?) the hardware after prolonged use. It could damage the monitor permanently. I did some trial and error, and I have rough values for the VGA registers, but I would like the precise values to minimise the risk of damaging the hardware. Also just out of curiousity. And I don't have access to an oscilloscope. 195.35.160.133 15:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC) - Martin -


 * Why don't you try the "suck it and see" approach *with* a multisync monitor?


 * How come it will overstress/overheat just because it gets a sync signal of an unexpected frequency? —Bromskloss 08:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Seconded: a lot of multisync monitors can show (on their OSD) both frequencies of the signal they are receiving. Try using a multisync monitor and see what it says. --cesarb 09:50, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Addendum by Martin: good idea using a multisync monitor to read both the scanline and pixel frequencies. In fact knowing only the scanline frequency that a particular VGA setting produces should be enough to compute the selected pixel frequency. Because my MS-DOS PC and my multisync monitor are 5 miles apart I could not put it to practice yet. So I still have no precise figures for the pixel frequencies. However based on trial and error and working backwards fom the BIOS mode for 132 columns (which uses the 4th pixel frequency) I now have some fairly good guesstimates.

I estimate the 3rd frequency (bit code 10b in the miscellaneous register) to be 44 MHz (give or take maybe two MHz).

And the 4th (bit code 11b) seems to be 35.2 MHz (give or take maybe a half MHz).

195.35.160.133 10:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)- Martin -

Second addendum by Martin: I have managed to compute the frequencies by looking at a status bit at VGA port 03dah which indicates vertical retrace. By counting Vretraces in real time I can compute the screen refresh rate. Multiplying that by the "vertical total" (1based=register+1) and the "horizontal total" (1based=register+6) and the pixels per character width (8 or 9) I get the pixel clocks.

The four values I got were 25.2 28.4 44.9 and 36.4. The second value (theoretically) should be 28.3, but still pretty accurate.

195.35.160.133 12:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)- Martin -

Brand new MAC's hardrive crashed - how to recover PROPERLY?
The Problem:

A good friend of mine recently acquired a brand new 400GB external Seagate harddrive and filled it with his film's clips for editing!

Last night someone pulled out its power without realising and this morning the Mac wanted to "re initiate" the hard drive.

My friend stupidly took it back to the seller who "couldn't see anything" on the drive and very stupidly reformatted it!

The Reaction:

I have obtained two different data recovery programs ("Recover My Files" and "Nucleas Kernel Macintosh"), and quite suprisingly the one manages to slowly see the lost files!  The problem is it takes freakin AGES. It took about 3 hours to get to 0.7% completion of scanning the drive!!

The other problem is that it doesn't know the names of the files! So it starts to rename things like "Recovered_Mpeg_203.MPG" - which doesn't really help.

 Your expertise needed:

(The Solution):


 * 1) Can you advise as to whether or not it is possible to recover the NAMES of the lost files? OR


 * 1) Can you recommend some high-end software that might be able to do the process quicker?

If I could do either of those all our work will not be lost!

Thanking you in advance

Rfwoolf 14:31, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This might not be entirely correct, but: Names are metadata. Metadata was most likely entirely destroyed in the reformat. Sorry. Consider yourself lucky you can recover the files, and just relabel them by hand. That time doesn't seem totally unreasonable to me, compared to the time and cost of sending it in to a professional data recovery service. You have to realize, it's trying to read data that shouldn't really exist. It probably has to read a disk numerous times in order to recover the file. All things considered, you might be able to recreate the clips quicker than you can recover them. -- Phoeba WrightOBJECTION! 16:02, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

software for checking broadband speed
Hi,

can anyone suggest/recommend some free (or very cheap) software which I could use to automatically check my broadband (adsl) speeds at regular intervals throughout the day? ie to run for 24 hours - or more - so the speed can still be checked even though I'll be at work.

I'm currently with virgin media on their broadband only package. I'm supposed to be getting at least 1MB but over the last few evenings, when I've checked, the various speed checker websites I use have been giving a result of 70-80k (little better than dial up!!)

I think I read somewhere that some virgin customers have concerns that perhaps virgin are over subscribed and their infrastructure can't cope - making everyone's speeds really slow.

I'm running windows xp on a 6 month old pc, with a speedtouch modem router.

thanks Spiggy 83.104.131.135 14:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You don't say, but note that 70-80 kilobytes per second is 500-600 kilobits per second, which is probably about right for a 1 megabit connection (which is what you have, I believe). It's true that it's lower than what they advertise, but their fine print no doubt covers them for that.  At any rate, it's at least 10 times faster than a real modem.  --TotoBaggins 15:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Go to SpeedTest.net every few hours, I'd suggest. Josh Holloway  15:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

OK. thanks for that. I might actually post a screen shot of my test results - in case I am misreading them. However, my broadband is really quite slow!! spiggy 83.104.131.135 15:52, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you run the test on a day when you had used your connection a lot (I mean a day when you've transferred multiple gigabytes of data)? Virgin have publicly said that users who've crossed a certain usage threshold (the threshold depends on what package you're on) in one day will have their bandwidth limited by a factor of 50% for the rest of that day.  Annoying, isn't it (but at least virgin are honest about it).  Cheers,    Davidprior 14:12, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

trouble uploading copyright free jpeg image
I have been having trouble uploading a jpeg image to go with my article under reporter's notebook. I have figured out the image locater coding, which should read but I cannot get my scanned jpeg file to load to the wikipedia website. It is waiting on my desktop. I am using mozilla firefox2. thank you. Rejoyce99 17:10, 22 May 2007 (UTC)rejoyce99
 * See Uploading images. If that does not answer your question, then post a more specific question.
 * By the way, I am not sure what you mean by "copyright free". The jpeg image format came after modern copyright law went into place in most of the world. And in modern copyright law, copyright exists in all created works, until its expriation, which has not happened yet for any jpeg image (under the laws of most western countries). Thus, copyright exists in every jpeg every created. Informally speaking, "every jpeg image is copyrighted". If the image has been released to the public domain by its creator, then copyright law can generally be ignored, as it pertains to this image. But otherwise, the image is not in any sense "copyright free". --Tugbug 18:30, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a bit of a sweeping statement. Copyright does not exist for Works of the United States Government, for example. That's why we can use NASA's images of Mars without any problems. Thanks to Corel Corp we can also use exact photographic copies of images in the public domain. It's quite misleading to say that every JPEG image is copyrighted. — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 18:49, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I think all that he meant is that JPEG isn't a "free image format", like the way PNG is. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 07:06, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Which is fairly irrelevant to the question. --24.147.86.187 12:22, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I meant that copyright exists in every JPEG image. And, as Matt Eason pointed out, I was wrong. I stand corrected. --Tugbug 18:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * And people can release their own images into the public domain if they want to. --24.147.86.187 12:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

smart drive
what is SMART DRIVE? what is the use of it?


 * It would be best if you read our article on the SMART monitoring system found in many modern hard drives. Splintercellguy 20:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

binary search tree
can anybody help me to under stand in a very simple way not in a bookish way that    how i can find the external path length and internal path length of a binary search tree.

Acer Aspire 5000 power jack
My girlfriend's Acer Aspire 5000's power jack is broken. It looks perfectly normal, but it just doesn't work. How can i fix it? --Shanedidona 20:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the jack on the laptop or the one on the power supply? Laptop's generally don't really have any user serviceable parts, if you have no warranty you'll probably need to pay for repair or replacement. I doubt someone here will be able to provide an answer to 'fix it' if you don't know how to do this kind of stuff already. Vespine 01:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Video Compression
What is the best way to fit/compress 2 GB of video (MPEG, but I don't know which) in such a way that it can fit on a standard 700 MB CD and still be opened on another computer without any special programs? By special program I mean anything that wouldn't usually come with Windows XP. --The Dark Side 23:49, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * mplayer/mencoder will do this for you. Reduce the size of the video and change encodings to something more spacious (MPEG4? Audio in MP3?)


 * You should know how little Windows XP comes with. It's surprising you can do anything on a vanilla XP installation. --antilivedT 05:25, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Virtualdub is a common way (at least, used to be) to recompress video. If you know how to use it, or follow instructions at doom9.org, you can get similar qualities after compression.  But be warned: recompressing video isn't a 5 minute task. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント  (talk) 07:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)