Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 December 8

= December 8 =

What's this charcter?
What is this character:

่

I can enter is with some http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/glossary.mspx + #### combination, but I forgot. Does anyone know? When entered into the old MSN messengers, it makes the font huge. Acceptable (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a Thai tone mark: mai ek, U+0E48. Bendono (talk) 04:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * How do I enter the character using alt + ####? Acceptable (talk) 04:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Use the hex code point that I gave above. Assuming that HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad is enabled, then alt + 0e48. (You need to hold Alt the whole time.) Bendono (talk) 04:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but how do I enter an "e" with the number pad? Acceptable (talk) 21:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not an e. He meant to type a '3' or '4' but missed the key. Try both of them. I'm pretty sure thats what happened. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neziwi (talk • contribs) 20:58, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You can take a look at List of Unicode characters which unfortunately doesn't seem to have this character or Wikibooks:Unicode/Character reference/0000-0FFF to work out the numbers for this and other characters. However an E was intended and no one ever said to only use the numpad (the only mention to the numpad at all was a registry key and you should not intepret registry keys too literally, it's just the internal name for the function). If you do only want to use the numpad only you need to convert the hexadecimal code into decimal. Note that when you are entering a hexadecimal code you literally need to press the plus. Take a look at Alt+NumPad here for more details. Also Unicode input and Alt code may be of interest Nil Einne (talk) 09:17, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

WW2 Colossus versus modern laptop
A CBS News story by Shelia MacVicar about Bletchly Park, World War 2 HQ for cracking Axis code messages, claims that the WW2 Colossus computer "still works as fast as a laptop." The Colossus computer article in Wikipedia says that recently a 1.5 Ghz laptop was able to break a code faster than a restored Colossus. It credits Colossus, according to some reckoning, as having "an equivalent clock of 5.8 Mhz", still orders of magnitude slower than the laptop. Is the CBS story full of beans? Edison (talk) 04:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Be careful. The Colossus wasn't intended to be a general purpose computer - it had lots of specialised hardware for code-breaking.  So it might well beat a modern laptop at codebreaking - but take a week to balance your checkbook! SteveBaker (talk) 05:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm - having read the Colossus computer article, I think the CBS story is wrong. We have a direct (and referenced) quote from someone who broke a code using a 1.5GHz laptop 240 times faster than the Colossus replica could manage - so that pretty much says CBS were exaggerating.  But it's still possible that there were other operations that the Colossus could do that are still more suited to it's highly specialized architecture - and might therefore allow it to beat a modern PC at that very specific task. SteveBaker (talk) 05:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I seriously doubt it. Modern computers are fast, I highly doubt there is anything Colossus would be able to do faster. A regular cellphone is several orders of magnitude faster than the Apollo-program computers, and that was 20 years later. I understand that application-specific computers are faster than general purpose ones, but it's been 60 years since Colossus. No way it would be able to beat a laptop in code-cracking. 83.250.202.208 (talk) 11:39, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: Regular cellphone processors are several orders of magnitude faster than any processors sent into space, regardless of whether they are Apollo-program ones, or 2008 ones. Like the Colossus, space-program chips (e.g. SPARC-design Leon) are reconfigurable, while cellphone processors like the ARM-design snapdragon are not. -- Fullstop (talk) 19:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * @Steve: the Colossus didn't really have any specialised hardware for code breaking at all. Bletchley had a very clever system whereby they broke the tasks of analysing the settings of a geimschreiber link into a few very simple (very mechanical) tasks. One was a very simple (by modern standards) letter-group frequency analysis (which is just a few counters). Another was "dragging" a crib over a ciphertext (testing a range of cribs against possible wheel settings), and another was "boxing", which involved exploiting statistical similarities between related machine settings, and was again another kind of counting.  Before Colossus these jobs were done by an oddbod variety of bespoke machines (one rightly named a Robinson after Heath), which had no real stored program (they just did what a loop of punched paper tape did them, and thus didn't even have any kind of real conditional logic). The Colossus proved to be faster and more flexible, but even then it was heavily attended by wrens who feverishly reconfigured it and did a lot of the functions we'd expect even the most basic computer to do itself.  Fundamentally the colossus reproduced the same statistical hacks that the earlier machines had, which in turn had (briefly) been done on paper by people. It made no attempt to simulate the target machine's operation, so it was entirely unlike a dedicated crypto-breaker box like the EFF's DES-cracker. It really didn't do much more than a bit of counting and some strcmp. 87.114.128.88 (talk) 01:02, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the evidence that there was a lack of a specialised architecture to the Colossus is that it ended up doing a bunch of tasks it wasn't intended for. It was built (in the face of stiff opposition from those who didn't trust electronics' reliability) to do just a couple of functions; but by the end of the war it was doing a whole slew of other tasks (and coping with significant enhancements made by the worried germans) - much of this is down to clever chaps like Donald Michie figuring out how to program it to do new things with its incredibly limited resources. Unlike the electromechanical monsters it replaced (which really were built with a single specific task in mind) it really was a proper programmable computer. 87.114.128.88 (talk) 01:21, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It wasn't a Turing-complete machine (which is surprising given how much of it was designed by Turing) - and "programming" it meant rewiring bits of it, not typing in a program...so to describe it as a "proper programmable computer" is a bit of a stretch. SteveBaker (talk) 06:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Read/Write rating of CF card
What is a typical read/write rating (ie how many times can it read/write) of a CF card? I'm only look for an estimate (1000 or 10,000 for example). Thanks, --Fir0002 06:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The answer is that the number of read cycles is infinite but the number of write cycles is in the 10,000 range - (probably higher these days) but it varies a lot from one generation of hardware to the next. But the problem is not as simple as it first seems because you have to count the number of writes.  Suppose you have a 4Gbyte MP3 player based on flash memory...when you write a song to it, it only takes up maybe 1Mbyte - but writing 10,000 1Mbyte songs to the MP3 player won't trash it because each song does not update the entire memory.  So long as the software is smart enough to spread new data out across the media, your MP3 player (which can hold 4,000 1Mbyte songs) could be 'written to' 10,000x4,000=40 million times...so you could write (and then erase) 10,000 songs to it every day for about 10 years before it would crap out on you.   Where things go horribly wrong is when device manufacturers are not very smart about how they use the devices.   Suppose the MP3 player has a single memory location that counts the number of songs it's holding currently.  Since that location would be written to every single time you wrote a track to it's memory, after only 1 day of loading 10,000 songs - that specific memory location would die and your MP3 player would stop working.


 * There have been some notorious cases of that happening. Apple had a printer that used a flash memory to remember the paper size settings - the intention was that this setting would only be changed through an interactive control panel on the computer and so it would happen quite rarely.  That was back when the number of write cycles was probably around 1,000.   It's very unlikely that someone would switch back and forth between 'letter sized' paper and 'legal sized' more than a few times a week - so the printer would probably last for years in normal use.  Then someone came out with some new piece of software that redundantly reset the paper size at the start of every page it printed and these printers started failing after an alarmingly short amount of time.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 13:33, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The CompactFlash article indicates that most newer cards use "NAND" type Flash Memory, and the latter article indicates a write endurance rating of around 100K. -- LarryMac  | Talk  14:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Question
Why does say "None that we know of" for games that have no multiplayer modes? There is clearly no multiplayer in those games. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.230.180.175 (talk) 07:06, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Because sometimes there's a third-party add-on that converts a single-player game into a multiplayer game. --Carnildo (talk) 00:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

That reminds me...
Anybody happen to know if there is a way to get my music collection from my original Xbox hard drive to my computer, or to a 360 for that matter? I've ripped all of my cd's already, but I had some songs on the xbox that were by local artists and don't seem to be available anywhere anymore. D a R kA g E 7 [Talk] 07:53, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * They're located at E:\tdata\fffe0000\music on the Xbox's HDD, in WMA files. You can either hook the HDD up to your computer and use a tool from to read it (with caution), or use a softmod or modchip to get an FTP server running on the Xbox, and access the files through there. The first thing will require 'hot swapping' the harddrive to unlock it, and plenty of information on that can be found at xbox-scene.com, most of it centered around doing that in order to install a softmod . Softmodding can be done that way, or via a gamesave exploit, which might be somewhat safer. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 00:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Question 2
What operating system is considered the best of all-time? 60.230.180.175 (talk) 12:58, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * That depends on your definition of "best" and your definition of "an operating system" and on whom is doing the "considering".
 * Is Windows AN operating system or is it many operating systems that have gone by the same family name? Is UNIX one operating system or many?  (Are IRIX, Solaris and Linux counted as "a UNIX" or not?  Should we count MacOSX as "BSD UNIX"?)
 * Is "best" the one that sold the most copies? Is it the one that crashed the least?  The one for which most applications have been written?  The most elegantly structured?  The most widely ported?  The longest lived?  Depending on what you want, the answers will vary.
 * Worse still, the definition of what an operating system *IS* is a little tricky to pin down. Windows is more than an operating system - it includes a windowing environment and a bunch of applications...but UNIX is the operating system and the common applications - the frequently associated windowing system is not a part of it.  Linux is JUST the kernel - the applications are mostly GNU.  BSD is like Linux in most places it's used - but as the kernel of MacOSX, it's just the kernel.  If we consider the kernels that are incorporated into things like microwave oven controllers and car engine management systems as "operating systems" then the question opens so wide that it would be quite utterly impossible to decide.
 * At best, your question is vague - most likely it's flame-bait. Either way we cannot (and should not) answer it. SteveBaker (talk) 13:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Don't listen to SteveBaker. The best operating system of all time is clearly SHODAN. Duh. --140.247.243.245 (talk) 15:23, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The MCP might have something to say about that! SteveBaker (talk) 03:22, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Haiku? Tama1988 (talk) 09:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the disappointing answer to your question is "they're all the same". While it's fashionable for people to have a fave they claim beats the others hands down, for mainstream OSes (ones you're realistically likely to run) there's disappointingly little diversity in architecture, capability, or performance. Of the "big guys" (windows, bsd, macos, linux, solaris, aix, hpux) they're all portable (yes, even windows, when MS care to port it). The great monolithic/microkernel schism is less defined in practice, as most of that lot lie somewhere between the two extremes. They all support processes and threads and files and protected memory and IPC and network sockets and a bunch of GUIs that all work just about the same. They have different (but not unrelated) APIs, but those overwhelmingly are workalikes - to such an extent that writing a windows API system for unix, and a unix compatibility layer for windows, didn't turn out to be (fundamentally) that difficult a task (it's mostly a matter of endless detail).  Now there's far more diversity in research OSes, but by the time concepts from research make it into "real" OSes the burden of unfortunate practicalities and the need to support existing software seems to mean we all end up with BlandOSv3. 87.114.128.88 (talk) 14:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

User:Topology Expert computer help
Could someone please try to help this user (maybe respond at his talk page)? He is having some sort of a strange problem with his keyboard and asked me to ask for help for him here. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It looks like the prob is that many of the letters they type are being dropped. I would suspect the issue is with the keyboard itself.  First, try cleaning it.  Hold it upside down over a trash can and shake it.  This should dislodge any crumbs, hairs, etc.  If this doesn't help, try a new keyboard.  If you don't have a spare one at home, buy a new one, they only cost around $20 each. StuRat (talk) 17:58, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

(double u)hen I type (double u), my computer log off. (double u)hen I type the firt letter of your uername, the ection blank.

TOP EPERT


 * I'm guess that the control key is stuck or broken. Ctrl-W is a standard "Close Window" command for Windows.  Not sure which username first letter is being referred to, Ctrl-N in Internet Explorer will open a new window using the current URL.  -- LarryMac  | Talk  18:43, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If you're using Windows, hit Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Ease of Access -> On-Screen Keyboard. That's for Vista at least, but it shouldn't be much different on other versions of Windows, and it'll be along the same lines on other operating systems. Won't fix your keyboard, but it should make typing a bit easier. CaptainVindaloo t c e 18:57, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for your help (and to Nsk92 for posting this)! The problem does not seem to continue but basically I had these problems:

'w' logged off the computer 's' blanked the Wikipage 'x' did not work (just made 's' appear so the keys switched functions) '2' did not work (just completely blanked a microsoft word document and I could not undo to get back to the original) '~' made the letters PKWHF (or something like that) appear and blanked a few lines

Actually, two reboots ago, it was working but one reboot ago it was not and now it is working again... Maybe the control key was stuck (it seemed to work when I tapped the key so thankyou for that) but I am still unsure of exactly what the problem was. Does anyone know whether this is because of a particular setting of the computer (in terms of command keys) or something of that sort? If so, how to undo it?

Thankyou for your help.

Topology Expert (talk) 19:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Take apart the keyboard and clean everything carefully. The "bigger" keys are likely to catch loooots of dirt, at least on my experience in my friend's computer keyboards (HELL, what did they DO in front of their computer?!). You can wash the plastic parts (keys, housing) with warm water (a bit liquid soap is good for coke remainings). The electronic foil containing the printed logic can be cleaned by rubbing CAREFULLY over it with some wet piece of cloth or toilet paper. Please, do care about screws, btw... HardDisk (talk) 23:05, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou, but my computer i a laptop... (and the problem i back).

Top epert.


 * Maybe it's time you took your laptop to a specialist, or try to get a replacement keyboard from the manufacturer or on eBay. You can also consider using an external keyboard (not so portable, but at least it will do if you don't need to travel too far).  If you really want to go for a do-it-yourself clean then read on...
 * You can dismantle a laptop keyboard; it's just a little trickier. If your laptop is like mine, the keyboard is held in by 2 screws under a bezel near the screen.  You will need to remove some other parts/panels to get at the screws that hold the bezel on.  The keyboard is also connected to the motherboard by a very short (and fragile) ribbon cable.  Once free of the rest of the laptop, the keys can be carefully prised off.  The base of the keyboard and the keys can be cleaned as described by HardDisk above.  If any parts become even slightly wet make sure it is absolutely dry before reassembly (leaving the parts out in a warm atmosphere for a couple of days will do).  Unfortunately, there is no good way to test it without reassembling your laptop.
 * One last thing: Poking around inside your laptop has a high risk of breaking something critical and it will invalidate any warranty. If the machine is still under warranty, call the manufacturer's tech support first.
 * Astronaut (talk) 14:00, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Assuming it is the control key which is sticking, and you have two control keys on the laptop, you could also disable the bad control key (by prying the key off) and exclusively use the other. It will look pretty bad, but hopefully solve the problem. StuRat (talk) 17:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that is what I have done. But according to what you have said control-w closes the window but not for me. Instead, 'w' logs off my computer. Does anyone know whether there is a program involved (or some setting) that I can set to default? Topology Expert (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It doesn't sound like a setting - the reassignments seem a bit too random for that! It might be worth checking the Fn key isn't stuck down - the manufacturers seem to do all sorts of different things with that. Come to that, check all the keys! Then borrow a separate keyboard from a desktop PC, plug it into the laptop and try typing with that. If the keys work with the separate keyboard, the problem's probably that the laptop's keyboard is sending the wrong codes - perhaps a driver problem, or just a connection behaving oddly. If they don't, it's more likely to be a software problem of some kind.
 * By the way, does Captain Vindaloo's idea work? AJHW (talk) 11:45, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help! I couldn't test Captain's idea because I don't have an 'ease of access' section on my menu. Topology Expert (talk) 15:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

No it works! But it is very tedious to type using that. Sometimes, my keys work; sometimes they don't. I don't really understand it...

Topology Expert (talk) 19:17, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds like it could be a hardware problem, then. The test with the separate keyboard should confirm that, if you can manage to do that. I think the most likely problems are a driver that's conflicting with the keyboard's driver, or a dodgy connection somewhere in the keyboard. If it's a driver problem, you might be able to fix it yourself by going to the manufacturer's website and searching for updated drivers. (Make sure you choose the right model number - the wrong driver can foul the system up badly! It would also be a good idea to make a System Restore point, so you can undo the update if it makes things worse.) A bad connection will be harder to fix yourself - so if updating the drivers doesn't work I'd be inclined to get an engineer, or the manufacturer's technical support if it's still in warranty. AJHW (talk) 12:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Choosing web-hosting
How should be proceed to choose a web-hosting company? All are incredibly cheap, promise 99.9% uptime, and lots of stuff and all seem to have terrible review all over the internet about how they were down for days...--Mr.K. (talk) 18:35, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * If you want dependable webhosting service, you need a service which your monthly payment matters. If you are paying $1/month and have a complaint, why should the company care?  It is just a dollar.  If you are paying $25/month, the company might listen to your complaint, but you aren't important.  If you are paying $100/month, the company may actually start taking your complaint seriously.  You will see this in what the companies offer.  The dirt cheap ones say "you can do this" and "you can do that".  The expensive ones say "we will do this" and "we will do that".  I am speaking from personal experience on the webhosting side.  I do not even attempt to compete with the cheap companies.  I charge a minimum of $120/month, but I have a staff of people that handle any issues the clients come up with as soon as the client calls in.  Most problems are handled right away while the client is on the phone.  The clients I have do not want to learn to do things themselves.  They want to pay someone else to do everything and have the ability to talk to a human whenever they have questions.  So, you need to decide what you want and then find someone who will give it to you for a price you are willing to pay for. --  k a i n a w &trade; 20:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Note that servers that charge $1-10 a month are almost always colocating your site with dozens of others on the same server rack. Yes, your $10 a month doesn't mean much, but when the site goes down it's usually the whole batch that go down, and that has a bit more weight (suddenly we're talking $120-200 a month at stake). I've found that the reasonably cheap hosting (e.g. $10/mo. and lower) are, in my experience, pretty good about keeping good up-times, because they want the reputation and the mass signups that come with it. It's true that the individual matters little to them but their business model requires that many individuals be happy. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Who's your ISP? My ISP hosts my site for free without ads. It doesn't support server-side scripting, though. If you're a student, you usually get a free site, too. At my college, our sites are free without ads and with Perl scripting.--192.94.73.1 (talk) 22:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Even if your ISP doesn't host sites, many people have "always-on" high-speed Internet connections. If you want to "do it all yourself", you can host your site on a computer in your house and use one of many dynamic domain services to keep a domain name pointed to your home's IP address. --  k a i n a w &trade; 01:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

If you really need very cheap hosting, my suggestion is to try several of them out. At the same time. Use something like to check on them regularly. Send them emails on several questions. After the month see which one is best for yourself. If you dont wanna wait 1 month, then time is to you more important than money so you should ignore those offering hosting for 1$ and pick a hosting with high ratio of good/bad reviews. And if you *really* need 99.9% uptime, then you need a [Service level agreement|SLA] guaranteeing 99.9% and that will cost you quite a lot. &mdash; Shinhan  &lt;&thinsp; talk &thinsp;&gt; 11:15, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There are lots of good web hosts out there. The review systems seem good and you just check the reviews and that they provide what you need. It is worth avoiding the free ones but even a tiny amount of money will get you a decent service if your requirements are basic. Support costs are especially important to suppliers so you can't expect many facilities if you don't pay much. Dmcq (talk) 12:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd like to point out that there are bazillions of "free" hosting sites out there. They give anywhere from 512MB to 50GB of "free" storage. On the con side, though, they have limits on what types of files you can upload (i.e., no EXE's or obscure endings like QRH's), and they limit your max file size, and they can sometimes disappear with little/no prior notice, leaving you without your files. It happened to me with (notice that there's nothing there...). And they aren't scared of losing customers, so their downtimes are pretty long. Another personal experience: L4RGE (at least it still exists...) has been claiming to be "upgrading their servers," which is a legitimate excuse for being down; the only thing with that is, it doesn't take 3 months to upgrade servers. And they've been regularly posting messages from the "staff" saying that they're having "difficulties" with their FTP service, which is 100% crap because they're just running Linux like everyone else... And most of them don't provide an IP address, so you can't register them with a DNS thingy-service. So, moral of the story: don't use them. flaminglawyerc neverforget 06:39, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In terms of free hosts, I'm guessing it depends on the type of free host. Some of them are part of a commercial service with limited bandwidth, data and other restrictions who are obviously hoping to attract you to their commercial service. In this case, although their paying customers are obviously going to get higher priority I would expect many of them do try to maintain a decent level of service since otherwise running their free service may be more likely to scare customers away Nil Einne (talk) 09:32, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Note that 99.9% uptime really isn't that good; that's (on average) about 8 hours of downtime a year. 99.99% is 45 mins a year; even the industry gold standard "five nines" is about 5 minutes a year. Any supplier with a half-decent SLA already has things set up so that routine problems like a router dying or a server failing don't have any impact - but this means that when you get outages you get them in big chunks with hard to fix external causes. For example, one of the two electricity substations that supply one of my vendors in London went on fire a couple of months ago, leaving the remaining one at dangerous overcapacity - had it gone too my hosting supplier would have had to physically remove his servers from the building (because the fix would take weeks, and there just isn't enough mobile generating capacity available to rent) install them in another facility altogether. With everyone else doing the same thing, I recon that would have taken a week to come back on line. Once you get above three nines you're essentially talking geographically-distinct, trunk-network-distinct, international (legal jurisdiction distinct), replicated equipment. Setting that up is expensive and difficult, and needs skilled people and hefty bandwidth to keep it ticking. Even Amazon's web services platform (which runs on such a network) partially fell over last month, disgruntling many. 87.114.128.88 (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Question
What's an effective way, on any site, of avoiding a user you don't like if you want to post something in a page that they often use? Yes, I know you can post it while they are inactive, but there are some factors:


 * 1) What if you don't know what time zone that user lives in?
 * 2) What if you don't know what time zone that user lives in, but you know they live in a country that uses multiple time zones?
 * 3) What if that user lives in the same time zone as you?

Are there any other ways of avoiding such users? 58.165.14.208 (talk) 21:14, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Does the page you and the user happen to work on mean a lot to you? If it doesn't mean a great deal to you, then avoid editing that page. Wikipedia is a very big place, so there are tons of other articles for you to work on. If the article you're editing is important to you, then try to be as polite and civil as you can in dealing with that user (easier said than done, I know). If you feel you can no longer reason with them, you can take it up to WP:WQA. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * No. Why not simply change your username or move on to a different website? Failing that, you could try keeping in mind that everyone is different and the fact you don't like this individual doesn't mean you both can't learn to at least get along. Is it just me or was a very similar question posted before? Matt Deres (talk) 11:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Installing software on Ubuntu
I have Ubuntu on my system on dual boot with Windows. I really want to learn to use it, but I cant seem to figure out some of the most basic things. Currently, I want to install Adobe Flash Player, but it's not working. For each build type, it's saying the architecture is not supported - it wants to use i386, while it is reporting I have x86_64 (apparently I have a 64 bit processor without even knowing it).

Help! Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Try nspluginwrapper, the Ubuntu wiki somewhere has an howto for Flash on 64bit... and you mighta take a look at this UF thread. HardDisk (talk) 23:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Uh oh - "Dont try alternate flash installs...which can leave files that conflict with the flash plugin." I pulled a bit of a hack on the last install (Unix leaves me the impression that little else is possible) and installed the 32 bit version (which doesn't work). How do I undo it before following these instructions. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:32, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed italics. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 19:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There isn't a stable release of the x86_64 firefox flash plugin. Install the i386 one and use nspluginwrapper.  There's experimental support for x86_64 now, check out the Installed user base section of the Adobe Flash article for a reference.  --  JSBillings  00:52, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I downloaded the rpm (the only type available), and archive manager stated "Could not open: Archive type not supported". I will say right now that I am quickly losing my patience with Linux; it is no where near as nice convenient as Windows or Mac. Magog the Ogre (talk) 05:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * And why the heck can't I log in as root? It always tells me I have an authentication failure... don't know the default password. Magog the Ogre (talk) 07:07, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You can't log in as root in Ubuntu. You just can't. (Well, without screwing around with the default configuration anyway.) You should use sudo for all commands that you don't normally have the privileges to execute. « Aaron Rotenberg « Talk « 19:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * And if you want to be root for a while, type "sudo su", and enter your ordinary password. --NorwegianBluetalk 22:38, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
 * RPM is not the only version available. If you click "Different operating system or browser? ", you will see .tar.gz, which you should use for Ubuntu.  Rather than blaming "Linux" for being inconvenient, consider Adobe is the one distributing a proprietary plugin without support for x64 on GNU/Linux (it's finally in beta, after literally years).  They are responsible for their own software.  Anyway, try the instructions at http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/install-flash-10-ubuntu-linux-64bit.html . Superm401 - Talk 19:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Copy whole IMAP repository to GMail
Hi all,

how do I clone my old IMAP repository to GMail (Google Apps)? Using Thunderbird ends up either in crashes or in mail loss (XP/Linux), KMail simply freezes (Linux)...what else options do I have to ensure that no single mail is lost?

Thanks,HardDisk (talk) 22:57, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Copy to local first. Then copy from local to gmail. Do not create IMAP folders from the client. Instead, create tags on gmail; these will subsequently appear as IMAP folders on your client. -- Fullstop (talk) 19:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)


 * A professional or educational Google Apps account has other migratory options Nil Einne (talk) 09:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I now figured out how to do it with imapsync. Quite complex, but it works =) HardDisk (talk) 15:22, 13 December 2008 (UTC)