Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 May 31

= May 31 =

Multi-core motherboard
Are there any motherboards that include slots for 4 core 2 processors? And preferably with at least 3 pci slots. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.126.229.235 (talk) 00:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Core 2 processors are designed for uniprocessor operation. You'll need an Intel Xeon for multiprocessor systems. Rilak (talk) 07:46, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, there are Core 2 Extremes in LGA771 format..See Intel Skulltrail. Of course, the Core 2 Extreme QX9775 is little different from a Xeon really, but then again, AFAIK so are the other Core 2s except for the fact that they are LGA775 with MP support disablled and not perhaps tested as extensively Nil Einne (talk) 14:29, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I am aware, but note that the question says, "...for 4 core 2 processors?". Skulltrail supports two. Rilak (talk) 07:50, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Good Fonts to Use?
I'm writing a story intended for pseudo-publication online, and I because of the division of continuity it involves, I came to the decision that I should render different characters' perspectives in different fonts. Thus, Chapter 1, which is written from the perspective of Alpha, would be in Font A, and Chapter 2, in the spirit of Beta, would be in Font B. There are other more artistic reasons I came to this decision, but further elaboration isn't relevant to the question. Anyway, I was wondering: What fonts should I use? I could use standard fonts, like Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, and Comic Sans, but frankly, I'm not comfortable with those; I've never been comfortable using Comic Sans, and as for Courier New, I'd rather none of the fonts be fixed and save those for specific circumstances as is usually the case according to major manuals of style (to indicate a computer readout, for example). Furthermore, Times New Roman is the only one with the "attention" (serif, attention to kerning, heights of the base line and descenders, support for slightly obscure characters) that I feel comfortable using; although, I sometimes wish it had better Unicode support. Is anyone aware of any repository or guide to professional fonts that I can use that provide a distinct "flavor" to each, a wide(-ish) range of support in terms of characters, without each being too "different" or "unique" to the point of being distracting (which is all too easy to achieve when choosing a font)?

Deshi no Shi (talk) 04:26, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * In books I've read with a "division of continuity", the different narratives have been indicated by a differing chapter title scheme (eg. "Chapter 3", "Chapter III", "Chapter 4", "Chapter IV", etc...), or they have used normal font for one narrative, and italic for the other.
 * If you pick distinctive but unusual font, you stand the chance that people will not be able to read your story because the required font is not installed on their computer. It is probably best to stick with the same fonts that appear everywhere else.  When I've written reports, I've generally followed the advice I was given long ago - keep the font changes to a minimum (ie. preferably one font family plus a fixed-width font for code samples; bold, underlining or italic for emphasis; larger point sizes and bold for headings), try to avoid colour either in the text or as a background (it doesn't photocopy or print well), never use flashing text (it gives some people headaches).  You also need to consider that the readers may have a variety of accessability issues (eg. colour blindness, dyslexia), or may use other operating system and browser combinations which don't have some fonts installed.
 * Astronaut (talk) 14:43, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * All browsers fail pretty gracefully when it comes to font changes. At worst they'll see them all as Times New Roman. Not so bad. Still readable. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * How about using different background and/or font colors instead of different fonts? Seems much simpler and much easier to make to work. --72.78.237.206 (talk) 17:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Making sure that you use a fot color that contrasts with the background well enough and so on, of course. Kushal (talk) 17:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You might play with different forms of serif fonts. They can have very different feels to them. Italics changes them quite a bit too. Some common Serif fonts that nearly everybody has are Times New Roman, Garamond, Palatino, and Georgia. All four have very different aesthetic characteristics—Times looks bureaucratic, straightforward; Palatino is small and rounded, slippery; Garamond has an older, formal look to it; Georgia looks new, extremely upright, bold. Palatino and Garamond both have very distinctive italics as well. Just a thought. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 01:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've taken a look at all of those fonts, and actually like them a lot. However, one thing I did notice was that the support between the fonts isn't very regular; many glyphs are supported by one font but not the others, or by all the fonts except one, etc. I was wondering if there's some commonly used font(s) that provide more or less comprehensive support for standard English characters? I've tried looking through Unicode Fonts, but they either have many characters that are entirely unnecessary (like Armenian) while lacking certain basic Latin glyphs, or they're not supported by any standard operating systems or browsers. Any advice? Deshi no Shi (talk) 23:54, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Extra Tool Browser
How can I get rid of an extra toolbar from my web browser, you know the ones that attach on that are called Seekmo and give extra options like freescore.com and playphone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.127.166.184 (talk) 12:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Depending on the browser you are using, you might have the ability to right click on your menu bar. You can uncheck any toolbar you want to hide from there. However, in your case, it seems to be a sign of a larger problem (hint:spyware). Please make sure that your computer is safe and secure. I would recommend a full virus scan (with ClamWin or AVG Free) and a spyware search (with Spybot Search & Destroy or Lavasoft's antispyware software). These resources are available free of cost on the Internet. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Kushal (talk) 13:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Seekmo is an adware product by Zango, a well-known adware vendor that promises you free content in exchange for displaying ads. The standard anti-spyware programs should work against this, and I even think Zango themselves offer an uninstaller (maybe, though given their track record, I wouldn't trust any software from them, even if it is an uninstaller). bCube (talk 23:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Adding videos to DeVeDe (software)
hello, I am using DeVeDe on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Wubi installation) on a Toshiba Satellite MM55-S135. I am using DeVeDe to create iso of a video dvd which will be full of very short (about 10 MB to 50 MB each) videos that we shot in family events. I have around 200 of such files to put on the iso. However, adding each of them manually is a pain. Ctrl-A, Shift-click, and control-click all do not work. What should I do? Is scripting the only way? If so, how can I do it? Please let me know. Kushal (talk) 13:16, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

PS: A few days after installing Ubuntu (Wubi), Windows XP miraculously recognized my DVD-RAM drive (which I was having issues with earlier).


 * Any takers, please? Kushal (talk) 00:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Please? Kushal (talk) 14:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Pretty please? Kushal (talk) 13:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Displaying the gradient when optimizing in R
I am learning Program R primarily to find maximum likelihood estimates of parameters in statistical models using optim. I am not specifying derivatives or partial derivatives. Instead I am letting R approximate them. However, I would like to know the values of those approximations at the maximum value of the likelihood.

Is there some way to tell R to display the approximations of the derivatives or partial derivatives at the maximum value of the likelihood?

An example of an optim statement in my code might be:

fit = optim(par=c(0.5,0,0,0), fn=negLL, method='BFGS', hessian=TRUE)

I tried following that statement with:

fit$gradient

but that only returned the word ‘NULL’ regardless of whether I remove ‘hessian=TRUE’ from the optim statement.

Thank you for any help with this.

Mark W. Miller (talk) 13:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Explorer
Is there any way to save or back up my last few weeks of History in Internet Explorer? Black Carrot (talk)
 * I don't know if there is any particular way to do that or not, but perhaps you could visit all the sites in your history and one by one add them to your favourites? Adam (Manors) 16:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Because of the proprietary formats Microsoft uses, if you want to be able to restore the history later, your best bet is probably to use some third party software. Try this one: If you just want to save or browse your history, check out this page:  Indeterminate (talk) 20:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Firefox can. Select History/Show All History/Import and Backup. --Ephilei (talk) 18:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

In IE6, you can simply copy the history folder, or its sub-parts, into another folder. Then copy it back into the history folder when you wish to view it.

I would like to keep my history for ever, but I've found if it goes back too far, the history folder becomes corrupted and stops working, but resumes after the history has been moved or deleted. I wish there was a utility to automatically copy the history folders, so that you would have a continuous record going back years. Another improvement would be to keep the history in seperate days, rather than lumping them into weeks as IE6 does. 80.2.205.84 (talk) 23:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Concatenated SMS
Does anyone know more about concatenated SMSes (1 long message sent as multiple SMSes). According to the article (and it's sourced) there is a 5 byte header in the user data leaving you 135 bytes, enough for 153 7 bit characters. The 153 seems right from my own experience, but if you have 135 bytes, that's enough for 154 7 bit characters (135*8=1080; 1080/7=154.29) so there must be something else. Is an extra byte needed to tell the phone to start 7 bit 'mode' or something? Note that a normal 140 byte SMS is 160 7 bit characters, as we would expect (there is an additional non user-data header) Nil Einne (talk) 14:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Some possibilities:


 * Data-integrity Checksum
 * total number of parts,
 * or some kind of ‘part X of Y ’ scheme
 * character encoding used in message.

Try reading the GSM specs (you’ll have to Google for them, I’ve had no need to find/read them personally). If that proves fruitless, perhaps ask the Wireshark folks about it, they’re rather skilled at dissecting protocols [wink]. — Lee Carré (talk) 06:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

TV PC
Does watching TV through a tv computer card mean you don't need a license? I read somewhere that portable battery tvs don't need a license (it would very hard to enforce, wouldn't it?) so what if your tv card was in a laptop. I live in England. Eff wone (talk) 15:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This page is pretty informative about the requirements for a TV license on a computer. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, you need a TV License even if you watch through a TV-card in your PC, but you might already be covered if your household already has a TV license for the other TVs there. The official site here has all the information.  The penalty for not having a license is a £1000 fine - but they have to catch you first :-)  Astronaut (talk) 16:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You always need a license or you will be fined - in a perfect world. The chances are you won't be found for a long time (if at all) and as you don't have a TV they still might have no case to get you. Not that I'm condoning anything. Adam (Manors) 16:53, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * A note of caution (a little off topic): The TV Licensing people are VERY, VERY persistant, as my TV-less friend found out. If your address does not have a TV License, they will keep coming back to make sure you're not watching TV surreptitiously and you haven't bought a TV.  Apparently, they have a hard time believing anyone doesn't have a TV in the 21st century and can be pretty unpleasant dishing out the legal threats, even with no evidence of TV equipment in the house.  Astronaut (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow, you Brits need a license to watch TV ? So Big Brother is even taxing your telescreen, how ironic.  What's next, a fee each time you use your own toilet ? StuRat (talk) 03:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow, are you concussed? The TV licence isn't a tax. It funds the BBC, who provide advert free high quality TV across tens of channels, as well as national and local radio stations. You may as well complain about your TV stations having 5 advert breaks across an hour, which in my opinion is far worse than a £100~ licence charge. TheGreatZorko (talk) 13:57, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

shell script
(Running Linux) What would a shell script look like, that would prevent a user from being logged in between certain hours of the day? I want to make computer unavailable for use from between, say, 9pm and 9am. Any ideas how to do this? Thx —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.110.174.74 (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Adding the following to /etc/profile would do it:

hour=$(date +%H) if [ $hour -lt 9 -o $hour -gt 21 ] && [ $USER = badusername ]; then echo "Sorry, you can't log in now" sleep 1 exit fi
 * I think I got the logic for the hours right. It's not foolproof, since they could hit ^C to kill the script, but it's simple.  --Sean 17:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Really, what I wanted with this was to make it so that I can't turn on my computer (I'm the only user) between certain hours so that I get to bet on time. So I suppose I could replace exit with /sbin/shutdown -h now and get that sort of effect. Or is there something that can be done to make it difficult to turn on the machine in the first place? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.110.174.74 (talk) 18:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC) Now that I think about it, couldn't I just use crontab? That would be the easy choice, that I think should have been obvious to me! :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.110.174.74 (talk) 18:48, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Rather than using a shell script, you ought to use the PAM module called pam_time. The functionality is built into every linux system I know of.  --  JSBillings  19:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

error importing movie into iMovieHD 06
Hello, when I want to move a video from a handy cam on to iMovie HD in my Macbook with OS X Tiger, I get the error "The file could not be imported: The file “Macintosh HD/Volumes/NO NAME/Documents/Videos/DCIM/M2U00145.MPG” can’t be imported; QuickTime couldn’t parse it: -2048" How can the issue be resolved? Thank you. Kushal (talk) 18:02, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Try to watch it via VLC, and watch out if VLC gives any errors. 88.217.56.36 (talk) 21:46, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * No error messages in VLC whatsoever, 88. Moreover, I was able to make a DVD iso with DeVeDe and then the default application burned it on a DVD-R which played on a standard television dvd player. I don't know why  iMovie HD is being so stupid. Any ideas? Have you gotten a similar error message in iMovie? Kushal (talk) 01:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you have Perian (perian.org) installed? I don't have any specific experience with that particular error message, but it might help - Perian is a QuickTime component that adds support for lots of otherwise unsupported audio, video and container formats to applications that use QuickTime, as iMovie does. --alien2k (talk) 19:28, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I will do it rightaway. brb. Kushal (talk) 20:42, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

wrong 'drive'
hi....major yet apparently 'small' problem

i have an external hard drive......which was the ''E' Drive' (as in computer HD is 'C' and CD Roms are 'D' etc) yet someone has someow managed to make it into the 'G' drive. The Ex hrd drive works fine but the problem is that any files on my computer linked with them (and there are a lot!) are looking for the link with the 'E' drive not the 'G' as it now is.....eg: its looking for:  'E:\[name of file]'......how do i change it back to the 'E' and not the 'G'

i am on windows Xp......

thanks, --81.77.2.11 (talk) 19:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * After the fixed devices on your PC have been identified during boot, drive letters are allocated dynamically. Probably some other devices have "taken" drives E and F. Have you plugged in a card reader, USB drive, external CD/DVD, phone, or other such device?  Use Windows Explorer to find out what drives E and F currently are.  Alternatively, have you installed any new drives in the computer case, or repartitioned any existing drives?  Astronaut (talk) 20:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * XP comes with a program "Computer management" (On my PC it is down "Start | Programs | Administrative Tools | Computer Management", but I probably moved it to that when I got the PC.) Select "Storage | Disk management". Look at the list of volumes and change as required using "right click | Change drive letter and paths" -- SGBailey (talk) 21:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Another way into Computer Management is: right-click on "My Computer" and select "Manage". (SGB, I took the liberty of correcting a typo in your answer.) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Super NES question
Today I bought a Super NES at a yard sale and installed it. I used the "multi output," and made sure red was plugged into red, white into white and yellow into yellow on the TV. I turned it on with a game called Xardion (I don't have any other cartridges to test at the moment). I made sure the cartridge was plugged in as firmly as possible, but I couldn't get it completely tight. The image I got was a mess of mostly magenta blocks and lines on a black background, and only a small part of it in the upper left corner responded to buttons on either controller. Should I blame the SNES or the cartridge? Neon Merlin  19:39, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, the easiest thing to do first is to clean both the SNES and the cartridge. Use a q-tip and a little rubbing alcohol if you have it, and make sure the connectors are clean (let them dry before running it again). A bad connection can produce things like what you described. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:43, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Update: I plugged in the Super UFO (a diskette-drive extension for the NES) and its menus show up just fine. Neon Merlin  20:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * My bet is still that it's some kind of dirty component. It's a classic thing for those cartridge machines—if the connectors get dirty (which is easy) they give you all sorts of gobbledygook. A little rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip on the copper ends works wonderfully. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I second the suggestion to clean the connections. I think it may also be a problem in the power supply. If that fails - can you contact the person from whom you bought it? Perhaps he has some cartridges you can try the console on.
 * I'm sure ZSNES will give you less trouble. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 23:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Windex and a q-tip is also a good way of cleaning the contacts on the cartridge. And emulators are illegal unless you own the cartridge. Useight (talk) 16:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually even owning the cartridge doesn't make it technically legal in the US. In any case, the legality of ROMs and emulators can vary depending on exact use—but enforcement has always been focused on the distribution end of things. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 16:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * What's your point? I suggested the use of an emulator as a replacement for the console, not for the ownerships of cartridges. Of course, if the OP does use an emulator, he might feel stupid (justly, in my opinion) chasing cartridges not manufactured anymore just to be legally entitled to play 15 year old games. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 16:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I've cleaned the cartridge, the cartridge connector on the SNES, and the connectors at both ends of the output cable (including the ones on the TV set) and it still doesn't work. Neon Merlin  16:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Call Nintendo. They actually do still try to support the old consoles. Perhaps they can give you some more ideas. The phone number is 1-800-255-3700. Useight (talk) 01:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Javascript question
I have a bit of Javascript for a little web app I am doing that intercepts keystrokes and, if they are of a certain type, sets the focus on a given INPUT control.

Here's the guts of it: function keypress(e) { var keynum; var keychar; if(window.event) // IE	 { keynum = e.keyCode; }	else if(e.which) // Netscape/Firefox/Opera {	 keynum = e.which; }	keychar = String.fromCharCode(keynum); if(!input_author_hasfocus&&!input_to_hasfocus&&!input_date_hasfocus) { if(keychar=="A"||keychar=="a") { document.getElementById("input_author").focus; } if(keychar=="T"||keychar=="t") { document.getElementById("input_to").focus; } if(keychar=="D"||keychar=="d") { document.getElementById("input_date").focus; } if(keychar=="F"||keychar=="f") valselect(1); if(keychar=="P"||keychar=="p") valselect(2); if(keychar=="N"||keychar=="n") valselect(3); if(keychar=="S"||keychar=="s") submitdata; }	} In Firefox this works fine (called from the onkeypress even of the BODY element). When I hit "A", it goes to my INPUT with the ID of "input_author" and just gives it focus. However in Safari it does that and then types the character "A" in the input line. I don't want it to do that.

Which of the two is being standards compliant? And how should I work around the issue in Safari? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:40, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd guess Firefox is more standards compliant - I've noticed problems with JavaScript on Konqueror (which uses the same html processing code). The best way to do this is to use access keys instead. --h2g2bob (talk) 20:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Funny story... apparently the standards for key events are basically a mess . However, the specifications give two ways to stop events from continuing after you've handled them (preventDefault and stopPropagation) . Unfortunately, Safari is (or at least used to be) buggy and would happily call those methods, do nothing, and return success . So it looks like you might have a hard time working around the issue, unless Safari has fixed the issue. You can test it on that last page I linked to. Indeterminate (talk) 20:30, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Opera has problems with CSS at nearly every site
Somehow, my Opera install has now **** up CSS rendering, so that sites are unusable, for example the Wikipedia sidebar is at the bottom of the page, ect. Bringing up the Error Console will show a host of CSS related problems. --86.6.44.95 (talk) 20:13, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Did you change the stylesheet? It does let you select your own... 24.76.169.85 (talk) 03:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not getting you. --86.6.44.95 (talk) 12:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Opera allows for a user-specified stylesheet, which will override any existing stylesheets on the pages you visit. To undo this in Opera 9, click View, then Style, then Author Mode; then go back into the Style menu and make sure none of the other things below that are checked off. If that doesn't do it, backup your bookmarks, uninstall Opera, nuke the Application Data folder for Opera (with the profile data), and reinstall. 24.76.169.85 (talk) 20:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

C: Int to string
I want to do a string from different integers. I was going to use sprintf but I would like to make the string of the same size, for example int 1 becomes "001", 12 becomes "012" and 123 becomes "123". How is it done? Bastard Soap (talk) 20:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * sprintf(yourbuffer, "%03d", theint) will add enough leading zeros to make the number at least 3 digits long. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

PHP & socket_accept & annoying problem
Hi all,

I run php5 on cygwin (yea, it's a shame^^); and I want to do some stuff with socket binding (I want to create some test server); but somewhere in the code there must be a problem, but I can't spot it: <?PHP $sock_l=socket_create(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,SOL_TCP) or die ("Socket creation failed!\n"); socket_bind($sock_l,null,31337) or die ("Socket bind failed!\n"); socket_set_nonblock($sock_l) or die("Unblock socket failed!\n"); while (1) { if($sock_t=socket_accept($sock_l)) { socket_getpeername($sock_l, $raddr, $rport); } } ?>

It fails in socket_access: " Warning: socket_accept: unable to accept incoming connection [22]: Invalid argument in /cygdrive/c/Dokumente und Einstellungen/Marco/Eigene Dateien/dev/spd/spd.php on line 9".

Any idea what causes this mess? Thanks, 88.217.56.36 (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC) PS: Using debug print's (which I removed here for the sake of length, WP is not pastebin), I know the socket is valid after socket_set_nonblock($sock_l) and there are no errors up to this one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.217.56.36 (talk) 21:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know PHP, but in other languages when using the Berkeley socket API you have to do a "listen" before you can "accept". --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 22:30, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * socket_create_listen --Sean 00:39, 1 June 2008 (UTC)