Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 May 30

= May 30 =

How do you make a group on Facebook?
Question as title. Does anyone know? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 01:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php — Matt Eason (Talk &#149; Contribs) 01:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Aha! Thanks! --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 01:50, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

MIDI rendering to a multi-track format
Do any programs exist that can render a MIDI mockup into waveform while keeping each MIDI instrument separate in the output (e.g. if it is uncertain for which instruments real recordings will be available)? Neon Merlin  05:35, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I use TiMidity (free, OpenSourced) - it has a bazillion replay options - you can certainly disable playback channel-by-channel...I think it can probably do track-by-track too, but I've never tried that. SteveBaker (talk) 20:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

My PC frezes or stops at windows loading screen
Hi friends!, My PC config is 256MB RAM,Zebronics(low-cost,local) motherboard with 865 intel chipset. Samsung 80GB Hardisk. I've been using the PC for longer time. recently I had this problem (that the pc freezes at the loading screen).So I thought of re-installing windows XP with a bootable cd since there was no use in booting using safe-mode or best last known configuration modes. The initial process of copying and partitioning my hardisk was ok. After formatting C drive and copying system files,the PC restarted and before the installation screen,the windows loading logo screen appeared and it freezed immediately when the loading bar scrolled to the end. I immediately checked for RAM issue and then replaced with new one, and still the same problem persisted. Later I Checked my Hardisk by installing XP with another pc,and to my surprise that too was working great...And another problem is BIOS,I guess the battery is OFF,since it dislayed checksum error each time i switch off,and the settings will be restored to default. Could this mean to make any problem?..My feel is motherboard which is the issue...But I',m not sure...So if you guys have any idea,please help me make decision and solution..thank you guys —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 06:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I am not an expert, but when my computer froze at start up and would only start in safe mode, I eventually found it was cured by turning the video driver off. It may have been a defective video card. You can get the computer to show you what it is loading during start up - sorry forgiotten how to do this. The last thing mine showed loading was mump.sys, but a lot of busy stuff starts then and it was very difficult to find out what the problem was. If you have a bad bios checksum then perhaps you should remove the CMOS battery for several minutes, and replace it with a new one, in an attempt to refersh the bios, but I'm already out of my depth here. 78.147.249.77 (talk) 17:19, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Mysterious new drive
I rebooted my PC after it had frozen up. Vista then told me it had successfully installed the driver software for my floppy disc drive. And when I look at my list of drives the floppy disc is there as drive A. The problem is I do not have a floppy disc drive. Never have had one. And I've not added any new hardware of any kind recently. So where has this mysterious new drive come from. How do I remove it? 58.169.214.60 (talk) 07:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Possibly your motherboard has an internal floppy disc controller, and Vista (being the helpful soul that it is) figured you'd want a driver for it, because otherwise you couldn't use it. Can't really fault an OS for assuming you'd want drivers installed for something in your PC though. I think I also have an A drive showing even though I have no floppy drive plugged in. Gunrun (talk) 09:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Firefox's salting folder
Where is my Firefox's salting folder? Has anyone seen it? I found no *.slt in my system. I have only the default installation of Firefox on Ubuntu.--Mr.K. (talk) 09:46, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The .slt extension isn't used anymore. You can find your profile directory under:


 * /home/username/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.Profile Name/


 * chocolateboy (talk) 05:08, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

"�" characters
In some Wikipedia pages with unusual characters, these characters are displayed as "�". How can I view them? I tried Internet Explorer and Firefox and they both couldn't view them. 95.84.64.174 (talk) 09:52, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This is the character shown when a Unicode character cannot be displayed. What operating system do you use? If you use Windows XP or Vista, or some (modern) Linux distribution, or Mac OS X, you should have full Unicode support in all (common) browsers. If you use an old operating system, such as Windows 9x, you probably do not have Unicode support (though I believe you can download something called "Microsoft Layer for Unicode" to add it). --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 09:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But now I realize that you probably do have Unicode support, for the character � itself is not available in primitive charsets such as ASCII, ANSI, and so on. Have you tried to right-click on the page, choose "Encoding" and then "UTF-8" or "Unicode"? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 09:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that all of the major browsers had full Unicode support on Win9x (Internet Explorer definitely—it even had a Japanese IME for English Windows). Microsoft Layer for Unicode is for applications that were designed for it (and require it). It doesn't add Unicode support to other applications. Manually setting the encoding is only necessary when the web page doesn't specify it or specifies it incorrectly, which should never happen with Wikipedia. -- BenRG (talk) 17:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm using Windows Vista. I checked, encoding is set on UTF-8. One example page is Dash. I see "The swung dash (� or ~) resembles a ...". 95.84.64.174 (talk) 11:07, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Install a Unicode font that supports this character. -- 200.234.107.35 (talk) 11:25, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * On almost all Windows Vista systems, there are good Unicode fonts from the beginning. Two of the most common are Arial Unicode MS and Lucida Sans Unicode. The DejaVu family of fonts (serif, sans-serif, monospaced etc.) are free, high-quality Unicode fonts. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:20, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And how can I view internet pages using those fonts? I tried copying the troublesome text into Microsoft Word and changing the font to Arial Unicode MS, but it still didn't work. 95.84.64.174 (talk) 14:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Usually you don't have to tell the browsers what fonts to use. They should select them automatically. If the sample text didn't appear even after your test with MS Word, it means that Arial Unicode MS doesn't have that character. Install one of the free fonts Andreas mentioned to check if they support your symbols (my system doesn't show them either... they must be very rare :p ) . -- 189.69.146.130 (talk) 15:49, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about the symbols in this thread, that's because they're all U+FFFD, the Unicode replacement character. What that looks like will depend on your browser. On mine it looks like a black diamond with a question mark in it. The swung dash at Dash displays on my machine but the quoted copy here doesn't. Apparently it was destroyed by the OP's browser or by the copy-paste process, but I don't know why. -- BenRG (talk) 17:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I replaced the text here with the replacement character myself to explain my problem. But when I tried to copy-paste the text from that article into Word, they also showed as the replacement character. I'll try installing the DejaVu fonts and see what happens. 95.84.64.174 (talk) 18:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * FWIW, on my Vista system, the character is shown correctly in Google Chrome 2.0 and Firefox 3.07, but not in Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 4 beta. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Copy-pasting the characters into MS Word and changing the font to one of the DejaVu family worked! I also upgraded Firefox to 3.0.9 and it worked there. Thank you for your help. But I still wonder if there is a way to view then in Internet Explorer. 95.84.64.174 (talk) 21:20, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Have you tried Internet Explorer 8? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Online "single page" feed reader
Is there any other online simple feed reader like Planetaki? It shows new posts from different sources as if they were a single a blog. I want a service similar to it with an option to assign categories or labels to subscriptions. -- 200.234.107.35 (talk) 11:20, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Have you tried Google Reader? Rawling 4851 15:25, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. I'm writing a list of simple alternatives for the readers of my blog, and it'd be nice to mention another Planetaki-like site, if it existed. :) -- 189.69.146.130 (talk) 15:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Cafepress/Zazzle/Spreadshirt market share
Which one has the highest market share? Which has the most revenue? The most user-created designs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Herzog (talk • contribs) 17:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Giveaways and antitrust
I've posted a question to the Humanities desk asking whether Internet Explorer is the only free-of-charge product in history to be the center of an antitrust case. Responses there please. Thanks - Tempshill (talk) 18:19, 30 May 2009 (UTC)