Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 September 4

= September 4 =

Alpha on Mac OS X keyboard
I'm trying to find a way to put the alpha symbol (lower case, I think. It's the one that looks like infinity but with the right side chopped off) into NeoOffice on a Mac. I found ∆ just fine but can't find alpha. Any help? I'd rather not copy and paste from somewhere. For one, I just want to know how to do it. And for two, I'd rather not have any unexpected formatting show up. Dismas |(talk) 00:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * You might not be able to—the hotkeys for Greek characters are pretty limited (and appear to be somewhat arbitrary). You can always get them in Finder, though: Go to Edit > Special Characters. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:11, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks!  That got it.  I still hate that they took away the Key Caps application...  Dismas |(talk) 02:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Apparently, this works in the same way as KeyCaps. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 12:08, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * You can enable the Keyboard Viewer (very similar to Key Caps) in System Preferences > International > Input Menu. Unfortunately, you have to have the input menu shown in your menu bar, even if you don't want any of its other features. -- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 19:16, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

RTMP streams and VLC
I'm trying to open a RTMP stream with VLC, and it's not going too well. There is an RTMP option in the "Open Network Stream" box. Given a URL, everything seems to go smoothly. I go into the Messages window, and again everything seems okay - no warnings or errors. But it doesn't play - it just sits there. No buffering, no video, no audio. I have to kill VLC with the system monitor of the OS I'm using at the time. Does anyone know of a way to open such streams with VLC or if there is another (preferably Linux- or wine-friendly) media player that will open them? I really don't want to install XBMC (and even then RTMP support there seems to be rather new and not fully implemented), but if that's what I have to do, so be it. Xenon54 / talk / 01:58, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * RTMP is a proprietary format and can support encryption. Attempting to open it with a 3rd-party client is unfortunately not possible unless the server allows it.  Nimur (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Debian Kernel Help
Hi. The installer is asking me which kernel I want to install: linux-image-2.6-486 linux-image-2.6-686 linux-image-2.6.26-2-486 linux-image-2.6.26-2-686 Obviously, I should get a 686 one, but I don't know how the ...26-2 one is different. Is the 2.6-686 the first 2.6 kernel release? Thanks.--S1kjreng (talk) 10:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The "2.6" package is "the latest 2.6". If you install it, it will actually get the 2.6.26-2 for you, so there's no difference right now. The difference is in the future. If you have the generic "2.6" package installed, future upgrades might automatically select something newer than 2.6.26. If you just install the 2.6.26-2 then future upgrades will only update the 2.6.26-2 with bug fixes if necessary, no newer versions. Not a big difference since you can easily change your mind later. 69.245.227.37 (talk) 09:36, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * ok. Thanks.--S1kjreng (talk) 22:51, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

how to make the best of out of USB stick?
I browsed about this topic a little bit and found that there are ceratin OSs that can be booted from an USB stick but its not of big use to me since public computers don't allow that. Portable apps seem to be good idea. Do you have other suggestions pls?. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.220.46.25 (talk) 10:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Most public terminals (in the true sense) will actively block foreign executables. — neuro  (talk)  10:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * For portable apps I suggest Portable Firefox as a must have, it's awesome. Also Portable Tor to allow you to view restricted sites at the public computer. I also suggest Process Explorer which can be used to override some restrictions on public computers, like timed forced shutdown if a program running on the public computer is responsible for it (select the program, right click and choose "kill process") . For OSs that run from USB, take a look at the Live USB article. SLAX is a nice, easy to use LiveOS with lots of features. Remember, flash drives only have a certain number of write cycles, so read/write intensive use of them will greatly shorten their lifespan. It might be better to use a portable external hard drive rather than a flash drive —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 11:33, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * With the ever decreasing cost for flash drives though, that may not be much of a problem for even heavy users. --antilivedT 14:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * True, but it's still an issue if the drive fails when it's got important stuff on it. Regular backups are a good idea —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avrillyria (talk • contribs) 14:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That's such a huge topic, it's tough to narrow it down. It depends on what you want to do.  Perhaps List of portable software would give you an idea of the scope of what can be done; Full office programs (openoffice.org), to compilers, to video viewers and burning software.  Just about anything you'd like to do. ;) — Ched :  ?  10:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Graphics card choice
I am looking for a card which has better performance but produce Less temperature. Which one I should choose? I am not worried about price. Actually my room is quite hot and worried about system overheating.

XFX Geforce 9800 GT 600M 512 MB

or

XFX Geforce 9600 GT 650MHz 512 MB

--119.30.36.54 (talk) 13:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * (added title) The 9800GT is a much better card than the 9600, so if all you want is performance then get that. In terms of heat the 9800 will definitely output more heat but as long as your case is adequately ventilated and you don't mind a bit of noise you should be fine. If you can though, try get a 9800GTX+ (which all comes with dual-slot coolers AFAIK) or a 9800GT with a dual-slot cooler so that the hot air from the graphics card gets vented out instead of recirculated inside your case, which will help your temps. --14:00, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reply. I had previously overheating issue with ATI Card (4890 1 GB) which caused system to freeze in 61 to 63 Celsius (GPU Temp) and even in low temp 47 to 49 Celsius (GPU Temp. If I attached XFX Geforce 9800 GT or XFX Geforce 9800 GTX+ will it improve heat issue then the ATI ? My pc case is Full Tower Thermaltake Xaser VI. Thank you--119.30.36.53 (talk) 18:10, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * That does not sound like an overheating issue. 6x degrees load temp is fine for GPUs. --antilivedT 12:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Post-fuse insertion?
What does post-fuse mean in the term "post-fuse insertion"? What kind of fuse is it talking about? It's something related to printers. Thanks to whomever can help. Leptictidium (mt) 13:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * IIRC, it means that it is inserted after the toner. — neuro  (talk)  14:06, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The fuser melts the toner to the paper. In a cheap color laser printer, you will place all your color toner on the paper at the same time, then fuse them all.  This causes a problem with bleeding and ghost images.  For most people, it is not visible and no problem at all.  On the high end, each color is placed on the paper and fused, one at a time.  This eliminates the bleeding and ghost images.  If you see the two side-by-side, you will recognize the one with separated toner insertion to be of superior quality. --  k a i n a w &trade; 16:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The fuser uses heat and pressure to "fix" the toner to the media. "Post-fuse insertion" or "post-process insertion" inserts a non-printed page such as a separator or cover into the job. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:25, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Static discharge and electronic devices
As you probably know if you wear synthetic fabrics and remove one layer over the other it generates a lot of staic electricity.. Does this present a danger to electronic devices (eg phones ipod etc) - under any conditions - what if the device in the pocket of one of the clothes items, and what if the first act after removing one of the items is to pick up an electronic device? More specifically has anyone ever bust their stuff doing this? Does anyone know what sort of quantities of static electricity is produced (charge).?83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:16, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You would have to encounter incredible extremes of static electricity to damage phones and .mp3 players. For the most part, the metal parts in the casing for these devices would shield the electronics from any static damage.  This is a normal concern that I'm sure most designs address.  I have never heard of someone's stuff getting damaged by normal static buildup.  If you took apart the phone to expose the electronics, it would be a good idea to ground yourself, as a person with their clothes can build up thousands of volts of static electricity. It is not dangerous to humans, as there is little energy to create current, but you can burn out diodes with it. &mdash;Akrabbimtalk 17:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * (Aren't most things plastic?) I was wondering about a worst case scenario - say for instance I picked up an usb stick, or memory card - touching the metal contacts?83.100.250.79 (talk) 17:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Electronics can get zapped by static charges - but only when one part of the device is at one voltage and another is at some other voltage. Transferring charge to something like a phone is fairly risk-free because the entire phone gets charged up and discharged together.  Touching the pins of a memory stick and then plugging it into something could zap it though - I'd recommend trying not to touch the exposed pins of such devices.  The worst thing about static discharge damage is that it sometimes doesn't show up for days or weeks after the device is zapped - so it can be tough to know what actually caused the problem. SteveBaker (talk) 16:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Minesweeper
Hello. Why is there speculation that Minesweeper in Windows Vista generates its board before the first click as mentioned in Minesweeper (Windows)? Would generating the board after the first click make more sense since, if Minesweeper randomly lays a mine at the first-clicked square, it can randomly assign the mine another location, knowing where the first click was and where not to place the mine again? I programmed the algorithm in Java as shown below. for (byte b = 0 ; b < 99 ; b++) {    boolean bool = true; while (bool) {        bool = false; mine [b] = (int) (Math.random * 480); for (byte j = 0 ; j < b ; j++) if (mine [b] == mine [j] || mine [b] == i) //i = location of first click {                bool = true; break; }    } } Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 18:11, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Either approach you mention is reasonable. I think the better approach is to make sure the first click is not a mine, but there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debate.  The sentence in the article is not cited, so I don't know whether it is speculation or fact, or a sort of abstraction to help teach the concept of the game rather than analyze the (unimportant to the article) exact sequence of events in the code.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I fact-tagged that line in the article, FWIW. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Minesweeper's first-click behaviour is dissected at the following:, , and . -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * This only applies to pre-Vista versions, the original Microsoft-written ones. The Vista version may have been rewritten from scratch so the these dissections maybe no longer apply. --FvdP (talk) 19:40, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * On the original version you could use the XYZZY code to see where all the mines were before you clicked. If you didn't click on a mine, they would be in the position as you saw. If you deliberately picked a mine for your first click, it suddenly wouldn't be a mine. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 20:45, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Why would there be a reasonable argument for generating the board before the first click? --Mayfare (talk) 16:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, if you need a lot of CPU time to generate the board (eg to make a setup that doesn't have an impossible-to-solve situation within it - or in order to establish some kind of 'difficulty level') then you might want to do it before the first mouse click in order to produce a faster response once the player starts playing. However, the need to move the mine that the player first clicks on without that move causing an impossible-to-win board might be just as tricky.  Simply quietly erasing that first mine seems like an easier solution - but it results in fewer-than-expected mines in the setup - which might be a problem if the user is counting on some exact number in his solution.  Overall, it just seems easier to do it after that first click...but I could see how some players might regard that as 'cheating'...although it's really not. SteveBaker (talk) 16:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

AT&T ad
There is a library where I go and get on a computer where this comes up every time someone goes to the Internet. The page says Firefox needs updating, so I don't know if that's the problem.

A number of web sites I go to there but not at home (where I limit the sites I go to so as not to cause problems) have an AT&T ad for high-speed Internet. My guess is they put something in it to slow the Internet down so you would think yours was slow and get theirs.

Actually, it doesn't happen every time, but when the computer does freeze, there is an AT&T ad on the screen. If I try to do anything, I just get the word "Stopped" in the lower left corner. I don't know how long it takes to go to the next page. It seems to work better when I put something where the URL goes and press "Enter". At least a blank screen is progress. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * So what's the question? --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 12:03, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * How do I fix it rather than just sitting there and sitting there with only the word "Stopped" or some useless message about some ad I didn't even want at the bottom of the screen? Here is a page where it did just that a minute ago. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry, that page loaded completely for me in about 3 seconds. For what it's worth, you didn't miss out on anything in this instance, because the cartoon was unfunny.  Unfortunately it's difficult to diagnose problems like this without actually sitting at the computer that is having the problems.  The partial loading of pages that I have experienced has been because of bandwidth restrictions, connection problems, or a slammed server that is hosting the page in question.  It is unlikely that banner ads have much or anything to do with the problem.  Tempshill (talk) 03:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That was just one sample. There are lots of newspaper web sites that have the problem. It doesn't matter what I'm looking at; if it's an unfunny cartoon, then I'm looking at it for a very long time and I can't get into anything else. And the AT&T ad is always there, though the situation doesn't happen every time there is one. There are many sites that have this same ad. So far, the delays have been minor today. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Three times today I just sat there and sat there. If you don't have dial-up, you're not supposed to be able to see "Read (url)", "Waiting for (url)", "Transferring data from (url)". I remember when we had to do that, but that was in the days we were happy to have anything. The AT&T ad was there every time. Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:09, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Converting Win98 program to Windows Vista 64-bit compatibility
Hello, I have a few old Win98-compatible programs that are incompatible with Windows Vista 64-bit. Vista's "compatibility" function does not work in these cases (I've tried). Is there a decompiler/recompiler that makes programs compatible with Windows Vista? I suspect the programs are made in Visual Basic, Visual C or Visual C++. Thanks, -- Guroadrunner (talk) 21:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Nice idea, but I have never heard of any such miracle product. One workaround might be to run your old programs in a VirtualBox that has an appropriate OS in it, of course.  Tempshill (talk) 02:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)


 * True - the program worked in VMWare's virtual box program, but VMWare's virtual box created a separate "ghost" hard disk drive that the programs operate, but not interact with what's on the Vista hard drive (no copy/paste function to the non-virtualized HDD). In one case, I need my program to interact with a program on the Vista hard drive to work, although thinking about it your idea works if I operate both programs in the virtual box world. This duo of programs I am talking about are the Windows-based GP2Edit-32, which modifies elements of the DOS-based Grand Prix II (which I can run under DOSBox). GP2Edit, which is legal, is no longer supported by its author. Of course I could just format the disk and load WinXP... -- Guroadrunner (talk) 00:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Graphics card on motherboard
Hello there, I want to add new Graphics card (PCI 2.0) on my mobo. This is my first time. So if I attach the card in mobo with cable do I need to change anything in BIOS?--119.30.36.38 (talk) 22:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)


 * It depends on the BIOS. Some bioses are smart and will automatically disable the onboard graphics adapter if they detect an external graphics cards. With other BIOSes you'll have to go into the BIOS "onboard peripherals" screen and disable the video. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)