Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 September 24

= September 24 =

Google chorme (www.xnxx.com)

 * Note: The above site is NOT safe for work. Dragons flight (talk) 01:04, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I have downloaded and installed latest version of Google chrome (not beta). I am trying to visit the above mentioned website. The problem is, thumbnail pictures is not visible there, it looks like empty boxes. But I can see them in other browsers like Mozilla and IE8. Do I need any extension to view them?--180.234.20.97 (talk) 00:59, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It works fine for me on Chrome. You might try reinstalling it, or simply emptying the cache and refreshing the page. Indeterminate (talk) 16:54, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Playstation3 (PS3) SDK
I like to write 'hello world' programs for the computing platforms I own. Just for fun. For the Wii, it's easy through Wiibrew. For the Xbox360, I see it can be done via XNA and a $99 subscription. How is it done on a Playstation3? PS3 article says nothing, and google for 'ps3 sdk' returns nothing from Sony and forum posts full of hearsay. -- CraigKeogh (talk) 03:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If you have an older PS3, you can install Linux on it and develop on that. However, you will be restricted from using much of the high-end capabilities of the system.  As for an SDK, those are hard to get.  Sony will not let you have one unless they like your idea.  Even then, they reserve the right to force you to cease development if they change their minds.  Eventually, they may allow homebrew games, but not now.  I wouldn't expect it until they focus on the PS4. --  k a i n a w &trade; 04:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The XNA "Creator's Club" package is a pretty unusual experiment on Microsoft's part. Usually to develop on a console you need either an profesional developer's kit, (Not available to private individuals, only businesses.) or a "homebrew" kit by people who have reverse engineered the consoles' hardware. (See Nintendo DS homebrew, Wii homebrew, PlayStation Portable homebrew)
 * However, there's no significant homebrew effort that I'm aware of for PS3, so your options are to install Linux on it and treat it like a Linux desktop, or to form a development company and buy a official dev kit. APL (talk) 13:11, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Just a note... From what I've read about the PS3 (and as I alluded to above), you cannot simply purchase the Sony SDK. Sony has to accept your project and allow you to use the SDK. --  k a i n a w &trade; 13:39, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * scedev.net is Sony's web portal for licensed Sony developers. It has a "Licensing Information" section if you're interested in signing up; I think everything else on the site is private, for licensed Sony developers.  As Kainaw implied above, though, it's a significant barrier to obtain a license from Sony.  There is no cost, but you have to present your credentials and prove that you're a real software company; and I believe you also have to do a concept submission for one of their platforms, showing your schedule and budget and basically a commitment to develop and publish a game for the platform.  They aren't going to approve hobbyists who just want to write "hello world", so the Linux idea above is your best bet.  One unfortunate aspect of Linux on the PlayStation 3 is that apparently Sony implemented a hypervisor to stop you from being able to access the RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' GPU.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 15:14, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, I'm wrong, there is a homebrew effort for PS3. (Of course there is. Why did I doubt it?) PSFreedom. So if you want to fool around with the ps3, you might check it out. But it's not really useful for making a game that anyone else will ever play. APL (talk) 15:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

computer science and technology
linking and loading web site and web server —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ankit Kumar Sinha (talk • contribs) 04:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry but could you rephrase as it's not clear what your question is. Also have you read our header which mentions "If your question is homework, show that you have attempted an answer first" Nil Einne (talk) 07:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Some articles that seem relevant to your query Hyperlink, downloading, web site, web server 82.44.55.25 (talk) 11:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Moving the contents of Windows PST files to an archive on a linux machine
I have two mail accounts that I access from Windows PCs, using Microsoft Outlook. I archive old emails in .PST files on the Windows PCs. I would like to periodically (and manually) transfer the contents of old .PST files to an archive on my Linux machine (that dual boots with XP), from which I would like to be able to open the emails and forward archived emails to my windows accounts. The archive must of course preserve attachments and have good searchability, and it will become quite large. I read recently that the Windows version of Thunderbird can read .PST files, so that might be one the tools needed to achieve what I want. I do not have any experience in setting up a mail server on a linux machine. Thanks in advance for advice on how to proceed and pointers to relevant howtos. --NorwegianBluetalk 07:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If the Linux box is not the one with the main Outlook install, then I'd recommend installing a light-weight IMAP server on it (in Linux). You can then drag'n'drop from Outlook to the IMAP server. The archive would be placed into an 'old-emails' folder on the IMAP server.


 * Are you manually sharing the .PST files around your MS-Windows boxes? This would alleviate the need for that as well; you'd just do a 'send-and-receive emails' on the other Outlook instances to sync them to the IMAP server. For laptops I'd set Outlook to keep a copy of the IMAP contents, so you can read your non-archived emails on the road.


 * There are several packages available in most Linux distro repositories for this. The IMAP server itself can't send or receive email (a SMTP server is needed to receive and IMAP isn't used for sending), so there is little security problems. I'll check how I did this and get back to your here. It wasn't difficult, but there were a few non-documented steps I had to take. CS Miller (talk) 13:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's been a couple of years since I did this (so I stand to be corrected with more up-to-date info) but Thunderbird can't read PSTs, and open-source tools and libraries to read them aren't very mature. There are several ways I know of to do what you want:
 * On a Windows machine, import the PST into Outlook (not Outlook express). Then, on the same machine, run Thunderbird and use its import from outlook option. This does MAPI calls (rather than reading the PST file) to get the email data. This should produce an mbox format file (down in the hidden gubbins of the Thunderbird profile in the Application Data area) which you can copy over to the equivalent place in the profile of a Linux Thunderbird install.
 * On your Linux machine, install Dovecot (it's in the standard package repositories for most distributions) and configure it as an IMAP server (its config options are fairly obvious). Now configure your Linux Thunderbird client to be an IMAP client of that Dovecot IMAPd.  On Windows, import the PST in Outlook, then configure Outlook to be an IMAP client of that Dovecot IMAPd on Linux. Then drag-and-drop the emails from the place Outlook imported them to over to the IMAP account, and they'll be instantly available to the Linux tbird. Once that's done you can decide to keep them inside the IMAP server or you can have the Linux Thunderbird copy them down to its own store (again by drag and drop).  Unfortunately in your position this requires the Linux and Windows machines to be running concurrently, and if you're dual booting this isn't possible.
 * Use Fookes Software's Aid4Mail (again on Windows, but it's fairly basic stuff, so it should work in Wine). That will read the PST file and will export it to either .eml files (that's one file per email) or an mbox that thunderbird will read. Again you'd copy those exported files over to Linux - you'd put the mbox into the Thunderbird profile, or with the .emls you'd just leave them in a folder somewhere and open them in Thunderbird by double clicking. Aid4Mail (I think you'd need the Professional version) isn't free.
 * I'll dig around and see if Evolution has PST support (as Evolution tries harder to be an Outlook replacement than Thunderbird does). -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * You've not said from where the Outlook machine is getting those emails. If they're coming from a Microsoft Exchange server (which is pretty common in corporate and institutional environments) then Evolution can access them on the Exchange server. If that's the case you might consider using Evolution on Linux rather than Thunderbird (it's pretty good, and has much better Exchange integration).  If you're set on Thunderbird, I think Evolution can export to mbox. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The this free-software program claims to be able to convert PST to mbox on Linux. I haven't tried (and don't have the wherewithall to try it now) but you can give that a shot. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 13:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot for your replies! The emails originated from two different exchange servers. The plan is to just copy the .PST files, I don't intend to connect to the exchange server from the linux machine. I'll be working on this in the weekend. I'll possibly be back with more questions, and will report the results here. --NorwegianBluetalk 15:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Temporary files
I work with a lot of temporary files which I delete after a few days. Basically constantly reading and writing small files. I'm currently using my computers main hard drive for this. Would moving them to an external drive be a good idea to speed up my computer? If so, which would be better; an external hard drive or a usb flash drive? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.197.38.32 (talk) 15:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Probably not. The SATA-2 connection you'd typically run in a desktop machine is more than 6 times faster than the USB2 connection you'd use for an external disk. An internal flash SSD (on that SATA-2 connection, or external on an ESATA connection) should be faster (at a nontrivial price); to what degree depends greatly on your specific usage pattern. It may already be that you're already mostly dealing with those files in the computer's (RAM) disk cache, in which case a faster drive won't help. You'd have to experiment to see for sure. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Just as an aside, if you're using these files frequently enough that you're concerned about performance, you probably don't want to be using temp files in the first place. I only use temp files for short term persistent storage, or as a hack to get around some usage-specific limitation.  if you really need to use files for some reason, and you have enough free RAM, try making a ramdisk and writing your files there - that will be dramatically faster than using hard disk I/O.  -- Ludwigs 2  22:04, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If creating a lot of small temporary files is really causing performance problems, it may be the seeking, not the raw bandwidth. In that case putting the files on a second drive could help a lot even if the interface is slower. ImDisk is a good free RAM disk driver for Windows. -- BenRG (talk) 02:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Hard Drive
I am wondering, is there a difference between internal and external hard drive life-span? If I had an external usb hard drive and left it on 24/7 always in use, would it last as long as an internal drive left on 24/7 always in use? Not including accidents like dropping the external drive. 71.236.203.190 (talk) 15:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There's no reason to suppose so, providing the external enclosure has adequate ventilation. External enclosures simply contain the same disks that are otherwise sold for desktops and laptops. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 15:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * externals may last longer on laptops, due to (a) the restrictions on ventilation in the limited laptop fame and (b) the random abuse that laptops are subject to. -- Ludwigs 2  03:37, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, there are other factors that may shorten the life of an external; it may be more likely to get yanked by its cable or knocked off a desk &c, in which case there may be either damage to the disk itself, or to the container. Plus, computer desks & laptop bags &c are usually designed with good placement/protection for the computer but not necessarily for other devices. The most recent failure I saw involved the plastic stub inside the device's USB socket (y'know, the one that supports the metal contacts) being damaged, along with the plastic backing at the rear of the socket, leaving it unusable, just because of a strong tug on the USB cable. If there's no USB cable in the first place, that failure mode is eliminated. bobrayner (talk) 15:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Transferring songs from the mini-disc player to the computer, is it possible ????
Today we have Ipods and MP3 players and the likes but some years back the MINIDISC-player was very popular, and i'm sitting on one with many songs on it. I doubt it possible, but i'll ask anyway if someone might know ; Is it possible to transfer these songs from the minidisc to the computer?? The usual thing would be to downlaod/transfer songs from the computer to the minidisc ofcourse, but i need the opposite, songs back on a computer. Old songs, many of which are hard to come by, that i would like to have on a computer and perhaps on my ipod because minidisc won't live forever and i hope the songs won't be lost with it.

So if possible, how does one go about doing this, transferring songs from Minidisc to computer?

Thanks :)

Krikkert7 (talk) 16:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * This MiniDisc FAQ, question #6, says that the MiniDisc was specifically designed with a "firewall" preventing you from digitally transferring audio from a MiniDisc to your PC. It goes on to say that there is a US$5,000 package, aimed at audio professionals, that will do this despite the firewall.  So, the way to transfer is going to have to be to use the analog hole: Hook up a cable from your MiniDisc player's "audio out" port into your PC's "audio in" port, and use ordinary audio capture software on the PC to capture the audio.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:33, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * PS: Hold the phone: Our own MiniDisc article mentions the "MZ-RH1" MiniDisc player, which apparently lacks the firewall and may let you digitally copy audio back and forth between your PC and a MiniDisc.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:36, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

thank you. Your answer is very helpful :)I'll give it a try ... 84.49.182.137 (talk) 17:23, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Latest Mozilla Beta Version
I have downloaded both of these beta versions: So which one is the latest version? My OS is W7 64bit.--180.234.0.174 (talk) 16:36, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Firefox Setup 4.0 Beta 6
 * Firefox-4.0b7pre.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer
 * The latest beta released on Firefox's beta site (and through auto-update is 4.0b6. If you are looking at the nightly builds, 4.0b7pre would be the latest build.  The most stable beta build will likely be 4.0b6 right now. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 19:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Help! How do I announce my blog
Help I need some assistance. How do I announce my blog which I have just started? There is hardy any readers at the moment. 122.107.192.187 (talk) 21:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The experienced and established bloggers I have met all followed more or less the same strategy. 1. Provide a steady stream of good content. 2. Give many, frequent, good, non-spammy comments (e.g. things that will make people interested in finding out who you are and what you have to say) on other blogs that might have a similar readership, with the link to your blog as your URL. That's the account of it I heard from a few such bloggers, anyway. They emphasized how difficult it was in the beginning and how much work they did to "publicize" their blog in a non-spammy fashion. (Spamming your blog — that is, lots of attempting to get attention without providing much substantive contributions to others — is probably NOT the way to grow your readership.) The readily-updating content convinces people that your site is worth bookmarking or following or whatever (and not just a dead site), while the thoughtful comments drive traffic and PageRank towards your site. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:16, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, don't write spammy comments trying to advertise your blog on other sites. It will not give a very good impression of either you or your site, and it probably won't mean much more traffic either. Chevy  monte  carlo  - alt 08:30, 25 September 2010 (UTC)