Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 December 7

= December 7 =

Need help looking for a image generator.
I am helping a relative create logos and designs for the packaging of a product manufactured by his small business. I am wondering what type of site or program would create "naturey" scenery for such a thing.  DCI  talk 03:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Question : want to create own .dic and .aff files without unicode ie is in ASCII codes
Hi I want to create own .dic and .aff files without unicode ie is in ASCII codes. Can you please guide me how to create it if I have wordlist. Basically In my language "MARATHI" we wrapped the specific fonts on the english ASCII characters.

Where will I get english spellchecker complete source code in java or c# or any for openoffice. -Ssamit131 (talk) 05:20, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Far be it from me to tell you how to use your own language.... but are you certain this is a good idea? Marathi can be written in unicode-encoded Devanagari.  In general, using non-standard text encodings leads to portability problems in the future.  So, if you're set on writing a dictionary - especially in Java or C#, you should seriously reconsider using Unicode.
 * If you're finding that people in your language community are using non-standard character encoding - using a font to rasterize ASCII characters as Devanagari - perhaps a better use of your time would be to write a converter program that inputs ASCII Devanagari documents and outputs them in standard Unicode. This will solve two problems: the document will now be portable - people who don't have your custom fonts will still be able to read it; and furthermore, you can use a standard Unicode Marathi dictionary and spellchecker.  The only remaining challenge is to slowly, steadily wean members of the Marathi language community off of their ASCII/font hybrid system, and get them to start using UTF-8.  This switch to Unicode is better in the long run - it helps make digital documents easier to share with other people and with machines (software tools like spell checkers, search engines, and natural language processors work better when the human language matches its reported character-set).  Nimur (talk) 06:50, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * For good measure, here's the official tutorial for Converting Non-Unicode Text in Java. In fact, to be called a Java language program, per the language specification, the source-code must be written in Unicode - so if you're using string constants, or variable-names, in Marathi-posing-as-ASCII, you aren't technically writing Java.  Nimur (talk) 06:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * (By the way, if you're still looking for the source-code to a spell-checker, you may want to look at Hunspell, a tool used in OpenOffice.org and other common spell-checkers). HunSpell supports UTF-8, but does also support single-byte encodings for backward-compatibility purposes.  HunSpell is free and open-source software under the LGPL and Mozilla licenses, so you can download its source-code.  More information: http://hunspell.sourceforge.net/ and documentation.  Nimur (talk) 18:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

need computer of hijet 2003 in pakistan
my hijet vans computer is dead. now i want to purchase new. my van hijet modle 2003. so please guide me how i can find it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.73.62.205 (talk) 13:14, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * This website: http://www.toyota-indus.com/ is the Toyota website for Pakistan who apparently also sell Daihatsu vehicles. From there you should be able to find a local dealer and/or parts supplier, who will be able to get a new computer for your Daihatsu Hijet van.  Astronaut (talk) 16:07, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Billycharge email scam
When I got home from work, my wife said a friend of ours got an scam email and that she (the friend) had clicked on the link. So, I'm looking into it for her. She runs a Mac and this page includes the text "PE32 executable for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit" down at the bottom. I take this to mean that the malware is intended for Windows machines and will ignore my friend's Mac. Am I right? I don't look at these virus/malware reports often enough to really know exactly what I'm looking at. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 14:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If it was a Windows executable in general it is incompatible with the Mac and won't be an issue. The only major caveats there are that if the friend runs virtualization software (e.g. Parallels or VMWare), these sometimes are set to launch on Windows executables and run them in the virtual environment. If the friend runs Bootcamp and has a partitioned machine, there's some slight chance that the executable might be lurking around there somewhere, but I don't know. It might be worth checking in their Downloads folder to make sure there aren't any EXEs hiding away in there. They won't cause the Mac any trouble but it's better not to have such things hanging out on one's hard drive. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:23, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, they don't run any of that. It's only a Mac system.  No Windows partitions hanging around or anything like that. Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 15:29, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Then it shouldn't be a problem, presuming that the site is accurate about it being a Windows 32 executable. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Acrobat reader problem
My dad has bought a new computer running Windows 7, and has downloaded Acrobat Reader X. However, when you try to open a pdf file, you get this message "There is a problem with Adobe Acrobat / Reader. If it is running, please exit and try again. (1014:1014) [OK]". Needless to say, it doesn't work any better the next time. Help! Alansplodge (talk) 15:59, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * My advice would be to uninstall Adobe Reader and install the free software Foxit Reader. It it significantly faster and can do mostly everything that Reader can do.  If you don't want to do that, you can try uninstalling reader and installing it again to see if that fixes the problem. TheGrimme (talk) 16:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I had the same problem but only because I had a previous version of Adobe Reader installed. You may need to uninstall any Adobe products and start again. However, note that Windows 7 comes with a free PDF reader. Mine did anyway.--Shantavira|feed me 16:47, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that, we'll give it a try. Please could someone give me some pointers with the procedure for "uninstall". Dad is 92 and I'll probably have to talk him through it on the phone and I've never used Windows 7 before!. Alansplodge (talk) 11:50, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The path for uninstalling on Windows 7 should be something like:


 * Start button/circle (at bottom left of screen) > Control Panel > Under "Programs", click "Uninstall a program" > click "Adobe Reader X" > click the uninstall button at the top of the list. I've just tested with Adobe Reader 9, and wasn't required to do anything else (although you may have to press "next" a few times). See here for a video and instructions from Microsoft, here for information on uninstalling Adobe Reader specifically.


 * I would second the FoxIt Reader recommendation; it runs much faster than Adobe for me. One word of caution, iirc it's often bundled with other free software (various toolbars, for example). If you or your father doesn't want this software, be careful to untick the appropriate boxes when installing it. Good luck! -- Kateshortforbob talk  13:40, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Windows media center gone crazy?!
I have windows 7 with windows media center in my dorm room. Windows media center keeps insisting that i have an xbox 360 and asking me if i want to "set up my extender" o.0 .... could it be reading someone elses device from the network? Why is this happening?

137.81.118.126 (talk) 17:00, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, you've figured it out. Someone else on the same local network has an xbox 360, and the two broadcast their presence. They've found one another and are offering to team up.  If you were to permit it (which it sounds like you shouldn't) then that person would be able to browse your media archive. It's happening because your dorm network administrator hasn't set things up to limit interoperation between different rooms (which might also be a good thing; especially if you had a friend in the same building with whom you did want to share media).  You can reconfigure your Windows Firewall to block the relevant traffic - this Microsoft article lists how to unblock the traffic, so block the things it says to unblock and you'll stop seeing the message. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:05, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

That was exactly my next question i was going to ask. Thanks for thinking a step ahead of me ;)

Problem solved. 137.81.118.126 (talk) 04:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Recover Ubuntu Server Install
Hi All,

I had an ubuntu server install (mostly used as local webserver), and unfortunately the pc died. The HDD still works though, and I can boot it on another machine but I have two problems:

1.) (more of a nitpick) When the machine starts, it first the monitor gives an error that the display mode is unsupported (the previous one ran on an old CRT which has also died), but after a while it does go on to display the login prompt. I am just mentioning this just in case it matters.

2.) ifconfig shows only 'lo' interface (loopback?). I am sure the new machine has a working ethernet, and I can see it using lspci, but I don't know how to force the server to use it as eth0

I am aware that I can prolly just backup the files / database I need, but I had a difficult time setting up certain software on it previously and I was looking to save time by doing the above. There was another machine setup much like this one is which broke down, but that one had the desktop edition of Ubuntu and it was pretty much plug and play. I want to understand why this server-edition seems less flexible.

TIA PrinzPH (talk) 21:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I assume you are stuck at a command prompt with no graphics. As root, go to /etc/X11/ and check the xorg.conf file. You will see a section that identifies the driver to use. That must match the video device in the new computer. You will also see a section that has options for all of the video modes. Make sure that one of the modes is supported by the new monitor. I'd try a simple one like 800x600 just to make sure it works. After changing xorg.conf, run startx. You will either get a long scrolling death message or a graphical display. If you get a graphical display, cool. You can tweak xorg.conf until you like it. If you get a long scrolling message, check /var/log/xorg.log (it may be xorg.0.log depending on the version of Ubuntu). Be prepared to have another computer and search the web for solutions to any lines beginning with EE (error) in that log file. As for the network device, I'll have to check an old Debian box I have to see what the configuration is. I remember it being in /etc/sysconfig, but I may be wrong. So, I'll check first when I can get over to that box. -- k a i n a w &trade; 21:28, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick reply. Sorry if there was confusion - the server edition is meant to have no gui PrinzPH (talk) 21:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * About the ethernet: when you installed on the original machine, the installer created a udev rule which bound a specific network adapter to eth0. That way, even if you added additional adapters (like a PCI or USB ethernet adapter) the original adapter (which you had your current network cable plugged into) will still get eth0 come what may. So that means any other adapter can't get eth0. Now you've plugged the same drive into a new machine, which has a different ethernet adapter.  But udev is still reserving eth0 for the old adapter (because it doesn't know you're not going to plug that in).  It will probably have detected the ethernet adapter in the new machine, and will have assigned it to eth1 instead.  So you can probably get ethernet working if you manually do a sudo ifup eth1. If you plan on using the install for the long term (which is quite reasonable; I've moved linux installs from one machine to another no pain at all) then you need to remove the udev rule.  On my Mint system that's in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, which contains a line like this:

# PCI device 0x11ab:0x4362 (sky2) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:19:31:7c:5f:14", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"
 * You can either comment this line out or change the ATTR field (it's probably just keying off the MAC address) to whatever the MAC is on your new machine (which you can get from ifconfig). -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 22:57, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting definition of "no pain at all". Without udev, you can replace your ethernet card and not have to mess with any config files to get it working again. The udev way is pain. 68.60.252.82 (talk) 23:11, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If you do dmesg | grep eth you should probably see a warning from udev saying that it couldn't setup eth0; it may also have information about what it did do with the network adapter(s) it found on the new machine. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:00, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * If the kernel detects a network card and assigns it an ethN, but ifup ethN doesn't bring it up, you may need to tweak /etc/network/interfaces - do a <tt>man interfaces</tt> for its format. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 23:19, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the replies. No, no eth was assigned to the interface. I think I will go ahead and try editing the persistent rules file, I found references to it on other sites as well (Finlay's post was invaluable ) (this site describes my problem to the letter). Can't try it right this instant though, but I will go ahead and mark this solved. Thanks everyone PrinzPH (talk) 00:40, 8 December 2011 (UTC)