Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 October 24

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[edit] October 24

[edit] Scheduled startup and shutdown

I have set my computer using the BIOS Power Management functions to start my computer at 7:00 AM so a program I run everyday can start at 7:30 AM. THe program includes a line of code to check time and end the program at a certain time. From there the power management section of the display properties sees the system is idle after 5 minutes and puts the system in hybernation. Trouble is the system does not always restart at 7:00 AM and the program never starts running. The system just stays in hibernation. Is there a beter way to accomplish starting the computer in the morning so the program can run and then shutting down the computer when the program is finished in the evening. Adaptron 00:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

please state your operating system, as this is where you would issue a command. TehKewl1 04:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

From what I can see, the computer starts up at 7:00AM. Unless this start-up process takes 25 minutes, the computer will be idle for more than 5 minutes before the timed start of the program at 7:30AM and would go into hiberbation. This could be why the computer just stays in hibernation instead of running the program. Perhaps you should start the computer at 7:20AM instead? Just my thoughts --yaninass2 | talk 04:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Windows XP. I've tried a new aproach. Instead of using Task Scheduler I simple put a shortcut to the program in the startup program folder and the bios power management start time set for 7:30 AM. The display power option is now set for hibernation after 30 minutes of the computer being idle and the program set to stop at 7:00 PM. After the program stops the system goes idle and then into hibernation but unless I shut if off the bios pwer management will not start again at 7:30 AM. Is ther a way to shut it down instead of going into hibernation using the power option? I don't see any options listed other than hibernation. Can I add a key or otherwise teak the registry? Adaptron 16:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

How do you mean "shut it down instead of going into hiberation" ? Can you just shut it down, or does it have to be in a suspected state? 68.39.174.238 03:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
This is a lot easier and a lot more complicated than I first thought. Windows XP actually has a shutdown command but it will not work under certain circumstnaces. What I'm working on now is to generate a shutdown batch file that I can executre from the program I'm running along with BIOS controlled startup and startup folder program execution. Any ideas are still welcome. Adaptron 00:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HTML Marquee trouble

I'm trying to design a marquee for use on a mock website, but I don't know much HTML, specifically something that causes a break between two sentences on the same line (like 10 spaces or something). With my marquee, one sentence scrolls accross, then I'd like a small break before the next one (as in, both would be visible but there'd be a gap separating them). If I use "br" it creates a new line and the marquee doubles in height. Can anyone help? --Bronzey 08:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I just found a sort of solution, put underscores inbetween the sentences then make them the same colour as the background... it works, but it's fairly ugly. I'd still like some expert advice though :) --Bronzey 08:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
The correct way to do it is probably to use CSS, but it's easier to put
<pre>          </pre>
where you want the space. —Bromskloss 08:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
No, wait, that breaks the line too! :-( —Bromskloss 09:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Ok, here's a better one (still ugly):
&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;
—Bromskloss 09:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Hah, thanks for your help :) --Bronzey 10:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Better expert advice is: Don't do it. Most uses of animated side-scrolling text are highly annoying intrusions.
The relevant CSS property is white-space, and the XML attribute xml:space is also relevant; but browser support may be an issue. The safest non-breaking space across all typefaces is the &nbsp; entity (Unicode U+00A0). --KSmrqT 14:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MS OFFICE WORD 2003

If i have a normal ms office 2003 word document and i want to split it up into 3, for example, columns but i dont want the title to be in one of the columns and i want it to be across the top as normal; what do i do???--84.66.6.35 09:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

In OpenOffice.org, you can select the part of your document you want to have in multiple columns and then go "Format" → "Columns…". Perhaps you can do the same in Word. —Bromskloss 09:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it's the same. Select the text you want to be in three columns. Then either click format, columns, or use the columns tool on your standard toolbar (it's to the right of centre, the top toolbar). Only the selected text will go into columns. Alternatively, if your document is only one page, you can put the title in the header in the top margin. Anchoress 10:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
There are a few ways to accomplish this, but this is perhaps the easiest: Type your title, hit Enter. Choose Format..Columns.. and select column layout you want. Be sure to choose "Apply to this point forward" instead of "Apply to Whole Document". Click OK. Type text for column 1. Choose Insert...break..Columb break. Type text for column 2. Choose Insert...break..Columb break. Type text for column 3. Voila! You now have a title centered above your columns. dpotter 18:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WORD

How do you put a horizontal line in Word??? Iv looked everywhere but cant seem to find it.

( i have MS Word 2003) thanks--William dady 10:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What kind of a horizontal line? Cuz there are lots of ways to do it. Be more specific please. Anchoress 10:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Just a normal horizontal line like the ones you get on newspapers under the title, iv dont it before but i cant remember how to do it. (also i think you can get them on website programs, like frontpage, and they have their own button)--William dady 10:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you have the formatting toolbar, just place your cursor in the text or on the paragraph mark where you want the line to show, and click on the underline toolbar button which is on your formatting toolbar (it should be the second one at top, to the right). Or choose format, borders and shading, and select the line you want. Anchoress 10:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
If you have auto-formatting turned on (which is the default), 3 or more hyphens will be automatically turned into a horizontal line. --LarryMac 12:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Alternatively, turn on the drawing toolbar (View -> Toolbars -> Drawing, it often shows up at the bottom of the screen), click on the "line" tool (by default it's just to the right of "AutoShape"), click and drag to draw your line. Holding down the SHIFT key forces your line to be at some angle multiple of 15° (helpful for drawing vertical or horizontal lines). — QuantumEleven 10:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Q about VoIP.

Do I need to be paying line rental on my landline phone for DSL to work? I'm looking at ditching my regular phone service for VoIP, but don't know if I need to have line rental active. Thanks.

Depends where you area and who your provider is, you'll have to ask them. In Australia you can NOT use DSL without paying regular phone line rental, but I do believe it is possible in other countries. Vespine 14:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
How much more would it cost to have cable broadband installed? If you have to pay for phone-line rental on top of DSL ISP charges, it might be worth switching to higher-speed broadband --Username132 (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Here in Australia, cable broadband is ridiculously expensive (the average is $100 USD per month, with a 20GB-per-month download limit). ADSL is limited to 1.5Mbit.

Take a look at Naked DSL. dpotter 18:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Or more importantly, cable is pretty much only available in the capital cities, and even then not everywhere.Vespine 23:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recovering Outlook mails and address book from a hard disk

I recovered the hard disk from my crashed laptop. It has all my outlook express mails and addresses in an archived format. It's possibly encrypted too. How can I recover them? I know had the laptop been working, there's a way to export all outlook data, but what can I do now? deeptrivia (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Were you using WinXP? The location for Outlook mail files (.pst extension) in XP is located in "Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook" you can take those files and import them back into Office. —Mitaphane talk 17:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SQL question about aggregate rows.

I'm trying to construct a query in PostgreSQL to to the following, and not having much luck. I have a list of purchasing records, each one with a product ID, a purchase date, and a price. My select is grouping by product ID. I want to also be able to ask, "what's the first and last price paid for this item?". The initial query I came up with was select min(purchasedate) as firstdate, max(purchasedate) as lastdate, min(case when purchasedate = firstdate then unitprice else NULL end) as firstprice, min(case when purchasedate = lastdate then unitprice else NULL end) as lastprice from purchaserecords group by productid;, but postgres claimed "column "firstdate" does not exist"; I suppose I can't use a previously defined field in another aggregate column. If I try to substitute in max(purchasedate) for lastdate, it says "aggregate function calls may not be nested". How can I make it do what I want it to do? grendel|khan 14:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I use a separate table that I fill - very fast. But, you can do it with a subselect: select * from purchaserecords as a where purchasedate in (select purchasedate from purchaserecords where productid=a.productid order by purchasedate limit 1). --Kainaw (talk) 15:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
I tried subselects, actually, but it was incredibly slow. I'm taking a different tack now and trying to move the aggregate functionality in the reporting engine. It seems like there's no good way to do this. grendel|khan 16:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Subselects are slow - that is why you are told to never ever use a subselect. However, there isn't much in the way of getting the "last" item for every group. That is why I make a "lastitem" table and I fill it with a script. Then, I query the lastitem table. Since my main table has over 10 million records for just over 2 million groups, having a lastitem table makes it MUCH faster to get the last item from anyone in the group. --Kainaw (talk) 19:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peripheral device

What is the general features, usage, key manufactures, and the latest advncements and innovations in a printer

Printers allow you to create hard copy of the answers after you've done your own homework. --LarryMac 14:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
What does your teacher mean by "latest"? I've heard that the printing press is a hell of a lot better than a monastery full of monks copying books by hand. --Kainaw (talk) 15:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] audio timescaling

Can you tell me if pitch synchronous granular synthesis is equivalent to pitch synchronous overlap and add (psola) method? THNX! --Ulisse0 15:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, PSOLA is a kind of granular synthesis. - Rainwarrior 17:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Thnx again! --Ulisse0 17:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PNG

Is the a way to save of otherwise convert bmp formatted files to png formatted files in Visual Basic 6? If not is ther an add on or a program that will convert a whole folder full of bmp files to png? Adaptron 16:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about VB6, but IrfanView has a nice batch convert/rename function which should perform that task. --LarryMac 16:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
ACDSee is also nice for that. However, if you have to do it with VB6, I don't know if it exists, but it shouldn't be the world's hardest thing to do since they are both considered bitmaps. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
If you can do it in .NET, the System.Drawing namespace is what you'll need. howcheng {chat} 20:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks very much for your help. Infanview will work fine although a plug-in, add-on or routine to do the conversion and save from VB6 would be nice and eliminate several steps. Since Infanview seems to have command line capability maybe I can use if from VB6. Adaptron 22:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate File Finding Program

I want to use a duplicate file finding program to remove duplicated music files. Of course two tracks that sound the same when I play them wont necessarily be exact duplicates (they could be different sizes, different formats and different names) - would this present a problem? --Username132 (talk) 17:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Well how does the program work? Or what is the program's name? If the program is just hashing the music data (not the filename or other metadata attached to the file) and looking for files that have the exact same hash, then even closely sounding files will be different. If program works buy analyzing the outputing audio waveforms and then matching it to similar sounding outputs, I'd say you're probably going to get some false positives. —Mitaphane talk 17:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
For a normal duplicate file finder, it'll only find files that are identical. If you have an mp3 at 128 kbps and one at 192 kbps, even if it's the same song, it's going to look significantly different to the computer. If you only analyze waveforms, it might still not work because of the way things are compressed and digitized, that one waveform might look a bit different somewhere where it was cut off cause it reached the peak, while it didn't on another file. So that would pose a problem. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:30, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
There is a program called Dupless that does what you want. The old freeware version however is virtually useless for more than a few files since it only provides manual capability. If you program I think even VB6 has file detail lookup capability. I don't know if the non-free version of Dupless offers automation but it should not be hard to find on the web. Adaptron 22:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ubuntu Problem

I inserted my Ubuntu 6.06 disc (64-bit for my AMD 64-bit processor) and after loading to a black screen with a mouse pointer, I get a small repeating blip from my speakers over and over. This also occurs in graphics safe mode. A few months ago it worked fine, then it did this, a month later it worked fine and now it's doing this. Why is it so flaky? Someone at the Ubuntu forums suggested checking for loose connections inside the case but that sounds a bit wishy-washy, especially since WinXP runs fine. --Username132 (talk) 17:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Reburn the disk and check the BIOS? X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 18:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
This problem occurs with the disc I've burned and the one I sent for from the Ubuntu people. What should I check for in the BIOS? --Username132 (talk) 19:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Placing page in Categories

Hello, I was wondering how to place my webpage into different categories that way my page that I just created will be seen under specific categories. Thank you for your help.

Unless your web page meets the guidelines for Wikipedia:Notability than it should not have its own page, and it will be deleted. X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 18:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
My interpretation of their enquiry was that they've created a new article and want to know how to use categories. I tried to find out what page they might have created but this post appeared to be their first edit. --Username132 (talk) 19:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Categorization FAQ are your friends. Although, for the future, it would be better to ask this sort of question at the Help desk. — QuantumEleven 10:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dark Laptop Screen

I'm guessing you've gotten this question before, but since i'm not willing to search through the archives to find it: I bought a new dell laptop that i'm pretty happy with, but for some reason (i guess to save power,) the screen becomes very dark the second i unplug it. i tried fishing around for a solution throughout the control panel and settings, including power settings, but i cant find how to disable this. any help? Sashafklein 19:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

theres usually a FN button on most laptops. hold this down, and look for two icons like suns (usually somewhere around the F8 or f9 buttons, or on the arrow keys itself. hold Fn and press these buttons and it should brighten your screen. hope that helps. -JOE

The only other place I would suggest(if you want to disable it completely) is searching options in the BIOS or contacting Dell. This is generally a helpful feature for those who prefer battery life over display. —Mitaphane talk 20:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Even at full brightness, it is common for a laptops to dim thier displays slightly when running on battery. I think this might just be a side effect from the change in voltage, but it is none the less common. - Ridge Racer 14:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm certain it's a built in feature. The question is whether it can be changed or if it's built into the hardware. —Mitaphane talk 17:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transparent Images

I am trying to make a black t shirt with an image i made in adobe. so that i don't have to pay to print black onto the tshirt, i made the image transparent in adobe and saved it as a jpeg. there are two problems. the first is that there was white on the image i made, and on the website where i made the tshirt (custom ink), the white does not display at all. it's just become transparent, it would seem. also, everything that is not white is ringed by white on the website. so my image that was supposed to show directly against the black is lined with a bit of white. would both these mistakes probably be problems with the website? should i have done something different with the image? thanks Sashafklein 19:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

JPEGs cannot be transparent. Save it as a PNG instead. howcheng {chat} 20:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Though remember PNG alpha channels aren't supported by IE! --frothT C 21:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Interlaced? Sashafklein 03:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want. See the interlace article for more info. howcheng {chat} 03:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
What if you choose a black background in Adobe (Photoshop I assume) instead of white/transparent? You're printing on a black T-shirt anyways, just make sure you trim as much as you can (but not too much!) when you cut it out to iron it on the t-shirt. Though if it's the shop that's making the t-shirt, and you're not printing on a sheet of transfer, you might want to check with them. --Silvaran 16:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Just thought I'd point out PNGs alpha channels are supported by IE7 which now has a final release, not just beta anymore. - Рэдхот(t • c • e) 22:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] If I were to sell my PC (probably ebay or craigslist), how much could I get for it?

custom built by ABS computer (abspc.com) here are the basic specs:

Awesome Series P4 2.8GHz 120gb hd Geforce FX 5900 Sound Blaster Audigy 1gb DDR CDRWdrive (not sure of speed) DVD drive Antec Case 2 fans, blue LED lighting XP home SP2 installed

never had any problems with it.

can anyone just give a rough estimate as to how much this might be worth? if you need any more detailed information please let me know. thanks in advance.

Search for similar systems on eBay using the Advanced Search and checking the "completed listings only" checkbox. That will give you a good estimate. howcheng {chat} 20:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Systems are a lot of work to build but well worth the price. A P4 and motherboard with 7.1 sound can be had for less than $200 (maybe even $150), a 240 gig hard drive for less then $100, a DVD/CDRW/R recorder for less then $100, 1 gig DDR less than $150, a case and PS for $40. Add um all up and consider less than half as a good place to start for a used system unless you get lucky and a schoolmate really wants yours and is willing to fork out the bucks. Checking out similar systems on Ebay as previously stated will help narrow things down although prices can vary dramatically from sale to sale. Adaptron 22:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Try this NewEgg trade in calculator here. --01:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
It told me $300 for my 2 month old thinkpad that cost me almost $2000 --frothT C 17:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Web based free source control for simple users

Dear all,

I would like to ask if anybody knows a website that can provide source control for *one* file only for simple users (students). We want to basically prevent concurrent changes to the same file by implementing a simple check out - check in procedures.

Thanks a lot in advance, Tommy

One file eh? Simple users? I don't know off the top of my head but you can check out Version_control, List of revision control software, and Comparison of revision control software --frothT C 21:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)