Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 December 24

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[edit] December 24

[edit] First words e-mailed/posted/etc. - famous?

Most American schoolchildren learn (and I sure remember) the first words over telegraph ("What hath God wrought"), over telephone by Bell ("Watson, come here, I want you"), on phonograph ("Mary had a little lamb..."), and radio - (IIRC, the letter "s.") My question is, do we have other famous ones for e-mail, for posts on a network server, and so on, for the computer age? What are they? And, if not, why not? Was there so much development going on at the same time that one can't really trace the actual first, or perhaps the action ws so frenetic that people didn't think to record the first? Or, were people in the 1800s and early 1900s just more cognizant of historical achievements and therefore the "firsts" were more widely recorded?Somebody or his brother (talk) 01:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

This, this and our own article on the first emailer all agree that the exact wording of the first message has gone to the great bit bucket in the sky. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copy-and-paste in Microsoft Excel

I'm working on a spreadsheet in Excel, and I copy-and-paste a series of cells a few times. Then I type something in a single cell, or edit a single cell. Then if I want to go back and paste the repeated date some more, it's not available to paste anymore. Why does this happen? I didn't copy anything else into the clipboard, so shouldn't it still be there the next time I want to paste? — Michael J 01:10, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you'd think so, but it doesn't ... there does not seem to be a good reason for this. Mind, if you press CTRL-C twice, you should get the Excel clipboard, which will facilitate multiple pastes with intervening edits. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. I didn't know Excel had its own clipboard. I thought it used the same standard clipboard that everything else on my computer did. I will try the CTRL-C thing. Thanks again. — Michael J 11:28, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
It's even worse than just having its own clipboard; it has a super finicky clipboard that usually only works if you have the thing you want copied actively selected. It's totally inconsistent with every other program, yet another wonderful "feature" of Excel. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:48, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
So to copy something you have to "actively select" it? What's so outrageous (and unusual) about that? Incidentally, it's actually the Office clipboard as it works across all Office applications. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
What's outrageous and unusual is that "paste" can require you to select the item you want to duplicate. --Carnildo (talk) 02:51, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
What it means is that even if you have said something is to be copied, if you don't have its rows still selected when you go to paste it then it won't paste. In, say, Word, you can select a word, hit copy, and then go and do whatever you want, and as long as you don't copy something else to the clipboard then the original text you put there will stay there. Not with Excel; if you have gone and selected something else or edited another cell then it won't let you paste the original stuff again. Totally stupid, totally useless. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Excel and PowerPoint don't originate with Microsoft; they were "bought out" when Microsoft was trying to first assemble its Office suite. As such, they each came with their own set of quirks and rather than force the 12 original users to learn something new, Microsoft has left many of these quirks in the programs even now, decades after the original releases of the programs.

And yes, it blows.

Atlant (talk) 00:11, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft is in my opinion just irresponsible with their software. This is the true danger of a proprietary monopoly realized — they create poor software, make it industry standard, and then have obscenely long development cycles (years and years) with software that has known bugs, non-standardized GUIs, and that every user knows requires endless amounts of struggling just to do simple things. It's a lousy, dangerous situation to be in, and neither competitors nor open source have really taken up the slack to make BETTER products (and not just knock-offs of the Microsoft ones), in my opinion. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Install GNUCash on Mac OS X

How can I download and install GNUCash on a Mac OS X (Tiger)? --Kushalt 03:16, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The documentation for Mac installation is here: http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_How_to_install_on_Mac_OSX.3F and here: http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/MacOSXInstallation SteveBaker (talk) 05:38, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Kushalt 05:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DVD playback software

What do people recommend in terms of Windows XP DVD playback software? --121.219.224.205 (talk) 07:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh and doesn't have to be freeware or OS --121.219.224.205 (talk) 07:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
VLC media player. --antilivedT | C | G 09:34, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Media Player Classic --Ouro (blah blah) 09:59, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Second on VLC. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme (talk) 17:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Third on VLC.
(feeling compelled to check VLC out) --Ouro (blah blah) 09:02, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Nah Nero Showtime is much more sophisticated. One of the things I really like about Showtime is the dynamic audio feature - a lot of DVD's have really quiet audio tracks and this boosts it up pretty well. --Fir0002 11:24, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Fourth on VLC. Also, check out Media Player Classic. Its almost identical to Windows Media player in look and feel but with so many more options and a built in DVD rendering engine. Also, less resource hungry than VLC. Think outside the box 14:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using the quadrature signal of the Digital Down Converter

Hi again. This is a DSP question and probably a hard one, but well. I have programmed a digital down converter and it works fine. But it has two outputs, and I have no clue as to what to do with the "Q" one? I'm using only "I" and its data seems erroneous at times, and I'm wondering if I should somehow combine it with Q. Thanks. ›mysid (☎∆) 11:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, answering my own question. Apparently, what I want to do is to convert this quadrature (I+Q) signal into a real signal. I would have to filter all negative frequencies out. I'll figure out how to do that. ›mysid (☎∆) 13:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] php/apache

i've recently installed apache2/MySQL/php5 on my pc and edited the httpd.conf file for apache, with
LoadModule php5_module "G:/Server/php/php5apache2.dll"
PHPIniDir "G:/Server/php/"
AddType application/x-htpd-php .php .html
i then created a php file <? phpinfo(); ?>, and placed it in htdocs in apaches folder
when i goto http://localhost/phpinfo.php, instead of displaying php info it asks me to download the php file instead, what can i do to fix this?--90.207.96.179 (talk) 16:35, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm pretty sure you have a typo in your AddType line, though I don't know if that is the problem. It should be: AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html --24.147.86.187 (talk) 17:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
yah thank you it works :P--90.207.96.179 (talk) 18:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Home Recording

My Dell has a fast processor, plenty of RAM, and a SigmaTel HD Audio card. Could I get good recording quality by simply plugging instruments into the microphone jack? -- Sturgeonman (talk) 19:05, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

You will never get any quality recording by using the microphone jack. It has very high impedance and requires very low signal source. Because of this high gain, a lot of noise is introduced. If you want to record from an external source, like the headphone output of a CD player, use the line input instead. The quality of the recording depends on many factors many of which you cannot control. One that you could and will greatly affect the quality is the volumn of your source. You want to use as high a volumn as possible yet not introduce any noise. Start recording at a set volumn. List to the recording carefully. If you detect noise, lower the volumn and repeat (if you don't hear any noise, increase the volumn). You want to record at the highest volumn w/o noise. NYCDA (talk) 19:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - use the 'line' input if you have one. It also depends on the instrument. My son's electric guitar needed a pre-amp plugged into the line input in order to get any quality. Also we needed to wire up a splitter plug to get signal onto both sides of the stereo image (some guitar effects boxes create stereo signals). SteveBaker (talk) 19:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mystery image

What is this? --Seans Potato Business 19:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a two-dimensional barcode. It works just like a 1D barcode except there is room for more information. The three squares in the corners allow the thing to be aligned properly. SteveBaker (talk) 19:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Specifically, a QR Code. — Matt Eason (Talk • Contribs) 19:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I was curious about what it said so I had a hunt for a decoder. http://www.hafenscher.net/qrcode/ has a downloadable decoder, and the image Sean linked to decodes to http://seo-labo.sblo.jp/ - the domain name of the site it's on. — Matt Eason (Talk • Contribs) 19:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Ahh these look like they are the things I read about in The Economist a while back. They are starting to pop up all over the place in Japan - you take a shot of them with your phone-camera and it decodes and provides relevant information. They are on things like bus-stops where the data shows bus timetables, or they are on movie-posters so you can find out more about the movie, included a link to the trailer (that sort of thing). I think they were talking about expanding to having them provide information on food-stuffs in stores so you can get more detail on nutritional content/recipes things like that. ny156uk (talk) 11:33, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Can they encode more information in less space than the traditional practice of printing real letters/symbols? I would be irritated if I had to rely on one of those for bus timetable information (as if it isn't confusing enough) --Seans Potato Business 22:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, they can store links to web-sites that give real-time information, that sort of thing. The idea being that you simply photograph it on your phone-camera and then it auto-opens the appropriate area. And yes space wise it could store huge amounts more than traditional text could within the same space. Not the same but there is the thing called rainbow storage which, if it came to play, could store around 250gb on a sheet of A4. Even allowing for a minute realisation of this potential you could easily store more information using this 'barcode' like system than with traditional letters/symbols. Also look at dataglyphs (http://www.parc.com/research/projects/dataglyphs/). PARC (Company) (Palo ALto Research Centre) is responsible for churning out some of the most impressive developments in the history of the modern computer. Sorry kinda gone off on a bit of random computer-technology rambling, oh well i've typed it now. ny156uk (talk) 23:15, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Rainbow Storage (yes, we do have an article about it) has been utterly debunked - it's just nonsense dreamed up as a theoretical possibility by someone with no grasp whatever of the underlying technologies. (I actually had a hand in the debunking - so I know!) There is no conceivable way to pack gigabits or even megagits onto a single sheet of paper. The PARC research suggests 1 kbits per square inch (100kbits per sheet of paper) is a realistic upper limit...and even that hasn't really been realised in practical devices because paper changes size quite markedly depending on humidity and temperature and using colour for encoding doesn't work well for long-term periods because most dyes and pigments change colour over days to months after printing. These issues can be circumvented - but only at the cost of having scanners that are vastly more precise than the data they are scanning. Such scanners are going to be horrifically expensive - and in ways that don't get better as technology progresses. Paper storage technologies have their place - but they aren't going to expand greatly from the niches they currently occupy. SteveBaker (talk) 00:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Cool - cheers for the info SteveBaker, kinda mildly gutted though as I remember reading about this somewhere and think - wow that's a great little idea. Oh well. ny156uk (talk) 15:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
The guy who came up with it was thinking about OCR - recognising printed letters. He realised that in addition to the 96 or so ASCII characters, he could also print characters from other alphabets - in other fonts or triangles and squares and stars and spirals...he made some sort of wild estimate of the number of symbols he could possibly think of in a number of fonts, etc. Then he thought of printing and scanning in colour and read that computers use R, G, B encoding with 8 bits per colour - and then multiplied the number of characters per page by the number of possible shapes he could imagine times the number of possible fonts, times the number of possible colours. Then to go one step further, he imagined his shapes being printed in two colours - one at the top of the character, one at the bottom - then he thought about coloured patterns that would prooduce yet more variations. Multiplying them all together he wound up with this insanely large number. To make matters worse, he knew that video compression algorithms can compress video down to about 100th of the normal file size - he assumed that if that were possible then he could compress his paper images by the same ratio prior to printing them! That's just crazy of course...but this guy wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He also didn't realise was that printers have limited spatial resolution (and so do scanners) and an octagon might be indistinguishable from a circle - or a boldfaced letter 'A' might look the same as a triangle. Worse still, the assumption of 24 bits per colour is crazy - the Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black (CMYB) printing system relies on dithering (printing a tight grid of primary coloured dots to approximate a larger area of intermediate solid colour) - and that of those 16 million theoretically possible colours, many of them are just muddy browns and blacks that the scanner can't possible distinguish.
A proper analysis of this has to start from the smallest reliably resolvable grid of 'pixels' that can be printed and scanned in colour - the largest number of reliably printable and scannable colours and so forth. When you start from actual device capabilities and work it from that end (rather than thinking about printing triangles and spirals and god-knows-what) - you wind up with the more realistic (but much less useful) figure of about 10kbytes per page. His demonstrations were initially of about that sort of range of capability - but later demos were shown to be rigged. The video he claimed to be playing off of a paper input turned out to be that the paper contained the URL of the video - or the filename or something laughable like that. Rainbow storage is well and truly BUSTED as a practical proposition. SteveBaker (talk) 07:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DVD Remixing

I have a film, both on VHS and DVD. The DVD version has a key scene cut from it that is present on the VHS. I wish to insert this scene from the VHS version into the DVD version. By chance, I have a capture card in my PC, so I can record the VHS scene (although directions on quality would be welcome). I'm more concerned with ripping the DVD in such a way as to preserve its superior quality. Hopefully I can just edit the particular chapter the scene is meant to appear in; is there a particular piece of software that can work natively with the relevant file(s, one for video and one for audio?) off the DVD, or will I have to recode the video twice, and if so, how can I best preserve the quality? What program could I use to insert the VHS footage? How do I re-burn the entire thing as a DVD-video disc at the end, hopefully preserving the menu etc.?

Many thanks, and Merry Christmas.

Rawling4851 21:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd use DVD Shrink to copy and decode the DVD to your hard drive. Then you will have a set of vob (DVD format) files. They are pretty big (up to 4GB on some movies) so you'll have to have lots of HDD space. Then, to get them in a workable format (lets say XviD format in an AVI) use something like Auto GK. This will take a while (2-3 hours). Now, use your capture card to record the scene from VHS (set your card to the highest quality, otherwise it will look awful and amateurish when you join in to the rest of the movie). You can use any video editing software to add the scene to the rest of the movie. Virtual Dub is good for this. You should end up with a nice Avi file of the whole movie, with the extra scene. You can burn it to a DVD or CD and it should play in any modern DivX certified player.
However, this does not preserve the menus. To preserve the menus etc use DVD Shrink like before. Then use your capture card to record the scene from VHS. Now you have to convert the captured VHS movie to the vob format, and you'll have to get your hands on a Vob editor. In my experience they are tricky to use and often corrupt the entire vob set. But if you can, add your extra scene via the vob editor and you should be able to burn the whole thing back to a DVD with the menus preserved. Make sure you use a program like Image burn otherwise it wont work. Have fun! Think outside the box 14:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The World Is Flat

I am currently reading The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, and I was wondering about the validity of a certain passage in it: "And the terrorist geeks in al-Qaeda are increasingly uploading their own news reports, threats, and speeches, not waiting for the BBC or CBS to come to talk to them, and then they're zapping their terror messages directly into your computer, via AOL or MSN." I can understand the first part of the sentence being the videos that surface and then are analyzed by everyone, but for the second part of the sentence, the way it's written, such an approach seems implausible. Can anyone elaborate on what the author meant? —Erik (talk • contrib) - 23:06, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

At the end, did it say, "Send this message to 20 of your friends otherwise you will have seven years' bad luck?" I have not read the book, but it sounds like he's having a laugh. I shouldn't worry too much about it. --ChokinBako (talk) 23:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Alright, it just seemed absurd to joke about relating terrorism to the concept of flattening. He does have a sense of humor in the book, so I'll go with that. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 01:21, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like someone who has no idea what he's talking about --ffroth 21:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vista Question

I have two questions.

1. How do I stop Vista from going to sleep and eventually switching off, every time I go to do something else for a few minutes? I mean, how do I disable the 'sleep' thing?

2. How do I adjust the sensitivity of the mouse, as very often, when I move the mouse across the screen it highlights half the page? (I know this is a hardware problem, but is there a control in Vista to sort this out?).

Cheers --ChokinBako (talk) 23:39, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The first will be in the Power Managment settings which are somewhere in the control panel. The second will be under Mouse on the control panel. I don't have access to a Vista machine right this moment but those are the headings they are under 82.31.4.72 (talk) 01:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
It will be called "Power Options". You can choose a plan and change the settings for each plan. --Spoon! (talk) 01:36, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Click the Vista orb (start button) and type "power options" in the search box. In the search results, click on "Power Options." Under your "Preferred Plan" (the one with the checked radio button), click "Change plan settings." Choose when you want the display to turn off and the computer to sleep. You can access the mouse settings by searching for "mouse" as you did for "power options." —Wayward Talk 10:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I did it. thanks! I am a mac user normally, so this is a little new to me.....--ChokinBako (talk) 10:52, 25 December 2007 (UTC)