Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 December 26

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[edit] December 26

[edit] Blackberry Pearl Input

My new blackberry used to 'predict' what i wanted to type when i hit each key once, but now it is in the 'ABC' input mode, where i have to hit each button a certain amount of times to reach the letter. How do i revert this change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.239.184.31 (talk) 00:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

From Ask Dave Taylor:
  1. Go to the main applications view on the Pearl.
  2. Choose Options (it's the little crescent wrench icon) and select it.
  3. Scroll down to Language and click the trackball.
  4. Under "Input Language" you want to either select your language with Multitap (to enable Multitap, that is the ABC mode you are in now) or without (which puts you into the predictive SureType mode). So, select English (United States) to get the predictive SureType.
  5. Now just click the menu button and select Save and you're back to normal.
›mysid (☎∆) 08:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Windows media player 10

I am wanting to listen to air traffic control feeds on live ATC.net, however when i click on a feed to listen to the browser goes to another page that says This program cannot display the webpage and the media player does not come up. I have checked the firewall settings and that seems in order but the feeds still won't load. Can anyone help.--logger (talk) 00:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm looking at this page which I assume is the one you are using. When I click the "Listen" button (black text on green background) I always get an error message similar to the one you are. However, when I click the related text link (in my case, "KBOS - Clearance Delivery - Boston, MA") the feed sometimes works. Which is weird, cause they're both the same link. I am able to listen to all the feeds I've tried using VLC player, if you're able to try that. You might have to force VLC to open .m3u files. (Create a dummy file: test.m3u. Right-click on it, choose Open with. choose VLC and tick the Always open with... option). Hope some of this works for you.--Kateshortforbob 20:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
PS. Thanks for pointing out that site - it's really interesting.
LiveATC streams work quite well with Winamp, give that a try. 161.222.160.8 (talk) 05:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Animor8"

For Animor 8 as the program itself I'm trying to download the file onto Vista yet their complications with how it is properly downloaded. Is anyone a user of the Animor 8 under Vista and knows how to properly complete the installation? Or of any Windows affliation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.250.175.113 (talk) 02:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I know there's a "Properties>Compatibility>Run in compatibility mode" in Win XP that may help a Setup file that keeps balking at an unfamiliar Windows version number. Please note that this is XP, not Vista, but there might just be a similar option in Vista's right-click menu. ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 20:12, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Operating System not supported

"OPERATING SYSTEM IS NOT SUPPORTED

Your operating system Linux i686 is not supported.

This service currently available only for Windows and Macintosh. "


(tg4.tv [[1]])


Is there a way to get Firefox to identify itself as a different operating system, for example an addon? --Duomillia (talk) 02:49, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Try this. Essentially, it's all handled via user agent and you need to spoof that you're using Windows through that. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 03:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Masquerading as Windows doesn't help, as it requires ActiveX. I don't have a Mac user-agent string though, can anybody give me one? (And when will they learn, those ignorant morons...) --antilivedT | C | G 06:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
What pathetic little site. Sucks there is such a limitation, but I urge you to email them with complaints, asking for a cross-browser website. — Kieff | Talk 07:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - using ActiveX on a public website is unforgivable. Aside from the business of Linux and MacOS users being unable to access it, Windows users with any sense at all will have disabled ActiveX support because enabling it is just begging for any random site to have free access to the innards of your computer. So in a sane world, nobody would be able to visit such a site. You should (a) boycott them and (b) tell them they're idiots. SteveBaker (talk) 00:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
You don't necessarily have to disable it.. just ignore and frown furiously at the "information bar" when it asks if you want to install the control. If you're using IE for some reason. --ffroth 00:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I could do that, but that would not result in me being able to watch tv in Gaelic :( --Duomillia (talk) 04:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Some of us regard that as an advantage!  :-) But you're definitely out of luck. If it's using ActiveX, it would require you to be running Windows for real - faking it in any way just isn't going to work. You should at least complain. If Linux/Mac users just sit back and do nothing then sites that make poor decisions like this will go on assuming that nobody cares and therefore not be able to justify putting in the effort to making a proper cross-platform site. If they get deluged with complaints then they'll realise that we are a substantial proportion of their user base and they'll do something about it. SteveBaker (talk) 07:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Camera as Web cam

My girlfriend just got a camera for Christmas. it is a Kodak Easy Share M853. Can it be used as a web cam? Thanks --Omnipotence407 (talk) 03:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know specifically how toset it up. But granted that it connect to your computer, yes. 24.47.171.124 (talk) 11:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Most if not nearly all standalone cameras cannot be setup as web cams. Even thought it can be hooked up to the PC, there's no way for the PC to tell the camera to take a picture therefore it won't function as a web cam. NYCDA (talk) 16:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Why not, is it a software issue? Would an appropriate program on the computer do the trick? --Omnipotence407 (talk) 18:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
It is more than likely a firmware issue - firmware being the program that is stored in the camera. I just spent some time on the Kodak site looking at the specs for the M853, as well as the user's manual and other info, and see no indication at all that there is any support for streaming video directly from the camera to the computer. When a digital camera is connected to a computer, the computer basically sees it as a storage device, little different from a USB flash-drive. Windows might flash up a "wizard" that is specialized for the type of device, but when all is said and done, you can access the files that are available on the device and that's about it. --LarryMac | Talk 18:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Canon PowerShot cameras (at least those I've owned) can be controlled programmatically over USB and could certainly be used as webcams with appropriate software. I don't know whether the software exists. -- BenRG (talk) 08:12, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do monitors affect computer performance?

Do monitors affect computer performance by some having more lag than others? I always thought the only thing that affected the performance was the computer itself, not the monitor.

Situation: I just got a new monitor for Christmas, but my games have tons of lag now. I was just playing the same games a few days ago on my old monitor and they worked fine. They now say that my system does not meet the requirements. The only answer I can come up with is the new monitor. My old monitor is much older than my brand new one so the new one should work much better anyhow. Can someone please help? Thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.119.61.7 (talk) 03:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Your new monitor may have a higher display resolution than your older monitor, meaning that your video card has to do more work when rendering for the new monitor. You might want to try lower the resolution (check graphical settings) in whichever games you are having performance issues with, or turn the graphics detail down. Otherwise, you probably would have to upgrade to a newer video card. If it's the same resolution as your old monitor, there shouldn't be any specific issues between monitors. --Kopaka649 (talk) 03:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RAM Speed Vs Quantity

I have two 512Mb dimms installed on my machine. One is rated at 266mhz the other at 333mhz. My understanding in this setup is that they will now both run at the lowest speed, ie 266mhz. Question then in terms of overall system performance, is it better to have one dimm installed running at 333mhz giving me less memory but higher speed, or both installed giving more memory,but lower speed ? (Computer is used for mostly office type applications, internet, email, occasional photo editing, etc--196.207.47.60 (talk) 06:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As you might expect, the answer will vary. As long as you're not using more than 512 Mb of memory, it would, in principle at least, be better to remove the slower module and thereby increase the memory speed by 25%. If you have any need for the extra memory, however, the gain from having it available (and thus not having to resort to swapping) will most likely by far offset any speed decrease. It's also worth noting that modern operating systems (besides being memory-hungry like most modern software) tend to be good at finding uses for any extra memory you may have; in particular, they'll use spare memory as a disk cache, often significantly improving disk performance.
Besides, any applications whose performance is bound by memory speeds are also likely to be ones that use a lot of memory, and thus could benefit from having more available. All in all, particularly given the workload you describe, I'd definitely recommend maximizing memory size over speed. Things might be different if you were into modern 3D gaming — but even in that case, I'd suggest trying it both ways and seeing which gives you a better frame rate. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 09:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
You will get more performance boost if you used 512MB. Please note using 333MHz memory instead of 266MHz memory will not give you a 25% boost in overall performance even in the best case scenario. System performance is a weighted total of all it's components. In the case you describe, you will not notice the speed decrease from 333 to 266 at all. But if you run Word, IE, Outlook and photo editing applications at the same time, you will notice a vast improvement using 512MB over 256MB. NYCDA (talk) 16:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
What we have here is 1024MB vs. 512MB, so I take it you meant that 1024MB is better? -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 20:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. Yes I mean 1024MB at 266MHz is better then 512MB at 333MHz. NYCDA (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
The rule of thumb when overclocking is that a 100% increase in memory speed will give you a 1% increase in overall system performance. --Carnildo (talk) 22:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Display problems with new computer

I recently upgraded my entire computer to a new system. It is working otherwise fine but I am having problems with the display. When I originally plugged everything in and booted the system up, it showed fine in text mode but graphics mode was messed up: it was shifted too far to the right, and when I got Fedora 8 to boot up after installation, the vertical size of the picture had somehow doubled so that the lower half of the picture was missing. The resolution (number of existing pixels) remained the same, but one pixel now took twice the amount of physical vertical screen estate, leaving me with an elongated upper half and an invisible lower half. When I got it to log in to Fedora 8, I managed to switch the update frequency from 60 Hz to 75 Hz, and that appears to have solved the problem. It's still shifted too far to the right though - I shifted the picture on the monitor all the way to the left and it's still missing a couple of pixels.

It says on the box that my graphics card is an ASUS EN8600GT but Fedora 8 reports it as nVidia Corporation GeForce 6100 nForce 430. Are these the same thing? I don't want to risk losing the picture altogether trying incompatible graphics card drivers. The motherboard has one VGA output and one DVI-D output. The card itself has two DVI-D outputs and no VGA outputs. Only the VGA output shows any picture. The card came with a VGA-to-DVI-D adapter, but when I tried it with the DVI-D outputs, none of them showed a picture. What is happening here? What is the cause of all this? How can I fix it? JIP | Talk 11:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

DVI connectors.
DVI connectors.

It's not actually a DVI-D adapter, I was just going by what my motherboard manual says. All three output plugs have holes for all possible pins in a DVI connector. The adapter, though, has 4 pins and a horizontal bar on the left side (like DVI-I and DVI-A shown here), and only six of a possible twenty-four pins on the right side. The pins are in the two upper rows, with the three pins nearest to the 4-pin left side on each row. The bottom row is empty. What kind of connector is this? JIP | Talk 12:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

As for the first part of your question - it appears you have to play around with the positioning and size of the display on the monitor more in order to get it right (uhm, what type of monitor is it?). Sometimes it happens. I tend to switch monitors about every half a year (due to moving and relocating, not because I wear them out!) so it just is like this. I can't help you with the other problem, though, but fish around fedoraforum.org, the support forum for Fedora. G'luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 15:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I did play around with my monitor settings. My monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 913N. I had to drag the screen as far left as it'll go, and it still leaves a few pixels cut off. The monitor settings don't even have size settings, I'm stuck with what it autoconfigures as. The vertical settings are OK. JIP | Talk 16:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I also prefer monitors by Samsung. I see yours is an LCD monitor - it won't have a size setting (I don't think most of them have, as opposed to CRT monitors, most of them do). Mayhaps you need some special driver or other utility to configure it further? I also have to sacrifice a few pixels, but I don't care enough to tweak it further, I'm satisfied with what I have now. --Ouro (blah blah) 17:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I submitted the same question to Fedora Forum. Hopefully I'll get a reply there. The same monitor worked fine with Fedora 8 on a 32-bit system with ATI Radeon 9200 Pro, so it's not the monitor or Fedora 8. It's most likely the graphics card. JIP | Talk 17:44, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Fedora Forum gave m a reply. All I need to do is:
su -
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-livna
yum install kmod-nvidia

I did this and it works all OK. JIP | Talk 20:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Cool. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to access files from another partition.

I have just recently installed Ubuntu on a partition on my Vista machine. Both work very smoothly together, and I have minimal problems with the Ubuntu (just teething troubles on my part). However, I was wondering how (or if!) it would be possible to access files on one partition from another. I have both operating systems completely partitioned, and they are not running simultaneously.

I also would like to know if it is possible to get Japanese language support on Ubuntu, so I can type Japanese.

I have a few more questions, but these will do for now.....Thanking you all in advance! --ChokinBako (talk) 12:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Linux should be able to use Windows partitions. They are accessed through the same devices as your normal Linux partitions, i.e. /dev/hdxn or /dev/sdxn, where x is the disk (a, b, c etc) and n is the partition (1, 2, 3 etc). You just have to know the correct file system type and mount them. msdos should work for FAT16 and FAT32 partitions. ntfs should work for NTFS partitions, but most Linux distributions don't have proper NTFS support yet. As for the other way around, Windows is completely ignorant of Linux partitions. Sorry. JIP | Talk 12:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer, but that still does not make sense to me. I have only just started with Linux, as of today. Is there any way I can search across partitions, and if so, how? --ChokinBako (talk) 13:06, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Expandoing on what JIP said, a broad-brush kind of an answer is that in Unix and Linux, each disk partition mounts as a separate volume (~"disk"). So if disk "a" has three partitions on it, you'll see three apparent disk drives: /dev/hda1/, /dev/hda2/, and /dev/hda3/. So you can use paths like "/dev/hda?/" to specify all of the partitions that are part of hard drive "A".
Atlant (talk) 16:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
You can use fdisk to view your partitions. Become root and type fdisk /dev/hda (or fdisk /dev/sda or something, depending on your computer's setup) and it will give you the fdisk menu. Type p to see the partition table, and q to quit fdisk. As long as you don't actually let fdisk make any changes, it's completely safe. The best way to be safe is not to use any other command than p. For example, it might show that /dev/hda1 is an ext3 partition (Ubuntu) and /dev/hda2 is an ntfs partition (Vista). Then you just mount /dev/hda2 as ntfs at some mountpoint (i.e. directory). You should be able to read your Windows files, but I don't think you'll be able to write them back. JIP | Talk 16:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Atlant's reply has a minor technical problem. It confuses devices and mount points. In Windows, these are the same thing. In Unix, they are different things. A device identifies your disk. A mount point is what you access it through. For example, if you have a directory called /vista, you can type mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /vista, and if everything works, you'll now see your Windows Vista C: drive in /vista. You could try, for example, to run "/vista/program files/applications/notepad.exe" (but remember that unlike Windows, Unix has case-sensitive filenames). [[User:JIP--ChokinBako (talk) 19:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)|JIP]] | Talk 17:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
"In Windows, these are the same thing." really? Start > Run > devmgmt.msc > Disk Drives --ffroth 04:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Right, so, first things first. how do I 'become root'? When I login I have no choice but to use my username and password, so I believe that is not what you mean. You mean change directories in the Terminal? If so, how do I do that? I am new to Unix (sounds silly coming from a predominantly mac user, who just got his first Vista, and now wants to go back to Unix based computers). I am totally lost here.--ChokinBako (talk) 19:15, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
You become root by typing "su -". It asks you for the root password. If you installed the system, you know it already. Otherwise ask whomever installed it. Changing directories in the terminal is done with the command cd, like in Windows, expect that when Windows uses \, Unix uses /. By the way, MacOS is nowadays much more Unix-like than Windows. If you have used the Unix command line in MacOS, the one in Linux should be very similar. The major difference is that the underlying OS is different - Linux is a collaborative effort made from scratch, while MacOS is a commercial product by Apple. JIP | Talk 19:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Windows can access Linux ext3 partitions with a driver such as Ext2 File System Driver for Windows. There are a couple of other driver packages as well. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, progress has been made! I have got as far as the bit where it asks me for my password, but it says the password I input is wrong. I was the one who installed it, and I only use one password on the whole system (both windows and ubuntu). Is there a default password or something, because during installation I only ever remember putting my password in for login, and this seems to be incorrect (which is impossible, because I am logged in now)? Yours, frustrated, but challenged. --ChokinBako (talk) 19:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I have never used Ubuntu. I have installed a Fedora system, and during installation, it asks me for a root password. This is mandatory. After installation, it asks me whether to create a normal user. I always reply yes, and it asks me for a password. These passwords are separate. When you log in to Ubuntu, use your normal user name and password. Then, after you have logged in, open a terminal. If the prompt says "#", you are already root. If it says "$", type "su -" and type the root password. This usually different from your own password, but it doesn't have to be. All this comes from the experience of a typical 1990s Linux user. If Ubuntu has any shortcuts around this, I wouldn't know about them. JIP | Talk 20:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
On Ubuntu, the root account is disabled by default. To enter a root shell, type sudo -i, and enter your user password, since the account that the Ubuntu installer creates is privileged to use sudo. Splintercellguy (talk) 23:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Aha, so that's the reason. Like I said, I have never used Ubuntu, so I assumed it worked like other Linux distributions. JIP | Talk 04:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Nope, debian is stupid and has no root account. You can create it by running "sudo passwd" to change the root password, then you can su root. Then disable sudo because it's a terrible idea. --ffroth 21:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Debian has both a root account and a password on it by default; you're confusing it with Ubuntu, which has a root account (of course) but no root password and so no way of using su. To the original poster: not everyone believes that sudo is a terrible idea. Marnanel (talk) 21:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
OK basically everyone :D --ffroth 04:46, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Ummm Ubuntu will mount you Windows partitions automatically with the newest Gutsy release (which comes with ntfs-3g, allowing read and write support). Are you sure they aren't on your desktop or in nautilus already? --antilivedT | C | G 04:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. In actual fact, I have just put my Linux on, and I can see my windows files now. I haven't changed a thing. They are all on the desktop now. Bizarre. Thanks a lot for the help, anyway.--ChokinBako (talk) 10:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Like, omigosh, 2 CPUs???

What's the difference between a dual core CPU and two physical CPUs? JIP | Talk 18:43, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

To be so vague as to be nearing incorrect... With 2 CPUs, they can only communicate through the bus. With dual-core, they can communicate directly and even share the same on-chip cache. -- kainaw™ 18:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I was under the impression that 2 CPUs is inherently better, but this is obviously not so. It seems that 2 CPUs is cheaper on the CPUs but more expensive on the motherboard. This question is mostly academic anyway - I am typing this on a dual-core machine right now but I'll probably never have a system with multiple physical CPUs (I've used some at work, though). JIP | Talk 19:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
There are pros and cons; see Multi-core (computing) for details. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 19:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

If I got it right, the eight core Mac Pro computers have two quad core processors. 71.85.117.190 (talk) 21:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My computer screen

Hey guys, my screen went black and then turned itself upside down. I'm not sure if it's related, but I've been getting a higher than normal number of blue screens. Help? YДмΔќʃʀï→ГC← 12-26-2007 • 20:56:00

Never mind... Restarting worked YДмΔќʃʀï→ГC← 12-26-2007 • 21:12:38
Maybe your video driver needs updating or is conflicting with some other drivers etc.

--TreeSmiler (talk) 22:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there is a key combination that makes this happen with certain nVidia drivers - control-alt-uparrow, maybe? --LarryMac | Talk 16:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, control-alt-down turns it upside down and the side arrows work too. I've never payed any attention to processors, but I'm told I have a Pentium M. I run Windows XP (better than vista!) and it's got intel centrino according to the stickers I never bothered to take off. YДмΔќʃʀï→ГC← 12-27-2007 • 18:13:54
nVidia is the manufacturer of the graphics chip, I don't think the processor should come into play. --LarryMac | Talk 03:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I just tried control-alt-down and it crashed my pc! Think outside the box 14:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)