Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 October 17

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[edit] October 17

[edit] Clipboard

Where could I locate clipboard on my computer? That options shows up when I close a word document and have worked with pictures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.121.107.157 (talk) 00:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Well if they are in your copy menu open a fresh word doc and click 'control+v' (i.e. ctrl + V) to paste. Alternatively (http://www.pencildude.com/tips/clipbook.html) shows how to locate it on XP machines. ny156uk 00:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] windows vista sound problem

i just installed windows vista on my Sony desktop which came with XP. Now my sound card doesn't work. In fact, the computer fails to recognize it. I don't remember much about the old card, it was made by yahama, I believe. How can I get it to work again?

Thanks,Rob —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.56.231.40 (talk) 01:11, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Check Sony's website. Usually, big computer companies have technical support websites where you can plug in your computer's serial number, and it will show you all the latest drivers & updates available for your model. However, it may simply be a case that there is no current Vista-compatible driver for your sound card. -- Kesh 01:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Ask Microsoft. They caused the problem, so they should be able to help you solve it too. If you're in the Netherlands, there's a independant Help desk for Windows Vista problem. Sorry, forgot the address. The easiest solution is not to install Vista in the first place until all the kinks are ironed out (not likely) or if you already installed it, go back to XP. - Mgm|(talk) 08:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Does the Sony website have any information on it? --Kushalt 19:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "UNIQ", "QINU" and more in a MediaWiki section URL

One section heading in Wikipedia, which includes several <ref> tags before the closing ==, has the unusually cryptic URL

http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Parental_leave_rights_in_different_coun tries_around_the_world_.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-00000012-QINU.072.07UNIQ699896 e027ff968b-nowiki-00000013-QINU.07_.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-00000014-QINU.073.0 7UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-00000015-QINU.07_.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-0000001 6-QINU.074.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-00000017-QINU.07_.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-no wiki-00000018-QINU.075.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-00000019-QINU.07_.07UNIQ699896e02 7ff968b-nowiki-0000001A-QINU.076.07UNIQ699896e027ff968b-nowiki-0000001B-QINU.07

Where does 699896e027ff968b come from? What do "UNIQ" and "QINU" indicate? Why is the word "nowiki" included? What other tags than ref, if any, generate this type of URL when placed within a section title, and could useful tricks potentially be based on this or related behaviour? NeonMerlin 05:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm - it's a piece of poor editing that seems to have confused the renderer that converts Wiki to HTML. They tried to add 'ref' tags to a section heading. What a mess! Anyway, I've just fixed it. I would strongly advise you to put NOTHING but plain text into a section heading. Nothing else is acceptable to the Manual of Style anyway. The new link to that section is Parental_leave#Parental_leave_rights_in_different_countries_around_the_world SteveBaker 23:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Someone put it back, I fixed it again. Also removing that massive link cause it causes the RD to scroll right --ffroth 21:57, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2M Upload

With all the hype over the 2 millionth picture on wikimedia commons, does anyone actually know what the upload was? 195.194.74.154 07:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Nope - it seems nobody knows. Someone noticed the 2M mark had been passed when the total was already 2,006,000 or so. The problem of determining which one was precisely the 2 millionth is tricky - the problem is that images are deleted at a fairly high rate - so a photo might very briefly become the 2 millionth - only to fall back to being number 1,999,999 later on. So unless you are actually watching when the first one crosses 2 million - you'll never know. Even here on Wikipedia - where people watch the article counter like hawks when a major milestone is crossed - there is always considerable debate as to which is "officially" The One True Winner. SteveBaker 23:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Factory Fit Modules in IT Products

I'd like to know what is the meaning of the term/phrase factory fit modules in any product of the IT industry. I'd also like to have some article on the approach that can be followed for the same. Kindly help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hny13180 (talk • contribs) 08:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Use the car analogy. When you buy a new car, you can get cheap wheels and replace them later with nicer/prettier wheels if you want to save some initial cost. However, it's much, much better to get the air conditioning installed when it's built. You can save some money at first by buying a car without AC, but the aggravation of later adding all the parts to a car that's already completely assembled makes the total cost much greater than if you had specified this factory option in the first place. Integration can be just as much trouble for an IT product as it is for a car. Thus "factory fit" as opposed to something you can add yourself later. SandyJax 19:54, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Firefox help needed

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6232/firefoxpp9.png

As you can see above, my history tab seems to have completely gone. How do I restore it to its former glory?

116.12.146.226 09:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry but I don't understand your question. Could you clarify the question? If you ask me, I usually just use the keyboard shortcut. --Kushalt 19:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
My guess is that 226 wants his browsing history to show up in the history menu one website per menu entry (as it normally does). If you go to tools>options...>privacy, is the box next to "remember pages visited for the last _ days" ticked? If you press ctrl+H to show the history, is that emtpy as well? risk 20:15, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
A history list is shown in that menu (between Home and Recently closed tabs) on my "slightly older" FireFox (IceWeasel) so I imagine this is a feature which has recently been removed? Select "Show in Sidebar" to show your history in the sidebar. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:36, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
No - the feature is still there. It looks like that if you just cleared your history cache (Tools/Clear Private Data) - or if you told Firefox to not record history in the first place (Check out buttons on the Edit/Preferences "Privacy" tab). Since there are a bunch of tabs open in that screen shot - all of those would be in the history menu if history recording were enabled unless it had just been cleared since the last tab was opened. SteveBaker 00:04, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] vista

i recently installed vista home premium.i put a password to limit those who use my pc,anyway i 4got my password and i just formated and re installed vista.after losing most of my info i remembered what my password was.i was wondering is there another way to log in if u 4get ur ur password.and dont have a paswword reset diskette?anyways thats the last tyme am using "knees" as my pasword. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.24.111.82 (talk) 11:18, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge - plenty of ways to do it with XP. Why not just make a backup administrator account? -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 12:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor? --Spoon! 22:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

This works on XP so maybe it'll work for Vista at the login screen hit Ctrl+Alt+Del a box appears enter administrator and the password you set for the default administrator account that's created by default assuming you remember that one of course or just make a backup disk which is easy i think you can use a CD for it but not sure.Xor24 talk to me 01:29, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hard disk errors

I recently assembled a new PC from components that I bought individually. After just less than a month the hard disk died a death and I received a warranty replacement.

Two days after installing the replacement hard disk the computer is showing the same symptoms again - odd scraping and rebounding noises from the HDD, Windows XP blue screen errors (some with stop code 0x00000024, some disappear too quickly to note), and occasionally programs unable to find a particular file.

Is this just bad luck or is there a possible cause for the hard disk failures? The disk is a 500 Gb Seagate ST3500630AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ (as was the first one).

I'm currently running the Seagate diagnostic scan on the drive, and one of the things it notes is "POH 26". What is "POH" (Wikipedia has articles at pOH and Poh but neither are relevant) and is a value of 26 good, bad or irrelevant? Thryduulf 12:16, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

A bad run of disks from the manufacturer? It's not unheard-of, and if you're not bouncing your system around and you are providing proper cooling for your disk(s), there aren't too many other explanations.
Atlant 12:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Bad luck, most likely. When things scrape, you've got the platter getting wrecked, end of story. Is your case extremely hot? Do you move it around a lot? Are your screws tight enough so that the drive isn't rattling around? (spinning drive = mini-gyroscope). Otherwise, try another manufacturer/brand. BACK UP YOUR DATA! -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 12:21, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
The case doesn't get moved very much at all, but it does get quite hot in there I think. The CPU seems to run at between about 35 and 54 C with the motherboard typically staying at around 41 C according to the monitoring tools. The monitoring utility notes the current disk temperature is 37 C and the worst is 40 C, but I don't know if this is good or bad?
The hard disk bay is a firm fit (its a quick release case that doesn't use screws) and so it will not be rattling around. I haven't had any opportunity to create any un-backed up data since last time yet, so that isn't an issue! Thryduulf 12:29, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Maybe the drives aren't getting enough power, or getting intermittent power, and the read/write heads keep crashing? If so, the PSU's the culprit. I think POH stands for power-on hours (Google "Seagate POH", first result). Temperatures look OK to me. CaptainVindaloo t c e 12:44, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Would there be any other symptoms of insufficient power? Is there an easy way to test it?
http://sucs.org/~cmckenna/newpc is the spec of my PC, although I'm using a different case and monitor and it has a 3.5" floppy, an IDE DVD-RW and and IDE CD-RW on the system as well. Thryduulf 12:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Is it still using the 350 watt PSU? I'm not sure 350's enough for that spec. CaptainVindaloo t c e 12:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes it is using 350 watts. If it isn't enough, what would you recommend? Thryduulf 13:11, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I can only find information online for the processor; at 125W it doesn't look promising (assuming I have the right one). I'll take a rough guess at 450W at least. CaptainVindaloo t c e 13:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh, just one thing. It could just be a bad power connector. Try a different connector from the PSU to the drive before you get a new PSU. CaptainVindaloo t c e 14:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] easily embeddable interpreter language.

I see python is like 12 megabytes, Perl like 15. Is there a popular modern scripting language (perl python php ruby etc) that's minimalist and like 700 KB for the whole interpreter, frequently embedded, etc. uTorrent leads me to believe ANYTHING can be done in like < 1 MB.

Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.80.94 (talk) 16:03, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Forth? Not exactly a "scripting language", but pretty darned useful. It's certainly small as it fits into Open Firmware boot ROMs.
Atlant 16:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Uh, I specifically said "scripting language". FOR EXAMPLE, say uTorrent were willing to embed a scripting language (for whatever reason) that's already minimalist and modern and completely prepackaged for embedding. And it wanted to increase in size by, say, 1 MB or 2 MB or something. What would it embed? Surely a couple of megabytes is enough to write a parser! Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.80.94 (talk) 16:47, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The reason I suggested Forth even though it's not exactly a "scripting language" is because many folks (including me) don't really recognize any hard and fast distinction between "scripting languages" and (what?) "non-scripting languages". If my suggestion of Forth offended you, please feel free to ignore it.
Atlant 19:14, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware of anything, but you're right that you could fit a parser in a couple MB. Applesoft Basic fit in 12K of ROM with room left over for the Monitor. Woz's original integer basic was even smaller. Donald Hosek 17:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

-- List answer to this question : PLEASE EDIT IN-PLACE:

You can write comments below here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.80.94 (talk) 17:34, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
What do the statements "python is 12 megabytes, perl is 15" refer to? The amount of disk space taken up by a minimal installation? The amount of memory used to run hello world? In either case I think those estimates are too big. But lua is smaller. And maybe tcl. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 17:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
It refers to the download size for the environment. I don't see a smaller, embeddable Python or Perl download, e.g. for Windows. What's the smallest, complete, command-line Python or Perl interpreter implementation?
What I mean is, say a minimalist program (my example is uTorrent, but you could use Notepad or whatever) wanted to add a form input, and a button to send the contents of that form (text-area) to an embedded interpreter. It doesn't matter why. Just a minimalist place for the user to do run arbitrary script in a given language. Now, what scripting language could they embed that would only bloat the program by a couple of megabytes (if that) and is MODERN and popular, along the lines of php, python, ruby, perl, etc, etc.
As for why someone would want to do this, I don't know. I often copy from the console instead of typing all the variations into a text editor, so you could picture my question as being about a Notepad.exe that includes an additional line to enter Perl one-liners, even for systems that don't have Perl installed. IE it's embedded. So that instead of writing: "perl -e 'for(1..10){print "$_: ", 1.7 * $_, "\n"}'" (unfortunately I don't have perl installed here so I can't test this) to give you a quick list of factors of 1.7 (for whatever reason) you can just write the part inside the single quotes and click the evaluate button and cut and paste the answer - even on systems that don't have perl. Embedding perl this way would increase Notepad's size from kilobytes to 10+ megabytes -- is there another, minimal, popular scripting language this isn't true for? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.80.106 (talk) 17:45, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

To be clearer, I'm repeating the question below, rephrased. (Not exactly the same question) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.80.106 (talk) 17:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby - which has a minimalist (< 1 MB) implementation you can embed?

Are any of the above programs, or modern, popular competition to them, minimal enough to where you can embed the basic interpreter language in a very small (couply of megabyte) program?

If these aren't, please answer up above about interpreted languages which are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.80.106 (talk) 17:52, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about the ones you mentioned (Is Ruby easy to embed in things? I'd like to know myself.), but depending on your purpose I know some people seem to like Lua. I've seen apps with embedded Lua implementations that are under a meg. --APL 18:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
  • You might be interested in Hecl, an open-source Tcl-like language that can run on the J2ME platform, which has some very small implementations. --Sean 20:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't know anything about actually embedding the interpreter code within the executable (remember stupid licensing issues if you plan on actually doing this), but scripting languages have command line interpreters that you can just include in your package.. php.exe for the Windows PHP implementation, /bin/perl on linux systems.. I'm sure something similar exists for python and ruby. Lua is used in a ton of newer video games for AI or UI scripting and the code is freely compilable into commercial executables (via the fantastic MIT license) --frotht 20:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
On my Linux box, the 'libpython' file for Python 2.5 comes out at 1.1Mbytes (this isn't a perfect measure of the size it'll be in main memory - but it won't be far off) - it's going to pull in some other libraries - but those are things like pthreads, the math library...stuff your main program probably already has loaded. It'll consume more memory once it's running - depending (of course) on how big the Python program it's running is.
For comparison, the 'libgcj' file for GNU's Java is 2.1Mbytes - and it pulled in a bunch of other stuff too. PHP doesn't seem to come with an embeddable version - the executable is over 2Mbytes.
The winner - by this measure - would be Ruby. 'libruby' is a mere 0.84Mbytes.
SteveBaker 23:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Websites Unknowingly Bookmarked

Hello. When I opened a printing dialog box on Adobe Acrobat, I clicked on Printing Tips, leading me to Adobe's website. Why/How does this website bookmark itself to my Favourites without my prior knowledge? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare 17:54, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the first part of your question matches the second part, but I'll try to answer both. Any program running ON your computer has the ability to start up a web browser at a specific page. That's how clicking on "Printing Tips" got you there. As for your Favorites, any program on your computer is able to drop a .URL file into a favorites folder. Sometimes, programs will do this when they are installed. --Mdwyer 19:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Mostly you see this behavior from malware and shareware; Acrobat is merely bloatware. It's possible the Acrobat software is doing this to you but I'd be surprised --frotht 20:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] mobile phones

Who invented the mobile phone. Which country were they from and in what year?217.171.129.68 20:42, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

We have a whole article on the history of mobile phones — Matt Eason (Talk • Contribs) 22:13, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yahoo Mail out of beta?

Is [new] Yahoo Mail still in Beta? I don't see the Beta sign in my mails. Has Yahoo! made any comments on it? --Kushalt 22:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

This is the Yahoo Mail web log entry: [1] Red 23:02, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Checking file size from the command line

There has to be a way to check a file's size from the command line in Linux or Mac systems. I tried the file command no luck. Thanks for helping everyone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.124.101 (talk) 23:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

On Linux, you use ls. Typically you do
         ls -l filename
and it displays something like
         -rw-r--r--  1 myname mygroup   35872 Aug 26 17:54 filename
which indicates that the file contains 35,872 bytes of content. There is also
         ls -s filename
which might display
         20 filename
indicating that the file occupies 20 blocks of disk space (blocks are 1024 bytes each when I do it, but I'm not positive that this is true everywhere). Some types of data file may contain "holes" that show as all bits 0 but occupy no disk space, so the sizes obtained in the two ways aren't always related in the manner you would expect. Usually "ls -l" is the one you want. If you need to parse out the fields from ls output in a script, you can use a simple awk program:
        size=`ls -l filename | awk '{print $5}'`
Another way to get the number of bytes in a file is "wc -c", but this involves actually reading the whole file instead of just asking the operating system how big it is.
--Anon, 00:18 UTC, October 18, 2007.
Actually wc (at least the GNU version) is smart enough to take a shortcut if you just ask for the byte count, and get the file size the same way ls -l does, without reading the contents. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Careful! The size of a file is not the same as the length of a file! A sparse file can be gigantic, yet only take a couple bytes of space! --Mdwyer 01:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Now you're just nitpicking the definition of "size". ls -l and ls -s have both been mentioned, so both possible definitions have been covered. There's a very good argument for defining the "size" of a sparse file to be the wc -c output and not the number of blocks actually occupied: wc -c is equivalent to the st_size field in the stat structure. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 02:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The same commands work on Mac OS X or any other Unix system.

Atlant 12:10, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

ls -hs displays sizes in human-readable form, for example "8.8MB" rather than "8724". (For completeness, there's also stat filename to display all information about a file). --h2g2bob (talk) 13:23, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
"ls" does not work as you'd expect on Mac. Resource forks are far less common on Macintosh than they used to be, but ls doesn't show them as being part of a file's size. --Carnildo 17:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Does "du" work? I'd expect it to, at least with the right options, but of course I can't test that, not having a Mac available here. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 07:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)