From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Computing desk
< February 19	<< Jan | February | Mar >>	February 21 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

Contents 1 February 20 1.1 Green Colour Prints 1.2 Memory Advice 1.3 Processor Advice 1.4 SQL question 1.5 Sharing with Vista and XP 1.6 ALT+?? 1.7 census date for Summit, California 1.8 nokia 1.9 Audio communications II 1.10 internet explorer hanging up from constipation

[edit] February 20

[edit] Green Colour Prints

Hello. Whenever I print in colour using a refilled cartridge, the document has a green hue. How should I fix that if I do not want to buy a new colour ink cartridge? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare (talk) 00:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Your cartridge isn't printing magenta ("minus green") properly. See CMYK color model for more information.

Atlant (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

If my cartridge cannot accept anymore magenta ink, then what should I do? --Mayfare (talk) 22:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You may just have to buy a new cartridge - you can't make magenta out of the other colour inks in that cartridge, that's why it has all three.

However, it may be that the ink cartridge is partially blocked, rather than empty - since you say you've refilled it as much as you can. See if you can find a cleaning utility in the software for your printer - one may be accessible in the Printer properties dialog, or a special Control Panel, or you could look on the manufacturer's website.

There's a whole section on why inkjets need cleaning, and how it's done, at Inkjet printer#Cleaning mechanisms. - IMSoP (talk) 19:08, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Memory Advice

I'm looking at laptops, and I get this option:

• 1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM) or
• 1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM)

Whats the difference, and which is better? 00:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The second option is better. It's 1 stick of RAM (1 GB) instead of 2 sticks (512 MB each). That will leave you an open RAM slot for future upgrades. Useight (talk) 00:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! HYENASTE 01:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Processor Advice

Thanks for the help on the previous question. I have one more. These processors come standard

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7250 (2.0GHz 800MHz 2MBL2)
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T8100 (2.1GHz 800MHz 3MBL2)

These are $40 more:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7500 (2.2GHz 800MHz 4MBL2)
• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T8300 (2.4GHz 800MHz 3MBL2)

Which should I get? HYENASTE 01:29, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what the 2MBL2, 3MBL2 bits mean though I assume they indicate something relating to them being mobile processors. As a general rule though if the price isn't a whole lot different (and in this case, $40 isn't much over the total cost), you should get the best processor you can, because they're near impossible to upgrade. The T7500 has a slightly slower clock speed, but has a large cache size than the T8300 (4MB compared to 3MB), and that might matter more, I'm not sure. Maybe someone else will know the answer to whether 1MB of cache size is better than .2GHz of clock speed. Those look like the only really important differences between the two. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Just by looking at it, I think the extra L2 cache will be quite a bit better than a .2 GHZ gain in speed in the latter 2 processors. As stated above, $40 isn't too much of a difference, but you do get a bit more memory on a relatively bottle-necked portion of the processor, I would recommend the third option: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7500 (2.2GHz 800MHz 4MBL2). Acceptable (talk) 02:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Just in case it isn't clear by now: The "2MBL2" means "2 MebiBytes of L2 Cache", and so on. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 11:35, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

And the bigger the L2 cache is, the better because that's where the CPU stores instructions. If it can hold more instructions at once, it cuts down on seek time. Useight (talk) 17:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Erm, not quite. Instructions are stored at all levels of the memory hierarchy, and so is data. It's a rare program that's actively using megabytes of code at a time, so a large L2 cache will mostly hold data. Also, there's no such thing as seek time for RAM. -- BenRG (talk) 18:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Um-There is acually a very high seek time for RAM, compared to L1 and L2. The L1 and L2 are the cache, where the CPU holds very recent instructions and data. The closer that the item is to the CPU, the faster time it will be so: CPU => L1 => L2 => Memory I personally would go with the T7500 and the higher cache rate. The memory fetching is where most of the processing bottlenecks end up.

OK maybe Data transfer rate? surely, the L2 has a greater data transfer rate than the RAM? Kushal 22:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The T8300 would be a better choice. It is based on the 45nm Penryn core, which has some minor performance improvements as well as running cooler. That last part will allow for increased battery life. The increased clock speed will also help, and although the cache size is smaller, there will be better battery life. The performance will probably be pretty close. -- Imperator3733 (talk) 16:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] SQL question

I'm writing a quick and dirty search engine for an in-house database. I'm trying to implement full-text searching with MySQL. I've got a function that will generate queries like this:

SELECT id FROM documents WHERE ((documents.title LIKE "%search terms%") OR (documents.pdf_notes LIKE "%search terms%") ) 

Which works great. Now I'd like to make it also search some other tables. In this case, "documents" has a primary key of "id"; another table, "authors" has a field of "name" and a field of "id"; the many-to-many relationship is maintained by a linking table called "link_documents_authors" that has a field "document_id" (primary key from the "documents" table) and a field for its corresponding "author_id" (primary key from the "authors" table). Make sense? Nothing too non-standard there.

How do I integrate searching of "author.name" into the sort of search above? Is it a good idea? I've learned to fear JOIN queries over the years but maybe this is a good time to get into them? --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:25, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

First, make sure you have FULLTEXT indexes on all the fields you are searching with LIKE. Also, dont forget to make foreign keys indexed. If everything is properly indexed, you can use this query:

SELECT d.id FROM documents AS d

INNER JOIN link_documents_authors AS lda ON lda.document_id = d.id

INNER JOIN authors AS a ON lda.author.id = a.id

WHERE d.title LIKE "%search terms%" OR d.pdf_notes LIKE "%search terms%" OR a.name LIKE "%search terms%"

Also, try replacing the last line with

MATCH (d.title,d.pdf_notes,a.name) AGAINST ("search terms")

Joins are not bad if everything is properly indexed and you dont join too many tables. Read more about MySQL fulltext search— Shinhan < talk > 13:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You state that this is a many-to-many relationship. The above query will only return results where there is at least one matching record in each of those tables. If you want to return records where there is only a result in one of the tables (for example a document with no matching author record) you will want to use outer joins instead of inner joins. —BradV 16:14, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, this is my problem with JOINs, the issues relating to inners and outers and etc. In the end I used a few nested IN commands—it seems to work fine though I'm sure it's not optimal (but for my purpose, a very small data set, it is easy and flexible). --98.217.18.109 (talk) 01:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm tempted to suggest that rather than simply shying away from all JOIN clauses, you invest in a good introduction to SQL and start making more powerful queries.

Looking back at the original post, I don't see any mention of there being documents with no authors anyway, so INNER JOINs seem perfectly appropriate - if you did a SELECT * FROM with no WHERE clause, you'd still get all your documents, along with their authors. If there is a chance that some documents have no authors, you'd simply use a LEFT JOIN instead of each INNER JOIN - meaning that the left-most table (documents) always gets returned, but the "right" side of the join (link_documents_authors in join 1, and authors in join 2) may or may not. A SELECT * FROM would show any author-less documents with a bunch of NULLs for the author details.

The problem you're more likely to encounter is that documents with more than one author will show up several times - a SELECT * FROM will show you why: each document has to have a row with the details of each of its authors. The easiest way, in this case, is to use SELECT DISTINCT d.id, which is a kind of short-hand for SELECT d.id ... GROUP BY d.id.

Happy hacking! - IMSoP (talk) 19:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sharing with Vista and XP

Following with my previous question, I tried what was instructed on Microsoft's homepage about creating sharing folders. I have followed all the steps, but on my Vista laptop, I cannot "see" my xp machine in the networks center. On my XP machine, I can see the Vista machine, and I can even access it, but when I try to access the folders in it, I says that "Access is Denied". I am an admin on both machines and took all the password protected file sharing setting off. What should I do? Acceptable (talk) 02:50, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You might be interested in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article, "Network Map in Windows Vista does not display computers that are running Windows XP" Apparently the XP machine needs a special patch to play with the Vista machine. -- RoninBK _{T C} 13:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ALT+??

I recently came across this symbol:

่ 

It looks very much like an apostrophe. However, when placed before a message in Windows Live Messenger, it makes the font super-big. Could anyone tell me what symbol it is and how I can get the alt + xxxx combination for it? Thanks. Acceptable (talk) 03:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

It appears to be the THAI CHARACTER MAI EK. I guess it would be alt+0E48. HYENASTE 03:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I also discovered it's Unicode character THAI CHARACTER MAI EK (U+0E48). However, Alt+0E48 didn't work for me, and according to that website, using hex digits with Alt+xxxx combinations may require a registry modification. Instead, you can try typing Alt+3656 to produce it. That works for me in WordPad, but in Notepad that just makes an H. --Bavi H (talk) 03:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, it works. Much appreciated =) Acceptable (talk) 03:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Check out ishida's Unicode Code Converter v6 next time you find some weird symbol. — Shinhan < talk > 13:54, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] census date for Summit, California

how can i find census information or demographics for Summit, California?Boomgaylove (talk) 04:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

how about the zip code?Boomgaylove (talk) 05:35, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Asking Google Maps for anything (I used "food") near the coordinates given in the article produces a ZIP code of 95033. --Tardis (talk) 20:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The United States Postal Service doesn't recognize Summit as a valid city or town name, probably because of its unincorporated status. When I searched for Summit on Google, it gave me a location near Ukiah, which doesn't match the above linked town at all. --LarryMac | Talk 14:13, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] nokia

this is my imei and i cant generate a new security code that works.its an 1110 nokia.what cud be the problem help?354572018159830 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.74.168 (talk) 12:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC) country being-kenya network-safaricon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.74.168 (talk) 13:05, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

If you mean to change the IMEI, it's not going to be an easy task and you could be flouting the law. It's likely that your IMEI has is blocked. If your handphone was stolen before and you told your provider to block the IMEI, the handphone is useless even if you managed to recover it. If you didn't purchase your phone from a certified reseller, there's a chance that it could have been a stolen one. Try asking your service provider for help. You might be able to confirm the block on your IMEI. In the worst case, you might have to purchase a new handphone. --KLLvr283 (talk) 15:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Download this program, enter your IMEI, you'll get a master code. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 15:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Audio communications II

yes, it's me again. i have another problem. Supposing right I had something on my computer that only played sounds saved as Whatever.wav, and I had something I wanted to listen to saved instead as Whatever.ASF, is there any way of converting from one form to the other,and how do I do that? HS7 (talk) 17:27, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually it seems likely that it will also play Whatever.wma, if that's easier to change it to. And maybe some other things like that. HS7 (talk) 17:33, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The first thing that comes to mind is dBpoweramp Music Converter together with dBpoweramp Music Converter's WMA plugins. --Kjoonlee 18:44, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've downloaded that, like you said, and, well, now what do I do with it? Sorry, i can't seem to work out how to actually convert from one thing to the other. HS7 (talk) 19:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You install both the converter and plugins. Then you right-click .wav files in your Explorer and choose conversion to .wma. --Kjoonlee 20:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] internet explorer hanging up from constipation

does anybody but me have this problem? I've never seen it mentioned anywhere. this has been happening to me with IE6 on XP with 500 meg membory, now same deal with IE7 on vista and 3 gig of memory, so i think there's something wrong. i'll be doing a lot of Internet Exploring, opening a lot of sites, (not all at the same time, I mean over a few hours), saving files, etc. after a while, IE starts not functioning correctly; right click menus won't open typically, first sign. then, "save as" starts to not save; then "save as" starts bringing up empty box. finally links, open menu, etc. don't work. only fix is to close out all IE windows and start over. at first i thought maybe it was the history was somehow being saved in memory and filling it up, but deleting the history doesn't help, i still have to close IE. so, what's filling up that's clogging IE? TIA. Gzuckier (talk) 20:08, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Please just use Mozilla Firefox :D\=< (talk) 21:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You might as well suggest a head transplant to someone who has a headache.. :p --Kjoonlee 21:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

How so? It's basically the same thing, but with less headaches. There is no learning curve to use Firefox after IE, and you can easily transfer your bookmarks over. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 21:34, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

You're taking things too simplistically. What if he can't? What if he doesn't want to? --Kjoonlee 22:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about IE, nor would I help anyone with it if I did.. ergo, Please just use Mozilla Firefox :D\=< (talk) 22:55, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Now that's not very helpful, is it? :P --Kjoonlee 01:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yet my signature softens my messages to the point where I can say pretty much anything I want and be vindicated by the dynamic-purpose friendly/playful/sarcastic EFG smiley. you idiot :D\=< (talk) 06:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

....who shares similar interests in reading..... I take it back! :D\=< (talk) 06:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep, Mozilla Firefox is definitely the way to go. Rediscover the web, Gzuckier. Use Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 is great and just as you sit to meditate about the free browser, you might discover what is in store with Firefox 3 (releasing in the first half of 2008)! (Please feel free to bring up any issue, although it is unlikely that there will be one, on the reference desk. If you have a good reason for sticking to MS Internet Explorer, just leave us a line, and please come back here for a better solution. ) Kushal 21:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

One question, Gzuckier. Do you have this problem when visiting a particular website or a set of particular websites? I know that at least some websites try to impose restrictions on right clicking so that might be a reason. If you were on Mozilla Firefox, I would suggest using NoScript on such websites. Oops ... the same sales pitch again =P Kushal 21:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Firefox is not so great in the memory management arena, so it too can get sluggish after some amount of time, depending on the usage pattern. One question, Gzuckier -- are you opening multiple IE windows during your browsing, and if so, how (i.e. from the File/New menu, or from a desktop icon, or the start menu)? Browser windows started File/New (and one supposes, multiple tabs) all run in the same process, while those started from the icon or start menu will run as separate processes. With 3GB of memory to play with, I wouldn't think there should be a problem, but hey, every piece of information helps. --LarryMac | Talk 21:58, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

There might also be some misbehaving IE add-on. A while ago StumbleUpon was causing similar-sounding problems for me. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 22:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

update for the curious: i turned off google toolbar and yahoo toolbar, and it's not hanging any more. now to find out which is responsible, if not both. Gzuckier (talk) 13:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)