Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 March 15

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[edit] March 15

[edit] Can a directory be made 'deleteproof'?

On WinXP, can a directory be made writable, but not deletable? I doubt it, but "Here There Be Experts..."

What I want is to (more-or-less silently) capture the contents of a couple of standard directories used by IE during normal browsing, such that IE will not be able to clean up after itself on exit. I won't know the names of specific files in advance, and don't want to actively watch the directory during browsing (to copy files as they appear, for example).

(I think this would be doable on most Unixen with clever values for umask, etc; but, this is Windows...) Any suggestions? 63.231.161.238 (talk) 00:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC) Dan

How would you distinguish between regular file rewriting and completely blanking the file? If you can write it, you can blank it, which is the same as deleting the information :D\=< (talk) 01:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Don't think I need to differentiate those two cases. I'm only trying to capture "behind-the-scenes" or implicit downloads (images, scripts, whatever-the-heck else comes down the wire during normal browsing) so bulletproof security really isn't required. Got any ideas? 63.231.161.238 (talk) 02:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC) Dan

You could try putting a read-only file into the directory; then you'd get a prompt before it is deleted. This wouldn't stop other files in the directory from being deleted, though... 66.134.46.130 (talk) 10:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps I've not conveyed the goal clearly enough. *I'm* not the one putting files in the directory, IE is — unless you have reason to believe that IE downloads are read-only, which it couldn't then delete by itself. Haven't seen that myself yet... 63.231.161.238 (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC) Dan

Yep, if you use NTFS.
  1. Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View.
  2. Uncheck (disable) Use simple file sharing, click OK.
  3. Right-click a file or directory, select Properties.
  4. Click Security.
  5. Click Advanced.
  6. Select a user or group, or click Add to add your wanted.
    • Everyone => all users
    • Creator Owner => user who created the file or directory
  7. Click Edit
  8. Edit permissions to your wanted.
IMPORTANT: Deny takes precedence over Allow. For example, if someone is JonX in group Users, and you deny writing for Users, JonX won't be able to write to that file even if you allow him.
IMPORTANT: Change Permissions allows exactly that. --grawity talk / PGP 14:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

What?! IE can cleanup after itself?! :D  ARTYOM  22:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

By the way, isn't a simpler approach to just rename each file as it comes as "Filename_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.EXTENSION" where YYYY is year, MM is month, DD is day and so on. It should be possible to do so.

Possible, but that solution doesn't meet the requirement that it run "unattended" — I do *not* want to watch the directory as IE does its thing and have to capture each file manually. Rather, I want to know what sort of stuff is being downloaded during browsing, perhaps by other users of this computer. 63.231.161.238 (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC) Dan

Advertisement: Use Mozilla Firefox! :D Kushal 15:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Kushal, can you be more specific as to how this solves the problem? I'm not aware that Fx is different from IE in cleaning up its temp directories when it's done, and for that reason that I thought I had to approach this whole problem from the OS side. Talk to me, mon, what else can Fx do for me!? 63.231.161.238 (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC) Dan

Well, I actually was surprised when I read this post at first, that's why I left the above message. I always had to clean up the IE's Temporary Internet Files (that's the folder you're talking about, right?) manually when I needed to free up some disk space. In IE7 (not sure about previous versions) you can actually set the maximum size of that folder in the options, and IE will clean up then only. What I'm saying is that perhaps you should increase the maximum size, cuz IE shouldn't be cleaning up after itself on exit by default. I remember browsing those temp files a couple times, and I could even view what kind of websites different users had visited.  ARTYOM  13:49, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the above solution looks nice and if the OP already has NTFS as his/her file system, I recommend them to give it a try. However, my NTFS paranoia (if there ever is such a thing) would make me wary of switching to NTFS just to implement this feature. I would prefer to see an application level solution such as incremental archiving where I would compare the folder and the archive and add anything in the archive that is missing. I would not need to compress anything yet, which I believe will help ease some pressure off the processor.

The The only problem is the OP does not want to actively manually monitor the directories. However, the OP seems to be positive about having an automated backup program do the job. Sorry for missing out what you wrote about it.

Well, the advertisement mark on Mozilla Firefox is just for that, to show you that it is an advertisement. :P You can get technical support with Mozilla Firefox (IRC irc://irc.mozilla.org ), technical support is always a few clicks away, and is manned by a group of real people who are not constrained in what they must ask about you before they can start hearing your problems :( .

If you are doing this for purely personal purposes and intend to use it only for yourself, I would suggest

  1. ScrapBook on Mozilla Firefox set up to capture everything as it comes. You can do that within options of the particular addon.
  2. Increase the size of your cache in Firefox to a ridiculous amount (I would suggest the disk cache be 300 to 400 MB minimum).
  3. Backup everything every night/fortnight/<time interval here> (depending on you preference) using aggressive compressing techniques like 7zip or WinZip Enhanced Deflate or something.

Please feel free to reply back. Kushal 12:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

NTFS is very good. It's a modern, fully-featured journaled filesystem, unlike FAT or ext2. Everyone uses ext3 because it just seems to never have any problems but it's just ext2 with journaling tacked on.. very kludgey. Sort of like hurd being the intelligent alternative to linux, but who cares because Linux works and Hurd doesnt. Anyway NTFS is great, has hardlinks, symlinks, supports advanced security features like ACLs (useless offline though). :D\=< (talk) 18:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Old habits die hard. I was always (well it feels like always now) taught to stay away from NTFS as if I used NTFS, I would get myself into quicksand or a big trouble or something. All I knew was it was incompatible with a certain operating system and that was enough reason for me to stay away from it. FAT32 was good enough for me, anyways.

Moreover, what do you say about HFS Plus:HFS::ext3:ext2 ? Is it a good anology? Kushal 16:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] embed

i have a music video.i want my name to appear on the clip.as in i don't want to sell or anything like it,its just for fun and to impress my gal.i just want to sort of when i play the song,the way deejays do,i see my name on the clip.is it possible?its a video file and i wanted to know if theres a software that caters to such a process,and i hope its not that complicated.Do i need any programming backgroung,bcoz i only know a little vb. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.220.113.117 (talk) 00:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you have Windows Movie Maker or something similar? In most programs, it should be fairly simple just to add text onto the video. crassic![talk] 04:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Expanding web buttons

I’m a fairly new at web design, and I’ve got a small personal website I’m working on with Nvu. I’d like the buttons to expand in size when you run the mouse over them. The buttons will be simply white words on a black background, no box or picture. How is this done? Is this way beyond my limited knowledge of HTML? If it’s two big a topic to cover here could you point me towards reference material please? Thanks, --S.dedalus (talk) 02:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Does Nvu do CSS? I don't know if it's beyond you, but one way approach to this might be with the :hover pseudoclass. [1] might help, but if CSS is totally new to you, you'll likely want a tutorial. Or two. Or two hundred. Wikibooks has one at wikibooks:CSS_Programming, though I'm not sure that it's all that excellent, but there are literally bajillions of others. I'm sure you could also accomplish this with Javascript, but bleh. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Definitely not the Javascript route though, it is messy and inelegant. --antilivedT | C | G 05:21, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
By "button" do you mean an anchor tag (<a href="">)? If so, that's really easy to do with CSS. One simple way to do it that shows the basic concept of using the :hover pseudoclass: <style>a:hover { font-size: 150%; }</style><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org" style="hover">Wikipedia!</a> Hope that helps! --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the help! :) Two hundred tutorial are probably going to be about my speed, but I’ll figure it out eventually. Cheers, --S.dedalus (talk) 02:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nokia Cell Phones

Resolved.

Do all "current" Nokia phones have ARM-something processor and SymbianOS inside them? --ÖhmMan (talk) 18:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

How do you define current? Is Nokia 2610 a current phone? (AT&T still sells it.) A good place to start is List_of_Nokia_products#Mobile_phones. Good luck! Kushal 23:07, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice link you have. It looks like that at least for cheaper phones the SymbianOS part doesn't hold true. Thank you! --ÖhmMan (talk) 08:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Glad to be of any use. Kushal 15:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsubscribe

If you get an account to something online like a social network service, how do you unsubscribe? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.88.36 (talk) 23:16, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Which one? Facebook ... account ... Deactivate account - Kittybrewster ☎ 00:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
SMS.ac —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.88.36 (talk) 01:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
Click on 'help' at the top of the page, choose 'Cancelling your service', then 'How do I cancel my account'. Algebraist 02:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)