Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 March 6

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[edit] March 6

[edit] Hi. I am working as a SAP HR Consultant in Mumbai.

I am here under project. I have few queries.

I have never worked on Arrears, OT and Maternity Leave in SAP HR. Can anyone help me out in this regards along with the configuration part

Do help me out pls

Regards

Shobha —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shobha.singajogi (talk • contribs) 05:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Namaste,

I would ask you to see the article SAP_Human_Resource_Management_Systems but it is a stub (maybe you could help!) I cannot help you with SAP but I would like to note that your question might not be detailed enough. Please consider adding some information on your needs so that people can see if they can answer your questions.

Wish you all the best,

Kushal 10:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Starting a website that allows users to upload videos?

Yes, I guess the general idea is the same as youtube, but it's different enough that it is not a concern. Does anyone know how youtube does it? I know they make the majority of their money from advertising, but I also know it costs millions each month for the storage space of all the videos that are uploaded. I want to start a website, but one of the key features of it succeeding, is that users have to upload videos. Is this technology easy to learn or at least pay another company or individual to do it for you? Do I have a chance of this idea going anywhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sticktalk (talk • contribs) 05:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

A lot of upload/download capacity for the website. A lot of storage. However, these probably come later. You would need to design a website and your players. A word for the wise: be sure to know what you are doing. the market is already overcrowded and there is certainly an advantage to being the top dog, which Youtube is. Viewers go to youtube as it has a lot of the producers and producers go to youtube because it has a lot of viewers. You have probably already thought about product differentiation, niche marketing and stuff like that ... well, regarding the actual software and hardware used, I am pretty sure that it is nothing like rocket science, but you will probably need a team of paid developers working on it.

Hope that helps, Kushal 10:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

"Is the technology easy to learn?" For a small site with a few videos, sure. For a site the size of YouTube, no. Scaling up something like this is the tough technical part, so that your server doesn't crash the second a hundred people download a 12 MB movie at the same time. I wouldn't want to try such a thing without having at least a small team of experienced software engineers on board. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 13:37, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
You're going to want to start off with a PHP script so that when the server gets a video, it will take it and convert it to flv (ffmpeg) and discard the original, as well as producing a bit of code that will display the video (an individual page for every video, for example). Converting to Flash video is to save space, and make the video loading time fast. For YouTube-style comments under each video, this takes Ajax and DHTML. Also consider having a forum of the likes of phpBB or vBulletin. Storage and bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper; you can now at a rate of $100/yr, get 500 GB of storage and 5 TB of transfer per month from Dreamhost[1]. Mac Davis (talk) 21:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] E-mails with no body

I often get such e-mails:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Delivered-To: [removed]@gmail.com
Received: by 10.141.63.7 with SMTP id q7cs308777rvk;
        Tue, 4 Mar 2008 01:12:24 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.78.184.2 with SMTP id h2mr571598huf.54.1204621941833;
        Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:12:21 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <liang-lillian@umail.hinet.net>
Received: from 64.233.183.27 ([202.10.69.21])
        by mx.google.com with SMTP id d24si4726895nfh.25.2008.03.04.01.11.03;
        Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:12:21 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 202.10.69.21 is neither permitted nor denied by doma
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 202.10.69.21 is neither
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:12:21 -0800 (PST)
Received: from 203.70.255.161 by 202.10.69.21; Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:08:06 +0200
Message-ID: <U[20

That's the entire content as shown by Gmail and Thunderbird. And there's a blank line before Delivered-To. What are these? --grawity talk / PGP 08:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say either truncated messages, or more likely, SPAM. Kushal 10:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

If you have something like procmail cleaning your mail before you get it, it may be spam with nothing but an attachment that was removed before you got the message. My procmail removes all kinds of attachments, but I also set it up to then look for empty emails and trash them. -- kainaw™ 13:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
No, unless Gmail uses procmail internaly. This message is from my Gmail's spambox. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grawity (talk • contribs) 16:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Note that almost all of those headers were added by the receiving mail server. The only headers actually sent by the mysterious originator were the last Received line (a pack of lies) and the incomplete Message-ID. I had a chance to see a ton of these as they were coming in to an open proxy honeypot and they displayed very little variation. There could be some hidden meaning (steganography), but I doubt it. The most likely explanation is buggy spamware which sometimes sends these out when it's in a bad mood. Spamware is a special class of software designed to send zillions of messages that nobody wants, so it has a pretty high error rate. If only 1% of messages sent by a particular spamming program come out with this error, that's still a lot of messages and the sender may not even notice that they didn't come out right, leaving no motivation to find and fix the bug. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 21:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] docx conversion

I've just spent tons of time which I don't have on trying to somehow convert a docx file to anything readable without Word2007. Supposedly free online converters either weren't free or didn't convert (error message from docx-converter.com). I've downloaded the docx-converter widget and even, to make it run, the otherwise utterly superfluous yahoo widget engine. Again, error message, nothing works. I'm now just very slightly frustrated, and I'd appreciate any help. (And yes, I know that you can save files in Word2007 in other formats, but it's not always an option to ask people.) My computer runs Windows XP (unfortunately), and I have an older Word version and OpenOffice. Thanks for any and all help!!!!! -- "Microsoft is the proof that democracy doesn't work." Ibn Battuta (talk) 12:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried this? (And Microsoft has nothing to do with democracy. Capitalism, maybe, but not democracy.) --98.217.18.109 (talk) 13:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
If you're doing this for personal use, just ask people to resend in a better-supported format. If you're doing this for business use, just purchase the latest MS Word. You might also think about sending a file that can't be converted to the vendors of the conversion tool; that's a good way to get a bugfix. --Sean 13:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I know I am off topic but any multinational organisation which has influence on national governments does have something to do with democracy. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Not with democracy per se. With the governance of a given country, sure. But that's not necessarily democracy. What does Microsoft have to do with rule by people, by voting? Not much. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 14:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I suppose it is debatable, but it seems that more and more power is ceded to non-elected organisations. I take your point that it is not to do with democracy, in that people still vote a government, but in many areas large industry lobbies have as much influence as voter's groups. -- Q Chris (talk) 16:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit conflict] Thanks!! I'm trying to Microsoft converter, let's see what the 28 MBs are good for. (...) Okay, been there, done that. No change whatsoever: The file remains unreadable. Not even an error message of the converter, just plain "nothing". Oh, how I adore Microsoft. If anyone should have any further ideas, I'd really love to hear them.
BTW, even for personal use, I cannot always ask everyone who sends me files or sometimes it would just not be worth the effort. And if I did it for business, I wouldn't want to upgrade to the latest Word either. What I've seen of it doesn't convince me in the least, and I wouldn't want it if you paid me for it. In fact, I'd change to OpenOffice and save my business tons of money, from which I'd hire someone to program a sweet little add-on to convert docx to doc... :o) (And yes, I know that Microsoft has nothing to do with "democracy". Otherwise there'd be some law against certain updates. It is a wonderful example of capitalism though--buy, buy, buy, and stop thinking if you'll ever need this and if it'll even make things better at all... Did I already mention I am just slightly annoyed to be wasting my scarce time today? --Ibn Battuta (talk) 14:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Zamzar has produced reasonable results for me in a few emergencies. However, it spams your email something chronic, so you may want to use a throwaway. --Kateshortforbob 20:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It might not be relevant but I will say it for what its worth. If it is just one file that you are having issues with, you can try asking the sender to resend the message. The file you have may be corrupted. If it is with all your docX files, do not even bother. I think OpenOffice.org is (after a lot of internal debate on whether or not to support the crooked file system) working on a plugin what allows you to use the X file extensions.

By the way, Sean, unless I am paying for software out of company funds or I am dead sure that the company WILL reimburse me for the cost, I would not buy Office 2007. Would you? Kushal 21:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I've opened up .docx files on OpenOffice before. It doesn't usually set up a file association, so you have to go into OpenOffice and File->Open. As far as saving as another type, depends on the type, but should do a decent job. --Bennybp (talk) 03:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] laptop graphics upgrade

Is it possible to update my laptop's graphics intenally or externally? I have an ASUS F5, would that be good enough to play games on, with it's ATI Radeon Express 1100. 172.203.200.253 (talk) 13:59, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The short answer is:

  • 1 I would not try it.
  • 2 Depends on which games you want to play is important. What games are you interestedin?

Hope that helps

Kushal 21:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Short answer: no. Your exact model number would help. Few laptops have upgradeable graphics--the Mobile PCI Express Module is the most popular way to accomplish that today. I do not believe the F5 series has an MXM slot, though. The ExpressCard slot is a theoretical interface for a display adapter, but none worth using have been developed. A docking connection would be another way, but I don't think the F5 series has a docking connector. The only thing I can imagine doing is increasing the size of your HyperMemory. Maybe you can do a google search for how to manually increase that. You might have to increase the amount of RAM in your computer if you do that, because adding HyperMemory will take away from general use RAM. --41.210.1.120 (talk) 22:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image editor

I'm looking for a simple image that outputs in text, something compatible with C. Preferable a bmp editor.Bastard Soap (talk) 14:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about what you are wanting. "A simple image [editor?] that outputs in text" doesn't mean anything to me. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 15:05, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't suppose there's any possibility you're referring to ASCII art? However, your question makes this seem unlikely.--Kateshortforbob 20:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Gimp can save images in several text-based formats, such as XBM, XPM, PBM, & PPM. By compatibility with C, did you mean a format akin to XBM? --71.162.242.96 (talk) 20:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Name for an occurence in digital video

If I pause an avi video and zoom in on, say, a small area of what I perceive to be white surrounded by green, it can be seen that the area in fact has a slightly green hue. Measuring the individual rgb components of the "white" region confirms this to be the case. This effect is only really pronounced if the object in question (the white blob in this case) is moving.

Is there a name for this "colour leaking" effect? Why does it occur? Is it caused by the compression used or is it a symptom of the original source footage being unable to perfectly capture a moving object? I can provide a screenshot if this is confusing. --80.4.203.142 (talk) 15:08, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

almost certainly due to compression yes.87.102.74.217 (talk) 15:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
JPEG? --grawity talk / PGP 16:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh, the horror. Never mention that format again. 206.252.74.48 (talk) 16:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Do you know what video codec is being used in the AVI file? If you do then it may be possible to find out more about that codec, and the particular obsertavtion you highlighted, out of interest what did you use to observe this?--Dave (talk) 17:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
DivX I believe. I've looked through some compression articles but I'm not sure what exact attribute is responsible. I observed it in MATLAB by simply extracting a frame from a video. I was really just looking for a succint name so I could refer to it easily within a formal document but it's not a big deal if I have to just make up my own terminology. --80.4.203.142 (talk) 17:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
These articles might cast some light on the subject: Compression artifact, and Digital artifact--Dave (talk) 17:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
On reading the Lossy compression compression article, it appears that your problem may be due to the codec used being a lossy predictive codec (I quote:)
"In lossy predictive codecs, previous and/or subsequent decoded data is used to predict the current sound sample or image frame. The error between the predicted data and the real data, together with any extra information needed to reproduce the prediction, is then quantized and coded." [[2]]
Hope that helps (tell me if it hasn't) --Dave (talk) 18:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, thanks a lot, that is helpful. "Compression artifact" seems like the usual term for such a thing then and at least I'm sure of the source of the problem now. --80.4.203.142 (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Domain names, Dynamic DNS

Can you get this sort of thing for free nowadays? All I want is a domain name which will point at an IP address which I choose and can change whenever - ie whenever my computer's IP changes. Shouldn't cost more than a penny, surely? --87.74.1.108 (talk) 19:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Though you can have such a thing on using DHCP and DNS, I don't tink you can use it at national domain level. This means you could have a dynamic fred.myco.co.uk or fred.myco.com, but not a dynamic myco.co.uk or myco.com. See http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/ for example service -- Q Chris (talk) 19:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
DyDNS specifically offers DNS resolution to changing IP addresses. I do not use it, but a friend does. His computers are on Comcast cable. When the IP changes, DyDNS is notified (via a script they offer) and his domain name maps to the new IP address. There will, of course, be issues with DNS caches, but not enough to make the service useless. -- kainaw™ 19:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
It's called dyndns, not dydns. And I also highly recommend it, dyndns is perfect for the job. :D\=< (talk) 00:00, 7 March 2008 (UTC)