Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 September 20

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September 20

Ethernet wiring

My Linksys wireless router has made it clear that I want to take the effort to make my network connections wired. To that end, I want to wire my house with ethernet cable. I was thinking of using Cat 5e but after reading the article for that as well as Cat 6, I'm now wondering if there is any advantage to using Cat 6. Will I be putting myself ahead of some standarization curve by installing the higher rated cable? Or will the next gen cable more than likely not be compatible and therefore I should just use standard Cat 5e? Dismas|^(talk) 05:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Linksys, lolz. Try a DLINK you noob. All kidding aside there are better wireless router makers out there, and unless you plan on using the network to move very large files or have a very large house, I personally would never recommend pulling cable instead of using an appropriate wireless device. But, to answer your question, you will want CAT6 if you plan on implementing gigabit ethernet over a distance, and 5e if you can settle for fast ethernet. If you want to beat the curve, pull some multimode fiber. --Jmeden2000 15:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The hard part of wiring is getting through the walls and ceilings. If possible, try installing the wiring in non-metalic conduit so it will be easy to change the cables if whatever you put in becomes obsolete. --Gerry Ashton 21:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the attitude (really appreciated that part) and the answers.... Dismas|^(talk) 06:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Computer game, drivers, failures to load

I've been having trouble running Half Life 2 on my laptop. The game starts up fine, but when I attempt to actually play it, the game (and the whole computer) freezes halfway through the loading screen. I'm running a 2.0 Ghz AMD, 1024 RAM, and 128 MB ATI Radeon Xpress 200 notebook. I've tried looking for updated drivers for the video card, but ATI's website doesn't seem to offer any. Could anyone tell me why this might be happening and what I could do to fix it? --Impaciente 07:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

If you don't have updated video card drivers the first thing I would try is going to the laptop manufacturer's site to find some updated ones, as ATI usually does not provide laptop drivers directly. However your specs seem to not be the problem, so I would attempt to track down those drivers if I were you. - Ridge Racer 11:49, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I've got a similar problem with HL2, where the game freezes at the loading screen, and yet I haven't discovered how to fix it, despite a lot of research. The best advice I can give is to search the Steam Support section [1] or search/post on the Steam forums [2]. Good luck. Sum0 16:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I've also heard that blasted Steam is a horrible application. Damn Valve for coming up with that thing! But anyway, thank you guys for your advice. --Impaciente 18:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

ANSWERED -> Wildcard searches

I have an odd task.

I know the first letter of a four letter word, but I only have clues for the next three letters.

I know the second letter is one of four possibilities; third letter is one of five possibilities, and last letter is one of seven possibilities.

I have a dictionary word list.

Is it possible to use some sort of finder (IE, Mozilla) to wildcard search for those conditions?

Is there some sort of random generator feature of Excel that allows me to randomly generate those conditions?

Can anybody think of any idea of how I could get a list of conditions?

Thank You,

lots of issues | leave me a message 09:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you need a crossword puzzle solver for this type of query. StuRat 10:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Where can I find a puzzle solver? lots of issues | leave me a message 11:29, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

140 possiblities is pretty managable. make a program to print all of the possiblities, then copy them into Open Office (or equivant) and see how many don't have red lines under them. Jon513 11:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Use any text editor that offers a full regular expression search. It will allow you to search for a string whose first letter is exact, whose second is one of your four, and so on. For example jEdit will work, as this page documents. (See the section titled "Character Class Operator".) --KSmrq^T 12:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

"Go away or I will replace you with a small shell script"... This problem is easy to solve with a simple regex, and a list to compare to. I would do this: grep '^l[abc][def][xyz]$' /usr/share/dict/american-english to search for a 4 letter word starting with L, and having one of the 3 letters for those 3 positions. The solution provided by this command: lady. --Jmeden2000 14:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I fixed your command. You don't need commas in a character class, unless you want to match commas. --Tardis 17:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you all so much. You directed me to a solution! -- Lotsofissues

CSS Skin

Is there any way to submit a CSS Skin for use in the preferences tab? Thanks in advance! -ENIAC (Talk) (Current Projects) 17:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

That's really a Help Desk question if you're referring to Wikipedia, but one way to do it is to pick a skin similar to the one you're aiming for (or MySkin if you want to start from scratch), and edit Special:Mypage/monobook.css for Monobook (likewise for the other skins). You can preview your CSS with the 'show preview' function; however, after you save it, you will have to bypass your cache. Hope that helps. --ais523 17:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

If you mean "I've designed a great skin and I'd like others to be able to use it too", then your first port of call is m:Gallery of user styles, where you can upload a link to it and a screenshot. I'm not aware, however, that any skin there (even my breathtaking MonoClassic skin) have been included in the source distribution or made generally available on any of the wikimedia sites. Folks can always grab a skin from the gallery and use it themselves. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Q Demographics

Two sections moved from WP:VP/T :

Hi! I'm wondering if anybody has a free! program to create those nice population charts. I mean where you have the ages 0-100(?) in the middle (y-axis) and the data as bars from the middle to the left or right (girls in red, left; boys in blue, right). I couldn't figure out how to do that in Excel. Maybe that works too? Thanks! --Hedwig in Washington ^(TALK) 02:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

If I'm wrong HERE, please give me a little hint! 8-) --Hedwig in Washington ^(TALK) 11:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The HINT is there = WP:RD/C, general computer / IT questions (Wikipedia related stay here at the Village).

HINNT n° 2 = the same applies for the next section. -- DLL ^{.. T} 18:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Man, a program? The best I know that you could do is call the US Census bureau (they make just about all of them here), or just make a bar graph for each side, then turn 'em ninety degrees if you couldn't get a program and really needed it. — X [Mac Davis] (SUPERDESK|Help me improve) 06:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep, a program. I'm a spoiled little puppy 8). And I can't do it with Excel. 8( Census is fine, but only for the US. Excel would be nice, but I really don't know how. Some help would be wonderful!??? --Hedwig in Washington ^(TALK) 11:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

What is a reply path SMS ?

JJ5358 10:05, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I fear you are in the wrong forum here. This forum is about technical issues regarding Wikipedia. --Ligulem 11:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Not quite, Ligulem, the reference desk is for factual questions about anything BUT wikipedia. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:29, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

If you followed your original question here, there's more chances ... good luck. -- DLL ^{.. T} 18:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Embedded videos

On my old computer when I opened a video off of a link whilst on the internet, the video would open in a miniture version of quicktime embedded in the page. This was useful as you could have many videos open, and paused at various points, without them interfering with each other. On my new computer, it tries to open every single one in WMP. This is quite annoying as not only does it open a lumbering ram hungry application, but I can only have one video running at a time, so how can I alter settings so that they open in a new window of IE with an embedded media player of some sort. Thank you. Philc _T^E_C^I 23:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

If you like Quicktime a lot, go to Apple's site and download quicktime. I believe the installer also installs a plugin in for your web browser. Once you've installed the program you can run it and tell the program to associate itself with the media file types(MOV,MPG,MP3,etc...) you want it to play. From there on your web browser should have the QT embedded player. —Mitaphane _talk 03:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)