Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 December 10

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December 10

Opera = Firefox + 20+ extensions

Isn't firefox, where loads of people not working together, all make their own extensions that can be downloaded and interfere with each other, a sure fire way to end up with a crashy browser? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seans Potato Business (talk • contribs) 00:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

That's why extensions on the official site are thoroughly tested before being made available publically. Also, I think there's some sort of namespace system in the plugin system so that plugins can't really interfere with each other. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

And don't forget that installing plug-ins is entirely voluntary (they don't self-install) and that most (all?) of them are open-source anyway (can be fixed if broken even if the person who made them stops working on them). They're also automatically easy to install and uninstall, unlike IE's plug-ins. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Function keys in Mac OS X

F11 is the de facto standard way to get full-screen display of a browser. But this won't work in default Mac OS X, as the system uses this key to minimize all windows. (And this is just one example of how OS X key assignment seems to compete with software-specific key assignment.) The obvious way around this is to change the OS settings so that what was F11 is now something else, or (since there's anyway Shift-F11 for a trivially slower alternative) just to disable the function. However, while I could easily do this with my own computer [I'm not using it right now and forget the OS version number; it's the version before the present one], the option isn't available for the higher-numbered function keys in a slightly older version [the version before mine] in th' missus' computer.

Am I overlooking some other option? Is there perhaps some escape key combination that means "Please pass the next keystroke to the active application just as you'd pass a regular keystroke (letter A–Z, etc.): don't clear the desktop, reduce the volume level, show all the windows in miniaturized form, etc." -- Hoary (talk) 10:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If you are asking "is there a way to disable Exposé, then yes, go to System Preferences > Dashboard and Exposé, and you can re-assign the keys that Exposé uses or you can disable them altogether. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Yup, I know that. (But thank you for trying.)

No, I want to know something rather different. To pursue the example of "Exposé", it's this: I want F9 to continue to have the Exposé function. But I also want to be able to bypass this at any time. Is there some key combination that allows me to bypass Exposé and instead feed F9 to the active application? Imaginably Control-Option-F9 might do this, or F9 immediately following Escape-Option might do it. I was surprised that my copy of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual ("Panther" edition) doesn't seem to mention this kind of thing. I tried various combinations of keys; none worked. I wonder if I'm overlooking something, or whether somebody has written a utility I could download and install to add this capability to OS X. ¶ Another approach: Is there some way to tell OS X that yes I do want Exposé on F9 except while program X, Y or Z is the active application, whereupon I want the keystroke passed to that application? -- Hoary (talk) 05:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

What you're asking for seems rather esoteric. Why not just assign Exposé to shift-F9 and be done with it? That would be a lot easier than trying to find a way to make Exposé be selectively bypassed, which is probably not possible. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:48, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Reasonable enough.

Well, here's the predicament. I made a set of scans of the best pictures in five rolls of film, and thought I'd burn the result to CD-Rs that I'd pass around to a dozen or so people who'd be interested. I suspect that several aren't so, um, computer-literate and I know that at least some use 'Doze and at least some use Mac OS X. So it occurred to me that I could make a slideshow using Dave Raggett's "HTML Slidy" (a combination of CSS and Javascript that's a free download from W3C and that I highly recommend). This way I could just tell people to click on index.html; their browsers -- whether MSIE, Konqueror, Shiira, Safari or whatever -- would take care of the rest. To minimize the risk that the browser either resizes the images or adds horizontal and vertical sliders, I wanted to add the instruction "I suggest that you maximize your browser and cut all the space-wasting crap from it. F11 usually does the job." But in Mac OS X (as most people leave it set up), F11 spectacularly fails to do this. (Moreover, my wife's slightly older version of Mac OS X doesn't even allow her to use F11 as she wishes.) It would have been good to say "F11 usually does the job. (Mac-users may have to hit Command-Option-F11 instead.)" or whatever. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to rephrase more laboriously.

Of course it would help if people knew that browsers could do this. But many seem oddly incurious.

Incidentally, Shiira has a particularly sleek kiosk mode. When I have to give what my audience assume is a "PowerPoint presentation", I do so with HTML Slidy and Shiira. -- Hoary (talk) 01:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Chess symbols in MS Word

How do you get symbols for chess pieces in Microsoft Word? Bubba73 (talk), 03:06, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I found a chess font and installed it and it works on my computer. I made an HTML file and it works. However, will the HTML file work for other people who have not installed the chess font? Bubba73 (talk), 03:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it won't. SteveBaker (talk) 03:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

See Chess symbols in Unicode. --Spoon! (talk) 04:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Putting in the codes doesn't work unless the user has a font that has the chess symbols, and since that can't be assumed, this dowsn't work either - even in HTML.  :-( Bubba73 (talk), 22:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

If I paste these into my Word Doc, make an HTML file, then everyone should be able to see the chess pieces, right? Or do I need to forget the Doc file and work only with the HTML file and insert the codes? Bubba73 (talk), 04:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

What you mean isn't completely clear. I think you're contemplating use of MS Word in order to make a web page. This is always a bad idea, as MS has a very screwy idea of what "web page" means.

See Chess symbols in Unicode, as recommended above. You just type in what's in the "HTML" column. For example: "♔ is a white king". Or you can copy and paste the character. If you do the latter, UTF-8 must be specified as the character encoding system in the HTTP header or a META tag. -- Hoary (talk) 07:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I have a Word Doc file that uses some chess piece symbols. I want to make an HTML file for the web from it, using the "save as". I'm not comfortable with using HTML directly. For instance, I don't know how to specify UTF-8 as you said. Bubba73 (talk), 18:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If I insert one of the codes (e.g. "♚") into the HTML document in Word or my HTML editor, I get the literal strig and not the chess piece figurine. Is there a setting in Word to tell it to interpret it correctly? Bubba73 (talk), 19:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, changing the font to "Ariel unicode MS" and then pasting the figurine works on my computer. I'll have to see if it works for others. Bubba73 (talk), 19:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work when viewed on other computers. Bubba73 (talk), 19:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem you will certainly be up against is attempting to use a word processor as an HTML editor. As stated before, Word has a very unique concept of what a "web page" is. It is very obvious to me when I hit a Word-version of a web page. It looks very odd with weird symbols, bad spacing, and extremely tiny letters. Using an HTML editor, you can type ♚ and it will be shown as a chess character. In the HTML, you see the ampersand, pound sign, numbers, and a semi-colon. In the web browser, you see the character. To answer your question directly, I seriously doubt that there is any setting in Word that flips HTML-code on so you can see ♚ and then turns it off so you can see ♚. Also note that Unicode must be installed to see Unicode characters. Most computers have it now - but not all computers. -- kainaw™ 19:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you are perhaps overly-concerned about typing in HTML. If you use notepad, you can do it quite easily. If you'd like to try, I wrote a simple guide to writing HTML that'll get you going very quickly: http://www.sjbaker.org/daddy_math/html.html - my son learned to do it when he was 10 years old - and it didn't take him an hour...so I think you can manage it! SteveBaker (talk) 23:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Steve - ten year olds are much better at learning than most adults, and your lad (if I remember rightly) sounds like an exceptionally bright ten year old! DuncanHill (talk) 23:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Shhhh! I'm trying to get someone to learn HTML! SteveBaker (talk) 00:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

HTML is cake, even today's half-emo preteen pop diva whateverthehecktheyarethesedays kids know it for myspace customization or whatever. I also learned it at 10, it's super duper easy --ffroth 02:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, using an HTML editor is not a good choice for me. (1) I'd need to learn HTML, and I know little about it (2) I need wysiwyg for normal editing - I need to see what it will look like to a browser, and with Word I can format it the way I want it (mostly), and (3) I have an HTML editor but it doesn't have spell checking, which I desperately need. And if I did a spell check on the text of the HTML file it would flag a ton of HTML stuff as spelling errors. Bubba73 (talk), 03:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

So..

1. Learn english
2. Learn HTML

Also, what it looks like in Word is not what you'll see in a browser, though of course it's a lot closer than notepad --ffroth 03:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

When you're writing for the web, forget "WYSIWYG". ¶ Froth's advice to "Learn English" may be amicably intended but it does look a bit obnoxious. Of course ability in English and good spelling are very different matters. So, spelling: Although none of the text editors I now use has a spelling checker, I've used such a text editor in the past. They're probably still available (see below). If you can't find one, you can simply use the text editor in one window; a view of your page in a browser in a second; and in a third, a word processor window containing a paste of what you copied from the browser window (i.e. the text sans markup). You run the spelling checker; when it finds something it doesn't like you fix the same place in the text editor window. ¶ Incidentally, my main text editor these days is Kate, which does an excellent job of matching quotation marks and the like. This is called syntax highlighting; the article makes it sound a lot more complex than it is. (Basically you just ignore it till you wonder why you're typing in the wrong color.) And that article also says: Some editors also integrate syntax highlighting with other features, such as spell checking.... Unfortunately I can't name any; others here probably can. -- Hoary (talk) 04:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't being amicable, I was being dry. No native English speaker should ever need a spell check, ever, ever. Learn the language you're speaking, people. I make mistakes, but only when I'm not even looking at what I type.. --ffroth 19:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, with the move to externally-styled XMLly page content, you can easily just type out your articles separately (e.g. in Word) and paste it into your minimalist formatting markup --ffroth 19:03, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Spell checkig and generating HTML codes are things that computers should be doing for people. Bubba73 (talk), 21:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, when I build a web page, I do this:

• Write the document in a proper word processor with spell and grammar check, etc - ignoring layout issues and pictures and stuff...just get the raw text bashed into the machine.
• Export as ASCII text.
• Bring it into a text editor (like notepad, emacs or vi) and add the HTML tags - including pictures, etc.
• Write it out occasionally and view it in my browser to ensure I didn't screw up the HTML tags.
• If I need to tweak a stylesheet or add JavaScript or PHP - then that happens in the text editor too.
• Use the W3C HTML checker to ensure I didn't break any rules.
• Use rsync to sync it to my web site and then wget to check that all of the links actually work in-situ.
• From that point on, small changes and additions are done in HTML directly.

The really SERIOUS mistake you make by using WORD is to assume that WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG is the antithesis of what the web is about. The mantra you must chant six times a day is "Trust the Browser". If you try to force the text to come out with the precise layout that you want, you'll fail miserably. It may look good on your computer with your browser - but for someone else with a different sized screen - or who has overridden the default fonts - or who is utterly blind and using a braille reader or text-to-speed - or who is looking at it on a 1.5" x 1" cellphone display...you're messing it up HORRIBLY. When you want a new paragraph, you should be using a paragraph (<p>) tag - and not a <br> tag and a bunch of &nbsp;'s or whatever weird stuff WORD does to try to make the document look exactly like you wrote it. If you need a particular piece of text to line up with a particular photo, you need to use <div> or <table> because if you just hit enough RETURNs to get it to line up in WORD, you'll be sadly disappointed when you see it on your laptop or on an iPhone. The thing with HTML (like Wiki markup) is that you are describing what the text is - not how it looks. You tell the browser that this is a paragraph and that this needs to be next to that - and you let the browser figure out the best way to make that happen.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. If a user has his browser configured to use a giant text size and weird colors, that's his choice- he obviously wants it that way, so don't override him. But writing for standards compliance is not practical- you'll end up with perfect HTML that renders in only Konqueror. I'd say write for standards, but test for Firefox quirks, and specifically design it to catastrophically fail in IE. --ffroth 18:57, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There are text editors that have spell checkers in them. Notepad++ apparently has one. You might try something like that. Word is not an adequate program for coding HTML for a number of reasons. It's barely adequate as word processing software, in my opinion, and it certainly can't handle the web. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 18:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

For plain text editing I use EditPad Pro, which has syntax highlighting and spell checking. It has a feature that you can view the HTML file as a browser would, but the problem is that you can't edit it at the high level. Bubba73 (talk), 18:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

PS - I'm not trying to make a professional website, just a personal website with a few simple pages. Bubba73 (talk), 18:10, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

All the easier to do it by hand! --ffroth 18:57, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Why do it manualy when the computer can do the work? That is what computers are supposed to do. Bubba73 (talk), 22:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I've downloaded Mozilla SeaMonkey Composer, and I'm looking into using that. That may be my best course. Bubba73 (talk), 18:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Seamonkey seems to do everything I need. I can go to the HTML code and insert the code for each piece once, then go back to the normal view and it shows the chess piece figurine. From there I can copy and paste the piece figurine. It would work better if SeaMonkey could insert the symbols, but this workaround works well enough. So I'm going with SeaMonkey instead of Word. Bubba73 (talk), 22:14, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

using telnet

ok im just starting to learn about computers, and one of the problems i have is with telnet. i use windows vista and i already have the telnet client active. lets say i want to check my email from gmail (i don't use outlook or anything btw, only webmail). i would open up a command prompt, and then what would i type? and on my older computers when i type telnet, it comes up with a white terminal telnet window, but on vista it just appears inside the black dos window with microsfot telnet. any ideas on this? any help is appreciated, thanx! 63.24.154.141 (talk) 03:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Gmail requires encryption so you can't use telnet for that. You can for example use telnet to get the main page of Wikipedia. Just type telnet en.wikipedia.org 80, and then another cursor pops up, there you can type HTTP commands. To get the main page, you can type GET /, and telnet will spill the HTML source code of the main page down your screen. Telnet only allows you to directly talk to servers, but you have to know how to talk to the servers yourself. Read up on the protocol you're trying to use and experiment. --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

ok so it allows a direct connection to servers but only if the servers allow it. the code above worked, but i couldn't see what i typed when i tryed to type get /. is this normal? and so telnet doesn't work with gmail. but would it work with something like ssh? and would telnet work on other mail servers (yahoo, msn, hotmail etc...) or do they requre encryption too? (btw this is the same person just with a differnt comp) 63.28.158.210 (talk) 23:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Usually servers won't allow connection to the telnet port (21) for security reasons, but if you're just using telnet to talk to the server by typing the actual commands instead of using a software to do it, you can telnet into a port for another protocol, such as HTTP, which is what is done above. Telnet connects to en.wikipedia.org at port 80, which connects you to the Wikipedia HTTP server. Can you post the output straight after you've typed that command? It should say connected to ---.wikimedia.org and give you a prompt for you to type things into. SSH is also encrypted, so you won't be able to use telnet for it (SSH is actually supposed to replace telnet for remote controlling other computers). Hotmail and Yahoo and MSN don't have POP3 access, so I don't think it will work. --antilived^{T | C | G} 02:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

when i type in 'telnet en.wikipedia.org 80', it shows 'Connecting To en.wikipedia.org 80' for about 2 seconds, then teh screen clears and nothing is left except a blinking curser. if i type immediately thereafter i can't see what i type, ie. if type 'get /' i just see the cursor moving but not actual characters. after that i press enter and it 'spills the source code' as you said, then the connection is lost. if i don't type anything on the blank screen and wait for a minute it eventually kicks me back to c:\ 63.28.135.93 (talk) 02:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

That is exactly what it is supposed to do. Why are you expecting anything different? -- kainaw™ 02:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The only reason to use Telnet anymore is to connect to a service that only uses Telnet. There's no reason at all to use it for browsing websites or checking email, when you can use graphical clients. Basically, the only uses for telnet anymore are: 1) server administrators who want to remotely connect to their machines for maintenance purposes (usually over SSH), or 2) people connecting to MUDs like FurryMUCK. -- 68.156.149.62 (talk) 01:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

About ram requirement for getting good FPS

I asked my doubt listed in 5.7 that if more ram is needed for getting good FPS, I still have this doubt. As steve baker mentioned a detailed explanation about the stuff, I looked into his article/essay on the real bottleneck for getting good gaming results. I could well understand those facts but I'm not clear with one point steve and that is about Virtual memory.If I have say 1GB RAM and the game I play demand 1.5GB as recommended config, then whilst playing my pc may try to write data into HDD due to insufficient ram and this may add time delay overhead while playing.Wouldn't this delay might cause drag or drop in FPS?, since the transfer rate for HDD is very slow compared to RAM!. Also please answer me this that if 512 MB of RAM is demanded for a game, then does it mean I should have 512 MB free memory out of 1GB or exclusive 512 MB physical RAM chip?. Sorry for a delay in posting...Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 06:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

"Paged" (microsoft term) memory is extremely slow.. tertiary storage is millions of times slower than cache and thousands of times slower than RAM. Also system requirements list how much total memory you're expected to need, not how much you need to set aside for the program itself. --ffroth 07:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Right. I'm trying hard not to confuse you here. IN GENERAL: Adding more RAM won't make your game go faster. HOWEVER: If there isn't enough RAM for the game to fit in - then the OS will start swapping and that will KILL your games performance - it won't just be slow - it'll literally stop for seconds at a time.

The typical behavior of a game that's run out of physical RAM (and is therefore using the disk drive for swapping) is that it will be literally unbearably slow - like 5 seconds per frame or something - and the disk drive light will come on every time the game hesitates like that. Some games don't need all of the RAM they demand for all of the time - so they might run for a while - then suddenly stop working for a few seconds, then carry on working smoothely again. At any rate - having less memory than the game needs is never a good idea. The only possibility is that the game manufacturer imagined that he had to require enough space for the game - plus some other stuff like maybe a browser and an email or chat client to be running at the same time. That might mean that you'd be able to get away with a little less than the required amount providing you're very careful to shut down everything other than the game...but to be honest - I doubt that's going to help much.

But if you have enough RAM that the game is running at (say) 5 frames per second or better - then it's obviously not swapping and adding more RAM is unlikely to help.

One way to see this to go to your control panel, select Admin Tools, then open the "Performance" widget. You should see some scrolling graphs indicating what's going on inside your machine - if not click on the 'System Monitor' entry on the left then on the 'View graphs' icon at the top. The yellow line ("Pages/sec") shows how much swapping is going on. If there is a big yellow blip on the graph, your computer just moved something to or from the disk drive because it didn't have enough RAM. So start this graph running and start up the game. Once the game is playing and you are experiencing slowdown, quickly pop up the Performance widget and see if there is a lot of activity on the yellow line. If there is - then perhaps you've got a RAM shortage.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the difference between Monitor refresh rate and FPS?

I'm unclear of the fact that some I heard saying that the graphics cards frame rate is restricted by monitors refresh rate. For example say if a monitor like an 15 inch CRT can make 60Hz of refresh rate at 1024 by 768 pixel resolution then wouldn't my gpu card be able to send data beyond 60FPS when VSYNC is turned to on?. Esp I heard this problem on LCD where the refresh rate is only 60Hz.also does VSYNC have some other meaning?...please anybody try to post your reply anything you know about this. Thanks a lot —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 07:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

That's right, if your monitor is only refreshing the screen 60 times a second, you can't see more than 60fps. If VSYNC is on, the graphics card won't even push a new frame until the monitor refreshes, reducing tearing (which I don't mind anyway) and also the apparent frame rate (which I do very much mind) --ffroth 07:40, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

In an ideal world, you'd have all of your interactive software refresh the screen at the exact same rate as the monitor itself repaints the screen and have the graphics card set up to swap it's video buffers during the monitors' vertical retrace period so you don't see a visual glitch. However, there are two considerations that result in people not doing that:

1. With 'twitch response' type games where very precise shooting behavior is required of players, some people find advantage in increasing the frame rate above what the monitor can actually redisplay. This makes one or more horizontal 'tear' lines to appear as you see the top half of one frame of video and the bottom half of another - this reduces graphics quality - but it makes the game software iterate faster which reduces the delay (the "latency") between pushing a button on the joystick and something actually happening in the game world. This obviously demands a really fast computer (or an older game where the demands on the system were not as high). Some people set the refresh rate of the monitor up to 72 or 80Hz in order to get lower latency without making the graphics look worse.
2. If (as is commonly the case), the game cannot maintain a solid 60Hz frame rate (with a 60Hz monitor), the policy of locking the buffer swap to the vertical retrace results in the game frame rate being forced to be an exact submultiple of the monitor rate. Hence, if the game COULD iterate at 59Hz, clamping to the vertical retrace will force it to run at 30Hz. Worse still, if the game's freame rate changes from frame to frame (say it varies between 59Hz and 61Hz) - then clamping frame rate makes it jitter between 60Hz and 30Hz which is even worse. If you don't clamp to the vertical retrace then the game can actually run at 59Hz but just as with speeding up the frame rate, this results in a horizontal tear line in the image. So which works best depends on the user's preferences.

SteveBaker (talk) 12:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks but if this is the case,then what's the use and advantage of running games at very high frame rate say above 100 or so while we can't go beyond the actual refresh rate?..And what is the purpose of VSYNC here?.Enabling it seems to reduce performance in terms of FPS.I do not understand this,but not all games have this option. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 08:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of VSYNC is to make sure that the frame isn't half-drawn when the monitor refreshes. VSYNC will lock the game's FPS to the frequency of the monitor's refreshing to eliminate that "tearing" glitch. Basically, if you want it to look pretty, use VSYNC. If you're playing to win, turn it off. As for running at really high framerates.. basically if you have an enormous framerate then it's just a sign that your computer is having no trouble running the game, and the controls will be very responsive. You can't really tell the visual difference between 60fps and 100fps on a 60hz monitor, but any experienced PC gamer can tell you that they'll just play much better on the 100fps one because of the difference in responsiveness --ffroth 00:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

OK - two separate things. Running the game at a frame rate higher than the monitor can refresh has advantages in some cases. Notably: Most games do everything once per frame - so they'll check the mouse once, the keyboard once, update the player's movement and each of the AI's once then draw the graphics once. If it's running at (say) 60 frames per second, that means that it'll read your keyboard and decide what to do about that 60 times per second - that's once every 16.7 milliseconds. If you are lucky then you press the 'fire' button the moment you see the enemy appear and at that exact moment, the computer reads your keyboard and tells the server "HE FIRED!!!". If you are unlucky, the computer reads the keyboard, then you press the key just a fraction too late, then 16.7 milliseconds later, the computer reads the key and tells the server that you fired. On average, it's about 8.3 milliseconds between you hitting the key and the computer noticing. Of course in that amount of time, the other player may have moved some more - so maybe you missed. If you crank up your frame rate to (say) 100Hz (if the computer can handle doing everything 100 times a second instead of 60 times) - then the computer reads the keyboard ever 10 milliseconds - so the average delay between hitting the key and the computer reading it is only 5 milliseconds. The other player will have moved a smaller distance over 5 milliseconds than he would have done over 8.3 milliseconds - so on the average, you shoot more accurately than you did at 60Hz. HOWEVER, your graphics don't look so good...maybe that's a bad thing.

The business of VSYNC is a bit more complicated. Inside the graphics card, there are two copies of what you see on-screen, there is the "Front Buffer" which the graphics card is reading from in order to form a picture on your monitor or TV - and the "Back Buffer" which is where the computer is drawing the next image. What's in the back buffer at any given moment will be an incomplete scene - maybe the buildings have been drawn and the sky but not the evil aliens of the laser zaps or whatever. When the computer finishes drawing a complete scene, it swaps the front and back buffers over (or perhaps copies the back buffer into the front buffer...it depends). So what's in the front buffer becomes the freshly drawn picture and the back buffer can be erased and a new picture started ready for the next frame - this is called 'Swapping the buffers' - or 'buffer-swap' for short. The 'VSYNC' thing relates to when, precisely the computer does that buffer swap. Remember that (at 60Hz), your monitor is drawing the picture line by line down the screen as it scans out the raster (we call this 'painting the screen'). If the computer were to swap buffers as the raster is painting halfway down the screen then the top half of the picture would represent where everything in the virtual world was one frame ago - and the bottom half of the screen would show it as it is now. If something is moving fast across the screen or (especially) if the camera is moving quickly - then the screen looks like it's got a tear across the middle because the top and bottom parts don't line up properly anymore. The 'proper' way to fix that is to have the computer always do the buffer-swap when the monitor has just finished painting at the bottom of the screen and is zipping back to the top to start again. This is called "the vertical retrace interval" - and there is a signal called 'VSYNC' that determines when that is happening. So - if the buffer-swap is made to happen when VSYNC happens then there is no tearing on the screen because each new raster is repainted with one entire picture.

However, the problem with this is that the computer has to wait for that VSYNC signal before it can buffer-swap - and that's a waste of time. So if the VSYNC is happening at 60Hz (every 16.7 milliseconds) and the computer is ready to swap after 10 milliseconds, it's got to sit there twiddling it's thumbs waiting for the slow old monitor to get done painting the raster. Well, if your computer is generating frames at better than 60Hz - then maybe you don't care that it's waiting for the VSYNC and therefore never able to go faster than 60Hz. However, what happens if your software is taking MORE than 16.7 milliseconds? Suppose it's taking 18 milliseconds. In that case, when the VSYNC signal pops up, the graphics card hasn't finished drawing the picture yet and so the buffer can't be swapped. Instead it has to wait until the following VSYNC - which is 33.3 milliseconds after we started drawing - so when the computer finishes drawing after 18 milliseconds - it has to wait around for another 15.3 milliseconds before it can swap the buffers. Then off we go again with the next frame - and the same thing happens. So the frame rate (which at 18 milliseconds would have been a reasonable 55Hz) has now dropped to half the rate of the monitor's VSYNC - which is 30Hz! In fact, if your software is running anywhere below 60Hz, it'll drop all the way down to 30Hz. If it's slower than 30Hz then it'll drop down to the next sub-multiple of 60Hz - which is 20Hz (three VSYNC intervals), 15Hz (four VSYNC intervals) and so on.

So here you have a trade-off. If you lock the software to swap the buffers at VSYNC then you risk making the frame rate slower than it could have been - but if you don't lock it, you get the "tearing" artifact. It's largely a matter of personal preference.

SteveBaker (talk) 13:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

can I instal and work on VB 2005 and VB 6.0 simulatneously ?

I have been working in VB 6 so far, and now I have got VB 2005(.NET Framework 2.0). I'm thinking of using both of these application software since I have previous programs and some new projects to be done in VB6 whereas I need to run VB 2005 also for some client's projects. So I'm now unclear that if I can run these two installed onto the same OS.Also by installing VB 2005, will VB2005 affect the VB6 tools such as "package and deployment" in anyway?...Please help me. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balan rajan (talk • contribs) 07:24, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The VB 6 IDE and VS 2005 can coexist, and will not conflict. Splintercellguy (talk) 18:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

i do use both and have no problems. (sometimes even simultaneously) Elvis (talk) 15:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

User Agent Information

My user agent information shows the following in the website whatsmyuseragent.com

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.6;MEGAUPLOAD 1.0

Will this be the same for everyone using Firefox 2.0.0.11? Any idea why I am getting that 'MEGAUPLOAD 1.0'? What does rv:1.8.1.11 and Gecko/20071127 say? Once upon a time, I installed Megaupload toolbar, but uninstalled later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.112.197 (talk) 08:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

rv:1.8.1.11 is the build of your Windows, Gecko denotes the layout engine of Mozilla (and the build). Megaupload must've left something behind (some software usually uninstalls in full but leaves behind in the registry some info that says they've been installed here before, certain time-trial and shareware software does this). --Ouro (blah blah) 09:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

rv:1.8.1.11 is the version of Gecko. --Spoon! (talk) 11:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks :) I'll correct myself then. --Ouro (blah blah) 16:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

(From the asker of the question) Thanks for the reply. If anyone of you know how to get rid of that MEGAUPLOAD 1.0 from my user agent, please tell. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.119.195 (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

This might help you: User Agent Switcher. It's a Firefox addon. G'luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 21:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Or just go into about:config and search for the useragent, and change that instead. --antilived^{T | C | G} 22:48, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

How do you use a jar file?

Hi! I neeeded to download a *.JAR file as I need it to use it on Template:Image label begin, but, how do you run such a file? --41.201.169.19 (talk) 13:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

JAR is a Java archive file. You'll need to have at least the Java runtime environment (JRE), or possibly the development kit (JDK). --LarryMac | Talk 14:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Once you have it, the command line "java -jar filename.jar" should run it. Friday (talk) 15:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Jar files are actually Linux/Unix-style '.a' files. If you have the 'ar' tool (which is standard for Linux/Unix and comes with Cygwin for Windows), you can unpack a '.jar' file into its component parts. This is sometimes useful for extracting data files that are inside the jar. But mostly - you're just going to hand it to the Java interpreter per Friday above. SteveBaker (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, JARs are ZIPs; the ar format is different. --Tardis (talk) 18:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Canon RAW in Photoshop CS

Dear Wikipedia contributors,

Can Photoshop CS open up all of Canon's RAW extensions? Thank you 71.18.216.110 (talk) 15:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

No it won't. New cameras (such as the 40D) save to .CR2 which you won't be able to open in CS. You'll need at least CS2 with Camera RAW 3.7 and then upgrade to 4.3 here. --Fir0002 23:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, Fir0002, thanks for the tip. I'm getting the 40D myself in a while, good to know :) --Ouro (blah blah) 06:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Some software that does read RAW formats is listed at RAW image format#Software support. If you don't, or can't, upgrade what you have to a version that does, you can download (for free) dcraw or Imagemagick (ref), both of which will recode a CR2 into something standard. Lacking a decent reference to CR2, it's not totally clear to me if you'd lose colour resolution in doing so - if you use them to convert to standard TIFF or a PPM you'd get 8 bits per channel. I doubt (but don't know for sure) that a current CCD could exceed that. -- Unitshead (talk) 10:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This is OR (allowable here on the RD, apparently), but... Canon has at least 3 different native raw/TIFF formats. Their first was CRW. This was replaced by CR2, and, just this year, it appears that Canon is using a modified version of their CR2 format in some cameras sold in the US since early summer. They are still using the CR2 extension, but the new version has some minor differences that break some photo importing programs. As of ~October, one of my customers was telling me that Adobe was aware, but had not yet "fixed" their software to deal with it. In fact, his call was what alerted my company that it wasn't us getting confused, it was Canon making a change. Granted, they are not in any way obligated to tell us, but it sure would have been nice! We shouldn't advertise our own products here, but it should be okay to say that, as of December, both Adobe and <insert-my-company> have released software that can read Canon's "new" CR2 format. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SandyJax (talk • contribs) 14:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Kindle

How does the Kindle access the Internet? Does the owner need to supply his/her own WiFi? If so what does it mean by free access to Wikipedia included? Am I missing something? Is Amazon offering its own Wireless subscription service? --Kushal^t 16:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Kindle "downloads content over Amazon Whispernet, which uses the Sprint EVDO network." --LarryMac | Talk 16:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --Kushal^t 17:49, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The important thing is that the Kindle DOES NOT GIVE YOU ACCESS TO THE INTERNET! It uses a cellphone-like connection to Amazon headquarters (which they pay for) which gives you access to just the few websites that Amazon choose to provide. One of those is Wikipedia - there are some blogs and some other services - plus Amazon.com of course - but you can't (AFACT) stick in any old URL and get access to it. Someone who played with one for 10 minutes told me that he couldn't edit Wikipedia using the Kindle - only view it! This makes me suspect that you are actually getting a mirror of Wikipedia - not "the real thing"...but that's hearsay evidence. But it's OK - if Santa is is listening, I still want one for Xmas - I have been very, very good this year. SteveBaker (talk) 23:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

You want one? Haven't you seen that side-by-side comparison of the Kindle's terms of use and RMS's "The Right to Read"? --ffroth 02:47, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I have read both separately but not the side by side comparison. Could you link us please? Thanks --Kushal^t 04:32, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

yep yep --ffroth 13:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Neither the critics of the Kindle, nor (oddly) Amazon themselves seem to mention two CRUCIAL facts:

Amazon would rather have people steer clear of Project Gutenberg. I should stop before I start a holy war. Moreover, if I was selling Kindle, would I not do the same thing? --Kushal^t 21:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

1. That there are several OpenSource tools that convert from other formats into Kindle's internal format (which, incidentally, is an open standard).
2. That you can provide your own memory card for the Kindle - which you can read/write from your PC with the right adaptor.

So getting your own content onto Kindle is a breeze and doing it that way costs you nothing. So - with a suitably large memory card, you can immediately dump Project Gutenburg (22,000 books!) onto the thing for starters - cost $0...and any other eBook format that you can convert to PDF or something can also be read on Kindle. What you can't do is read Amazon-supplied material on anything other than your, personal Kindle...that's not really much different from the iPod/iTunes setup.

The reason you can't get to the general internet through the thing is that Amazon are paying your phone bill and they'd go bust VERY quickly if people used it a lot. Also the display (being a weird ePaper thing) doesn't update fast enough for interactive types of usage - you certainly couldn't watch movies or even GIF animations on the thing...and without flash/Javascript/Java/etc, it would be a pretty poor Internet experience anyway. But that's NOT what it's for. It's a book/Wikipedia/magazine/news-blog reader - and for that, it's not half bad. For me, it's worth $400 just to be able to comfortably read Project Gutenberg+Wikipedia+Slashdot+email without needing an Internet connection or a crappy backlit 320 pixel display.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

That's really worth $400 to you? I mean, personally I don't sit down and "read" Wikipedia all that often (I edit, but that's quite different, and I like to be able to snake all over the place at once), when I want to read books I prefer them in hard copy (I've got this thing called a "library" in my town that keeps me from having to actually buy them all, but even then, I don't really MIND owning a few books now and then, and I don't go through them that quickly), and I am suspicious that I would enjoy reading blog feeds in black-and-white "on the go" enough to warrant the price. Personally I think $400 could probably be better spent elsewhere; if they drop it to $50 and make it considerably less bulky looking then I think it'll give books a run for their money, but until then I'm predicting a pretty short lifetime for this. I could buy a pretty nice iPod for $400; that'd be worth a lot more to me than a book reader of any sort. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 01:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You have got that one. I have tried to read a plain text e-book from PG on the Nokia 6600. I would not recommend that to anyone. --Kushal^t 18:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I actually did read Dante's Inferno on my laptop - (1200x800 display) it wasn't good either. ePaper is definitely the way to go for that kind of thing. SteveBaker (talk) 20:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hold on, I read the whole of Great Expectations and all but the last chapter of Anna Karenina on a desktop computer (a lowly 1024 x 768!)

But that was not my point. Does not the Kindle have technical restrictions on how large an SD card it can hold? I am pretty sure it is capped below 4 GB. PG is already past 4 GB. --Kushal^t 21:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, OK! So load a mere 11,000 books today - and about 10 years from now, when you've finished reading them all (at a rate of maybe three books a day), spare 20 minutes out of your busy day to put the other 11,000 on there. (Sheesh!) SteveBaker (talk) 00:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It certainly takes a little getting used to to read books on a computer screen, but I don't have much of a problem with it. I read almost all of His Dark Materials, all but one of the Ringworld books, and 3 or 4 Robert A. Heinlein books in microsoft reader. I've got better places to spend it if I had $400 to burn ($400 for a little e-paper display that displays text files?!) --ffroth 23:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• I want a good e-paper thingy really badly, but I'm just not sure if they're there yet. I wish I could go into Best Buy and actually handle one of these things. I frequently want to read long documents that are available online as PDFs (scientific papers and such), but I don't want to waste the paper and ink to print them out when I often end up just skimming them. An e-book would be perfect for that. This thing just kind of looks clunky, though. Maybe when Apple comes out with one it will be pretty and not suck. --Sean 23:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Cafepress will print and bind a book from a pdf for very very cheap, and you only have to order one- you can set up a store with one item, buy it yourself, then close the store. --ffroth 00:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I tend to copy and paste things off of the internet and into Microsoft Word or Notepad. The only problem with that is that my computer is too heavy to carry around. This means I don't have to go on the internet and look something up, or wait for it to download, which my computer seems to be extra slow at. There are dozens of ways of reading, and this Kindle thing seems to be the worst.~ ~ ~ ~

Text-to-speech on Java using Microsoft voices?

Does anyone know if there are any open-source Java programs/libraries that can use the voices built into Windows XP/Vista?

Thanks!
Sam 18:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The only open-source Java Speech implementation I'm aware of is FreeTTS. It uses its own voices, not the build-in Windows ones, however. -- Unitshead (talk) 10:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Caesar IV

Moved from Entertainment Desk. Rockpocket 19:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I installed the Caesar IV game in my pc and started it. The game started but all I see is white screen though I can hear the music running in the background. When the music stops the Caesar IV cursor appears but the white screen is still there. I can move around the cursor and could even blindly press the menu buttons of the game. But I cannot see anything. What could be wrong? The total display memory of my pc is 64 MB (I got this info from the DirectX diagnostic tool that one gets by typing "dxdiag" in the "run" program in start menu). I got the same problem previously with harry potter 3 but when i modified certain settings like color depth in the .ini file I could see everything again. I tried this with Caesar IV too. But it didn't work. Can you help me out? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.89.21.98 (talk) 09:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

See the related posts on Sierra's forum: [1] --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 21:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Ipod + Limewire

I get some music via Limewire and upload it from there to the Itunes music folder (File, Add Folder to Libary (the folder my Limewire tunes are in)). The songs all display in the main Itunes music folder. My question is, can I transfer these tunes to an Ipod without any problem? I want an Ipod but don't want to spend a few hundred on something that doesn't work for me. (Note: I'm not talking about the Shared Limewire tab that comes up in like the middle of the sidebar, I mean I have uploaded them into the main music folder). Thanks! DoomsDay349 22:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you can transfer any old MP3 no matter what the source to your ipod. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 22:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the iPod article and also (http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html/) the apple site you can find a list of all compatible music-storage files. Basically you should be fine. ny156uk (talk) 23:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

its true ive been doing it for like 3 fuckin years Esskater11 04:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I like the passion in this response - good work! ny156uk (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 22:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Second that --Kushal^t 16:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

unicode characters

how would i type in unicode characters if i didn't have a numeric keypad? is it the same if you typed it in using the number row? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.28.158.210 (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Good question. My new keyboard doesn't have a numberpad either.--SeizureDog (talk) 23:59, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

If nothing else, you could copy and paste them from a page like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft). Pfly (talk) 04:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Start run charmap --ffroth 13:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Computer start up process

Hi, I am currently using Windows Xp opearating stystem.Whenever i turn on the computer a lot of "unwanted programs" start up automatically.My question is :Where are instructions to start up these programs are located? Can I customize edit which programs to start and which programs not to start?202.70.74.161 (talk) 23:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Start > Run > type in "msconfig" > navigate to "startup" tab (last one) > choose the services you want to startup --Fir0002 23:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

msconfig will find some, but you'll find many more using Microsoft's Autoruns program. A word of warning to 202.70.74.161 - this shows many process and services, and you won't know what most of them do. Most will be benign, and necessary, parts of Windows, so if you just zap everything you don't recognise you'll kill your machine dead. Using a decent Antivirus (AVG) and Spyware remover (Spybot) first will clean up a lot of problems, as will uninstalling stuff you definately don't need using the "add/remove programs" thing in the Control Panel. Only if that doens't work would I go removing stuff, either with Autoruns or msconfig, and then only after I'd done a pretty thorough Google search to make surethat what I was removing really was something unpleasant or unnecessary. -- Unitshead (talk) 10:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Spybot has a nice feature if you enable its "Advanced" mode that will show you all startup processes and highlight all of the ones known to be totally unnecessary and the ones known to be totally necessary, and explain what most of them are as well. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 15:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Memory Speeds

Hi,
Can anyone point me to a comparison of memory speeds (approximate read/write speeds in MB/s) which includes a standard 7,200RPM HDD, a 10,000RPM HDD, RAM (something similar to say Corsair 8500 C5D), a USB key (reasonably good one - USB 2.0 obviously) and a 16x DVD. Thanks! --Fir0002 23:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Places like this (http://www.storagereview.com/php/benchmark/bench_sort.php) and tomshardware (http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html). This one compares a 7200rpm hDD with a Raptor HDD which (as i understand it) is a faster setup than normal (http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html?modelx=33&model1=117&model2=138&chart=32). ny156uk (talk) 00:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm especially fond of List of device bandwidths. It's telling you the maximums though - so remember to tone down the numbers it gives in the face of reality! SteveBaker (talk) 00:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Steve - that's perfect! :) --Fir0002 00:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

To my door. I've been good, honest. --ffroth 02:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You're asking Santa to bring you an OC-3072 line for Xmas? Have you any idea how hard they are to gift-wrap? Besides, Reindeer don't like being shoved down sub-street-level service ducting - so delivery is at best problematic. :-P SteveBaker (talk) 15:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Elves? --ffroth 02:07, 13 December 2007 (UTC)