Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 July 28

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July 28

Looking for a very specific firefox plugin

Are there any firefox plugins that will rotate through tabs, and refresh the page? Say, I open up My Watchlist, Recent Changes, New Articles, and UAA, turn it on, and press F11, and it will refresh the tabs and cycle through them every few seconds, almost as a pseudo-RSS feed.. Preferably, switching to a tab, refreshing the one after it, and then switching to the newly refreshed page. If not, does anyone care to write one? >.>

I don't know about any Firefox plugin to do this kind of thing, but assuming you are using windows, you can easily write a script using something like autohotkey or autoit to do the work. NoClutter 23:28, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Linux. And it would be running on a fairly old system, a slot loading iMac --L^ie! 02:52, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Visual Basic to Python converter

Is the purpose of the Visual Basic to Python converter to provide a means of generating an uncopyrighted version of an author's algorithm? Clem 02:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean this? http://vb2py.sourceforge.net/ No, I don't think it is, but lots of people who have programmed in Visual Basic would like to convert it to Python without further work. The forum on that site says it has been hacked and all the posts destroyed. I hope this isnt due to luddite Python programmers. 80.3.42.160 13:44, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

luddite Python programmers? Don't you mean luddite Visual Basic programmers, who might now have a legitimate need to protect their algorithms from copyright theft? And for that matter why would anyone want to convert an algorithm from Visual Basic to Python in the first place except to generate a disguised form of the algorithm which can be claimed is original and has no copyright? Clem 14:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

What you are saying could be interpreted as paranoia. I expect nearly everyone who uses it will be converting their own code. 80.0.98.113 16:18, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why converting it to Python would encourage copyright infringement. If the coder in question has the original source, it can be easily re-used however one wants in VB, Python, whatever. If VB programmers don't want others to use their code, they shouldn't distribute it in the clear, but should put it inside encrypted libraries, etc. --24.147.86.187 22:34, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what language is used, the algorithm remains the same. Most copyright notices in source code reflect this. 86.151.216.153 20:45, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

How to set up eth1 to get a connection with an encrypted network?

I'm using Debian Sarge -- the networking applet doesn't really work. I am able to connect to a PPPoE network at home, using pon, but I haven't managed to connect to an ordinary DHCP wireless network (with or without a key). I was able to associate the key to eth1 using iwconfig, but that in itself doesn't get connectivity -- I don't know how get it to make the DHCP requests. --Trovatore 04:35, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Found the answer myself: the command is /sbin/dhclient, just in case anyone else needs it. --Trovatore 04:42, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Checking 64-bit processor

How I can check that whether my processor supports 64-bit applications or not?? is there any command line instruction in Windows XP for the same.

just look up the type of processor you have here. That said, it doesn't matter, since Windows XP is 32 bit, unless you're running the 64 bit version, in which case you'd already know. Unless you intend to switch to linux or buy another copy of Windows, you won't be able to use the applications at all. That said, I'm not really sure why you'd want to. 64 bit isn't really all there yet... --L^ie! 05:41, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Despite the problems, there are numerous advantages to using 64 bit versions of Windows. That said, I'm doubtful anon is aware of any of them Nil Einne 23:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Download CPU-Z and run it, it should open with the CPU tab selected, if x86-64 is listed under Instructions, then your processor supports it. Cyraan 18:25, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

QoS on Thompson SpeedTouch 585

can anyone help me with QoS on this router..i mean i don´t know anything about Qos, but would like to use it to limit user´s bandwith on a network by ethernet port to a certain percentage of overall bandwith, i can log in and look at default policies but that´s about it i read some CLID commands for it and got more confused...we have quite a few computers on network both wireless and eth cabled and would like to really use this and not have to get a server to do our bandwith monitoring and usage stuff

i am using PuTTy btw, if that helps or if it can use scripts to modify this automatically??

Thanks in Advance Roger @ IntraRed 07:51, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Web programming languages

I know that the three most basic web programming languages are HTML, JavaScript and CSS. What comes next? PHP? I know about AJAX, but I think it's a combination of several programming languages.

HTML and CSS aren't really programming languages. The prominent web programming languages are probably PHP, Perl, JavaScript, and Java. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:16, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

SQL is extremely widely used for database interaction. Again, maybe not strictly a programming language — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 20:18, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure its Turing-complete, which would make it a programming language. --Oskar 19:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

As Wirbelwind stated, HTML is not a programming language. It is a markup language. The monstrous difference is that commands in a programming are expected to be performed exactly as expected. Commands in a markup language are performed (or ignored) however the presentation program sees fit. To add to Wirbelwind's list, Ruby continues to gain momentum. As for Bewildebeast's common on SQL. PostgreSQL and MySQL are two very popular database engines (mainly because they are free). Most big websites require a database to go along with the programming. -- Kainaw^(what?) 20:38, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Well i've no idea what defines a language V other coding tools but whatever the big ones I hear about are... VB.NET, ASP.NET, C++, SQL and everywhere i turned just lately people seem to want to say 'ruby on rails' (whatever the hell that may be). ny156uk 23:36, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Someone doing web programming may need to know about XML (and DOM, SAX, XPath, XSLT), XHTML, and web services in general. Much work has already been done with portals and content-management systems, and rather than working from scratch a web programmer may be working with Sharepoint, Joomla, Zope (Python), etc. etc. etc. Java was mentioned but specifically J2EE (JSP, servlets, JSF, JBoss, Tomcat) for some web applications. Knowing about web servers will help too: IIS and Apache in particular. (I guess the Web development article would have been a good reference here. Note in particular the difference between client-side and server-side programming.) All the better if you have some familiarity with Agile software development, code repositories such as subversion, deployment tools like Ant, unit testing. Transaction processing, security, testing, search engine optimization ... and business skills in basic finance, project management and business analysis. I know the context is "web programming languages" but for a web developer, this all can certainly be "what comes next". iames 15:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

AVI to DVD

Hi all:

Is there any easy way to burn a .AVI file to a DVD, which could then be viewed by a standard DVD player? I don't think it should be too hard, since it's the analogous process to making a music CD out of mp3 files... p.s. Only free software please! Thanks! --Waldsen 20:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

What kind of computer are you using? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.195.124.101 (talk • contribs).

Yes, but you need to have a drive that can write to DVDs. And odds are, if you have a drive that writes to DVDs, it probably came with DVD-writing software. So my guess is that you don't have such a drive. But if you do, tell us what type of computer you are using. --24.147.86.187 00:37, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I do have a DVD Drive, and I use Windows XP. I have Nero software, however, the option to "burn video" asks for .ifo, .vob and .bup type files. I only have a .AVI. I either need to convert the format or find some other program that can create a video DVD directly from the .avi file. --Waldsen 01:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I recommend DVD Flick, their main site is down at the moment, but you can find it under "Mirror download" located here. Cyraan 19:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

The easiest way is to convert your AVI to VOB. Any DVD-burning program that will take the AVI (i.e. iDVD) will convert it to VOB anyway. I'm not sure what software does this for Windows, though. --66.30.5.140 20:03, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Several versions of Nero support transcoding to VOBs. If your Nero comes with Nero Vision Express then is thould be possible Nil Einne 23:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Resizing partition

I just switched to Ubuntu from Windows XP and I'm trying to move files over while shrinking my XP partition and growing my Linux (ext3) partition. I've successfully shrunk the XP partition but using GParted the resize option is grayed out for the Linux partition. I also tried unmounting it, but I get "Could not unmount dev/sda2: The partition could not be unmounted from the following mountpoints: '/'. Most likely other partitions are also mounted on these mountpoints. You are advised to unmount them manually." No other partitions are mounted on "/", I don't know how to unmount manually, and I am somewhat afraid of what unmounting means for my data. So could someone address that final concern and/or help me figure out how to resize this partition? Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 20:18, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

First let's define what "unmount" means: it means that the operating system lets go of the device, and stops providing access to the files on it. All filesystems are unmounted every time you shut down the operating system, and a removable device (like a CD-ROM) is always unmounted before it's removed. It's nothing destructive. The root filesystem (mounted on "/") can't be unmounted, because it's in use. The only way to "unmount" the root filesystem is to shut down the operating system. From your description it sounds like GParted can't resize a filesystem while you're using it. So you need to either run GParted under an operating system booted from somewhere else (like a Live CD), or use a different resizer that works on a filesystem that's mounted. That would be an "online" resizer, like ext2resize. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 23:01, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought it's possible to umount / ... there's just no permanent storage medium and the OS can do fine without it. You'll have a lot of problems if you try to umount the swap while it's in use though. --froth^t 23:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Every running process has a current directory. You can't unmount a filesystem if any process's current directory is on that filesystem. Therefore as long as there are processes, there must be at least one mounted filesystem. A running operating system with no processes is possible (the kernel could still route network packets - I've heard of this being done with BSD). With initrd there is a time during the boot sequence where the initial root filesystem is moved out of the way and the main root filesystem takes its place, so you could call that an instance of "unmounting the root", but it doesn't leave you with no root, just a different one. Those are the only 2 cases I can think of where you might say the OS is doing fine after a root unmount. They're both irrelevant here. There is an option I didn't mention before though: instead of trying to unmount "/", remount it in readonly mode (mount -o remount,ro /). That might allow GParted to succeed. If not, there's always the Live CD option. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 00:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it would work at all: Assuming that you have your XP partition at the start and you've shrunk that, so now you've got a XP partition that goes from 0 - n and a ext3 partition that goes to n - end. Now you've shrunk the XP partition again, say by 1000 blocks, so now you've got XP partition going from 0 - (n-1000), blank space from (n-1000) - n and ext3 partition from n - end. But, you cannot move the starting point of a partition (unless you copy everything out, delete partition and create it again), so now you've got this useless space between the 2 partitions that you can do nothing about. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:52, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

That's a good point. The filesystem to be grown must be moved down first, so it starts at the beginning of the free space. The move is actually the easy part, from a programming point of view, since the filesystem's internal structure can be ignored - just copy it bit for bit and adjust the partition table to move the "start of partition" to the new location. I don't know if any tool to do it actually exists though. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 02:30, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip about moving it. From Windows I used Acronis Disk Director to move and resize the ext3 partition and it worked fine. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 19:54, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Verizon vs. Cable

Hello Everyone!

Recently, a Verizon FIOS tech came to my door and explained some stuff about switching from Optimum (TV, Phone, and Internet) to the fiber optic FIOS network. He explained that the internet will be faster, TV will be clearer, and the phone will be more reliable with lower prices. Now I know he was just trying to sell me something, so I figured I'd ask the tech gang at Wikipedia for some advice. Is Verizon's FIOS service better than Optimum's? What are the pros and cons of each one. Thank you very much for the help!

MAP91 22:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC) P.S.- I am located on Long Island, NY (Nassau County) if that pretains to my question.

YES. Yes yes yes yes yes. If you have fios support in your area and you can afford the outrageous price then go for it! If you have a good broadband plan then you can get several MB/s (which is epic speed)- remember though that basically everyone with cable is bottlenecked by their internet service plan, not by their connection, so there could be cheaper room for improvement by just getting a better connection from your cable isp. But cable companies are evil and they suck you dry- easily thousands of dollars per year for a decent cable package and cable internet- for outdated technology and unreliable service. Don't buy his claim of clearer TV though, that doesn't even make sense. Maybe more HD channels than cable but normal tv won't look a bit better --froth^t 23:37, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Fiber is faster than cable (from the experiential point of view), but be careful that the deal doesn't include any catches. In my area, fios is just rolling out. In the fine print, they literally cut your copper phone wires so you have absolutely no connection to the phone company. This is non-negotiable. Some of their plans require that you buy internet, phone, and tv services from them. Also, the rates may skyrocket after the first 3-12 months. This is coming from someone who wants fios service. 170.115.251.13 15:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

beginning networking question

When troubleshooting a network connection, it is sometimes necessary to check to make sure the firewall is not causing problems. My question is, how is it possible to use a firewall to help troubleshoot a network connection? This was an examination question that I chose to skip, and now that the exam is over I am coming here to ask for answers or help on where I can find hints. Thanks. NoClutter 23:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

If the firewall logs connection attempts, you can test that an app is working.