Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 March 9

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March 9

Video Wallpaper

Are there any programs (free) available with no strings attached (spyware, virus etc.) that can play videos as the wallpaper?

VLC media player does it. There's an advanced option, under Video -> Output modules -> DirectX in the preferences. Overlay mode has to be enabled ("Overlay video output" in the Video section, and DirectX must be chosen in the Output modules). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 03:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Of course, DirectX is PC only. But then again, so are spyware and viruses! --24.249.108.133 00:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

crossposting from Help Desk -- IPA font question

Hello. When I look at Wikipedia articles, most of the text is easy to read, in a nice-size Arial font. But IPA pronunciations are not so clear. They show up in a very light serif font, and some of the strokes are so thin that they disappear. Is there any way to change the way IPA text is displayed? (I realize I asked this same question on the Help Desk before, but it was about nine months ago and there was never a response. I'm hoping maybe new people are looking at this now that didn't see the archives.) — Michael J 20:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear about your question not being answered, we receiv many questions here and occasionally we do lose track of one or two. Do you mean then pronounciaton for a place when it is different font style and some letters are bakcwards. As far as I know there is no way to change this, however their could be but as far as I'm aware there isn't. However I could be wrong so keep checking back here within the next 24 hours and another editor may know how to or beable to give you further advice. Regards - Tellyaddict 21:07, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe if I show you a little screen-shot of what I see (from the article on Hawaii):

As you see, the IPAs are hard to read on my screen. — Michael J 21:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how to answer this and I know some very knowledgable people frequent this reference desk, so I'm crossposting here. I'll let the user know, so replies here are fine. — coelacan — 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like bad hinting with bad anti-aliasing to me, try turning off cleartype to see if it's better, and use an alternative font. --antilived^{T | C | G} 04:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

How are those things done? I'm not aware of any place on Wikipedia that lets me choose my font. — Michael J 08:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Turning off cleartype can be found in display properties (can't tell you more information, haven't used Windows for a while), and if yo use firefox, you can force it to use a font in Preferences/Content/Fonts & Colours/Advanced/ and uncheck the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts..." option. Then you can select the font you want in the same window, although I am not quite sure where does IPA belongs... --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Display properties (right click on the desktop, then select properties from the pop-up menu), and go to the Effects tab (I think), and take a look there. This would also be my first diagnosis, that it's an antialiasing problem with the font. Tell us if it helps. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You can choose your font on MediaWiki by using a user stylesheet. The selector in this case is .IPA (from {{IPA}}). If you are using MSIE, you could also try using another browser; since MSIE is the only modern browser which is unable to automatically choose an alternate font when a character is not found in the current font, Wikipedia uses a hack to force MSIE (and only MSIE) to use a different font for IPA. --cesarb 17:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

css selectors

/* Don't display some stuff on the
user page */
body.page-Main_Page #lastmod,
body.page-Main_Page #siteSub,
body.page-Main_Page #contentSub,
body.page-Main_Page h1.firstHeading {
   display: none !important;
  }

1. What is the syntax for specifying the selector for a particular page, in the various namespaces?
2. And more importantly, where is this documented?
3. Also, I can't find any documentation on the body.page selector, nor any of the selectors of the set that it belongs to. Please point me to them if you know.

In my monobook.css, the above syntax works for pages in the main namespace, but doesn't work on my user page, for instance. (I swapped out "Main_Page" with "User_The_Transhumanist_(AWB)", but nothing happened. And yes, I cleared the cache). I also tried a colon after "User". Nuthin'. The Transhumanist (AWB) 04:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Check the page's generated HTML; the class MediaWiki generates for that page is page-User_The_Transhumanist_AWB. --cesarb 17:10, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Out of curiousity...

...does a screensaver count as a program, and make a button appear on the taskbar (which, paradoxically, the user cannot see because of the screensaver)? Sometimes when I move the mouse to turn the screensaver off, I catch a faint flicker of something on the taskbar, which looks like a program button disapppearing. Battle Ape 08:05, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, a screensaver is a program. It might make "a button on the taskbar" because it creates a new fullscreen window to draw on. --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 10:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Screensavers are executables, with scr or exe extensions --froth^T 18:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

IIRC you can, in fact, change any (or nearly any?) executable from a .exe to a .scr extension and plop it into your Windows or Windows\System32 directories and use them as screensavers. However, unless they're designed for it, they won't quit when you move your mouse. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Virus? Trojan? Malware?

I opened a setup.exe, and it obviously was a piece of malware, because it did nothing. When I boot up my PC, it will click (the click sound when you browse folders in explorer) and what seem to be IE windows open for a split second then disappear. This causes the current window I am using to lose focus. This is mildly annoying. After about 5 minutes of this, it will freeze whatever window I have focused, and try to copy a load of files to somewhere, it looks like every file it hits the cancel button, then selects NO on the "are you sure you want to cancel" window, then copies the next file and repeats. Then after about 20 seconds it asks for a disk to be enetered for a certain file. Of course I hit cancel at this point, and it stops. The window I am using is now frozen and must be closed through task manager. After this file transfer behavior, it seems to not do much more. But I left my PC on overnight, and when I woke up there was a guy talking about some product, and a very high pitch (like it's sped up) audio playing too. I couldn't see anything untoward in my task manager. I have tried running hijakthis, ad-aware, and mcafee virus scan. The only thing that was picked up was a trojan by mcafee, but removing this didn't solve the problem, when I virus scan the trojan is back. I've done this both in normal boot and safe mode. Does anyone have any idea what this malicious code is? Searches on google for the symptoms come up with nothing. Capuchin 11:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

No, but you could go to forums with your Hijackthis log and they should be able to solve it. I quite like [1] for these issues. x42bn6 Talk 11:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I did put it through a Hijakthis Parser, and nothing obvious came out of it. Capuchin 11:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You need to run HijackThis, ask it for a log file, and submit it to the forum x42bn6 suggests. Or submit it here. Neil (not Proto ►) 12:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I will do, I am at work at the moment, I'll post in on the board and post a link to the thread here leter on today, I don't want to fill up the reference desk with my log. Capuchin 13:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Posted thread on the suggested forums here: [2] Capuchin 16:44, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I gave it a once-through and I don't see anything (except SecuROM but that's ok if you're fine with it). Are you sure the setup.exe was malware? It could just need a good compatability mode run. Try scanning it with AVG or Avast or some other free av --froth^T 18:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It's definately opening ie windows, most of them to ad pages. I think maybe the file copying that i described was a thing doe by one of these websites. It opens a huge number over about 5 minutes, then stops for about a day. then starts again. very weird. However I dont think it's trying to take over the computer. Capuchin 17:15, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Try checking your windows Scheduled Tasks --froth^T 18:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I would guess the trojan that keeps coming back is the problem. What is it's name ? Try doing a google search for that name and see if there are any solutions documented out there. StuRat 23:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

All these problems? Why don't you use Linux or Mac OS X? --24.249.108.133 00:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)--24.249.108.133 00:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I have 4,000 pdf files on my computer. How do I manage them?

The 4,000 pdf files have a number of subjects (some multiple subjects) so a simple hierarchical directory tree isn't suitable (some would need to be in multiple branches). I would like to write long (ie paragraph) descriptions of each file. Searching isn't that important, just browsing a list of lists then browsing a list of files with paragraphs attached is enough.

The best idea so far is a html page where I just write a paragraph of notes with a link to the pdf file. So apart from this, is there a freeware Windows program that can help me out? Thanks. Mjm1964 11:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Writing 4000 paragraphs is a lot of work. Have you considered google desktop? --Seans Potato Business 12:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I have the same problem, but with several hundred. I categorize them and give them all the best name I can without reading them all, and I also use Yep.. [Mαc Δαvιs] X (How's my driving?) ❖ 16:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC

Check out Smart Folders in Mac OS X. You can build virtual directories that live update according to search criteria like file size, date created, etc. --24.249.108.133 17:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen a good tool that allowed for EASY and PRACTICAL categorizations of PDFs (I have thousands as well). I've thought about writing one for a long time but it is hard work. Sigh. Maybe someone here will come up with one. Things like Google Desktop, etc., are nice for finding SPECIFIC things IN the files or specific files but not useful for large scale categorization by topic at all. Ditto with Smart Folders -- they don't let you do anything based on the CONTENT of the files in any meaningful sense (sorting by size is almost useless for such things). Usually in such cases I end up making custom little database systems to keep track of them but this isn't very practical nor is it generalizable. --140.247.252.156 18:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

You could create a primitive database with a link to the file and then build on this to allow for tags/descriptions/creation date/source etc. This way you could run queries against your thousands of PDFs to locate 'specific' ones quite easily. The setup would take time but ultimately if you have links to the file the acutal location of the file is less relevant, what would become more relevant would be ensuring the file deosn't move once you add the 'file pointer' to the Access DB. I use something similar to this to track procedure-documents in my office. ny156uk 23:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It is terribly time consuming to create such databases from scratch, even if you know what you are doing. And most people don't. --24.147.86.187 00:10, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm a Unix weenie, so my approach would be to grab the text out of the PDFs, and then just grep for things I'm interested in. The setup would be like:

cd MyPdfCollection

for file in *.pdf; do
    pdf2txt $file $file.txt
done

and then if I'm interested in the ones that contain information on, say, Venezuelan beaver cheese, I'd do:

grep -li "beaver cheese" *.txt

and hopefully get some results which would tell me which PDFs to read:

FamousCheesesOfTheWorld.pdf.txt
ThingsThatMightNotExist.pdf.txt
FoodsTastierThanCaerphilly.pdf.txt
FreshOut.pdf.txt

Just using the usual Unix text tools is a lot more flexible than any customized solution. --TotoBaggins 14:37, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[3] has just released a beta version of something that looks really good. It's not freeware and it's for macs so I haven't tried it out but I wish I could! Aaadddaaammm 22:08, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

An application for this sort of thing is what I expected to see in Vista (in fact, it was the only thing I wanted to see in Vista), but as the release date approached it was clear it wasn't going to make it. Microsoft have been at it for over a decade and the project was originally code named 'Cairo'. Its current form is WinFS. This is a file system that is based around metadata, which is precisely what you need. Hopefully this will make it into the next version of Windows, although that's probably wishful thinking... Johnnykimble 19:22, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Serial Key

Suppose I get a software with my laptop which is already installed. and I want to check its CD-key. Where do I go t check what my produts CD-Key is? Do I have to edit the registry for this?

It depends on the software. Some of them show them in plain sight in the registry. Some of them show only hash values in the registry, or hide them. Some of them provide another means of seeing keys without poking around in the registry. And there are utilities for some software that lets you see the keys easily when the software doesn't provide a means to do so. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 17:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Magic jellybean keyfinder will do the job for XP and Office. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 149.135.83.72 (talk) 06:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC).

Just save your .nfo files :D --froth^T 18:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried to install the software on vista. It got installed and it started working but suddenly it showed some error and only the vista serial key was shown and not the office 2007 serial key that I actually wanted. What do I do?

A request...

I'm trying to make Wikipedia's most effective tools as easy to understand and as useful as possible. Please take a look at it and let me know on its talk page how I can improve it. And if there's an especially useful tool that I've missed, please let me know! Thank you. The Transhumanist   17:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Transporting RAM

I need to transport some RAM (not very far, just on foot, more or less) but I don't have any of those static-free pouches they usually sell you it in. Is there a worthwhile substitute? Does it matter much? --140.247.252.156 18:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I doubt that you'll ruin it by carrying it a short distance, but by all means if you have a static-free pouch then use it. And whatever you do, don't touch copper --froth^T 18:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a static-free pouch, as I said. --24.147.86.187 00:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes well I'm urging you to find one if at all possible because that's the ideal solution. --froth^T 18:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Anything which prevents static buildup or averts a static differential across any component or lead will help. The anti-static bags have a coating which conducts electricity, so anything consistently conductive would work. How about wrapping it in clean aluminum foil? Even a small paper bag would offer some protection. —EncMstr 19:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We seem to be missing an article on antistatic bag. I'd put it on a small conductive metal box; any static charge will migrate to the outside of the box, leaving its inside free of static. --cesarb 19:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! --24.147.86.187 00:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Just don't use fibre or plastic. The simpliest way is to simply wrap it in paper.--155.144.251.120 04:20, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

History of the computer interpreter

When was the first computer interpreter designed and who designed it? Does it predate the computer compiler?

Computer programming in the punch card era? Not 100% sure that's the first, but it gives you a start for your homework if nothing else. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 03:32, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Backing up a music library to DVDs

My father wants to back his entire music library (~40 GiBs) to DVDs. Problem is, you can't just copy the folder because it is to big. Is there a good way to "segment" the folder into 4 GiB chunks so that it would be easy to do this? Oskar 22:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The big trouble is actually getting it back again in a couple of years. I would try to 'naturally' break it up into directories that are the right size, such as by musician, date, etc. --Zeizmic 23:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

iTunes will do this for you. Just click burn disc and follow the on screen directions.--Ryan 03:58, 10 March 2007 (UTC)