Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 October 3

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October 3

CNET / IT's most influential?

This section seems more appropriate than entertainment for this question: I'm putting together an article on the most influential 'critics' in a variety of fields, people whose opinions in their respective fields hold the most commercial influence, i.e. they often have a direct impact on sales. I'm including Walt Mossberg in the field of technology but need another name from this field. I realize this is opinion-based and thus not entirely appropriate for the reference desk, but I'm unfamiliar with this field; thus my question is whether there is someone at CNET or maybe Wired whose influence is similar to Mossberg's? Wolfgangus 03:23, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say that the only one who comes close to Mossberg in influence would be David Pogue. I mean, you can add a whole bunch of people, but those two are the big ones. --Oskar 09:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

John Dvorak, columnist, and Jerry Pournelle writing at BYTE Magazine were huge influences back in the day. I'm not certain about where they're at today. Tempshill 18:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok - thanks very much for the input. Greatly appreciated. Wolfgangus 07:45, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Finer intervals for Windows vista's parental control

Windows vista's parental control allows you to set the times children can log in to the computer, but only in 1 hour increments. Is there any way (without getting 3rd party software) to set it up in 30 minute intervals instead (i.e. by modifying some registry entrys or something)? 86.41.187.147 03:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Are you really just some kid who wants to registry hack the parental control (to turn it off)??? Anyway, I don't have vista but maybe this might work. Press start, the run. In the prompt type services.msc and in the description field look for a service that have something to do with parental controls. Then if you find it you double click it and make sure it is disabled as default (for your account only! or parents might find out). And then restart the computer and re-login.

I see no reason to assume this Q comes from a kid. To answer the Q, I doubt if you can do what you want directly. I suggest you set the times to allow half an hour more than you want, then just tell your kid which half hour during this time they aren't allowed to use it, and enforce this yourself. The computer should be in a common area, not the kid's room, for safety, in any case. It will probably be easier for you to manually enforce the starting time than ending time or you will get the inevitable "aw, just a couple more minutes ?". StuRat 13:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I hope Vista does not allow all users to modify the registry ... --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 03:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

It does if you're an administrator. And probably it allows you to edit HKCU even if you're limited, because it only affects you.. I don't actually know this though --froth^t 04:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I got a limited account on my Windows XP once. Then I tripped over the power cord and some <root>/Doc&Settings/Username/.../Firefox/... file got corrupted and I could run firefox because I was on a limited account and apparently firefox could not rewrite the bad file with a new one so firefox could not start. Once I made myself an administrator and tried again, it worked. Bottomline: I don't know much about registry but I know that limited accounts have limited access to everything including their own documents and settings. I hope I am not angering anyone. .... --Kushal^{Click me!} write to me 18:34, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Nobody likes running non-root (or at least without the ability to go root, for the nix security model), and microsoft makes it worse --froth^t 19:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Is it Internet Explorer or is it Google...?

For about the last week to 10 days, whenever I use IE to visit Google it takes well over a minute and a half for my hard drives to be scanned... I've tried disabling the Add-ons and deleting the cookies and temporary Internet files but without any positive results. Firefox is a bit quicker to bring up the Google site but still takes longer that IE did 10 days ago. Is this a known issue with a solution already figured out or is Google now including files on my personal computer in the searches and downloads it does online? 71.100.9.205 10:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The only files IE or Firefox should be accessing on your hard drive when you visit Google are the cache files, which shouldn't take a minute and a half, unless you have some sort of plugin or addon that causes it to also index your hard drive. I suspect you are suffering from some other problem, possibly spyware or a computer virus, or even a flaky hard drive. -- JSBillings 12:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The system was shut down during drive compression or defrag but that was after the problem originally occurred. Microsoft Indexing acted pretty much in the same way and it has been disabled so that leaves spyware although I am running Windows Defender so I don't think that is what it is which brings me back to whether Google has become the spy master instead. 71.100.9.205 13:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain Google hasn't installed spyware on their front page. What exactly were you doing when you shut down during drive compression or defrag? That sounds like a more likely culprit. -- JSBillings 13:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

How do you access Google ? If you're using a toolbar, try typing in the address instead, this will tell you if there is extra crap running when you pick the toolbar. If so, just add a favorite/bookmark for the address and get rid of the toolbar. Also, have you tried other search engines ? StuRat 13:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, found it. What seems to have worked is decompressing the drive. Apparently the shutdown was during compression and some files or parts of files were compressed and others were not. I must have done the compression further back than I thought and it was the defrag that was done recently. After decompression, the defrag was done again and now everything is back to normal. Thanks. 71.100.9.205 15:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Why would you compress your operating system's hard drive?... --froth^t 20:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

To see how much space would be recovered. 71.100.9.205 08:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Loop through XML

Hey all,

If I've got an XML file, let's say it contains the actor names and roles. How do I loop through the data and show them in my php file? It's a bit different from showing the XML file with CSS. It's more like using the data in some other formats to be used later. Cheers - Imoeng 14:15, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Check out the section "XML Parser Functions" in the PHP docs. Basically you need to parse the XML, that is, make its data understandable to PHP and be able to put its data into variables, etc. With XML you should always try to use pre-existing parser functions rather than trying to parse XML as a text file (no need to re-invent the wheel, nor try to re-implement an entire standard on your own). Look at the examples in the manual and you can probably find one that can be modified to do what you want. --24.147.86.187 14:39, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that these days with PHP5, the DOMdocument family of functions are the preferred set of functions for this sort of thing. A lot depends on how you're using the XML and the size of the dataset (the problem with the DOMdocument approach is that you need to load the whole XML into memory, while XMLreader will scan the file as necessary). Donald Hosek 20:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Cheap printers

I'd like my printer to be able to print lots of pages for the lowest possible cost without caring much about quality. Any ideas? --Taraborn 18:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Historically dot matrix and the even worse thermal transfer printers are used for this, for applications like cash registers. I don't think there's much market for such low quality printers in the PC printing market anymore, however, so a bubble jet printer may be the cheapest technology you will find for those. StuRat 18:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Taraborn is looking for TCO, though, not just the cost of the printer. If you really mean "lots" of pages then a cheap laser printer may be the best solution because toner is cheaper per page. Googling "printer tco" might help, though I saw lots of links to manufacturers' websites. Tempshill 18:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

An easy way to lower the cost-per-page more than changing technologies is likely to do is to reduce and print 2 or 4 logical pages on each physical page. --Sean 19:06, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to all, really informative answers. I'll follow your advice, Tempshill, and google that. --Taraborn 19:08, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

These days the cost of the printer and paper is negligable compared to the cost of the ink/toner. So...

• Make sure the printer has separate Black and Colour cartridges so you can replace the former without swapping out the latter. You aren't going to run out of coloured ink - so why pay to replace it!
• Check out companies that sell cartridge refill kits and make sure your printer is one of the ones they support - if possible, phone them up and ask which printers work best with their refill technique.
• Bear in mind though that you can't keep refilling them forever because in the case of inkjets, the nozzles fail or get blocked - and in the case of laser printers, the toner drum gets worn/scratched. Both things are designed to last only for the life of one cartridge and so after just a few rounds of refilling, your image quality will start to get worse and you'll have to buy a new, authentic, cartridge every few refills.
• When you are looking at the price of a printer - mentally add on the cost of a dozen print cartridges of the appropriate type before you decide buy it...it is very often the case that seemingly cheap printers are sold at a loss by the manufacturers who get their money back by sticking it to you with huge cartridge costs. Higher priced 'commercial grade' printers are more expensive to buy - but are frequently cheaper to keep fed with ink.
• By all means get a laser printer if you can afford it.
• Print only in monochrome (no colour) and reduce the contrast so you are printing in a lighter shade of grey - not utter black.
• Avoid printing large photos or white text on black background.
• Reduce font sizes and print two pages of text side-by-side on one sheet of paper. This saves ink as well as paper.
• Print on both sides of the page if you can...although I've heard stories that this is not good for laser printers...I have no idea why that might be.

SteveBaker 22:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The fuser units in some printers (that normally don't do "duplex" printing) don't cope well with toner "on the wrong side" but I've never seen a printer that was rated for "duplex" operation have much trouble with this. Yes, definitely print 2- or 4-up and duplex whenever possible.

Atlant 13:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, along the lines of Tempshill's suggestion, get a US$200 B&W laser printer, like the one the Fat Man uses. You could probably get one off eBay for much cheaper than that. Ink jet printers are cheap to purchase--but irritating to own and expensive to refill; they always run out of ink and print very slowly. Toner for a black and white laser lasts a comparatively long time.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 23:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

• Another nice thing about laser printers is that the print is waterproof. --Sean 04:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

A few more hints on reducing printing prices:

• Use Print + Preview before printing to be sure you won't waste paper and ink on a bad print.

• If there only appears to be one page to print, don't pick Print All, but pick Print Pages 1 to 1. Otherwise, sometimes you get a second page with nothing but a header and footer.

• If there are ads or other crap on the page you want to print, use the Print Screen keyboard button, then Edit + Paste in Microsoft Paint, then trim all the crap off the page before printing. Web sites which provide a "Print" button frequently insist on putting ads in the printed version, too, but you can prevent this, using the Print Screen method.

(Or just select what you want and hit "print selection". Print screen converts the stuff into screen resolution raster graphics, which is unspeakably horrible. Epylar 23:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC) )

• I like to feed paper in manually, one sheet at a time, instead of using the paper tray. One reason is that printers frequently seem to jam if you give them more than one sheet at a time. Another is that if the first page isn't coming out right (say one of the 3 colors isn't printing), I don't give it the next sheet, it sends an "out of paper" error to the PC, and I can abort the print immediately. If it has a paper tray full of paper it would keep going, and you can't stop it from printing short of pulling the plug, which isn't a very good option. The next time you plug it in it wants to continue printing, anyway. StuRat 13:50, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Fuel pump cuts out

My brother got a junk yard 2.4L '97 Chevy Cavalier engine, which he put in his Pontiac Fiero. He hasn't yet hooked the engine up to the dashboard computer. When he starts the engine, the engine control module cuts off the fuel pump after 1/4 second. He's trying to figure out why. I suggested that it may be that the ECM wants to get some feedback from the instrument cluster computer, basically a "yes, I am here" signal, and cuts the engine off when it doesn't get it (some type of security feature). What do you think ? StuRat 18:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a wide range of possibilities - but most likely is that the ECU is expecting a fuel pressure signal from somewhere near the carb and not getting it. If the fuel pump starts running and the system does not get up to pressure then the odds are good that a hose fell off and gasoline is squirting all over the floor someplace - so the ECU turns off the pump after only a very short delay if it doesn't see the expected pressure increase. So it's possible that your fuel pressure sensor is broken, or the wire is broken - or it's simply not wired up right. There are perhaps other possibilities - there is a huge variation in what features are supported and how they are dealt with - so it's hard to be definite. SteveBaker 22:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Can you list some of the other possibilities ? StuRat 04:08, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If the ECU thinks that the engine either isn't running - or shouldn't be running, it's going to cut off the fuel supply - that could be anything from a bad crank angle sensor to the ECU thinking that the airbags went off (so there was a crash and we'd better turn off the fuel pump to avoid a fire). I'f disconnect the fuel pump from the ECU, put it on a manual switch and see if the engine will run well when the fuel pump is running OK. Hopefully that'll lead you to some other problem - and eliminating THAT will make the fuel pump work properly with the ECU. SteveBaker 21:03, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Connecting my computer to my TV

Ok folks, here's the dilemma, I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with an "Mobile Intel 945GM express chipset" family video card that I want to connect to my 32" Panasonic LCD HDTV. I'm currently connecting the two via an S-video cable, but when playing some video files I get faint upwards scrolling white fuzz lines on the TV. It's most noticeable on an all-black or very dark screen, and I'm certain they're not present in the video files as they don't appear when viewing on the LCD monitor or on other computers. I'm looking to explore causes and possible solutions. My first suspicion was that they were due to some sort of frame rate mismatch resulting from progressive computer signal and the interlaced TV (the 29.97 vs 30 fps thing). However, a friend suggested they were the result of the poor quality of an S-video connection. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to make my video card output at anything other than 60hz to test the framerate theory. So I've been looking at other options. The laptop has VGA and S-video out (and a firewire port), and the TV has component, composite, HDMI, and S-video in. I've found cheap VGA-component cables but I don't think my video card nor the TV can convert from an RGB signal to Pb,Pr,Y so I would need a fairly expensive transcoder ($150). If this is the best/only solution I'm willing to go with it but I want to be sure that (a) it will solve the problem (b) there are no other cheaper solutions that are just as effective. So that's my question: Any ideas/thoughts on the cause of this fuzz/interference? Any ideas on how to test whether its the result of a frame rate mismatch or the S-video cable quality? Any ideas on solutions to the problem?

Thank you all very much, -Nick 24.82.140.138 22:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The first thing I'd try is a different S-video cable to rule out a problem with that. Exxolon 01:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you may have been on the right track with the scan mismatch. Since the diff in scan rates is 1/33 second, does it take about 33 seconds for the lines to move across the screen ? If so, that would support your theory. Can you change the scan rate or progressive vs. interlaced setting ? If so, give that a try. StuRat 13:26, 4 October 2007 (UTC)