Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 February 17

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 17

A Mystery: Connection losses while streaming

Hi everyone,

I have a bit of a mystery going on with my computer. I was trying to watch House online, for free, the other day, and my connection keeps dropping! My wireless internet connection seems to drop ONLY when I'm streaming videos (i.e. episodes from ABC or FOX.com). Every ten minutes or so, the video will stop, I'll get a 'limited connectivity' message, and I have to disconnect and reconnect to the network for it to work again.

So, in the vein of House, here's the list of symptoms: I'm running Windows Vista, with a Speedstream 6300 modem, running on WPA-PSK with a very long password, and a group key renewal rate of 3600. My computer is a brand new dell XPS m1300 with the standard intel wireless chip.

I've tried changing the channel number, there are no microwaves or 2.4Ghz phones in the area.

Any ideas on a differential diagnosis? In windows XP, I read about a conflict with the Wireless Zero service, but im running vista and there is no equivalent that i can see.

Thanks for the help in advance!--68.173.40.42 (talk) 05:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Is there difference between widgets and applications

Apple had said that iPhone will not open to outside applications. But I think it already has something called widgets right from the start of iphone. Just want to know whether they two are different. Has iphone allowed third party widgets from the start? Are viruses not possible in widgets? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.96.24.87 (talk) 06:51, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Widgets are primarily just HTML, CSS, and Javascript—no real opportunity for viruses, not really full "outside applications." Dashboard widgets though can make function calls to compiled programs, which makes them more flexible but opens up security holes; I don't know if iPhone widgets can do that or not. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 02:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

havin problems with my modem on ubuntu

hi I´ve problems with my Aopen modem on ubuntu. it is a pci device with drivers designed for windows Xp and I can not use it because the Gnome PPP does not recognizes it I need some help o information where to find help thank a lot alejo

PD. I`m from Cuba so, if you want, you can write me on spanish that is better for me —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alejotaller (talk • contribs) 06:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Ola. Turn to Ubuntu Forums, I believe they will be able to get you tips on your specific modem. Good luck! --Ouro (blah blah) 09:42, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Professional Photographic Printing Resolutions

Can anyone tell me if there is a rough formula that can be used to calculate the optimum pixel size of an image for printing high quality digital enlargements using wet photo processing (not inkjet printers)? I have an amount of digital art that I wish to get printed at 18" x 12" or 30" x 20" I'm currently working in Photoshop at around 3000 pixels wide but not sure if this is anywhere near high enough. Thanks for any advice. Kirk UK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.144.69.28 (talk) 07:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It all depends on the viewing distance. A billboard may look perfectly fine from your car but each pixel will correspond to something like a 1cm square, which is clearly not acceptable for a 4×6 print. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

3000 pixels gives about 250 dpi for an A4 print, which is nice. You could probably blow it up to an A3 poster and not feel any special quality reduction. For a 30 x 20 print, this will be ca. 100 dpi, which should just be just about enough. Any stuff above that is printable on larger sheets, as they are conceived to be viewed from a larger distance, so you can live with a lower image resolution. Hope I helped a bit. --Ouro (blah blah) 09:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

This might be of use (http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/print_viewing_distance.html), basically average viewing distance is pretty much equally as important as PPI/DPI . ny156uk (talk) 09:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that, really useful and informative. Kirk UK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.43.102.147 (talk) 12:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

'Collaborative' Web Browsing

Bleh, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Anyway, MSN had some weird plugin (or did they used to have an overlay of Internet Explorer?) that allowed atleast two users to share a browsing experience. Now, it seems that there is an extension for Firefox by the name of Cobrowse: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1469

Unfortunately, this extension seems to be no longer developed (was updated for 2.0 back in Oct '06). Anybody know of something similar, hopefully as an extension for Firefox, which may be better-er? Washii (talk) 09:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want to share everything, you could use Google Browser Sync and give the other person your Google account ID and password. I do not recommend it sharing your Google account password with random people you might meet on AIM. Kushal one 14:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Google Browser Sync is quite a ways over the top...I'm trying to share the actual browsing experience, not any settings. That is, the clients of the Cobrowse server open the same tabs and can all read through them, this in semi-realtime. And what does this have to do with random people on AIM? This is for my girlfriend and I to easily share pages back and forth across individual computers (and I tend to browse faster than her). Note that I'm not looking for anything that would be seen as a Browser synchronizer. Washii (talk) 04:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It turns out that there is an article under basically exactly what I want to do: Cobrowsing. I left a comment there mentioning the extension, though I'd love to see if anybody has heard of anything else like this for Firefox as a simple extension. In the meantime, I'm going to investigate the article's See Alsos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Washii (talk • contribs) 04:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I apologize for the misunderstanding. Coop is currently under active development. Would this work? Kushal 18:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, that's kind of cool. Sort of what I wanted, but it's a lot less cobrowsing, a lot more social networking. Was hoping for more of a real-time dynamic, though drag-n-drop may work for some of it (though I wonder what will happen with many 10s of tabs open). Thank you, Kushal. I might experiment with this in conjunction with the Cobrowse extension. Washii (talk) 04:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

nokia hack

can one bypass the nokia security code?there is a site that says when uve lost ur security code,it can generate a new security code for u.is it a hack or crack or just a flaw? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.49.74.73 (talk) 10:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The security code on your cell phone can, most likely, be compromised. Doesn't Nokia want to reuse the phone if you screw it up and return the phone in a locked state? I am not sure but I am pretty confident that it is not as easy as pressing a sequence of code that will magically unlock every cell phone. I believe it must be lower level than that. Kushal one 14:23, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I remember having such program which could generate a master code, but I think it won't work on newer Nokias. You can download it here, but you must have Java installed. Or, if you don't want to mess with downloads, you can just e-mail me your IMEI and I'll mail back the code. --grawity ^{talk / PGP} 15:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Vista window won't stay open

When I try to open "Computer", "Control Panel", "Recycle Bin", a folder, even a zip file, that window opens, then it closes immediately. The start menu and all the icons on the desktop disappears, then reappear after a few seconds. What can I try? The computer is only a few days old. I am running Vista Home Basic. thanks.118.90.78.205 (talk) 11:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC) I scanned for both adware and virus. The system is reported as clean.118.90.78.205 (talk) 11:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

My best guess is that the Windows Explorer is restarting itself. I can see two reasons (and thus two solutions) for it:

1. Infection; do you have a current anti-virus, anti-spyware (or anti-malware)? Is the firewall turned on?
2. Bad installation; you might need to reinstall Windows Vista.

I am not sure which one it is. My first questions to you are:

1. Do you get any error message(s)?
2. Do you have a current antivirus program on your computer? Which antivirus software do you have? Could you check to see when the virus definitions were last updated and the last time you did a full system scan?

Hope to hear back from you soon,

Kushal one 14:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I thought explorer was restarting at first too, but Task Manager shows explorer.exe stays running for the whole time. No error messages, and nothing in Event Viewer. I just scanned it using Norton 2007 and Spybot, with the latest updates. F (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

How bizzare! Kushal one 23:48, 17 February 2008 (UTC) I seriously have no clue about this one. Unless a wise sage comes up, the best I can say is hold on and keep breathing until Service Pack 1 comes up (some time in 2008 Q1). Kushal 02:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess I have to reinstall Windows then. Thanks F (talk) 03:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Do your windows open back by themselves after closing? Do you have to open them manually? Kushal 18:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Bluetooth headset emulator

Is there a program (for windows (xp or vista)), which could emulate bluetooth headset? (Use computer's soundcard for audio input and output and connect to phone via system's bluetooth drivers). -Yyy (talk) 11:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Extract vector from PDF

[1] At the bottom of page one, there is the logo (and rainbow symbol!) of the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Could someone extract it, as a vector (.svg/.eps) file and upload it to the article? Cheers! Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 13:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to be an embedded vector image, so you're looking for someone with Adobe Acrobat. Sorry, I don't have one but I'm sure you'll find someone here who does. The thing that concerns me here is the possible copyright (don't know what's the UK policy on government things). Admiral Norton ^(talk) 18:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The {{logo}} would seem to be fine. Porcupine (prickle me! · contribs · status) 18:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Inkscape 0.46 will start supporting import of PDF documents. Right now the 0.46 prerelease supports it as well. --Kjoonlee 19:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

PDF2SVG is what you need. Edit it in Inkscape later if needed. F (talk) 23:27, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Inkscape 0.46 prerelease 1 is available free (as in free beer and free speech) and it works very well with the PDF file linked above. --Kjoonlee 15:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

All you need to know is how to ungroup things (ctrl-shift-g) and align them (ctrl-shift-a) and delete them (del). --Kjoonlee 15:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Not neccessarily in that order, though. Oh, if you need to group things again you need to know ctrl-g for grouping as well. Why install a non-free demo, when you can do it in Inkscape? Especially if you have to run Inkscape anyway... --Kjoonlee 15:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Firewire box?

I've heard that the way people record video or video games is though a box with a firewire (1394) port on it? Yet what is this mysterious firewire box? Is it a DVR or a standard cable box? And is their a way to record it onto a external firewire drive or computer? Mine is running OS X Leopard. --Randoman412 (talk) 14:05, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a DV Converter... try Googling it. --70.167.58.2 (talk) 23:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

html on invisionfree

Hi. I'm trying to edit the html on an invisionfree forum. I need to replace <%BOARD HEADER%> with my own html, but it won't let me remove that tag. So now I have two board headers, one is the default one, and one is my custom header. How do I get rid of it or somehow edit the default code? --Anakata (talk) 20:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Writing a Programme

Which language should I learn and use to produce a programme that plots a graph of an 8-bit joystick value against time, and can also export this value as a CSV file. I have a Mac. How to I input the value of the joystick position?

--Cash4alex (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

The main tool used for OS X programming is Xcode, the page of which gives a description of the languages it uses. I don't know how to use it myself, though, and it's rather high-level stuff. Personally when I do Mac programming (mostly little things) I use RealBasic, which is very easy by comparison, and there are ways to make it do very powerful things. Depending on the joystick manufacturer there are different ways to do it in RealBasic. Exporting to a CSV file is trivial in any language, in any case. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 21:35, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Unusual Outgoing Connections Blocked by PeerGuardian

Okay, Heres my story. I wanted LimeWire, So I installed PeerGuardian 2, then installed and used LimeWire. Then I noticed that PeerGuardian was blocking my computer from connecting to various IP addresses belonging to the US Army Research Laboratory, DISA, and NASA roughly every 5 minutes. I'm thinking the only reason that my computer would be doing this is if there was some kind of tracking software (I ran Antivirus and Antispyware with updated definitions, nothing). Really weirded out - I uninstalled LimeWire. -Christopher Kraus (talk) 21:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the answer to your question, but - when you decide to download something, (for arguments sake, some open source software) using peer-to-peer, your program goes out and finds a list of the networked computers which are offering a download (ie. other PTP users), and begins downloading from one or more of those users. In this case, I'm guessing those IP addresses were on the list of users-offering-whatever-you-wanted-to-download, so Limewire was attempting to connect with and download from them. However, PeerGuardian works, I understand, by keeping an updated list of users you would not wish to connect with ie. government bodies, law enforcement organisations and industry associations, in order to protect those users who may choose to download illegal things. So PeerGuardian was protecting you by preventing you from connecting with users on that list. Whether those users were honey-traps to catch people doing illegal things, or some guy who'd installed PTP on his work computer to see the latest episodes of Desperate Housewives is another matter... --Kateshortforbob 22:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

That makes sense, but I've uninstalled LimeWire, and my computer is still trying to connect to the government agencies. This is making me think that it is something tracking-related. --Christopher Kraus (talk) 00:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Like I said below, who cares? The only reason you're seeing that at all is because you're blocking them. Just let PG run in the background :D\=< (talk) 00:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I encourage people to run PeerGuardian all the time because of that kind of crazy stuff.. yes your computer is connecting to (or getting connections from) all sorts of foreign governments and the NSA etc etc, and yes you're communicating with them. Unless you have a quick netstat trigger finger or an excellent firewall, it's almost impossible to figure out what's causing the connections. But who cares, just block them with PG :D\=< (talk) 00:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

It's just weirds me out that my computer didn't do this before I installed LimeWire.--Christopher Kraus (talk) 01:00, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you can say that, based on your original assertion that you "installed PeerGuardian 2, then installed and used LimeWire." If you weren't running PG before running LimeWire, than you really don't know what your computer was doing before. --LarryMac | Talk 18:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

These all run root namespace servers. Domain name system I've run into this before with PG2 as well. Washii (talk) 04:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

And there are really countless other reasons these IPs could be showing up. Random pings? People running P2P apps over a government network? Incorrect info in PeerGuardian's database? Is the program giving any more information or is that all it says? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 04:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

True, but I have a very strong feeling that should Christopher Kraus lookup the specific IPs listed at USARL, DISA and NASA, he would find that they're root DNS servers. He did say that PG2 was guarding outbound connections, where random pings would be inbound. Of course, it could be P2P on government networks, but I've checked the slew of IPs that PG2 has scrolled for those items before, because I had the same sort of visceral reaction until I found out what the IPs were.

I figured that was misinterpretation on the in/outbound, but I don't know how the software works. In any case, why would his computer be connecting to root DNS servers? Generally the ISP's DNS server does that if needed, unless he's running his own DNS server (in which case he'd likely know...) -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 05:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

How long did you have Peer Guardian installed and running before you installed Limewire? Kushal 02:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)