Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 June 13

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June 13

Javascript and Opera

Although I have Javascript turned on in Opera some sites do not recognize it. Firefox has sometimes the same problem. Should I stick to IExplorer? What can I do? GoingOnTracks (talk) 00:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Opera never gets any love. However, what problem do you have with Javascript in Firefox? We are very eager to help but it helps if you could provide more information. Is it a specific website that you are having problem with? Kushal (talk) 00:28, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that means that the problem with Opera is not solvable.

www.alternate.de didn't show properly in Opera or Firefox some weeks ago. GoingOnTracks (talk) 00:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Please don't get me wrong. Opera is a fine, polished, and rock-solid application. Its just that most people have a bias for a certain application (and change is hard). When I think of Opera, I remember that silly old "banner ad". With Firefox 3 release candidate 2 out, I don't think anyone needs to work with any proprietary web browser. I did not want to sound absolutely dumb by asking which OS you are on (I assumed you are on a version of Windows, since you mentioned Internet Explorer --by the way, there is a lot of hype about IE8, but I am getting off-track). It could well be you are on one of Mac OS, Mac OS X etc. I have a small problem with kantipuronline.com on my mac with nightly builds of Firefox 3. This problem does not exist on my Windows machine with the release candidate. Therefore, it could be a platform specific problem. Please tell us which OS you are on. Kushal (talk) 22:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I prefer to work with Opera or Firefox (for the plug-ins). I am on Windows. And I know of a further site where Iexplorer works fine but Opera or Firefox not. In this one, when you want to place a bid, you have a rule of tools to format the text. In the IE it works, and in the other two it will not load. GoingOnTracks (talk) 13:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Increasing my paging file

I have Windows XP SP 3 installed, with 1GB of RAM and 1.5GB for my paging file now. If I increased my paging file by 500MB, what adverse effects can I expect? Also, I have about 60 processes running in the background after my computer starts up from shut down (plus my browser, and other programs I use a lot like mIRC or iTunes). Is 60 too high, and if so, how can I be sure I don't turn off something at start up I really need? My task bar on the lower right only has 9 icons at startup, and most of that is essential like mousepad, McAfee, and volume control. My goal is to make my computer run faster without buying new RAM.--十八 01:35, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

To see exactly what your processes are and what they are doing - have a look at the excellent Microsoft utilities at sysinternals. With 1G of RAM it depends what you're doing on your computer - you should not be paging all that much if you're using it for lightweight tasks; if you're into modern games or high-res digital editing for example, then yes you're going to need a larger swap file, or more RAM which is cheap nowadays! Sandman30s (talk) 04:48, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It might slow down a little bit due to the hard drive being slower to access than the RAM. You can tell this right away if it's constantly accessing the hard disk. A couple of ways you can speed your computer up: 1) defragment the hard disk; 2) defragment the virtual memory paging file by turning virtual memory off, restarting, turning it back on, and restarting again.

Buying RAM can do a lot more to speed your computer up, so don't be too closed to doing so. One big thing that I've found is bumping up your swap file if you're low on memory usually makes it go slower, because it will be constantly accessing the hard disk. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ram Cleaner

What exactly does a ram cleaner? Which data does it clean? Could it delete what you have saved? --Omidinist (talk) 06:03, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd never heard of a RAM cleaner before, so I googled the term. Those programs look pretty dodgy to me. There was a big scandal a decade ago when people noticed that the best-selling "RAM compression" program SoftRAM95 actually did nothing at all. That product at least claimed to do something that made technical sense (make a compressed swap file in RAM), though it didn't actually do it. The CyberLat RAM Cleaner page seems to make no technical claims at all about the product they're charging $5 for. I doubt it's worth the money. -- BenRG (talk) 14:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

A typical "RAM cleaner" works by allocating a huge amount of memory. This forces the operating system to discard things like the disk cache and other caches (pre-rendered fonts, and possibly some other things), and move inactive programs and memory areas to the swap file. Occasionally this will speed up programs you start after running the cleaner, but it's far more common for it to slow everything down. Unless it crashes your computer, it won't delete anything important. --Carnildo (talk) 21:33, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm a little curious what a RAM cleaner would be expected to do. Every time you restart the computer, what is in RAM gets discarded anyway. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:24, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows Media Player 11 codec missing

I try to play .avi files using my version of Windows Media Player 11 on my new laptop but everytime I try, there appear to be missing codecs. I've just installed Media Player Classic but it does not work. Not sure where I can download the codec, what can I do? --Blue387 (talk) 06:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Try this? http://www.cccp-project.net/ It's built to play .avi(s) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.156.83.85 (talk) 06:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You might also try the K-lite codec pack with Media Player Classic, if you haven't already. It can usually fix this problem. Leeboyge (talk) 21:39, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I also recommend K-lite codec pack, it may be hard to believe, but with that codec pack and the program The KMPlayer, to this date, I played 100% of the "regular" media files I encountered (and I do a lot of internet browsing, exotic formats, etc...), you can also try MPlayer and VLC (with the codecs installed), if none of them work, it is very, very likely that that media file is currupted or it is not valid... (or requires an exotic codec...) SF007 (talk) 03:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows XP Service Pack 3

Ever since I downloaded this a while ago...I, for some strange reason, can no longer see some special characters. Why is this & how can I get them all back?

Well, what are these "special characters"? If for example they're Hangul (and thus special to non-Koreans), then I'd start by checking if you have a Korean font installed. Morenoodles (talk) 09:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Compare java performance between Unix and Windows

I know that java programs perform faster in Windows than Unix. And tuning can narrow the gap. But is there any document comparing java performance between these two OSs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Isaiah5818 (talk • contribs) 08:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

ePSXe

Now that I have gotten ePSXe to work, I need to know where I can download games for it. Interactive Fiction Expert/Talk to me 09:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, those games are more or less illegal, and we can't point you to anywhere. However, there are very good search engines out there on this interweb thing I hear about. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

It works just fine at reading Playstation CDs in your CD-ROM drive. You can usually get games at extremely low prices from garage sales and used-game stores. You could also try eBay, but the prices usually aren't as good. --Carnildo (talk) 21:35, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hacking an .exe file

Hi. I have an .exe file (the executable of the game Deadlock: Planetary Conquest). All the text of the game is stored in it as plain text. I suspect that it also contains all the data in plain binary. I would like to make changes in this data. I have a hex editor, but I have no idea where are the relevant pieces of data located. Is there any effective way to find out? For example, is there a way to monitor which locations of the file are accessed at given points in time when I run it? Thanks. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 09:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Try ResHacker or newer XN Resource Editor. --grawity 12:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, the numeric data I'm after doesn't seem to be among the resources these programs deal with. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 12:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I've hacked .exe files using a Hex editor (beav, in my case). The only changes I was able to make was changing text strings to others of identical length (possibly including blanks). Any additions or deletions presumably threw off address offsets used in the program and would cause a crash. Still, I managed to have some fun. For example, I changed the standard Windows Free Cell game into Nazi Free Cell: "Nein, Das Move ist Verbotten !" StuRat (talk) 23:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks to me like you need the Cheat Engine. — Shinhan < talk > 05:02, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. This certainly looks interesting, but I haven't been successful in trying to use it for my purposes. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:46, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

editing with Mac OS X Preview

Preview (software) tells us that Preview is Mac OS X's application for displaying images and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents (my emphasis), but clearly it does more: you can use it to resize, to fiddle with color balance, etc. (I'm talking about Preview version "4.1 (469.1)", as supplied with OS X 10.5.2.) So can you also copy and paste selections? There is a copy option (rectangle, ellipse, lasso), and I use it to copy. I then move elsewhere in the same image and either (a) click the cursor and choose the "paste" option or (b) define a rectangle with the cursor and choose the "paste" option and -- either way, nothing seems to happen. Or anyway what was red before is not overwritten with yellow. There's no error message, and I am offered the option of undoing my paste, but the whole operation seems to achieve nothing.

Can Preview do this? I can hardly complain if it can't; but if it can't, then just out of interest what is "paste" for?

If Preview can't do this, do I have any freebie options other than Gimp? (Gimp had a rather disorientating interface the last time I tried to give it a go.) Morenoodles (talk) 09:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You might have a look at Seashore. I don't recall exactly what Preview can do, but it's pretty lightweight. Fletcher (talk) 13:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! I've just spent about two hours battling with it to get it to do something I could do in five minutes with Windows-95-era Lview (as installed from one diskette), but that's progress in software, isn't it, heh heh. Anyway, it did work in the end. -- Morenoodles (talk) 08:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

web languages

Hello, Can anyone please tell me the difference between ASP, .NET and ASP.NET? Thank you in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.255.171.250 (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

ASP is Microsoft's old web scripting thing. .NET is Microsoft's name for a framework of program libraries, inter-program communications, and such. ASP.NET is ASP with the .NET framework. You can see ASP, .NET, and ASP.NET if you are actually interested in learning about these topics. -- kainaw™ 12:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Which filesystem I can choose

My requirement is that, data write / read to disk should be as fast as memory write / read. This filesystem can also take the advantage of a fact that at any point of time memory will not be filled up by writes too quickly, before it is getting written into disk. If at all this fails, graceful degradation is expected in this case.

I would like to use this filesystem as a RDBMS datastore.

Or, simply caching would solve most of these problems? :) --V4vijayakumar (talk) 13:41, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Because of the structure of the motherboard itself, a disk will be slower than memory. You may find a motherboard with some weird configuration where memory is as slow as disk access - but that would make memory pointless. Everything could be done on disk. The best answer I can give is to use a hardware RAID0 (striped) with a lot of fast drives that have a good on-drive cache. I do this for my database servers. I use the maximum number of drives, all striped. Each drive has a large cache. So, disk read/write is very fast. Of course, it isn't as fast as memory. So, I avoid disk access by maxing out the memory. I specifically asked all the server dealers "What server do you sell that has hardware raid and the most memory possible?" Now, I can do rather large table joins without ever swapping to a disk. -- kainaw™ 13:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, RAM caching is normally handled independently of the file system. Some file system drivers may do a better job than others of laying out data on the disk for faster reading later, but even in the best case this will be far slower than reading from the RAM. If all your frequently accessed data fits in RAM, the choice of filesystem shouldn't matter much. This should be doubly true of a database store, which will probably maintain its own virtual filesystem inside a single huge file, making the container filesystem basically irrelevant. (But I know next to nothing about databases.) -- BenRG (talk) 14:07, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems to me the OP is talking about a high-end file system. Proper RDBMS's don't use one large file; rather their datafiles are split not only physically but logically at the table and index level at least, for a very simplistic summary. If you're talking about data getting written as fast as memory, it doesn't quite do this; database writes are flushed to datafiles and "redo" logs asynchronously. So if you use a high-end disk subsystem such as EMC, which uses fast disks and ridiculous amounts of disk cache, these writes are performed from cache to disk asynchronously therefore allowing other operations to happen in memory while disk writes are going on in the background. EMC works well with the Veritas File System (vxfs) but this is all high-end stuff really. Sandman30s (talk) 22:58, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

lan networks

Hi...we hav a lan in our hostel with which about a hundred comps are connected...I'm planning to create a sort of bulletin board thru which anyone can be able to post any news or event list also it must be able to work like a website...is there any way to do so?? if yes how??? plz explain in detail...any link which can help will be gr8...thanking u all in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piyushbehera25 (talk • contribs) 15:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Note: If you need very high performance, use a separate computer for this.

1. Install a web server, such as Apache with PHP and MySQL (or simply XAMPP)
2. Install bulletin board software, such as phpBB, punBB or [UNB].
3. RTFM.

--grawity 18:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

stereo sub

this might not fit in the computer section but its the closest thing to technology matters. I blew the sub on my stereo and am wondering how specifically to fix it. yes i know i can take to a proffessional at some store or whatever but we happen to not be going into the city for quite awhile. i can't go one day without listening to it. what should i do about it?Jwking (talk) 19:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

HOW did you break it? They aren't something that's easily broken, mechanically... --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

If this is a traditional speaker with a paper cone attached to an electromagnet, the paper cone is probably torn. You could patch the cone, I suppose, but it will never sound as good as new. It might sound good enough, especially with the volume low, until you can manage to get a replacement, though. StuRat (talk) 23:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You could cover the tear in the cone with hillbilly chrome and it might not rattle, but chances are, you'll need a new speaker. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Game resolution suddenly decides it doesn't like me.

I have a 1280x800 laptop and I'm trying to play Age of Empires II. I've had the game for ages and it's always played fine, filling the whole screen no matter what resolution I set it on. Today it screwed up, filling a small rectangle in the middle of the screen, and even if I play it on the highest resolution it can go (which is the 1000xsomething; it won't let me click the 1280 one) there's still big black lines to both sides.

I noticed it when I booted the computer up - randomly one of the 'Windows resuming' screens was small like that. It's annoying me, I haven't added, changed or taken anything away, it's just 'happened'. What's going on and how do I slap the game back to working properly?

Lady BlahDeBlah (talk) 21:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Under Accessories | System Tools use the System Restore to restore your system to a point in time when the game last worked. Sandman30s (talk) 23:02, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Nope, that's not fixing it. I don't think there was a point for that time Lady BlahDeBlah (talk) 23:08, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You said "Today it screwed up" so restore your system to yesterday, or last week! If that doesn't fix it then you have a hardware problem I'm afraid. Sandman30s (talk) 23:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I'd guess the graphics card needs to be replaced. But, just to make sure it's not the monitor, try hooking up an external monitor. StuRat (talk) 23:43, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Before you rush out to buy a replacement laptop, have a close look at all of the display settings before you start the game.

Also, in both XP and Vista I have seen it where the screen resoluton is set to something like 800x600 by default when it cannot read your personal settings because you are logged out of your user account (it was annoying as hell because it moved my icons around to fit the new resolution). All these different modes are stored somewhere in the registry and are built up each time the computer encounters a new setup like being in "Windows resuming" mode for the first time. Looking in the registry on my Vista PC, I stringly suspect it is something to do with the data stored in HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\VIDEO, but I'm not sure what you should do here. You could try the searching the Microsoft knowledge base, or maybe someone who know more about the different screen resolution will add further answers here.

Edit: BIG REGISTRY WARNING... deleting the wrong thing in the registry can seriously mess up your PC - so much that you will have to reinstall Windows. The registry editor has no "are you sure?" questions and has no undo feature. Use it with great caution. Astronaut (talk) 18:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Photo story 3 temporary files

Hello I am using Photo Story 3 on Windows XP SP2 on a Toshiba Satellite M55-S135. I am working on a project right now but for some time, the application is not responding to Windows. I was wondering if I could salvage any work out of it. Does it save its files in a special format (like Audacity does)? If yes, where can I find the temporary files? The project contains voice-over which I will have difficulty in persuading the people to do the re-recording. (I was dumb enough to do the recording on Photo Story, so I have no back up of the audio.) Please help. Kushal (talk) 22:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Kushal (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Never use Microsoft software for anything of importance. That's my general advice. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 03:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ubuntu/Debian?

From a desktop user's perspective, what are the main differences between the two distributions? (I know Ubuntu has a faster release schedule). Fletcher (talk) 22:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Debian and Ubuntu are very, very similar because Ubuntu is a fork from Debian. Aside from the release cycle, the ideology is different. Ubuntu seems to be focused on helping non-technical users and achieving mass market appeal [1], while Debian focuses on developers (for its "unstable" releases) and servers (for its "stable" releases). Debian is very focused on making sure most software is free software (developing the DFSG); while Ubuntu it is prepared to make some compromises with nonfree software vendors if this helps the end user. This may be because of their different revenue streams: I think Debian's main funding is through SPI, a trust for funding free software projects; while Ubuntu is funded by Canonical, a company selling software support. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, ubuntu is probably more suited for most users, more easy to use, more easy to install some software, more hardware support, more easy to get support (since is probably the most used distro), and all that stuff... unless the question of "Free Software" really matters to you, you sould be better with ubuntu... (just my personal opinion!) SF007 (talk) 03:36, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I hear that Debian is much more stable and has better performance (not newbie-friendly, though). Ubuntu development is funded by a company that makes a living from people having trouble with it, so I don't trust them to make any sort of effort to make things work. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 21:18, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't share that kind of conspiracy-theory-minded point of view; in fact I have had a good experience with Ubuntu, which has gained a reputation as one of the best or the best desktop linux experiences. Canonical doesn't have a monopoly, so intentionally making Ubuntu difficult would simply drive customers to another distribution. I posted my question in consideration of the fact that Debian continues to officially support my architecture, PowerPC, while Ubuntu maintains only an unofficial port. Can anyone elaborate on how Debian is more difficult? Is it simply more work on the command line (which I don't mind), or does it really require a lot more knowledge to get it working? Fletcher (talk) 14:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Mac OS X - Raw data to /dev/audio using 'cat'

On UNIX computers, I sometimes like to mess around and cat data files to the audio device to see what kind of industrial music I can produce. How can I do the same thing on Mac OS X? I have tried using /dev/audio, /dev/dsp, and /dev/mixer, but they all produce the error "Operation not supported". I have heard that OS X has a higher-level audio system than /dev/audio, so is there another device I should try to cat or pipe to, or should I just pipe to a program like mpg321 and save the hassle? Freedomlinux (talk) 22:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

This program looks usable. ~~ N (t/c) 07:37, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't think that's what the OP wants, as he/she wants to pipe any random file to /dev/audio to listen to their funky sound (mostly static for compressed files, but the .ko file I had lying around had a few tones in it), not play music files through the command line. To the OP, have you tried sudo cat instead of cat, in case it's a permission thing? --antilived^{T | C | G} 09:53, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

If it's anything like the common UNIX play command, it can accept raw audio files, for the same effect. ~~ N (t/c) 20:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Nickptar, while that is not my preferred solution, I may be able to do some creative piping to achieve the same result using your program. I suppose the problem lies in the abstraction of the sound system normally used by /dev/audio. Antilived, I do believe I was root when I tried to do this, due to the inherent administrative nature of accessing the hard drive and outputting to the system audio device. Thank you both for your tips, I will try and see what I can do. Freedomlinux (talk) 00:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)