Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 June 23

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June 23

1080p concerns

There seems to be something wrong with my T.V. somehow. I have an hd dvd player and set it to 1080p but for some reason won't play hd dvds. i tried to set my 360 and ps3 to 1080p mode but it wont go to that quality. is there some reason y, something i missed? Its a sony 46" full hd tv. Jwking (talk) 01:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Which type of output are you using? Some TVs don't support 1080p via component video cables. And which particular Sony TV is it (ie. model #)? -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:03, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a full hd sony tv thats 46". the model number is kdl46s4100. either that one or the other one only instead of an "s", its a "w".Jwking (talk) 02:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Some questions to the original poster:

1) What type of cables are you using to connect your HD DVD player to the TV ?

2) What's the make and model of the HD DVD player ?

3) When you say the HD DVD player "won't play", what do you mean exactly ? Do you get some type of error message ? Is it possible you have a BLU-RAY or standard DVD in it instead of an HD DVD ?

4) When you said you "tried to set my 360 and ps3 to 1080p mode but it wont go to that quality", does that mean those devices don't support 1080p, or that they do but it wouldn't display on your TV ? StuRat (talk) 12:03, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I suspect this is a cable/connection thing. Do you have the appropriate HDMI cable in place? If you do - have you also got other cabling to and from it (e.g. scart-connection) - if so, try removing those. Sometimes the machinery gets confused if you are using both connection-methods at once (admittedly this is on my somewhat older non-HD tv but I suspect the same could happen on a more modern tv). ALternatively a tried-and-tested technique is to unplug everything entirely and start again. It's only a 10/15 minute job and sometimes that alone will be enough. Good luck 194.221.133.226 (talk) 14:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I also suspect this is a cable thing. In order for your TV to be in 1080p mode, it should need at least component (the one with 3 plugs for video, and 2 more for audio, not to be confused with the typically yellow composite video cable), though some devices don't support 1080p in component. In which case, you would need an HDMI cable (most likely) or DVI (less likely). --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

USB-based data acquisition system -- recommendations?

[Question and first few answers transferred from the Science Desk --Anonymous, 04:42 UTC, June 22, 2008.]

I'm in the market for a decent-quality, reasonably priced, USB-connected data acquisition system. For me, "reasonably priced" is somewhere in the US$100-200 range. Likely systems are the Data Translation DT9812], the LabJack U3, or the miniLAB 1008.

My other big consideration is that I want the thing to be Open. I don't want one where the only way to talk to it is with the vendor's own proprietary, quirky library, that requires the use of some limited number of mainstream operating systems and C compilers. I want to be able to open the USB port and talk to the device myself, partly because I'll be doing it from Mac and Linux systems which the vendor might not support, partly because I've been disappointed too often by the quirkiness (and worse) of the API's provided by vendors like these, but mostly because if I'm programming down to the bare metal by having my code twiddle bits out in the real world via one of these boxes, I want to, well, program down to the bare metal.

Anybody here have experience with any of these systems, or anything similar? —Steve Summit (talk) 02:49, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Steve, it might be helpful if you said more about what you want your DAQ to actually do, such as number of channels, response times, analog/digital, etc. Dragons flight (talk) 03:00, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

4-8 analog in, at least a couple of analog out, at least 8 digital in, at least 8 digital out, at least 12 bits of analog resolution. Frequency and response time not critical; this would be for simple monitoring and control, not audio or anything high-frequency. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

With some programming, perhaps something like this could be adapted to suit your needs? APL (talk) 05:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

problem with wiki

Hi, I have a complicated problem with my own wiki... I wanted to make the link "pretty", like:

www.example.com/wiki/Page_title
Instead of:
www.example.com/w/index.php/Page_title (the default)
and ther a are many ways to do it:
-the first one (used on wikipedia), does not work for me because I don't have root access to the server
-And then another one (recommended if the above does not work), works fine, but it breaks my website, because I had www.example.com pointing to my homepage, and with this second method www.example.com points to www.example.com/wiki/Main_Page which I don't want to... do you guys think there is a workaround for this? (I think I have PHP in safe mode, in case that matters). Thanks. SF007 (talk) 08:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I think you should just get rid of the third RewriteRule, since it does nothing but rewrite a root-directory request to /wiki/ which then redirects to Main_Page --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 08:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

You mean this: "RewriteRule ^/*$ wiki/ [L,QSA]", right? I did it and it woked like a charm! it was EXACTLY what I wanted, thank you very much! I also found a better place to post my questions regarding MediaWiki software http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_desk. Thanks again! It finally works! :) SF007 (talk) 17:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

MS Excel: VBA: Selecting a range using variables

I'm writing a macro that creates many new sheets and I need to copy a different column of data from a "Master" sheet to each of the new sheets. So I ran a loop using the column number (Col) as the variable and then I used the following code:

myRange = Sheets("Pivot").Range(Sheets("Pivot").Cells(5, Col), Sheets("Pivot").Cells(941, Col))

but I get an error: "Object variable or With block variable not set". Please help, thanks. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 10:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Please provide a larger code extract, :)88.105.217.30 (talk) 14:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for not giving more context. I tried the following and it worked!

   With Sheets("Pivot")
       Set myRange = Range(.Cells(949, Col), .Cells(1885, Col))
   End With
   
   myWS.Range("B7:B943").Value = myRange.Value

The last time I left out the ".Value" bits. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:07, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Access to en.wikipedia.org

When I try to access this page it takes 5 minutes to come up. All other sites come right up. I have tried to empty cach but that makes no differance. Any suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.62.126.82 (talk) 12:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are trying to say! The gen-X (talk) 14:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia can be slow. It is a very popular website. You just have to wait. As for accessing the Reference Desk pages, they are slower than most of Wikipedia both in size of data that is transmitted and the time it takes your web browser to display the data. -- kainaw™ 15:00, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

5 minutes is a loongg time though. It comes up fast for me—no slower than any other pages. You might want to run a tracert to see where the hangup is—it might just be an issue of something going slow somewhere between your computer and the Wikimedia servers. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I too have experienced periodic (once a week) slow downs with wikipedia, it usually clears up the next day.87.102.86.73 (talk) 16:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

facebook/myspace tracking

somebody at my school yelled at me cause i'd been looking at their pages on facebook and myspace. How are they traking users? do facebook/myspace send out notices of whos lookking? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.213.24.10 (talk) 14:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Facebook doesn't let you track that sort of information—the only way to know is if someone clicks on a link in your profile to an external site, and then it shows up on tracking software you have on that site. Don't know about myspace. (And honestly, if they want you to be locked out of looking at their pages, there are privacy settings they can adjust. If they've made something public, you've every reason and right to look at it.) --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:02, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

According to this page, Facebook doesn't really allow tracking, but MySpace does. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I think there's a Facebook app that will track, as long as both you and the other user have the app installed. I've seen a number of supposed Myspace trackers, but I'm skeptical that they actually work. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 06:05, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Webcasting

I need to set up real-time webcasting (streaming of audio and video) for a conference.

What are my software options? I'd be interested in something that was: 1. free but reliable, 2. compatible with a range of web cams (though it'll probably be a Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP), 3. easy for someone on the other hand to watch no matter what kind of computer they had (and not cost them anything), and 4. would lend itself to being recorded (that is, the stream being saved) as well.

Any suggestions? --98.217.8.46 (talk) 15:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Have you looked at Skype or Stickam? The first allows video conferencing (IIRC), and computer-to-computer calling is free, and it's encrypted. But you need a third-party software to capture the streams, unless they've since changed it to include it. Stickam is the same, should be free, and it puts more of the load on their servers afaik, and you'd need a third-party software to capture those too, I think. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Is it a public event? Please support Yahoo! by using Yahoo! Live^BETA. There is no software to install (apart from a standard web browser and Adobe Flash technology) and it is free of cost. Kushal (talk) 02:48, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

You could use the ancient Microsoft NetMeeting, which operates in H.323. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 06:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

having problem unistalling FIREFOX 3.0

I having some problems unistalling FireFox 3.0. When I load up the unistall wizard to unistall Firefox 3.0 the wizard it freezes my pc and I cant do jack about it. I tried to CONTROL-ALT-DELEATE TO "STOP the freezing" but I cant get Program Manager to work. I tried Mozilla tech support I dont think they help me that much. I've tried to unistall Firefox atleast over 6 times I'm getting frustfrated right at this problem I'm just asking the large community of Wikipedian users to help me at here. Thanks. --Rio de oro (talk) 16:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

If the uninstall wizard failed you can try using ccleaner to remove it. Or you can manually uninstall by deleting the Firefox Installation directory (C:\Program files\Mozilla Firefox), then remove the shortcuts from the Start Menu by right-clicking and selecting delete. To remove the Windows registry entries use "regedit", but this is not necessary as they are harmless if left, and registry editing can completely screw up your computer. If you decide to reinstall Firefox at a later date try Portable Firefox which does not need to be installed, doesn't leave personal information behind or interfere with any currently installed versions of Firefox. JessicaN10248 16:30, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

If I do System Restore(the "time machine" undo thing) well that do any much . Btw, I know what ccleaner is but I dont got a clue on how to use it right. The web browser I'm currently right now is Internet Explorer 7Rio de oro (talk) 18:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Automated access to email account?

PROBLEM: I get periodic updates in my gmail e-mail box that I need to routinely scrub by hand and pass into a database. I need a way to automate this.

QUESTION: Is there a free or for-fee service out there that will allow me to easily access a passworded e-mail account, grab out specific messages by subject line and then process the message body all automatically via scheduled daily task? By easily I mean something that does not require compilation or hand-coding SOAP requests. Basically I'm just looking for an e-mail account with an easy-to-use API so I can talk to it with some kind of scripting language. Gmail doesn't have an api, so I have to look elsewhere. NoClutter (talk) 17:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, gmail does support POP3 though. That's a relatively easy way of managing something, and you should be able to parse the retrieved message with a script. Not sure if this would be something acceptable as a solution for you though. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

If you use Firefox you might be able to use a greasemonkey script but don't ask me to write as i have no clue how to... Xor24 ^{talk to me} 02:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)