Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 September 13

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September 13

Combat Flight Simulator

Is there any 3D combat flight simulator with modern airplanes and high-end graphics? --81.227.70.149 (talk) 00:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

There are a lot of examples in combat flight simulator. Take your pick. Intelligentsium 00:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

If you want realism, I'm going to suggest Allied Force. - Akamad (talk) 18:28, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Make a sound play every time a key is pressed.

Is there any programs that can play a sound every time a key on the keyboard is pressed? Until It Sleeps 01:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably quite a few. Here's one that might work. (I assume you're using Windows.) There might also be some way to set this sort of thing up through the Windows Accessibility settings. Indeterminate (talk) 04:54, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Easy Itertive Fractals For Windows

Is there any easy to use fractal software that can be used to demonstrate iterative as well as the usual madelbrot fractals with 9 & 10 year old children? I am especially looking for something that can demonstrate fractal forms in nature; snowflakes, fern leaves, coast lines etc. If it is freeware, even better. Looked at Chaoscope, Apophysis and ultrafractal. They all have their strengths but are not the most straightforward to use. Kirk UK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.82.79.175 (talk) 09:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried ChaosPro? It's my personal favorite from the free ones. — Kieff | Talk 10:15, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

MacBook Pro Charging

Hi. When I connect my MacBook Pro to the power adapter, often this just has the effect of keeping the remaining battery life constant rather than actually charging it (I have been on 38% for nearly a day now). Does anyone know how to sort this out? Thanks 92.4.190.210 (talk) 13:09, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Unless this is typical for macbooks (idk), it sounds like you have a failing battery. If warranty hasn't yet expired it's time to use it. --194.197.235.240 (talk) 13:43, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a bad battery. Take it to an Apple store and they should be able to diagnose, potentially replace. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 15:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

MyWebSearch - how to get rid of it?

Recently, Firefox on my Vista machine has been redirecting to search.mywebsearch.com whenever it doesn't recognize a search in my address bar. I have set Firefox to be able to search from the address bar (like in Chrome), but I'm just getting this site. Ad-Aware reported to me yesterday that I had a bunch of files associated with this thing and it removed them for me, but it's still happening. I have looked on some websites to find out how to remove it completely, but they all tell me to remove it from Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. However, when I try to do that, I can't find the software listed there (nor any of its aliases). Is there any other way to do it? (A bit more info: my machine is a HP, and I just read the wikipedia article about this issue and it says that it is very often bundled in with the preinstalled software - whether this is the case with my machine or not, I cannot be sure, but what I can say is that I have only noticed this recently, say, over the past few months). TIA. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 16:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

It is part of MyWay Searchbar. Try Superantispyware and Spybot - Search & Destroy. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:43, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers! Spybot seems to have worked. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 18:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Displaying sound

I want to display the sound on my computer like the old stereos used to with an LED display. But not a real one, a virtual one. That lights up at all sounds on my computer., suggestion program for this. many thank yous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.46 (talk) 17:00, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

That thing is called a VU meter, incidentally. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:26, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

And so searching for "windows vm meter" or something similar will find any number of programs that do this. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:28, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Many media players have a 'VU meter' in their 'visualisations' settings - go to help (in your media player) and search for that.

Windows media player, real player definately have them, I imagine most others do too.77.86.47.174 (talk) 18:16, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I tied searching but i can't find anything. media plaer not good because i need all computer sounds to work not only just the mediua being played —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.46 (talk) 20:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Name of PCB material?

I'm trying to remember the name of a possible future material for PCBs but my mind has gone blank. I know it started with either H or Hex? Can someone help me out here? I know it's still in development. --Glaesisvellir (talk) 17:31, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

You definately mean Printed_circuit_board#Materials and not part of the chip itself - eg "Hi-K dielectric"?77.86.47.174 (talk) 18:18, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Could it be HF - meaning halogen free - this are not in developement though - they exist.77.86.47.174 (talk) 18:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

How about "Hi modulus carbon fibre"?77.86.47.174 (talk) 18:26, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I'm sorry, it didn't start with H. It didn't even really have to do with PCBs. Turns out I was looking for Graphene. Again, very sorry. --Glaesisvellir (talk) 21:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Financial functions in excel

In Excel, how would you find the present value of principal payments of a bond and the present value of interest payments if you know the rate, the loan amount remaining and the principal payment? 71.229.144.57 (talk) 20:24, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I think you will have to manually set up some of the equations. There are some built-in functions to help you, such as PMT (payment) calculation, PPMT (principle payment), and others linked on these documentation pages. Depending on your needs, they may be exactly suitable for your calculations. Nimur (talk) 21:51, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

There is a built in function PV, about which the help file says: Returns the present value of an investment. The present value is the total amount that a series of future payments is worth now. For example, when you borrow money, the loan amount is the present value to the lender. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:49, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

CSS Image Fade

(I don't have Windows - so no IE) Does any IE version support CSS image fading in any way? I want to load two images, one over the other, and decrease the opacity of the top one until it is 0% and only the bottom one is visible. I would like this to work in Windows. I know it works on my Linux versions of Firefox and Konqueror (and supposedly, the Konqueror support is already in Safari). -- kainaw™ 23:48, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Quirksmode discusses opacity, including the support in different versions of IE. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:59, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I found this set of scripts to be pretty easy and designed with multiple browsers in mind (including IE). You might give it a spin. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 11:40, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Rather than wasting your beautiful mind on browser incompatibilities, consider getting a toolkit that will handle them for you. The following, which uses Prototype and Scriptaculous, works on both IE and standards-based browsers

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
        <title>Fader</title>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/javascript/prototype.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/javascript/scriptaculous/scriptaculous.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="/javascript/scriptaculous/effects.js"></script>
        <style type="text/css">
            #pics img { position: absolute; left: 10px; top 100px; }
            div#ctrl { position: absolute;  top: 450px; }
        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="pics">
            <img src="http://theinternetisterrible.com/wp-content/things/happycat.jpg" alt="meow">
            <img id="fade_demo" src="http://www.killsometime.com/Pictures/images/Tired-Dog.jpg" alt="snore">
        </div>

        <div id="ctrl">
            <a href="#" onclick="$('fade_demo').fade(); return false;">Click here for a demo!</a><br>
            <a href="#" onclick="$('fade_demo').show(); return false;">Reset</a>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

--Sean 18:40, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Before posting HTML code please make sure you are posting the WHOLE code so other people can try out the code and see if it works. Second if you look online you can get free programs to help you fade the images without the use of CSS. The problem with CSS is browser compatibility. If you have one user running IE and another running Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and some other no name browser then you have problems... it's called "Cross-browser compatibility". I would suggest using Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop Flash will do the same thing.

--Jdswebservice (talk) 16:48, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Hrm. So when I post C code, I should include all of stdio.h? --Sean 20:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

...except there are probably a lot of situations where Photoshop and Flash are way more trouble that they are worth. Anyway, the scripts above (the one I posted, or the one TotoBaggins refers to), work on the major browsers. It's not perfect, but nothing is (Flash certainly doesn't work on all of them). --98.217.14.211 (talk) 11:55, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes you should... smart ass... reason being is because for the people that have this same problem don't know what your javascript files link to. so why don't you post your javascript files as well... you know, it could be a problem with the onclick or the function you are calling. so please feel free next time to sodimize yourself before posting smart ass comments like that.

peace and love!

JD's Web Service... yes i'm not signed in. sue me

I am currently using flash (see). I want to change it to CSS because it is getting too big and will get bigger and bigger and bigger... -- kainaw™ 13:19, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

i don't see how you are going to get around this... you currently can't use css to fade two images together. HOWEVER, what you can do is set the alpha transparency of the WHOLE image. as you can see here. CSS Made Easy Your problem CAN NOT and WILL NOT be solved by using CSS. I would suggest learning some type of prgram LIKE Flash or Photoshop. If you're worried about image size just make the image smaller. It's your choice. You want to do something fancy like this and keep your file size to a minimum then you're going to have to sacrifice size and or quality.

OK! SO NOW I GE IT! after looking at you site i understand what you want to do. give me until the weekend and i'll post some javascript code and my html code with inline CSS style sheet. I thought you meant you wanted to have two images overlap as in half and half... if you just want to FADE between two images all you have to do it slowly set a fade of alpha transparency in javascript using the document.get built into javascript. I'll work on it over the weekend.

Thanks,

JD's Web Service