Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 March 4

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March 4

OPTICAL FIBRE

WHAT ARE THE STANDARDS OF OPTICAL FIBERS? ELABORATE IT COMPLETELY —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.196.118.81 (talk) 06:31, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this for your homework? JIP | Talk 06:42, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

See optical fiber and the links therefrom.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:55, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia! Please do not type in ALL CAPS, as it is considered the online equivalent of shouting. Thank you. Rocketshiporion♫ 06:16, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

a freeware tool to zip files in batch one by one

does it exist? t.i.a. --Il signore degli dèi (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Please explain in more detail. You have a batch of files and you want to turn each file into a zipfile containing only that file? What platform are you using? Marnanel (talk) 15:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. I use Win XP. --Il signore degli dèi (talk) 15:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

May or may not be quite what you're looking for, but have you tried 7zip: [1] ? Darigan (talk) 15:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Does 7zip allow to zip the file one by one with a unique command? --Il signore degli dèi (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with 7zip, but I assume it can be controlled from the command line, so you could write a batch file quite easily to do this. (Easily, that is, if all the files are in one directory.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:35, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

If you have a command-line program that has, for example, the syntax

pkzip textfile.txt textfile.zip

you could use the following command in the Windows shell (start button -> "run" -> type "cmd", then type "cd \programs\files" if that is the name of the directory where the files are):

for %f in (*.txt) do pkzip %f %f.zip

to get all .txt files zipped (though the filenames will be textfile.txt.zip and not textfile.zip). If you want all files use *.* instead of *.txt. For this type of task it is often hard to avoid command-line programs. Jørgen (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

(Jørgen, you have the arguments backwards. The zip file comes first, followed by the file(s) to add.) -- BenRG (talk) 05:28, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The following will zip all files in c:\srcdir into individual zip files in c:\dstdir with ".zip" appended to the name:

   for %i in (c:\srcdir\*) do zip -j -X "c:\dstdir\%~nxi.zip" "%i"

This uses the Windows version of Info-ZIP's zip utility. The -j option makes it not record the path "c:\srcdir" in the zip file, and the -X option makes it not record Windows security information (which just wastes space, in most cases). You could also add the -9 option to use maximum compression. If you want the source file extension to be stripped, so that textfile.txt ends up in textfile.zip, then replace %~nxi with %~ni. But note that if the source directory has multiple files with the same extension, they will end up in the same zip file.

You can also use 7-Zip's command-line version, 7z.exe or 7za.exe. Unfortunately this seems to lack an equivalent to Info-ZIP's -j option, but you can do this:

   cd /d c:\srcdir
   for %i in (*) do 7z a -mx=9 "c:\dstdir\%~nxi.zip" "%i"

If you care about file size, 7-Zip's maximum compression (-mx=9) is better than Info-ZIP's maximum compression (-9). They are both compatible with every unzipping program. -- BenRG (talk) 05:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

DNS not responding

My laptop keeps loosing connectivity to the internet and when I run diagnostics I get DNS not responding, did a Google search on it and one of the solutions I found was to change my DNS to Primary DNS 208.67.222.222 and Secondary DNS 208.67.220.220 which I did but I am still getting the same problem. I am running Windows 7 on my laptop. Any Ideas? Mo ainm~Talk 17:10, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

That IP address resolves to opends.com, but the first thing I would do is to change your DNS servers back to the DNS servers that you were told to set them to by your ISP. (Or to the setting named something like "Get Automatically from ISP", if that's what your ISP told you to do.) DNS servers are usually run by ISPs for the benefit of their customers; your ISP's DNS servers are unlikely to be the real problem, and your performance will suffer if you use some open DNS server that is shared among hundreds of thousands of users from around the world.

It is more likely that this is a signal problem. Is this a wireless connection or a wired connection? Have you tried connecting from multiple places to verify whether the problem is with (a) your laptop, or (b) something about the router or ISP? Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

It is wireless and was previously set to get it automatically, I have checked the connection with the wifi on my phone and it connects no problem so looking as if maybe it is a problem with my laptop. Mo ainm~Talk 17:56, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you able to connect at another wireless site, perhaps at a coffee shop or the like? Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:17, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if this matters but have noticed any time I start Bit Torrent, it seems to lose connection if I then restart the laptop the connection is established again, is it possible that Bit Torrent is doing something? Mo ainm~Talk 23:14, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Printing or splitting a very large web page into parts

I do not want to sit for hours and hours in an uncomfortable chair in front of my desktop computer to read this webpage http://www.re-bol.com/rebol.html which would be over 500 pages if printed out. Rather, I want to print it onto paper a chapter at a time and read that.

Can anyone suggest a way of splitting it into chapters or converting it into a PDF file please? Thanks 92.24.182.238 (talk) 20:44, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Download PDFCreator. That will install a "printer" that makes PDF files. Then "print" the web page to this printer - this will create a PDF file of the webpage. Then, you can print some pages of the PDF file at a time to a real printer as you read. Jørgen (talk) 20:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Most Web browsers have an option in the print dialog to "Print selection only"—if yours has this option, you can highlight a portion of the page and print just that. —Bkell (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

My first thought was, "there is no way that a document like this would be available only in HTML; it must be published in other formats, including PDF." My second thought was, "I'll try replacing the HTML extension with PDF." And it worked. The PDF is at http://www.re-bol.com/rebol.pdf. -- BenRG (talk) 04:36, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant! Thank you. 92.15.24.116 (talk) 13:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Installing IE9 RC

Does anyone happen to know whether if I install IE9 RC, what happens when the RTM comes? Will I be able to install the RTM over the RC? Or will I have to re-install Windows? I'm using Win7 64-bit. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

This source indicates that you can install IE9 over the beta version, so I would imagine it would be the same for the RTM. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Even if it turns out that the IE9 RTM cannot be installed over the Release Candidate, you will not have to reinstall your Windows 7 operating-system. At worst, you'll have to uninstall the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate application, and then install the Internet Explorer 9 RTM application. Rocketshiporion♫ 13:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)