Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 May 30

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May 30

Legally downloading System Shock 2

Having played newer games by Ken Levine, I'm interested in his older work. Are the 1994 game System Shock or its 1999 sequel System Shock 2 available for legal download (I'm totally not interested in Piratebay or anything of that nature)? I've looked on Good Old Games, Steam, and Impulse, but none have either. Used physical copies are available at online retailers, but at some very hefty prices. Incidentally I live in the UK, so services like GameTap aren't available to me. Are there other online distribution channels I should search? TinyLittleRobot (talk) 00:12, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Digression about Abandon-ware sites.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Try abandonware sites. Here are the underdogs pages for those two games: [1] [2] ... unsurprisingly, it looks like there's a download for the old one but not the more recent one, which is presumably still claimed as somebody's property.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC) Abandonware is technically pirating. It's all still technically someone's property. (The publisher is still fully in business — just because they aren't selling something actively doesn't mean they've given up on their copyright ownership. They may, say, be interested) Here's the deal: you won't find a way to legally pay EA for the property. You could buy it secondhand, but you're going to have a huge markup because it is expensive. Your 100% legal options are limited to buying it at the huge markup (which goes to the person who owns it, not EA), or write to EA and express your desire for them to make their software purchasable again (good luck). --Mr.98 (talk) 02:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC) In many case the company has gone out of business, leaving no heir (I didn't check in this instance, because I was tangled up in Python - see the question above): and these sites typically play nice - if there is a publisher for the game, they will link to the online shop. Their interest is in providing access to obscure old games.  Card Zero  (talk) 02:38, 30 May 2011 (UTC) No, their interest is in selling you old games, either firsthand or through a distributor. Mr.98 is correct; "abandonware" is not somehow legal because it's hard to find it for sale anywhere. I had a similar problem looking for Alien Crossfire, the expansion to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri; the only place to get it was on eBay, and it was US$50, which was more than I wanted to pay. I sat, sad that the publisher wasn't selling it over Steam (or the like) and avoiding taking my money. Comet Tuttle (talk) 03:14, 30 May 2011 (UTC) OK, how about this: abandonware sites are not a single monolithic entity and should not all be tarred with the same brush, and sometimes the ownership of a game may become lost in the mists of time and possible owners may be uninterested in determining whether they really own the game or not due to its lack of commercial value weighed against the difficulty of asserting their uncertain rights. And Alpha C is a wonderful thing, I have several heavily worn original copies. By the way, if you look up Alien Crossfire on that site, they send you to a page on the publisher's (Firaxis) site where you can buy it. This is admittedly a dead link, but the goodwill is there. Looking around the Firaxis site, Crossfire is now a free download (as it's an add-on to Centauri, which they will sell you via Amazon).  Card Zero  (talk) 03:33, 30 May 2011 (UTC) The key concept you don't seem to really grasp is just because the copyright holder is hard to find does not mean it is out of copyright. The odds are that the intellectual property is still owned by someone, who, according to the law, has every right to exploit it now, in 10 years, in 50 years, whatever. Just because you'd like to play the game doesn't trump that. Copyright law is generally pretty straightforward on that point, and in this instance (as with many others) it vastly privileges the content producers over the content users. Personally I don't have a huge problem with breaking the law in this instance, but let's not pretend that it's anything but copyright violation. Just because something is cool and rare does not somehow make it public domain. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:31, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I've boxed the above sidetrack. The question was for a legal way to download the System Shock games. The System Shock games are not abandoned works. They were published by EA, who seems to still be doing quite well. APL (talk) 06:16, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

"Abandonware" is software that is no longer sold, not software whose original publisher has gone out of business. And being abandoned works in your sense (publisher out of business) would not affect the legality of downloading them, as Mr.98 explained. But I agree that the discussion of abandonware is probably useless to the original poster. -- BenRG (talk) 17:45, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

We'd better stop discussing it, then. :) I don't know, I thought it might qualify as ethical (and safe), which might be what the OP really had in mind. Oh, and I agree with Mr.98's last remarks, entirely.  Card Zero  (talk) 18:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I googled "system shock" purchase and found that it's listed as a used item through amazon.com for about US$35. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

He clearly asked for a download purchase option. I don't blame him, physical media is a pain in the neck to manage. i kan reed (talk) 18:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Actual data! This gamasutra article from today quotes a guy from "Good Old Games" as saying with regard to System Shock and Syndicate, "the rights to those games are scattered between a lot of people, so it's quite a huge legal puzzle." System Shock 2 was not mentioned, but it seems likely that its rights situation is going to be similar or identical, so to me it sounds like it's not going to happen soon. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:18, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Making Add-Ons for Firefox

Would it be possible to write my own add-ons for Firefox? For my own use principly. What language should I use? Are there any guides available for doing this? Thanks 2.101.10.190 (talk) 10:19, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

There are some guides and tools available on the developer section of the addons site AvrillirvA (talk) 10:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Date and time format in Numbers

Is there a way to set the default date and time format in Numbers on my iPad? I have tried selecting a block of cells and formatting it to 5/29/11 and 7:00PM but each time I reopen the spreadsheet it goes back to May 29 2011 and 19:00:00. I love my iPad but this is pissing me off to the point that I want to throw it out the Windows, ha ha. I have looked through the 200 plus page Numbers guide but it is less than helpful. If this is an example of the ease of use and switching to Apple from MS, I'm not convinced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.234.6.175 (talk) 14:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Computer related post on Misc Desk

See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Please_help_-_how_to_stop_pornographic_content_and_popups_on_a_computer. Exxolon (talk) 15:59, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Chrome / Firefox plugins For Poor Connections?

Are there any plugins for Firefox or Chome that can help with Internet connections that are sporadic? Something that would automatically keep refreshing a page until it loads? --CGPGrey (talk) 16:48, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you need plugins or just to adjust some of their base settings, such as the number of times to retry. StuRat (talk) 02:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

you can also set the timeout I'm fairly sure, setting it longer may help it not display a "this page cannot be displayed" when it takes more than some arbitrary length of time to load. Of course it can make disconnects harder to detect in the process HominidMachinae (talk) 07:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

How to get max memory bandwidth throughput on a Tyan S4985-E

I have a quad socket S4985 MB from Tyan (link:http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=554)

All sockets are populated with Opteron 8384 cpus (2.7GHz).

I have 24 GB of ram divided into

16GB = 8 x KVR800D2D8P6 x 2GB (Kingston 800mhz 2 GB DDR2 ECC registered Dual rank x8 DIMM's) Chips on both sides of DIMM

8GB = 8 x KVR667D2S8P5 x 1 GB (Kingston 667 1 GB DDR2 ECC registered single rank x8 DIMM's) Only chips on one side (SPD modified to run 800 MHz)

So all RAMM is running and identified as 800 MHz ram.

How should I populate the DIMM sockets to get the best Windows Gaming performance out of my selection of DIMM's?

I run a Dreamspark version of Windows Server 2008 R2 and various Linus distro's.

I was thinking to run cpu 0 and 1 with 8GB each (4 Dimm's dual rank) and cpu 2 and 3 with only 4 GB each (4 Dimm's single rank), but would I benefit, and in what ways, if I gave each CPU 6 GB ?

That would then be a two KVR800D2D8P6 (4 GB) in one memchannel and two KVR667D2S8P5 (2 GB) in the other memchannel pr. cpu

I've read about memory ranks and x4 vs x8 configs but I'm wondering what would be the most optimal configuration with this 24 GB.

Suggestions with explanations are welcomed :-) 85.81.121.107 (talk) 16:58, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

To add to the question - I'm not supposing to edit any chipset DARM / NB registers to optimize throughput, I just want to know if it makes sense to have the Opteron use 2 dual rank + 2 single rank dimms (6 GB distributed among all cpus). Or if I'd be better of populating cpu 0 and 1 with only dual rank ram ((GB each) and let the two other cpu's run just single rank (4 GB each). 85.81.121.107 (talk) 18:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Reading here : LINK: http://www.nor-tech.com/solutions/intel/dox/DDR2%20advantages%20for%20dual%20processor%20servers.pdf page 3

1. Utilization of all four ranks per channel is always preferred for optimal performance; performance should not differ based on whether four ranks are spread over four DIMMs or four ranks are consolidated onto two DIMMs. 2. Identical DIMMs—Dual Rank (DR) or Single Rank (SR)—in one system are preferred because the system’s chipset can equally distribute memory addresses. Configuration with DIMMs of different ranks (i.e., mix of SR and DR DIMMs per channel) will offer sub-optimal performance versus identical DIMM configurations. If a memory upgrade is required, then the upgrade of all DIMMs is preferred over partial upgrade.

The above (1.) suggest that best performance is obtained by running dual ranks per channel (four ranks), so I would never get optimal performance on the cpu's in which I populate the DIMM sockets with single rank memory, because the opteron can take four ranks of memory per memchannel (8384 is capable of running dual channel = 8 ranks) ? 85.81.121.107 (talk) 18:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Get toner levels on laser printer

Resolved

I have an HP CP1215 color laser printer. I recently got a warning that the yellow toner was getting low. I want to check the toner levels (it must have that information), but I can't figure out how to do it. I go to "devices and printers" on the control panel (Windows 7), but I don't see anything there that shows the toner levels. I downloaded a diagnostics program from HP, but it doesn't show the toner levels either. The printer is out of warranty, so there is no free tech support from HP. Surely there must be a way to check the toner levels, but I can't find it. How can it be done? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:27, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

See HP Color LaserJet CP1215 and CP1217 Printers - Checking Toner Levels. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:29, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you - I should have googled on those words. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 22:13, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Mac Cocoa Multitouch

Resolved

I've been trying to add a swipe event to my application, and I have implemented my swipeWithEvent: method, as seen below. My question is, now how do I make it do anything? Should I connect it to something in Interface Builder, or something else? I Appreciate your help.

- (void)swipeWithEvent:(NSEvent *)event {
   CGFloat x = [event deltaX];
   if (x == 1) {
       //do something;
   }
   
}

--Thekmc (Leave me a message) 18:46, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I figured it out, so I will answer my own question, just in case anyone else needs it later:

1. Subclass NSWindowController
2. Put the code I listed above into the subclass
3. Put the subclass in Interface Builder
4. Finally, control drag from the blue box to your main window, and select "window" from the little menu that pops up

I hope this is helpful to somebody. --Thekmc (Leave me a message) 01:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The documentation included with XCode provides tutorials in the proper use of Interface Builder, including how to properly design Controller classes and link them to subclasses of standard GUI classes. Online, you can also use Interface Builder Help for Mac from http://developer.apple.com. Nimur (talk) 23:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

software that will fix things in video

I am looking for software that will fix certain things in a video file. I transferred family 8mm film to DVD. Much of it is underexposed. A lot of it needs color correction. About half of it needs speed correction. And taking out camera shake would be good too. The needs (in order) are:

1. automatically adjust the brightness (this is most important, much of it is underexposed)
2. correct the color
3. adjust the speed
4. stabilize the image

Yesterday I spent 85 minutes on the Adobe Photoshop page and Pinnacle Systems page. I know Pinnacle can adjust speed and probably both can stabilize the image (reduce camera shake, but I'm not sure). I can't find anything about adjusting for underexposure and correcting color. Neither will give technical support unless you own the product. Roxio and Nero also might have software that does need.

Does anyone know of software that will do these things? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:49, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

You are looking for a full-featured video editing suite. You have some free/open source options: Virtualdub and Avidemux, but you probably will be best suited with the commercial options: Adobe Premier, Apple Final Cut Pro

Will those last two adjust the brightness and correct the color? I spent quite a bit of time on the Adobe website, and it didn't say. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:37, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather pay a few dollars and get commercial product with documentation and support, but the Adobe product is probably too expensive. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Firefox problems

Hello. I am using Firefox 3.0 on a computer that hasn't been used for a while. It works OK for the most part, but some websites (notably Facebook) don't operate properly with it. I also have IE installed on my computer, but when I try to use it, it says it can't connect to anything. And when I installed the newest version of Firefox, it also said it couldn't connect to anything. What am I doing wrong? — Michael J 19:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you running any kind of firewall? If so is it configured to let Firefox/IE correctly connect to the internet? Exxolon (talk) 20:20, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. I never turned on or installed a firewall, but it may be. How do I check this? — Michael J 20:45, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

What operating system are you using? Exxolon (talk) 22:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Windows xp. — Michael J 23:48, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Some versions of Windows XP have a built in Firewall - check your control panel, look for the Windows Firewall icon and open it. Turn the firewall off and see if that fixes the issue. If it does you have a misconfigured firewall, try turning down the security settings one step at a time and see if it works. If this doesn't work, your problem is something else. Exxolon (talk) 23:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Speech recording

Which of these formats is the best one to record teacher's speech in a classroom?

1. WAV PCM 8 bit
2. WAV a-Law 8 bit
3. WAV u-Law 8 bit
4. WAV PCM 16 bit
5. MP3 96kbps
6. AMR

Slijk (talk) 20:56, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Is this homework? Did you read the articles on pulse-code modulation, A-law algorithm, μ-law algorithm, MP3, and Adaptive Multi-Rate audio codec? -- BenRG (talk) 00:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Depends on device. This list looks like smartphone application supported formats. I have tried AMR, MP3 and unknown type of WAV on nokia N70. AMR ir heavily compressed and loses some information (maye can be fixed wit good external microphone), MP3 would be good, if CPU could keep up (CPU in N70 could not), wav would be OK, but file sizes will be large (although 8bit 8kHz would be only 64kbps). -Yyy (talk) 07:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, these are formats from ALON dictaphone. Strange thing is Yyy, that I can't play those WAV files on both my phone and PC. Also, like you said, AMR is heavily compressed, however I don't think it differs much from mp3 96kbps... Slijk (talk) 23:16, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

AMR is only 16kbps. Well, i have not tried anything besides AMR, much, because back then mp3 did not work well and i cannot remember, why i did not try wav. If MP3 works for you, then probably it is the best choice (if it works). Maybe problems with amr was caused by noise (phones microphone is not designed for picking up sound from 10m away).

These wav files cannot be played even by application, which recorded them? All variants does not work? (pcm 8bit, a-Law 8bit, etc.) Does these works in vlc? (vlc supports many formats, but not amr, maybe it could open wav files with nonstandart/missing headers). -Yyy (talk) 11:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

typing foreign characters

Im using Windows XP, how can I be able to type foreign characters using my keyboard? The response I usually get is by using Unicode, but I don't really know how to imput those either. 72.235.230.227 (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Some thoughts:

1) Unicode typically involves entering escape characters (somebody else can supply the details). So, it might be a good option if you only want to occasionally enter foreign language characters.

2) Cut and paste can also work (if you tell us what language you want, we can probably find you their alphabet for cut and paste purposes). Again, only good for occasional use.

3) An on screen keyboard, in the other language, might be an option if you need to type a few more foreign characters than in the above cases.

4) Another option is to change your keyboard mapping to give you different characters. This would work if you want a language with about the same number of characters as English, but not for oriental languages that have thousands of symbols. Of course, this option means you lose your ability to type with English characters, until you switch back. So, this would be a good choice only if you need to do extensive writing in the other language. You might also want to buy a new keyboard in that language, or at least get stickers, so the letters on the keyboard match what you get on the screen.

Please let us know the language you want and give us some idea of how much writing you need to do in that language, so we can help further. Also, what's your intent with this foreign writing, do you want to print it out, send it in emails, etc ? StuRat (talk) 02:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I just want to be able to type foreign characters with ease without having to copypaste every individual character, such as Japanese, Korean, or Russian characters. Copypasting every individual character takes a bit too long for me 72.235.230.227 (talk) 08:27, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Install the correct Input method editor (IME). I have the Japanese IME installed on my laptop and can type Japanese phonetically. Astronaut (talk) 10:03, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's the official "how-to" from Microsoft: How to change your keyboard layout. Following these instructions, you can set up and swap between multiple keyboard layouts, including keyboards for different languages and character-sets. Nimur (talk) 23:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

This is the easiest way to do it with Russian. There is usually a keyboard called "Russian phonetic" as well, which is a lot easier for someone who knows how to type on QWERTY (it maps Russian letters onto their approximate English homophone match — so zap becomes зап. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Input method editors and the like are completely unecessary for languages that are mostly roman alphabet characters. Chances are all you need to do is google "alt codes" and hold down the alt key while entering the code on your numpad. Simple, easy, and works no matter your PC (for instance if you're on a school computer they won't let you add software to) HominidMachinae (talk) 07:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Which doesn't help with any of the languages the OP mentioned specifically. --Mr.98 (talk) 15:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

.aspx?

A webpage offers a PDF to download from a link, but all that is actually downloaded is myfile.pdf.aspx instead of the myfile.pdf. Is there anyway to obtain the pdf itself? Or has the website just made a programming error? I'm using the lastest version of Firefox and WinXP. Thanks. 92.24.191.98 (talk) 22:54, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Try opening the .aspx file in a text editor. It may contain a link to the PDF in question. You could also, of course, just change its extension to "PDF" and see if that fixes it. In any case, it sounds like a definite problem with the site's coding — it is sending (or failing to send) a PDF with the correct encoding. --Mr.98 (talk) 23:02, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I had this exact same problem (with FF and IE on XP) whilst trying to complete my tax returns on SARS's website. It kept downloading .aspx text files instead of opening the PDF's in the browser. The problem was only solved when I downloaded and installed Adobe Reader and set my browser to open pdf's in the browser with Adobe instead of attempting to download them. Previously I was using Foxit reader; I now run both, with Foxit set by default to open and read pdf's on my hard drive whilst Adobe "catches" all my browser clicks and opens pdf's in-browser, including those referenced by .aspx files. No other combination of browser setting and pdf software worked for me, so I'd say just installed Adobe Reader 10 and get on with it. Zunaid 16:37, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

This is common with improperly MIME-typed file outputs from web applications. It IS a working file (most probably), just has the wrong extension. Change the file extension to .pdf and it will work. --rocketrye12 ^{talk/contribs} 20:14, 2 June 2011 (UTC)