Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 February 27

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February 27

MS WORD

In Word '03, when I highlight text and type it doesn't delete the highlighted text, how do I fix that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.193.147.179 (talk • contribs)

Go to the Tools-->Options, and then on the "Edit" tab, the first checkbox is "Typing replaces selection". - Akamad 06:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Refreshing Problem

When I visit a website like Wikipedia, then refresh the page I do not get the latest version of the page. I have to right click on the article a click open in new window to receive a new version. Does anybody know how to fix this? 68.193.147.179 01:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

You can either disable cache or use ctrl+refresh to reload from scratch. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 01:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The details depend on the browser. You should check out Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. Spiral Wave 01:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

AOL 9.0 SE E-Mail Problem

When I write a message from the program AOL, AOL adds on AOL.com AD on the bottom of the message 10 spaces after the messaged ended. But, it is only supposed to be there if I email from www.AOL.com. Does anyboby know why this is happening? 68.193.147.179 01:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

They seem to be adding ads everywhere to pay for their new "free" e-mail. That apparently means free of cost, not free of annoyances. StuRat 05:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

That's the free as in "free beer" but the waitress spit into it :D Aetherfukz 15:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

PSP

I have a Sony PSP which I purchased last December. It was dropped the other week and since then it has kept freezing when I turn it on and sometimes won't even boot up. Does anyone know how I could fix it? I've heard of people putting theirs through way worse so I'm hoping it can be fixable. I bought it interstate and I don't know where the receipt is. Mix Lord 01:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

You've probably knocked something ajar inside it. I've dropped mine and had no problems, but who knows. Unless you're just saying that to cover up the fact you screwed installation of a homebrew loader, simply send it back to Sony, they'll fix it. -Wooty Woot? contribs 01:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

No, I find that honesty seems to be the best policy here on the reference desk. At least when asking questions anyway. Do you think anything in it would be user serviceable? And would I still need a receipt to claim it under warranty?

Mix Lord 22:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Firmware in low-end GPS units

Hi,

I am interested in who makes/provides the firmware (or perhaps it's a basic operating system) that runs the common, low-end GPS units commonly available. Not the higher-end models that run run Windows CE, but the monochrome, basic system seen on basic GPS systems.

Is there a single company that on-sells this OS to Garmin, Magellan and others?

Thanks. 130.101.152.94 01:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)MJH

Desktop publishing programs

What are the relative merits of Scribus, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign when it comes to typesetting books? The Adobe InDesign article says that books are usually typeset in QuarkXPress, but what makes this software preferable?

Also, does Scribus have support for ligatures, swash characters, and all the wonderful things that come with OpenType fonts? --Siva 02:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Selective proxy use in Firefox?

Today I needed to access a site that's theoretically available only in the U.S. To circumvent this restriction, I used an open proxy. But the proxy is probably slower than my direct connection. What I'd like to do is enable the proxy only for that one site (and possibly others I'll specify later) and disable it for all others. I know you can set Firefox to use the proxy by default and turn it off for specific sites, but is it possible to do the opposite? NeonMerlin 06:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I know only of Torbutton. Though it's intended for Tor, you can set the proxy settings for whatever you wish. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 06:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Coral Cache would appear to be in the US. This can be accessed by changing site.com/page to site.com.nyud.net:8090/page. --h2g2bob 04:03, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

You can write a proxy auto-config file for yourself. The syntax isn't particularly difficult, it's just fairly simple JavaScript code. Yours might look something like:

function FindProxyForURL (url, host) {
    if ( dnsDomainIs(host, ".somesite.us") )
        return "PROXY proxy.someproxy.com:8080; DIRECT";
    else
        return "DIRECT";
}

—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 08:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

iPod memory

I have a 60GB iPod which is almost full. Both iTunes and the settings screen on the iPod tell me that I have 515 MB available. But when I try and copy a single short song to the iPod, iTunes tells me that there is no space. So why isn't that 515 MB available to me? I've tried resetting the iPod but it doesn't help. Many thanks. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 06:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that you have half a gig allocated to firewire disk usage (as in data storage). --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 06:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much for this. So does that mean the iPod needs that half a gig to operate? Or can I free it up somehow? --Richardrj ^{talk email} 08:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you're misunderstanding what User:Wirbelwind is saying. An iPod has a setting where you can allocate a certain amount of space to be used for data storage (e.g. text documents, presentations, etc.). That 515 MB might be set aside for that. If so, you can change the settings of the iPod to not use any of the harddrive for data storage. Dismas|^(talk) 09:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

No misunderstanding, I can assure you. My second question was just for clarification, i.e. I was asking if the amount of memory allocated to data storage can be changed by the user. From your response, it sounds like it can, so I'll need to look into how I can do that. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 11:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, so I've now looked through the settings both on my iPod and on iTunes, and I can see no way to tell it that I don't want to use the hard drive for data storage. I don't currently have anything stored on it except songs. Am I missing something obvious? Many thanks once again. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 16:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

You haven't said whether you're on a Mac or a PC but I would think this would be the same on both systems... Connect your iPod, open iTunes, on the left you will see your playlists, library, and devices listed. Click on the iPod. This should display info about the iPod in the main window. In the "Options" section of that screen, there should be a checkbox that says "Enable disk use" next to it. Make sure this is unchecked. Dismas|^(talk) 22:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much, I'd seen that and thought it might be the answer. The checkbox is indeed ticked, but it's greyed out (I'm on a Mac) because I've also checked the option to manage my iPod songs and playlists manually rather than have them automatically sync with my iTunes library. I have to keep that option checked because I don't keep copies of my music on my hard drive (I have it all on CD). I don't see why the two checkboxes should be related, but they obviously are. Which kind of stumps me. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 22:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

A certain amount of your hard-drive is taken up with system-files that the iPod requires to operate. This shouldn't show in the available-space however. The only other thing I can think of other than space being dedicated to 'data storage' is that a portion of the hard-drive may have corrupted, leaving it unusable.

depending on your version of iTunes this (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61131) link may help. If you still cannot recover the file-space for songs I would consider resetting your iPod as I understand it this will remove all your songs from your iPod , as that may resolve the issue. ny156uk 18:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The iPod generally has two partitions by defualt: the firmware partition and the data partition. The firmware partition will range from 10MB to even 100MB, I don't know, but certainly not 500MB. The data partition is used for everything else; iTunes prefs, iPod settings, your music, calendars, notes. So, you should be able to copy your music. Also, if there were bad blocks, iTunes would most likely say "I/O error", not "Disk full". --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

"System Restore" on MAC OS X

How is it possible to get my MAC iBook to restore itself to a previous date, like the System Restore option in Windows? In fact, is it possible? MAC Help was no use to me, as either I don't know what the keyword is (i.e. the name of the process), or it just doesn't exist. Thanks in advance! CCLemon-ここは寒いぜ！ 10:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain there isn't one, at least not one as smooth in Mac OS X. They're going to introduce such a feature (in fact, a much more advanced one since it keeps track of versions of individual files) in Leopard called Time Machine Oskar 18:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

No, but a past article on either MacWorld or MacAddict tells you how you can build your own System Restore disks from the System Restore disks that came with your iBook, which is close enough. kelvSYC 22:06, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Before Leopard, Mac OS X accomplishes this through 3rd party apps. I have something in my prefpanes called "Deja Vu" which came with a suite of Roxio software. [Mαc Δαvιs] X (How's my driving?) ❖ 03:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Google Earth

Does anybody know how long it takes the free version of Google Earth to pick up on Wikipedia articles. I noticed and changed the coordinates for Ottawa/Rockcliffe Water Aerodrome on the 16 February because it was showing up at Cambridge Bay. It is still shown on Google Earth at the same place as Cambridge Bay Water Aerodrome. The main thing is that because the coordinates for most of the airports in the Yukon were entered in the format DD|MM|SS|00|W they all appear in Russia. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 10:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Google Earth is not hitting Wikipedia live. (Which is probably a good thing.) I presume they're working from our database dump files, and as you may know, those don't exatly come out with clockwork regularity -- the last one completed on 2007-02-11. At best they come out once a month or so, and I don't know how avid Google is being about picking up the new ones. --Steve Summit (talk) 20:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Another MAC question

I have a Japanese iBook, but unfortunately the keyboard is set to UK settings for some bizarre reason (I bought it in Japan - it's just a coincidence that I'm from the UK). Anyway, I want to set the keyboard back to Japanese settings (e.g. so that single quotation marks are SHIFT+7, etc.) so I can reduce my typos. Anyone have any idea? CCLemon-ここは寒いぜ！ 10:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There should be a language preference in the preferences. I'm not in front of my Mac right now otherwise I'd be able to point you exactly to it. One of the options for that setting is to have a flag representing the current language setting. The flag would be up in the upper right corner next to the clock. If the flag is there, you can pull down the menu for it and change the settings there. Dismas|^(talk) 11:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

What Dismas said. I'm not in front of my Mac either, but if you can't find the flag, I'm pretty sure there's a Language box in System Preferences where you should be able to change the settings. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 12:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I have tried both of those, but I can't get the keyboard to write Roman letters as printed on the actual keys on the keyboard when in Roman letters mode (i.e. with an 'A' in a box). It's just a minor embuggerance, as I'm using both Japanese and UK computers simultaneously, and I've got to keep reminding myself which type of keyboard I'm using. It just slows my typing speed down. I'll work it out. Cheers! CCLemon-ここは寒いぜ！ 13:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I assume that you have enabled both a Roman layout and the Kotoeri layout for Japanese. If not, enable them via the International Preference pane (in System Preferences). Then use Command-Space to switch to the layout you need. You may have pressed Command-Space (or either Command-Shift-Space or Command-Option-Space, depending on your prefs) accidentally, which forces the keyboard layout to change. The procedure is similar to classic Mac OS, but I do not recall what it is off the top of my head. kelvSYC 22:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Loopback

why can't a pc from the same building on a different floor can not connect to the network on a different floor. in the same building.

Rephrase your queston since at this point it makes no sense. Splintercellguy 15:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

It can, and much further than that, considering that I'm writing this to you from a building far away from yours. As for doing so on a single cable, as your node title seems to indicate, Ethernet physical layer has material about distance limits for that medium. In the future, it would be good to sign your posts with ~~~~, and also to include key details like what kind of network you're talking about. --TotoBaggins 16:34, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Just going out on whim here. I'm heavily assuming that you mean there's a wireless LAN network in a building, where a computer can connect fine, but another computer on a different floor cannot. Wireless LAN networks have a limited range, and it can deteriorate through walls, and the second computer is out of range in that case and needs something like an wireless access point in between to connect the second computer. If this doesn't help, then please rephrase your question and supply us with more details. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 19:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There are lots of reasons for a network not to work properly. Your PC could have an improper netmask or default gateway address set. The building's network could be misconfigured. The computers in your building might all be using NAT in such a way that they can reach machines in the outside world just fine, but not each other. If you can give us more information about your machine, and the machine you're trying to reach, and how, and how it fails, we might be able to give you some more specifically-applicable information. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

How does this whole "bootstrapping" thing work, anyway?

When I start my computer, a nice little 1980s style menu shows up on my screen asking me if I want to boot Ubuntu or Windows XP. If I don't pick anything, GRUB (for that is what I am using) will boot Ubuntu 7 seconds later. This menu and and configuration is stored on my linux partition at /boot/grub/menu.lst, and I can easily edit it in Ubuntu (or windows). My question is this: how does this whole thing work? I mean, the MBR is 512 bytes long, 446 of which is machine-code dedicated to launching the OS. Since 446 bytes ain't a whole lot of room to put code in (certainly not if you want a cool 1980s style menu!), I'm assuming it executes some code stored in my linux partition. That code then loads the menu.lst file and displays my options. But to do this, doesn't the computer have to mount a file system? I mean, how would the MBR-code find the GRUB-code stored in linux or the menu file, if it couldn't use a file system? And to mount a file system, don't you need the linux-kernel running? I mean, finding and opening is a system-call which the kernel sends to the correct driver, right? Does GRUB actually boot a tiny operating system, only to shut it down when I choose to start my "real" operating system? Or does it boot linux proper? I mean, it has to be able to read any number of types of file-systems, from Ext2 to ReiserFS to VFS, right? What's going on when I start my computer? Oskar 17:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right about the stages of booting- the MBR only contains the code to load up GRUB stage 2. The "code" to read off the hard drive is in the hard drive firmware as part of the LBA abstraction. I guess that 512 bytes must be enough to get some kind of rumedial filesystem running to walk the ext3 tree to find and stream the grub code into memory. If you look at the grub binary files, there are a ton of different tiny files that each are optimized to find the grub stage 2 code for each filesystem. So if your /boot is in reiserfs, then when you install grub to the MBR, the grub setup copies this reiser-optimized boot code into the MBR. It must be extremely optimized, and almost certainly programmed by hand in machine code --froth^T 19:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, no, the filesystem driver is written in C. See my answer below. --cesarb 19:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

On my fedora system, /boot is an ext3 filesystem! This surprises me. I figured it would be FAT. No matter. What happens at boot time is:

1. The level 0 bootstrap code (in ROM) loads the MBR into memory and jumps to it.
2. The MBR code (level 1 bootstrap) identifies the selected partition and loads the first sector of that and jumps to it.
3. For MSDOS and NT, this sector is called the boot sector and it contains the BIOS parameter block (BPB). Its job is to find the "boot file" to load and jump to it. In NT/W2K/XP, the rest of the file is contiguous right after boot sector. In MSDOS/FAT, it begins in cluster number 2. The basic code is like 2K or 4K long, and contains logic to parse the filesystem. In the case of grub, I looked at the /boot/grub directory to see what I could learn. There are two interesting entries:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 Mar 30  2006 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 102332 Mar 30  2006 stage2

I bet the boot sector loads stage1 and stage1 loads stage2. With a little careful programming, the boot sector code can be used by the stage1 code to leverage 1024 bytes of honoring basic filesystem structures like simple inodes, scan directories looking for pathnames, etc. This all assumes the files are simple and don't require all the features of the filesystem, like security access checking, 4 GB long files, symbolic links, etc., etc. It does not need to understand any kind of filesystem—just the one that it is installed on. Stage2 with 100K is more than enough to show text mode menus, play music, parse complicated filesystems, etc. —EncMstr 19:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The stage1 can load the stage2 directly (bypassing the filesystem; the sectors with the stage2 are recorded when GRUB is installed), but it's not usually done. Usually it loads the stage 1.5 from the remaining sectors on the first track (see my answer below), which then loads the stage2 from the filesystem. --cesarb 19:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Usually, when GRUB is installed on the MBR (the stage 1), it also installs the "stage 1.5" on the following sectors of the first track (for historical reasons, the first partition starts on the second logical track, leaving a full track of wasted sectors, which are used by several bootloaders and some copy protection systems). The MBR is enough to load the stage 1.5, which has a full read-only filesystem driver for the filesystem of the partition where /boot is (this is why there are several versions of the stage 1.5). It then loads the stage 2, which has all the filesystem drivers, the menu code, and everything else. As an aside, when it's not possible to use the stage 1.5 (for instance, when GRUB is installed on a floppy or a partition boot sector), it directly loads the stage 2, bypassing the filesystem (which can cause problems if the data blocks with the stage2 file are ever moved; the same problem also happens with LILO, which does not have a filesystem driver). --cesarb 19:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

So you are saying that stage 1.5 has enough room for code in it to contain a primitive file system driver that can read the /boot part of the file system? It's big enough, like a couple of KiBs? That's pretty darn cool. If I understand you correctly, if there isn't such a track GRUB simply hard-codes what part of the hard drive that contains stage2 and simply jumps there, right? Can I just say: this kinda stuff is awesome :)

But what if /boot isn't in a "simple" file system like ext2, but in something fairly exotic like VFS or JFS? Do you still use those kinds of drivers in stage 1.5? Do you have to custom make them, since there isn't a kernel? Or do you use the other method and simply jumps to the pre-recorded position of stage2? Oskar 23:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, read-only filesystem drivers (which is what grub uses) are much simpler than read-write filesystem drivers, even in more exotic filesystems. You don't have to custom make them; the default installation of grub already has all possible drivers (each on its own stage 1.5 file, the installer choses which one to use depending on the filesystem it will have to read; the stage2 has them all compiled together). And usually /boot is a simple filesystem (often ext3, which grub treats as ext2), since there is no real benefit of a complex filesystem for something that's so rarely used (read on boot by grub, written when installing a new kernel/initrd or changing the boot configuration, and the rest of the time doing nothing). On my system, grub has stage 1.5 files for ext2, FAT, JFS, MINIX, ReiserFS, and XFS. --cesarb 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Very cool. Thank you for clarifying this! Oskar 02:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Distributed chess program...?

Is there yet a distributed chess program designed to utilize the power of thousands of personal computers over the Internet to play a game of chess like the SETI program that uses distributed programming to search for life in outer space? 71.100.171.80 19:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Something like this: Chess960@home? Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 20:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes! Thanks. 71.100.171.80 21:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Unless you are a true genius at chess, I would expect a single computer chess program can provide all the challenge you need. StuRat 05:26, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually my own personal ability to concentrate and win at chess against a personal computer program long ago proved to be inadequate even at beginner and intermediate levels. All of my losses revealed the problem to be insignificant moves I had overlooked which proved to me anyway that the ability to consider every possibility is a strength which a computer has and which I lack. Therefore my interest evolved into one of wondering what other strengths might be exploited which computers have such as distributed programming. My interest is not in playing a game of chess against a distributed computer program but in seeing how the personal computer programs I have rate such a program as an opposing player, which takes me to my next question... 71.100.171.80 11:29, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe any computer comes anywhere close to being able to consider every possible move until the game's conclusion. If you figure an average of 20 possible moves per turn, and 60 moves turns for each player per game, that would be 20^120 total "games" possible or 1.33 x10^156. Computers can, however, consider far more moves than a person can. In both cases, though, the critical skill is an accurate "pruning algorithm" to chop off the silly branches of possibilities without wasting much time on them. For example, there's no point at looking into pawn development moves when you are in danger of checkmate, whether you're human or a computer. StuRat 18:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

What does "20 moves per turn, and 60 moves for each player" mean? Black Carrot 06:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Moves per turn are how many possible moves there are available for a player to make each turn. Moves for each player is approximate how many turns ae in an average game. Nocternal 15:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

That's right, I've now clarified my comments above. StuRat 19:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Downloading sun java packages

Hi all,

I downloaded a piece of source code that requires Java files from sun.plugin.javascript. Naturally I've searched the web and sun.com, but I can't find where I'd get such packages. Anyone have any idea?

Thanks! -Mary —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.96.110.73 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 27 February 2007

After a quick look on Google Code Search, it looks like it's part of Sun's browser plugin implementation. The jar file for it seems to be htmlconverter.jar, which however does not seem to exist on Sun's 64-bit JVM. I would recommend avoiding it; it does not seem to be portable and is probably for internal use only. --cesarb 22:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

spam help

hi, I have a spam problem on outlook express running windows xp. i get about 15 per day "giberish stock quotes" and "returned mail" . my isp is orange and my email is "fsnet.co.uk" the old freeserve one.

can you help?

I tried to set up a spam folder but it failed!

thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.105.76.80 (talk • contribs) 21:55, 27 February 2007

• Usually when one gets the "returned mail" spam, it means that someone that you know has a virus, and you are on their email mailing list somewhere. One good way of stopping it is to simply change your email address, and let your freinds know that they may have a virus, and for them to be extra careful with Virus protection. Zeno333 01:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)