Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 January 12

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January 12

Ubuntu in expert mode

Help! How can I install Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) in "expert mode"? Thanks! --151.42.224.199 11:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

With "F6", right? --151.42.224.199 12:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

What exactly you mean by "expert" mode? Live CD you just install, text based CD give you more options but not GUI and you don't really need them in normal install. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Software to write reports in style of Wikipedia?

I have to write some long reports. I like the way Wikipedia offers a simple means of indenting paragraphs by using a colon, how it numbers sections automatically, and how it does automatic footnotes too. I use the wordprocessor StarOffice5.2 and doing those things within it would be very complicated and counter-intuitive. Is there any wordprocessor, text editor, or other software, that can format reports as Wikipedia does please? Preferably freeware or public domain. Thanks. 62.253.48.4 13:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure about pre-made software, but you could use wikipedia itself. Simply edit whatever document you want using your own user space or a "sandbox page" and then save the resulting output as an HTML file on your local machine. Then open that file in a word processor. Most modern word processor software understands HTML. Obviously, this is not a good solution for routine use. If you know how to program in perl, python, java or other, writing the software yourself won't be difficult with many of the public domain libraries that process "wiki" markup already out there. dr.ef.tymac 15:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You might try TeX (or one of its variants, like the popular LaTeX): it follows the same principles of automatic formatting and separation of content and style, but is designed for paper documents, especially technical ones. (It, notably, is the source of MediaWiki's mathematical formatting support.) It can, however, become relatively complicated depending on what you want to do with it. --Tardis 17:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

LaTeX is complicated no matter what you want to do with it :) --h2g2bob 19:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I was excited by Lyx except I then found out it will not work with WinMe although it does work with some newer versions of Windows. I have written a number of crude WYSIWYM subroutines in gwbasic - the only language I know. They do things like sort paragraphs, create an index, allow remarks lines or hidden keywords lines at the beginning of paragraphs, and automatically place paragraphs at the appropriate place in a skeleton outline of contents headings (I like to write individual paragraphs on various topics as I feel like it, and have these automatically put in the right place in the text), plus numbering paragraphs in '8.3.1.2.1' style. I would be very interested to hear of any word processor or editor which can do these things.

What you wish to do is possible in OpenOffice.org's word processing component Writer. The recent versions are quite intuitive and easy to use, and it is easy to record macros for the tasks you most commonly do. It is a large download, but it is open source and free:-) --Seejyb 14:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

which is the bigger program in mb of data recovery HD

MY E-MAIL IS -email removed by User:Froth-

-email removed by User:Froth-

ATT::

RAFAEL FERNANDES —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.22.71.237 (talk) 13:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

There's no way we can know what program is "bigger" based only on your question. What data recovery system are you talking about? Why do you need to know? Maybe we can provide alternative solutions --froth^T 18:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You can look at the size of the installer download of each program to get a comparison of how large different programs are. If you're asking about compression ratios, most compression algorithms are created pretty equal these days. Droud 14:13, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Change supply voltage

My hard drive has been getting overheated but not when I install it in another computer. I checked the power supply voltages since I heard that low voltage will cause a motor to overheat. My 12 volts supply is 12.68 volts but my 5 volt supply is only 4.75. Is there a way to increase the voltage and bring it up to 5 volts? -- 71.100.10.48 13:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Try another plug on the power supply since there may be a bad connection or something else drawing current. There isn't really a way to increase the voltage on a single rail without modification of the PSU. Either replace the PSU, or if it were me, invest in another fan or two to keep your case cooler since that's probably making all the difference. --66.195.232.121 16:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

A bad connector is very unlikely to result in a low-voltage or unintended-current situation.

In answer to the original question, no, as far as I know, there's no (good, reliable) way to adjust the voltage of a typical computer power supply. If it's truly delivering inadequate voltage, replacement (perhaps with a higher-power and/or higher-quality supply) is really the only option.

With that said, I doubt that a 5% low-voltage condition on the 5V supply would cause a disk drive to overheat. So I would look for other causes, such as inadequate ventilation (as 66.195.232.121 suggested), or the possibility that something else (perhaps the power supply itself) is overheating and blowing so much hot air into the case that it's heating up the disk drive. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Chips are generally designed to operate on a range of voltages. For example, a 0.7 V is still a logic 0, and a 4.2 V is still close enough to power a 5 V chip most times, because it's pretty much impossible to set the voltage exactly for all configurations because of different load resistances. So 12.68 and 4.75 really are both close enough that it's within the normal range, and shouldn't be anything you need to worry about. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 02:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually under-voltage will cool down stuff, not overheat stuff (well in ohmic things anyways, which are (roughly) most things). --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

True, although one of the big exceptions is: motors. Some (not all) motors are based on a design that inherently tries to output a constant amount of power. If you decrease their voltage, they draw more current. If the voltage drops too far, they draw so much current that their windings overheat, and may even burn out. This can be a real problem when a region's electricity generation and transmission network is unable to keep up with high demand, such that the voltage is allowed to drop (a "brownout"). However, the motors that usually succumb to this problem are the ones used in refrigerator and air-conditioner compressors; I've never heard of it occurring in small motors such as are used in disk drives. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

On sidenote, doesn't the motor use 12V supply and the electronics use the 5V in the harddrive? And yes, in a brushless DC motor for harddrives the controller will try and maintain the same rpm regardless of the input voltage (to a degree) and thus takes more current in undervoltage to maintain the same power. But 5% increase in current shouldn't overheat and break the motor (hell I've doubled the marked voltage of a fan (same brushless motor) and it still ran fine, although very noisy). --antilived^{T | C | G} 23:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Blogging

How can I get people to read my blog? 75.21.177.88 15:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Have content in your blog that people want to read. --Kainaw ^(talk) 16:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Lol. He's right, though. You could try advertising to those who are interested in whatever it is you are blogging.--Russoc4

Link to other popular blogs whose audience might be interested in your blog by using TrackBack or something similar. Leave interesting and relevant comments on blogs with active comment threads, entering your blog's address in the 'URL' field provided; if people like what you have to say, they're likely to check your blog. Note that these suggestions are just ways of doing what Kainaw and Russoc4 are talking about; if you don't write anything interesting, you're not going to get readers, no matter how many trackbacks you get. grendel|khan 19:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

question about file types on Firefox for Mac

I'm trying to get Firefox (on mac osx tiger) to open video files by default in VLC player (or even quicktime player). However, by default it opens them in a separate tab in an embedded quicktime format. If I go into preferences, then click manage (under the file types heading) it only gives me the option of managing .PNG and .TIFF files. Why can I not manage other file types like WMV, MOV, AVI, etc.? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.192.64.118 (talk) 18:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

I believe these are controlled by windows or the actual programs themselves. You would certainly need a plugin- the quicktime "browser plugin", for example, interacts with the quicktime player itself and unless the plugin comes with VLC itself (I'm not very familiar with VLC) you'll have to find one --froth^T 18:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

VLC has a Mozilla (Firefox) web browser plugin. It is probably installed when you installed VLC. Typing about:plugins in the location (address) bar will display your currently installed plug-ins. To change actions for file types, edit it in the preferences (Edit -> Preferences). On the content tab, look at "Configure how Firefox handles certain file types", and edit that. I'm afraid I'm not a plugin expert, as I hate plugins. --h2g2bob 19:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Ooops, re-read your question. It sounds like the webpage is using a player embedded on a new webpage using <embed> tags. You can't turn this off in the options: if the plugin is available it will be used. Some extensions (like NoScript) will replace the player with a box so it doesn't load the player unless you ask it to. To open the video in something else, you can use any of a range of extensions (even my very own UnPlug). I'd check the extensions for a solution: https://addons.mozilla.org --h2g2bob 19:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Syncing a PocketPC PDA with Mac OS X

Is there any way you can sync a PocketPC PDA with Mac OS X? The page on iSync says that it does not work with windows PocketPC. Is there any way possibly to sync iCal with a PocketPC? Many thanks, --86.137.233.160 22:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Check out The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile - Kesh 20:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

video

getting video straight off the internet to the computer, how?

Right click on the video link, then select "Download target as..." or "Save link as...". Sometimes it will be a stream so you might want to look into a stream ripper. Droud 14:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

video

How can i acheive the following goal: take a video that is featured on the internet and get it saved to my computer?

If you are using firefox, you can install an extension called Fast Video Download ryan 23:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Use my firefox extension, UnPlug. --h2g2bob 01:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Or, probably easier than either solution (especially if you don't use Firefox), just visit this site, and paste in the URL of the page. It will then give you a link to download from. Easy peasy. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 02:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the video format. You need to be more specific. If it is something that is launched in RealPlayer, for example, it is not easy and not always possible to directly download it. --Fastfission 18:18, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Blocking Open Proxies under the IPv6 network (which has 3.403*(10^38) unique addresses!)

It is Wikipedia's policy to block all open proxies as soon as they're discovered. Out of 4,294,967,296 IP addresses in the IPv4 system, an unknown percentage of them are open proxies. (If anyone knows of or can find the percentage of all IPs that are open proxies, please let us know.) Administrators or bots on administrators' accounts block open proxies as they find them on or off Wikipedia. Even though a great deal of them have been blocked by now, I have found some open proxies that the administrators haven't discovered yet. Even under the IPv4 system, not all open proxies can be found; it would take a lot of time, resources, and effort to possibly find them all. More than that, new IPs become open proxies every day, while other IPs become reassigned to non-open-proxy assignments.

As soon as the IPv6 system gains wide acceptance, a vast number of IPs out of all possible IPv6 IP addresses will become open proxies, and still remain a vanishingly infinitesimal slice of the 3.403*(10^38) possible IPs. More than that, the number of open proxy IPs will keep growing every day (and perhaps every minute, or even every second!) Even if one million bots were each given administrator privileges and assigned to find and block one open proxy IP per second, it's safe to say that it would still take over a million years to find and block every last open proxy IP in existence on the IPv6 network.

Faced with this dilemma, what could Wikipedia's administration possibly do about this issue? What do they plan to do about it? Moreover, since open proxy blocks only apply to the local Wikipedia, what about the foreign Wikipedias, other Wikimedia wikis as well as Wikia wikis? Blocking them one-by-one like it's been done to the IPv4 open proxy IPs will most certainly not work on the IPv6 open proxy IPs, so what do you say a new solution would be for when the day comes? --129.130.38.24 23:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Just because there are a larger number of possible combinations doesn't mean the number of proxies will skyrocket. Proxies aren't a feature of the protocol, they're paid-for servers running to transfer content --froth^T 03:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

See Also

• Wikipedia:No Open Proxies
• Wikipedia:WikiProject on open proxies