Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 September 2

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September 2

Audio Fix

I have a few videos (Windows Media format, .wmv) where the audio is very very quiet. Is there any way to fix that? Black Carrot (talk) 00:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you can put WMV files into iTunes, but within the library you have the option to set the 'volume' for each video/track inside its "options" - you can also ask iTunes to 'equalize' the volume of songs in your library. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I can only find a way to change iTunes' own playback settings, it leaves the original file quiet. Can anyone recommend a free video editor that I could do this in? Black Carrot (talk) 13:52, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I think VirtualDub can do that sort of thing. There are some links to how-to guides here.--Heron (talk) 19:38, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

McBSP I2S interface

how can a I2S non compatible device be made to communicate with I2S standard compatible devices with the help of DSP processor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.61.1 (talk) 07:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

uTorrent

hi, ok this is my problem: i used (previously to yesterday) uTorrent and the saving folder was on an external hard-drive...but i have had to re-get utorrent because i deleted it (the program was on my comp.) so thats what i have done. The problem is that because i have a load of files that are 1/2 downloaded on my ext HD i would like finish them, of course, but as it is a 'new' utorrent i doesnt 'interact' with them. Is There any Way i can put this right so the 'new' utorrent can 'do' the files from the 'old' utorrent. For various reasons i cant do system restore and i have Windows XP btw. thanks, --81.77.136.150 (talk) 10:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I think if you load the same torrent back and point the save directory to the same one as you used before it would hash the existing files and continue from there. At least that's how you do it in other torrent software that I've used. --antilived^{T | C | G} 11:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

is there any way of telling which one is the original torrent, when i try to find them, from the files that have already been downloaded (in part)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.77.136.150 (talk) 11:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The download directory will only contain your partially completed downloads. You will need to download the .torrent files for each from the website you got them from originally. Open the .torrent file and then set the download directory in utorrent to the directory that your partially downloaded file is in. utorrent will rescan the files and then begin downloading or seeding. Also see this guide which has more info. JessicaThunderbolt 16:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

goat skull in motherboard

i read on helpline about goat skull being found inside of a computer when opened to put new chips in, all embedded in the motheboard. also have heard it might have a link to satanic images put there in the computer shop and displaying on the screen. does this happen?? does it happen often? Bradley10 (talk) 10:59, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I sprinkled holy water on my PC motherboard just in case. Magic blue smoke came out, so I think you may be right. ;) Franamax (talk) 11:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The only vaguely relevant Google result I can find is this (someone making a custom PC case with an image of a goat skull on the side). I'm pretty sure goat skulls on motherboards and repair shops putting satanic images on computers doesn't happen that often. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 14:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

A possessed computer? In that case, don't put your hand near any fans. :) Rilak (talk) 17:35, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what? Are you actually seriously asking whether this happens often -- that is to say, whether Satanic computer shops put in satanic images and embed goat skulls in the computer's motherboard? I hesitate to say this, Bradley10, but in the interests of honesty: a lot of your questions make going by WP:AGF pretty difficult... but AGF I will. So, uh, no. No, it doesn't happen often. Considering that a motherboard is exceedingly unlikely to work with a goat skull embedded in it, what with goat skulls being, well, goat skulls instead of computer parts, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that barring some really weird and unique prank, it doesn't happen at all. Ever. One simple reason for this, apart from the technical challenges involved, is that if someone buys a computer from you, and you put a goat skull and Satanic images in it, chances are that that you're going to have a really crappy day in a courtroom sometime in the near future. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 22:39, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Reinstalling Windows or switching to Linux will resolve most goat skull-related problems. -- BenRG (talk) 00:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Captain Disdain. If it happened, it was a prank. It would be perfectly possible to shove a goat skull inside the case of a desktop PC (depending on the available space, of course) and give the owner a nasty shock when he next opened it up. I doubt you could embed it into a motherboard though - there would be no room for the 'workings'. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 00:19, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Now captain that is an interesting question --- Is it illegal to put a goat skull in a machine and satanic image on the computer? also I have only heard of this happening once and I did not see the comptuer in question; just that "it was showing BAD THINGS... bad bad things" and that when opened there was a skull of a goat in there. to think about it it may not have been embedded in the motherboard, just in the computer?

i have seen a computer with an alarm clock inside it but this is much milder Bradley10 (talk) 13:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless you have some kind of reliable evidence (that is to say, something other than "this one guy told me that...") of this, I'm pretty damn sure it never happened. And--

I'm sorry, I was going to go into detail about false advertising and how a goat's skull would restrict airflow inside the computer, but I just had to stop, because looking at your edit history, I'm really not buying this. I'm trying to go with AGF, but my heart's not in it. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 21:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Torrents

what is generally considered the fastest 'torrent downloading program'? thaks--81.77.136.150 (talk) 11:19, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The program you use will not affect your download speed (at least not in any measurable way). Your download speed depends primarily on the number of seeds (see the BitTorrent article for details on how BitTorrent works) a given torrent has, as well as their upload speeds. The best thing you can do is to set your upload speed as high as you can without saturating your bandwidth (70%-80% of your maximum upload speed). — QuantumEleven 14:06, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

utorrent is considered one of the fastest in terms of CPU speed as it uses minimal computer resources (14 MB of RAM). In terms of download speed, as QuantumEleven said above the program doesn't make any difference. Things that effect speed are your internet download speed, number of seeds, peers and leechers, and the upload speed of the seeds and peers. So in other words you could have the fastest broadband in the world but if the seed is only uploading at 300 kb/s then that is the fastest it will go, and similarly if the seed is uploading at 300 kb/s but you are on dial-up then it will only go as fast as your download speed. JessicaThunderbolt 16:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no statistics to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if different BitTorrent clients do have noticeably different downloading performance. Clients have a significant amount of leeway in which peers they connect to and which pieces they request, and some might have better heuristics than others. -- BenRG (talk) 11:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It's the public tracker vs. private tracker comparison that matters way more. I'd be very surprised if I ever use up the whole bandwith on one mininova torrent. Admiral Norton ^(talk) 21:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

What are some good private trackers and how do I get to register when I know nobody who could let me in (i.e. invite me)? user:Everyme 06:14, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm Confused

Is it possible to install an IDE hard drive on my motherboard?

My motherboard has one IDE header which is currently used for my CD/DVD Drive and 4 SATA Headers, one of which is being used for my current Hard Drive. The last time I had two IDE devices on this header, my Windows boot.ini file registered the second device as a Hard Drive (it was a ZIP drive) and somehow found a windows installation on it, which corrupted my boot.ini.

You can see my fear in installing an IDE hard drive on this header. Should i do it or spend some money on a SATA hard drive to circumvent this problem? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you can install an IDE hard drive in your PC. After you install it, you may want to go into your BIOS (read your motherboard's manual for how to do this, usually your press F1 or DELETE at startup) and make sure that, in the boot order, the hard drive with your OS installed comes before the hard drive you just installed. Otherwise, your PC will try to boot off the new hard disk, which will cause problems. — QuantumEleven 14:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there any specific arrangement i should use? Should i put the HDD first on the cable or second? 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The hard drive is usually set to cable select, but by changing the jumpers, you can make it slave or master no matter which plug on the cable it is. It doesn't matter at all whether if your drive is the master or the slave, they're equal. Coolotter88 (talk) 16:53, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Awesome. Thanks. 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 11:32, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if you plan on having both an SATA and IDE drive in your case, the SATA drive will have to be the master. If you plan on using the IDE for storage, then you'll be fine, but if you plan on dual-booting them, you'll be in for some headaches. When installing an OS on an IDE drive, the installer usually refuses to modify the MBR on the SATA drive, meaning you have to go into BIOS and change the boot order each time you boot into a different OS. I managed to get it to work normally by creating a custom GRUB configuration on my IDE drive. It was a huge pain.--Birdsusing nnn (talk) 12:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Darn. Maybe that's why i had so many problems with the ZIP drive. I guess i will buy a small SATA drive then. 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 16:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not just buy a IDE-to-SATA adaptor? Then you could plug your IDE drive into a SATA slot via the adaptor. There's many places you can get one if you search. Zunaid©® 20:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I did not know those existed. I will look into it. Thanks! 31306D696E6E69636B6D (talk) 13:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Blender (software) as CAD tool

does someone have good experiences using Blender as CAD tool under Linux? I am searching a 3d CAD for Ubuntu. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 18:11, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a category for Category:Linux computer-aided design software. Many of the names clearly state "3D" in them. Blender is rather popular and has many online tutorials. -- kainaw™ 18:15, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I know that Blender is popular, but not as CAD software. That´s why I am asking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.K. (talk • contribs) 18:27, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

IMHO, blender doesn't really make a good CAD tool. It's ability to make things to accurately specified dimensions or to place things at accurate positions/rotations are all kinda crappy compared to "real" CAD programs. You can't calculate volumes or check "goodness of fit" of parts, or find center of gravity...there are just a ton of CAD-specific stuff it doesn't do. I don't know whether you know - there is a specific version of Google for Linux-only searches here: http://www.google.com/linux - if you enter "CAD" into that search box, you'll find all of the popular Linux CAD software. [1] seems to be a pretty good list of "possible"'s.

SteveBaker (talk) 06:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Want the URL link for C-programming which contains the sample programmes

Respected Sir / Madam, I am ramnath from Bangalore, Very much interested to learn C-programming. I have some difficulty for applying Logic for C-programming. I have already one URL link of C-programming which contains the Theory about C-Programming. I want one more link of C-programming that should contain sets of Sample programms.

So, Kindly provide me the Same

Thanks, Ramnath —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ramnath1979 (talk • contribs) 19:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Google Search. There are also Wikibooks on C programming. -Abhishek (talk) 06:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

php file uploads

i'm writing a function to handle processing file uploads and ran into some what of a problem. I'm trying to move the file from the tmp directory to a image folder but every combination of file path yeilds either "file or directory does not exist" or permission denied. I've tried setting the folder with both 777 and 757 permissions and neither allow it to work.

hers the setup up of my server (shared hosting), some path/public_html/stuff visible on web, so i created a folder called images inside public_html (so its path is public_html/images)

i define a varaible $file_path ="/images/"; (i've tried having the / at start, end both etc, nothing seems to work)

this is what i then use to move the file:
if(!move_uploaded_file($image_tmp,$file_path)){
$field="file";
$form->setError($field, "* File error 0, Contact Admin");
return 0; }

where $image_tmp=$_FILES['file']['tmp_name'];

so my question is wher am i going wrong with moving this file?--90.216.21.128 (talk) 20:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

/images/ is a directory off the root of your file system. Is that actually the location, or is it relative to your home directory, or the working path for your program? You probably need to specify something like '$HOME/images' or '../images' or '~/images' --LarryMac | Talk 20:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

tried the three things you said none of them worked, i'm not sure what you mean but images is a directory inside public_html where anything i put is avaible on the web, the script itself resides in the same folder that contains images--90.216.21.128 (talk) 20:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I had a PHP uploader a very long time ago. The code's still lying around here, this is what I have:

<?php
$uploaddir = '/var/www/mysite/uploads/';

$_FILES['userfile']['name'] = preg_replace('#[ ]#','_',$_FILES['userfile']['name']);
$_FILES['userfile']['name'] = preg_replace('#[^()\.\-,\w]#','_',$_FILES['userfile']['name']); 
$_FILES['userfile']['name'] = preg_replace('#(_)+#','_',$_FILES['userfile']['name']);

$uploadfile = $uploaddir . basename($_FILES['userfile']['name']);

if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile)) {
   $message="Upload successful, yay!";
} else {
   $message="Upload failed, boo hiss!";
}
?>

I assume the preg_replace stuff was getting rid of nasty characters in the filename. Anyway, note I gave it the upload directory relative to the root of my system's filesystem. This was Linux + Apache + Apache's PHP module. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 21:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

thanks just needed to include the full path and the bit with basename--90.216.21.128 (talk) 21:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Ndiswrapper on Kubuntu

Ok, I am dual booting Win XP and Kubuntu 8.04.1 KDE 4. I downloaded the ndiswrapper (on XP because I have my drivers installed on it) and put it on a flash drive. I booted Kubuntu and extracted ndiswrapper. Then I went and read the file it gives about how to install it. I followed the directions word for word (except it didn't say make uninstall and make as root but I had to because I didn't have sufficient permission otherwise). However, on the make and make install parts I kept getting errors, but I kept going. When it got to the part to install the driver ("ndiswrapper -i driver.inf"), I was notified that ndiswrapper wasn't installed and I needed to apt-get it. Well, that won't work because the whole reason I need it is to connect to the internet (apt-get and surf and stuff). I can't figure out what the problem is. (BTW I also tried sudo apt-get while booted on the liveCD and logged-in on Kubuntu with the disk in the drive.) Any ideas? TIA, Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 21:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Basically, it had errors when you tried to compile it. So, it didn't compile and didn't install. Without knowing WHAT errors it had, there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do to help. -- kainaw™ 00:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. Here:

I'm removing the 50K of error messages, a bit much for the reference desk. All we need to know is

loadndisdriver.c:15:20: error: stdlib.h: No such file or directory

You don't have any header files. Before trying to do any compilations on a Debian-derived distribution, you should apt-get install build-essential --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 01:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Did you read those errors? You don't even have stdlib.h installed. You don't have a system set up for compiling software. Did you install the development (devel) packages for the kernel before trying this? I know, it is a catch-22. You need to be online to install with apt-get, but you need to compile to get online. You need a complete install disk with ALL the main packages on it. That will allow you to install the devel packages and then you can try to compile the driver. -- kainaw™ 01:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I thought those could be contributing to the problem. So I boot linux from my hard drive and put in the install CD or how do I install those dev packages? Ζρς ι'β' ^¡hábleme! 01:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the "real damn easy to install" Linux systems is that it is damn hard to do a custom install. You don't want to install from a live image or just select the quick install option. You want a custom install. You'll be shown the packages you can install. As tcsetattr mentioned, you need to select the build-essential package when you install. -- kainaw™ 12:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

In Debian, we'd simply boot normally, apt-cdrom add the disk with the packages on it, and apt-get install build-essential. Has Ubuntu made it harder? To find out, I downloaded an image called "kubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso" (md5sum e0b9861df26c54acfd62bf35abe859f6) and it has the necessary deb files. apt-cdrom add should work on it. If not, dpkg -i by hand --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)