Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 September 5

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September 5

Online survey websites

I recently came across www.awsurveys.com, which pays for surveying. How much money can anyone earn by way of these websites? These websites dont pay a fixed amount. For example, if I start a website and pay a fixed amount for people to take surveys online, how much would I need to pay survey takers daily? Simply put, if I pay $1 daily for taking a short survey for five minutes, will there be takers?

See Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Does_this_look_legit.3F. As for takers—I doubt it. Five minutes of my time is worth more than $1 plus I'd have to go through all the hassle of telling you where to send the check and who to make it out to (and I'd be worried that you'd only be doing it in order to get my address to sell to spammers). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, What is the payout an average person would expect for spending 5 minutes taking surveys; assuming no spamming is done? Any idea?

Simply answering, yes. There will be takers. Will they be your targetted demographic is an entirely different question. Kushal (talk) 03:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Proxy server

I'm trying to use a proxy server to access a website that's only available in the US. I've tried and tried but all the instructions I found everywhere on the internet are so full of computer gibberish that I'm not getting anywhere, and I don't understand how you find a proxy server to use. Do I have to have a computer in the US whose IP address I can use? Surely not. I'm so confused. Please explain to me how to set up a proxy server in the most dumbed-down words possible. Thank you most kindly!!! Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 02:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Removing any sort of computerish word I can think of... The site is only available to U.S. computers. So, must have a computer in the U.S. to view it. What you want is a computer in the U.S. that will let you give it a web address and it will return the web page from that address. It is an in-between man. For example, if you are underage and you want to buy alcohol, you get an in-between guy. You give him the cash. He uses the cash to buy alcohol. He gives you the alcohol. It appears that you are asking "how can I be the kid trying to buy alcohol and the guy who is buying it at the same time?" You can't. You need to locate a proxy server in the United States. How? Google. Also, ensure you don't type anything important into it. Back to the example before - assume you give the guy your credit card to buy alcohol. How do you know he didn't copy down the information from the card when he was in the store? Similarly, you cannot trust the operators of proxy servers. -- kainaw™ 02:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

vtunnel.com , proxyninja.com there are many just google.. -UnknownIP

Try Tor (download here). In the Vidalia Control Panel click "View the network" and select a node from the country you want, then append the address with it's name followed by ".exit" - so "google.com" would become "google.com.random22.exit". Replace "random22" with the name of the exit node. JessicaThunderbolt 19:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Graphing one variable against another in Open/NeoOffice Calc

It's wonderfully easy to make pretty charts in Calc, and to label them prettily. But prettiness aside, I'm having trouble getting them to show what I want them to show.

I have a Calc spreadsheet with "time" running from A2:A21 and "number completed" from B2:B21. "Time" is a regular arithmetic progression: 0, 3, 6, 9, 12.... It's my independent variable. "Number completed", the dependent variable, is of course not quite so neat. The number in B7 (for example) is the number completed in the time in A7 -- you get the picture, I'm sure. So, in the graphic representation, I want "time" as my x-axis and "number completed" as my y-axis. (Just the kind of stuff we were all doing with pencil and graph paper when we were 13 years old.)

Calc tries hard to be helpful. It sees that row 1 contains text and starts by graphing B2:B21 in red (good) and also A2:A21 in blue (thanks but no thanks) against "row". I can easily zap the latter but this means I have unneeded gaps between my pretty red bars. Also, my numbers are plotted not against time but instead against "Row 2 Row 3 Row 4 Row5" etc. Thanks, but I want them plotted against "0, 3, 6, 9", etc.

I've a hunch that I should have named/labeled my rows before attempting to make the graph. In the past I've received spreadsheets with named columns and perhaps named rows too, but I've never wanted to do this and now that I want to try it I can't see how. (Right-clicking the leftmost column doesn't bring up an option to "adopt row labels from the cells of this column" or similar. And yes, I've RTFM.)

So, uh, what very obvious fact have I been too dumb to notice? -- Hoary (talk) 02:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what you did but you definitely don't have to label your rows. In Calc, start with Insert|Chart and answer all the questions. for "X axis" write "time" and for "Y axis" write "number completed" and away you go.

I'm no expert in Calc so I'm just guessing that you stumbled on some super-helpful (or not) "wizard" that I've been lucky enough not to stumble on. Just make the chart in the regular way and you'll be OK. Tama1988 (talk) 11:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Right. I started from scratch and it all went as you said. Thanks for the encouragement! -- Hoary (talk) 06:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Code samples when job interviewing?

I recently lost my job (I'm a computer game graphics programmer) - although I don't anticipate having trouble finding another one. One of my colleagues who was also let go has been asked to produce a "code sample" prior to getting a face-to-face interview. They want to see a piece of C++ source code that came from actual work that exhibits his programming style/ability.

I've been in the programming business since the late 1970's and I've never heard of a company asking for that before. I often see "programming tests" - but never a request for an actual code sample.

Some people have suggested that the "real" test is to see if the programmer will actually produce a piece of code from his previous job - which would show that he's prepared to break confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements and thus be "A Bad Thing". But a tiny snippet out of (probably) a couple of million lines of software that's not really security-sensitive really wouldn't matter to anyone.

Has anyone here ever heard of a company asking for code samples before? Does anyone here interview programmers with this technique? What are they looking for? How big should the sample be? Is this some fancy new interview technique?

SteveBaker (talk) 02:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, if I was a coder, I think I would simply say that due to NDA issues, you're unable to produce any code from your previous work, but would be glad to demonstrate your ability in some other way, such as a programming test. Not only is that likely to be true, but I think you're right in assuming that this is a way to test you. If so, it strikes me as a kind of a pointless test, but then that's what tests like this tend to be. If you do want to submit a code sample to them, I think you can reasonably expect them to tell you what the sample should be like in terms of size or function or whatever. -- 213.157.89.9 (talk) 09:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes - but when needing a job, failing to meet the demands of the company recruiter tends to be a bad thing. Programming tests are a pretty common idea these days - maybe half of the jobs I've applied for demanded one. They are generally rather fun - nobody who can actually come close to being able to do the work should have much trouble with them. SteveBaker (talk) 10:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but surely no company recruiter would expect you to violate a confidentiality agreement? Of course, if you've been working on open source stuff or something, then it wouldn't be a problem, but if not, what else can you do if you can't provide the code sample? Especially if it is a test of your professional ethics, I really can't see you losing by politely explaining that you can't provide a sample because of a non-disclosure agreement. (Oh, and the anon post above was from me; I didn't realize my login had expired.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree in part with this process. When I had my own company years ago and had to hire a developer, I asked for a little sample of code produced so I could see the programming style, attention to details such as comments and indenting, etc., and guess what - the first person emailed me a whole lot of source code one file at a time, one email at a time! This showed me that the person had no clue how to use a zip archive, just for starters. The next person's code showed a big lump of code without modularization - a big "no-no" in development. I eventually hired someone about ten tries later. I was quite fussy actually, as I asked some questions that I had recently not known the answers to. I wanted to hire someone who knew more than me - lots of recruiters don't want to teach people - and I didn't regret the decision. Sandman30s (talk) 12:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

When I was looking for my current job a lot of places asked for code samples, but I was looking for an entry-level job, I didn't think that the practice was common for more advanced-level jobs. One of the justifications for this I've heard is that it helps you find people with a "passion" for programming, because the code has to be code they cooked up in their spare time.

Helexe Games used to have a humorous "how do I get a jobs in games" FAQ on their website.(WayBack Machine Link) that covers this about halfway down the page. Essentially, they want to use it like an artist's portfolio, and they expect that someone who programs for a living would have done some programming on their own at some point as well. APL (talk) 13:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I would just write up a generic class to show your programming style (a page or less). When I've interviewed programmers in the past I never did that, but did ask them to code a little something during the interview; nothing hard, just enough to be sure they're not bullshitting me (which is strangely common). --Sean 15:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

"(which is strangely common)". This has surprised me as well. Recently where I work we were interviewing for a couple of programming positions. It's astonishing the number of people who apply, talk a good talk, but can't actually write a very simple program. The ones I hate are the ones that ask me for help completing the test as though it were a complex homework assignment that we should all collaborate on. Perhaps asking for a code sample is intended as a way of weeding out these no-hope big-talkers. APL (talk) 17:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

At a previous workplace of mine a new guy was hired, and a few days later when he was all settled in he comes into my office, describes the simple utility he was asked to write, and says he's just having a little trouble getting started. I describe the general approach he should take, and he says "yes, yes, I see", and goes off. The next day he comes back and says while he understands how to write the program as a whole, he's having a spot of trouble on what the first line should be. Hmm. I tell him, and he says "yes, of course!" and goes off. Next day, he comes back and says he's having a bit of trouble on ... the second line. He was fired later that day when I discussed the situation with his boss, and the truth came out. A few weeks later I get an email from him: "thank you for your kindness when we worked together recently. I'm happy to inform you that I'm now the director of software development at XYZ Corp. The reason I'm writing is to ask your advice on this system we're developing ...". I wish I was joking. --Sean 17:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if we worked at the same company? ... I was asked such questions a few times by recruiters, and I always said, "of course not, everything I did for my previous employers is proprietary to those employers." --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 02:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't at all claim to be an expert in the field or anything, but I suspect what the recruiter heard was "of course not, I don't practice my craft outside of the workplace." APL (talk) 07:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

GameCarearGuide.com, which I believe is associated with Gamasutra and GameDev magazine, mentions in several of their articles that programmers should have code samples prepared and ready. (Example [1]) This is more about breaking into the industry than moving from one position to the other, but it's not inconceivable that some places wouldn't differentiate their first-stage hiring procedures. APL (talk) 07:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

If you are asked to produce code that was written for a previous employer, or was a work-for-hire, or was under NDA, or in some other way you do not have the right to reveal the code then my advice is: explain to them that revealing such a confidential code sample, even if it is small or does not really reveal any trade secrets, is not something you can do. Never violate any law, regulation, NDA, contract, social custom, or moral code. If they really ask for code written for previous employers and insist on it, then you probably should not work for them. So my advice is not only not to give them confidential code, but actually to avoid having any relationship with people who are immoral enough to ask for such a thing in the first place. But it is possible that this request came from an inexperienced young recruiter and is not company's policy or condoned by the management. If you can, try to negotiate saying that while revealing confidential code written for a previous employer or client is impossible, you can give them some free/open-source code you have written recently, or some code you have written as a hobby at your home for your personal use or enjoyment, or tell them that you would be happy to writte some new code just to show them your skills, or that you can take a programming test. If they insist in seeing code which is confidential, don't contact them again. NerdyNSK (talk) 14:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

usb hubs

I have two 4 ports usb hubs and if I plug more then one thing in nothing works, do I need drivers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.173.10.17 (talk) 09:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

No - you shouldn't need drivers.

Does your hub have it's own power supply? Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Does it need batteries? If so, does it have batteries? Are they nice new batteries? Are you really, really sure about that?

If not, it may be that your PC is unable to provide enough power down a single USB cable to power two or more peripherals. The USB spec requires only a very limited amount of power to be provided by the PC host...and all USB peripherals should limit themselves to just that amount - most take far less than that maximum - but maybe not in your case. It's certainly possible that a PC that only produces just enough power (a laptop for example) - combined with two fairly power-thirsty peripherals - would be enough to make everything stop working.

If that's the case, go get a decent USB hub with it's own power supply - and your problem should go away.

The only other thing I could imagine would be if you plugged one hub into another...I've never tried that and it might not work...but it doesn't sound like that's what you're saying.

SteveBaker (talk) 10:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I was in the midst of suggesting that you check the power supply, also. I have one or two devices (like a scanner) that will not work if the hub does not have its own power supply. My hub is connected to a power strip as well as to the computer, and I'm able to use it all the time. --- OtherDave (talk) 10:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep. USB hubs are really pretty dumb machines - power distribution is about the only thing that can go wrong. It's annoying that companies sell the ones with no power supply though - that's a violation of the USB spec and they really shouldn't be allowed to sell them. SteveBaker (talk) 10:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to add to the confusion: my USB hub will work, in spite of having its power supply disconnected, for some small items (like a USB transmitter for a wireless mouse). It will not work for the scanner, which doesn't have its own power cord. My theory is that the scanner just draws more power than the hub can borrow from the PC. After my initial confusion, I chose to leave the hub connected to its own power source all the time. --- OtherDave (talk) 22:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Need Advice on buying a laptop!

Hi I was wondering if someone could help me choose a laptop to buy. I can spend up to £500. I'm off to university this september so I need one that can do word processing and make presentations etc. The operating systems I'm most familiar with is XP/Vista so I'd be happy with either of these. However, I also play a game called Counter Strike Source. The recommended requirements are as follows: '2.4 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX 9 level graphics card, Windows 2000/XP, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection' (taken from steam website.)

A laptop I'm interested in called the inspiron 1525 found on dell.com has the following specification:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5750 (2.00 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache) Video card - Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100 Memory - 2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024] Hard Drive - 250GB (5400RPM) SATA Hard Drive Optical Devices - 8x DVD+/-RW Optical drive, including SW

I don't know whether this laptop will be good enough to play the game. A friend told me I'd need a laptop with a duo core processor and discrete graphics card for optimum performance when gaming but I've heard these are expensive.

Any response would be great and any other suggestions for laptops I could buy which meet my requirements would be very welcome. Please don't get too technical as I'm not brilliant with computers! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.125.174 (talk) 10:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

An easy way to do this would be to take the game into Curry's, PC World, etc., and ask the shop assistants there if it will work. They might even let you try it on one of the display machines of the laptop you are interested in. Bear in mind, though, laptops these days are far better than they used to be, but are still not optimised for (modern) gaming, unlike desktops.--ChokinBako (talk) 11:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about the game but I can tell you that for your serious uses you do not need MS Office. Get OpenOffice.org instead. That way you'll save some money and have more to spend on beer, I mean a computer you can play your game on. No, wait, you're going to university. Forget playing computer games, spend your time with other students. With or without beer. Tama1988 (talk) 11:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is the calories ... :P Anyways, I am sure beer was just a joke. I don't play many games on my macbook but I still find plenty of distractions if I want to. Unless you must play CSS on a computer, I would suggest you to wait and get a console instead. Kushal (talk) 14:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Counter Strike Source is based on Half Life 2 and from what I've heard it either won't run on a computer using integrated graphics or it will run very poorly. Doing any kind of serious 3D graphics whether it be gaming or production graphics on a computer using integrated graphics is not going to result in satisfaction. I would suggest getting discreet graphics. Rilak (talk) 11:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

CSS is not quite as intensive graphically, but I agree - Intel integrated graphics is hopeless, rather get something with an Nvidia chip on it. My laptop has a Quadro NVS and has no problenm playing CSS or more demanding games for that matter. Sandman30s (talk) 11:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for all your your help guys. I see that using intergrated graphics is not a good idea then. But what about this laptop- It is an Acer Aspire 5920H. I wonder if this would be any good. Please give me your assessments/reccomendations!

Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 / 2 GHz ( Dual-Core )

RAM - 2 GB (installed) / 4 GB (max) - DDR II SDRAM ( 2 x 1 GB )
    - Please call 0870 167 0818 for double memory offer
Hard Drive - 250 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 5400 rpm
Operating System - Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Screen - 15.4' TFT 1280 x 800 ( WXGA ) - 24-bit (16.7 million colours)
Optical Drive - HD DVD-ROM - integrated
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS - 256 MB

spec taken from laptopsdirect.co.uk Thanks again to all who have helped —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.125.174 (talk) 14:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't exactly your question, but keep an eye on the maximum RAM for your computer. (I am content with my Inspiron E1505, but I can't take the RAM beyond 2 G. ) You might choose to get 2 G now, as with your Acer example, but that machine can take 4 G. RAM is the cheapest add-on speed boost you can manage; with some laptops, other kinds of upgrades (like graphics) are difficult or impossible. So spend on what's harder for you to upgrade after the fact. --- OtherDave (talk) 22:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

That looks perfectly fine to play CSS at a decent resolution (not sure if it supports your native WXGA resolution though, which is always first prize on a laptop), or even modern FPS games at lower resolutions. Sandman30s (talk) 23:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Software glitch; not sure who's responsible

I asked a couple of questions about my new computer here recently. Now I have more.

On several occasions, I have seen a message onscreen stating that I am not connected to the Internet and telling me to connect. Sometimes it still says it won't. And yet when I go to other sites, there is no problem.

I finally concluded the problem was not with my computer or the Internet provider, but it was the fault of a slow web site. The software can't distinguish betwen the inability to connect with the site and the Internet actually being out. In these situations, I know to check the blinking light on the modem and it is almost always blinking.

And the other day, I repeatedly got the message I needed to connect to the Internet, and was repeatedly told I wasn't. Later I discovered, after actually going to other sites, that the address I was using had an invalid character in it; this is supposed to give me a message saying "no such web site" or something like that.

Rather than bother tech support people who are likely to be somewhere in Asia, I'll just see if someone here knows what to do. I found what version of Internet Explorer I had, but I can't seem to access that information now.

Looking at the box the computer came in I have "Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1". Hmmm ... given Vista's bad reputation, maybe that's what's causing the problem.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, Alt-H worked for me. Explorer is Version 7.0.6001.18000.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any screenshots of the error? Is it a message within Internet Explorer or a little popup near your task bar telling you that you've been disconnected? I'm just wondering if your problem is with some hardware (motherboard/NIC/Ethernet cable). Laenir (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't know what a screenshot is or how to make one. It's a small popup in the center of the screen giving me three choices--Broadband, Dial-up, or Offline. If I click on "Broadband" it almost always gives me a smaller popup on top of the first one which tells me to click on "cancel".Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Steps to make a screenshot in Windows: 1. Press the Print Screen (PrtSc) key when the screen looks like what you want us to see. 2. Go to Start→Run..., type "mspaint" in the box and click Ok. 3. In MS Paint, choose Edit→Paste, then File→Save. 4. In the Save dialog box, choose "PNG" from the "Save as type:" box and then save the image somewhere. 5. Upload the image, e.g. to ImageShack or Wikipedia itself. 6. Link to it here.

I suspect this is some kind of software provided by your ISP. Does it tell you to click "cancel", or does it just have a "cancel" button and no others? If the latter, it's probably trying to connect and the "cancel" button is there in case you change your mind. Try not clicking it and see what happens. -- BenRG (talk) 21:18, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Me no speak geek, so no screenshot.

Okay, I did it again.

At the top of the first pop-up on a blue background (there is a blue border around the whole thing) are the words "Dial-up Connection" with a red X on the right.

Below that, on a gray background, there is an arrow pointing to the right and a globe. To the right it says, "Select the service you want to connect to".

On the left it says "Connect" with one of the n's underlined. In a box with a down arrow on the right it says "Broadband connection".

There is a box below that with a check in it which has the words "Connect automatically" on the right.

Below that are three boxes to click on: "Connect" with C underlined, "Settings" with one of the t's underlined, and "Work Offline" with the capital O underlined.

At the bottom it says "Dialing attempt 1. Unable to establish a connection".

If I click on the "Connect" box I get a box with "Connecting to Broadband Connection..." at the top on a blue background (and there is a blue border), with no X, only a "Cancel" button under the message "Connecting through WAN Miniport (PPPOE)..." to the right of a picture of a computer.

The first box never goes away. The second one gets covered up with an error message if I don't click on "Cancel". I can't copy and paste the error message, and I'd rather not try to copy the whole thing.

All I did was put an invalid character in the URL.

If I put the URL in correctly ...

Bingo! I'm there!Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 16:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Need a javascript bookmark for downforeveryoneorjustme.com please

Using Firefox 3 if that makes a difference. Basically what I'd like is a bookmark that, when I click it, opens the currently selected tab's address at DFEOJM. It would need to strip out the http:// though, DFEOJM doesn't like it. So if I visited http://en.wikipedia.org and it was unavailable, I could click on the bookmark to bring up http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/en.wikipedia.org. I know zero javascript but it seems simple to do.

For bonus points, I set my bookmarks to open in a new tab by default. Is there a setting to make a specific bookmark open in the same tab?

For super-duper bonus points, is it possible to write a Firefox plugin that automatically loads the DFEOJM page whener a "site unavailable"-type error is encountered? Zunaid©® 16:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Here's your bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(){location="http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/"+location.host;})()

--grawity 16:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, thanks grawity! and bonus points for letting it open in the same tab :) I'll leave this open just in case someone can do part 3 of the request, but part 1 and 2 are resolved. Zunaid©® 19:27, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You might have hit upon a goldmine with your third request. I am looking forward to having this included in Firefox 3.2 (of course, I would rather Mozilla use a different provider from DFEOJM). Kushal (talk) 03:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Copy files in Windows

Hello. Can someone tell me how to do the following in Windows: Given a directory D and a target directory T, copy every file contained in D (or it's sub directories, recursively) to the equivalent location within T, assuming that T has the same subfolders, but to exclude files with a certain name. I'm not sure I explained that well. Another go: we have two directory structures. How to copy just the files from one to another. No directories will be overwritten or created. Some files will be excluded. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.223.156.1 (talk) 16:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

xcopy from the command line can do most of that, but I don't think it can do all of it. For example, xcopy D T /s /exclude:file1 will copy all the files in D (and all subdirectories except empty ones), except the list of files contained in file1. If T already contains files, you might be able to use the /u switch, which will only copy files from D that already exist in T (u for "update"). Beyond that, I think you'll need a short program of some type. --LarryMac | Talk 19:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You could install Cygwin and then run something like this from the bash command line, replacing SRC, DST, and EXCLUDE with your file/directory names (note that SRC appears twice):

     IFS=$'\n'; for i in $(find 'SRC' -not -type d -not -name 'EXCLUDE' -printf '%P\n'); do cp "SRC/$i" "DST/$i"; done

Warning: untested, may destroy the universe. -- BenRG (talk) 20:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if RAR or ZIP etc. supports this, but I remember a DOS archiver called ACE (that works in Windows) that had a switch -x to exclude files to write into an archive. Once you extract the archive using the e parameter it will by default retain your directory structure. You didn't say if you wanted to make this a batch copy, but if so then ACE can be run on the command line. You can investigate WinACE, WinRAR, etc. to see if they support the "exclude" switch. Sandman30s (talk) 23:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

If bash seems a bit daunting and you don't mind paying money for software, I think that Take Command will do what you want. -- Hoary (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

robocopy will do that, and it's free. —Bkell (talk) 14:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

How do you track a website visitor's IP range in IPv6 so if they change their IP you can track who uses the same range?

How do you track a website visitor's IP range in IPv6 so if they change their IP you can track who uses the same range? First there's three different ways to convert IPv4 to IPv6 and the IPv4 in hex sometimes is at the front and sometimes at the back. Plus, I've been trying to understand IPv6 and it looks like IPv6 when changing range isn't like IPv4 where 123.123.123.(changes) will be a range and so it can be predicted. But instead IPv6 looks like ranges will change numbers randomly like someone will have their numbers assigned for the firs 64 bytes and not use the rest and the range will change up there, then some other IPv6 IP will use 96 bytes and the range changes elsewhere, etc. William Ortiz (talk) 21:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you need to distinguish between two clients on the same netblock, you'll need to use something other than IP address to do it. One way is to assign session cookies. This doesn't help if the user has cookies turned off.

I guess it depends for what purpose you want to "track" visitors: if you're looking to determine the number of unique visitors for marketing reasons (e.g. "Advertise on my site! I get 10,000 unique visitors daily!") then unique cookies plus unique netblocks would be a pretty honest way of doing it. If you're looking to identify specific users so you can block abuse from bad users, it doesn't help much as a determined user can delete cookies and use proxies. --FOo (talk) 19:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm making a website and the range tracking will try to detect who might the same people. I basically could do it if ranges were predictable in IPv6 somehow except I'm not sure how ranges will change in IPv6 as it looks like ranges are all screwy and not changing an a preditable way like IPv4. Fortunately my site is not finished or up so I can completely overhaul the database. I seached the web and the only thing I found was that they're putting IPs in hexadecimal format now. Anyway, anyone know how IP ranges will work like in IPv6? William Ortiz (talk) 04:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Linux dual boot

I am interested in installing Linux on my machine; I would like it to be able to dual boot. I currently have Windows Vista SP1 installed. My background is short to none with Unix (I have worked with Bash in MacOS X however). My issues are this:

1. I just bought my first computer, and I don't want to gunk it up. It was expensive, and I'm poor. If it is too complicated or risky, I won't do it.
2. I am interested in running a good Linux based system for educational purposes (it's much easier to get an IT job with Linux experience).

Does anyone have any suggestions or a good tutorial on how to install the dual-boot system, and which Linux version I should try it with. Thanks a lot. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:22, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

[2] is a guide for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a good choice since it is so very often the first Linux distribution that people try and people often dual boot. This means that the amount of material on the web of the "I'm coming from a Windows system and I'm trying to / I just / I want to / I had problems with...." type is huge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.164.115 (talk) 23:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You can't screw up the hardware with software (well not usually, see Halt and Catch Fire and Killer poke), so if you bought your computer from a computer vendor as opposed to built it yourself it usually comes with recovery options, so if you screw up your software you could always use the recovery wizard to reset the software to factory condition. --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

As for the Ubuntu interface, it's not to hard to figure out. If you know how to use a computer well, you'll be fine with Ubuntu. Although after you get used to where everything is, I'd recommend checking out the command line.(Applications--> Accessories--> Terminal). It's an easier and faster way to do tasks. To update Ubuntu use Update Manager or the command line. Update Manager: System--> Administration--> Update Manager. However the command line (BASH) is much faster. To update use: sudo apt-get update. Enter the password you use to login and it will quickly update the computer. Also use: sudo apt-get upgrade to upgrade and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu when a new version comes around. To set the root password(Needed for some actions) use sudo passwd root. To add or remove programs try "Add/Remove" found: Applications--> Add/Remove. Voila! You have a list of programs to install from. Or alternatively use System--> Administration--> Synaptic Package Manager to get specific packages or uninstall more than one package. Ubuntu comes with a full suite of programs and you can easily add more. To install from a download: Download the file to(Usually in .Bzip or tar.gz format) Use archive Manager(Pops up automatically as it is the default program) to extract the file. Then go to the command line. Use cd (Name of Directory where you extracted to) then into the program file itself. The run ./configure and the make and then make install. I should note you need to be root to "make" and "make install". Don't worry if it sounds complicated. Experiment! And in no time at all you'll have everything figured out. I loved Ubuntu when my dad first showed it to me and now I use almost all the time using Windows XP Professional SP3 only when needed. And feel free to ask more questions if you need to. A word of warning, do *not* always login as root. You run the chance of completely wrecking the computer if you don;t know what you are doing. Don't worry though, use the man command to get the manual about a command. Good Luck!:D(Did I mention Ubuntu is completely free and is basically comes as a premium system? Compare that to Windows[Which costs quite a bit] where you have to buy ''more'' software just to make it good.)(Everybody else here on the Reference Desk may correct mistakes I made in this quick guide)--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:04, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You might also be interested in getting your toes wet with Wubi (installer). Kushal (talk) 03:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

!AAH! That takes forever! It downloads all slow(It's a big file) and it will take literally days for the download. Just use BitTorrent to get the ISO image from the Ubuntu website, burn it on a CD, and install using the CD.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 04:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Xp54321. I used Wubi on a Toshiba Satellite on Comcast "High speed Internet". (I know we all love to hate Comcast but please read the whole story.) I think I was able to download and install Ubuntu in a matter of about two hours. Probably because I was doing this at night. I did not realize that your mileage may vary. I had been using dial-up for ever myself but lately I seem to have taken broadband for granted. I apologize for any misconception. By the way, Xp54321, do you know if it is possible to instruct Wubi to look for the Ubuntu image locally? I think that would be the best of both worlds, to borrow Miley Cyrus' words. Kushal (talk) 05:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I read this somewhere on Wubi forums sticky-- if you put wubi.exe and the ISO in the same folder, it will use the locally stored image for installation. Didn't try it myself though. -59.95.98.102 (talk) 06:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I have never heard of Comcast but I use DSL I believe. The ISO image and wubi in the same folder mmh....I'll try that out sometime but I'd probably want to read that forum. Can you link to it?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 15:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You can't screw up your hardware by installing Linux - but it's perfectly possible to screw up badly enough to mess up Vista by trashing the boot sector or something. This is especially true of laptops that come without Windows CD's that have a sneaky hidden OS restore area on the harddrive. Also, before you start, make a "Recovery/Restore" CD from Vista so that you CAN reinstall it if everything goes horribly wrong!

HOWEVER: If you just want to get your feet wet with Linux, download and burn a "Live CD" version of Linux and use an external USB drive for storage. That lets boot Linux from the CD. You do more or less everything Linux without touching one single byte of your harddrive. You can even install some versions of Linux onto a USB drive and tell your BIOS to include USB in the "boot-chain" so your PC will boot Linux from the USB drive if it's plugged in - and fall back to Vista if it's not. Once you're comfortable with Linux, you may feel more confident about installing a full Dual-boot or (we Linux nuts would hope) you might want to erase Vista altogether and run Linux-only. But take baby steps. SteveBaker (talk) 15:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

In addition, I have some other open-source recommendations.:) Don't use Microsoft Office use OpenOffice.Org instead to save some money. Actually a lot of money. The full version of MS Office 2007 is well over $600 and still lacks one program found only in a another version of MS Office! With Open Office you get a full suite and don't have to pay a dime. Don't use Internet Explorer use Mozilla Firefox instead, as you can expand its functionality with addons. These addons are extremely useful and there are millions of them for doing almost anything. Finally, remember Windows is expensive. XP is still about $100-$150 and Vista is about $220! Linux is free! --Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 15:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

(I don't see how the previous remark relates to this question - but FYI, I have a "price guide" that relates the price of the most popular Windows applications to their OSS equivalents here [3]).

I'm surprised nobody mentioned a Microsoft Virtual PC or VMPlayer solution... no need to dual boot!Root⁴(one) 03:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Google chrome and videos

Hello,

My (prehistoric) laptop is now host to all 3 main browsers. I want to love Chrome, and i'm so nearly there, but why does it insist that I download all of adobe's whizz-bang freeware just to watch a few videos when IE (and to a lesser extent, firefox)can just deal with it? Anyone else have this problem? 82.22.4.63 (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it hasn't happened on my computer, but I just installed the new version of Flashplayer (before I installed Chrome mind you). Youtube and any good video site these days uses Flashplayer; the fact that not all videos are working on Firefox shows you are certainly using an ancient version of it. That said, I did already have Flashplayer crash on me once. Magog the Ogre (talk) 22:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You need the Flash player to watch Flash movies. Firefox and IE can't "just deal with it"—they have the player installed already, you probably just forgot you installed it (or it came pre-installed—which isn't exactly great either). It's not a "problem", it just means the browser isn't installing third-party tools behind your back—which is a good thing. Just install the player and you'll never have to deal with it again, and you'll forget you did it as quickly as you did the time you installed it to work with Firefox. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't like Flash a lot. It's great and all for movies/videos etc. BUT it hogs a huge' amount of CPU processing power. One (cool) thing about Chrome is that it lets you see what is using how much CPU.(In percentages). I looked. Guess what? Chrome and all its subprocesses were using less than 5% of the CPU(This is on my brother's computer,Specs:2.20 GHZ, 1.00 GB of RAM, 225 GB hard drive plus a second 139 GB hard drive.) but Flash alone was using 20% of the CPU! Google says it improved Javascript's speed on Chrome but Firefox has an addon called Flashblock which blocks Flash elements on a page. You'll find your web browsing speeded up by it. It can be found here. Chrome has yet to have such a feature but I should note Chrome is fast and certainly light and easy to use. However I feel it needs some more features before it can take on giants like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or Opera or Safari etc.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 02:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Would you prefer that those crisp graphics that Flash provides be streamed as an unsharp video file, clogging your connection? Although I can not comment on how well Flash is optimized, it does use the CPU for a reason. =)--mboverload@ 03:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I know, I know, but still, Flash should somehow be improved as to not hog so much CPU.--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 04:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Also, it could be used a LOT less. Flash is needlessly used when a static image would be perfectly fine, mostly due to crappy marketing departments. Thus supporting both our points =) --mboverload@ 04:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Firefox 3.1 will pushing for <video> tags. I'd imagine it does not involove Flash. Kushal (talk) 14:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Right, Firefox will use Theora, assuming the feature makes it (it's in the nightly builds right now, and apparently works fine with Wikipedia/Commons videos). 24.76.161.28 (talk) 15:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

You can open the Chrome Task Manager, click on Shockwave Flash, and then click on End Process. Simple way for Chrome Flashblock :) — Shinhan < talk > 09:21, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Typing vowels with macrons in Linux

I'm taking a Latin course, and I need to type vowels with macrons, but I can't find a way to do it. Before I switched to Xubuntu, I used Debian with GNOME, and I was able to type them by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Alt+[unicode string, e.g. 0101], but now for some reason it doesn't work anymore. I've tried using an AltGr keyboard layout, but it doesn't seem to have macrons. I also tried mapping the left Windows key to Multi_key using xmodmap, but that seems to revert back to Super_L whenever I close the terminal emulator or restart X. Somebody help please??? --Anakata (talk) 22:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you using the same IME as before? --Kjoonlee 00:50, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure. How do I find out which one I'm using? It always worked fine before, so I never paid any attention to it. I have SCIM installed, but I don't think it's the default because when I want to use it I have to right click and select it from a menu first.--Anakata (talk) 02:22, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

That's so silly that they're making you do that. As I'm sure you know, THE•ROMANS•WROTE•LIKE•THIS. They didn't have macrons. But I digress. It's far less convenient, but you can use OpenOffice's Writer to insert a symbol by going to Insert --> Special Character.--Birdsusing nnn (talk) 05:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

On my debian installation you can type macrons with AltGr+Shift+] followed by the letter you want (like this: ē). You can get other accents in a similar way, e.g. AltGr+; then e for é. This may work on ubuntu too. 163.1.148.158 (talk) 09:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, AltGr+Shift+] then e results in this: ”e. Is there a file somewhere with all the AltGr combinations and what they result in?--Anakata (talk) 13:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a command that generates a .ps file showing your keyboard maps at various levels. Check out this page [4]. 163.1.148.158 (talk) 14:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

If you find that the keystroke is too cumbersome for fast typing, you could just put an underscore after the vowel like "ma_cron", and then when you're done do a ":%s/a_/ā/g" or however your editor does a search and replace. Another method is to open up the macron page and just cut and paste when you need one. --Sean 17:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the help everyone! Turns out SCIM has a Unicode input mode so I can input the characters by their Unicode number.--Anakata (talk) 13:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)