Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 August 25

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August 25

Zipped folders

In Windows XP... is the compression algorithm used by zipped folders lossy or lossless? --72.197.202.36 (talk) 00:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Lossless. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 00:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Lossy file compression wouldn't work that well. Lossy compression is generally used for things that have analog analogues (hmm)—images, video, sound. The human brain patches together the lost bits or ignores them. For things that are wholly digital—text, for example—lossy compression would totally corrupt it and not be recoverable. I'm willing to wager that NO practical folder compression algorithms are lossy. --68.50.54.144 (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair point... Thanks! --72.197.202.36 (talk) 21:39, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Well spoken, 68... sorry to nitpick (but this is the refdesk!) "Wholly-digital" is probably a poor choice of words, since lossy compression is also "wholly digital" (and ascii text does have an analog equivalent). I think your meaning comes across, though. Lossy compression works better on multimedia data like images, movies, and audio. Our lossy compression article does talk about applications to text, and includes a fairly complicated published algorithm. The simplest one I can think of is simple vowel removal (lvng mst txt stll rdabl to mny rdrs). In general, though, this is not applied by standard file compression. The original poster can be assumed to be describing the pkzip format, which uses a lossless LZ77/Huffman coding algorithm; or gzip (which uses the same lossless technique). But, in general, a folder could be serialized and compressed by any algorithm (with potentially catastrophic results and unrecoverable files). There's no reason JPEG couldn't be applied to an arbitrary input file (we could pretend the bits represented a grayscale image, for example; zero-padding and a suitable spoofed header might be needed to stuff the file in to a standard tool). The result might be fun! Nimur (talk) 03:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Wiki markup

This may be a dumb question, seeing that I barely understand even one other question posted on this desk -- I notice wacky things in Wikipedia that I never knew could exist, in terms of: formatting mathematical equations, colored bands and bars and boxes, large font-almost cartoonish quotation marks, and lots of things I can't remember, but basically, things that are way more sophisticated that just plain text. Is all of it programmed in to be able to work, or do you just play with the markup and things happen (that's sort of the dumb part :) If it is all programmed in, how does everyone know how to do it? Is it listed somewhere? The way I do it is I have to wait until I see something crazy and then I click "edit this page" and try to figure out the HTML (I think that's what it's called) -- but obviously, that's not the way to do it properly, or else the first time never would have happened. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 02:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Some of it is in HTML, some of it is in CSS, and some of it (the equations) are in a specialized language called TeX. People who do science or math know TeX because it is basically required if you do anything with equations these days in an academic setting (even science papers that don't have equation are usually written in TeX). TeX is powerful but not user-friendly—it's one of those, "once you know it, you know it and can use it a lot, but if you don't know it, it might as well be Chinese" sort of things. Wikipedia has special TeX interpreters that render the code as graphics—it's a plug-in or something like that.

As for HTML and CSS, they are just standard web markup. If you do any web programming you know them. Wikipedia doesn't do anything special with them, other than not filter them out. --68.50.54.144 (talk) 02:19, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

How did we learn them? Some of us have been here a while; you pick up on details and learn how to navigate the (somewhat disorganized and scattered) help pages. First, you might want to read Wikipedia:Template messages to learn about the basic syntax of templates. Next, you might want to read Help:Displaying a formula, Template:Cquote, and Wikipedia:COLOR - since you specifically asked about those things. Then, to broaden your understanding overall about how the wiki works, you can start learning about wikisyntax in general. Technically, the correct term is wiki markup or wikitext, (not HTML). One of the primary roles of the MediaWiki software (which runs on the Wikipedia servers) is to convert wikitext into renderable HTML and CSS (which your browser then uses to actually draw the fonts and images to your screen). Wikipedia / MediaWiki does this with server-side scripting (in php). Technically, you can manually add a lot of HTML into the wikitext area, but this is frowned upon for a variety of reasons. You can read Help:HTML in wikitext for details. Finally, you can read the Help:Contents for a general overview. Some subtle things, like the difference between WP:Project namespace and WP:Article namespace never really get "explained" to newcomers - you either pick up on the detail, or ignore it. If you install your own copy of MediaWiki on your own server, you'll have the opportunity to muck around with more of the under-the-hood implementation details; that insight will help you understand the interplay of all the different components of the wiki. Nimur (talk) 03:20, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

IGGP site missing!

Hello, I am the chair of the Steering Committee of the International Grape Genome Program (http://www.vitaceae.org/index.php/International_Grape_Genome_Program). This page has been operational recently (at least a couple of weeks ago). I checked the page today and it won't open. I don't know what to do. Has it been deleted? Has the link been damaged? Any advice on what I must do would be most helpful.76.193.49.119 (talk) 04:04, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I can't even access the main page, let alone the subpage you linked. (Though, I can ping the machine, so it's alive). It seems like the web-server has been disabled or is no longer reachable through that alias; possibly, some new firewall is responsible. Your best bet is to contact your web administrator or IT specialist. Tell them the web server at 169.237.195.13, or its network, needs maintenance. If it is managed (as I suspect) by UC Davis, your IT guys can be found here or by phone (530-754-HELP (4357)). Nimur (talk) 06:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

CD copyright information

Is copyright information on CDs, DVDs, and BluRay discs, regulated in a way, so that the information may be found, in the same way, in the same format, so that programs may check any copyright info without problems?

For example, Copyright (C), TradeMark (TM), and RightsRestricted (RR) symbols are regulated, so they may always be found in the bottom right corner of the image, name, logo, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HitmanNumber86 (talk • contribs) 05:24, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Nope. You can safely assume that everything recent is copyrighted. If the author has granted you particular rights (such as under a Creative Commons license), they'll make that obvious by including the license or a reference to it. And no, those symbols are not "regulated" in the manner you suggest. --FOo (talk) 08:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Driver update

Hello there, recently I have upgraded my system. I found a driver update link in ATI catalyst control center (My graphics card is XFX 4890 1 GB). After clicking on "update driver" link, this page appeared and showed that driver update for XP, Vista and windows 7 (both 32 and 64 bit) are available. I already have CD for my graphics card provided by manufacturer. Both XP and Vista showed that G. Card driver is up to date. Should I stick with CD or go for up date to that link? (though 4890 1 GB released on April 2, 2009. It's not so backdated)if I download and install that driver update should I uninstall my previous one, though they are same driver software?

One more thing, if you go to that page you'll see three box. First One is for Operating system second one is for product family and third one is for product series. There I found that two series are available for updating. One is Redeaon 4890 series and another one is Radeon 4800 series. I checked both them and they showed same driver software. If they are same then why they are representing two separate series? Which series I should pick up? Thank you--119.30.36.45 (talk) 08:31, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Language changes in Microsoft Word (resolved)

Whenever I type the following in Microsoft Word, the set language changes to Russian and the characters are replaced with what I assume are the ones in the same keyboard position on a Russian keyboard:

5. R = 5.5 cm; Q = 20.5 nC; R_in = 10.5 cm

changes into

5ю К = 5ю5 сьж Й = 20ю5 тСж К_шт = 10ю5 сь

Why does it do this and how do I stop it? --superioridad ^(discusión) 09:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I figured it out. Incidentally, the 'detect language automatically' feature is incredibly annoying. --superioridad ^(discusión) 09:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is - it keeps guessing wrong, marking half your document as containing spelling mistakes. — QuantumEleven 11:03, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Project management software

Is anyone able to identify the program that has been used to create this image (before I removed most of the text in an image editor)? Could anyone recommend open-source software that runs on Windows, suitable for creating such graphs, and for project management in general (single-user programs are ok)? Thanks, --NorwegianBlue ^talk 09:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks somewhat like a Gantt chart. If so, there are some OS options on comparison of project management software. --Sean 13:08, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Definitely. I've been looking through the list and it's quite a mixed bag. I realize that my question should be more focused.

1. I need to insert tasks on a time axis, with their estimated duration
2. I need to insert deadlines/milestones
3. I need to put the tasks into different categories, that are reflected in the graphical output (e.g. with different colors).
4. I want reasonably visually pleasing output (I liked the output in the image I linked to).
5. Ability to indicate the interdependencies of tasks would be nice, but is not a must.

I do not need

• document management or version control
• issue tracking
• allocation of manpower.

Although I asked for recommendations for windows-based programs, a php+mysql web-based program would also be of interest. I installed Planner now on a linux machine, to try it out (it appears to have a Windows version too). Unfortunately, it does not satisfy my requirements number 3 and 4. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

My experience is with Microsoft Project, but pretty much any Project management software should be able to do what you want. Unfortunately, the list suggests to me that not all packages are equal. From the Open Source products, I would suggest taking a look at Project.net, eGroupWare and GanttProject. Project.net requires Oracle (definitely not open source and not free either), eGroupWare has web interface and requires PHP and a database like MySQL, and GanttProject could be limited in what you can do (but it does create Gantt charts). One hint might be to consider resource management as a means to separate the tasks into categories. Astronaut (talk) 22:06, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

eGroupWare looks very promising. I have a hosted account with MySQL and PHP, so I'll try it out. Thanks! --NorwegianBlue ^talk 08:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Game not compatible with vista?

Hi I just bought age of mythology and the titans expansion pack from ebay and at the time I didn't realise that the items advert said the game not compatible with windows vista. I was wondering why this is. If it is compatible with XP why not with vista? RichYPE (talk) 09:47, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Can you not tell vista to run it in XP mode? I vaguely recall this is an option ... indeed, after right-clicking on an exe, one can select properties, compatibility. Not sure if it'll work for you but... --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

[Obligatory Vista-hating message] 67.243.4.208 (talk) 16:20, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

hmm I am in a bit of a dilemma now... The game is new and still in its packaging. If I open it and try and run it in XP mode and it doesn't work I can't return it. Someone please help! Thanks RichYPE (talk) 21:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Googling "age of mythology vista" seems to return a lot of people having problems with it so unfortunately I'm afraid there probably isn't going to be a yes/no answer, but it doesn't look good. It might work, it might not. As you know it didnt' say it supports Vista, but this isn't just because the game was released before Vista's launch, it's officially not supported even with patches. Sorry I haven't been able to be of much help. ZX81 ^talk 21:41, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Current in mac mini

I have a mac mini that seems to be discharging a constant current through it... It gets stronger at the back to the point of not being able to touch it... It's giving off at least a few volts of electricity but definitely more than that... If anyone knows anything about this some advice would be muchly appreciated... Thanks 81.35.161.99 (talk) 10:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I know you should unplug that computer right now and have an actual technician look at it, since clearly you aren't one yourself. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:02, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, you were absolutely no help at all... Cheers 81.33.81.250 (talk) 12:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what help you are you looking for though? You obviously understand the problem you have with it, but we certainly can't walk you through diagnosing (and fixing?) it on the reference desk, because quite simply electricity can very dangerous and it's not the sort of thing that will necessarily make any sense unless we can see it. Like Captain Disdain said, if you don't know how to do it yourself, you'll need to give it to someone who can. ZX81 ^talk 12:52, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

IMAP: Loading all messages simultaneously

I am using a slow internet connection, which causes Thunderbird to take a long time to download each message. It loads each message individually: I click on a message, it loads, and appears in the viewing panel below. On hitting the down arrow, it may take 10sec to load the next one.

Is there a way in which Thunderbird can download them altogether, so I can do something else while they all load? My name is anetta (talk) 10:42, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Rightclick the account (in the left-hand bar), hit properties, go to the "offline and disc space" section for that account, and hit the "make the messages in my inbox available when I am working offline". It should then download all the messages. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

DTMF

Why the telephone has to sound the DTMF coding at every telephone call?--Mikespedia (talk) 10:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't really understand your question. If you are asking "why does my phone continue to issue DTMF tones after I've dialled", then there are two reasons. Firstly normal phones can't tell if a call has completed - they'd dumb, and just send DTMF tones whenever you push buttons, and it's the exchange's problem to figure out call state. Secondly, even when phone systems are smart (like mobile telephony and VoIP) and do know if a call has been dialled okay, DTMF is used by IVR systems, voicemail, etc., so the handsets have to continue to send them as needed. Indeed, systems which don't use DTMF for call setup (e.g. VoIP systems like Skype) still have to have little DTMF-emitting virtual keypads, so IVR and voicemail apps still work. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 12:23, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Phone keyboard

strange symbol on the one key

Why the number 1 on the phone keypad (mostly on mobile phones) has a "o_o" sign? What is it and how does it come from?--Mikespedia (talk) 11:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It's been there on every mobile I've ever owned and on a press-and-hold always connects me to my voice mail box. Since it looks like a stylised tape, I would suggest that. It doesn't seem to be part of any international standard such as E.161. Nanonic (talk) 11:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

voicemail —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.136 (talk) 12:25, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

voice mail recorder for fixed phones also uses tapes. I have seen in English movies. --V4vijayakumar (talk) 14:28, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It's funny that we still use the "tape" metaphor when it's incredibly unlikely that tape will be all that useful in the future. Then again, the floppy disk as a universal "save" icon is pretty similar, in that respect. --68.50.54.144 (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Sleepy Hard Drive

You know when you leave an external hard drive inactive for about 5 mins it goes into power save mode? How can I make it do that on command? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.136 (talk) 12:22, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

On Linux you can say "hdparm -Y /dev/yourdrive". More options here. --Sean 13:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

In windows go to "control panel", and look for something called "power options" or similar - there you will find various options to control when stuff turns off, and how long before it does that.83.100.250.79 (talk) 13:44, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Bear in mind that you can run hdparm on Windows. — neuro^(talk) 14:41, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

How do I get songs off of my iTouch iPod onto my new laptop for free?

I created a new iTunes on my new laptop and burned some CD's onto it so there is about 50 songs on my iTunes. However, there are 500 songs on my old iTouch that I want to download onto my laptop but it keeps asking me to erase everything on my iTouch. How do I avoid this? --Reticuli88 (talk) 13:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Try iRepo; you can use if for free (you just have to repossess each song one by one) or you can pay something along $19.99 to do them all at once. I used the free for 600 songs, just because money is tight. It took like thirty minutes. It was really easy to use, though. Hubydane (talk) 15:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

What kind of laptop? You should be able to copy the songs off if you are willing to play around in a shell. I was able to get everything off of my iPod in Mac's Terminal with just a little bit of playing around—the music is on there, just hidden in deep and sometimes hidden folders. --68.50.54.144 (talk) 04:23, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

How to add to file to a zip file?

How to replace a file (/dir1/file1) to a zip file (/dir2/zip), without renaming the zip file; without adding any directory hierarchy like, 'dir1/file1' to zip file; and without '.zip' file extension. I tried all options like, 'rjufmTb' and combination, but none of them are working. --V4vijayakumar (talk) 14:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I assume you're using linux, since you're using a forward slash as a directory separator. If I understand your question correctly, this achieves what you want to (Tested on my Debian box, in a directory which initially is empty):

     mkdir dir1
     mkdir dir2
     echo "First version of file1." > dir1/file1.txt
     echo "This is another file in directory dir1." > dir1/another_file.txt
     zip -r dir2/foo.zip dir1
     # ********** Now wait three seconds... **********
     sleep 3s
     echo "NOTE: file1.txt is now updated to second version." >> dir1/file1.txt
     zip -u dir2/foo.zip dir1/file1.txt

I had to add sleep 3s to make zip understand that the file actually had changed, otherwise things were happening too quickly for the time-stamp to change, and therefore, the file wasn't updated in the zip file. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:01, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. But, I already have a zip file (test) without '.zip' extension. When tried to update / replace a file using 'zip' command, it is creating a new file (test.zip). I am just looking for a command like "zip zipfile_without_dotzip_ext --files-from this_dir --replace_with file1". platform, linux 2.4.27 / bash 2.04.21. --V4vijayakumar (talk) 05:09, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that can be done using zip alone. My version of zip (I'm on a ubuntu machine now, but that should hardly make a difference) adds the .zip extension if you don't explicitly type it, i.e. zip foo dir1 produces foo.zip. So, to get a zip-file without the .zip extension, it must have been renamed after being created. Why do you want to avoid the extension, anyway? If it's important to achieve this, you could always write a shell script that renamed the file (adding .zip), did the update as specified above, and renamed it back. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 08:23, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

thanks. yeah, this problem was solved by renaming the file to '.zip' and back. I was trying to do it without renaming. It is good that 'zip' is doing some extra work by adding this extension, and there is no way to prevent it; that is really bad. :) --V4vijayakumar (talk) 09:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Retaining leading quote in Excel

As many will know if you insert a leading quote ' in an Excel cell it will display the following text as entered without the quote, e.g., '01 will display the cell contents as 01. If I want to keep that leading quote I can't find how to do so (have tried many different Number Cell Formats and they don't seem to work).

The issue is I'm trying to get a Concatenate formula to work correctly but am hitting this issue. Abbreviated form of formula showing key part is:

CONCATENATE("*[[:",B4,"|",D4,"]]")

Now say cell B4 contains text with a leading quote, my concatenate formula loses the quote, when I want to keep it in the formula result. I can solve the problem by using two quotes instead of one (so that the first one is 'lost', and the second one becomes the de facto required first quote), but that's not my preferred solution. Any ideas? --jjron (talk) 14:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

CONCATENATE("*[[:'",B4,"|'",D4,"]]")? (Your formula plus a couple of added apostrophes.) Now you get an apostrophe every time, irrespective of the source. I'm struggling to understand why you wish to retain the apostrophe when it looks as if you are constructing some wikimarkup. Meanwhile I have checked that IF statements appear unable to recognise the leading apostrophe, which seems to rule out that approach. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:48, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, right on the wikimarkup, but the solution doesn't work. The reason I want to keep the apostrophes (but not hard code into the formula), is because sometimes I want italics (e.g., for species names) but usually not - to get the italics I want to enter ''Homo sapiens'' into B4 and have it work in my concatenate formula when I join it with some non-italicised text. As I say I can just enter '''Homo sapiens'' and it works, but it annoys me that I can't get Excel to do exactly what I want it to! :-) --jjron (talk) 14:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I share your annoyance in this instance. You could enter all of your italic data as '''Foo'', although in the long term this might result in apoplexy. You could enter your species as plain text, have another column indicate it is a species, and then use a conditional formula to construct the wikimarkup. It does look to me as if you'll have to use some sort of workaround. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:18, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. You could attack the problem with visual basic. Interesting read. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your efforts. Yep, reading that VB article you mention (and from trying to fix this) it sounds like Excel is programmed in such a way that the leading apostrophe isn't even regarded as part of the cell contents, so in effect doesn't exist. Therefore as you say, would need a work around - probably will keep it simple and just go with the additional leading quote (the italic indicator cell would work, hadn't thought of that, but it cuts down the flexibility if you only want part of those cell contents italicised for the final wiki code). Ultimately I'd like to get a bot to do this stuff, but don't have time to learn how to do that in the foreseeable future. Cheers, --jjron (talk) 07:46, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

The conditionality based on an indicator should not be too hard: if(b99="Italic",CONCATENATE(this'a'way'with'italics),CONCATENATE(that'a'way'without'italics)). But it's a kludge. Another option, if feasible, is to substitute some more benign character for the apostrophe - such as a tilde "~" - involving putting the input (if scraped from somewhere) and the output through a search & replace (maybe in a text editor) before uploading it to the wiki. --Tagishsimon (talk) 08:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, true, could use an alternative symbol for the italics, hadn't considered that either. If so I'd just build a replace into the concatenate formula (an IF to check for it, then truncate the alt symbol and replace it with the quotes), however if I have to remember to use an alternative symbol I may as well just remember to add an extra quote I guess :-). Thanks again. --jjron (talk) 15:07, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

My Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 has an error!

I loads fine, but there is this annoying box in the upper left hand corner that has the games logo, and it wont go away.Accdude92 (talk) (sign) 14:29, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

A screenshot would be nice if you could link it (but, for obvious reasons, don't upload it here). — neuro^(talk) 20:49, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Windows Live

So I asked on here and the answer worked... But then evidently something changed, because my email address ***@email.lmc.edu now only receives messages. When I try to send messages I get a server error message. Help, please! Hubydane (talk) 15:54, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

What error are you getting? "Server error" sounds like HTTP 500 (which you can't do anything about) or a misconfiguration of settings in your client. Make sure the server is set to "smtp.live.com", port 25, SSL, and check that the username is set to your e-mail address. Xenon54 (talk) 20:42, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I keep getting these two error messages; the first one is new, since my AOL account -just- stopped working.

1) The connection to the server has failed.

Subject 'Address' Server: 'smtp.aol.com' Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x800CCC0E Protocol: SMTP Port: 25 Secure(SSL): No Socket Error: 10060

2) The connection to the server has failed.

Subject 'Re: ' Server: 'smtp.live.com' Windows Live Mail Error ID: 0x800CCC0E Protocol: SMTP Port: 25 Secure(SSL): Yes Socket Error: 10060

Any thoughts? Hubydane (talk) 23:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Just a suggestion (sorry if I'm off track, didn't see the earlier discussion you mention).This could be an error at the receiver's end rather than your end. Have you tried sending emails to different people, preferably who use different email providers? If so, do they all produce the same error message? If it's particular to one address or provider then the problem would most likely rest with them (for one address you may simply have an error in that address). Start by sending an email to yourself (i.e., from and to this same account) and see if that works. --jjron (talk) 23:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

(See Hubydane's first post about this problem here: Windows Live Mail)

If you use SSL, it usually doesn't use port 25. I recently had to change the servers for my hotmail address in Outlook Express. For the outgoing server, I had to use smtp.live.com, check the SSL option, and enter port 587. --Bavi H (talk) 02:13, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Tried the port 587 on both of my e-mails and it worked! Is using port 587 the solution to my AOL not sending as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hubydane (talk • contribs) 12:53, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

multi-audio, multi-subtitle MKV file

Dear Wikipedians:

I am looking for a small, sample MKV file that contains multiple audio streams and multiple subtitles. I want to test it out in Windows Media Player to see how I could switch between the audio and subtitle tracks.

BTW, are there any MKV files out there that contain multiple video streams? So that I could switch between multiple videos, perhaps even have a picture-in-picture?

Thanks.

70.29.26.86 (talk) 16:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/0906/test.mkv is the only one I could find. 30 seconds of some MMORPG, but only one video track. At least you will be able to tell if WMP can play them or not. No problems with playing it for me under Ubuntu. I can tell you that VLC media player (free for just about every OS in existence) has a "Audio" menu and a "Video" menu to switch between different tracks, but there is only one track on this file. I'm sure WMP has a similar mechanism. This forum thread might be of interest to you as well. Xenon54 (talk) 20:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.

Resolved

For how long will Google retain its advantage?

discussion closed see disclaimer below, sorry to be such a spoilsport

{{{2}}}

WP:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_crystal_ball 69.255.26.5 (talk) 04:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Unknown hard error

I like to play Age of Kings on my Windows 2000 PC. It's a ropey old thing, prone once every couple of months to spates of hanging or crashing, and it's very bad at running Age of Kings - it tends to freeze once in a while and spin the CD for ages. Just now I had a spectacular crash, which dumped me into the desktop with an alert box that just said "unknown hard error" and an "OK" button. Nothing else on the screen would respond to clicks, and when I pressed ctrl-alt-delete, instead of task manager the PC just restarted. It then couldn't find my boot disk. Fortunately when I turned it off and on again it was in a better mood and everything was fine.

I think this is my favourite error message ever, so terse and baffling. What does it mean? 81.131.41.17 (talk) 20:54, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hard errors are usually a STOP error that wouldn't throw you to the desktop, but instead would throw you to a BSOD, which would explain why CAD rebooted the PC. It basically means that a driver (or critical system file) is corrupted. — neuro^(talk) 23:12, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

How exciting. I've just been playing my game again and am currently running with no problems, so I'm not sure what to think. I guess I'll try and run chkdsk. 81.131.46.11 (talk) 01:08, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

A better plan would be to run 'sfc /scannow' from the run dialog. :) — neuro^(talk) 14:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Mobile phone comparison matrix

What websites or tools can I use to drill down the mass amount of mobile phones being offered by the manufacturers?

I'm looking for something similar to http://www.wikimatrix.org/. i.e.: Being able to select phones from a range of criterias, then being able to compare them side by side.

Thanks! --jcmaco (talk) 22:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Most websites of electronics retailers will allow you to select a few phones and compare features. (I don't know which country you're from, so I couldn't recommend any.) Manufacturer websites should allow you to do that as well - if you have a specific brand you're interested in, there would be a good place to start. Xenon54 (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm more interested in something independent, not tied to a specific manufacturer/provider. Specifically, I want to know which recent phones offer quad-band GSM, tri-band 3G (W-CDMA) and 500+ hour battery life. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcmaco (talk • contribs) 23:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

In which country? Astronaut (talk) 23:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

None in particular. This phone will be used in my round the world trip (South America and Asia are the highlights). Quad band GSM is essential and I think that tri-band (any combinationn) of W-CDMA should allow me to access Internet pretty much everywhere. --jcmaco (talk) 23:56, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Many tri band UMTS phones are either 850, 1900, 2100 (more common, the iPhone for example) or 900, 1900, 2100 (there may also be some other combinations, e.g. with 1700). Some may be one or the other depending on the model/where you buy it. 2100 is usually used in urban areas in Europe Asia-Pacific but 900 is planned to be used in rural areas (because of its greater range). 1900 and 2100 are often used in the US and possibly South America in urban areas with 850 used in rural areas. 850 is sometimes used Asia-Pacific. Not sure about 900 in South America but I would guess so. Having said that, there aren't actually that many 900 networks at the moment (like 6 or so and mostly in Europe plus Australia and NZ both of which also have 850 networks last time I looked which was about 2 months ago) and I don't think many 850 networks either. UMTS frequency bands may be of interest. Quad band UMTS is rather rare. Of course you can use GPRS in most places and maybe even EDGE if it's supported but that's not guaranteed but both of these particularly GPRS will be slow. Mind you, you may find given the prices of data in a number of countries particularly on a local prepay SIM (I wouldn't recommend you bother looking at the roaming prices from your own network, probably not even if your on a $200 a month postpaid plan) you probably don't want to use the internet too much anyway, just for emails and the like. In what country is somewhat relevant in terms of the ranges of phones available will vary and you may have to import your phone from overseas. GSMArena tend to have most well known brand phones although I don't know if they allow a search of the sort you want. ESato does appear to, their forums tend to concentrate on camera phones but according to their page they cover all new phones (well I presume that means at least mid to high end ones in the Western world, but it sounds like that's what you want). I seem to recall encountering some other site that seemed to allow comparisons recently but can't find it now. Nevermind found the GSMArena search thing [1]. It does have one problem in that HSDPA and UMTS are distinct. I'm presuming all HSDPA phones will be HSDPA only in other words, if you decide 900, 1900, 2100; you only have to look at HSDPA and UMTS for each. You don't have to look at HSDPA 1900, 2100 and UMTS 900 or something of that sort, but I can't say for sure. Esato may have a similar issue, either that of their database is incomplete since the iPhone never showed up for me. The final site I'm referring to may be [2]. I stress the may since I'm not sure, I kept coming across it a while back but as so often happens with these sort of things can't now. In any case, phones.com doesn't allow you to do what you want, it allows comparisons but you have to select by brand and model from what I can tell (the site I saw was comparing phones side by side with some Google searches) Nil Einne (talk) 19:54, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking about your comment and wondering if there was some confusion. When you said W-CDMA, I presumed you meant UMTS as obvious from my comment. This is what W-CDMA generally refers to in mobile phone parlance. UMTS gives higher speed but as I mentioned above is not necessary solely for internet (or pretty much anything other then video calls and push to talk and I guess internet services which require a high speed like video streaming) because GSM has GPRS which can provide internet access albeit slowly. (One thing I didn't mention above, bear in mind UMTS access may not be great in parts of Asia and South America anyway) and although there are a few W-CDMA only networks, I believe the majority of places with them (e.g. UK, Australia, NZ) also have GSM networks with good coverage from other providers. However if you were referring to CDMA2000 the successor to IS-95 (cdmaOne) both of which are particularly used in the Americas and a bit in parts of Asia. That's a completely different issue. Don't be confused by the fact UMTS uses W-CDMA. UMTS is a successor to GSM and so UMTS phones don't support CDMA2000 or cdmaOne as a rule. Phones which support both are usually called Dual mode mobiles or sometimes global mobiles or world mobiles. They are a completely different category and probably less common then quad band GSM, tri band UMTS at least for the major brands and likely hard to find in many countries. I don't know much about the band situation for cdmaOne or CDMA2000 so can't help there and not sure whether the sites I provided are of much use (GSMarena not surprisingly concentrates on GSM phones, not sure if they tend to include dual mode ones). You may find it better just to look for a list of dual mode phones since as I've mentioned I don't think they're that common. One thing I do know, you'll have far more choice if you also look at Chinese manufacturers (and Indian and Thai to some extent). However because these phones don't tend to be sold outside of China and perhaps a few other developing countries with similar situations; and other factors, you usually won't see them in many listings like the GSMarena one. Your best choice may be to use something like Google Language Tools or Bing Translate and visit the official site and perhaps some other Chinese sites. Alternatively you can look at sellers like on ebay and a few other places. I may be able to offer some help here. One thing you want to consider is whether you want to look at only decent Chinese brands, e.g. CECT, Lenovo, K-touch or also at the more random brands who make clones and other random stuff. Probably a good idea if you want a 500 hour battery life since I would take claims made of some of the more random manufacturer phones with a grain of salt, they're often completely fictitious with 6000mAh battery capacities and 3MP cameras that can only save 640x480 images (with the better manufacturer you can at least look at their official websites as I mentioned.) As I've already suggested you can buy them from Ebay and some other places if you do decide to go with one of them, I may be able to offer some tips here if you like (I've looked at but never purchased Chinese mobiles but not into the dual mode area but have seen them). You may also be able to find some discussions, reviews etc from forums, blogs and other such sources. P.S. One more factor to consider, I'm not sure how common [[UICC] or R-UIMs are in the Americas (I think most networks in Asia have them although they don't have them on the CDMA network here in NZ). I believe they not so common in the US. This is significant since it's great having a CDMA2000 or cdmaOne phone, but not so great if you can't actually use it because you can't purchase a SIM for the CDMA portion. You'll have to have some foreign network for roaming, and since it's probably not going to be postpaid, that could be expensive. Nil Einne (talk) 2