Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 October 21

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October 21

Affiliate links or codes?

The "Affiliate links" section of Wikipedia:Spam reads as follows:

Even if they are related to the subject or is an official page for the subject, external links containing affiliate or referral codes are considered spam.

What is affiliate code or referral code? Or perhaps this means affiliate links or referral links; but what are these? It would be helpful if (1) articles could be written on these subjects and the terms linked, (2) someone inserts an explanation at that page, or (3) the text at that page could be reworded. In the meantime, what are they? Nyttend (talk) 02:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

They are codes that credit a certain account with having sent the user to that web site. Say that I have a web site. I want users to come to my site, so I set up a system whereby people can be paid for sending users there. So, you create an account with my site and I give you a special URL, www.foo.com/code. Now, every time that someone goes to www.foo.com/code, you get a couple cents and they get redirected to my site, foo.com. Dismas|^(talk) 05:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Something like AJAX across sites

Hi All,

Here's our situation: we have an online store in Host A (which uses a proprietary CMS). This host is IIS / ASP based, and I can create ASP pages but they have SQL functions disabled. Now we also have a Godaddy hosting plan (linux/php/mysql -- lets call it Host B), and I was wondering if there was an easy way for me to query the database I created on MySQL on Host B.

I have been able to work around it to some extent by doing the following, but I feel it is very awkward:

I have caller.asp in host a which takes parameters passed to it, it then creates an iframe embedding and passing the arguments to a query.php which does the appropriate query to MySQL.

One of my problems with this (aside from security concerns etc) is that the formatting is done by the php file, and its a hassle to have to update the php file everytime a new layout is desired.

Surely there has got to be a better way around this. It would be great if I could just get the results in a string/array using something like server-side AJAX that I can parse according to my needs. (Oh, and yes, I understand that AJAX is intentionally limited to the same domain to prevent xss hacks/attacks)

If anyone can point me to a good article / concept it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance PrinzPH (talk) 02:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

Why can't you just return the data from the PHP file in a parsable format? That seems to be what you are getting at, and it's what I would have suggested doing. It is not hard to write up a PHP function that converts an array to, say, XML, or to an HTTP GET request, and it's equally not hard to find code to parse such data. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:22, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! :) I have gone ahead and made an 'api' on php returnin xml, then parsing that using asp. Man I love the refdesk! PrinzPH (talk) 00:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Youtube

What's the longest time a Youtube video has been on the site without a single view? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 10:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I suspect you'd need to have access to Youtube logs for that... I don't know how one could go about finding that out without them. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:13, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you include private videos in your description? Kushal (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

macbook display problem

Hi guys, I have a 2006 Intel Macbook and it has run into a weird problem lately. It randomly messes up and turns into something like http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/20/102009051200.jpg I think the situation is getting worse as this has been happening for a few days and it seems to like to go to that pre-VGA stage more often and stay there more often. Sometimes it corrects without me consciously acting to correct it and sometimes I move the lid as if I was opening or closing the macbook lid. Any ideas guys? I am so confused by this. Kushal (talk) 12:14, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The looks inverted... pressing ctrl+option+apple+8 inverts the screen. Maybe you have done this accidentally? Though that would be a very optimistic assessment (since it doesn't look totally consistent)... more worst case would probably be some cable coming loose, which might produce that kind of weirdness. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

It was worth a shot though. However, no, it is not the normal "inverted" look. The loose cable idea is what I thought too. that or a cable caught somewhere ... how can I fix this? any ideas? Kushal (talk) 14:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it were me, and I were comfortable taking apart a MacBook (which I am—they're not too bad, not compared to, say, iBooks, which have ten million more screws than are necessary), I would probably take it apart and give it a gander. My guess, based on taking them apart before, is that the problem will be in the wires on the hinge of the screen. There are wires that go into the LCD from the motherboard and they have to cross at the hinge. As you can imagine, this is a potential high-wear area because opening and closing the hinge, if it catches the wire, can cut into them. My guess is that there is some kind of cable damage in that area, and that you are getting analog weirdness as a result. (Which can be very weird. I had a VGA cable once that went bad on the inside, somehow, and it was warping all the colors when it was being output to a projector. Took forever to diagnose that it was the cable that was the problem, not the projector or the Mac.) ifixit.com has a lot of good tutorials as to how to take them apart and replace pieces; unfortunately, if it is one of those cables, I'm not sure you can replace those by themselves (they appear to only be sold with the entire display assembly). Anyway... that's my uneducated guess, based on previous experience inside Macbooks and your description! --Mr.98 (talk) 15:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I will look into it. I am also thinking about the other macbook that is running into (an unrelated) problem... http://hadakushal.blogspot.com/2009/09/messed-up-screen.html

If I do have wire damage, where will I find cheap but durable wire and parts? eBay? I guess some of it is for another question here at the reference disk but I want to make sure that it is worth it to open the computer. ... I have replaced the hard disk drive on the computer before but I have not really opened it up upto now. Kushal (talk) 22:17, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it is one of the cables you can't buy separately, the nice thing is that if you bought a broken display (e.g. a cracked one) used, the cables would probably work. I don't know how feasible it would be to transplant them from one to the other, though. If it is a problem of wire damaging, you don't need "durable" parts so much as to position them in the case correctly. I have in the past used a small bit of card stock (e.g. cut from an index card) to add an extra layer to keep the wire from slipping into a high-wear area. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

is there a way

I got an nvidia geforce 8400m gs in my laptop, which max(the default) resolution is 1280 by 800pixels. But i do know that this card can go up as much as 1920×1080. i know that becouse i hooked up an HDTV tv to it by the hdmi output built in my laptop, and so it can produce it with no problem, but there seems to be no way to set it higher then the default (1280 by 800) if no hdmi output is provided. any one know of any way to make it set to higher than 1280 x 800? Maby some register tweaks, or external drivers that might help.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.35.38.154 (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Does your problem occur with another external monitor? Are you trying to use a VGA interface instead of HDMI? The laptop's integrated screen most likely has no more than 1280x800 pixels. 130.188.8.9 (talk) 13:26, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Your screen only has 1280×800 pixels; even if it somehow accepted a 1080p signal there are still only 1280×800 pixels, it's a physical limit that's pointless to overcome through software. --antilived^{T | C | G} 07:02, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Rendering problem of reference

Why is the hyperlink of references 24, 29, 32 in List of National Treasures of Japan (paintings) not properly formatted? Can it be fixed? bamse (talk) 13:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I fixed ref 24 - the problem was square bracket characters in the URL being misinterpreted when MediaWiki was rendering the page. So I replaced [ with %5b and ] with %5d and all is well. You're right that refs 29 and 32 (which refer to the same site) have the same problem - but I've not fixed them, as both appear to be bad (that is, they just resolve to the homepage of the museum, rather than to the specific page about a given artwork that the accompanying text would suggest). If someone can fix these URLs to point to the actual artworks, I'll escape these too. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 13:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I fixed the other references in the same way as you did with 24. For me, both links were pointing to the page about the respective artwork. bamse (talk) 14:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I can confirm that all three are work properly now that you've applied the escapes. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 14:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Screen capture of VisualBoyAdvance on Mac

May I know what buttons must I press to make screen capture of VisualBoyAdvance games on my Mac?--121.7.226.146 (talk) 13:51, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Preview (software) is the Mac OSX component that allows you to grab screenshots. It has options to grab the whole screen, specific windows, or manually-specified screen areas. Nimur (talk) 14:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

To take a full-screen capture in OS X, press Apple-Shift-3. It will save it as a PNG on your desktop. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

In Snow Leopard, Quicktime Player can capture your screen to a movie. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

How buy the correct memory off eBay?

I'd like to upgrade the memory of my current computer, but I'm confused about how I can tell if the memory for sale on eBay will be suitable for my computer. Most of the memory for sale includes two letters followed by some numbers - I think its PC1234 for example - do not know if this is relevant. What is the correct proceedure to follow please? Using the Everest software, it tells me that the memory in this computer is DDR DIMM SDRAM, that the Motherboard Name is ASRock P4VM8 and the Motherboard ID is 63-100-0000010-00101111-120204-VIA$P4VM8000_P4VM8 BIOS P1.00 I do not know what the model of the computer is, I think it is some old obscure model. I also have two other old computers I would like to improve the memory of before converting to Linux. Thanks 92.29.141.85 (talk) 14:20, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Here is your motherboard vendor's official product website. This has a lot of technical information, and a downloadable manual for more detailed information. The documentation states about the P4VM8 motherboard:

• Supports DDR400/333 non-ECC, un-buffered memory
• DIMM slots: 2
• Max. capacity of system memory: 2GB

You should be compatible with any memory that is DDR400 (PC-3200), DDR333 (PC-2700), or DDR266 (PC-2100). Nimur (talk) 14:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. What is the significance of the PC-XXXX? These PC numbers seem to be included in most eBay descriptions - what actually do they mean? Does the standard involved have a name? 89.240.199.100 (talk) 19:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

We have a nice table in the article on DIMMs. "PC" specifies that the technology is either Single Data Rate or Double Data Rate 1 (DDR1). "2700" is a standard "version" of the DDR1 technology; it approximately represents the data transfer speed (it is approximately 8x the clock rate, indicating an 8-bit data signal; but note also that this is "double data rate", so it's really 8x 2x the clock rate...). Actual data transfer speed may vary based on many other factors. The technical term for this is "peak transfer speed", measured in Megabytes per second, but again note that this is approximate. You can more safely consider it a "model number", which is loosely based on a technical specification. Nimur (talk) 21:34, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Go to the PNY, Crucial and Kingston web sites, find their part number for your product and searc for the number on eBay. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Its a pity that it is so difficult to identify what compatible memory would be. I wish the standard 'model number' was so designed to make it easy to see if it would be compatible with existing memory, but there are so many parameters: pins, speeds, and several other things that are difficult to identify or figure out. Is there anywhere online I could learn how to identify compatible memory - which of the variouis parameters are critical, which are less important - please? 78.151.83.175 (talk) 23:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Re: compatibility, almost all memory manufacturers have tools on their website that let you plug in your make/model of computer and will tell you what chips are compatible. I don't know though about which parameters are critical... usually there aren't too many options, though (at least in my experience). --Mr.98 (talk) 15:01, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Upgrading from integrated graphics

Hi, I'm thinking of getting a new PC but I could only afford it with integrated graphics. Would I be able to take my old graphics out and put it in the new system, or would the integrated graphics stop me doing that? Thanks a lot in advance. Mikerooney (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

A cautious yes. When I put a graphics card in a PC with integrated graphics, the graphics card took precedence over the integrated graphics. If it doesn't do so, the BIOS will almost certainly have a means to inhibit the integrated graphics. Just make sure the motherboard in the new PC has the type of connector required for the old graphics card. Astronaut (talk) 15:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It depends on the motherboard(s). Some (most) desktop size (ATX) motherboards with integrated graphics adapters still have a PCIe slot, and if you put a compatible card into that, they typically use that rather than the integrated controller (you very very rarely can operate both). So for this to work you'd need to know what kind of graphics card your current system has, and make sure that your new system's motherboard has the same, or a downward compatible, slot. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 15:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. A NVIDIA or an ATI is offered instead of the integrated, so I presume my old ATI would work then. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikerooney (talk • contribs) 15:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Consider getting the cheapest modern card you can find; it will almost always be better than your old, presumably AGP card. Maybe substitute the extra cost with a smaller hard drive, for example. Sandman30s (talk) 19:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The single biggest question is whether the new computer has an AGP slot (assuming your old graphics card is AGP). If it does then it's 99% certain it'll work - if it's a PCI-express slot and your graphics card isn't - then you're in trouble. You might want to consider that though - are you sure your aging graphics card is actually going to be faster than the integrated graphics on your new motherboard? If the integrated graphics are based on an nVidia or ATI chip - then maybe you're better off using it 'as-is'. If it's based on an Intel graphics chip then probably your old nVidia/ATI card will do better. SteveBaker (talk) 01:36, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Perfect Performance in Windows 95

I just reinstalled Windows 95 on my old HP Vectra VE 200 MHz PC from 1997, and as always (I do it maybe once a year for nostalgic reasons), the performance is perfect. The system boots fast, and while in Windows, the performance is almost out of this world: Browsing the Start Menu, opening a new explorer window (as is done every time you open a new folder, using the default settings), opening Notepad or Paint with a *.txt or *.bmp file, opening the control panel, etc, is performed with no noticable delay whatsoever (it must take less than 1/30 of a second), and you even cannot hear anything from the HDD when you do any of these things, and there is never any flickering. You can shut the computer down in less than two seconds. Of course, Windows 9x has no security at all, and is not stable, the set of features is highly limited, and the GUI is very simplistic, but still – is it not possible to write quick (in this extreme sense) software today? My Windows Vista PC has a clock frequency of almost 3 GHz, has gigabyes more RAM, is much newer and so on, but still you have to wait perhaps a half second to open an explorer window, or a simple application. Even browsing to a new directory in an existing explorer window takes perhaps 1/5 of a second. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 19:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Those old HP's were brilliant machines. Even back to around 1990, the 486 HP's were highly optimized machines and for some reason worked faster than all the rest. Maybe they worked out the caching optimizations and lost the art today; who knows? However, current operating systems are filled with bloatware (support for older hardware and compatibility code) so I can imagine why Vista would work a bit slower. Windows 7 (64) I must admit is pretty fast for what it does (better than Vista anyhow). Also remember that there is more and more globalization code now, so everything you open must go and lookup libraries and perform pass-through conversions just to display correctly (talk about multibyte UTF8 etc. here, not the best for performance). When the world (let's call it the Microsoft world and forget about clouds, shall we) goes completely 64-bit and Microsoft finally pulls the plug on legacy 8/16/32 bit code - then you'll see vastly improved performance and less bloated operating systems. I don't see why they don't do this anyway - people can always dual-boot if they want to run old apps? Or run a 32-bit virtual machine on their fully 64-bit computer.

BTW, if you want to go back to 1985, there was this brilliant computer called the Amiga. Apart from its state of the art hardware for the time, its entire GUI O/S fitted into 1 meg. Yes, ONE MEG. And it worked super-fast and had no bugs to speak of. Now that was tight, optimized code. Now you find people can't write printer drivers in 1 meg... sigh. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. Sandman30s (talk) 19:41, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

To expand on this point, modern operating systems also include tons of features that were simply not available in Windows 95. Programs load more and more libraries that aren't always needed to read that simple text file, and the OS will index files on your hard drive for "instant" searches. As the hardware gets faster, Operating Systems have moved further away from the basic file and window manager that come with them to including intensive usability features (such as the previously mentioned search improvements) as well as automating and performing matainence tasks in the background that you were expected to perform yourself in the past. This has bloated the software significantly, but modern hardware can handle this bloat. Yes, it would be nice if it was faster, but with the points mentioned by Sandman as well as taking into account the extra services loading and bundled with the OS, software is likely to keep the same "speed" while allowing for more advanced features to easily be included as hardware becomes faster. 206.131.39.6 (talk) 20:03, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, well put, 206. To add another point - if you're online, there are lots of sometimes hidden checks going on, which can add to slowdowns obviously. Just to give you an example, I found svchost.exe recently doing a sequential port scan on my router - harmless but irritating. Also, there are tons more viruses that virus checkers have to scan for nowadays. There are agents of all sorts that compete with each other for file associations. There are annoying resident 'features' that check your local network and refreshes everything with the slightest change. Windows 7 has 'gadgets' that check time and weather and currency conversions. With all of that running in the background, it's no wonder that there are slowdowns of all sorts, even with the hugely faster hardware we have nowadays. I would imagine a new install of Windows 7, completely offline, would work almost as fast as that HP the OP mentioned.

As our global online world invents and reinvents itself, we will hopefully reach a point of standardization in the computing world that can only help with more optimized computers. Maybe cloud computing is really the way to go, as bandwidth gets faster and cheaper by the month; then all the problems spoken about here can remain in the domain of super-fast servers. Sandman30s (talk) 20:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Um... None of the x86-64 versions of Windows have ever had support for 16 bit code (including DOS), let alone 8 bit due to the removal of NTVDM. Well it's possible some of the early betas did, I don't know that far although it's my understanding as mentioned in the articles that in long mode certain options on the processor making it not possible but in any case since Windows XP x64 RTM they definitely haven't. They do include WOW for 32 bit code. Also I'm somewhat doubtful the overhead for WOW32 is actually as much as you think but am welcome to be proven wrong by some citations. BTW, I don't know how long you've been using Windows x64. I've been using it since 2005 and the Windows XP days. While I've never found it as bad as some people suggest the ability to run x86-32 apps remains an absolute necessity even in these Windows 7 days. While most of the core Windows apps are now 64 bit native there is still a hell of a lot of stuff that isn't. For example for a variety of reasons very few open source apps are. There's no official x64 Firefox for example. And even some MS apps remain x86-32 only. Microsoft Office 2010 will finally bring a 64 bit version but that's still a while away. Checking my running apps Windows Live Messenger remains 32 bit. Adobe have brought 64 bit versions of many of their apps with CS4 I believe. However I'm still waiting for a 64 bit Flash plugin and a 64 bit Java plugin. Then there's codecs (true with x64 FFDshow you have most of the important stuff). And I'm not even mentioning gaming... True if Microsoft had simply excluded WOW32 things would be different. I don't think they would be better. There's a reason why Itanium failed badly... Nil Einne (talk) 17:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You can make Vista that fast if you upgrade the hard drive. I've seen Vista PCs with RAIDs or SSDs that are very, very, snappy. Programs are much larger than in the past and they have more modules (DLLs) that are often spread across the hard drive. Solid-state drives do not have read-write heads, which should mitigate the issue of collecting modules spread across a disk. Vista also introduced transactional NTFS, which means more journaling, and thus, more hard-drive activity.--Drknkn (talk) 20:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Apples new OS Snow Leopard received a bit of interest because it was significantly smaller (install size) than its predecessor. In a world where hard-drive space costs (essentially) nothing that kind of working to make it smaller is quite refreshing. I can't track it down (i'm at work) but there was some weird site I found once that was all about making incredible software with a file size under a set limit - something stupid like 50KB, the stuff these people could produce was insane. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 08:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Snow Leopard is smaller because of a combination of dropped support for PowerPC CPUs, and general optimisation of the OS. Back to the original question, Windows 95 is probably fast because you keep reinstalling it all the time, if you do the same with Vista you'll get a lot more speed out of it. I'm running the Windows 7 RC on a machine with 1GB DDR-233 RAM, a 20GB HDD partition, 64MB integrated graphics, and a 3.06GHz Intel Celeron. While Aero does not work, it seems very fast (Start menu opens with no noticeable delay), probably because it is newly installed, with no additional processes in the background. Go into the Processes tab in Task Manager on Vista and 95 and the difference will be insane! Use Software Explorer in Vista to keep this in check, and hopefully you will see performance improvements. 110.175.208.144 (talk) 06:30, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

First Computer in a Home

I normally hear that Mary Wilkes is the first person to have a computer in the home. Other times, I see it listed as "ostensibly" or "usually" or "as far as I can tell" she is the first person to have a home computer. This should be something rather discrete. If someone else was using a computer in his or her home before Wilkes, who was it? -- kainaw™ 19:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

It's going to depend entirely on what you consider a computer, right? How about a non-programmable digital electronic calculator, e.g. Sumlock ANITA calculator, c. 1961? Nimur (talk) 21:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

This article [1] quotes Mary Wilkes as saying that she believes she was the first person to work on a computer at home.

If we take the modern definition of "computer" (something that's equivalent to a Turing machine in terms of the Church-Turing thesis) - then non-programmable calculators definitely don't count - if they did then the abacus would win, and I'm pretty sure that I could argue that a pile of rocks used as 'tally sticks' would take the first home 'calculator' back to the stone age! If you're prepared to accept older meanings of the term "computer" in order to squeak that calculator past the modern definition - then I'd have to point out that a "computer" was originally a person who performed calculations for a living - and I imagine that many people had one of those at home back in 1613 when the word was first used!

However - I think the definitive answer is that Konrad Zuse developed the worlds first "Turing Complete" machine - that makes it indisputably a "computer" by all modern definitions. We're told that he built the machine in his parent's apartment in 1936 - which makes him by far the first person to have a computer at home.

Just in case anyone attempts to claim that Babbage did it first - well no - his analytical engine was never built and the small part of his difference engine that did get built (and which he undoubtedly showed to interested visitors at his home) - was nothing more than a calculator - and an unfinished one at that.

So - Konrad Zuse wins by a solid 25 years! SteveBaker (talk) 01:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Choise of motherboard

Hello there, I have come up new motherboard of Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3R and want to have it soon. But after reading this thread I'm bit worried about this board. As I had bitter experience with XFX 770i SLI board which froze my entire system numerous time. So I want a stable board which will be stable in long run. And I don't have the same experience again. Thank you --119.30.36.40 (talk) 21:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Is it possible to get further review of GA-EP45T-UD3R? The google shows few or no review on this board.

I would expect one of the reasons for the lack of reviews is because not many people were interested in DDR3 at the time the board was launched so most reviews were for the DDR2 variant. Further the UD3R can probably be said to be a mid end motherboard, I would expect most people who were interested in DDR3 were at the high end particularly with X48. However the reliability and performance of the DDR2 variant is no guarantee of the reliability and performance of the DDR3 one. From my experience I can say Gigabyte tends to make good motherboards for the price. In fact they are currently my preferred motherboard vendor (not that I buy motherboards much and that's partially influence by the what's available here in NZ and the price). I can't specifically comment on this motherboard but I will say one single anecdotal problem report, is basically useless. Even more so when the cause of this problem is unclear. It's possible for example the problem is completely unrelated to the motherboard or the user damaged it (as its claimed the problem only occured after a new HSF was installed and someone who needs to be told to try memtest doesn't exactly strike me as the sort of person who knows what they're doing). In fact even multiple reports of problems are not necessarily as useful as they may seem there are a lot of complicating factors like the number of users. Nil Einne (talk) 17:47, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Regular expressions and AWB

Hey, I figured this out once before, but I didn't save it, so now I've forgotten what I did the first time around. I need a regular expression that can find a dated template, and replace it with another template. However, the catch is the date on the template is variable so it's not a simple replacement. I've used a regular expression once before to get this to work in AWB, but yeah, didn't save it. For example, let's say I want to replace {{OTRS pending|year=2009|month=October|day=11}} with {{PermissionOTRS|id=###########}}, but I also have maybe a dozen more images that need the same ticket ID number, but were uploaded on different days so it could be September 29, or October 9, or October 20, etc. What is a regular expression that can selection the beginning of the template, but ignore the stuff in the middle? Does that make sense what I'm trying to accomplish? -Andrew c ^[talk] 22:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

So let me get this straight: you want a regex that matches the entire "OTRS pending" template, no matter what the arguments are? Well, that's easy, this should work:

{{OTRS pending[^}]*}}

First, it matches the beginning of the template ("{{OTRS pending"), then everything that isn't a closing curly bracket ("[^}]*") and then finally the end of the template ("}}"). I'm not sure about AWBs regex-handling, but that's pretty much the standard syntax. Was that what you wanted? 90.233.134.223 (talk) 01:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, wait, i forgot that curly brackets are a control character, so that might mess it up (though I just tried it in Python, and there it worked fine). Maybe it's best just to escape those, like this:

\{\{OTRS pending[^\}]*\}\}

There. That's it 90.233.134.223 (talk) 02:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you got the idea. I'll test it out soon. Thanks a bunch. Since I was messing with it today, you don't have to backslash the curly brackets, but you do have to backslash the | (though that doesn't seem to matter as your 'regex' is ignoring everything after "pending", which is great!). Anyway, I'll test it out when I'm back on a computer with AWB installed on it, thanks again. -Andrew c ^[talk] 03:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Bi-directional HDMI and DisplayPort signal compatibility.

The new iMac introduced yesterday has a new feature. The mini DisplayPort accept video *input* so you can use the iMac display as a second monitor for your laptop or what have you. Now I've seen $20 Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI connectors are also available. So would I be able to connect an HDMI device (like Blu-Ray player or DVR) into the iMac to use as a monitor? Are both HDMI and DisplayPort bidirectional? Would the adaptor be bi-directional by design? --70.167.58.6 (talk) 22:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

HDMI and DisplayPort have different electrical properties, different signaling methods and different protocols. Therefore a chip is needed in the adapters to translate the signals, and I highly doubt it'd be bi-directional. Pure mechanical adapters though, such as mini-DisplayPort <-> DisplayPort adapters, are fully bidirectional as they are merely a cable. --antilived^{T | C | G} 06:57, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I contacted the manufacturer and they confirmed their adapters are not bi-directional. Drat! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)