Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 September 20

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September 20

how to jam a signal from neighbors remote controlled car?

(This question has been moved to the Science reference desk - check here for any answers.) Exxolon 00:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

ClamWin

I have a problem with my antivirus software, ClamWin Free Antivirus. It won't download Virus Database Updates to my computer. I think it's a bug in the software. What should I do? Jet (talk) 00:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It'd be best to contact their support, e-mail them and tell them of the ordeal, or have a computer-savvy friend drop by and take a look at your machine and settings first hand. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

If you are sure it is a bug, be bold and submit it. --Click me! write to me 02:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

googlepages.com and RSS Feeds

Hello. I am trying to subscribe http://math.marilake.googlepages.com/math10 to my RSS Feeds on Internet Explorer 7. The icon did not turn orange. Is there a method to subscribe that website to RSS Feeds? Thanks in advance. --Mayfare 00:40, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

That site does not look like it offers an RSS feed, no. RSS is a specific type of marking up of the content, it is not automatic. --24.147.86.187 14:57, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Making an Ad with Word or Excel

My question is about how to make an ad with Word (or maybe Excel) so that on the bottom I can create one of those tabs with a phone number and email address that's vertical in writing and that's easy to tear. Which program would one use, and how would you make that? Thanks. 207.161.0.174 03:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Because I'm lazy, I'd use Excel. You'll get fewer creative options, but it's easy to define the little tabs using a cell for each and then format the text to run vertically. I'd use one huge cell for the ad and then a bunch of littl'uns running along its foot for the tear-off strips. If the lack of imagey stuff in Excel gets you down, you can always work up some artwork in a different package and then paste it in as an image. --Dweller 09:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

(ec):I'm using Word 2007 - the 2003 stuff I'm doing from memory, so it may not be quite right. Write the text of your ad normally, then create a table with one row, and fill the phone number/email into as many columns as you want. (10 tear-off copies = 10 columns). Highlight the whole table (click in the left margin). In 2007, go to Layout under the Table Tools heading, and click Text Direction until you get the vertical text. In 2003, you shold be able to right-click each cell and choose Text Direction and choose the direction you want. Make sure you've got enough space to cut between each email when you print it out. --Kateshortforbob 09:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)i know the answer to it! but i'm not going to tell you!!

Windows office

On the main admin account of my computer (windows XP) Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc. open up normally. However on the other accounts whenever any of them are opened the 'Windows installer' opens and tries to install it, even though it is already on the computer. Once I press cancel it opens up normally. This is annoying because if I want to open a document with something on it, it will load as a grey screen, and I'll have to open and find it from inside the program. What can I do so it opens correctly? 68.231.151.161 03:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Did you try letting Microsoft Office complete the process? If not, could you see if it completes? If it ends in an error, could you note down the error and come back to post it here? --Click me! write to me 02:06, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Python string concatenation

How do you concatenate a string and a variable in Python? My code is something like

x = 5

print 'x is '

print x

which outputs:

x is

5

But that is on 2 different output lines. How do you get them on the same line? Elpenmaster 04:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

In the case of print, you can use a comma to separate them, which also adds a space between printed items.

print 'x is', 5

In general, you can convert x to a string with str(x) and use the plus sign to concatenate.

print 'x is ' + str(x)

--tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 04:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --Elpenmaster 04:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, newline is suppressed if you end the print command with a comma:

print 'x is',

print 5

I don't recall whether or not this introduces a space. —Tamfang 22:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Putting files under "Podcast"

I have a bunch of one hour radio recordings from public domain that I want to file under "Podcasts" in iTunes. Can I do this? I have all of the mp3s in one folder already, and I tried putting it into the podcast folder, which didn't work. Any ideas would be appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.126.67.144 (talk) 04:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

To do this, you can select and right click on all of the podcasts and then select "Get Info". This will bring up a dialog box. Select the Info tab. There should be a drop down box where you can select the genre. "Podcast" should be in there. I'm not sure if iTunes will pick up on this and automatically sort it, however.

Hope that helps. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JustinSavidge (talk • contribs) 13:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

video camera question

What level of quality of video camera do I need if I want to make a video documentary of something and distribute for free it online? The quality should be good enough so you wouldn't notice any problems online or on TV for that matter. Maybe not good enough for the big screen, but that's fine. But the duration should be convenient for filming lots and lots of stuff, like at least an hour before you have to dump to computer and empty the memory. Also don't need high optical zoom because most of the shooting is closeup and interviews. We're not doing a social documentary here, not a nature documentary.--Sonjaaa 04:36, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

And shouldn't this refdesk category be renamed to "Computing and technology" or something?--Sonjaaa 04:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

VHS video quality will do you with arpumd 270 lines on the screen. This will be better than most internet video. If you want to release it on DVD you will have to go double the quality. All modern video cameras should be able to do this. Just some still cameras may not achieve the frame rate required. Graeme Bartlett 12:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Any decent consumer video camera these days would be more than enough to shoot good quality footage, but it depends on the camera's resolution and the encoding the camera uses to store the video. Generally, the higher the resolution of the camera: the better the image, but the more expensive they become. You want as many pixels (more A by B, ie. 1024 x 768 is much better than 640 x 480) as possible for your price range. Get one with a high frame rate too, don't settle for anything less than 30 frames per second. Choose a camera that has a decent encoding format as well (this will maintain the quality of the video before being washed out by more compression in the post-production stages). H.264 or better is recommended, but be careful; these cameras are expensive.

Hiring one out might be a better alternative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JustinSavidge (talk • contribs) 13:54, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I have done a little bit of this kind of shooting with some help from the experts. Shop around for a prosumer 3-chip DV camera. Many documentaries are shot with those these days. Just as important is professional audio equipment, at least get a nice wireless mic, we don't notice it as much but sound makes or breaks a documentary. If you are shooting people you will want to get a wide angle lens attachment so you can get really close to your subjects when shooting hand-held. For interviews you will also want some lights and light stands, a blue gel filter in front and a plain tungsten from the side gives good results. -- Diletante 14:57, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Computing is an entirely different thing than technology. There are many questions here about, for example, programming languages, that could work just as well if the electronic circuit had never been invented. And that's not taking into account theoretical computer science questions. But this is still separate from Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics, which deals with complete exactness and infinite accuracy, which computing is not concerned with. JIP | Talk 19:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Compact camera for Wikipedia photography

Hi. I am looking to buy an ultracompact take-anywhere digital camera in the EUR/USD 250 price range to take photos for Wikipedia, among other things.

Must-haves are shirtpocket size, robustness, image stabilisation technology, good optical zoom (c. 38-100 mm equiv.) and fast switch-on time. Megapixel count and brand do not matter. Since the market for these things is positively crowded, I would appreciate it if someone here has made some particularly good (or bad) buying decision and could provide some advice on what camera (not) to pick. Thanks, Sandstein 16:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

If it wasn't for the shirtpocket size I'd recommend my own camera (Canon PowerShot S3 IS) or better yet, its successor (S5 IS). However, for shirtpocket cameras, I suggest the Canon PowerShot A720 IS or the Canon PowerShot SD 850 IS. The former has a better optical zoom and is cheaper but it looks like it is physically bigger. JIP | Talk 19:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

My default advice for this question is choose your price range and go and find the Canon that matches it; I'm yet to have anyone complain about getting bad advice. Can I suggest something from the Canon Digital IXUS range. Not sure about the exact prices in Euros, but they would seem to meet all your requirements. I can't recall the exact model, but my niece just bought one for about AU$400 (which should equate to the prices you mention) and loves it. --jjron 09:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for the advice. I'll have a look at the Canons. Sandstein 15:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

avgw.exe

Something is chewing up most of my computer's runtime. The only thing I know how to check is the Task Manager, and it's hard to say since everything fluctuates constantly, but I think it's something called avgw.exe. I put that into Google, and it sounds like it's either a virus or part of my antivirus. Is it safe to turn it off while I find out more about it? Black Carrot 19:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you running AVG anti-virus? Turn that off and see if the behavior changes. You might also want to check on the program settings to see if you can adjust when/how it runs. Also, Process Explorer is a nice program (free) for getting a little more detail about running processes than Task Manager can give you. --LarryMac | Talk 19:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

(not to be confused with Process Monitor, another excellent sysinternals product) --froth^t 20:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Possibly it's running a virus scan. That tends to chew up my CPU pretty good. Adblockfreak 20:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Switch to NetBSD already... --Ouro (blah blah) 20:45, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

You know, it's not only extremely unhelpful but it's also extremely cliché for Linux users to recommend switching to Linux as an alternative to actually answering the Windows-related questions. (On top of that, I'm not sure that would simplify a whole lot. Most of my Linux-using friends spend more time trying to get various bits of hardware and software to work correctly than my Windows-using friends do keeping their AV up to date and their system spyware clean. Personally I use OS X so I don't really worry about either.) --24.147.86.187 22:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

— Charlie Brooker, The Guardian

Ahem! NetBSD is not Linux! If you want to rant, please get your rant right. Oh, and since you're an OSX user, you're actually closer to being a BSD user ... --Pekaje 10:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not telling people to get anything other than they already have, that's the difference. Anyway, pardon me, I said "Linux" instead of "Unix-derived open-source operating system." Same difference. Anyway, I've got nothing against PCs, though it is obvious that for casual users they are often more than they can deal with—they take a lot of active maintenance. And if that is the case, said casual users are certainly not going to be any easier off with an open-source Unix derivative. --24.147.86.187 13:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Not the same, and anyway linux is a kernel not an operating system. I hate GNU but the OS is theirs, they just use the linux kernel. GNU/Linux. --froth^t 13:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

In any case, it is probably AVG anti-virus, it is probably scanning your system. Usually you can click on its taskbar icon and say "don't do that right now" if it is scanning while you are trying to use it. --24.147.86.187 13:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

e-mail

How do you send an e-mail from a company generated "contact us" window? There is never a 'send' button —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ingridarchibald (talk • contribs) 20:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

There should be. What site? --froth^t 21:49, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes it's just a mailto link, which usually should start your email program if you have one. If not, or you prefer to use a web-based email as I do, often you can right-click and save the email address for subsequent pasting. But yeah, like froth says, what site? We can take a look. --LarryMac | Talk 23:58, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Or use Gmail Manager to handle the mailtos with gmail :o --froth^t 02:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, pray tell. --Click me! write to me 02:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Premiere Pro vs After Effects

What are several fundamental differences between Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects? Thanks. Acceptable 22:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Not to be a smart alec, but did you read Premiere Pro and After Effects? What about the entries are not clear? Premiere is an NLE, best suited for long projects with few layers. AE is best suited for shorter projects with many many layers. You wouldn't edit a movie with AfterEffects and you would not want to composite 100 layers within Premiere (Although both technically CAN perform many of the same tasks). --72.202.150.92 20:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Breakdown by letter

I've searched for a while, though not too long, but does anyone know of an applet, any kind the average person could use, that breaks down paragraphs by letter? I've got this difficult task, write a three page report on something, and then write three more pages, about the exact same thing, and on the second sheet I'm only allowed a source pool of 10 letters, and my words must be proper English, I've been trying for two hours, and only managed to translate two sentances, and I'm not sure what letters to use. Thanks! I know it sounds like I didn't try that hard, because anyone else will hit the "golden searchword", but try it yourself, with proper grammar using a thesarus. Yamakiri 23:00, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Search for simple programs to break ciphers. Counting letters is one of the basic tools of cryptographers. --Gerry Ashton 01:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a tough assignement. If you stick to common letters like ETAONRISH and one more for luck (LD or U) you will get the most milage for words. See Letter frequency Graeme Bartlett 12:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

• See also lipogram. --Sean 15:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
• Also, if you're on a Mac or some other Unixy system, the following Perl command:

perl -000ne '%h=(); $_=lc; $h{$1}++ while /([a-z])/g; print "Paragraph $.:\n", map "  $_: $h{$_}\n", sort keys %h' yourfile.txt

will give you per-paragraph letter-frequency counts like so:

Paragraph 1:
 a: 1
 c: 1
 d: 1
 e: 9
 f: 1
 g: 2
 i: 1
 l: 3
 m: 2
 n: 3
 o: 1
 p: 4
 r: 10
 s: 1
 u: 3
Paragraph 2:
 a: 1
 c: 1
 ...

--Sean 16:21, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Or activeperl for windows.. perl isn't platform dependent --froth^t 16:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

• I usually omit that since the average Windows user doesn't have Perl installed, and those who do know that the above will work for them. --Sean 18:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys! That makes things easier, I've got 1.5 paragraphs now! Yamakiri 23:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I downloaded perl, just want to make sure that it's supposed to look like python or MS-DOS, because the files in the 500 folders it downloaded all the ones I can truely open come up like that. Yamakiri 00:43, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Perl is meant to be run from the command line; if you have it installed properly you can type the above command into an MS-DOS prompt and it'll find the right files to interpret it. Kuronue | Talk 22:16, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Memory usage in windows?!

What's with the discrepancy? I'm inclined to believe process explorer since I just bought a game through steam and as it began to download the memory usage in process explorer shot up while task manager's only went up 2MB. But what's the deal with expecially DWM? I thought I had plenty of memory available since everything visible in task manager adds up to only about 100MB (and + services couldn't be much more) but process explorer shows DWM alone consuming that amount! This is alarming! Which program is right? Also, this screenshot was taken before I bought that game in steam (and I haven't used steam at all today). It's not updating as far as I can tell. So why is it read/writing 1.3MB/s? And running sixty five threads? Just curious.. --froth^t 23:04, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm, ok so the vista Reliability and Performance Monitor is reporting that the commit charge of dwm.exe is the same as the private memory available reported by Process Explorer, and the perfmon private memory available is the same as what shows up in the task manager. So this means that it's only actually using 20MB and the OS has reserved it 100MB to be available if needed, right? Like the cached memory vista allocates so much of? --froth^t 02:58, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Try going to View->Select Columns and select the Process Memory tab, then enable Working Set Size. This supposedly you the equivalent of the Task Manager Memory Usage for the individual processes. -- kainaw™ 03:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

As for cached memory, Vista will use every bit of your memory to cache/preload stuff if you aren't using it. Why not? It makes things run faster. -- kainaw™ 03:04, 21 September 2007 (UTC)