Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2006 August 14

Humanities Science Mathematics Computing/IT Language Miscellaneous Archives

The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions at one of the pages linked to above.

< August 13 Computing desk archive August 15 >

Bittorrent Video Problems

Say someone has successfully downloaded several movies through Bittorrent. Say this someone opened them through Winamp and the audio is flawless. However, this persons problem is that there is no video. What might this person(who is not me) be doing wrong? Thanks.

Well, that someone should stop using winamp immediatly and start using vlc media player. You never, ever, have to worry about file formats and codecs again! Incase that doesn't work (which is VERY unlikely), in vlc press View->Stream and Media Info... to get the media info and google the codecs and see what you can find. Tell us how it goes for that special someone. Also, as an aside, VLC is by far the best media player out there, not only does it play everything natively, it's also the player with by far the most options and things. You can, for instance, manually delay the audio by a given amount so that videos with audio and video out of synch can be fixed! It's really quite extraordinary. Oskar 06:20, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Concur.

Photoshop

I have a hypothetical question for everyone. Let's say that I hypothetically downloaded Photoshop from BitTorrent. Now, let's also hypothetically say that I unzipped it and now am trying to activate it. Let's say that I hypothetically don't really know how to use the keygen. Could anyone offer me some hypothetical solutions? (the keygen is hypothetically done by PARADOX, if it matters.) Thanks for your help on this hypothetical question I have been speculating. --71.98.25.194 05:11, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, at a complete, unfounded guess, (hypothetically) you'd want to choose to activate photoshop by phone, you'll then be given a serial number. (Hypothetically) put this into the keygen and you might be given an activation code.

Now that doesn't sound like a very good (hypothetical) answer, i wouldn't activate by phone unless you're currently not on name terms with some very important biological features (eh..?). Does this (hypothetical) copy of photoshop contain any information on performing such an act? (hypothetically of course...) Benbread 10:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Hypothetically you should figure it out yourself. It's hypothetically the least you could do since you downloaded it for free instead of working almost a whole week's pay to buy it. =D But that's just me. The activate by phone is the key. --mboverload@ 10:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Jeez, couldn't he have just said that his friend Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo had a problem with his pirated edition of Photoshop? Hypothetically? --Sam Blanning^(talk) 14:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

What if (hypothetically) some guys (hypothetically) have bad attitudes and (hypothetically) put spyware infected copies of Photoshop on BitTorrent so wannabe pirates can (hypothetically) download and try to (hypothetically) install the software? In the end you (hypothetically) get an infected computer and a message that says Gimp is free. --Kainaw ^(talk) 15:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if such a hypothetical situation is likely to happen, as users downloading said hypothetical copy would be unlikely to continue seeding the file after they're told to use GIMP. Though in such a hypothetical world, who knows. Benbread 19:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Unless they hypothetically liked GIMP better then the copy of photoshop that they hypothetically aquired and wanted to spread the word? I know of several hypothetical situations where files were hypothetically seeded just for that purpose. --Markwalling 21:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

DVD Decrypter

I am in the process of backing up a DVD that I own using DVD Shrink 3.2 and DVD Decrypter. I already created my ISO file in DVD Shrink, however when I go to burn this to a DVD-RW, it gives me this error message:

"Failed to Write Sectors 0 - 31 - Cannot Format Medium - Unsupported Medium Write Speed"

I attempt to write the DVD at 2x, the speed that the program itself claims is the maximum speed possible. My drive is the TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H552D. I should add that when I retry burning without first ejecting and then re-inserting the disc, I also receive this error message:

"Failed to Reserve Track! - No More Track Reservations Allowed"

If this helps, here is the information DVD Decoder displays for my drive/disc.

TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H552D GA01 (ATA) Current Profile: DVD-RW

Disc Information: Status: Empty Erasable: Yes Free Sectors: 2,285,849 Free Space: 4,681,418,752 bytes Free Time: 507:59:74 (MM:SS:FF) Supported Write Speeds: 2x

Pre-recorded Information: Manufacturer ID: MCC 00RW11N9

Physical Format Information (Last Recorded): Book Type: DVD-RW Part Version: 2 Disc Size: 120mm Maximum Read Rate: Not Specified Number of Layers: 1 Track Path: Parallel Track Path (PTP) Linear Density: 0.267 um/bit Track Density: 0.74 um/track First Physical Sector of Data Area: 196,608 Last Physical Sector of Data Area: 0 Last Physical Sector in Layer 0: 0

Thank you in advance for any help or advice you can give me.

--Cduffner 05:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Try:

• write slower
• change to a different brand of media
• write the ISO with a different program (e.g. CDburnerXP)

-- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it might possibly be the media, because from what I remember it's pretty old. It doesn't even show a maximum write speed on the disc. I already tried to write slower (all the way down to 1x) and I also attempted to burn the ISO with Power2Go and CDburnerXP. Anyone have any other suggestions? --Cduffner 20:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Have you verified that you can write to a DVD-RW with that drive, without trying to burn that particular ISO? --LarryMac 20:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm.. when I go to open up that drive in My Computer (with the DVD-RW in it), it asks me what program I want to use to open it rather than just displaying its (empty) contents in the explorer window. I wonder what could be going on? --Cduffner 05:21, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Try using DVD Region+CSS Free along side your DVD Shrimk. I Do and never have any Problems

Torrent help

Hi.... can anyone help me with this problem i have Azureus and i have been using it for a long time now i have encountered a problem. When i start Azureus i get a error saying Azureus did not close tidily hence a error has Occurred so i reinstalled the software and the problem still Occurred and the software crashes, can any one help. Thanks in advance

Have you tried uninstalling Azureus and then re-installing it? — QuantumEleven 18:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Widescreen monitors

I'm upgrading my computer (building it from components for the first time, so prepare for further questions when it actually arrives and I get my screwdrivers out), and I've ordered a flat 22" widescreen monitor. How do resolutions work with these? Does everything work as normal, only stretched out, or does everything need to be set to display at special resolutions to look right? My greatest fear is ending up with ugly black strips at either side of the screen if I have to use a normal resolution. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 14:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Widescreen monitors just use resolutions with a different ratio than the usual 4:3 used by "normal" monitors. Things shouldn't be stretched (unless you force a weird resolution, maybe) and there should be no black bars (unless there's an option to use them), you should just have a bit more screen real estate on the sides. digfarenough (talk) 16:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

This is entirely true for an OS's desktop and programs that run in it (they're not silly enough to hardwire their software for any given resoltion or ratio) and I think for modern games too. But older games do hardwire a specific resolution, and in those cases I think you'll get black bars. I'd be interested to know how Quake and (more likely) GLQuake fare on a widescreen monitor. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 16:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's reassuring. Come to think of it, most monitors allow you to stretch the horizontal width anyway. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 17:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Analog monitors (CRTs) can do that easily - changing the width is just changing the voltage range through which a signal oscillates. A digital (discrete element) display like an LCD can't do that - to widen or narrow an image a full bit-wise image scale operation has to be performed - and as that scaling (if it were done) would likely be done inside the monitor, it'd be unaliased and vile. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

who owns 220.227.238.169 :80

Every week or every 10 days or so, my computer receives data from the IP address 220.227.238.169 . Can you say who owns that IP address? Is it Microsoft or someone else? Is it legal for someone other than microsoft to install programs which download data continuously every while like this? What can I do to stop this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.226.71.11 (talk • contribs) .

According to this page, "220.227.238.169 resolved to deploy.akamaitechnologies.com". Akamai is an internet caching service (among other things). More information can be found from the links in our article. I'll leave the other questions to somebody with more information. --LarryMac 17:47, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT) WHOIS information shows that IP is registered to Akamai Technologies, the server physically in Mumbai (the :80 is just a port number). If you do not have any business with Akamai, then that connection may be suspicious. However, your IP address, the very similar 220.226.71.11, shows similar information. I would conjecture that the connection is related somehow to your internet connection. I'd email your ISP's helpdesk, if you are concerned. CaptainVindaloo ^{t c e} 17:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I like the description on the questioner's IP whois: "RELIANCE-Wireless-Dialup-PDSN-Users-Internet-Connectivity-DHCP-Pools-for-South-and-East-Region-for-4-million-customers" --Kainaw ^(talk) 18:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I belive MS uses akamai sometimes when its own servers can't cope, especially in the case of denail of service attacks. Since akamai are a primerally caching provider who try to place content as close as possible to the users the fact the server is physically local (probablly the IP is similar because its from the same upstream as his isp) isn't a surprise either. Plugwash 16:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You think Microsoft should be allowed to do it? —Bromskloss 08:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

cutting a song

Hi guys, is there any way I can cut a song to have only the chorus? so that it lasts for like... 20 seconds max.? I don't have any profesional software though, so is there any simple way?. thank you.--Cosmic girl 17:36, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

You could always convert the song to a wav file and edit it using Sound Recorder, presuming you're using Windows. Then convert it back to MP3. --Kiltman67 18:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a program called Audacity which is Freeware and very good for this sort of thing. I don't know the website though, so you'll have to Google it. Joe 042293 19:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The homepage is listed on the Wikipedia article that you linked. --LarryMac 20:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ --Russoc4 20:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

thank you!! XD... can any of u explain to me how can I turn a song into a 'wav' file? and, by doing so, do I reduce the size considerably?. --Cosmic girl 21:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

To answer your second question, No, in fact it gets considerably larger instead. --Kiltman67 21:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

To answer the first, in Audacity, load up the file you want and click on File > Export as .WAV. Simple! Sum0 22:06, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank u!:) --Cosmic girl 01:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

For smallness you probably want mp3 or ogg, and in a low bitrate. The bitrate is pretty much equal to the quality of sound. — [Mac Davis] (talk)

Can computer monitors display television signals?

Is there any hardware setup that would allow a computer monitor to display a television signal from a standard indoor aerial? As my monitor is going to be so much bigger than my current television, and I'll be living in one room, it would be nice to watch TV on it. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 17:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

There are several TV tuner cards available for PCs, as well as standalone boxes that will convert a TV signal to one that is displayable on a monitor. Try this Google search, for example. (Also, please use the "Ask A Question" link at the top of the page to add a question). --LarryMac 18:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. What was wrong with the way I did it? Edit conflicts? --Sam Blanning^(talk) 18:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Nothing major, but on my watchlist page, it showed that there had been an update to the previous section. You did provide an edit summary though, so that made it slightly less confusing. And hey, at least you didn't edit the whole page :-) --LarryMac 19:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Some monitors also come with analog TV decoders (or, depending on your perspective, some TVs have VGA/DVI connectors too). I've yet to see anything sold as a monitor which also has a DVB decoder (although of course one does get DVB decoders for PCs et al). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, looking at this site (where I'm buying my parts), I'm surprised at how cheap these things are. For only £5 more than I'd pay to get my TV to receive Freeview (the no-monthly-subscription digital satellite service in the UK), apparently I can get a card that receives Freeview digital satellite and records programmes as well (whereas cheap Freeview set-top boxes obviously don't record anything). Seems almost too good to be true. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 23:11, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

(Come to think of it, I won't actually have access to a Freeview-enabled internal aerial to plug into the thing, but it would still be nice to be able to record stuff on terrestrial.) --Sam Blanning^(talk) 00:02, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

(And a quick look on Argos shows that my indoor aerial might actually receive Freeview, or if it doesn't I can get one that does. I'm going to stop progressively demonstrating my own ignorance to myself now and go to bed.) --Sam Blanning^(talk) 00:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like you want to watch TV without having to use the computer, right? Actually, it is not completely impossible extend a computer monitor (with analogue input) to become an analogue TV, but you might have to build the things yourself and it's probably not worth it. You draw a picture on a cathode ray tube by sweeping the electron beam horizontally (fast) and vertically (slow) while varying the beam intensity. Computer monitors do the sweeping internally and you only give synch pulses to let it know when to start a new horizontal or vertical sweep. The pinout of a VGA connector reflects this. The analogue TV signal was designed so that making a reciever should be as simple as possible. Therefore, it consists of pulses that tells the reciever when to start new sweeps. Between those pulses, the signal tells you how intense the electron beam should be.

What I have described is true for grayscale TV. When full colour TV became available, a new signal standard had to be invented. It was made so that feeding a colour signal to a grayscale TV (completely unaware of other colours) yields the corresponding grayscale image! Also, feeding a grayscale signal to a colour TV yields the grayscale image (I think). Actually, the extension to colours was done in different, incompatible, ways in different parts of the world. Of course, you would have to build a radio reciever to extract the video (and audio) signal in the first place, so, again, it's probably not worth it. —Bromskloss 09:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Formatting an External Harddrive

I have an external USB hard drive. It is currently in NTFS, but I want to format it in FAT32 so that I can use it with my Linux dual boot. Windows XP doesn't let you format it into anything but NTFS and I'm a Linux noob running Ubuntu. I tried GParted, but it doesn't seem to be able to manage externals. Any help? --Russoc4 20:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't answer your question, but have you checked you can boot with your external hard drive on? Nevermind booting from it. I know my one (one of Western Digitals) won't boot if the hard drive is switched on. --Kiltman67 20:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Since most "external hard drives" are just internal hard drives with a case, you can just remove the case, plug it in as an internal hard drive, format it however you want, then remove it and put the case back on. Not always the easiest way, but at least it works in a pinch. StuRat 00:10, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

What problem does gparted have? the drive will probablly appear as a scsi drive btw due to the way linux handles USB mass storage.

BTW my soloution to setting up an external hard drive with fat32 was to use fdisk and format on a win98 box. Plugwash 16:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I partitioned a USB external Maxtor hard disk into several NTFS and ext3 partitions perfectly with GParted. Maybe you haven't noticed how you can select between different hard disks in GParted? Near the top-right corner, there is a drop-down menu allowing you to select a different hard disk. -- Daverocks (talk) 06:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

cfdisk in Linux is pretty good, although I don't know how the external disk would be named - internal disks are named /dev/hda, /dev/hdb etc. If you can work out what Linux calls the external disk then 'cfdisk /disk/name' will probably work. Rentwa 20:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Transferring files from computer to computer

Is there any way to transfer files from one computer to another without using the Internet or data storage media, like through a cord? --Impaciente 23:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Well back in the olden days we used to use a null modem cable, but I'm not sure if they're still around. Oh, previewed and the wikilink isn't redlined, I guess they are still around lol. Actually come to think of it though, you should be able to network the two computers without too much trouble. All the Window$ OSs since Win95 support master/slave networking without extra software, and I'm sure Linux etc do too. Or, come to think of it, after three edit conflicts, lol, you can just install the hard drive from one into the other and do the file transfer thru the OS's copy feature. Anchoress 23:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

1. Buy a hub (50 USD)

2. Buy two Ethernet cards (2 x 10 USD)

3. Buy two Cat-5 cables (2 x 10 USD)

4. hook them all together. Go through the XP networking wizard.

5. right click on the folder you want to share and turn file sharing on.

6. with PC that has shared files, go to start->all programs-> accessories->command prompt

7. type in ipconfig

8. On PC that you want to transfer to, open IE.

9. Type in \\w.x.y.z where w.x.y.z is the IP address of the computer with the shared files on it.

10. copy-paste in the files.

Wjlkgnsfb 23:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, many ways. I just tried a new USB (on computer A) to USB (on computer B) transfer method, but apparently the cable is bad. Local Area Networks and Wide Area Networks were also in use long before the Internet. And Intranet (notice the difference is spelling) is also an Internet-like interface, but only operates within a specific company. StuRat 00:00, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I remember reading (when USB first came out) that you need a USB bridge for that to work. Ordinary USB cables won't do it, AFAIK. --Kjoonlee 02:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's what it was, but it didn't work. Back to the store it goes ! StuRat 19:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

You don't necessarily need the hub. —Bromskloss 09:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

But if you don't use the hub, you will need a crossover cable to connect the two computers. As I previewed, I noticed this was also covered below, but I am going to leave it up here too. --Markwalling 22:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, either a crossover cable or at least one network card that can do the crossing over itself. —Bromskloss 08:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, if both computers are Bluetooth-capable, you should be able to connect one to the other as a device, and do a file transfer. FireWire is another kind of cable connection which I have used on my Macs. --Canley 01:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

1. Print the data out
2. Scan the data in as an image
3. Use OCR to convert it back to the original file format

(Note: may not be the best method.) EdC 02:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

1. Buy a serial cable
2. Connect two computers using the serial ports
3. Run a serial transfer program on each of the computers
4. Copy files from one computer to another from the program

• Buy an..
  • Ethernet cable and a cross-coupler
  • Or
  • Ethernet cross-cable

(commonly called an Ethernet crossover cable --WhiteDragon 16:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

• • Connect two computers using the Ethernet ports
  • Set up Windows file sharing
  • Access the files from the network

--Kjoonlee 02:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

video memory issues

Hello there,

It appears I'm having trouble with my video card. I reported the "symptoms" my PC is suffering from to some (supposedly) knowledgeable friends, they said it probably was a memory or video memory problem. When running World of Warcraft for the first time about a week ago my computer would suddenly black-out and boot.. or sometimes everything would just stop and I had to manually reset it. Then with Tony Hawk's Ug2 it would sometimes stop with the sound from both the game and winamp playing on the background going to a -+2sec loop.

So, I tested my memory with a program I found called memtestx86 or something, and it passed. 11 times.

Now I looked around for a program (for download) that would test my video card memory and have found nothing.

The question I should have asked earlier... Does anyone here know of a program to test video memory?

My card is a ATI RADEON X1600 Pro 256MB (PCI-Express). I bought it about two months ago, but had not (really) put it to test until recently. I have also tried to remove and reinsert it in the PCI-Exp slot.

By the way, another time it crashed was when I ran a benchmarking program, 3D Mark 05.

Thanks in advance. VdSV9•♫ 23:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC) (edited VdSV9•♫ 03:24, 15 August 2006 (UTC))

I would check to make sure you have the latest drivers and all that stuff (that you should probably already know). When you say, "I have tried to remove and reinstert[sic] it too," I assume you mean you reseated it in the expansion slot? It's a good idea. Next, check the heat. ATI has a Catalyst control panel, and it _might_ allow you to underclock it. This _should_ run it at a lower temperature as well, even in 3D mark. If you still get lockups, check the PSU. A card like that is going to need at least a 400W power supply. Actually, if you're still reading, check this first since it's the simplest thing to verify (open the case, look on the side of the PSU). A lot of these new computers come with low-end cards, or even on-board chips, that don't need a lot of power. Buyers get tired of the performance, buy a new video card, but--whoops! Not enough juice from the PSU. As for the heat, if it turns out that that's the problem, make sure you have good circulation in your case. Add another case fan if you need to (presumably you've checked all your other fans to make sure they're still working). Good luck! --Silvaran 03:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Try ATITool. It's aimed at overclockers, but it will alert you to rendering artifacts (i.e. errors). Of course, it might just crash like everything else. - mako 05:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try this ATITool thing next. I have been checking the temperature and it's getting close to 70°C, and if that was too hot I'd guess the catalyst control panel would warn me. BTW, all I see there as an option is to overclock it, not underclock it, anyways, it doesn't seem to be overheating anyway.

I just bought the whole thing about two months ago, and the power supply reads something like this:

 | 12V | 5V | 3.3V |
 |   250W+  | 235W+|

later. VdSV9•♫ 12:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

btw, now that stop/loop thing doesn't happen anymore when running THUG 2. All I get is crashes, sometimes just the program, sometimes the system (with nasty blue screens and everything). VdSV9•♫

Email Post Dating

How do people send email with a date that's in the future, sometimes days or even years into the future?

Changing the date on the PC that sent the email might work for some email systems. StuRat 00:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The date & time shown in an email are stored in the message headers, as are other details like the subject line and the sender's address. Software that is sending an email can set the headers to any value whatsoever, so a system sending an email could, if it wished, put Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 01:33:42 +0100, which would show up as having been sent a decade from now. Of course, most systems use the date & time set on the computer they're running on, but there is no reason why they have to. -- AJR | Talk 00:33, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I've always meant to write a procmail recipe to spam out future emails. Has anyone already done that? --Kainaw ^(talk) 19:41, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Software sales

How much software is sold yearly in the U.S? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.1.13.142 (talk • contribs) 09:46, August 15, 2006

That depends on whether you mean in dollars or in copies. Harryboyles 06:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC)