Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 July 27

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July 27

Norton Confidential error

Hello. I installed a 15-day free trial of Norton Confidential last month. I uninstalled it because it was expired. My antivirus software is Norton AntiVirus. The latest version of LiveUpdate shows that I have Norton Confidential installed on my computer. Recently, LiveUpdate found an update called "Web Authentication Feature Update" that is 2721.2 KB in size and is associated with Norton Confidential. Whenever I try to install this update, error LU1825 occurs. I ran the Intelligent Updater; it claimed that my computer is fine. Symantec says that my second option is to uninstall and reinstall Norton AntiVirus, but I do not want to do this because it takes so much time to do so and catch up on my virus definitions. How can I get rid of this and future updates associated with Norton Confidential? The little window at my monitor's bottom-right saying, "Would you like to run LiveUpdate now to download the available updates?" wastes my time when I only have the Web Authentication Feature Update to install. Thanks in advance. --Mayfare 01:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

RAM

I'm using a fairly aged computer (bought it in 2001, I think) and I'm looking to buy some new RAM. I'm running 2x 256 MB sticks of PC2100 DDR SDRAM. Does this mean that when I shop for new RAM, I need to make sure it's PC2100 DDR SDRAM? Or can I use PC-5300 DDR2? A Very Noisy Lolcat 03:24, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The PC standard is backwards compatible so you can use any RAM as long as it says "PC" and a number higher to 2100 next to it. Read DDR_SDRAM for more info. --racergr 04:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, DDR2 ist not backwards compatible to DDR, as racergr's answer might imply (unintentionally, I assume). --Dapeteばか 08:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

That is right and it is because the newer sticks are wrongly marketed as, for example, "DDR2 PC3200" instead of just "PC2-3200" which is the correct standartisation according to DDR2_SDRAM. Have a look on DDR_SDRAM as well it will help you understand what RAM you have. --racergr 02:22, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually for whatever reason I've seen certain DDR PC3200 sticks advertised as not backwards compatible. I'm not particularly sure why, perhaps they simply lack the SPD because the vendor can't be bothered certifiying it. I can't remember the brand but I don't think it was a very good one so I suspect provided you stick with a half-decent brand there should be no problem Nil Einne 23:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Linux and Network Connection Sharing

How can I make my linux box with share its ethernet connection to its wireless connection without a GUI? Im running ubuntu server. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.195.124.101 (talk • contribs) 15:55, 27 July 2007.

ubuntuforums.org has a useful thread. If that doesn't help, the forums are generally good for both quality and speed of responses if you ask a question. Search first, though, most stuff's been asked already. --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 18:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Saving laptop power.

Out of curiosity, what are some ways to save power on a laptop? Will running less demanding programs, or fewer programs, using less CPU cycles, help? Not accessing the hard disc as often? Would, say, running in TTY, without graphics programs running, save a significant amount of power? PowerTOP has some neat ideas, but how much of an actual return is there? And also, slightly more realistic, what's the longest anyone knows of a laptop running off a battery, assuming it's in a very low power usage mode (like the TTY 'digital type writer' scenario I mentioned above), with power saving techniques? And even less discreet than that, under 500$? --L^augh! 08:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, the biggest hit your laptop will take is from running CPU-intensive programs. GUI versus terminal probably doesn't matter much (because, after all, even the terminal window is just a collection of graphical stuff to Windows or Mac OS X), but if the program is contantly busying-up the CPU, that will consume a lot of power. The next biggest hit is the LCD backlight; run the screen as dim as you can stand. Spinning down the hard disk drive is probably a lost cause in modern operating systems because something or other will want the disk soon enough and spin it back up again, but you can try it; this used to be a very effective technique on my old PowerBook 170. Naturally you're not running the CD-ROM/DVD drive, right? And you're not busy listening to music via iTunes or some other CPU-intensive player. And you've turned off the wireless network, wireless mice, etc.

With regard to "how long", my old PowerBook 170 used to get up to four hours if I really worked at it. I think our Sony VAIO with the third-party "big" battery will also achieve that (assuming Windows/98SE lives that long). My modern PowerBook G4 is probably more like 3 hours (which is pretty funny because its battery stores far more energy than the old battery did), but I'm also more spendthrift with its power than I used to be with the PB170.

Other folks may have other ideas, of course.

Atlant 12:18, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm talking about running in TTY mode, which is just the terminal screen, without running any of the window manager elements or anything except the bare minimum, which is whatever is in the terminal and whatever starts on boot. I figure terminal programs should be simple enough they don't take much power, right? And a TTY could look pretty good even when dim --L^augh! 19:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Huh? There is running X and there is not running X, and there is a big difference between the two. Any usual 2D graphics stuff that you run with X will consume roughly the same amount of power as anything else you would run with X running.

Screen brightness plays a big part too. I've got a Lenovo Thinkpad (used to be made by IBM), and I can get around 5 and 1/2 hours with the brightness turned down while using wireless according to the windows battery meter.--GTPoompt(talk) 19:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - on my Thinkpad, the battery life changes drastically between full brightness and minimum brightness, but CPU power/fan speed/etc. doesn't seem to affect it very much (i.e. I can still get 2-3 hours of battery life, close to maximum, on minimum brightness but full CPU and fan power). ugen64 05:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Outlook Express

Can someone please tell me how to leave an automated 'Out of office' message using Outlook Express? It seems unbelievable that there is no way to do this, and yet I have clicked on every menu without finding what I need, and nor can I find the topic mentioned in the system's Help menu. Someone advised me to go to 'Tools' and use the 'Office assistant' tab, but my version of Express does not seem to have such an option under Tools. Have I just got a poor version of Express, or what?

Thanks for any help. Maid Marion 09:18, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

You don't mention what version you have, but this may help — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 09:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for prompt and helpful response. Maid Marion 09:56, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

English-like programming languages

1. What programming languages are there that look english-like? I am already aware of Inform 7, AppleScript, and perhaps COBOL too. I'd like to use one - but I cannot as far as I know use AppleScript as I have Windows Me.

2. Would it be easy to write a preprocessor that converted an english-like syntax into a computer language like Python for example? My thinking is that this would make the language much easier for beginners. After gaining confidence with the english-like version, they could gradually change over to Python itself. Thanks. 80.2.213.139 12:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that most programming languages ARE English-like. How English do you want them to be? Do you want to parse:

• Draw me a window, please.
• I want a window.
• Open window here.
• This is where the window needs to appear.

English is such a vague language that you can't use it directly for precise programming. You must have exact syntax. Once you apply an exact syntax, someone will come along and complain that your choice of exact syntax is confusing and ask for a plain English version of your language. -- Kainaw^(what?) 13:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Surely you cannot be serious! This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Python_add5_syntax.svg is hardly english, is it?. Applescript and Inform 7 on the other hand are more like english. What I'm asking is if the same thing can be done for other languages by pre-processing. Or would that be frowned on because making some of them easier to use would mean programmers would get paid less. Anyway, I'd be very grateful if someone would like to answer the two questions. Thanks 80.0.128.223 18:13, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a purposeful balance in programming languages between English and conciseness. Personally, I do not want to type "for every variable I will call X in the array of values named A, please do the following..." when I can type "for X in A do". If you read the code, you will see that it is in English. It is just shortened because nobody wants to pay programmers to spend all day typing all the extra English that is not necessary. In other words, making the language verbose will increase the cost of programming, not lower it. -- Kainaw^(what?) 18:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not as simple as the amount of typing. Programmers frown on English-like syntax because it makes programs harder to understand. A more familiar example to most people is mathematical notation. The mathematicians of a few centuries ago wrote out almost everything in longhand. The introduction of concise notation (however badly designed) was a big step forward in readability, because it allows you to perceive the structure of a formula at a glance. I think a lot of progress in mathematics has been driven by improvements in notation. It's the same for programming languages. Most languages could stand to have better syntax, but the ideal syntax wouldn't be English-like, it would be symbolic with improved visual Gestalt to mark program structure. Yes, it's something new to learn, but it pays off in overall productivity. -- BenRG 14:55, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I note your views, but please could anyone answer the questions? Thanks. 80.0.128.223 18:36, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I did. I asked "How English do you want it to be?" and I noted why a preprocessor would be very difficult due to the vagueness of the English language. -- Kainaw^(what?) 18:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a good answer for the first question as I don't know that many programming languages. As for the second question, that is, in essence, what programming is. When people write functions they are writing what you call preprocessors for simple tasks. Writing a preprocessor that understood through english what people want their computer to do would be a nearly impossible task. If you succeed you could easily market something like that and make billions. On the other hand, if you want to help learning, you could start with something like Scratch (programming language). -Weston.pace 19:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It would not be difficult to add more words to preprocessors. In Kainaw's example, you could preprocess for every variable named into just for. I don't why he implies it is all that difficult. It is what Perl is designed to do. Youth in Asia 19:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

You can name all the specific examples you want... the point is covering every single possible interpretation would take a long, long time. Specific examples are easy, but an overall parsing of the English language is nigh impossible. Gscshoyru 19:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that anybody writes a preprocessor that translates english into a computer language, I'm just wondering if other languages could be made as easy to understand by non-programmers as the three examples I mentioned above. I dimly remember that in Prolog, I think that this could sometimes be done for one or two commands, I think this was referred to as syntax sugaring. I'm also disapointed that there is no list, category, or article about English-like programming languages. Thanks. 80.2.192.76 20:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

<joke>The most English-like programming language I know is the Shakespeare Programming Language. Link</joke> --Kjoonlee 21:42, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Your answers:

1. Look at the article for 4GL and decide for yourself what is more "english-like" for you. SQL is a good candiadate, although not a programming language but a query language. In SQL you can see small statements that are quite like english, for example "insert milk into fridge ....".

2. There is no major technical challenge of writing such a preprocessor. However it would be a time consuming process which would produce something rather useless. Teachers use pseudocode to assist begginers understand what a programming language means.

--racergr 02:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the clear answers. I like the promise of SheerPower4GL since its free and its said to be like BASIC, the only language I'm capable of programming in, and preferably GWBASIC at that, although BASIC is not english-like. 80.2.223.138 13:25, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

How about SHRDLU? You might want to look up natural language processing while you're at it.

Descriptive English for C Statements and Subroutines is a restricted-English syntax for C implemented as a preprocessor. -- BenRG 15:02, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, but it seems to be be about translating C into grammatical english, not the other way around. 80.0.98.113 16:31, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Sony DSC-S500 (digital camera)

I got it last Christmas, had a little fun with it, then I wanted to start getting into recording videos. When I recorded one, I found there was no sound. So I looked through all the menus of the camera, played with it, and I couldnt find any option for sound anywhere.

I looked online, and it said it has sound recording.

So then I looked again, and I couldnt find any options or settings to hear sound. I've let other people who know alot of DC's to look at it, and they couldnt figure it out either. PitchBlack 15:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

If you are trying to play back on the camera, maybe the camera doesn't have speakers.

How do I know if it has speakers? Is the open dots on the side of the camera the speaker? It said on the site that it has sound recording, so what does that mean exactly? PitchBlack 23:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It means it records sound with your videos. The instruction book should give you details, if it came with one (a lot of the cheaper digicams these days only provide this on an accompanying CD). According to the website it has a microphone, but it says nothing about a speaker (by comparison, the DSCW100S, for example, specifically says it has microphone and speaker (in both cases you need to go to the 'Specs' tab and look under 'Sound')). The 'open dots' on the side would be the microphone. I'd say at that price they've skimped on the speakers. Download a video you've recorded to your PC and play it there - you should get your sound. Note that the video will be pretty minimal as it only records at 320 x 240 for a max 30secs. --jjron 11:38, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Website growth

When attempting to plan for growth in a web site oriented business, what would be considered a "good" growth rate in terms of usage? The web site will not be selling anything so the potential user base is in theory, very large. I've heard that some website business aim for a growth of .5-1% growth a day (which seems really high to me). Any ideas or experiences? 96.224.17.145 15:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)AP

I don't know this, but I assume most websites are either big or small. Some will be of interest to some people, filling a niche, and never go beyond that. But others may appeal to a wide audience. At first, growth is likely to be small, but if it is given the right attention in the right place by the right people, links will lead to more links, which will lead to a higher Google rating, which will attract more visitors, who also start linking to it from their own websites, etc. In other words, once past a certain barrier, growth can be exponential. Wikipedia being an extreme example. A major factor here is that a website doesn't rely on physical production, so once the potential is there, there is nothing to hold back the growth. That's why a website can grow much faster than most businesses ever can. DirkvdM 06:37, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Nintendo Why?!-Fi Connection

I've been trying to get onto Nintendo WFC forever, and my friend successfully used my own equipment the first time he tried. Now, I've got a Toshiba Satellite A105 notebook, an HP Pavilion desktop, a Netgear CG814W wireless cable modem gateway, and the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector. Now, when I try connecting to the WFC from the notebook and USB Connector, I can never really connect. When I tried this from the desktop computer, it worked quite well. However, the desktop has since been moved away from the cable modem, so my only option is the notebook and USB Connector. I can't figure out what's stopping me from connecting; I even hooked up a direct connection to the modem, to no avail. I checked the WFC site, and it said that the error code I've been getting is related to firewalls. Now I'm pretty sure that the only firewall program I'm running is EZ Firewall (it was provided off the Road Runner site when I got it)...anybody got any ideas? I really appreciate any help...

Is your wifi on Channel 1 or 11, or whatever your nintendo manual says to use? --L^augh! 19:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Um...not sure about that. Would that be the modem? It probably is, because it worked once before...I think there's something wrong with the notebook...--The Ninth Bright Shiner 20:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

That would be whatever is creating the wifi signal, which would probably be your router, or in this case the wifi connector (which you'd think would default to it) --L^augh! 22:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I'm guessing that's a yes. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to connect using the desktop computer.--The Ninth Bright Shiner 02:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

eBay.com.au tripping Opera's Fraud Protection

Recently whenever I try to sign in to eBay.com.au using Opera, the browser says that the sign-in page has been blacklisted as fraudulent. Any ideas why this is happening and what I can do? I'm using Opera 9.22 build 8801 under Windows XP Home Edition w/ Service Pack 2. --Lumina83 23:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Check your hosts file (does windows have one?) and check to see if some malicious program redirected ebay.com.au.

Agreed. Make sure you're actually visisting ebay.com.au. Either that or Opera's service is overzealous and not well enough programmed to validate real sites. The Evil Spartan 19:03, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, it seems to be working fine now. Maybe someone reported it as fraudulent by mistake. --Lumina83 07:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)