Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 April 29

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April 29

How are tactical maps made?

I am looking for a program or explanation on how tactical maps involving NATO symbols are made? Such as this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Map_of_dnieper_battle_grand.jpg

But also on the smaller, batallion-scale, or any scale. What program is used? I have found military fonts online, but ideally i'm looking for a program that allows me to map tactical movements with proper NATO symbols. Autorealm is a program which I have used in the past, and there are some references of a military symbology pack online, but the links are broken. Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated. --Baalhammon (talk) 04:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Autorealm uses True Type fonts, which is the format for most other specialist fonts as well. http://www.mapsymbs.com/maphome.html has NATO APP-6 and APP-6a symbols, for free. They should work with Autorealm. KoolerStill (talk) 09:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Um you do realise that NATO was formed in 1949 right? That map was from 1941 or 1943 Nil Einne (talk) 21:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

linker

I need a linker that can connect my Samsung U708 Earphone and Microphone with my computer Audio and Mic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stool8888 (talk • contribs) 07:23, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

You probably mean that you need an adapter. I don't know if such an adapter exists, but if it does, a well-equipped electronics store that sells Samsung cell phones would probably be a good place to ask for one. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

pc2mac, end of lines in text files

I transfer a simple text file from PC into a memory stick, then transfer it to Mac-System-9.2. Due to different encoding, I have too many additional blank lines. Question: Is there any FREE script of Mac-System-9.2 that would take care of the end of lines when I drag and drop a simple text file on its icon? Thank you in advance. twma 09:27, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

TEXT<->.TXT Converter seems to do what you want, though with a somewhat annoying interface (it defaults to converting Mac->Windows, and you have to change this for every file). -- Speaker to Lampposts (talk) 19:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Lampposts. Our supporting staff managed to download a copy for me called TextConverter without any extension. I double clicked it on Mac-system-9.2 but did not work. I inserted the extension .exe and then double clicked it on my PC. A dos-window appeared and disappeared quickly. I do not know what to do now. Be grateful if you could advise. Thank you in advance. twma 06:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like it is meant to be run on the Windows machine, to pre-convert into Mac format, not much help if you are being given Windows format files by someone else. http://www.filetransit.com/view.php?id=34958 is another converter that works on the Windows end of the transaction. But you should have a File Exchange Control Panel incorporated in your Mac OS which would do the conversion automatically. For plain text files, it is merely a matter of stripping off the Line Feed character at the end of every line (which is what is causing your double-spacing). Once the control panel is set up correctly, double-clicking files with the registered extension will do the conversion.KoolerStill (talk) 13:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to KoolerStill. File Exchange Control Panel solved my problem. Thank you again. twma 07:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

sound card volt meter

I want to measure a DC voltage with my computer cheaply. It should be possible using the sound card which has a high resolution ADC but is AC coupled. The DC would need to be chopped up, possibly using the sound card audio output. I've had a good look but I can't find references on the web. What would be a good, simple circuit for this? Cheers! PeterGrecian (talk) 10:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

This would be an interesting proof of concept, though not exactly the most practical way to measure DC. One way to chop up the signal would be to get an analog mux (such as Maxim's), run your signal to one input, ground the other, and use a 555 to toggle them. Conceptually it'd be straightforward. But I think you could also figure out some way using a 555 and an op-amp or two.

Note that you need a reference voltage of some sort in order to calibrate your measurement system. And don't apply too much voltage to your sound card inputs... they're probably not as forgiving as multimeters. (Multimeters are pretty cheap, btw.) - mako 20:53, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks mak. I'll have a look at the mux, but I'll probably use op-amps because I have some handy. The application I have in mind is testing battery capacities which requires measurements over several hours or days. Cheers. PeterGrecian (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You may find this link useful: http://lea.hamradio.si/~s57uuu/scdsp/CheapChop/cheapchop.htm I was looking for exactly the same thing and found the link. I'm now happily using my sound card to record switch open/close events.--Phil Holmes (talk) 14:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Phil, just what I was after, and I'm happy to know I'm not the only one who thinks like this! PeterGrecian (talk) 09:05, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Radio Button script

I was wondering how hard it would be to make a script that would automatically fill in online forms; specifically those that contained radio buttons. The script would just randomly fill in all available buttons.

--Drogonov (talk) 12:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Not too hard. The Javascript below does the radio-button thing you mention. You could save it as a bookmarklet for whenever you feel the need to randomly choose a radio station. --Sean 13:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

  javascript:  var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
    var radios_by_name=%7B%7D%3B
    for (var i = 0; i < inputs.length; ++i) {
        var t = inputs[i];
        if (t.type != "radio")
            continue;
        if (!radios_by_name[t.name])
            radios_by_name[t.name] = [];
        radios_by_name[t.name].push(t);
    }
    for (var name in radios_by_name) {
        var group = radios_by_name[name];
        var random_index = Math.ceil(Math.random() * group.length) - 1;

        group[random_index].checked = true;
    }

It kind of works but once you use the scirpt it checks the radio button ,as planned, but then goes to a blank white screen saying "true" --Drogonov (talk) 16:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Stick a "void(0)" at the end to prevent that. --Sean 13:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

what would this do?

 

    $("input:radio").each(function() {
        $(this).attr("checked","checked");
    });

I think it uses jQuery to check all the radio button inputs on the page. I don't don't know jQuery, so I'm guessing. --Sean 13:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

P2SP exist or not ? Or the real name is?

http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=960617 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ice77cool (talk • contribs) 15:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

http://article.ednchina.com/CE/20090330084408.htm http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Farticle.ednchina.com%2FCE%2F20090330084408.htm&lp=zh_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

As hardware already come out P2SP technology.. May be it is a marketing trick. I mean fake technology. But P2P mean Peer to Peer. Client-Server is connection between Client and Server.. Then how about connection with/without torrent server (DHT) to both Client (Peer) and Server? Is it so call Peer-to-Peer-Client-Server? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ice77cool (talk • contribs) 15:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinacache (P2SP stated.. Funded by INTEL too) Hm... My P2SP deletion log also being deleted.. P2SP so hated by people? Ice77cool (talk) 10:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

ITQ portfolio work

Could someone with experience of teaching or marking ITQs (ie, the final "Making Selective Use of IT module) give me some tips on what is expected? Or a link to a course syllabus - I can't find any detailed information on what I should cover.

I'm taking a level 2 ITQ course at my local community college in Liverpool, England, one evening a week. I only have to do the final portfolio module, because I already have a basic ECDL certificate which excuses me from all the other work. However, being let off all the learning modules means I have no experience of the work an examiner will expect. My ECDL was assessed thru multiple choice tests (and one short intray exercise) so it doesn't help, and my tutor says the things I'm suggesting (based on my work & study experience) aren't complex enough. I can only go to college once a week for 2 hours, my tutor is too busy with people who started at the beginning to sit around holding my hand, and without background knowledge I can't ask intelligent questions.

I haven't been able to find a syllabus anywhere, and my tutor's instructions seem to change every week. At first I was told a copy of my CV was an adequate piece of work (even though I'd already written it) but the following week that had changed, for no clear reason.

I've been asked to produce three separate pieces of work, each using a different module of MS Office 2007, but also told that one module can be research on the internet. These are my ideas so far:

• A training pack for new library counter employees (Word and/or Powerpoint)
• A budget for a student society exchange visit, with income & expenses shared among the participants to give a minimum fee (Excel)
• A presentation of the society's activities, to show to new members at the first meeting (Powerpoint)
• A relational database to track job applications and followup (Access)
• A web search for sources to use in a history essay, covering Google Books, the library catalogue, JSTOR, and relevant websites thru Google. I could print the search results from each place I looked.

Please let me know if any of these are good ideas, and how much detail & complexity I'd need to show. Many thanks!! 86.143.231.244 (talk) 16:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Access takes a LOT of learning, to produce anything good with it. Do the training pack, in Powerpoint. Avoid too many fancy transitions. Look into the feature that lets the user click on some part of the screen to "jump" to the next item of interest. Do it on a Master template of your own design, and print out written handouts from them. Then do the student budget, in Excel, with calculations all done with formulae. Allow for variable amounts to be entered by the user. For both of these you actually DO need to do a lot of research, to get the material for your content. Document that search process, with links and quotes. Organise it into a Word document, making use of the Table of Contents and Footnotes features. They would expect relevant content, but mostly you need to demonstrate proficiency in the software modules themselves. So read through the Help to find features the average user wouldn't use, and incorporate them into your design. Go more for function than appearance. Expect to spend two evenings experimenting with the features, another outlining the flow of data, maybe two researching the content you need. Then two days for each section putting it all together. Good luck. KoolerStill (talk) 15:53, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Wireless network security

How safe is it to use unsecured wireless networks to access sensitive websites such as internet banking? In case I'm using the wrong jargon, the situation is thus; I live in an apartment complex, many people have wireless routers- most are secured by password but I can access the net with my ps3 using one which isn't. Leaving aside any possible ethical issues for the moment, is it safe to access internet banking (an encrypted website i'd hope) using this connection. Thanks in advance for any replies. Stanstaple (talk) 17:28, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

In theory, if you have access to unsecured wireless you could log into the router with the default password and set up encryption for the duration of your internet banking. I'd do this when you're sure the other people are not using the net, like 3am early morning time. Then remove the security when you're done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 17:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

That is particularly inadvisable. Altering someone else's router settings may be sufficient for criminal computer trespass, whereas using an unsecured wireless network may be somewhat less clear (depending on jurisdiction; this is not legal advice). – 74  00:19, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

If it's not his network (as is the case here), he probably doesn't have the router password (unless the router's owner is particularly incompetent), so he probably won't be able to change the settings. --128.97.244.41 (talk) 21:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Is that neccesary though? If I'm using an encrypted (?) website does that scramble the information being sent between the ps3 and the router or just between the router and the rest of the net? (I'm no techie in case thats not patently obvious]]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanstaple (talk • contribs) 17:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It's just an idea, a bit extreme I guess. An encrypted website that uses https should scramble the data from your browser to the banking site, so all data traveling over the wireless connection is scrambled too. But with wireless, anyone could use packet capturing software like Kismet to record all wireless traffic between your computer and the wireless router, then go through the data and extract your passwords, visited sites etc. Even if you used secured wireless they can still be cracked. But, the likelihood of someone doing this, especially in a residential situation, is quite low. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 17:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

(HTTPS also makes phishing very difficult when correctly used with modern browsers. MTM (talk) 18:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's safe to access an HTTPS website using an insecure wireless connection. An eavesdropper could tell the name of the server (www.bank.com), and roughly how many bytes were being transferred in each direction, but nothing more than that. An active attacker could break the connection (denial of service) but not add/remove/alter any data. -- BenRG (talk) 18:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Though if it's not a wireless network you are supposed to use, accessing something important like your bank with it could be a bad idea. Because the owner can then inquire the bank and be like, "someone hacked into my network and accessed your bank with it", and that would look bad on your bank and it might make them suspend your account or something because either you did it and you dragged them into this mess and they are taking heat for it, or someone else hacked into your account, and in both cases they would really want to talk with you. --128.97.244.41 (talk) 21:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input- I'll believe it because it's what I reckoned anyway- just wanted confirmation really. ' Appreciate your help.

TBH, do you really want to take the risk that your irate neighbour might hack your bank account and clean it out; and them come knocking for a reason why you were using his wireless connection without his permission. Maybe your neighbour is stupid unskilled in securing his network, or maybe he is a skilled criminal waiting for a sucker to use his network for something important. Astronaut (talk) 02:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Another possible attack vector: The neighbour could set up his router to redir all traffic to www.bank.com to his web server, which is set up to look just like www.bank.com, except it has an invalid certificate (or simply uses a plain HTTP connection). He forwards the data sent to his server to the real www.bank.com, and relays the data from www.bank.com back to the user, capturing the username/password, and all the transactions in the process. decltype (talk) 22:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

For that reason it's important to check that you're connecting by HTTPS and never accept a certificate your browser flags as invalid if you care about connection security. (An invalid certificate is fine if it's a website you wouldn't mind connecting to by HTTP in the first place.) If the certificate is valid, there is no danger of an irate neighbor hacking your account. I don't mean to endorse stealing Wi-Fi bandwidth, which is a criminal offense in many places. People have been arrested, and I believe fined/jailed, for doing it. Furthermore, the owner of the connection could contact the bank you connected to, which can identify you from their logs and might notify the police. The connection owner can also see your DHCP host name and your MAC address, which could be used to ID your computer if it was seized. So don't do that. But I also don't want people to get the impression that online banking over an insecure net connection is dangerous. It's not, it's safe, which is a good thing since all net connections are insecure to one extent or another. -- BenRG (talk) 23:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Flawed PHP code

I was writing a short application for a couple Wikipedian IRC users (it will be an RC notice script if it ever works), but I have a problem in my test bot; it can't write data to the socket. If anyone would like to, I'd be very grateful if you reviewed the code. I get an error from fwrite() at the end, on line 222. Thanks! --Yamakiri 20:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I see no fwrite() (nor anything that should call it) on line 222. --Tardis (talk) 02:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

which generally indicates that there is some error in parens or something like that. If you get functions causing errors right near the end of your project it means you should double check all your brackets, etc. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 09:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Err, I meant fgets ._. I'd checked my brackets, quotations, etc. but I didn't see anything. The thing is, how it won't recognize the socket I use ($YamaBot->socket) --Yamakiri ^T_C 04-30-2009 • 19:38:00 19:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

SoftSell

A friend of mine owns a consignment clothing store, and uses SoftSell on an ancient Windows 98 computer (yes I know...). Today, my friend started getting an error message: "Errpr DBFAT x/1104 Create error \\maint\softsell\Defentry.dbf (DOS Error 53)" and then gave quit, retry and default as options. The store has two computers, linked with a wire. This error only occurs on the front computer. The one in the back is the main one.

I know this is pretty much a lost cause, but any help at all is appreciated.

P.S. SoftSell Business Systems, LLC became Ascert, LLC in 2002, and the support website requires a customer login, whcih I don't have.

Thanks, Genius101 ^Guestbook 20:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

DOS Error 53 occurs when trying to map a network drive from a DOS PC (I assume this applies as Windows 98 is based on DOS) to a Windows PC that does not exist. First, try remapping the drive. If that doesn't work, check that the computer "maint" is correctly connected to the other computer and that its network settings (workgroup, name, etc.) are correct. Xenon54 (talk) 20:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I know how to remap in XP, but how exactly would you do that in Windows 98? Thanks, Genius101 ^Guestbook 12:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

In Windows 95, it's Network Neighbourhood -> File -> Map Network Drive. I'm not sure if it's the same in 98, but it likely is. NN should also show you "maint" if it's correctly connected to the network. Xenon54 (talk) 20:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The first thing to do is to make sure the network cable is intact and has a good connection at both ends. StuRat (talk) 09:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help, but it turns out that the network cable was completely unplugged. *sigh* If only people would check that first... Thanks, Genius101 ^Guestbook 21:13, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Resolved

StuRat (talk) 04:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

New Retail System

Because of my above problem, I am looking for a free alternative to SoftSell, which is a retail management program. It needs to be free, because I think taht is the only way I can convince my friend to switch over. Also, it needs to work on Windows 98. Thanks, Genius101 ^Guestbook 20:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem is not with the SoftSell, so there is no point in replacing it for that reason. There may be some old (no longer supported) programs around. But it is not a simple matter to change from one to the other,as all the data would have to be re-entered, unless you can find one that uses the same database format (not likely with proprietary software). The only way it would be worth doing that work would be in conjunction with upgrading the computers, too. Going to Win XP3 would be enough, and would run on as little as 512Mb RAM (although 1Gb or more is better). If money is an issue, excellent used XP boxes can be found for a few hundred dollars. The existing program might in fact run on XP (in compatibility mode) but faster.For a business machine, all these factors have to be considered before making any changes. KoolerStill (talk) 18:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)