Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 November 12

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November 12

Mobile programming

What should I download if I want to write programs for my phone in Java? My computer is Windows XP. F (talk) 04:12, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You'll need the Java SDK to start, but don't underestimate how many additional steps you're going to have to go through to get a program running on your phone. Depending on the phone, it might not be possible to run outside code on it. What kind of phone is it for starters? Shadowjams (talk) 06:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Nokia 3500 classic. I have copied programs over and they work. F (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The Mobile development article is probably relevant. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Nokia's Developers site is here. Astronaut (talk) 10:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

in my client-server network, i want to do that-user can use only notepad.sure that he can not use any other application.

active directory security

PHP & OOP, tutorials that actually DO something?

I'm trying to wrap my head around OOP in PHP and have read(& sometimes skimmed) a half-dozen free tutorials and am getting frustrated. I understand the basic structure, the analogies with cars & carparts, etc. But I'm having a really hard time visualizing real-world implementations of PHP OOP. (I'm new to this programming thing, if that wasn't immediately obvious)

I would be very grateful if someone could point me towards a tutorial that actually uses OOP to construct something, rather than just going over the definitions and relationships for the 100th time. I am having absolutely no luck turning up any project-driven tutorials. Thank you. 218.25.32.210 (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I find the tutorials in those programming books useful. Visit your local bookshop and see if they have books by Wrox Press or Apress and others. Personally, I find books in the ... For Dummies series less useful, but many people find them useful. Try to visit a real bookshop - you can always buy online, but it is helpful if you can look through a selection of books. Alternatively, try your local library. Astronaut (talk) 11:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I second the notion that you ought to check out the bookstore/library. I have found published books much better than online tutorials, which, as you point out, are often just descriptions of details rather than things that walk you through understanding. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Life cycle failure pattern of CPU-Fan

I search a statistic for failure of a Cpu-Fan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.242.195.103 (talk) 09:49, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

is piracy of apps a problem for apple?

Is Piracy of iPhone/iPod touch apps a problem for Apple? If so, what are the major sources/channels of piracy Apple has to deal with (by name), and how does Apple fight these in general and specific? Is there any that, like the Pirate Bay, is specifically "immune" in some way from Apple/a particular thorn in its side? This is not homework. 92.230.70.54 (talk) 12:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you Google "apps apple piracy," it appears that yes, there is some piracy, and some apps with mechanisms that let them check such a thing report rates of 90% or so. I don't know where they are pirating from, though, but if you put in "iphone app" on Pirate Bay, it definitely comes up with a lot. Does the piracy harm Apple, per se, more than the developers of the apps? I don't know, but it's likely to be the source of whether Apple themselves cares much. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of Firefox

I've discovered that Firefox reports a particular web page as not found, whereas Internet Explorer quite happily retrieves it. Has anyone else come across this, and what it the cause of it? --rossb (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

what's the url —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's here --rossb (talk) 15:14, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I use Firefox, and it loaded just fine for me. Tan | 39 15:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It worked for me, under Firefox 2.0.0.20, too. StuRat (talk) 15:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

works here. perhaps you have ad block or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.89.85 (talk) 18:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not pretty, but I can view it. I don't use Internet Explorer.   pablo_hablo. 21:03, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Works in Linux running Iceweasel AND Lynx as well. --Ouro (blah blah) 11:51, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Runescape classic cheat server

How do you enable the cheat server?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You can't. The current RSC servers are only released as a test to see how popular they are (it says so in the news post). You might be able to on the full release, which won't be for a while yet. (Next time, this would be more suited to the Entertainment desk.) Vimescarrot (talk) 16:31, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

First, they said that there would be cheat servers. Second, this is ok to post here or on the entertainment desk, as it is COMPUTER game, and an ENTERTAINMENT game.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 17:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm only advising you as to which desk would get the best response. There are no cheat servers. Vimescarrot (talk) 19:39, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a good guideline would be that questions about actually playing modern computer games ("In World of Warcraft Deluxe Edition, how do I get the Sacred Thingamajig of Howdoyoostan, twice blessed?") should go to the entertainment desk. Questions about getting computer games to work in the first place ("I've been trying to install World of Warcraft Deluxe Edition for days now, but Windows keeps telling me WOWOBJECTS.DLL is corrupt. What do I do?") belong here. JIP | Talk 20:34, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok I will prove to you that jagex said that there were. And if someone wants to move this, go ahead.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 15:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I know they said there would be. They also said (as I've stated before) that the current RSC release is a trial, not the full final release. Vimescarrot (talk) 01:21, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but members who acess it before the 25 th, have access to it whenever now.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 17:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Powerpoint slide is not opening

I am trying to open a power point file which has 98 slides, but instead of opening, it is showing a message that my anti virus (avira) is preventing the file from opening. So disabling it for a while will solve that issue, I mean then the file will open. I have disabled it and try to open file but nothing happened. Again the same message. Then I uninstalled that anti virus and tried to reopen the file, but again it refused to open and told me to deactivate anti virus. It showed the following messages :

The presentation cannot be opened. Your antivirus program may prevent you from opening the presentation. To fix this problem, make sure your antivirus program is current and working correctly. If the problem persists and the presentation is from someone that you trust, turn off your antivirus program, and then try to open the presentation again. If you do this, make sure you turn on your antivirus program again after you open the presentation.

How can I rectify this problem (open the file)? Thanks--119.30.36.45 (talk) 17:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be a memory problem...Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 18:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

A memory problem problem with bad RAM? Unlikely. Please do not guess write too vaguely and accidentally send the OP on a fruitless search for more RAM. The first thing to check is whether the file is defective. Does it open on other PCs? If not, there's something wrong with the file. If so, the default bonehead tech support suggestion would be "Please uninstall PowerPoint, reinstall it, and try again", which might possibly work. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Accdude92, I read your terse answer as "bad RAM" rather than "not enough RAM" which I think is what you meant. This is unlikely to be the problem with a PowerPoint presentation on a modern machine what with today's virtual memory and such. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I hate to ask something obvious, but have you scanned the file for viruses? I mean, it's pretty odd for your AV to reject it, and the behavior you are describing what happens when you disable AV is not encouraging (it sounds like an autorun macro going crazy). Powerpoint files can carry viruses in the form of VB macros. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• I had this ppt file in my pendrive. I scanned pendrive with avira and it found some viruse which were repaired immediately. I also scanned each file individually. No virus at all. My other ppt files from pendrive can be opened easily except this particular file. I have just opened another ppt file and then drag and dropped that file (which is not opening) file into it. But a new message appeared like: The server application, source file, or item can't be opened or returned an unknown error. You may need to reinstall the server application.--119.30.36.45 (talk) 21:28, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

My first guess is that your ppt file was damaged, either directly by the virus or by the antivirus program when it removed the virus (though you aren't specifically saying above that the virus on the pendrive was attached to the ppt file). What happened when you tried opening the file on another PC? (Alternatively, if you don't have another PC handy with a copy of PowerPoint, you could use GMail to mail it to yourself and do a "View as HTML" so that GMail attempts to view the ppt file.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• Ok I tried to view as HTML. But instead of opening it shows error in new tab and shows this message The attachment cannot be viewed as HTML. Download the attachment to view it in its original format. I downloaded it and tried to open the file. But not succeeded.--119.30.36.33 (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If other PPTs on the same drive open, but this one doesn't, then I'd go with Comet Tuttle's theory that the several viruses you had have damaged the file. I've occasionally had luck fixing horked Office files by opening them in OpenOffice.org and saving them off as a new office file; it depends on the nature and extent of the damage. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Greasemonkey script

I have the following simple code that will reload a web page in firefox every 60 seconds:

(function()
{
    setTimeout("document.location.reload();", 60000);
})();

What I need is for the script to somehow scan the webpage before it reloads it for the text "The URL you requested was not found" and if detected, not to reload the page. This in effect makes the script update to the very latest version of a particular web page before it's deleted (the site I'm going to use this on deletes pages after a certain amount of time). Is this at all possible? Regards, 82.43.89.85 (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You can't, generally speaking, due to the race condition where you check the URL, it's OK, and then you reload the page, but by then it's not OK. Perhaps the safest and easiest method will be to load the page into a hidden iframe, check that the iframe's contents are not "page not found", and then display the iframe if it's OK. --Sean 22:57, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

How would I go about doing this? I have almost no scripting knowledge, are iframes hard to use? I'd be extremely grateful if you could link me to an online guide which explains what I need to do. 82.43.89.85 (talk) 23:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You're unlikely to find a guide that describes this exact thing you want. Your choices probably boil down to learning Javascript well enough to do it yourself, or paying/persuading a programmer to do it for you. Userscripts.org seems to have a requests area here. --Sean 22:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)