Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 March 3

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March 3

windows 7 file sharing

I have recently upgraded to Windows 7 Professional and am having trouble sharing pictures. My PC is set up with a partitioned hard drive. Myself being the administrator, and 3 other users. These picture files seem to be open for sharing but, I seem to still be missing something important.I even tried the homegroup, NO LUCK. Just trying to keep kids out of my stuff. Very new to this operating program, will need step by step instructions. Thanks, Frank,74.47.146.203 (talk) 00:23, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to share with users on the same computer you can right-click on that file or folder, then select "share with" from the menu that appears - then select the people. step by step instrucs.

Or place the files or folders of files in the "public folder" (used to be called "shared folders") - there are default folders for "public music" , "public pictures" etc [1]

The homegroup feature is actually for sharing between 2 or more computers connected on a network.

The first two ways should work - note there might be an issue with windows 7 sharing more than it should when you mark a folder as shared [2]. Or this might have been fixed. First get sharing working, then check to see that it isn't sharing more than it should.

You might need to turn password protected sharing on (or maybe off) first (this only lets people with a username and password see the shared folders - stopping 'guests' seeing them) - see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Share-files-with-someone this explains about public folders and sharing too.87.102.67.84 (talk) 01:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Apologies if you've already done this - it's not clear how or where you are going wrong.87.102.67.84 (talk) 01:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Outlook Web Access attachments

My brother-in-law's employer allows access to their Exchange Server email system using Outlook Web Access so that employees can work from home. A few days ago, he had a curious problem where he couldn't open an attachment to one of the emails he'd received from a work colleague, and asked me (the family's computer guy) to take a look. When trying to open the attachment (a Powerpoint 2007 file), a message box pops up saying the file cannot be opened and you should save the attachment the computer. Because this is accessed through Internet Explorer, the only way that I can see to save the attachment is to right-click and choose "Save target as...". Doing that, the file is saved as a zip file containing many xml files in a number of folders; and which Windows is only capable of opening as a zip file.

Strangely, this problem does not appear to affect this one attachment, about 6 out of a hundred or so emails with attachments are affected. I was unable to find a consistant factor - the emails were not all from the same person, and the senders had sent other emails & attachemnts before and since with no problem; the file types were all MS Office but included Powerpoint 2007, Word 2007, Powerpoint 2003/2000, and Word 2003/2000 (the employer has recently upgraded to Office 2007). TBH, this one has got me stumped. I flagged the problematic emails with coloured follow-up flags, and suggested my brother-in-law ask the IT department to investigate what makes these mails different. Unfortunately, in common with many of his colleagues, he thinks the IT department is filled with useless jerks whose only purpose is to make life difficult for the other employees, so I suspect he either won't ask them or will get an unsatisfactory quality of help.

Are there any further tests I could do without access to the Exchange Server, additional things that could be asked of the IT department, or web resources I could check out for an explanation? Astronaut (talk) 01:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds to me like a file association problem, not anything wrong with the server. Are you seeing the problem with only Office Open XML (Office 2007) files? Xenon54 / talk / 02:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

If it was file association, how come the vast majority of attachments still open quite correctly (including Office 2003/2000, Office 2007, PDF, and so on)? The problem attachments were all MS Office but were from various versions (2007 and older versions - .doc and .docx; .ppt and .pptx - ie. not just Office Open XML). However the XML files in the resulting zip file did appear to contain fragments of the text of the attachment, so I could easily believe the whole contents of the Office document/presentation was encoded in some way across many XML files. Interestingly, when a problematic email was forwarded to a non-work email address, the attachments could be opened without any problems using the very same PC. Unfortuantely, I don't have access to the regular mail system - that is only accessible from my brother-in-law's office - but I will ask him to check if the problems attachments can be open while at work. Astronaut (talk) 04:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's what I suspect is going on: The PowerPoint file really is a zip file of xml files, but has a different extension. In some cases*, Internet Explorer tries to automatically detect the file type and will change the extension to the "correct" type. That is, Internet Explorer thinks it knows better and saves it as a zip file. Just rename the file back to the proper extension and it should work.

*For example, if the server sends the PowerPoint file with a generic MIME type like application/octet-stream or text/plain, Internet Explorer will try to automatically detect the file type. If the server sends the PowerPoint file with a more specific MIME type like application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, then Internet Explorer keeps the original file extension. See MIME Type Detection in Internet Explorer for more information. This Internet Explorer "feature" is often an annoyance, and can be avoided if the server sends a more specific MIME type. --Bavi H (talk) 05:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7 new Updates

I heard that a new update for windows 7 disabled pirated copies of windows. is this true? how would I stop this? many thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 02:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This has all the answers to your question [3] 87.102.67.84 (talk) 02:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy responce. I better not update lol —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 02:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

You better buy a genuine copy of Windows 7. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:49, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll pass. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 14:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

And thus does another round of horrifically insecure systems spring up. Either buy a legit copy of the OS, or switch to a free OS. Your approach means more worms spreading, more spambot zombie machines, etc. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 15:34, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I hate do have to say this but in addition to ShadowRangerRIT suggestions, if you are going to use pirated software at least be smart. For example, if you are worried about a specific update disabling your system due to piracy, make sure you don't install that update but do install all other ones Nil Einne (talk) 08:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Vimeo stutter

When I play a movie on Vimeo, the sound is always chopped into incomprehensible pieces of about 1/2 sec, even if the picture is smooth. I'm using Firefox on MacOS 10.5 (PPC Mini). —Tamfang (talk) 06:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This happens we you have either; a poor connection to the interwebs, or a very old computer./ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 11:05, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the key question, then, is why it doesn't happen with (e.g.) Youtube. —Tamfang (talk) 04:50, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Unrefresh

Once you have refreshed a page, is there a way to undo your refresh? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 07:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

No of course no! You ve cleared the cache it's all gone try opening the page in a new tab next time to preserve the content —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 11:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Recursive rootkits

Has any analysis been published on how multiple rootkits on the same machine, unaware of each other's presence, could interfere with one another? Anything focusing specifically on hypervisor-level ("blue pill") rootkits?

On a related note, has the effect of multiple man-in-the-middle attackers on the same channel, each unaware of the others' presence, been analyzed from the legitimate users' point of view? NeonMerlin 08:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Done appropriately MitM attacks should have no effect on the end user. As a practical matter timing will likely be an issue in all of these cases though since any problems exaggerate any lag. Shadowjams (talk) 09:11, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I guess I should mention that the authentication mechanism (if there is one) will indicate there's a problem, but I guess that's already assumed in the attack. But if you had Adam trying to talk to Zack and then Eve, Frank, and George each doing their own man in the middle attack, so long as they were in a series. Again though, practical considerations would be an issue. The "lag" issue is more of a timing issue in setting up the original channel, in which you'd have to intercept the legitimate communications and insert your own. As you add more steps that process becomes more prone to failure. Shadowjams (talk) 21:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Date injection

Does anyone know of a program that injects a time/date into an application? I used to have a freeware version I downloaded from the internet on my old computer but cannot find it. What it does is inject a different time/date from the system time specified by the user. Any help would be great, thanks! 198.188.150.134 (talk) 08:17, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Why not write your own program to do that? Save this text in Notepad:

var wsh = new ActiveXObject("WScript.Shell");
var d = new Date();
wsh.AppActivate("Notepad");
WScript.Sleep(500);
wsh.SendKeys(d);

Save the file with a .js extension and double-click on it when Notepad is open. Make sure that you select All files when saving the file in Notepad. It will insert the date into Notepad. You can replace Notepad with the title of another application you want to insert a date into.--Drknkn (talk) 09:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

He might not be asking for something so trivial. I read the question to mean that he wants to run a program so that it reads a different system date than the actual system time.

Perhaps he has a trial program that has expired, or perhaps he wants to test if an application can survive the end of the 32bit epoch.

I'm not aware of a way to do this. There are multiple ways for an application to retrieve system time, but all of them eventually resolve down to kernel calls. You'd have to intercept those and translate them. Tricky.

Not knowing what the application is, your best bet might be to set up a virtual machine. Perhaps with VMware. APL (talk) 16:37, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Opera Mini on Nokia E63

Hi, I have the Opera Mini 'app' for my Nokia E63 (on UK network '3'), and it is much faster than the built-in browser. Does anyone know if it's possible to make Opera the default browser, for all internet use? Currently when using, for example, the Facebook app, the default browser is loaded. Thanks in advance. 194.205.143.136 (talk) 09:24, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Type "about:config" into the url bar, then select "app.default" and change the value to the .exe file of the browser you wish to use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 18:24, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

QuickTime portable

Is there a portable version of quicktime I can download? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShadowFire101001 (talk • contribs) 11:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally only open-source applications can be portabilized. Some freeware is portabilized, as well, from time to time, but I don't think anyone's done Quicktime yet. I suggest you try the open-source VLC Media Player Portable, which can play pretty much every video or audio format in existence. If you absolutely must have Quicktime there do appear to be several options (on the PortableApps.com forums, for instance) that simply "launch" a local copy of Quicktime and helps the launched copy act if it's portable. Xenon54 / talk / 12:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I beleive the OP means an application that can be executed immediately from a USB flash memory (or similar), without any prior installation, when he/she talks about "portable". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Virtual Disk

Can you boot a computer from a virtual disk on a hard drive? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Redigrey (talk • contribs) 16:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

In theory, yes, but probably not available as a product. In a sense, a partition of a hard drive is a "virtual disk", so a bootloader could be written for the purpose of finding, reading and booting from a virtual disk. After loading bootstrap code and the "real" filesystem drivers, it would need to load an additional set of virtual disk software (as well as whatever information is needed to find the virtual disk) and then boot from there. In practice, I do not believe a produce of this sort exists; if you want to boot different OSes, you're better off partitioning your drive and using a boot loader (e.g. GRUB) capable of booting multiple OSes from different partitions.

That said, there are hypervisor based ultra-light OSes that do something very similar to what you want; they boot a minimalist OS and then create virtual machines that do all the real work under the supervision of the hypervisor OS, potentially loading these OSes from a virtual disk. In this case though, the OS booted from the virtual disk is still virtualized to some extent and will generally underperform the same OS being booted directly without the hypervisor intermediary. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

For more information on the hypervisor approach that might meet your requirements, see Hypervisor, specifically the information on type 1, "bare-metal" hypervisors, which are the type I described. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:34, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Special Character Keyboard Shortcuts

Resolved

The Windows 7 Character Map doesn't display keyboard shortcuts for all the characters. In XP, it showed me the keystrokes for the box drawings; Windows 7 doesn't. Is there a list of the keystrokes for the box drawing characters? Or, for that matter, all the characters?  Buffered Input Output 16:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Copy charmap.exe from Win XP to Win 7 and it will work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Redigrey (talk • contribs) 16:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope, shortcuts still aren't there. Is there a way to convert the Unicode codes to a keyboard shortcut, because the character map help says that that's how you do it.  Buffered Input Output 16:49, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

It's fairly long for shortcut, but if you're only using a few characters, you can memorize codes for specific characters, from a list like this one. I personally memorized Alt-0233 because accented 'e's occasionally appear in English words (like résumé), and Alt-789 because pirate smileys are fun. §-) —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 16:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I should point out that the "eyepatch" is not actually documented there as Alt-789. Many characters have two codes, one with a leading zero, and one without, and there doesn't seem to be a clear relationship between the two codes (nothing simple like octal vs. decimal or the like). I found most of them by trial and error. Yes, I'm a giant geek who is frequently bored. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

For numbers 255 and under: If you put a zero in front, the character will be from a Windows character set. Without a zero in front, the character will be from a DOS character set. See Alt code - Legacy (compatibility) methods --Bavi H (talk) 03:17, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I figured out that if you switch the codepage to DOS: United States, the hex equivalent to the keyboard shortcut shows up next to the unicode value. It seems to work. Thanks for the link, ShadowRangerRIT.  Buffered Input Output 18:33, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Flash and WMV Sometimes Doesn't Work

I am running Windows 7 64-bit.

Sometimes my Flash in web browsers and Windows Media Player doesn't work. When I got to play a song or a movie, WMV is stuck in the loading phase, where the play/pause button is unclickable; the song/movie refuses to play. At the same time, Flash also stops working and when i try to load a website with flash, the browser freezes and I have to close it.

Why does this happen and how do I solve it? Usually a restart fixes the problem, but sometimes two consecutive restarts are required. Acceptable (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Flash and Windows Media Player are completely different things. If the problem is hitting both, then your problem is likely caused by neither and/or you're running some kruft (malicious or otherwise) that is screwing up general system performance. I'd make sure you have up to date drivers for your chipset/motherboard and your graphics card. If you have two virus scanners running, deactivate and uninstall one of them; competing virus scanners can cause serious problems and lockups since they both have near limitless privileges and they end up consuming all system resources scanning each other. Finally, can you provide the precise browser you are using, including the version number, as well as the Flash version you are running? Also, does the problem affect all Flash video, or only specific sites? —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 17:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

And with Flash in particular, see if you can replicate in Firefox and/or IE (whichever you don't use primarily) as well. That will help diagnose whether it is a browser-specific problem. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the same problem happens in both the newest versions of Firefox and IE that I am using. Basically, anything that requires sound, including Skype and video games (Call of Duty 4) refuse to work. Acceptable (talk) 22:14, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Closing ports, monitoring internet activity

I have WindowsXP. 1) I have had one or two programs ask to open ports. After I have uninstalled them, how can I check to see if I have any unnecessary ports open and also close them? 2) I just read something about botnets. Sometimes I see internet activity on my computer even while I'm not doing anything, and I normally never allow programs to use the internet automatically. How can I find out what this internet traffic is, and is there any software to alert me to malware-use of the internet/ Thanks. 92.29.76.9 (talk) 17:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The firewall openings can be configured using the steps in this guide. Your computer will be performing a low level of intermittent internet activity for various purposes; Automatic Updates, the "Windows Genuine Advantage" anti-piracy tool and virus scanner updates are often done in the background without alerting you to them. There are tools to monitor programs' network activity (search for "Network Monitor" or the like), but most of them are fairly technical; even if you understood them, it wouldn't necessarily help you as clever viruses will hide in svchost.exe processes (of which there are many, since it is used to partition services by the OS itself). If you're worried about malware of that sort, you're better off using an up-to-date virus scanner and an up-to-date malware scanner. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

For legitimate software Windows Defender is good for finding out what is using the internet (usually stuff like adobe update, google update etc) - you can't use windows defender and Microsoft Security Essentials (what ShadowRanger above is talking about I think) at the same time .. try defender first. Select 'tools' then 'software explorer' then 'network connected programs' - it gives a fairly clear display. I imagine more malicious programs will slip under the radar - but it's not unknown for "program update" software to continue running on a machine long after the actual program has been uninstalled. (Note defender isn't an antivirus - and there probably are built in programs in the OS that give network connectivity details - but it is fairly user friendly) Shortfatlad (talk) 19:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Technically, any combination of two anti-virus products can cause serious problems, not just pairing two MS products. My girlfriend just acquired a new computer; a couple days after she bought it she complained it was locking up randomly. Psychic debugging led me to ask a few quick questions:

1. Did you install AVG on it? (She usually installs it as a decent free scanner after a clean OS install)
2. Did it ship with a virus scanner?

Turns out, it shipped with TrendMicro. As soon as she uninstalled the extra scanner the machine stopped locking up. Other virus scanners might play a bit more nicely, only locking specific files or processes and not the whole computer, but it's a time bomb in any event. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 19:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

To actually get rounf to answering your question about firewalls : goto "Start" >> "Control Panel" >> "Firewall" >> select the "Exceptions tab" - this should show a list of things that are allowed through the firewall - it's fairly straightforward from there to disable a legitimate(ie openly visible) program you don't want to have access. It is true that I found programs had got access through the firewall and had never asked permission (despite "alert me" being on) - they were all stuff I would have allowed anyway.Shortfatlad (talk) 19:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Capture Video

I wish to record video from a streaming website, however the website does not offer a download service, and all attempts to use various plugins and addons with firefox to capture the video have failed. I am therefore seemingly left with but one solution; to capture the data directly from the internet connection. Please specify all programs that would allow one to monitor and capture video data streams directly from the ethernet port. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShadowFire101001 (talk • contribs) 17:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32/MPlayer-mingw32-1.0rc2.zip + http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/windows-essential-20071007.zip (goes into 'codec/s' dir of former).
  mplayer -playlist -dumpstream URIhere -dumpfile foo (occasionally you will not want -playlist).
• http://www.downloadhelper.net/
• http://www.google.com/search?q=replay%20media%20catcher

¦ Reisio (talk) 18:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Will any of those work with the ITV Player? I'm not sure if it uses RTMPE but there is a good chance it does. I've tried two or three URL sniffers and none of them have found the right URL either. 92.29.76.9 (talk) 18:45, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

FedEx for large files?

Say I had a multi-gigabyte file I needed to upload to an FTP server very quickly. Could I sneaker-net my file to a business and they could upload it on a super-fast connection? (And charge me a per-megabyte fee or whatever) Is that a service local ISPs offer? How would I find a local service like that? I'm not even sure what to call it. --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

You might try contacting the company that hosts your FTP site and seeing if they would be able to do it. Keep in mind, your FTP server's download connection may be quite limited; in the same way a home connection is mostly download with a bit of upload, web servers are usually the opposite (since they are usually uploading much more than they download), so you might not get that much of a boost from a faster link on your end. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Some organisations that need to distribute very large amounts of data (such as bioinformatics or astronomy) use a couriered hard drive end-to-end. If you needed to have all the data hosted, but distributed to relatively few people, you could just get a dedicated hosting service (the kind that actually let you install your own machine in their data centre) and you'd physically install the disk there yourself. If you needed to distribute to lots of people, you'd often use a large scale content delivery network provider like Akamai Technologies; I don't know how you'd typically get large data files to Akamai, but (for the large amount of money they'd be charging for the large-scale distribution you're buying) I'd be surprised if they didn't entertain disks-by-fedex as an option. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Many companies that offer dedicated hosting will do things like install/swap storage for said hosted systems. It's not very cost-practical (since you need to have the host in place, and most will charge a labor fee for such work) but it would be effective if you could find a company relatively close to you. Keep in mind that a symmetric 1 Mbit connection can upload 450MB/hr, and faster services are available from most Cable or DSL operators. Getting a faster turnaround, unless you had many *hundreds* of gigabytes that needed to be uploaded, would be hard to do with any sort of service that you didn't run yourself (i.e. have the keys to the hosting provider to let yourself in to attach the storage.) --144.191.148.3 (talk) 18:36, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Amazon S3 allows you to ship hard drives to them for upload (for a fee), I don't know if their speed qualifies as "very quickly" for you, though. More info here. Jørgen (talk) 19:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Life expectancy of Microsoft

Given the prevalence of free operating systems and piracy, and the fact that Microsoft has of late pumped out mostly crap or malfunctioning operating systems, what is the life expectancy of Microsoft corporation? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Delvenore (talk • contribs) 18:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, let's just throw out the "predict the future" part of the question. Nobody knows what will happen or when, and I don't think any "life expectancy" estimates are going to be very useful. (Especially when something dynamic like how a business performs and how it is perceived. People seem to like Windows 7 a great deal more than recent MS operating systems, which goes against your general assertion.)

More specifically, will piracy and free operating systems overturn Microsoft's OS dominance? Trends so far point to "no." While people seem to be reasonably willing to switch out individual programs in face of inferior product (Firefox has a sizeable chunk of the market, even though IE still dominates), they don't seem nearly as willing to switch entire operating systems, for reasons that are understandable. Considerations of platform compatibility, the need to be able to call up dedicated tech support, and the desire for things to be as simple as possible all seem to favor the largest shares of the market going with the dominant, if buggy, option. Now, the market share will probably fluctuate a bit as free OSes are more widely publicized, made easier to use, and find ways to basically duplicate what people can do on Windows boxes (with less hassle), but on PCs I don't see Windows becoming irrelevant any time soon. More likely is that Microsoft's non-OS products will run into trouble (like IE, like Office, etc.) as free alternatives pop up and don't require so much of a radical change.

As for piracy, I don't see it affecting this debate very much, to be honest. Microsoft might take some financial losses from people pirating its software but that doesn't actually affect its market share (the pirates are still using MS products). If MS has major profit problems I suspect they'll just cut back on the bits of them that make less profit, which doesn't, I don't believe, include the OS.

All that being said, dominance can be a very a fickle thing, so who knows. --Mr.98 (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

You should keep in mind that Microsoft is *extraordinarily* stable, monetarily speaking. They have a AAA rating on their debt for a reason, and don't engage in the sort of speculation that brought down triple-As like AIG. They have cash reserves in the $40-50 billion range last I checked; if they stopped producing or shipping products of any kind they could still pay every one of their 50,000 employees 100K/year for the better part of a decade without running out of cash. Their annual net income runs around $15 billion dollars, varying by a couple billion each year, and it's not in decline. Paraphrasing Mark Twain "Predictions of their demise are greatly exaggerated." —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Just by way of comparison, Google's reserves are around $11 billion and Yahoo's around $3 billion. The fact that Microsoft has much larger reserves doesn't make them bulletproof, it just means they have a lot of room for failure without being in danger of insolvency. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Although mostly crap or malfunctioning operating systems is your personal opinion (and one I don't share), I have to wonder why, if you find them so bad, you're using Windows 7? You've freely admitted further up the reference desk that you've pirated Windows 7 so are you just asking the question in an attempt to be a troll? ZX81 ^talk 18:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I know you're new to the Reference Desk, Delvenore, but your question was flamebait; please be more restrained in the future. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Not much of a future. Blocked by Tnxman. Apparently a block evader who has been doing this before. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I, like ZX81, disagree with the premise that Microsoft products are "crap", but the question of the market leader being able to stay on top in a mature market is a serious one for any company, as General Motors and IBM (for the PC) and Dell show. Microsoft is smart enough to adapt, though around 1995 "it looked as if Bill Gates and company had missed the paradigm shift created by the Internet[4]." This link from two years ago is a Steve Ballmer list of Microsoft's "eight long-term growth bets"; the most important bets are probably the much smaller ones that are touched on later in the article. Microsoft doesn't have the reputation of Bell Labs or anything, but hopefully for them, they'll launch 1000 small research projects per year, and 1% of them will be hits. The company is big enough to finance a lot of research for many years. Comet Tuttle (talk) 19:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Microsoft's performance is only a small factor — proprietary software simply cannot compete with open source software in the long run. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Based on what evidence? We try to avoid prophetic statements here. There are advantages and disadvantages on both sides of the proprietary/open coin. And even if open source eventually becomes the dominant philosophy, nothing is preventing Microsoft from embracing it to a greater or lesser extent, much in the way that IBM has done. Without evidence of any sort, your statement is empty flamebait. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 20:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

This isn't article space, and that is no prophetic statement. :p A company with a finite number of employees cannot compete with a world of contributors. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, a significant number of open-source "contributors" are employees of various companies. Sun paid a few hundred to work on OpenOffice -- a fraction of what Microsoft has working on Microsoft Office. A few other "contributors" working for Linux companies contribute a few lines of code here and there simply to get OpenOffice to work with their distro. There isn't a world of contributors. And the people who do contribute are spread across many different projects, competing with each other. Microsoft has 91,000 employees, 31,000 of whom are developers. Compare that to the 130 employees at Canonical or the 1,000 total contributors to the Debian project.--Chmod 777 (talk) 18:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Your statement is demonstrably false. To date, Microsoft has competed with open-source products most successfully. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:50, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Overclocking

Does overclocking a computer cause damage? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Transfigurations (talk • contribs) 18:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Depends on the quality of the components, the amount of overclocking and the degree to which the overclocking is compensated for. Many chips shipped by manufacturers are exactly the same chip, but the final speed rating is assigned after testing a representative sample of the batch for the failure limit, then selling the other chips clocked a little below that limit. If you get lucky, your chip might be of higher quality than the chips they tested and would work perfectly fine at higher clock speeds. If you're unlucky, your chip is of lower quality than the sample, and even a very modest overclock would burn it out. Some of this can be compensated for by more advanced cooling solutions, but there is always a risk of damage whenever you overclock. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 18:48, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Not always, but an overclocked component always has a higher risk of failure than one running at the regular speed. Our article on Overclocking has a lot more information on this. ZX81 ^talk 18:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Video

What is the best codec for encoding video? I don't know which to choose what has advantages over the others? Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aject8886 (talk • contribs) 19:24, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

h.264 has good hardware encoding and decoding support compared to many other codecs. It's also quite popular. Depending on your specific criteria for "best" it is hard to answer your question more specifically. Caltsar (talk) 19:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Depends on whether you're willing to pay, the quality of the video, whether you want it to be easily redistributable, whether you want open source and/or patent unencumbered, etc. Popular codecs for videos in general release mostly boil down to Xvid and H.264 (for low res and high res video respectively), with DivX and Ogg Theora less used, but still relatively popular. WMV is also popular due to the relative ease of use for those with minimal technical knowledge and a Windows machine. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 19:40, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Avoid opening an email client when clicking on an email address

When you use an internet browser and click on an e-mail address, it will usually open some assigned software/e-mail client. (I forgot where exactly it was, but it's a Windows setting somewhere.) How can I stop that from happening??? I'm so sick of clicking on links which turn out to be e-mail addresses, and then my computer gets bogged down because some program opens... which I will close as soon as it's loaded. I can't believe there's no little checkbox to stop browsers from doing this... but at least I haven't yet found that checkbox.

BTW, I use more than one browser, so simply assigning that browser as "software to be opened" doesn't solve the problem. And yes, I can probably (?) assign at least a small program such as the editor, which would at least avoid long loading times... but I simply don't want *anything* to open unless I tell it otherwise.

Thanks a lot, Ibn Battuta (talk) 22:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

You would have to set this within the browser in which you click the link. For example, on my PC I can find:

• in Opera, a menu option Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Programs
• in Firefox, a menu option Tools > Options > Applications
• in MSIE, a menu option Tools > Internet Options > Programs > Set Programs> Associate a file type or procotol with a program.

Then, of course, you would select "mailto" as the protocol concerned.

However they don't seem to have an option other than to choose a program. --Sussexonian (talk) 23:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, you're right. And the problem is: For example in my IE, I can only choose between Outlook Express (which I don't use), Microsoft Office Outlook (which I don't have), Windows Live Hotmail (which I don't use), and Opera (which is very slow to load). That choice seems ridiculous!

But hey, I hadn't yet found the Firefox option, thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!! --Ibn Battuta (talk) 00:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

What makes pirated copies "unsafe"? Does it get worse or is that marketing?

1.) What makes pirated copies "unsafe"? In theory, I would expect that some expert could simply deactivate/re-program a license requirement, and then pirating should be possible without any security risk. So what makes it unsafe: Is it "only" the concern that some mean guy could hide malware in a seemingly free (pirated) copy, so that there's an *intentional* (by someone) security risk? Or is it also risky to deactivate that license stuff itself? If so, why--b/c hackers unintentionally do more than just deactivate the license requirement? Or why else?

2.) In the last few months, I've increasingly heard about the issue that pirating is not just illegal/immoral, but also unsafe. Is that just my impression? Or if pirating does indeed increasingly get that reputation, why? Is it because a) it's always been bad, but nobody heard (or cared?) about this issue so much? b) pirating has indeed gotten unsafer? (and if so: why??) c) some clever marketing guy for proprietary software realized that pirating will decrease if people fear for security problems, so he's promoting this idea?

[As you guess by my inadequate terminology, I'm not a computer geek, so I'd appreciate if you don't use words or concepts I won't understand... at least not without a tiny bit of explanation or linking. Thanks. :o) ] Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 22:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The unsafe aspect is:

1. Malware hidden in a distribution (or the tool used to disable the piracy checks), exactly like you said
2. That disabling the checks usually means disabling updates

The latter point is the important one. If your OS is up to date, but you stop updating to avoid being deactivated by the piracy checks (we'll assume your pirate copy of the OS was made by your own mother, manually breaking the check on her own and you trust her implicitly), you're initially just as secure as any legit user. But when a security patch is released and you don't install it because you disabled updates, you're now vulnerable in a way that a legit up-to-date copy is not. The details of the security fix often make it easier to develop an exploit for it in unpatched machines; most widespread worms targeting Windows machines could not affect an up-to-date OS, but because of piracy (and update laziness) there are still millions of machines that can be infected by them. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 23:05, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

To the rest of your question, the security risk involved has increased slightly over time, but only because more and more people are connected to the internet by always on internet connections. If your machine isn't on a network, then your security is pretty good. If it's on dial-up, you're only vulnerable while connected, and certain forms of attack that require brute force testing of the system aren't feasible. But if you're connected all the time by a high speed link, you're always vulnerable. Which means an exploit is more likely to be exploited. The risk was always there, you were just protected by a crappy or nonexistent internet connection. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 23:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

So if my mother is clever enough to only break the check, but allow updates--by some very clever way of making the break invisible to updates: you don't know what my mother can do at a computer!--then pirating from trusted people like her should be "100%" safe, correct? [I'm not talking about police men busting her and me, just about malware.]

Besides, if my mother doesn't like to pirate OS, but a very unpopular software for counting cows in Farmville, Idaho, the program should be "virtually 100%" safe--because chances are that nobody will write malware for that software, correct?

And would you say that the increased awareness of pirating as a safety issue is more or less matching the speed with which it does indeed get unsafer? Or would you say it's actually catching up (before we didn't take it serious enough, now we almost are) or losing ground (by now, pirating is getting very popular, but safety awareness is not catching on enough)? Thanks, Ibn Battuta (talk) 23:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC) PS: If you should think that responses to things like the second paragraph would unduly advertise pirating, feel free to edit it and this "PS" out of my reply. :o) I sure don't want to cause trouble for Wikipedia... or the software developers in Farmville. --Ibn Battuta (talk) 23:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

1. If your mother is a software cracker and is able to crack Windows 7, then, correct, it's up to her whether to introduce malware into the crack. As far as "100% safe", nobody knows that; any cracked software may have unintended vulnerabilities. The problem with updates is an obvious one.

2. Incorrect; anybody who has the cracked cow-counting software could incorporate malware into it before they share the cracked software. By way of analogy, computer viruses that infect Windows applications will try to infect any Windows application; a separate virus is not written for each application out there.

3. I don't think you will find any studies that survey software pirates' awareness of the risk of what they are doing. It's quite a narrow niche (and hence, by the way, possibly a good area for future Ph.D thesis writers to focus on. You could be the first.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Ad 3: I wasn't thinking of pirates themselves, but rather the general public, e.g., discussions in forums of major newspapers. They should be a bit easier to reach for my Ph.D. thesis... although you're right, pirates would make for a sexier topic. :o) --Ibn Battuta (talk) 00:21, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I am a Pirate. I have pirated all sorts of things. From my experience, 'unsafe' copies of pirated games/movies/music/software/whatever quickly disappears. They disappear for a couple of reasons;

1) The 'unsafe' software makes the computer unusable, making it so this copy can't be shared for others to download.

2) Depending on where you download the 'unsafe' software you might find an area where people who have already downloaded it can comment. If it is 'unsafe' in a obvious way people might comment on that.

I cant recall a time in which i have downloaded an 'unsafe' mp3 / game / anything. This does not mean that i haven't, just cant remember. I have always kept a legitimate free anti-virus and firewall running and updated. On top of that i normal spend time reading the comments, looking for possible problems / fixes / viruses. Oh, and i only download from well-known websites. From my experience i have come to trust pirated games/movies/music/software/blah.... blah .... blah. I hope this helps. – Elliott(Talk|Cont)  23:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7 vs. Windows XP

Does Windows 7 outperform Windows XP? I think I read somewhere that Windows XP is slightly better than Windows 7, though obviously horribly outdated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crockadoc (talk • contribs) 22:34, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

In terms of resources required to run the OS, Win7 requires more than WinXP. Some specific tasks handled by the operating system are slightly slower due to changes in the design to improve security, isolate privilege levels, etc. That said, the same thing was true of WinXP SP2 vs. WinXP, WinXP vs. Win2K, Win2K vs. Win9x, etc. The question is whether those improvements matter. Since I started using Vista, I've never had a program freeze in such a way that it blocked access to the applications behind it (thanks to the DWM, which transfers responsibility for responding to window messages to the OS). With 64 bit aware processing, I can actually address all 4 GB of RAM on my machine, allowing programs to run entirely in memory or cache more file system data. The isolation of privileges means malware can't just take over the whole machine without at least providing some warning. If your machine was made in the last two-three years, it can handle Win7, and the performance drop will be unnoticeable in 99% of situations. Aside from that, you need to decide if the improved security, functionality and stability is worth it. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 22:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind, being slightly slower is often irrelevant. If a particular click takes three milliseconds longer to service because of additional abstraction at some layer in the system, you're not going to notice. Virtually any program that operates entirely in user space will only be affected by side-effect; that is, the resources used by the OS might slow it down if the machine is resource constrained, but the machine isn't actively slowing down random third party programs.

In addition, some things that people use to evaluate speed are improved in Win7. Many people complain about a lack of responsiveness after booting WinXP, which happens because all services are started at the same time and compete for resources early on. Vista and Win7 set several of these services to a special start class that doesn't execute immediately, and operates at reduced CPU and I/O priority during initialization, meaning user programs get priority. —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 22:48, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

They're actually very similar in performance on applications. Just google (or bing!) for "windows xp 7 benchmarks" - (rule 35 - if it exists - benchmarks exist for it).Shortfatlad (talk) 00:54, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

TV Tuners and recorded programs

I got a couple of questions. Question numero uno: Can anyone recommend TV tuners that are good for laptops? I haven't quite ended my search for a new laptop, so the only thing I can guarantee is that it won't be a Macbook. OK, next question: I know that recording shows on a PC takes up a lot of space on one's hard drive, so I wonder if it is possible to buy an external hard drive and use that solely for the purpose of storing recorded TV programs, because upgrading the hard drive on whatever laptop I end up buying will cost me $$$. Also, since the DVR on my cable receiver is at full capacity, would it be possible to transfer programs recorded on it to my hard drive? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 23:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I've personally used Hauppage's USB DVB-T adapter; if I were getting a new one I'd get a dual channel one (so you can watch one stream and record another concurrently). You'll need to get one that suits the transmission system you intend to record (analog NTSC or PAL, or digital DVB-T/C/S or ATSC); I don't know what, if any, option you have for recording off a US cable hookup onto a regular PC. I can recommend Windows 7's own Windows Media Center (not Hauppage's packaged software). WMC's recordings are single sensibly named files and can (at least for the unencrypted UK DVB-T signal I get) be copied to other media (as MSDVR files) easily. Recoding MSDVB to other formats (say to watch on a portable player) is a royal pain. I don't know about your specific cable DVR, but in general it isn't possible (or at least isn't made at all easy). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not too familiar with all the abbreviated terminology you just used (ok, I looked it up, so I'm not completely clueless), I plan to stream whatever DVB is for digital cable. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 23:38, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to stream your cable channels on a TV Tuner? I suspect no, it'd probably be too easy of a deal. But can you, like, get Comedy Central to stream on your computer via a TV tuner? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 23:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

As your IP resolves to a (presumably) US cable provider, it's likely that your cable feed is encrypted by the cable company. In that case it seems you need the appropriate CableCARD, which is supplied by the cable company themselves, in order to view their cable feed. I don't know anything about what restrictions that places on a computer user - I believe it varies between companies. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I just found out my cable provider does provide one for $2.00 a month, so apparently it is possible. Would it be compatible with a TV tuner? 24.189.90.68 (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Searching around, it seems cablecards plug into tuner cards like this one. You need to see what your cable company says. It seems some cablecards only work in special TVs, and surely if they sell one that does work in a laptop, there will also be an associated program you'd need to run. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 01:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. 400 bucks is steep, but expected considering how new it is. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 01:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I've also done some research on getting a TV tuner card for storing recorded TV programs on hard disk. I concluded that they weren't quite ready, at the time, for the following reasons:

1) The expense, as you noted.

2) The processing speed required to store full 1080 data. Most tuner cards say they "support" 1080, but that only means they downconvert it to a lower resolution they can handle, before storing.

3) The total storage capacity needed.

4) The rate at which data can be sent to an external storage device is probably insufficient for 1080 resolution, with a USB 2.0 connection. Hopefully this will be resolved by USB 3.0. StuRat (talk) 20:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't know much about USB 3.0, but if you want a high speed external storage device, I strongly recommend firewire, e-SATA or perhaps ethernet (i.e. NAS). USB 2.0 is capable of 480mbps, but it's well known that it generally performs poorly with external hard drives/mass storage devices and even Firewire 400 easily outperforms it. I admit this isn't something I've looked at for a while, but I somewhat doubt it's changed much.

However I have to admit even with USB's poor performance I don't know if it'll be a real problem if you're only talking a single/simultaneous recording. Even if you only manage 20MBPS, that should be more then enough for even a MPEG2 compressed stream. If both the tuner and hard drive are sharing the same USB2.0 connection perhaps it will have problems but even then I somewhat doubt it for a single stream.

Also in terms of the above points, I don't know much about how things are in the US but I doubt the majority of tuners downconvert. For starters, any digital tuner, be it DVB-t, DVB-S/2, DVB-C/2 or ATSC is not going to since that would take a lot more work. There are very few analog tuners which support HD, and perhaps some advertise 1080i support but downconvert but the Hauppage HD-PVR does support 1080i and does not down-convert. The price is $209.99 at NewEgg. (This is a hardware encoder, I don't think any software encoding HD tuner exists because amongst other things it'll probably have bitrate issues if you aren't using PCI-express.) However this is no use if your device does not output HD over component, but that's not the tuner's fault. In any case, it doesn't seem like this is what's being discussed here.

In terms of storage capacity, it isn't really that bad. Okay in the US I believe you often use MPEG2 HD which does generally mean high bitrates but even then for broadcast TV I doubt you ever use anything higher then 25mbps (and even that is probably unlike, [5] suggests 19.3 mbps is more common) which would need ~10.5GiB / hour. So a 2TB HD could easily store over 165 hours. If you're talking h.264, like used here in NZ for example, a bitrate of 10mbps or so is more likely so 350 hours or so is no problem.

Perhaps a key point which I hinted at with the above, the real problem is with encrypted content like cable and satellite. For example, setting up a system to record Freeview NZ isn't that hard (well there were problems due to the fact we were a fairly early adopter of DVB-t HD with h.264 and AAC but nowadays they are generally resolved) or expensive. You can get a 2 tuner DVB-t PCI-express card for NZ$160 and that's really all you need other then software. (Because we use MHEG-5 exclusively for the guide, you do generally have to use some internet service for the guide.) This allows you to record at least 2 channels (e.g. with 7MC) and with MediaPortal and other better software you can record more then that (any combination on the same 2 multiplexes and we only have 3). You can even get cheaper generic single tuner DVB-t devices from places like DealExtreme for US$20 or less. However encrypted content is often a lot more difficult. In fact, as bad as the situation is in the US [6], at least you have an option. Here in NZ, your only option is by using software made by unknown people (which is probably against the DMCA in the US).

Nil Einne (talk) 09:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the storage capacity needed, I should clarify my point. While current storage capacities are fine for "time shifting" (recording something, watching it later, then deleting it), it's not sufficient for building a library. That is, if you want to keep every episode of some of you favorite shows, they will quickly fill the hard drive. You could, of course, keep getting new hard drives as the old ones fill, but that gets expensive and having to reconnect an old hard drive to see a favorite episode can be too much trouble, especially if it's an internal drive. Also note that there's a fine line between time shifting and building a library, as you might mean to watch something and delete it the day after you record it, but may fall behind and have the number of recorded shows go steadily up. Perhaps such a person should just admit they can't watch so much and delete it all and start over, but now we're getting into the psychology of "hoarding behavior". StuRat (talk) 15:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't expect more detailed responses. No, I don't plan on building a "library" of recorded programs, I already know beforehand how problematic that is (in fact, my DVR can't hold in any more programs, as I also share the TV with someone who has the "hoarding problem", apparently everything they record is too precious to delete, hence why I want to get a TV tuner in the first place). However, I am the type to record something, mean to watch the next day or over the weekend, and then that program sits there for ages completely forgotten, so you do have a point there. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 04:06, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

GigaQuads

In Star Trek they use GigaQuads of data as a measurment. Does GigaQuads actually real measurement of storage capacity for computers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Velderon4 (talk • contribs) 23:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

No. They were made up so as to prevent the possibility of real world computing advances rendering Star Trek technology obsolete. Source —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 23:11, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This website suggests that it could be the equivalent of a Yottabyte. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 23:17, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

With no support whatsoever. Sure, it could be, but it could be many things. Or it could be something not based on a binary number system at all (ternary computing appears to exist in the Star Trek universe, and bytes of any sort would not apply). —ShadowRanger ^(talk|stalk) 23:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it does not matter if data is represented as ternary. The permutation value is linear and can still be converted to a count like an integer just as a byte count. -Tim-J.Swan 9 Dec 2013

What has permutation to do with anything? —Tamfang (talk) 05:25, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Inevitably, some guy is going to use the term to measure something in the real world, and then it'll be belittled in the show as a result. Kinda like smoots. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Indopedia is a non-compliant mirror of a very old copy of Wikipedia. That comes verbatim from the article Gigaquad, which was moved to Quad (Star Trek) and later deleted. Admins can see this revision here. That content contributed in June 2004, without any reference, by an IP with no meaningful track record. It is of no value as a reference. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 23:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'm sorry, I made a mistake, combing through a Star Trek forum might've been more reliable, but imagine doing that when you're not a Star Trek fan at all... 24.189.90.68 (talk) 23:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I would guess a 'quad' is a four dimensional byte (a byte being 2^3 bits and 1d) thus a quad is (2^3)^4 = 2^12 bits = ~4Kb. 512bytes (This is not based on interest or knowledge of star-trek - it's a guess)Shortfatlad (talk) 00:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

In real life, a quad can refer to a quad word, four times as large as the word size, for a given platform. For a common 32 or 64 bit desktop computer, a gigaquad of storage is not particularly impressive. decltype (talk) 12:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)