Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 May 25

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May 25

Microsoft Word 2007 - Preventing Broken Table Rows

Good Evening!

  Does Word 2007 have a setting to prevent table rows from being broken between pages; and if so, how do I turn it on?

  Thanks as always. Rocketshiporion♫ 10:57, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Right click the table, select Table Properties. On the Row tab, uncheck allow row to break across pages. Alfrodull (talk) 17:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

How do I restart an animated gif when viewed in Firefox4?

When I load http://met.no/filestore/animation_level1.gif into Firefox4.0.1, using WindowsXP, then the animated gif runs through just once and then stops.
Is it possible to restart the animation without downloading the whole gif again?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 00:34, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This has apparently been a bug in Firefox since 2002, see the report page here. It doesn't look like anyone is working on fixing it. What you could do is save the gif onto your computer, and then open it with Media Player Classic which lets you skip to any part of the gif just like when playing a video file AvrillirvA (talk) 10:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Strange! I would have thought that such a bug could not be allowed to persist past a major version update of Firefox. (But now I see that it is rather common practice).
I don't know much about Firefox-development, so I have to ask:
Is it possible to not solve the major bug of animated gifs not restarting on page reload (which apparently is a hard nut to crack), but rather to circumvent the problem by: "just writing an add-on" that whould give the user an option to: "Restart animated gif (run once)" and maybe also: "Start/Stop looping animated gif", when right clicking on a gif in Firefox?
--Seren-dipper (talk) 01:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Lost edits

At Wikipedia:UuU it says that the oldest edit to Wikipedia that is visible now is in fact not the oldest one ever, because all edits made prior to that one have been lost. Have there been lost edits long after the UuU edit? What is the approximate date of the most recent Wikipedia edit that is irrevocably lost? --Theurgist (talk) 07:23, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I recall a while ago there being a bug with the page move feature which could result in some of a pages edit history being lost if a page was moved over a redirect. The moving over a redirect section mentions this and states the bug was fixed in MediaWiki 1.5, which was released in October 5, 2005. Also worth noting; every deleted edit is stored in the deletion archive in case it needs to be restored. Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages states that there have been several incidents where the archive was cleared, in 2003 and 2004, so those archived edits are irrevocably lost. I would also not be surprised if several edits have been lost over the years due to random server-side errors, although there's no way to know for sure. AvrillirvA (talk) 14:49, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The earliest edits are actually available to view these days, then there's a gap in later 2001 I think. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:15, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Not all of the earliest edits are back - the earliest edit for the main page, for example, is this one, from late January 2002. Warofdreams talk 15:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Best loss-less compression graphic format ?

I want a format to store a single image. It should allow a 24 bit color depth and have loss-less compression only. The intent is to use it for photographs. Which format is best for this ? StuRat (talk) 08:03, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I suppose it depends what you mean by "best", but PNG should do the job. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:24, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

If you are just going to store the photos and look at them and put them on the web, then PNG is a good choice. If you're going to do a lot of Photoshop work with them, PNG may be a problem, as my colleagues have complained a lot recently about Photoshop's ability to correctly read and manipulate PNG files; so in that case you may want the TGA file format instead. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Lossless JPEGs exist. If you're being theoretical, they might be best. If you're being practical, they aren't widely supported by applications. (They work in lossy mode too, so that fails your "lossless compression only" stipulation, but I didn't really understand it so I ignored it.)  Card Zero  (talk) 23:01, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Historically, the industry standard for loss-less storage of photograph-like images is TIFF - 140.142.20.229 (talk) 17:45, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

If it's a digital camera then you should keep the images in whatever format the camera stores them in—probably either JPEG (the highest supported quality) or some camera raw format. Converting them to any other format, even a "lossless" format, will lose information (and uselessly increase the file size). -- BenRG (talk) 18:58, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. I decided to go with PNG. StuRat (talk) 16:43, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

Changing my ISP and e-mail address.

Hi folks. Looking for a bit of advice here. I have been using AOL for a long long time now but am about to move to Virgin Media (UK) next month and am a bit worried that a lot of my contacts will be lost as a result. I intend to let everyone on my e-mail list know before the changeover my new e-address (if I get it in time) and have already printed off my existing e-contacts. And I have started copying to a relative's Inbox some mails I want to save. But I am concerned with commercial organisations who contact me by e-mail such as Banks, and other Financial Institutions and online shopping organisations who will maybe not allow me access to my accounts as they will not associate my new e-mail address with my current and savings and other accounts. And I can't tell them my new e-address until after the changeover. Any advice appreciated please. This is the first time I have done this in over 20 years. Thanks. 92.4.38.19 (talk) 11:15, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

You can set up e-mail with hotmail i.e. Live services, Gmail or Yahoo Mail (whatever that's called) and give your financial institutions that email. Then next time you change ISP's you will not have to wait and see for the new email. General Rommel (talk) 11:18, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a long time since I used my AOL email account, but I think it is independent of your ISP. In any case, most online banks will recognise you by a username and one or two passwords, which you can input from any computer independent of your ISP or email address. If you do have an email address associated with your bank account etc, you can change it at any time once you are logged into your account. Virgin Media will supply you with an email address but I suggest you don't use it. If you set up an email address with Gmail etc it is usually fairly easy to import your contacts from your previous email account.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 12:05, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It's possible to keep paying AOL to keep your AOL account alive for a few months (or years) after you switch to using Virgin Media. You would log on to the Internet using Virgin Media as usual, and then you would just go to www.aol.com and click "Sign in" — after a few months of paying for both, and you're more comfortable with finally terminating your AOL account, do so then. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the above suggestions. I am really grateful to you all. I regret to admit that after a lifetime of enthusiastic change, usually motivated by peer pressure and work requirements, I have now moved into dinosaur land where it's becoming attractively easier to stay with the familiar. And I still write with 2 fingers instead of 2 thumbs !!!., Cheers. 92.4.35.36 (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

We moved from AOL a few years ago; some family members had AOL accounts that they wanted to keep. They are still active and accessible through www.aol.co.uk - the screen name seems independent from the subscription and we do not pay anything to AOL.(not Wikipedia-reliable, but generally a good source) I have set up Gmail accounts for them which store copies of all the emails sent to the AOL accounts in case they ever do lose access. You may not be able to retain access to things like saved emails in your personal filing cabinet. PS. AOL/Carphone Warehouse is notorious for continuing to charge you even when you think you've already cancelled - something to watch out for! --Kateshortforbob _talk 09:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd use this as an opportunity to break the link between your ISP and your email address - as other have suggested I'd get a gmail account. If the AOL account stays active for a while, I'd set it to forward to the gmail account. --Cameron Scott (talk) 09:20, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

About Computer

what are all the latest updates in PC, Softwares, OS and Applications. The basic extra knowledge about computer and its technology.................. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Muthu.varsh (talk • contribs) 12:23, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It is unreasonable to ask anyone to list every one of the latest updates in computers. If you have a specific question about a specific topic, please feel free to ask. -- kainaw™ 12:57, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Timeline of computing and the pages linked from it have some info AvrillirvA (talk) 15:00, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I actually recommend the Personal Computer article for a general survey like this. It goes into more detail than you need about all the variations, but if you skim it you'll pick up a lot of information, and there are many very useful links to related articles. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Including passwords in a shell script in Linux

Is there a best practice for the use of passwords in a shell script (or the like) in Linux? I am automating the use of svnsync (a Subversion utility) with a cron task so it'll run every evening, and I didn't exactly want to include the passwords in plaintext in the cron task. Comet Tuttle (talk) 16:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

If you don't want to use any sort of keyring or password encryption service, you place the password in a user settings file like ~/.svnsync_pass. Note that the file is hidden. You also chmod 700 on it so only the user can use it. Then, when the user runs the script, the script reads the file. You can further improve security beyond chmod by using selinux with a context just for that file and shell script. -- kainaw™ 16:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't chmod 600 be better? The difference is that there is no need for anyone to execute that file. The file's owner can both read and modify the file, but no one else can do anything to it. Note that a preceding dot only hides the file from being listed with a normal ls command, ls -a will still list it. But the chmod will prevent anyone except the file's owner from seeing what is in the file. JIP | Talk 18:46, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

600 would be better. But, I suggest 700 initially because I don't like suddenly getting into what the numbers mean. Sometimes, I even suggest using chmod ugo-rwx and then chmod u+rw just to avoid saying 600. -- kainaw™ 18:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Beyond general computer and network security, and Kainaw's advice above: a) don't pass the password on the command line, so it doesn't show up in a ps listing and b) make sure that the password store doesn't end up in the backup (or if it does, that you're comfortable with the physical security of the backup). If this was for something seriously secure I'd have all kinds of further elaborate suggestions, but I suspect that'd be overkill for your case. A long, machine-generated, unique password (that is, it isn't used for anything else) is a wise idea too, so if it's compromised the damage is compartmentalised. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:45, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

What does "compartmentalised" mean? JIP | Talk 18:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

In this case it means divided in to compartments, like a submarine. So if there's a hole in one compartment (one waterproof section) of your submarine, the water doesn't get into all the other compartments, and an accident doesn't become a disaster. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:51, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) It means that the damage is limited to that particular account. For example, if I have a different password for each of 5 email accounts and you get the password for one of them, you can't suddenly access all of them. However, most people use the same password for all of their accounts. I wonder how many people use the same user/pass for their Bank of America account as they did for their hacked Playstation Network accounts? -- kainaw™ 18:52, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Good answers, thank you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:27, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Do we have an article about the current power stuggle between Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Adobe, etc.?

I was reading this article[1] where the author mentions that they're writing a book on "Microsoft, Apple and Google and their many business battles." and I thought, what a fascinating topic! Do we happen to have any articles about this? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:29, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

There's Apple v. Microsoft, though that's ancient history by now and is only about a court case and not the battle for market share. The recent struggles are indeed a great topic, but it's such a sprawling topic that I don't know how we'd have an article about it. By necessity, it seems to me you'd have to use a lot of improper editorial judgment just to choose what topics to hit and what topics to not hit. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:12, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

The browser wars article might be relevant AvrillirvA (talk) 11:41, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

RAM

I'm thinking of adding more to my Intel Dual CPU E2200. I've currently got 3GB of DDR2-800. Does it have to be the same speed or is there any benefit to getting something faster? How much more would you recommend for Vista? I don't do anything fancy or demanding, but it takes an annoyingly long time to fully boot (a couple of minutes I think). Firefox 4 has also noticeably slowed down as well, although that may just be Wikipedia's fault. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:52, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Before deciding on a RAM purchase, you can examine the current state of affairs by hitting ctrl-alt-del, then choosing "Start Task Manager". There are two tabs to look at now. The most important under Vista is "Processes", which lists all the little programs running right now. Click the header of the "Memory" column to sort them by amount of memory used. At the bottom it'll tell you how much physical memory is being used. The "Performance" tab does show a nice graph and discusses memory, but you'll notice the "Free" amount of memory is very low — but this is misleading; the low number is because under Vista and Windows 7 there's a rather aggressive caching scheme to speed up disk access that'll use almost all your free memory. (Yes, the cached data gets jettisoned when a process requests some memory.) To answer your earlier question, your motherboard will throttle its memory accesses to match the slowest set of RAM sticks in your system. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:10, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Is your version of Windows 32-bit or 64-bit? I only ask because if you're running 32-bit there's not much point adding more RAM past 3Gb as you won't get to use most of it unless you switch to 64-bit.  ZX81  ^talk 01:27, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Rats. It says 32-bit. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:21, 26 May 2011 (UTC)