Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 August 4

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August 4

Passing variables to a Flash movie at runtime

Hi, for my Javascript-based (not AJAX) webapp, I need to pass parameters to a Flash movie after the movie has loaded. I tried flashVars, but the variables can not be changed, as they are read as the movie is loading, and never afterwards. I do not have access to PHP/ASP/other server side language, as this webapp is not exactly webapp(does not access the web, deployed on CD).

Thanks... --125.238.81.215 01:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the answer will depend on whether you are using Actionscript 2 or 3, but in any case, I think this might do the trick for you. --24.147.86.187 17:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look into it :) --125.238.81.215 05:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

PC buy guide

Hey guys, I would like to buy a good end computer without graphics card currently..Budget is not a deal.Can anyone put me the bottomline and the configurations for that?..I would play more games, so kindly can you get me the current configuration...?.Thanks in advance

Uh, any good computer is going to have a graphics card, especially if you want to play games. It depends on what types of games you want to play. If you want to play Tetris and Chess, anything will do, if you want to play a brand new game off the shelf you're going to need more. Using something like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux even older computers can do pretty well, if you want to run Windows Vista you're going to be spending hundreds of dollars on hardware to get similar speeds. It also depends on what type of PC you want- A full tower? UMPC? desktop replacement? PDA? Mini desktop? Depending on what you want, the bare minimum for brand new computers is about $400 from quality brands, I know a website that sells bare minimum PCs for 140$ (need your own monitor, keyboard, and CDROM, and when I say bare minimum I mean it)- or I can show you computers that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. Name specific tasks you want to do, how fast you want to do them, and how pretty you want them to look, and we can start talking prices. --L-- 18:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

perhaps they already has a graphics card from there last pc, in which case look for good ram and cpu but make sure your graphic card will fit properly (eg AGP, PCI, PCI-express etc etc)might be worth looking at building your own pc, you might not be able to save much money but you'll be able to buy exactly what you want plus you wont get burdened with either trying to buy a good pc without graphics card or ending up with a spare graphics card--Colsmeghead 15:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Shell?

I've heard the program Windowblinds being referred to as a shell. Is this correct? BeefJeaunt 12:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If it is able to replace Windows Explorer (which is Windows' shell), it is. If it is just a skin, it's not. --cesarb 12:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The article makes it clear that it is a skinning facility (albeit a pretty elaborate one!). But I wouldn't call it a shell. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:00, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not. It just takes over (or patches into, I don't know) explorer's job of rendering the environment. Shell (computing) specifically states that WB is not a shell replacement --froth^t 15:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

The DOS DIR command

How do I force DIR to display a file's time to the seconds? Instead of:

06/11/2007  10:38         3,595,275 IMG_2193.JPG
06/11/2007  10:39         3,600,951 IMG_2194.JPG

I want:

06/11/2007  10:38:33       3,595,275 IMG_2193.JPG
06/11/2007  10:39:25       3,600,951 IMG_2194.JPG

-- Toytoy 12:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this information is ever recorded. WinRAR uncompressed archives are a useful format to keep track of precise file modification times. --froth^t 15:37, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Huh? Of course it's recorded -- where do you think WinRAR (or any other archiver) gets the information from?

In the original MS-DOS filesystem, modtimes were recorded with only 2-second precision (that is, the seconds were always even), but I presume Microsoft has managed to fix that by now in newer filesystem implementations.

(None of this answers the original poster's question. Me, I suspect there's no way to get the DIR command to do this, but I'm no DOS/Windows expert, so I could be wrong.) —Steve Summit (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Come to think of it, not even the Unix/Linux ls command, with all its bazillions of options, has a standard way to do this. Me, when I need to see a file's times down to the second, I always use a command-line callable ("chapter 1") stat utility (though of course that's not a standard thing, either...). —Steve Summit (talk) 16:19, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

GNU ls has --full-time which gets you the seconds. And the nanoseconds, but those are likely to be all 0. --tcsetattr (talk / contribs) 20:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If you right click a file and select "Properties," you can easily see a file's creation, modification and access dates are all registered to the second. E.g., Today, August 04, 2007, 12:43:37. Is there a tool to create a file list that's accurate to the seconds? -- Toytoy 16:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be hard to make one if there is. In php the fileatime() function allows all sorts of detailed formatting of the timestamp. --24.147.86.187 17:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Not hard at all. Here's a simple C program I just whipped together:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <time.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
	int i;
	struct stat stbuf;
	int errs = 0;

	for(i = 1; i < argc; i++)
		{
		if(stat(argv[i], &stbuf) == 0)
			printf("%.24s\t%s\n", ctime(&stbuf.st_mtime), argv[i]);
		else    {
			perror(argv[i]);
			errs++;
			}
		}

	return errs == 0 ? EXIT_SUCCESS : EXIT_FAILURE;
}

—Steve Summit (talk) 17:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Ready to do some reverse engineering!

I have had the bad fortune of acquiring a piece of US Robotics Winmodem (agh!) that adamantly refuse to work with my Slackware box. (It came with my new PC, so I guess the manufacturers just forced it on me.) However, I see that it works perfectly in the three versions of Windows I have on my computer (98, 2000 and XP). And in 2000 and XP there is even a generic modem driver that comes with Windows that will automatically make the USR winmodem work (the driver installation CD that came with the modem was necessary only for 98). So I think that my winmodem has been around for a very long time.

Strangely, despite all the fantastic advances in so many areas of Linux in recent years, surprisingly little work has been done on the subject of winmodems. The linmodems.org site hasn't been updated since 2001! I checked the drivers tab of my winmodem in the device manager and saw that it just consisted of a few files (vxd's for 98 and one or two sys files for 2000/XP). And the size of them are all in the 10-100K range. So I think it shouldn't be that hard to disassemble it for more information

I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting ready to make some contributions to the open source community. But I need some tools first. Does anyone know of a good PCI hardware monitoring software that runs in Windows that will allow me to monitor, in real time, the data (signals, commands, other data structures) sent by Windows to the winmodem that allows it to do its magic? I figure that if I can capture the binary "open sesame" magic words for getting the winmodem on-hook, off-hook and emit dialtones in Linux it would be a great start!

Thanks.

129.97.225.195 15:51, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried using ndiswrapper? -- Kainaw^(what?) 15:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Kainaw, I will give it a try. 129.97.225.195 16:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Reading this again, my mind just made the connection that you need a modem driver, not a network driver. The ndiswrapper is for network cards. I do not know if there is a similar wrapper for modems. -- Kainaw^(what?) 18:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

You should know that the essential feature of a "winmodem" was that (to save cost) it was missing most of the guts of a normal modem; all the "hard stuff" was offloaded to the host CPU. (See our winmodem article.) So the "driver" for a winmodem is not just some code to pass characters and control signals back and forth between a modem (leaving it up to the modem to encode and decode all the on-the-wire protocols); rather, the code on the host CPU that "drives" a winmodem has to know abut, and implement, most of the details of all those on-the-wire protocols. And the protocols are not simple; in fact the point of moving the implementation of those protocols out of the modem and onto the host CPU was that (it was felt) they were becoming too complex to implement on the modem hardware of the day.

When winmodems came out, they were widely derided by some as being a hack and a cop-out, burdening the host machine with a bunch of CPU-intensive processing which arguably isn't its job. Also, it was obvious that there could never be an open-source reimplementation of a winmodem driver -- the host portion of the winmodem would be ridiculously tightly integrated with the hardware portion, writing it would require intense collaboration with the winmodem manufacturer, and the code would obviously only ever get written for Windows (thus the name, "winmodem").

Now, of course, those who believe a thing to be impossible should not stand in the way of those who are doing it, and there were indeed some heroic efforts made by a few overly-dedicated hackers to "port" some winmodem drivers to Linux. But it's a hopeless effort, and I'm not surprised that the projects lost momentum and haven't been kept up-to-date.

I won't try to discourage you from your quest (that would be unseemly), but I will say that I have never and will never use a winmodem, and I would never think any less of Linux (or any open source OS, or indeed any non-Microsoft OS) for not supporting them. They were a spectacularly bad idea, an exceedingly wrong engineering tradeoff, and they have (as near as I can tell) died the ignominious death they quite richly deserved. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

In addition to Steve 2's comment, the main reason this probably isn't a big focus is because pretty much nobody uses dial up anymore-- especially not the people that use linux. To be blunt, I'd really recommend looking for at least DSL, if not cable or fiber optic. AT&T offers DSL for only $15 to start, it might be worth looking into. You might also consider using a tethered (cell phone) modem, which generally have higher speeds than dial up, not to mention being more portable --L-- 18:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

mp3 playback stuttering and skipping in Winamp when hard drive is in heavy use...

What the subject says. :) When my HD is grinding away on another task (for example when Winamp is rescanning my music folder or something else is loading), the mp3 that's currently playing starts to stutter and jump. This has only started happening in the past couple of weeks. Sometimes the mp3 file is permanently damaged afterwards, unless I pause it until the HD activity has stopped. Any ideas on what might be causing this/how to fix? --Kurt Shaped Box 15:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It could be a sign that UDMA has been disabled, or that the disk is fragmented, but neither would damage the MP3 file. Try enabling SMART on the BIOS, or getting a SMART utility for Windows, to see if it displays any warnings. --cesarb 16:11, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmmmm. My HD has damaged blocks, is running hot (56 degrees C) and is showing 'failed' for 'Reallocated Sectors Count'. Anything I can do, or is a backup before FUBAR and a new HD in order? --Kurt Shaped Box 16:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a backup and replacement, or perhaps replacement and copy (i.e. from the dying drive, mounted as a read-only slave once you've booted onto the new drive) is definitely in order, PDQ. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:01, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

PlayStation 2 international compatibility

I couldn't find the answer to this in the PlayStation 2 article so it's probably a stupid question, but would games released only in Japan work on American systems? 66.231.129.250 16:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• Directly from the article:

"Software for all PlayStation consoles implements regional lockout by containing one of four region codes: NTSC/J for Japan and Asia, NTSC-U/C for North America, PAL for Europe and Oceania, and NTSC/C for China.[8]"

In other words, no. --Alph Tech STUART 17:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

That sucks. Thanks for the answer. 66.231.129.250 17:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

You can get the playstation chipped to play other regions I think. Though not sure how legal it is/what it does to the machine. ny156uk 23:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I use one of these to play imported games. It's a little bit of a hassle, but it works like a charm. 69.95.50.15 19:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Picture effect in Pinnacle Studio 10

in Pinnacle Studio 10 , how can i make effect on the picture , (not on video) (picture inside the video) how can i make picture disapeare gradually , picture fly.....etc.

Firefox, Photos, Facebook, and Java

Hi everyone.

I'm trying to get facebook's photo uploader to work in firefox, but I'm having a huge amount of difficulty as the java just doesn't seem to kick in. I've tried uninstalling all the java versions and reinstalling anew from the website... I've tried emptying the mozilla plugin folder of all java-related dll files. No luck!

I'm running firefox 2.006, and according to the java website I'm running java 1.4.2_02. Any ideas? --Cacofonie 16:59, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Try Fireuploader. Ive installed it but never used it. it looks good. Lmc169 19:55, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Free virtual breadboard

Has anybody out there developed a free virtual breadboard Win32 application akin to WinBreadboard? --Alph Tech STUART 17:50, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think you would be better off to google search for "circuit spice" or "digital circuit simulator". There are many out there. They don't do a breaboard layout, but actual digital circuit layout which is basically the same thing.--Dacium 06:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

mutliple users at the same time?

Ok, it's my understanding that linux and other unix-likes are designed to be able to be used by multiple users at the same time, right? Does this still work? Is it possible for, say, me to plug in two monitors, two keyboards, two mice, and run them as effectively two users logged in simultaneously? Using Xserver? Is it possible to run different window managers at the same time- say GDM on one and KDM on the other? What would the performance impacts be- especially for gaming? Would it be possible to have the graphics card process two 3D games (Say, Nexuiz) running at the same time? And of course the required "if so, how?" --L-- 23:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

HOWTO. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I was about to say "Yes, absolutely, Unix is designed for multi-user support", but then you mentioned multiple monitors and multiple window managers, which starts getting dicey.

If you don't care about multiple monitors and multiple X servers (yes, I know you do care, but bear with me) it's no problem at all. You can use ALT-Fn to switch among Linux's six virtual consoles, and log in as different users on all of them, no problem. (I do this all the time.) You can telnet or ssh into the machine and log in as different users. (I do this all the time, too.) For virtually all of the user programs and system tasks on Linux (or any Unix-like) system, they're all set up to run properly even if there are multiple users logged in.

But where it starts getting tricky is the user interface. Unix was originally designed to run on a minicomputer or small mainframe, and the assumption was that there were distinct physical terminals for each of the logged-in users. When you've got exactly one monitor, keyboard, and mouse attached to the box running the OS, this assumption can start to break down. If you've hacked the hardware in your box so that you can attach multiple monitors, keyboards, and mice, you're obviously moving back towards the "multiple distinct terminal" bailiwick, but there may be some tweaking to do in order to get it to work the way you want.

In particular, stock Linux assumes that there is exactly one X server running on the local machine, and it's always running (as I understand it) on behalf of one user. Since you do care about your multiple users all using graphical environments, you obviously care about this limitation. It looks like the HOWTO that Finlay McWalter mentioned is all about that particular problem. I'm surprised it talks about kernel mods, because that sounds like it contradicts the assertion I would have made that Linux supports multiple users out of the box, but I guess the explanation is that Linux supports multiple users out of the box as long as at most one of them is using the local X server. —Steve Summit (talk) 23:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Photoshopping - Style

I know this is an odd question but...Do you know how in some shots people look like they have photoshopped the subjects skin into being almost plastic looking. Is there a reason beyond just an inability to know how to use photoshop/when enough is enough or is this a particular style? Every time I see shots manipulated like this they look freaky and awful but they are appearing everywhere. Now i'm a fan of the idea of using photoshop, it can help people look their best for a shoot, but these style photos appear in magazines that surely would have professionals producing them/editing photos - so it must be a style/on purpose? ny156uk 23:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I am interested to see how do you selectively blur the low frequency data (blotches, pimples etc.) and leave the high frequency data (spores, skin texture) alone in Photoshop. --antilived^{T | C | G} 00:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It is classic air brushing, just made easier in the digital age. As for how you can get rid of blotches without smoothing the skin as a whole, it is not hard to do, it just takes a little more time (you remove each blotch one-by-one, usually by cloning some skin near it and replacing it. The "healing" brush does a pretty good job of this automatically). I think the goal of those who did the shots in question was to have un-real looking skin — not just blotch free, but impossibly smooth. I think it looks awful too, but I'm not the target audience (most of those glamour shots of women in women's magazines are aimed at... women. Not to sexually arouse them, but to make them think, "Oh, my skin looks like crap." I find it really amazing how much women fret over things that most guys likely don't even notice. I think guys often do the same — from most women I've talked to, receding hair/baldness is not regarded by most women as anywhere near the blemish that most men think it is.) --24.147.86.187 00:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes that's the current way I'm doing it but it doesn't work well in many cases when the lighting is not flat (eg anything that's not shot with direct flash). --antilived^{T | C | G} 01:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It just takes practice, I think. My former boss did photo retouching and she just uses mostly cloning tools. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 21:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)