Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 May 8

Computing desk
< May 7	<< Apr | May | Jun >>	May 9 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 8

Which Distro Should I Use?

Now before the flamewars and links to polishlinux start, let me say that I know that each Linux distro has its advantages, and am familiar with the "how to choose a distro" websites.

What Linux (or BSD; really anything that's free) distro is right for me? I run Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex right now, and wanted to do a fresh install to Jaunty Jackalope (because screw KDE 4.1), but then I started shopping around to see how the other distros are doing again. Gentoo looks needlessly complicated (I'm not against a steep learning curve, so long as it's worth it, but I'm not convinced that Gentoo is) and I'm hesitant to switch to RPMs.

I am only an "intermediate" level user, but am not afraid of getting my hands dirty with more complicated systems, as I'm willing to learn whatever I need to; so long as it's worth the trouble. The asthetics of the OS aren't important to me at all, nor is it's OOTB operability, as I install all my own software and customize it manually (so I care nothing about what software it comes with nor its themes, or anything like that). The most important things to me, then, are stability (which seems to be Debian's claim to fame right now) and "bleeding edge-ness"; what intrigues me about Gentoo is that I don't have to wait forever between releases to get the features I want. Also important, but less so, are flexibility and performance (it looks like OpenSuse or Fedora are the most responsive, right now).

Is Ubuntu a good compromise between the stability of Debian and the short release cycles of, say, Fedora? Or is there another OS that I should be looking into? Is Sabayon (the Gentoo derivative) worth trying out?

I don't expect some "objective" answer, I just want to get some opinions. Thanks, Deshi no Shi (talk) 00:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC) (P.S. KDE rules Gnome drools)

I spent a good portion of my undergraduate time working between different unixes and linuxes and qnixes and things you've never heard of. Boy, is it confusing! First of all, you've made the important first step in comprehending that the front-end user interface (GNOME or KDE or fvwm or whatever) is not the operating system distribution. (In fact I've run all of the above environments on all of the above *nixes and sometimes as a result I can't tell which machine I'm currently on!). And, your csh and bash and tcsh and zsh will probably run on all of the above as well. So... what's it all about? What's the difference between the distributions? (Linux distribution might help out here, but seriously... what exactly is a "distro" anyway? Why is Debian different than Ubuntu, if they both use the same package manager, same shell, same GUI, same libraries, ...)

Well, first of all, the Linuxes are all running the linux kernel, while the Solarises and BSDs and Mac OSXes are not. (And QNX? Well, just suffice to say that although it presents you with a POSIX-like shell and a lot of the standard system-calls, it's... not very much of a linux at all!) But all of them are POSIX compliant, and support networking and multithreading and encryption and so forth. But if you are going to remap your memory system for a custom coprocessor and need to recompile your kernel memory-module to handle variable page sizes based on current coprocessor instruction, you're going to need to choose your kernel carefully (I've heard, from people who would know, that CENTOS and Solaris make this task "easier"). And if you were planning to do something more benign, like maybe mixed shared memory programming with OpenMP and a little pthread code in the same program, you might actually find that there's a difference in the dynamic scheduler capability for different incarnations of the kernel. Or maybe you've got some files mounted on an AFS drive and you want to ensure that the network traffic stays encrypted, all the way through the machine, past the network, up to the shell, through the user-space, and decoded at the point-of-use in some kind of protected memory. Then you better have a kernel with libPAM module support! Are you doing these things? If not, you may never really notice your distribution.

Backing up a notch or two, at the "intermediate" level, you are going to want to install or compile some program some day which is going to have some dependencies. A lot of libraries are pre-packaged and precompiled for the common distributions (in the form of a DPKG or an RPM or sometimes even straight-up .so files). Pick a distribution that's going to be used by people who work with things that you work with... that way, you'll have a community which has already prepared the sort of tools you are going to need. It's not often worth anybody's time to trace back seven levels of library-dependency when you just want to get a standard tool to run.

Compiler support may be an issue between vendors. Some of the more esoteric optimization flags and the less standard extensions (like some c99 complex-math support) turns out to be not very platform-portable - this usually means that it's getting linked in with some system library (like libm.so).

So, what's the moral here? Distributions make a big difference if you're doing non-standard things; but if you follow "best practice" and write code that doesn't link with weird libraries, and doesn't jump from high-level logic to operating-system calls in the same module, you'll be better off and spend less time tracking down portability problems. I would stick with Ubuntu if I could, but some of my tools are only available on other linux platforms (and aren't worth the hassle of porting).

Hopefully this will give you some perspective - use "whatever distribution is easier." If you actually get to a point in your professional or academic development when you can decisively state that "the Solaris cilk scheduler gave me a 20% speed improvement" or "the network stack on QNX was insufficient to handle packet buffers for gigabyte-sized files using https" or some other distribution-specific issue, you're probably going to care what distribution you are using. Until then, pick a good shell, pick a good user-interface, and use as much standard unmodified software as you possibly can. Nimur (talk) 01:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, opinions are free too! I use 64 bit SuSE 11.x (now OpenSuSE) on all but one of my half dozen home computers (the one that doesn't is my firewall machine which is running SuSE 6.3 with the barest minimum set of files necessary to allow the computer to boot and firewall (security in obscurity!). I use SuSE because back in the early days of Linux, the SuSE guys gave away gorgeous boxed editions of the full SuSE distro to anyone who contributed software that they used. The boxes kept coming over many years - so whenever I needed to install on a new machine, it was just easier to grab the latest SuSE box and stick it onto the new computer. Since the Novell take-over, they stopped doing that - but OpenSuSE works pretty good too - and I'm kinda stuck in a rut.

The full SuSE distro is nice because SO many programs can be pre-installed from the honking great DVD image. The mechanisms for adding more stuff post-install aren't particularly nifty - but when pretty much everything you'll ever need is right there in your original install, it's rare indeed that I see a program I want and find that it's not already on my computer. Since I want to USE Linux in a productive way - and not spend my time tinkering with it - I think SuSE is a pretty good choice. However, if you are a tinkerer or a learner or you have to have the very latest version of everything - then SuSE is probably a poorer choice.

However, Ubuntu is pretty amazingly popular - and there are good reasons for that too. I don't have a recommendation - it truly is the case that everyone has a different idea of what works for them.

01:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I've never used or even seen Zenwalk Linux so my opinion is worth squat; but for the nothing my opinion is worth, Zenwalk sounds lean, adaptable, reliable, and palatable. -- Hoary (talk) 01:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Puppy linux was recommended to me. 78.147.3.176 (talk) 08:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I'm surprised I got so many good responses! Thanks everyone, I appreciate your advice. I've thought about what you said, Nimur, and it makes a lot of sense. I think I understand the differences and options a little better now. I think I'm going to stick with Ubuntu for the time being, with maybe Fedora and Sabayon partitions to play around. Thanks again! Deshi no Shi (talk) 20:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Super Ubuntu is ubuntu on steroids, you might like it...

Apostrophes and quotation marks to question marks

Why is it that on some web pages, all the apostrophes and quotation marks get changed to question marks (e.g. here)? I've seen this phenomenon pop up with relative frequency in my time on the Net. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 06:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

That's what you get when you paste text from Microsoft Word into your web-design application. Word converts apostrophes and double-quotation marks to "smart quotes" -- so-named because they are slanted: ' becomes ’. But note that, in order to produce the second glyph, I typed ’. Likewise, " becomes ”. If you paste such angled characters directly into certain pages with custom fonts, they aren't displayed. The presence of boxes or question marks is a sign of an inexperienced or lazy web designer. View the source of the page (View → Source in Internet Explorer or Firefox) and you'll see what I mean.--24.9.71.198 (talk) 07:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

You can get lazy and not get caught. Just turn off Smart Tags in the Word application.KoolerStill (talk) 09:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Web programming supports special characters which are available on plain text editors (such as textpad). For any other characters, you will have to specify the html equivalent failing which it would either be shown as a box or a question mark. For reference you can google 'html equivalent of special characters' which will give you the list which you should use for web programming. I would suggest not to use any special character and develop a habbit of using HTML equivalent.203.99.215.11 (talk) 10:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

It also happens when a web-site assumes a character encoding but doesn't bother to specify it (like a bank I use), and your browser is set up with a different encoding as default. --ColinFine (talk) 17:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Infrastructure design for Information Technology services

After knowing the client's requirements regarding a particular service or solution, how do we decide on the approach to be taken for the complete project (things like the environment, the resources, the technology, the servers, database, permissions and the associated risk analysis)? 203.99.215.11 (talk) 10:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

ITIL? (As always, we have an article on everything). Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of publications which outline setup, configuration, technology choices, and so forth, for "best practice" in a large organization. It sounds like it's exactly the answer to the question you are asking. Unfortunately, ITIL is also hundreds of volumes (covering every detail for the entire enterprise). If you have a specific question, like "what's the best way to load-balance the network storage for a federated database", you can drill down to that volume in the ITIL library. (Also, I think the actual information is "proprietary" and expensive - sort of like hiring a ready-made consultant - even though most of the practices revolve around using free, free software). Nimur (talk) 12:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Usually these decisions come from a combination of the client's needs and your team's experience and which technologies and setups they are familiar with. The question implies that you're in over your head on this one (if the consultant is in the position of having to hire consultants to make basic decisions). Tempshill (talk) 15:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, that's really what this sounds like - but for the benefit of the doubt, maybe the OP is a student? Maybe a business-student trying to get involved in IT? As Tempshill mentioned, the correct answer is "use your technology experience and domain-specific knowledge; balance cost versus return for various options; and check with some standard references for the implementation details." Nimur (talk) 16:55, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Well.. Nimur is correct that I am a business student trying to gain some knowledge on the IT side. I have been assigned a project to work on the same lines as mentioned in my question. Will have to surely come up with a questionaire that would help me in making the final decision. I guess I will require a questionaire for the client and also for the company developing the soultion. Please guide on these lines and provide me with references / case studies (if any).203.99.215.11 (talk)

Do it yourself. Ask your librarian what reference databases or journals that you can access. You are not allowed to ask homework questions on the Reference Desk. If you find your studies boring, then you should change your major. Frankly, this project of yours is a waste of time in any case. It is all theoretical bullshit that will do you no good in the workplace. I know this because I majored in Business Management as an undergraduate and then Computer Information Systems (inside a business college) for my master's degree. Avoid theoretical subjects and learn something applicable in the real world -- accounting, programming, law, etc. Strategy cannot be taught. It is unique to every company. This is not trolling, but blunt honesty. Sorry.--Kje53yt (talk) 09:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

First of all, to to the other respondents - there's no need to be so brash; he's asking for help, not answers. Secondly, to the original questioner: while you're learning strategy for dealing with IT, you might as well learn something about the culture of IT as well. People who work in front of computers for 8 hours, and then go home for another 8 hours of recreational computer use, rarely take kindly to "outside advice" about how to run their technology infrastructure better. (How can you possibly know their system as well as they do?) This is especially painful if the outside advice comes from a non-expert computer user. (This is not meant to be a jab at you, it's just the way it is). This culture is widespread and prevalent, and it's the source of a lot of jokes about sysadmins and programmers. So, step 1 in your strategy must be to become more of an expert than your client regarding the particular technology in question. Did you read through the ITIL library? Did you come across some technology names and terminology in your project? Did you read and understand the appropriate Wikipedia articles, and dig deeper into the external links? One thing is for sure - the internet has no shortage of detailed information on the subject of technology operations. Nimur (talk) 14:58, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Gmail error

I got a error 500 today from my Gmail account. The account was temporarily not available. What happens with the incoming emails in the mean time? Are they saved and delivered?--80.58.205.37 (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I gots the same thing, googles help page about the error says "while Gmail is inaccessible, your messages and personal information are safe." I don't know if they applies only to already saved messages though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.54.169 (talk) 11:19, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The real answer is, "it depends on how catastrophic the outage was." In a normal configuration, your email client (Google's GMail website) is a front-end, and the mail exchange servers, file servers, etc., are different software on different computer systems (maybe in different geographic places, even). Most likely, the 500 Service Unavailable message referred only to the client front-end. In that case, new mails would not be lost. But unless anyone has an insider-view in to the actual system status at Google, it's impossible to know for certain whether the back-end stayed alive when the client-side crashed. Email has some redundancy (like "wait and retry the send later") built in to the protocol design (if the sender's side SMTP server supports it), so even if there was a short outage on the backend servers, all mail is not guaranteed to be lost. Nimur (talk) 12:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Laptop advice

I'm looking to get a new laptop, and I've shopped around a bit and can't find exactly what I'm looking for. Was hoping for some advice.

I have right now (and love) my dying Lenovo Thinkpad. Two main issues with it, other than the fact that it's really beaten up. 1) the speakers suck. I want good ones. And 2) the harddrive's really small. It's about 80 gigs, I think, and I'd like something closer to 2-3 or more hundred.

I am looking for a computer that's similarly solid and fast, though. It should have a nice keyboard. It should be Windows (XP's best), but I can switch from Vista. It shouldn't be prohibitively expensive (above $1500 or so), shouldn't be more than 6ish pounds (for a 15 inch screen), and it shouldn't heat up or be noisy when running (my Thinkpad's silent and cool most of the time.)

Is this asking too much? Any ideas? Also, non-ugly would be nice.

Thanks,

140.247.237.244 (talk) 14:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Dell do a 'Studio 15' laptop that's got a 320gb hard-drive, 4gb of RAm, is quite pretty looking, comes with vista though. No idea about quality of speakers but doubt many laptops will have great ones (not a lot of space for producing either a sizeable or bass-y noise I think). Anyway that's about £600 so I guess around $900 - you can get one with 500gb hd-drive and blu-ray for about $1250. ny156uk (talk) 15:49, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! What do you guys think about Dell's quality? I've heard mixed things. Lenovo's are, I think, generally considered pretty solid machines. Are Dells? 140.247.45.202 (talk) 18:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought dell is a great company and so ordered a dell latitude without seeing. but they sent me a laptop with very bad quality display. only after that, i came to know that only truelife branded displays are good. the display i am hanging with is difficult to use. so better see, use the laptop before you buy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.69.33 (talk) 18:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Well I got my parent's a Dell and my partner's pc is a Dell - both seem good and work very well for what they need, no complaints from them. I have a Macbook myself, and whilst I do love it the build quality is not as good as my previous iBooks....the edging has broken away around where I rest my arms, it's sharp on the edges rather than smooth and the trackpad has got 'shiny' much quicker than my previous ones). Having said this I would still go with Apple in the future - but then that's because i've got so used to the operating system (though I used Wintel PCs constantly at work and elsewhere). ny156uk (talk) 21:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm most unimpressed by the mechanical design and quality of my own "iBook" and have the impression that Apple devotes an inordinate amount of its energy to what its computers will look like when they are brand new. If you like OS X you are no longer limited to an Apple computer. I have a Dell on order not because I have any opinion of Dell but because it's light, it's cheap; and, unlike every other laptop "maker" selling in my part of the world that I investigated, Dell does not charge me for the copy of Windows that I would anyway delete (it comes with Ubuntu instead). -- Hoary (talk) 02:45, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thinkpads have come down in price. You could have gotten a T400 direct from Lenovo with XP Pro and Vista Business (XP preinstalled, dual license), 3GB RAM, and a 250GB hard drive for less than $800 shipped at the end of April when they had their last 37% off sale. The sales happen periodically—I assume there will be another in a month or two. A high-end T400 or T500 with almost everything maxed out (2.8 GHz, 4GB, 320GB, ATI graphics, high nit display) is still under $1500 after the discount. I'm no audiophile, but the speakers on my IBM T40 seem quite good, at least compared to the (expensive) Toshiba laptop I had for a while which was unlistenably horrible. -- BenRG (talk) 17:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

If choosing Dell, check out the Dell Outlet section. They sell previously ordered, returned, refurbished and cosmetically damaged computers at lower cost then new. I recently picked up a 13 inch Inspiron with 2GB of ram and 160 GB hard drive for just over $400. The laptop was listed as refurbished with no physical blemishes.

Emacs on Win32 and remote Unix programs

Hi all, I am running Emacs (22.1.50) on a Windows XP system. I have access to Matlab remotely on a Unix system that I can connect to via SSH (I also have access to matlab on a remote WinXP system that I can connect to via RDP, but I doubt that helps). I have administrator rights locally but not on the remote systems. Now my question: Is there a way for me to start Matlab directly from Emacs (the same way I start latex by typing C-c C-c when I edit tex files)? It would be oh so convenient to test programs directly from Emacs. I realize this would likely involve some pushing of the files to the remote system on each run (by FTP?). I can connect to SSH with a key file so I would not have to enter the password each time. This might be a bit too complicated but I thought I'd ask. On a related note, if I ran Linux locally (might and might not be an option), would this be easier? Thanks! Jørgen (talk) 14:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you considered using SSH to connect to the Unix box and then running Emacs on the Unix box itself (through SSH)? Then, Matlab would be local to the running Emacs session. Of course, what you are trying to do is possible. I do similar things in my daily work, but I don't use Windows. I edit in Kate (on KDE). I have a terminal window in Kate that shows the command prompt from whichever remote computer I'm interested in. When I edit files, they are transferred back and forth in the background, so everything acts as though it is local. There must be a Windows program that does the same - one of which would likely be the KDE-on-Windows project. -- kainaw™ 15:46, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Try editing the file on the windows system as "/ssh:user@host:filename" (using Tramp mode). As long as the emacs can run ssh commands in a way it understands, you can directly edit the file through the local emacs. You might need to install OpenSSH if it's not already there. Then you can run another ssh connection to actuall run matlab with the file you're editing. Another thing you could try is running SSHFS on your windows system, and just edit the file like it were a local file. -- JSBillings 13:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Both suggestions are useful; when I have some more time I will look into the details (I've only vaguely heard of Tramp mode, for example, but now I know what to search for). I'll also look into KDE-on-windows. Jørgen (talk) 00:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

For the record, Tramp mode worked (with some modifications to my local system - my Tramp version didn't support plink but all I had to do was to create a ssh.bat in a directory with PATH access and put plink (with the parameters to use a key file) in there). Editing files remotely then works fine, still haven't managed to run shell commands from emacs but that is almost as easily done in a separate terminal window. Thanks again! Jørgen (talk) 13:32, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

mobile number verification through SMS in USA

hi, I am based in India. For our website, we collect US phone numbers from people in US who want to register for our site. We want to verify the phone numbers of US registering people. For that, one solution would be to send a message to each registering person. That is costly. Another solution is SMS gateway whose initial cost is high. Is there any cheap solution to send sms to people in US from outside US, maybe India? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.248.69.33 (talk) 18:46, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I am unsure whether it would meet your needs, but check out [[1]] for sending SMS messages.--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Java Programming

In Java, is there a simple way to find the fractional and integer parts of a number? --Simeon24601 (talk) 19:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

If by number you mean a double or a float:

fractional part: x % 1.0

integral part: (int)x

--164.67.154.134 (talk) 21:29, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your fractional part will work (I don't think you can take a modulo of a double in Java). You can do this,

double x = 3.1415;

int    xInt = (int) x;
double xFrac = x - xInt;

I vaguely recall that the Double Object type had some utility functions, but there is no way this is "simpler" than the above. (You would need to create a new Double object, initialize it with your primitive-double value, and then call functions on the Double object). Also, I can't find such utility functions in the API documentation, so maybe I'm mistaken about their existence. Nimur (talk) 15:33, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

If your solution may need to accept negative numbers, check that it gives the results you want with them. Certes (talk) 17:17, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Random colour picture

There is any website like that ( http://www.random.org/bitmaps/ ) website, but that create also pictures with colour?? 189.0.219.13 (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Is there an article for licenses that are free only for personal/private use?

There are two types of such softwares:

1. Free and open source software, but only for personal/private use.
2. Freeware, but only for personal/private use.

Is there an article about this type of common (especially the latter - most or at least many vanilla freewares are like this) license? I searched but found nothing. If not, how should such a new article be named? Thanks! -79.176.25.233 (talk) 19:47, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think such licenses need their own article. Do you think they are not sufficiently explained within the context of the above articles? (If not, how about just expanding a section within those articles?) Tempshill (talk) 20:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Wiki for a whole city

Has any city established a Wiki just for the single city? Any large city has far more details than can be accomodated here on en.Wikipedia, so I am thinking that some cities might have a Wiki running just for their own place, no other subjects than the particular city. --DThomsen8 (talk) 19:54, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I know I saw one for a neighbourhood, I think while looking at examples to set up my own wiki. Unfortunately, I can't remember anything else about it. Sorry, gENIUS101 20:42, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, but tell me about how setting up your own Wiki worked out. Was it difficult?--DThomsen8 (talk) 21:07, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The wiki was my first website, so a lot of my problems came from finding out how ftp worked and stuff like that. Once I got the basics down, it was relatively easy. if you use MediaWiki, like WIkipedia, it does a fair amount of the work for you. Thanks, gENIUS101 23:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I have created many of my own Wiki's (http://www.sjbaker.org/wiki, http://www.miniownersoftexas.org/wiki, etc). On Linux machines, it's very simple. You just download the MediaWiki stuff and unpack it in whatever directory your webserver is going to serve it from. You do need a copy of MySQL installed - and for me that was the hardest part. You also need to be sure that Apache (or whatever HTTP server you are using) has the PHP stuff turned on. SteveBaker (talk) 15:41, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

In fact, hearing SteveBaker talk about his wikis made me want to find out how to make my own. Thanks, gENIUS101 19:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco seem to have them. Consider starting one for your city with Wikia. It's free, and there's no configuration or hosting necessary. Just register, and if desired, point a custom domain to it.   — C M B J   00:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Excellent information! I am somewhat interested, but I would be curious about the effort involved, and from the examples, how the material gets a start from Wikipedia. I would certainly need help from others to do this, too much for one person --DThomsen8 (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is a wiki for a community that is a little smaller than a city. --ColinFine (talk) 17:53, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a Rochester, New York wiki. 76.117.247.55 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC).

Meta Repo?

I'm tired of, in Linux, having to either A. Wait around for the new release of my distro for new versions of software; B. Hunt down that software myself and update it manually, regularly; or C. Hunt for unsupported repositories for my software, which sometimes don't exist. For Ubuntu specifically, but any distro generally, is there some sort of Metarepo or comprehensive collection of other repos that one can find? That way, when a new version of OOo comes out, I don't have to wait several months, or search for it down myself, but can have it update automagically?

Thanks, Deshi no Shi (talk) 20:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I try to do that in my repo for Ubuntu/Super OS, but I have to say it is a very limited repository at the moment... Hacktolive (talk) 20:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Not all distributions have releases. In Gentoo most packages are available several days after upstream release (at least month of testing is needed to mark something as stable). Debian Sid also always has new packages. MTM (talk) 18:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

What does this mean (in BASH)?

I always wondered what was the proper name for this (in BASH): "$@"

I know what it is, and I know how to use it, but I simply don't they the official name for that! Google is also not a solution since we all know searcinhg with non-regular characters don't usually work Thanks Hacktolive (talk) 22:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The man page for bash only says it's one of the "Special Parameters" which "Expands to the positional parameters, starting from one." --h2g2bob (talk) 22:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I pronounce it "ess at" when I have to pronounce it. Nimur (talk) 15:40, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Who do you think has the authority to give it a 'proper name'. It is what people call it, and I would say 'dollar at'. --ColinFine (talk) 17:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I just thought there was a "proper name"... Hacktolive (talk) 00:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Is there anything in the bash source code to name it? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

C printf bug?

If printf( "%dG", iNum ) produces a floating point number rather than an integer followed by G is this a bug in the compiler being used, or is this a valid variant of printf formats? (It was 'fixed' to the intended output using printf( "%d%c", iNum, 'G'). -- SGBailey (talk) 22:44, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

If your printf does that, then it's definitely not correct. It wouldn't be your compiler's problem (unless your compiler messes up strings somehow); it would be your C standard library implementation's problem. --164.67.100.135 (talk) 00:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

It's a bug - but not in the compiler - it's an error in your standard library. (And a surprising one too!) This program:

  #include <stdio.h>

  main ()
  {
    int iNum = 6 ;
    printf( "%dG", iNum ) ;
  }

Prints "6G" (as you'd expect) on my Linux machine using the standard GNU libraries. SteveBaker (talk) 03:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll probably report it to our embedded compiler supplier. -- SGBailey (talk) 12:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

That would be a very public-spirited thing to do! For what it's worth, "%0G" or "%-G" would legitimately produce a floating point number - so you can kinda envisage where their code might be going wrong. SteveBaker (talk) 17:56, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Trouble redirecting an Open Office Base file to a new SQL source

This is a question I first posted on an Open Office forum: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewforum.php?f=13

However, that forum doesn't generate much traffic. I'm hoping for more exposure/help here.

We are using Base to access a MySQL database using the JDBC driver. The database itself is simply the raw SQL code (all the create and insert statements and such) running on a server. I also recognize that all the forms, reports, and queries are part of the ODF file that base created. We can change the SQL directly on the server if we choose to, and those changes are confirmed by Base as soon as the appropriate window is refreshed. So far so good. Here is our problem. Until now, we have been connecting to a local server (localhost). We now have an online server set up and wish to redirect Base to use the SQL on that server instead of the SQL on localhost. We could easily create a new ODB file, pointing it to the new online server, but we would lose access to all the forms and queries we've designed. Is there a way to accomplish this redirect without any such loss?

I am using Open Office ver. 3.0.1, MySQL ver 5.1, Window Vista SP1, and a remote Apache server running on a Linux machine. I will provide more details on request.

Thank you (anyone) for any help you choose to provide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.32.4.225 (talk) 23:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC) |}