Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 September 10

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September 10

Latex equation captions

Is it possible to add a caption to an equation in LaTeX? Thanks. 139.80.7.123 00:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

What you're trying to do doesn't make sense. Either you want to put an equation into a figure (with a caption) or you want to talk about the equation in the surrounding text rather than caption it. Donald Hosek 17:08, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Laptop AC Adapter Problems

A few hours ago, as my Dell Inspiron e1505 laptop was running off of the AC adapter, the adapter suddenly stopped working - the battery icon indicated that there was no adapter power and the adapter's green status light had turned off. I unplugged the adapter and replugged it into several different sockets, and after some tries, the light turned on again.

Just now, I had the same problem, and "fixed" it by the same method. However, as soon as I plugged the adapter into the computer, the green status light ceased. It is now broken for good as far as I can tell.

I was just going to buy a new adapter, but when I asked my friend about this, he said that he had the same problem himself twice (i.e., the status light turned off as he plugged it into his Dell laptop), and both times his computer stopped working and had to be sent for repairs. Both times customer service fixed it and told him that his motherboard had been fried.

Thus, my question is: Is this a problem of my adapter (in which case I should just get a new one), or is this a problem of my computer's motherboard or whatever (in which case I should be more worried)?

Thanks, -MagneticFlux 03:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Unfortuately, this is a dell manufacturing error. My sister's laptop's adapter of the same model suddenly stopped working and a replacement was needed. (Another reason not to choose dell in my view, Go Acer!) ::Manors:: 16:33, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Pascal

Where is Turbo Pascal help available?Beta alpha 07:14, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

http://shhs.1earth.net/kla/compstud/PascalTutorial_de_nz/fh-jena.de/~gmueller/Kurs/default.html is a helpsite for pascal. It's been about 10 years since I studied turbo pascal but I suspect that a large amount of it is the same as plain old pascal. ny156uk 18:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

multithreaded UNIX kernel

I am first year student of M.C.A. having diffculty in finding information about MULTI-THREADED UNIX KERNEL.So, give me brief introduction of MULTI-THREADED UNIX KERNEL.203.193.189.22 09:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)pimpale_manjeet

Have you read our fine articles on Unix and POSIX Threads? Splintercellguy 09:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that POSIX threads generally don't have anything to do with kernel threads, although I guess it's possible that some O/S out there uses them in kernel space. I'm not aware of one, though. --Sean 12:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

A little politeness would be nice too. ::Manors:: 16:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you interpreted my clarification as impolite. It certainly wasn't meant that way. Or do you mean SCG's response, which helpfully pointed the asker to the relevant articles? --Sean 17:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps he means the OP, who used caps in part of his response. Splintercellguy 16:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

In which case a little WP:AGF would be nice too. --Kjoonlee 15:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

How do I set the hostname on Fedora 7?

How do I set the hostname on Fedora 7, so that it will apply even after I reboot? hostname only applies until I reboot the computer. JIP | Talk 10:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

There are multiple ways (all done as root)

• run hostname your.host.name
• Edit /etc/hostname and put your host name in the file
• Edit /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf (where "eth0" is your network device) and add send host-name "your.host.name"

I'm sure there are at least 27 more ways. -- kainaw™ 12:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the Fedora way is to edit /etc/sysconfig/network. -- JSBillings 13:36, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there is a program you can run (as root) in Fedora called system-config-network. You may need to yum install system-config-network first. -- kainaw™ 13:42, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Go to System -> Administration -> Network, DNS tab, and enter the hostname. --Spoon! 15:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

That's 3 more ways. Only 24 more to go... -- kainaw™ 15:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Email

Why we have asked to enter the verification code, while creating E-mail? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.247.255.10 (talk) 12:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you be a bit more specific? Creating e-mail where? You may be talking about a CAPTCHA; they're used by some webmail providers to make sure it's a human creating the account. Computers can't read the text in the CAPTCHA image so they can't create an account. If computers were able to create accounts without the help of humans they could create large numbers of accounts automatically and use those accounts to send spam. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 13:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that while computers have difficulty reading CAPTCHAs (I wouldn't put it past a bot able to use an OCR program or algorithm to read the letters, although it is difficult - note the noise and patterns), the hash associated with the CAPTCHA can be cracked. So, in other words, it doesn't solve everything but it certainly stops the most basic scripts - ones that can be written with a few minutes of thought and AutoIT, for example. x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

online money

how to make real money online from a country like saudi arabia ??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.107.116.238 (talk) 17:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Sell something people want. Market your business so people who want what you sell know you are selling it. -- kainaw™ 17:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

can you give me a place where i can sell pc games and things like this ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.107.116.238 (talk) 17:25, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Ebay, Craig's List, Postaroo... there are hundreds of places. -- kainaw™ 23:12, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Or you can get your own online store at Ecrater Djmckee1 - Talk-Sign 13:51, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Vista and Ram

Hello, can anyone please tell me the maximum amount of DDR2 RAM windows vista will allow you to use without upgrading to 64bit? thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.68.12.32 (talk) 18:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

This site says 4GB. This one agrees. The operating system shouldn't care about DDR2, that would be a consideration for the motherboard. --LarryMac | Talk 18:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Or try...http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-question-maximum-memory-in-32-bit-windows-vista/ Not sure from a quick read over it what the answer is - but seems to suggest that with 4gb installed you'll not be able to utilise it all effectively. All very confusing unfortunately. ny156uk 18:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, the short version is that a 32-bit processor has a limited number of addresses, and everything must have an address. That is, those addresses are used for both memory AND for communicating with devices. So, even if you fill the entire address space with memory, some of it will still be occluded by other things in the system. This is still a problem with 64-bit addressing, but the system area is unrealisticly far away. --Mdwyer 20:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe the exact number is 3.5GB. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 05:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe anything over 3 GB will be a waste of money (at least for now). Just have some expansion bays open for future upgrade and I am sure you will be fine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Multipleidentitynumberthree (talk • contribs) 20:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC) --Do not click me! 20:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Two firefoxes, one profile

I have Firefox portable on my flash drive, as well as the Mac Firefox. I would like to set it up so that the profile for each is the same. Is there some way I can redirect the windows Firefox to use the mac's profile, or vice versa?

Thanks in advance, --Omnipotence407 21:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

If you have IRC, irc://irc.mozilla.org/firefox might help. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope, I don't have IRC, if you could summarize or something, that would be great. --74.37.228.44 00:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The profile is stored as a load of files in a folder. I don't think you can change which folder it uses - it will always place them on the hard drive (although you can make the folder a symlink in OSX).

However, you can copy the contents of the folder by hand. I don't know of any way to make this automatic.

Some files can have information on locations of files on the disk (for example, if you set .ram files to always open with realplayer). This will change between OSs and may cause problems.

You should be able to copy your bookmarks (bookmarks.html) between profiles without any problems (until Firefox 3 is released). There's some firefox extensions which put bookmarks online for sharing between different computers - [1][2] - which would do this for you.

Hope this helps somewhat - take a look through http://kb.mozillazine.org/ for more info, and you should backup before doing anything risky. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's possible between Windows and Mac. I did it between Ubuntu and Windows once, and it worked fairly well. Some very complex plugins/add-ons might not work, but ones like AdBlock do. Basically, run firefox.exe (and/or thunderbird.exe) using the "-profilemanager" option. That allows you to change where the profile points to on the drive. So just set them both up to point to the same directory. But backing up your data first would definitely be a first step. --Bennybp 02:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Assuming you know where Firefox stores the profiles, could you replace that folder with a symlink to the other Firefox's profile? Confusing Manifestation 03:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)