Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2010 March 20

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March 20

Editing Wikipedia from iPhone OS

Resolved

Whenever I edit Wikipedia from Safari, it doesn't seem to let me respond if a thread has more than x replies. What happens is the text entry box only displays so much text. There are two ways to get around this: I can create a new thread, indent my reply, and post without a subject. Another way to do it is to respond to the subsequent thread, right above the section heading. The problem is this doesn't work if I want to respond in the middle of the thread, only at the bottom. So, how do I increase the amount of text showing in the text entry box, such that I can view the entire thread and respond to it? Viriditas (talk) 03:45, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

you can't, but while editing the text (of which you only see the top, you don't see enough) you can hold down your finger over any location until you see the "select all" bubble, tap it, tap "cut", then tap "paste". This leaves the same text (but the bottom portion of it rather than the top portion) in the edit window as before, since your blinking cursor is now at the bottom. Maybe you can now see the location you would like to edit, so just tap there so the cursor moves there... 82.113.121.93 (talk) 12:51, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I'll try that. Good advice. Viriditas (talk) 21:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Works great! Viriditas (talk) 04:58, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Also note that some people always respond at the bottom (maybe they're on iPhones, too ?) with something like "@StuRat: No, Pope John-Paul II didn't die of auto-erotic asphyxiation in Bangkok, you must be thinking of David Carradine." :-) StuRat (talk) 18:08, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Heh. Viriditas (talk) 21:50, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

syscall # 3

Hi folks. Real simple question, but I need the help for my class!

I'm writing assembly for NASM on Linux intel. The assignment says, 'write a program that repeatedly takes in a line of input, puts out the number of words (separated by blank space) and halts if the input line is blank.

mov eax 3 ; this will mean that I want to use the system call to read.
mov ebx 0 ; I want to read in from the keyboard
mov ecx address ; the address where I want to store the input string

What I am unclear about is what do the registers contain after int 0x80 occurs? Does edx contain the length of the string that was input? What do the other registers contain?

thanks

Duomillia (talk) 03:47, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Per this (old but should still hold) and this, for all syscalls, eax contains the return value of the syscall. In the case of read(2), eax contains a ssize_t that is either the +ve number of bytes read, 0 if no bytes read, or -ve for the appropriate error per its man page. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 10:21, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Error message in main screen every time my computer turned on

Immediately after I turn on a computer, an error message pops up in the main screen. The message says something weird, like "..couldn't find 0023XAS02" (I just made this up since I don't remember the actual thing), and the bar name ends with the .exe and has two buttons "OK" and "Cancel". How can I stop it from keep appearing at the start of turning on a computer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.68.120.162 (talk) 08:28, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

We can't really help you unless you tell us the exact error message. You might check the Windows startup configuration - there are a lot of places programs can register in Windows to start at bootup - to see if a broken program is trying to start at launch. Here is a list of common places to check for startup programs, and how to remove them: How to Remove Startup Programs, by O'Reilly Media. Nimur (talk) 09:33, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

No need to bother with that, just use Autoruns. F (talk) 05:30, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

That seems like a fantastic tool for sysadmins and power users! Thanks for the link, F. Nimur (talk) 18:39, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Login page

If I turn on my 2002 XP computer, I'm led to a blue login screen, even though there is only one user ID with no password for the computer. Is there a way for the computer to skip this login screen and just proceed to the window main screen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.68.120.162 (talk) 08:39, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. [1] [2] Nil Einne (talk) 08:57, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

control breaks

How can I best understand control breaks and their logic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.77.248.239 (talk) 20:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Try Control breaks as a starting point. Cander0000 (talk) 05:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Delphi/AVG Issue

I have encountered a strange Delphi 2009/AVG Free Antivirus issue. If I create an empty VCL Forms Application, i.e. an application with an empty form, and run it, AVG blocks the execution of the program, and reports that Project1.exe (the executable's filename) is (infected by) Trojan horse Downloader.Agent.AONT. This - of course - makes me think of the W32/Induc-A virus. But this virus should only affect Delphi 7 and below, and I cannot find any changes to my library folder. What is even more strange, is that if I add any code whatsoever to the application, AVG will not report any issue at all. If there really was some infection of my DCUs, it should not go away by adding code to the project... Moreover, AVG has no information whatsoever regarding this virus in their online virus database, and Google has never heard of it. I therefore suspect that it is a false alarm, or a bug in AVG. But can I be sure? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 22:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

It may very well simply be a checksum match, and thus a false alarm. Try uploading one of these "infected" .exes to virustotal.com. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:56, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not a computer security expert. But it does not look good, or does it [3]? But I have run a complete scan with AVG, and it reports no infections. So how can a compiler running on a uninfected system produce infected executables? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:13, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

If I add a beep; statement in the FormCreate procedure, it appears to be clean: [4]. Is it possible that so many (mostly unknown, though) virus scanners report a false alarm? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 23:34, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is an old know problem. Many (under the table) antivirus products will report a Delphi executable as virus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fedra (talk • contribs) 20:30, 10 August 2016 (UTC)