Oh no! More boring computer problems! Oh no!

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we use Omnipage for OCR I think.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 2 February 2007 13:21 (nineteen years ago)

muchos gracias

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Friday, 2 February 2007 13:28 (nineteen years ago)

WHERE DO YOU YANKS KEEP YOUR # KEY? Editplus keeps on switching my keyboard to US layout (I assume it's US - @ above the 2 and " above the ') and my hash has been replaced by backslash. Any tips for getting Editplus to switch back also appreciated.

― ledge (ledge), Friday, 2 February 2007 15:41 (nineteen years ago)

Shift 3 where we keep our £ key

― Ed (dali), Friday, 2 February 2007 15:41 (nineteen years ago)

lovely

― ledge (ledge), Friday, 2 February 2007 15:48 (nineteen years ago)

One of my servers will randomly switch virtual terminal sessions (running in the "screen" program over PuTTY) to the american keyboard layout. It is very annoying, when I try to type " and get @ instead, and then can't work out where my | is.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 2 February 2007 16:15 (nineteen years ago)

this is not really a computer question but a question about the implementation of iso 8601 in the w3c recommendation for xml schema. it is a very simple question, but i can't make heads or tails of it.

"ISO 8601 describes several formats to define date, times, periods, and recurring dates, with different levels of precision and indetermination. After many discussions, W3C XML Schema selected a subset of these formats and created a primitive datatype for each format that is supported.

The indeterminacy allowed in some of these formats adds a lot of difficulty, especially when comparisons or arithmetic are involved. For instance, it is possible to define a point in time without specifying the time zone, which is then considered undetermined. This undetermined time zone is identical all over the document (and between the schema and the instance documents) and it's not an issue to compare two datetimes without a time zone. The problem arises when you need to compare two points in time, one with a time zone and the other without. The result of this comparison will be undetermined if these values are too close, since one of them may be between -13 hours and +12 hours of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)."

from XML Schema by Eric van der Vlist. why is it a problem specifically for that range? does exactly one time need not to have a time zone? how close do the times need to be? can someone come up with an example illustrating exactly what the problem is? obviously if one time is not timezoned, the comparison will be indeterminate, but i have a feeling he means something else, or that there are other conditions that i'm just not seeing and this has been bugging me for two days and i have no one to ask or the people i ask don't answer so if you could i would love you so ilx thank you

― youn (youn), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 03:25 (nineteen years ago)

I think that all that's being said is that if you compare two date/times in a document with no time zones, against a document with time zones (or even in the same document), then if the dates/times are close to each other (i.e. within half a day) then the result is going to be so (potentially) inaccurate for it to be no use to you.

Obviously, if you compare 1st Jan 1963 00:00 with 8th Nov 1997 13:00, then for most purposes, the error caused by not having a time zone is pretty minimal.

It perhaps depends on why you think this is an issue, Youn... Why would it cause you problems? Are you sending documents across time zones?

― KeefW (kmw), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:01 (nineteen years ago)

It's only a problem within that range because by "a point in time" he means a date and time.

For example, if you have the timestamp: Feb 7th 2007, 13:00 EST, and the timestamp Feb 7th 2007, 13:00 (with no zone specified), then obviously you can't tell which is earlier (or if they are equal). On the other hand, the timestamp Feb 5th 2007, 13:00 (no zone again) is always going to be earlier than the first one, because the two points are too far apart for specifying the timezone to make any difference.

In the context of XML it's not a problem if neither timestamp has a zone, because all timestamps without zones should behave as if they're all in the same time zone - this is what "this undetermined time zone is identical all over the document" means.

(xpost)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:02 (nineteen years ago)

Firefox has started freezing for about half a second, every 20 seconds or so. I thought I was imagining it first, but it's definitely there. Clues? Updates turned off, no third party extensions running.

― I don't know whether to play the trumpet, read a book or be a lesbian. (aldo_cow, Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:06 (nineteen years ago)

Does it only happen when you've got specific sites open?

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:08 (nineteen years ago)

No, any of them. Started about a week and a half ago.

It's obviously just a FF problem, since it doesn't affect any other apps and the cursor is still free to move - it just won't change to a finger or whatever at the right time, or register a click immediately, or pause as text input is going in, or whatever I'm trying to to do. It's sounds like it's trying to check something, hence why I turned the other stuff off even though it wasn't causing a problem before.

― I don't know whether to play the trumpet, read a book or be a lesbian. (aldo_cow, Wednesday, 7 February 2007 09:13 (nineteen years ago)

A PHP problem. Why am I suddenly getting the error

Warning: mysqli_fetch_row() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, boolean given

for

$rs = mysqli_query($db, $query);
while ($i = mysqli_fetch_row($rs))
{

... (error given on the whileline)... this was running fine a couple of days ago, and is also identical to error-free code elsewhere.

― ledge (ledge), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:19 (nineteen years ago)

oh never mind, the sql query was messed up, i am idiot.

― ledge (ledge), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:34 (nineteen years ago)

two weeks pass...

ok, so. i have a maxtor 1gb hard drive. it is formatted to ntfs and has about 450 gigs of stuff on it. i've recently switched to mac, but i can't write anything to this hard drive because it's not formatted as hfs.

my question: is it possible to create a 500 gig partition on the drive in hfs that exists concurrently with the ntfs portion, then move all the stuff from the ntfs disk over, and then wipe out the ntfs portion of the drive completely, thereby converting the entire thing to hfs? or would that be too convenient?

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 10:56 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, if you have a copy of Partition Magic to do it with (and a machine that will run Partition Magic to plug the disk into, of course)

― Forest Pines, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 10:59 (nineteen years ago)

lol @ "partition magic"

(thanks fp.)

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:02 (nineteen years ago)

actually, wait: google's telling me that partition magic only does fat and ntfs?

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:13 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

bootable linux rescue that comes with qpartd:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php

― koogs, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:23 (nineteen years ago)

i... see.

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:25 (nineteen years ago)

I didn't realise gparted could resize NTFS!

Yes, that is a more sensible solution.

― Forest Pines, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:26 (nineteen years ago)

resizable partitions = unicorns!!

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:41 (nineteen years ago)

is there a non-unix solution by chance? i am unitarded. (but i do have access to a pc and a mac, if that helps.)

― ^@^, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 11:57 (nineteen years ago)

so there are definitely no mac apps that can do this right?

― ^@^, Sunday, 4 March 2007 11:24 (nineteen years ago)

Do most new PCs have a firewire port or is it something you have to request from the manufacturer? I ask because I'm buying a digital camcorder that I've been told only connects to a pc by firewire. And if anyone can explain the thing with digital camcorders still having to use tape then that'd be great too!

― NI, Monday, 5 March 2007 02:10 (nineteen years ago)

there are lots of dvdr, hdd and solid state camcorders available these days. i guess there are tape camcorders for the same reason there are still vcrs.

firewire is common on laptops, not so on desktops. (um, that said, the newer desktops here at work have what look like firewire sockets)

― koogs, Monday, 5 March 2007 06:49 (nineteen years ago)

I firewire card is dead cheap anyway. The reason tape still persists for video is that data density is high and disk based solutions are not good at high degrees of shock or movement. The DV codec use don tape is very good and easy to edit after use, DVD based used MPEG-2 IBP which less edit systems can deal with, solid state camcorders are using H.264 and H.263 codecs which are very resource intensive to do anything with.

― Ed, Monday, 5 March 2007 07:32 (nineteen years ago)

okay, here we go:

i have a dell inspiron 8500 pc laptop, exactly three years old. today i was out at a free wifi hotspot, using the battery. this is from the era of crappy dell laptop batteries, where if you do any intense computing for even 20 minutes, the battery is gone. so i checked email, browsed, etc. and after twenty or so minutes the little bubble popped up that said low battery. i clicked shutdown, and then closed the laptop, most likely before the computer had completely shut down. a little later i got it plugged in at a cafe, and when i went to turn it on...nothing. or almost mothing. just a blank screen. no windows startup, no DOS action, just blank. I've taken out the battery, plugged and unplugged the computer, made sure the battery is charged, and still, nothing.

so, what do you all think? is there anything i can do? (short of taking it somewhere...i have no money)

i am kind of freaking out.

thank you.

― jergincito, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:31 (nineteen years ago)

A battery three years old is to all intents and purposes a dead battery. Try running it plugged in with the battery removed, i'm not sure if you did from the post above. If not it may be either the power supply or power management unit that is fucked.

― Ed, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:33 (nineteen years ago)

thank you. will try. i didn't know you could plug it in with the battery out.

― jergincito, Monday, 5 March 2007 13:33 (nineteen years ago)

Thanks a lot Koogs & Ed. Turned out I did have firewire (confusing how it's also called a DV something) and Ulead did a great job of capturing the footage quickly and painlessly to my pc. Can anyone recommend a better video editing program than Ulead 10? It's great for simple quick jobs but I'd like something with more effects and tools.

― NI, Monday, 5 March 2007 18:46 (nineteen years ago)

Very trivial question - when I start up my laptop (Windows XP), RealPlayer automatically opens. I cannot for the life of me find any option in the preferences to stop it doing this. Any thoughts?

― Archel, Monday, 5 March 2007 18:55 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't used RealPlayer in a long long time, I installed Real Alternative instead.

You can look here http://www.chipconnection.com/tips.html there are two sections that may help. Removing realplayer from the tray or the next one "Prevent programs from automatically loading when you start Windows" should do it for you.

― svend, Monday, 5 March 2007 19:17 (nineteen years ago)

was there a mac os x update recently that might have totally fucked my php.ini? because something did, and it wasn't me.

― akm, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:04 (nineteen years ago)

shouldn't it copy the old one to like php.init.something? IIRC it did that for apache?

― JW, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

i don't know, it was using php.ini.default and my regular php.ini file seems to have disappeared, and all the permissions for these things (like pear.php) were changed as well.

― akm, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:16 (nineteen years ago)

ok so my computer problems (with a 3.75 year old dell laptop) were so bad my computer completely and utterly died. i will be getting a new computer in about two weeks. what kind should i get? (basically what i require is that it be fairly light and transportable, have a glossy screen, at least 80 gigs of memory, at least 2 hours of battery life, and be able to run both itunes and windows media player. and, um, the internet and a word processor.)

― Maria, Monday, 5 March 2007 21:29 (nineteen years ago)

ok, here's an easy one: how do i configure a program to automatically load upon startup in tiger?

― ^@^, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 11:58 (nineteen years ago)

right click on dock icon, "launch at login" (or something like that)

― tissp, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:06 (nineteen years ago)

System Preferences --> Accounts --> (select account you want to configure) --> Login Items

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:08 (nineteen years ago)

ooh tissp's is better

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:09 (nineteen years ago)

thanks dudes.

― ^@^, Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:12 (nineteen years ago)

Hi hi,

I want to buy an external hard drive to 1) act as a backup/archive of music, pics etc and 2) enable me to transfer large amounts of files between two PCs. Can anyone advise me as to what would be a good value solution at present? I don't have a phenomenal amount of stuff, maybe 40Gb at present, but I'd like it to last a while.

Thanks!

― Mark C, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 15:15 (nineteen years ago)

320G for £80 at a dixons near you. (seagate toaster looking thing, usb2, runs very cool)

oh, have gone up in dixons, but here's one:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=14982&&source=Dealtime

― koogs, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 15:51 (nineteen years ago)

Mr. Jaq got a 500Gb MyBook for less than $200 last weekend. He hasn't done much with it yet.

― Jaq, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 15:52 (nineteen years ago)

Only prob with a MyBook (or at least the one I had) is constant spin up/down for no reason. P!ssed me off in the end; got a 1.6TB NAS. How portable do you need it to be? You may want to try looking at some of the caddied laptop drives out there.

Try here...

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 16:38 (nineteen years ago)

I don't need it to be terribly portable - simplicity, reliability and price are the three keys.

― Mark C, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 16:41 (nineteen years ago)

A MyBook would still be the cheapest out there, just about. All of them are simple (i.e. plug and pray). Reliability: have had two MyBooks, and only got rid because of annoying spin up/down thing mentioned above. I've had no such problem with my Maxtor external, which is the only one I've kept as an addition to the NAS. Most of your options are pretty much of a muchness, to be honest.

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 16:59 (nineteen years ago)

Hm, I need a music drive....

― JW, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:14 (nineteen years ago)

As in? For storage on your pc? As an ipod kind of a thing? Personal recs=NAS (Buffalo terastation) for storing flac files (flac=lossless=good). Alternative to that would be the external drives mentioned above. iAudio X5 as a portable ipoddy thing, as long as you RockBox it quicksmart. You can then convert your flac to ogg, and away you go.

― peteR, Wednesday, 7 March 2007 17:21 (nineteen years ago)

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