Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with Computer

How to get my posts from Wordpress.com to Blogger?

reenum — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:07:18 -0800

I want to migrate entries from Wordpress.com to Blogger. Is there any easy way to do this? I made the Blogger to Wordpress.com switch a few years ago, but love the new Blogger interface. I find that being able to label posts is a lot less restrictive than Wordpress's categories.

Migrating to Wordpress was a flash. But, going the other way seems to be a problem.

I've tried to Google this, and most of the info out there seems to say that at the moment, this is impossible to do. I've found a couple of tools like blog2blog, but none have worked this far.

Oh technically inclined MeFites, please help.

P.S. I'm not technically inclined, so I really don't have a way to write a program or anything to do this.

Incompatible RAM chips: the mystery of the memory

mjklin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:46:24 -0800

To my dear friends of the hive mind: Yours truly is trying to upgrade RAM memory and running into problems with incompatible chips, slots, or both. Here's what I'm working with:

Computer:
Acer Aspire ASI180, AMD Athlon 64 X 2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
Windows Vista Home Premium

Original RAM chip:
512 MB, DD2 DIMM, F
64TFT PO 132144.3
Made in: TAIWAN

Chip I'm trying to add:
Samsung, 1GB 2Rx8 PC2-6400U-666-12-E3
Made in China
M378T2953EZ3-CF7 0804
806080

There was another Samsung chip also, but it hasn't worked in any configuration and I figure it's bad. When I put these two chips in the motherboard in various configurations of the 4 slots, I get these results:

[512MB] - [ ] - [ ] - [ ] = Shows 512 MB in Windows

[ ] - [512MB] - [ ] - [ ] = Shows 512 MB in Windows

[1.0GB] - [ ] - [ ] - [ ] = Continued beeps on startup (memory problem)

[ ] - [1.0GB] - [ ] - [ ] = Continued beeps on startup (memory problem)

[1.0GB] - [ ] - [ ] - [512GB] = Continued beeps on startup (memory problem)

[ ] - [512MB] - [1.0GB] - [ ] = Continued beeps on startup (memory problem)

[512MB] - [ ] - [ ] - [1.0GB] = Shows 512 MB in Windows

[ ] - [ ] - [512MB] - [1.0GB] = Shows 512 MB in Windows

[ ] - [ ] - [1.0GB] - [512GB] = Continued beeps on startup (memory problem)

[ ] - [ ] - [ ] - [1.0GB] = Shows 1 GB in Windows

[ ] - [ ] - [1.0GB] - [ ] = Shows 1 GB in Windows

What I glean from this is that the 512MB and the 1GB chip do not play well together. Only in some configurations does the computer start at all with both chips in, and then it only detects the 512 MB chip. The only way to get it to see the 1GB chip at all is for it to be alone in one of the back two slots.

Here are my questions: Is there something wrong with the 1GB chip? If I get another 1GB chip, is it going to work with its brother (in one of the back slots)? And why don't they work in the front slots?

San Q very much.

How to create a large empty file in osx?

greggish — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:16:54 -0800

How do I create a very large (+10gb) empty file in OSX? I've found some instructions on doing this through disk partitioning, but the external hard drive i have accessible right now has stuff on it - and i don't want to accidentally erase it all... i just want a large file full of zeroes.

What the heck is wrong with my laptop??!!

osloheart — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:36:31 -0800

What the heck is wrong with my computer?? So for the past week or so, my computer has been freezing up on me about 80 percent of the time I log onto the internet. It is out of control. I get this message "this program is not responding" and have to end the program, etc. Sometimes it takes a while to freeze and sometimes it is almost instantly. I noticed that when I log onto sites I use often (like Metafilter) it doesnt happen. But if I do a Google search and then click on a site I dont usually go to, it freezes right away.
I went to look for answers on the internet, but after about 3 times, I got frustrated and came here to ask you guys because I am clueless.
Its a two year old Dell Inspiron with Windows XP.

Help my father troubleshoot a pesky virus.

micawber — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:37:54 -0800

ParentTechSupportFilter: My father has a virus. *sigh* before I send him to Geek Squad, what else should I tell him to do that he hasn't done already? I don't know how this virus arrived. A sibling suggested blame being cast in the direction of my mother, who probably downloaded something she shouldn't have. Note that my father uninstalled his virus software because he felt it slowed his machine down. *sigh again* He is running XP.

That said, my father has done pretty well: he booted up in safe mode, he removed the offending program. He tried to install the Yahoo (i guess there's Yahoo internet now? heck if i know) antivirus, but his computer tells him he already has virus software installed. He called Norton tech support and they talked him through various uninstall scenarios, and ultimately said what my first response was - it's in the registry.

My father went into the registry and 1) found the virus there and 2) couldn't see anything from Norton or McAfee.

Now it's in my hands.

I am not far from him but really don't want to waste a saturday on this, mostly because my father is extremely unpleasant in these situations. plus i don't know that i can actually help him any more. what else should i be looking for or asking? what else can i tell him to do - besides wipe the machine and start over, which he will absolutely NOT do?

Why does Skype not want to take calls?

arniec — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:15:11 -0800

Important Skype Issue! I primarily use Skype for voicemails, however I am getting lots of complaints that Skype's line is busy. Every time I open Skype the preferences are set to only allow calls from people in my contact list. I keep setting them to allow calls from anyone and they keep going back to only accepting calls from people in my contacts list. Sometimes these settings reset while Skype is still open. I have not yet been able to determine a pattern. I know that every time I open Skype it's set to only take calls from people on my contact list, and I think that when I make calls it resets as well.

I have contacted Skype's technical support 10 days ago and they have not responded at all... I've Googled to no avail. This is extremely frustrating as I am a recent convert to Mac and I took Skype with me, but I never had these problems on my PC.

I do have Ecamm's Call Recorder for Skype installed, but I can't find any reason why it would be changing my settings.

Help! Please!

How to stop torrents at work?

numlok — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:13:20 -0800

I'm sure this question will not make me the most popular student at the dance, but is there a way to identify (via IP) machines running BitTorrent clients within an internal network (ie. work)? My company has around 50 employees, and the old, "Please don't torrent at work" doesn't seem to be doing much good anymore. It brings our email and web browsing to a near standstill, and dropping by the "usual suspects" is not only tiresome, but doesn't seem to find all the sources of traffic any longer. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Live AIS data is a web browser

kaozity — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:55:58 -0800

Hi, Another oddball question... I have a live data stream of AIS data and I would like to take the data and ultimately display it on a world map through a web browser. The problem is that I have no clue as to how I would display live updated information on a map. I would like the map to update as the stream of data is coming in. This might be an ambitious project for someone who is weak on web programming, but i figured it would be worth looking into.

How to use a 32" CRT as a computer monitor?

Ziggy Zaga — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:43:13 -0800

I want to be able to use my 32" television as a secondary computer monitor for games/movies. There are many tutorials for doing this on the internet but I'm having a heck of a time actually getting this to work. What am I doing wrong? Computer is relatively new, runs Windows XP SP2 and has an nVidia 7300 GS card with a VGA, DVI and 4-pin S-Video port. Newest video drivers (as of today) are installed.

Television is an unknown model Philips/Magnavox CRT monstrosity with several rows of composite ports and two (pretty sure, but not 100%) 4-pin S-Video ports. If I knew the model I could locate the manual or specifications but neither Philips nor Magnavox seem to have these CRT television sets listed on their sites anymore.

I went to the store and bought a 12' 4-pin S-Video cable. Hooked one end up to the video card, other end to the television. Messed around with the settings and configurators in the nVidia control panel.

I'm getting a signal on the TV, but unfortunately it is about as clear as watching scrambled porn. It's constantly fuzzy and doesn't display anything coherent. I know it's getting a signal from the computer since I can make out certain things depending on what's on my monitor ("hey, that looks like a nipple!") but it is absolutely unusable.

I am assuming that something, either the resolution, bit depth, or frequency is incorrect but the nVidia control panel does not make it easy to change any of these things. I'm pretty sure at one point I did find somewhere I could change the resolution but the lowest it would go is 800x600 and didn't seem to have any effect on the display.

If it matters, the control panel keeps referring to my TV as being an HDTV. It is not an HDTV.

Any suggestions? All the computer hardware I find seems to facilitate watching TV on your computer monitor, not the other way around. Furthermore I could not find any useful adapters or anything at Fry's; I couldn't even find a VGA-to-composite converter (yes, I was getting that desperate).

If you need any more information about the setup then please ask; I'd really like to be able to accomplish this task.

Thanks

In OS X, how to open an application with command line arguments?

Izner Myletze — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:01:59 -0800

OS X terminal help. How do I open an application with command line arguments? Application FOO supports a number of command line arguments. From OS X's terminal,

$ open FOO.app (this works fine)

$ open FOO.app -r
open [470] No such file: /Users/Izner Myletze/ -r

$ open 'FOO.app -k'
open[471] No such file: /Users/Izner Myletze/FOO.app -k

How do I start FOO with -r or -k?

Tell me about current NAS manufacturers and technology?

loquacious — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:53:34 -0800

Tell me about Network Attached Storage ( NAS )? In particular what current manufactuers should I avoid for a typical 1 terabyte (or greater) RAID array? I'm also interested in general information and pitfalls for NAS devices and implementations. Deployment is for a mixed platform small office - about 8 seats. Platforms are XP, Vista and OS X.

I'm assuming SAMBA protocol for shares. Usage is low to medium - the office needs a data/file server for storing and reliably sharing typical office documents.

They emphatically do not need an actual server. There's no forseeable upgrade path to an in-office Exchange server or domain controller or the like - this is handled by a remote office through VPN. I could build them a PC-based solution using something like FreeNAS but that would be overkill, and I don't want to introduce a possibly flaky desktop/server into their office.

What NAS models or manufacturers are considered the most reliable? Best support? Best value?

Much thanks in advance!

How do I enable simple file sharing on Server 2008 and stop my network from crashing?

Magnakai — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:15:12 -0800

How do I transparently share files from a Windows Server 2008 box to several XP computers? I want it to stop asking for a username and password when people try to access files. Also, can anyone point me in the right direction to solving this weird network issue I've been having? I've been assigned to run the IT stuff for the small business that I part-time for. They have four machines running Windows XP. One of them used to host all the office documents in a shared folder, enabling it to be accessed from across the network. They're connected via brand-new Cat 6 cables going into a wireless router, which is connected via another brand-new cable to a rather ancient 4-port ADSL modem.

They now have need of a dedicated server, and because of some incoming (in the next year) custom written software, it needs to be Windows Server 2008. I built them a low-cost machine with stable components and it seems to run fine.

I hooked it up to the network, connected to current share and transferred all the office files over. I then shared that directory. I created accounts that have the same username and passwords as the default accounts on the XP machines. I gave access to the office file directory to Everyone. At the top of that screen, it specified that if you selected Everyone, it wouldn't ask for a username or password. But it does!

When they were shared from the previous workstation, you could happily access them without entering a password. Is there any way to revert to this level of behaviour?

My second question follows from this - I tried accessing the folder from one of the comptuers on the workgroup, and I then entered Administrator and the password for the server into the request box that popped up. It connects absolutely fine. But once it's connected, at regular but random intervals, it seems to hang the workstation for a period of time and kill the network connection for the server. Other computers were able to access the network and connect to the internet fine. I can reproduce this problem Can anyone give me pointers to trying to diagnose this error, as obviously it makes the whole endeavour rather useless!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and thank you for reading this long question.

Computer Engineering, or Linguistics? Or maybe web design... and how do I fit travel in there?

malapropist — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:50:49 -0800

I'm having a lot of angst about whether to continue with my major, Comp Engineering, or to find something else, such as linguistics or web design. Can you give me some perspective? Hi, I'm having some issues with my college education. Here are the main points:

I went to community college after high school, 5 years ago, with the idea that I would end up working with computers. But life, family problems and depression intervened and I've taken a bunch of gen ed but no actual major prep. So, basically, the major prep for transfering into a comp eng program at a CSU will take me 3 years. From now. The idea of being stuck in community college for ANOTHER 3 years makes me sick. I was under the impression that it would be more like a year and a half, or two, which is much more paletable. Considering that engineering is the most unit-intensive major you can take, I'm looking for another major that is less intense.

Two fields that interest me a lot are web design (an old hobby) and linguistics (a new interest). I've heard that linguistics intersects with computer science, and that there are jobs for linguists in technology companies, but I can't seem to find much more detailed information than that, such as which companies, or what kind of jobs exactly. I have seen some interesting programs, such as UCLAs Linguistics and Computer Science bachelors, which sounds right up my alley, but what is the application of this? What kind of work is it? Depending on what I'm reading, it either seems like there are exciting opportunities for someone with a linguistics degree, or that it's a theoretical degree that is only useful for academia. As far as web design goes, that's a whole another question whether to go with a design degree, a computer science degree, some kind of certification, or just say bollocks to a degree altogether.

I very much want to join the Japan English Teaching program after college, regardless of what degree I get, and perhaps teach English in Korea as well. This is one thing that makes me doubt pursuing a comp eng degree, because it feels like if I get that degree and turn around and become an English teacher for a couple of years, I'll let my engineering degree and skills go stale. It seems like if I follow that course of actions, when I return stateside I would be unhirable. How true is this?

After school, I would like to spend a few years either way, living in foreign countries or in a city outside of southern California, where I live. It seems like comp engineering would be a good option for this, because there is technology everywhere. Linguistics also seems like it would be a good idea, though depending on what languages I specialize in, it could be actually more limiting than CE. What do you think? I'm considering, if I do go through with linguistics, specializing in Japanese and an Indo-European language, probably French. Which of these two degrees would help me get a job and live in a wide variety of societies?

Anyway, I have spent so so so much time thinking about all this stuff, and it seems the longer I spend the further away it all gets. I'm feeling very demoralized. I'll be visiting the counseling department next week, as well as the career planning center and the transfer center around the beginning of term, but to be honest they haven't been very helpful in the past. I want to be as knowledgeble as I can so I can ask precise questions. I feel like there is a lot I don't know about simply researching careers and majors and colleges and programs and this and that and the other.

I know there are plenty of people here on Askme who have gone on to have amazing careers and/or travel a lot. Can you confer upon me your wisdom? Please. Give me an outside perspective. I feel so trapped in my head about all this. I search online, I go to the library, I talk to the counselors, but in the end it can't help me figure out what will happen 4 or 5 years from now with too much accuracy. Thanks for your time.

I'm up at 2am because my computer is down. Help me get it to boot!

dudeman — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:07:16 -0800

My PC was working fine until tonight. I rebooted to fix a BIOS setting (to enable the onboard Ethernet port) and since then it won't boot properly anymore. The PC POSTs fine, keyboard is initialized, I can enter the BIOS setup fine and make any changes I like, then save them. After that, the screen blanks and I'm left staring at a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. Nothing happens. How can I troubleshoot this and fix it? Keyboard is now nonresponsive. As far as I know the PC is not even trying to boot. If I hit "F9" to select my boot device, it doesn't show me the boot device screen. Every time I boot, same problem.

This is a 1 year old PC assembled from parts. Biostar TF-7025-M2 motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 dual core processor. 3GB RAM, Antec 350 power supply. Onboard video. Maxtor SATA hard drive. Panasonic DVD-writer. IBM keyboard. I've disconnected everything else. I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on the system. GRUB should be loading from the MBR on the hard drive and displaying options, but it is not.

The BIOS settings include a built in burn-in-utility (memory tester) which I have tried enabling. It won't run it.

I've tried booting from the hard drive and booting from several different rescue CDs - Ubuntu Live CD, Ultimate Boot CD, with no success.

I've tried clearing the CMOS via the internal jumper. CMOS is cleared but this doesn't solve the problem.

I'm thinking that this could be:

a) bad power supply (can run BIOS but can't boot?)
b) bad motherboard (but wouldn't I get some other indication of a problem?)

Any suggestions how to troubleshoot? I don't have a spare power supply or motherboard to swap in, unless I'm willing to cannibalize my Windows PC (can't do that!)

Reinstalling Windows on Laptop Without CD Drive

OverlappingElvis — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:03:12 -0800

We have a laptop at work that's just so full of crap, etc. that it's near unusable and we've decided to just wipe it and do a fresh install of Windows XP (for which we have the CD). The problem is, this laptop doesn't have a CD or floppy drive - it has some kind of dock connector on the bottom that I guess might have a CD drive, but we don't have that either. Any ideas?

Help me restore hope AND Documents.

TuxHeDoh — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:26:23 -0800

My parents computer crashed. I never determined the cause. It had XP on it. They've since bought a laptop, and want to recover documents from their desktop. They bought a hd enclosure. I connected the hd, and it's recognized, but it seems that the profiles must've been encrypted. I know that it's almost impossible to break the encryption, but want to be helpful, any suggestions? I have attempted to boot to USB, with the Desktops HD connected via USB, and I can get to the safe mode screen and such, but get a blue screen no matter what option I choose. Could I boot from a XP repair disc and then point it at a windows on the USB HD, and login with an account to export the encryption certificate? Any other ideas?

Why doesn't my laptop like projectors?

robhuddles — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:27:53 -0800

What causes my laptop to freak out whenever I plug in a projector? I have a Toshiba Satellite P205-S667 laptop. It's running Windows Vista Home Premium. It uses the Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family graphics driver.

On several occasions, my computer has completely freaked out if I hook it up to a projector. It starts by dropping the projector signal (last night, it was happening every few minutes), and then eventually progresses to completely freezing the computer, to the point that I have to press and hold the power button to turn it off to restart.

And then things get really fun. Sometimes it will restart fine, and then work for a few minutes before freaking out again. But others, Windows will refuse to boot up at all and take me into first the Startup Restore utility, and then System Restore.

This isn't specific to a single projector or even projector brand - it happened last night while using a very old InFocus, but it also occurred once while I was using a newish Dell projector and at least once on a Samsung.

I have checked to be sure that the graphics card driver is up-to-date. I tried turning off the Vista-esque features, such as the Sidebar and Aero. I've manually reset the screen resolution to match that of the projector. Last night, I even tried resetting the Theme to Windows Classic, but nothing seems to work.

Unfortunately, running my laptop with a projector is an important part of my job, so I really need help to figure out what's causing the problem and how I might fix it.

This Computer is Locked

ptm — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:38:08 -0800

My corporate laptop computer goes into lock mode when i let it idle. The Message "this computer is locked and can only be opened by "user Name" or administrator." It's not part of the screensaver process and I can't quite figure out what part of the registry I need to go to to get it to stay on longer than 15 minutes even though i'm not working the keyboard. This is a Windows XP Pro, but I've seen this same message on 2000 as well.

Why is my jumpdrive shocking me?

captainsohler — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:32:18 -0800

While plugged into a USB port on my PC, my recently purchaced jumpdrive (Sony Microvault 4GB) mildly shocks me as I try and handle it. It is pulsing with a current. Obviously I'm going to return it, but what I would like to know what causes this phenomenon? Talking with friends who usually are up on this sort of thing draws blanks.

Easiest way to swap left/right audio channels?

FrostBite795 — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:18:16 -0800

What is the easiest way to readily swap the left/right audio channels on my PC? I'm moving back to school in a few weeks and am very excited about my bedroom layout. My desk will be lined up along the foot of my bed such that I'll be able to turn around my monitor and speakers to face my bed (for movies, TV shows, etc...). However, the little audiophile in me recognizes that this will also swap the left/right audio channels, and this bothers me.

I have a Dell Inspiron e1505, running Windows XP Pro with a Sigmatel audio codec. I would think there would be a tiny freeware application that sits in your system tray and allows you to readily activate/deactivate a channel swap. Is anyone familiar with such a solution?

I have done a good deal of research and found similar questions asked on other forums. The answer is invariably, "Just swap your left and right speaker." As often as I plan on watching from bed, this is not an option I'm considering.

Note, I am an electrical engineering student and would probably be capable of creating my own physical switch. If you have schematics, I'd love to see those too, but I'm really hoping for a free software solution.

PS: My first question!

I want to learn how to create 8bit -16bit style animations, kind of like "Code Monkeys" on tv network G4. Where do I start?

Kyokusen — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:36:04 -0800

I want to learn how to create 8bit -16bit style animations, kind of like "Code Monkeys" on tv network G4. Where do I start? After searching for a bit someone on yahoo answers said that they use Photoshop, After Effects, and Final Cut Pro (don't have the last one because it's mac only) to do the bulk of the animating. I can get a hold of other programs too but i just don't know what to do first. If anybody could point me towards some good tutorials/programs for animating this type of work, it would be much appreciated.

lazy computer

Jason and Laszlo — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:07:05 -0800

Why is my iMac running slow? 2 year old iMac is running annoyingly slow; how can I remedy it?

I mostly just use Word, Firefox, and Itunes. It goes slow when I switch between programs.

Mac OS X version 10.4.11
1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo
512 MB 667 MHz RAM

thank you.

How does IT documenation work?

wabashbdw — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:53:34 -0800

Despite having no training whatsoever, I've gradually become 'the IT guy' at work. I want to get organized and begin building a documentation file but I have no idea where to start. Although there is a lot I don't know about technology, I am able to help people around the office with small computer problems. And when an issue is beyond my knowledge, I usually end up being a middle-man between the user and the company who handles our larger IT issues.

Well, my role as IT first-responder is growing and I need to get organized. My understanding is that 'documentation' is critical to an effective IT department, but I don't even know what 'documentation' means in this context.

So, what pieces of information are documented by most IT departments? Where/how is this information stored that makes it easy to find when it is needed? [For IT workers] What is your system for documentation and what would you keep/change if you were building a new system?

Recommendation for a new (non-itunes) media player

Carillon — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:56:46 -0800

I need a new media player for music as itunes has finally driven me over the edge. Does anyone have a good windows-based media player to recommend?

Is this possible? Begging for some type of assistance!

TeachTheDead — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:04:37 -0800

Joomla 1.5 form puzzle. Looking for a way (either a plug-in or module) to let me create a custom form that will allow users to input a code and based on the day the code is inputted, assign a numeric value... Ok, so I have a bit of a conundrum, I have a site, built with Joomla 1.5 and I want to make a page where users can input receipt numbers for various things. Say you received a receipt from a store, and what we want to try and accomplish (as none of us are really certain if this is doable) is the customer would input this receipt, and based on the day the receipt is inputted, there would be a set assigned variable...

For instance, say the users receipt number is 77804 and he put this number into the form on a Monday. If you put a receipt in on a Monday, the receipt value would be 3, if it were a Friday it would be a 7...etc etc....

Is this possible using Joomla and if so, how can we accomplish this? I know there are dozens of form plugins for Joomla, we just don't know what ones would work the best and which ones can actually do this.

Finally, after the user inputs the receipts, we as the "end users" would get an email or something accessible where only the admins can see the results of the receipt totals.

Looking for any info on this as its something we have been trying to figure out for almost 2 months now and we are just not getting any where. Please, MiFi super geeks, nerds, Joomla advocates and designers, we are begging to find a way to make this work. We might even be able to give some type of trade or something for any help with this question....do I sound desperate enough!?