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From what I've been reading, online backup services seem to be slightly pointless for anything more than a few GB worth of data. Let's say I have 1TB to back up and a home DSL connection. I haven't done the math but I've seen estimates that say that 3-4 GB can be uploaded in a day. On the slow end, that's nearly a year for the initial backup. So do any of these services offer the ability to physically send a drive full of data to them for the initial "upload"? Dismas| (talk) 05:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
There was again much fuzz in the media about supercomputers becoming more affordable, and that it makes brute-forcing passwords much easier. However, there is a very easy way to make brute-force completely useless: have a maximum number of allowed tries before blocking the account for some time. This is why PIN codes for credit cards can be only 4 digits long. For online or other personal computer-related use this could cause the possibility of someone blocking the accounts of others by deliberately entering wrong passwords, but even this can be easily solved: don't block the account, but have a cooldown period between accepting consecutive tries. Even forcing to wait for one second after entering a wrong password can thwart any brute-force attack, one second is big enough to hinder algorithms which are based on trying millions of combinations every second, but small enough that it doesn't disturb human users. So why is there always so much panic around passwords, and forcing them to make longer and longer, instead of everyone implementing a system like this? -- 131.188.3.21 ( talk) 09:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I mirrored a lot of pages with the -m -k options, but wget crashed just before it converted them to relative links, and the pages I downloaded are now gone from the site I downloaded them from, so I can't run the download again. Everything has been downloaded, it's just all the html files still point to online locations instead of the downloaded ones. Is there any way to make wget convert the links? Or some other program that might? 82.44.54.4 ( talk) 11:17, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
sed -e 's:full_http_server:root_of_the_local_dir:g' infile > outfile
. Make sure the locations are properly escaped (using : instead of / saves you from having to escape all /s ;-). I'd make sure outfile
is in some mirrored directory so as to leave the original files save and sound. --
Stephan Schulz (
talk)
07:12, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Is there any quick way of telling what font you are viewing in a web browser? (I prefer to allow sites to set their preferred typeface.) When I copy and paste into a word processor it just uses the word processor's default. I know you can view page source and dig into the css...was wondering if there's an easier way. 151.203.20.165 ( talk) 13:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Firstly, a recent hard disk failure, I ordered a new hard drive and installed it in my computer, then proceeded to install Windows XP Professional (service pack 2) onto the new hard drive. This got my computer up and running again...mostly. Windows works, and I've been able to get some things functioning...the only problem is that none of my computer's hardware seems to be installed anymore. As far as my computer knows, it has no internal network card and no internal graphics card (or at least not the one installed and working before the crash) or sound card, causing me to have very limited graphics options and no sound or internet options/devices in Control Panel. I'm guessing that this is because the device drivers need to be reinstalled (correct me if I'm wrong). However, the Dell CD labeled "Drivers and Utilities" evidently (as I discovered upon running it) has nothing on it except a computer diagnostic problem and not the "drivers and utilities" I need. Where do I obtain the drivers (again, assuming this is why half my computer hardware doesn't seem to exist) and get all my hardware working again?
After this is done, I would like to recover the data from the non-working hard drive and copy it all (including installed programs, data within those programs, files, pictures, etc.) onto the new hard drive. The hard drive originally failed when I was running Windows Live Messenger, Mozilla Firefox, and GR2Analyst (see previous posts). I had installed the radar program that day, but it was running just fine for the few hours up until the hard disk failure. I'm fairly certain that the old hard drive did not suffer a head crash, because when I plug it into a SATA thing ( this thing is the one I have) the hard disk spins without the click of death (it sounds like it's running normally), but I could be wrong considering my inexperience with such issues. Previously when trying to start up the hard drive while it was in the computer, it would start up to the Windows screen where the little blue bars scroll across the screen ( [12]), which would sit there for about 5 minutes before displaying a blue error screen that said among other things "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME", and automated diagnostics on the hard drive gave the error codes "Error 0142 Msg code 2000-0142 Unit 1 Self test status 79" (or something similar), "0F00:0750 Disk_0 Self-test Read Error" and "00F0:0244 Disk_0 Block 6468425 Can't read, replace disk or remove write protection". When I plug the old hard disk into the computer using the SATA cord, the computer recognizes it by saying "your new hardware is installed and ready to use", but it doesn't show up in Windows Explorer. Given all of this information, what might be wrong with the old hard drive, and what can I do to copy the information from the old hard drive to the new hard drive? Sorry about the huge wall of text, and a big thanks to anyone who makes it through it all and answers. There also might just be a barnstar or two in it for the answers that end up working (one for the first paragraph, and another for the second). Ks0stm ( T• C• G) 16:35, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
How do you echo the time in a bacth file? I tried "echo time /t" and it didn't work. I just want it to display the time, not log it to a file or anything. 82.44.54.4 ( talk) 19:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Do network cards and routers and such eventually wear out with use, like say a hard drive would? Or could you download at the maximum rate for years without any degradation? 82.44.54.4 ( talk) 20:15, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
This PDF has some weird things going on it.
For one thing, I can't (on a Mac, with multiple PDF programs) search it at all. It doesn't seem to have any security bits relating to this set when I look at its properties in Adobe Reader.
When I try to copy and paste text, I get just gobbledegook as a result. I would paste some but it seems to be killing the Wiki editor with its crazy gremlin characters.
What's going on here? I'm both 1. just curious (I haven't run into this before), and 2. trying to search it for a reference and am frustrated! Is it intentional obfuscation, or is it an artifact of the PDF producing program? (Apparently it was created with GNU Ghostscript 7.05, which I wouldn't think would cause a problem.) -- Mr.98 ( talk) 23:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Computing desk | ||
---|---|---|
< August 14 | << Jul | August | Sep >> | August 16 > |
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. |
From what I've been reading, online backup services seem to be slightly pointless for anything more than a few GB worth of data. Let's say I have 1TB to back up and a home DSL connection. I haven't done the math but I've seen estimates that say that 3-4 GB can be uploaded in a day. On the slow end, that's nearly a year for the initial backup. So do any of these services offer the ability to physically send a drive full of data to them for the initial "upload"? Dismas| (talk) 05:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
There was again much fuzz in the media about supercomputers becoming more affordable, and that it makes brute-forcing passwords much easier. However, there is a very easy way to make brute-force completely useless: have a maximum number of allowed tries before blocking the account for some time. This is why PIN codes for credit cards can be only 4 digits long. For online or other personal computer-related use this could cause the possibility of someone blocking the accounts of others by deliberately entering wrong passwords, but even this can be easily solved: don't block the account, but have a cooldown period between accepting consecutive tries. Even forcing to wait for one second after entering a wrong password can thwart any brute-force attack, one second is big enough to hinder algorithms which are based on trying millions of combinations every second, but small enough that it doesn't disturb human users. So why is there always so much panic around passwords, and forcing them to make longer and longer, instead of everyone implementing a system like this? -- 131.188.3.21 ( talk) 09:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I mirrored a lot of pages with the -m -k options, but wget crashed just before it converted them to relative links, and the pages I downloaded are now gone from the site I downloaded them from, so I can't run the download again. Everything has been downloaded, it's just all the html files still point to online locations instead of the downloaded ones. Is there any way to make wget convert the links? Or some other program that might? 82.44.54.4 ( talk) 11:17, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
sed -e 's:full_http_server:root_of_the_local_dir:g' infile > outfile
. Make sure the locations are properly escaped (using : instead of / saves you from having to escape all /s ;-). I'd make sure outfile
is in some mirrored directory so as to leave the original files save and sound. --
Stephan Schulz (
talk)
07:12, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
Is there any quick way of telling what font you are viewing in a web browser? (I prefer to allow sites to set their preferred typeface.) When I copy and paste into a word processor it just uses the word processor's default. I know you can view page source and dig into the css...was wondering if there's an easier way. 151.203.20.165 ( talk) 13:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Firstly, a recent hard disk failure, I ordered a new hard drive and installed it in my computer, then proceeded to install Windows XP Professional (service pack 2) onto the new hard drive. This got my computer up and running again...mostly. Windows works, and I've been able to get some things functioning...the only problem is that none of my computer's hardware seems to be installed anymore. As far as my computer knows, it has no internal network card and no internal graphics card (or at least not the one installed and working before the crash) or sound card, causing me to have very limited graphics options and no sound or internet options/devices in Control Panel. I'm guessing that this is because the device drivers need to be reinstalled (correct me if I'm wrong). However, the Dell CD labeled "Drivers and Utilities" evidently (as I discovered upon running it) has nothing on it except a computer diagnostic problem and not the "drivers and utilities" I need. Where do I obtain the drivers (again, assuming this is why half my computer hardware doesn't seem to exist) and get all my hardware working again?
After this is done, I would like to recover the data from the non-working hard drive and copy it all (including installed programs, data within those programs, files, pictures, etc.) onto the new hard drive. The hard drive originally failed when I was running Windows Live Messenger, Mozilla Firefox, and GR2Analyst (see previous posts). I had installed the radar program that day, but it was running just fine for the few hours up until the hard disk failure. I'm fairly certain that the old hard drive did not suffer a head crash, because when I plug it into a SATA thing ( this thing is the one I have) the hard disk spins without the click of death (it sounds like it's running normally), but I could be wrong considering my inexperience with such issues. Previously when trying to start up the hard drive while it was in the computer, it would start up to the Windows screen where the little blue bars scroll across the screen ( [12]), which would sit there for about 5 minutes before displaying a blue error screen that said among other things "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME", and automated diagnostics on the hard drive gave the error codes "Error 0142 Msg code 2000-0142 Unit 1 Self test status 79" (or something similar), "0F00:0750 Disk_0 Self-test Read Error" and "00F0:0244 Disk_0 Block 6468425 Can't read, replace disk or remove write protection". When I plug the old hard disk into the computer using the SATA cord, the computer recognizes it by saying "your new hardware is installed and ready to use", but it doesn't show up in Windows Explorer. Given all of this information, what might be wrong with the old hard drive, and what can I do to copy the information from the old hard drive to the new hard drive? Sorry about the huge wall of text, and a big thanks to anyone who makes it through it all and answers. There also might just be a barnstar or two in it for the answers that end up working (one for the first paragraph, and another for the second). Ks0stm ( T• C• G) 16:35, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
How do you echo the time in a bacth file? I tried "echo time /t" and it didn't work. I just want it to display the time, not log it to a file or anything. 82.44.54.4 ( talk) 19:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Do network cards and routers and such eventually wear out with use, like say a hard drive would? Or could you download at the maximum rate for years without any degradation? 82.44.54.4 ( talk) 20:15, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
This PDF has some weird things going on it.
For one thing, I can't (on a Mac, with multiple PDF programs) search it at all. It doesn't seem to have any security bits relating to this set when I look at its properties in Adobe Reader.
When I try to copy and paste text, I get just gobbledegook as a result. I would paste some but it seems to be killing the Wiki editor with its crazy gremlin characters.
What's going on here? I'm both 1. just curious (I haven't run into this before), and 2. trying to search it for a reference and am frustrated! Is it intentional obfuscation, or is it an artifact of the PDF producing program? (Apparently it was created with GNU Ghostscript 7.05, which I wouldn't think would cause a problem.) -- Mr.98 ( talk) 23:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)