A thread for boring computer questions.

Can anyone think of a way of converting a FAT32 partition with Windows XP installed on it into an NTFS one, possibly by cloning it, formatting it as NTFS and then copying back the files?

No worries, answered my question.

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

I have UTF-8 encoded metadata that I need to convert to non UTF-8. Does anyone know if there is an encoding that will handle UTF-8 gracefully, e.g., turn accents in UTF-8 into accents in the standard character set for Western languages? I tried ISO 8559-1 and I still get funny characters.

UTF-8 is the encoding you seek.

hmm... depending on yr data/tools/skillset... there are a few programmatic ways that might be a bit more effective to convert utf-8 to ascii.

sometimes, if there's only a few problem characters... running a search and replace in any decent text editor is a plausible choice.

it depends on the exact problem.
m.

msp, I think that's possibly the best example of begging the answer that I've ever seen.

Anyways, the problem is not the encoding. UTF-8, or more broadly, Unicode, is a universal encoding, in that every character of every language is (theoretically, at least) represented. No, the problem is yr display device, which appears not to support UTF-8. You can either choose a different display device or you can discover which encodings are supported by yr display device of choice. If you are using a terminal-type application, then the solution may be as simple as choosing a Unicode font that supports the "funny chars" you want to see drawn correctly.

Also, if you were really using ISO-8559-1 instead of ISO-8859-1, I'd expect that you'd not see what you want to see.

UTF-8, or more broadly, Unicode, is a universal encoding

Unicode is a character set. UTF-8 is an encoding. Unicode characters in UTF-8 are one to four bytes long. ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1) is a character set and encoding in which all characters are one byte long. Provided your data only contains characters that are available in Latin 1 there's no reason why it shouldn't be desirable or possible to convert UTF-8 encoded characters to Latin 1. Some solutions here: http://www.unicodetools.com/

Thanks, ledge. That was exactly what I needed - the tools to do the conversion. I had been trying to do it with an XML editor and I don't think it was working. Thanks!!! I will try it out today...

This is going into a database that does not support Unicode. :(

Believe it or not, Unicode is an encoding: This is why characters from the Universal Character Set (perhaps you were thinking of this, ledge) each have Unicode numbers, this being the very definition "encoding". The Unicode encoding is kind of a meta-encoding, in that it's not generally directly implemented, but instead, is referenced by encodings such as UTF-8, UTF-16, and many other more obscure encodings.

youn, the easiest way to transcode yr data is to load it into a database which does support UTF-8, then extract it in the encoding you require. Perhaps if you included the information that you are transcoding for a crappy database in yr question, you wouldn't have gotten a slightly snarky answer from me.

on my work PC, you can access servers through the "my network places" function, which basically operates as a simple SFTP program. is there a similar built-in feature on macs, or do i have to download a separate SFTP program?

Macs come with command-line SFTP, but you can download Fugu if you want a GUI.

Fugu.

Note that if you are not actually using SFTP, but instead, accessing CIFS shares, then OS X does come with similar functionality built into the Finder.

begging the answer? i'm just trying to know the requirements before i try suggesting a solution. furthermore, sometimes people already know the answers to their problems. they just need to identify what the problem actually is by talking about it.

sry for treading on yr question answering turf.

on my work PC, you can access servers through the "my network places" function, which basically operates as a simple SFTP program. is there a similar built-in feature on macs, or do i have to download a separate SFTP program?

You're talking about SMB sharing, which OS X has. Under the System Prefs there's a "Sharing" or Network area, to the best of my recall, which will allow you to turn on or off Personal File Sharing. As for finding other computers on the network, that's sometimes a function of being logged into a Windows domain and you should be able to still connect directly even if you can't see the directory with smb://machinename

a mysterious red line has appeared across the center of my computer screen. it is actually slightly off center. it is a vertical line. i tried restoring my computer to a previous state, but that has not removed it. very very strange.

probably a monitor problem then

CyberDuck is less clunky than Fugu

i've used fugu and cyberduck and they both suck compared with the program i have on my work pc (winftp)

MySpace question...So I found an html code for MySpace and changed the background color...Now I want to add an animated gif on that background. What code do i put in? FYI, here's the code i've been using:
http://tinyurl.com/6eszrt

Codes for Changing your Myspace Background Image

http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/myspace_backgrounds.shtml

> Now I want to add an animated gif on that background.

it's like the 90s never happened...

i've used fugu and cyberduck and they both suck compared with the program i have on my work pc (winftp)

-- n/a, Wednesday, July 30, 2008 2:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Must be a really good program if a google search for it is all malware and spam pages

I use Transmit.

gah, that html myspace thing isn't working for me, i copied and pasted it where the other body edits were, and it's still not showing up. :( And it's a very large animated gif, a series of paintings

I use Filezilla for FTP and SFTP.

a mysterious red line has appeared across the center of my computer screen. it is actually slightly off center. it is a vertical line. i tried restoring my computer to a previous state, but that has not removed it.

It's your monitor, and it's probably not fixable.

Is the line there if you turn the monitor on not attached to the PC?

It's a laptop. That's a good test, but I don't think I can carry it out.

Guys, i got the animated gif to work, thanks

how do you find and remove duplicate files ? during the past dozen years i amassed a few hard disk drives and over time a portion of that space got cluttered with dupes after making some recoveries/ backups all over the place

i tried the first hit on google for that: duplicate file finder. it's visualisation isn't too clear to me and since it froze on me a few times i would be tempted to try something else before giving it another go

anyone else having problems using zshare? (won't stream, goes back to preview page if you try to download.) google gives me some mutterings about uk isp blocking, but then also similar complaints from india and africa.

the streaming does work via a proxy (albeit not for larger files).

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=766454

bogon filters :(

How come youtube no work for me no more? Nine times out of ten the vids stall after 20% or less, often they don't even load enough to start playing. Doesn't matter what other network traffic I have. Doesn't matter what browser. No problems with other video sites or large downloads.

I ended up using libiconv for the character encoding conversion.

google gives me some mutterings about uk isp blocking

yeh, this has become INTERNET FACT! without a shred of decent supporting evidence. it may well be true, but i'm not so sure.

how do you find and remove duplicate files ?

If you have a Unix machine, this command will find identical files within a folder called folder_path. It works on machines with the GNU userland tools, and may well work on a Mac (although I haven't tried it). There is a tiny tiny tiny chance that it will match files that aren't actually identical, if there is a hash collision.

find folder_path -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum 2>/dev/null | sort | uniq -w32 -D

When I open an email from a colleague sent to my g00glem@il address (via Mail on a Mac), five (5) windows open, which all say:

A problem has been detected with the font in the font file $C. The system will attempt to disable this font, but to avoid future problems, you should quit all of your open applications and remove this font file or replace it with a new version.

I've tried to work out how to do this but can't find anything pertinent in the Help file that will let me behind the scenes anywhere to do this. Never had anything like this before, and I can't see any weirdo fonts in the email...

The easiest way to handle it is to go to Gmail and delete or reply or whatever.

If you want to get to the root of the problem, open the mail in source view if you can and look for any offending font tags.

Thanks libcrypt - don't seem to be able to get to source view, but will have another go at that later and in the meantime will go to gmail.

Hello,

My router seems to have died. While the thing is still on (there are lights at the back, where the cables plug in) the three lights on top of it, which all go green when it's working properly, resolutely refuse to turn on at all, in any colour. And the internet doesn't work.

So I guess it's died? It's quite old - at least 6 years or so. A Speedtouch 510. The question is: can I just go to Dixons and buy a new one? And if so, how easy is it to make it work? Will I need to know long-forgotten passwords and DNS addresses and stuff? I have a separate wireless doodah which plugs into to this router and makes wireless work, and that's still okay as far as I know.

I have a PC btw. Thanks in advance...

no, if its a new router it will be like a new wireless network so youll have new password etc that youll set up. Its easy peasey. Just make sure you get a router that is compatible with the same letter as your wireless card eg 802.11b or 802.11g or n etc I think most newer routers will cover all bases.

automatic updates has just offered xp service pack 3. im using a cracked copy of windows xp pro. if i d/l this sp3 will it recognise my pc is non-legit and do bad things? is sp3 really necessary?

i think it probably will.

PC Mag on SP3:

The new stuff isn't particularly noteworthy, and the rest has been available already through Windows Update. SP3 functions primarily as a collection of past fixes with a few security additions. SP3 is most certainly essential for anyone who hasn't applied SP2, and for those who haven't kept up with the Windows Update downloads, but if you've been on top of things, SP3 won't do much for you.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD.

ah phew, thanks sunny!

no problem!

My Mac claims to convert Word docs to pdfs with no loss of resolution. But it looks to me as though it does lose a bit.

Also, it seems to increase the font. I'm typing in Ari3l 10 and it seems to increase it to about 11/11.5 (I'm looking at it at 100% of normal size). I need to ensure that what appears on the printed page appears as Ari3l 12.

Am I imagining things?

GOD these questions are so fucking BORING

I aim to please

Are you using Acrobat, Word, or the built-in print-to-PDF function to convert to PDF?

Also, why are you googleproofing "Ariel"?

Also, MS Word's notion of "100%" really has nothing to do with anything real, so you cannot compare how it looks on-screen to how another app displays at "100%".