Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 February 29

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February 29

Extent of destruction of opening an email

With all the spam mail circulating around telling one to "Not open messages with the title 'Postcard" as they contain viruses...etc", I began wondering, to what extent can opening a malicious email do to your computer? If one just opens the email message, not attachments, can a virus really "destroy your Harddrive?" Acceptable (talk) 01:10, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you'll be fine as long as you don't open the attachment (especially if it's a .exe from someone you don't know). Once a virus is on your machine, there are a lot of different things it could do, like turn your PC into a zombie to send out more viruses, install a keylogger to try to get your online banking password, or delete everything off your C drive. I sent a virus e-mail once, there was no attachment and the e-mail's contents just said:

"1) Forward this to everyone you know; 2) Delete your C drive."

I don't think it worked. Useight (talk) 01:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there have been issues with some clients (Outlook Express / Outlook specifically, and there was something with Windows' PNG library or something) that have allowed emails to run code without the user opening an attachment. As they stand right now there's no such exploits I know of though. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think most or all clients have had such flaws over the years; I remember hearing about them in Pine and Eudora, and of these fixed Thunderbird security vulnerabilities the ones marked in red have the potential for malicious code execution. As far as I know no virus/worm that spread that way has ever caused significant damage—all of the major epidemics were caused by naive users running attachments manually. There have been tons of hoax warnings of this kind, e.g. Goodtimes virus. As someone pointed out long ago, the best subject line for a virus like this is not "GOOD TIMES!!" but rather "New virus warning", because who wouldn't open that? It's not technically impossible for this to happen, and it's a good reason not to use network software with huge market share (since you lose the protection of herd immunity), but other than that I wouldn't worry about it. -- BenRG (talk) 18:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

yes, Crustacean is correct. This is why some of us advocate for a particular E-mail client, well at least for novices. Kushal 03:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Also remember that the way viruses spread is NOT by destroying user's harddrives outright, but by turning the user's computer in a machine to send more viruses. In the process damage can be done and more malicious viruses have been known to corrupt and delete files from a hard disk but a virus which just destroyed your drive outright would not really be all that effective in the long term. Like real viruses, diseases which quickly kill the host tend not to have more than few quick outbreaks at any given time, whereas something like a common cold flourishes like crazy constantly because it just causes us to sneeze a lot and spread it further. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 01:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

download speed

I just now noticed, for the first time, that Firefox could actually calculate my download speed. I don't exactly know the standards for internet connection speeds, so tell me this: is an average of about 400 kilobytes/sec a good speed? flaminglawyer^c 01:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

It depends on what you're paying for, and where you're downloading from. But yeah, that's not bad (probably). -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:25, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

If you're on a large network that's very good. My university has hundred-something megabit pipe (OC-3 I think), but it's maxed out for something like half of a typical weekday, so I don't see many of those megabits :) :D\=< (talk) 01:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is quite good considering you are talking about one download. Kushal 03:27, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

You can also find your download/upload speed at internetfrog.com. Useight (talk) 04:22, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Email for Paypal?

Anyone know the email for paypal? I need to dispute a payment(goods not received, still not available per the seller, should have been instant per the website, it is for a digital card) but I cannot seem to use their dispute resolution as I cannot seem to get anything that works as a transaction number off the email I have from them. Anyone know what email I should send something to to get their attention? Dureo (talk) 04:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC) whaddaya know, I guessed right :P Dureo (talk) 04:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Headings in XHTML

Headings in XHTML are: <h1></h1>, ... <h6></h6>. Why don't they use: <h level="1"></h>, ... <h level="6"></h>? -- Toytoy (talk) 04:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Oops! In XHTML 2.0 they use <section><h></h></section>. -- Toytoy (talk) 04:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Good thing they didn't do that in earlier versions, be cause IE6 doesn't support h[level=1]-type selectors. — Kieff | Talk 06:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

youtube problems

when i use youtube, the video never fully buffers. how do i fix it? i've already tried clearing my cache. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.104.189.221 (talk) 09:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Try increasing your cache size, maybe? Which browser are you using? Try a different one. --Ouro (blah blah) 15:15, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Windows Character Map

One of my favourite interests is to search through the Unicode characters available in the Windows charmap.exe application. Although I generally like the application and its features, I really would like the window to be resizable; in particular, I would like all glyphs (at least optionally) to be much larger. Are there any similar Windows software offering this feature? --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 17:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I found one called PopChar that will magnify individual glyphs. Just do a Google search for "Windows Character Map replacement" and you'll get a whole bunch of choices. --LarryMac | Talk 17:41, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

proxying with a CGI python script?

I'd like to create a transparent proxy of Google's home page, with some of my favorite searches. I realize a firefox plugin could probably do that but I'd prefer a server-side solution. So how can I transparently insert some code into pages, but rewrite all the liks easily to point to my script instead?

For example, searching should submt to my script, which in turn should submit to google. "mechanical" might be a good library for this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.122.6.248 (talk) 21:42, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, you could do this with PHP pretty easily, especially if you used a spidering tool like snoopy, if you know a little PHP to begin with (but it's pretty simple stuff for the most part). I'm having a little trouble understanding exactly what it is you want this to do and why, but it seems within the capabilities of the spidering tool I linked to, which I have used many times to do simple retrieving and sorting of results from various search queries on a host of sites. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 03:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if something like Proxomitron or even Greasemonkey might also suit your needs? - IMSoP (talk) 13:28, 1 March 2008 (UTC)