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1500 questions
216
votes
5 answers
Compress files from OS X terminal?
In the Finder, there is this wonderful ability to right click on a file or directory, select compress from the drop-down, and end up with a zipped file.
Is it possible to do the same thing from the terminal?
William Jockusch
- 5,123
216
votes
2 answers
How do I reset the time on my computer without turning it on?
Alright, so today, I did something very stupid: Do an experiment on my computer without backing it up.
So I saw that the calendar in Windows could only go up to 12/31/2999 (or something like that). I was wondering if I set the time to 11:59:59 PM,…
Jon
- 9,479
- 40
- 99
- 131
216
votes
7 answers
Preventing applications from stealing focus
Are there any solutions to prevent applications stealing focus from the active window?
This is especially annoying when I'm starting an application, switch to do something else and the new application starts receiving half a sentence of text.
svandragt
- 3,353
216
votes
12 answers
Why are pixels square?
Pixels in screens are square, but I'm not sure why.
Both pixelated images look pretty bad - but I'm not sure there's any advantage of squares over hexagons here.
Hexagons also divide up into 3 colours nicely:
So what's the advantage of squares…
Tim
- 2,377
215
votes
17 answers
Is there a way to see any tar progress per file?
I have a couple of big files that I would like to compress. I can do this with for example
tar cvfj big-files.tar.bz2 folder-with-big-files
The problem is that I can't see any progress, so I don't have a clue how long it will take or anything like…
Svish
- 41,258
215
votes
14 answers
Disable "These files might be harmful to your computer" warning?
I keep getting this irritating warning when copying files over the network:
These files might be harmful to your computer
Your internet security settings suggest that one or more files may be harmful. Do you want to use it anyway?
I am copying a…
Jeff Atwood
- 24,402
213
votes
14 answers
How do I select all text from a file with nano?
I open a file in Ubuntu nano editor from the comand line and I want to copy all the contents of the file so I can paste it in an another application outside the shell.
So far I can only copy using shift on the screen that is visible but not on all…
Elzo Valugi
- 2,241
212
votes
9 answers
How can I create a non-login user?
I'd like to create a user and a group both called subversion on a RHEL 5 system. I looked at the man page for useradd and I guess the command would be just be...
useradd subversion
However, not sure how to avoid creating a home dir. Also, I don't…
Ethan
- 3,921
212
votes
4 answers
View RAW message source of an email in Outlook 2013
How can I view the source of an email in Outlook 2013?
I want to see the exact email source, as I can do in Gmail or in Mozilla Thunderbird. I'm particularly interested in the top matter (headers?). Here's an example, courtesy…
Colonel Panic
- 12,549
212
votes
4 answers
What is the purpose of the holes marked "Do Not Cover" on hard drives?
On many hard drives, there's a text warning to "not cover this hole", sometimes adding that doing so will void the warranty.
What is the purpose of this hole and why would covering it cause damage or increase the likelihood of drive failure?
(Image…
oKtosiTe
- 9,776
212
votes
8 answers
Execute a command from another directory in bash
Say that I'm doing this:
cd subdir
git init
cd ../
Is there a way to do this with a single command, or perhaps two, rather than having to move in and out of a directory in order to run a command there?
(Not looking for a git-specific solution;…
Trevor Burnham
- 2,541
211
votes
8 answers
How to delete a file in Windows with a too long filename?
My wife has several files and folders that somehow ended up having filenames that have caused them to be undeleteable (can't be deleted) by normal means or via the command line. I believe the filenames are too long due to the depth of the folder…
user3048
- 2,249
211
votes
3 answers
Why are there directories called Local, LocalLow, and Roaming under \Users\\AppData?
I have a workstation running Windows Server 2008 that's logged into an AD domain, and I have a dual boot with Ubuntu Linux. When running Linux, I'd like to be able to use the same Thunderbird profile I use under Windows, so I pointed Thunderbird to…
JCCyC
- 2,883
210
votes
3 answers
How to force ssh to use a specific private key?
With ssh -i you can instruct ssh to use an extra private key to try authentication.
The documentation is not clear on how to explicitly use only that key.
Herman van Rink
- 5,020
210
votes
10 answers
How to copy text from Console2?
I just started using Console2 as an alternative to cmd.exe
I can't figure out how to copy text from the console to the clipboard -- dragging over it with the mouse won't mark anything, and there is no option in the right-click menu to "mark" as in…
GJ.
- 10,151