Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 January 13

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January 13

Cheapest stable setup for GTA IV?

Does anyone know of a cheap yet reliable configuration for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV? I currently have a 1.8Ghz Pentium Dual Core, a gigabyte of RAM, and a GeForce 8400GS, which lagged and coughed when I play the game. I could've gotten more FPS if only that they optimized the source code better rather than just hastily porting a console game to a PC (they could've gotten so far as to using assembly language... :p), but what do you think? I don't need to max the settings out, I'm happy with low or medium settings... Blake Gripling (talk) 04:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The cheapest setup would be a $200 Xbox360 Arcade (cheaper if purchased refurb'd from GameStop). It's guaranteed to play GTA4 smoothly! --70.167.58.6 (talk) 20:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It runs slow because you have a 1.8GHz dual-core CPU and 1Gbyte RAM...which are both the very minimum the game will run on (I bet it says that, right there on the box). Hence you shouldn't expect to run it at anything above the very minimum settings - and then at the lower end of the 'playability' spectrum. Your knowledge of game development is clearly comprehensive...oh - wait...NOT. Nobody writes stuff in machine code anymore, modern C++ compilers can write code VASTLY better than any human for anything but the very shortest code sections. If they'd written much of it in assembler - it would have been a lot slower...not faster.

It's actually VERY tough for games developers to make software run on PC's as well as consoles efficiently. The consoles have rigidly known parameters - so you can optimise the heck out of everything in the sure and certain knowledge that what you get on your development station is what the consumer will get. But with PC's - there are at least a dozen different CPU performance levels - RAM availability that's all over the map, dozens of GPU configurations (also with different amounts of RAM), fifty different sound cards - different hard drive and CD/DVD speeds - even different keyboards and mice to consider. Then you have 7 varients of Vista and god-knows-how-many for XP. The user may have installed god-knows-what drivers and have left who-knows-what running on the desktop then the game is started. He may also have "improved" the default settings of Windows and BIOS...Worse still, because there is no control over cooling or whether the power supply is adequate or not - either CPU or GPU or both may drop into thermal throttling without warning at any time! In essence, no two PC's are alike. If that's not bad enough - a PC game sells for less - the prices drop very soon after launch and piracy is rife. So providing games on the PC platform is 'iffy' at best from the point of view of profitability - hence RELATIVELY little effort can be put into making it work at the absolute peak of perfection. That's sad - but it's a fact of life. SteveBaker (talk) 04:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

If this were any other game than GTA 4 I would recommend getting 2GB of ram, and a more powerful graphics card (the ATI HD4850 if you can afford it, something like a GeForce 8800GT/GS or a 9600GT if your budget doesn't stretch that far) However GTA 4 is very CPU intensive, due to its complex physics engine, and the Euphoria animation engine, coupled with the large amount of characters on screen. You don't tell us what CPU you have so I can't tell you a specific processor for your socket, but a 2.4Ghz Dual Core should be your minimum on that end. 212.219.8.231 (talk) 09:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

@SteveBaker - Yeah, agreed. It's kinda' similar to the issues Hackintosh users are facing right now - since practically no two PCs are the same, hacking Mac OS X to work on all motherboard models (Asus, ECS, Foxconn, you name it) and OEM PC configurations is no easy task. And oh, sorry for the assembler comment, my mistake.

@212.219.8.231: Hmm, I could've gotten at least an Nvidia 8600, but I already spent my Christmas money on an 8400, although I'm planning to upgrade in the next couple of months, or when I get a job. Blake Gripling (talk) 11:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Well not meaning to insult but your 8400 is a pretty basic card by todays standards. It will run just about any program you can throw at it but certainly not at settings that look nice, and maybe not at good FPS. Please don't upgrade to an 8600. The improvement will be negligable. The minimum you should be aiming for is a a GeForce 9600GT, or an ATI HD4650, both of which give you good bang for your buck. If you wait a little while the Nvidia GTX 130 might come out in a non mobile form, and that will surplant the 9600. You would also see a significant boost in everything by putting some more ram in your PC, especially considering how cheap ram is right now. 212.219.8.231 (talk) 13:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, maybe if I rack up some more cash, I'll get a 9600GT. And another stick of RAM. Besides, the 8400 is only good at running those cheesy Korean MMORPGs the kids are into nowadays... Blake Gripling (talk) 23:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

You're taking a risk that you'll spend money on the 9600 and the RAM and get zero (and I mean, literally zero) speedup. If the bottleneck is your CPU (which I think it is) then upgrading the rest won't help at all. As others have said, GTAIV is a CPU hog because of all of the physics and animation - since you have the slowest CPU the game will support - I'd say that was your problem. Anyway - you can find out by reducing the resolution of the screen. If cutting the resolution down makes things go faster - then the graphics card will help. If it doesn't then putting a faster graphics card in there probably won't make a difference to frame rate at your current screen res. Adding RAM won't help unless you have a bunch of other software running - so try shutting down every program and unnecessary service before starting the game - if that helps then more RAM may help...if it doesn't then it won't. SteveBaker (talk) 17:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

No, if he doesn't have a good video card, then he would have wasted his money. To be safe, he should upgrade all three. How do I know this? Because I bought a new laptop with a 2.5 GHz dual-core CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and an ATI Radeon HD 3400 video card. The result? GTA IV barely runs.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 22:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Which is precisely why I recommended reducing screen resolution to see if that speeds things up. I am actually a graphics programmer, working in the games industry - so I do know just a little about what I'm talking about! If you drop the resolution, the graphics card will have fewer pixels to draw - so it will be less heavily loaded. If it is the bottleneck and the CPU is sitting around waiting for it - then dropping the resolution will produce a faster frame rate. If the CPU is the bottleneck then giving the graphics card a little less work to do doesn't help the CPU at all - all it does is to make the graphics card sit around twiddling it's thumbs for even longer. So, if you try this simple experiment - you'll know which thing needs to be upgraded. Similarly - if the game does actually RUN in 1Gb (as it claims) then adding more RAM can only help if the game doesn't actually have access to all of that RAM because something else that the game designers didn't expect to be there is hogging RAM. So - try shutting stuff down. If the frame rate of the game improves when you free up more RAM - then buying more RAM might help...if not, then don't bother spending the money. These are not difficult tests - but they do actually work. "Trust me, I'm a professional!" SteveBaker (talk) 02:51, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I might swap my PDC with a 2.2Ghz Core2Duo installed in the other PC in my house. Will that make things smoother? Blake Gripling (talk) 23:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I thought I just answered that question, but do whatever you want. I have a 2.2 GHz CPU, 1 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GEForce 7300GT in my desktop, and it doesn't even run.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 23:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

COMPUTER ENGG> OR COMPUTER SCIENCE>!?????????

hey all, Ok i know this isn't the "education" related reference desk but i'm pretty sure many computer professionals answer questions in this section and so hoped that one of them might answer my question rather than if i asked it in another section.I'm going to do my undergraduate in the computer stream and i'm hoping to join florida institute of technology.Firstly i would like to ask is florida institute any good for computers or good in general? Secondly i'm divided on whether to choose computer engineering(1) or computer science(2) because as of now the only difference i know between them is that (1) has subjects related to computer hardware as well whereas (2) does not.But i still fail to understand which is a more promising stream in the future.So i basically want to know which is a better stream to do and I'd appreciate it if you of you guys could help me out in figuring out which is the better option for and why you would choose one over the other.P.S. i want to specialize in 3D games programming so is it a good option to get into FIT for my undergraduate and then specialize elsewhere? And also if i take computer engineering could you specify what extra subjects there would be in the course?(P.P.S.I hate physics(if it helps in your answer))! Vineeth h (talk) 05:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I'd expect that physics would, indeed, be important for a career in computer engineering, with topics like heat transfer being absolutely vital. If you want to do 3D games programming, that would be computer science (except creating the consoles and equipment for the games). StuRat (talk) 13:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course, if you really want to work in games, Vineeth, you might also want to consider a school that offers a curriculum specifically geared towards that career. Gamecareers.com has a pretty exhaustive list of various schools that have programs like that, both in the United States and elsewhere. Not all of these institutions are created equal, obviously, but if you want to learn how to make games (as opposed to learning things that can be applied to making games), why not really go for it? -- Captain Disdain (talk) 15:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

From my experience at an engineering institute, "Computer Engineering" meant participation in the introductory engineering classes, but no specific focus on physics concepts, etc., with a few high-level courses on transistors and VLSI. Realistically, the class overlap with "Computer Science" is quite extensive (and can be made even more so with electives), and most employers lump "Computer Engineering" in with "Computer Science" anyway, which is good considering there is significantly less demand for hardware design than software design. No reputable firm is going to hire a "Computer Engineer" to design heatsinks any more than they would hire a "Mechanical Engineer" to lay out a CPU. The game design sector can be quite intense; I'd recommend against a school specializing in "game design" unless you are certain that's where you want to end up (and even then it's worth a second thought). If I had to choose between "Computer Engineering" and "Computer Science", I'd pick both. If that wasn't possible, I'd pick "Computer Science". Of course, this (and all advice, especially from random people on the web) should be weighed against what *you* want to accomplish. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 05:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Retrieving Deleted Files

Hello, I accidentally deleted a folder on my external hard drive. I was wondering if there was any way to retrieve these files. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.134.129.235 (talk) 05:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

If you just check the questions made after january 1st ,2009, then you will come across the exact same question asked by another person.I have already replied to his answer so just check up the question asked about "retrieving files asked after january 1st and you will see the question and my answer.Vineeth h (talk) 05:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Since it appears to be archived here is the question Vineeth is refering to - Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2009_January_5#deleted_file_retrieval_program 212.219.8.231 (talk) 09:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Reinstalling windows

I want to reinstall Windows on an old laptop, but I don't have the cd it came with. It's a legit copy of Windows, and I do still have the product key (from the sticker on the laptop). Is there any way I can download it and burn it? (I've heard that would be illegal, but I figured there might be a way since I do have a product key). I tried to use the system recovery program on it (it's a gateway laptop) but it said I needed a recovery cd. Gah! I'm so glad my current computer has a recovery partition. Anyway, any help would be appreciated. DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 05:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Let's assume that you do infact have the cd-key and that you aren't lying.Then it'd be perfectly alright to just do a torrent download for windows xp professional and then enter the cd-key which you legally bought. (Removed this line. We should be linking to potentially illegal downloads, even if this particular person does have a licence - 212.219.8.231 (talk) 09:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC))

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Vineeth h (talk • contribs) 06:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Alright now, last time I checked there was considerable contention over whether torrent servers were "linking to potentially illegal downloads", and here we were linking to a search engine linking to a torrent server. Is it acceptable to link to a Wikipedia page linking to a search engine linking to a torrent server? How about a Wikipedia page linking to a Wikipedia page linking to a search engine linking to a torrent server? -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 10:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The odds are that someone who owns a laptop has already paid the Microsoft tax, and I personally see no reason why they should be required to purchase another copy of windows to reinstall software they already "own". Unfortunately, downloading the windows xp install isn't quite that easy. You need to find the version of windows xp that corresponds to your product key (probably not the "corporate" version widely available online). You can theoretically find out what version of windows xp to search for in Start > Control Panel > System. If you are able to find that version online then there is some hope that your product key will work. I would also recommend downloading the most recent service pack and writing it to a CD before you reinstall windows; you should be able to find a download link on Microsoft's support site. Finally, if/when you have to call Microsoft for support, it would probably be best to skip the details of this process since it undoubtedly violates the terms of their end-user license agreement--just tell 'em you reinstalled with a recovery disk. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 06:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Your user page says This user contributes using a Mac, and doesn't know why Windows was ever invented. There seems to be a certain contradiction..... But let's put aside the contradiction and instead concentrate on your presumed familiarity with the Mac. This of course uses Mac OS X (unless you're really old and funky). This in turn is based on Unix. GNU is not Unix, but well, it works in the same way (plus a few more). "Linux" is GNU. Whoopee, you can download and install GNU/Linux, and legally too. Morenoodles (talk) 10:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

He said it was an old laptop. Could be testing stuff, don't poke holes in it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.240.66 (talk) 15:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

You'll notice it also says I use Microsoft Windows under duress... if you going to take the time to investigate me, at least do a thorough job. haha. DaRkAgE7_[Talk] 19:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

S-Video... 7-pin laptop to 4-pin TV

Hello. Because my DVD player's screwed, I'd like to connect my laptop up to my TV. My laptop has a 7-pin S-Video socket, but my TV only has 4-pin. What is the solution? Use a 4-pin for both, or buy an adapter? Or something else? ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 08:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

According to our page on S-video, "The 7-pin socket accepts the 4-pin plug (unlike the standard 7-pin socket) and the S-video signals are available on the matching pins." So it would seem that a four-pin cable would allow you to connect your laptop to your television. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 09:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Keylogger removal

I'm trying to help a friend and can't find much help generally available online. She doesn't seem comfortable telling me too much. This is what I seem to understand so far. She's using an HP laptop running Windows (she could possibly be running Ubuntu, but I'll assume Windows). She feels that when someone was in her place, that they installed a keylogger that isn't getting flagged by any of the Anti-spyware/Anti-virus software she's tried. She claims it's not visible in applications, processes, or services. When I asked her why she felt there was a problem, she mentioned "Naim feedbags" which apparently keeps/is some sort of log. "Naim feedbags" didn't seem to score any useful hits on Google, so I'm a bit confused here. I know this isn't much to work with, but hopefully someone here can at least point me in a useful direction. Thank you.

Hmmmm... Perhaps AIM feedbags? Which could be an error message upon trying to add more than 150 "buddies" [1] or just adding new "buddies" [2] using iChat. Some directions for potentially fixing one cause of this error are available at [Macworld forums].

Alternatively, you might consult our page on Paranoia. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 16:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

And hey, maybe she's right? If someone has installed some really custom software it's totally possible it wouldn't show up on a blacklist. Tell her if she's really worried to copy all her data off, wipe the drive clean, and reinstall the OS. And then show her how to put a password on her machine. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, because somebody who can write a custom keylogger will be stymied by a Windows password. *If* there is a keylogger or if you want a resolution that practically guarantees there isn't then a reinstall makes sense. But, given that she is unable/unwilling to provide details on what operating system she's running or what error message she's receiving to her would-be rescuer a reinstall sounds rather unfeasible. An alternative might be to have her download and burn a live CD like Knoppix which she can then use to boot and protect herself from keyloggers whenever she feels the need. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 01:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't be a twit. A custom keylogger can be written with just a smattering of knowledge of Visual Basic. It isn't exactly rocket science. And who knows what she can provide—there's a difference between having provided it and being able to provide it. There are lots of non-technical ways to infer the existence of something technical. If someone starts telling you about things you've been typing, you can probably guess that something is up, even if you don't understand the technical aspects of it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 18:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

And a windows password can be bypassed by any bootable media. If she'd provided *any* evidence of a keylogger then we wouldn't be having this discussion. But she didn't ("Naim feedbags"?). Of course she could at some point in the future provide such evidence; then we would be able to offer actual assistance instead of randomly guessing. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 20:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Get a program like IceSword (google it) and check the Hooks. If there's no keyboard hooks from unknown programs, you're safe. --wj32 ^t/c 05:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey guys, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to this board for a while. Thank you for your help. I could have gotten more info from her, but she felt she was inconveniencing me. It would have been rather awkward at the time. Anyway, I will suggest she try Ice Sword for now. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.37.189.37 (talk) 15:03, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

POPS And OOPS in C++

What are the difference between POPS And OOPS ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Subhadeep reloaded (talk • contribs) 14:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

"oop" stands for "object-oriented programming", which a programming paradigm available in C++ and other object-oriented programming languages.

a "pop" is either a stack operation, or an acronym for "post office protocol", both of which are programming language independent. C++'s standard-template library has a "stack" class for non-hardware stack operations, one method of which is named "pop".

"pop" and "oop" are not comparable. -- Fullstop (talk) 15:10, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

'POP' may stand for procedure-oriented programming. I've never seen that acronym used though. — Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 22:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Techlepathy

What exactly is techlepathy? Is it possible with today's technology? What are your thoughts on the future of this technology? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.203.204.66 (talk) 15:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Techlepathy implies it hasn't been done yet, but does describe it nicely. As to my thoughts, well, que sera sera...- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Technology can actually block the transmission of emotions, hence the need to add emoticons to typed sentences in order to restore the emotional subtext. Of course, this emotional deficiency in writing is as old as writing itself, but the diff is that we now use writing for quick, terse, informal communications that don't allow for careful wording to try to get the emotional subtext just right. Thus a smilie or flame stamp on an e-mail can get the job done quickly. StuRat (talk) 16:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Um... Telepathy technology? Or are you referring to Telepathy (software)? --wj32 ^t/c 05:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

An unhealthy desire to techle somebody? A new area of medicine? Come on. Give us a hand here. After all, we can't read your mind. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Scientific Computing

I thought of posting this in the Math section but I think that this post would be most relevant here. I have a couple of questions. I am working with MATLAB 7.1 with service pack 3. I wrote a function with generates a matrix (according to some rules), updates the matrix (using some more rules), and after a certain criteria is reached, the function terminates. Now the problem is that I want the function to run a couple of times so I wrote a script which basically executes the function (let us say) ten times. If the function by itself takes t units of time to run, then running the script should take around 10t. But when I run the script, it seems to take much much much longer, like 100t or something. My questions is, is this typical behavior with programs? I have done plenty of simple programming in the past but this is my first attempt at something so big. What is happening? Is my system getting bogged down because of the function running 10 times consecutively? Is it because the RAM doesn't have a chance to be cleared? By the way, I am working with Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and my machine is decent with AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ 2.81 GHz with 2GB of Ram. I also tried increasing my virtual memory. The initial is 4092MB with the maximum allowed being 8092MB (is this good for my hard drive? Is this recommended or will this kill my drive faster?) but this seems to have no effect.

I am thinking that running the function once takes a certain amount of RAM which is probably less than what I have to offer so there is no problem. And then when the function stops running, the RAM is freed. But when I run the script, you need ten times as much RAM which is more than what I have to offer so when my RAM fills up, it has to clear up the RAM and then uses it again. Is this what is happening? Does anyone know how do these programs deal with memory? Also, how much slower is writing to my hard drive than writing to RAM? Is paging beneficial at all?

(And by the way, there are no graphics involved. I am only concerned with speed so far. I know that displaying stuff causes the program to run much slower. The function just runs and all the calculations are done in memory and at the end a number is displayed).-Looking for Wisdom and Insight! (talk) 18:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

For best performance, you very much want to avoid going to paging space, as this is usually far slower than running directly from RAM, especially for programs that must constantly read and write data to memory. A good program would, indeed, free up all the memory when it's finished with it and then allocate new memory as needed, but the real world is full of horrid programs that may never free up the memory they reserve. Whether MATLAB has this flaw, I can't say, but you seem to have provided evidence that it has. StuRat (talk) 20:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Manually expanding your paging file probably has little impact because by default Windows will automatically expand it when necessary, and I believe writing to the hard drive is on the order of at least 100 times slower than writing to RAM. While in my experience Matlab was never particularly fast, there are definite things to avoid to prevent it from slowing to a crawl. Searching Google for "Matlab performance" will return a number of hits with good advice on how to work around Matlab's quirks. In particular, this site shows how you can profile your code's execution to determine where Matlab is behaving poorly. -- 74.137.108.115 (talk) 21:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Given that you have two loops — the iteration inside the function that decides when to stop frobbing the matrix, and the iteration that calls that function n times — the first thing to check (before worrying about complicated things like swapping) is how many times the loops are executing. Have the function print (or store in a variable, or whatever) the number of times it frobs the matrix, and see if — for reasons I can only guess at from this information — the function is doing more work in the case where you call it repeatedly than in the case where you call it once directly. Also important, presumably, is the size of the matrices involved (since it counts as yet more loops, perhaps implicitly, nested inside the function's loop); is that a constant? --Tardis (talk) 23:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Animation Software

I am interested in a career of animation. Not the CG animation of today, just traditional drawn cartooning. I realize it would take too long to animate everything by hand, so I would scan in drawn images and use computer assistance for coloring, putting together the frames, etc. This is my question. What software would be used for computer assisted hand drawn animation? What shows use this style of animation? For Mac would be nice. --32.140.39.233 (talk) 19:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure about specific software, but tweening is one thing you'll want, where two frames are provided by you and the computer creates additional frames in between those two. StuRat (talk) 20:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure the OP wants to use tweening. Sounds to me like he/she just wants aid in compositing and coloring. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Adobe Flash is pretty adept at this sort of thing. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 20:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of the programs at 2D Animation software and Free 2D graphics animation software may be of interest. Most 3D animators also work well with traditional drawings, some that come to mind are Blender, Maya and PowerAnimator (the last two I think are used to animate South Park). Macromedia Studio MX is also worth a look. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.88.87 (talk) 22:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I've also heard good things about Toon Boom Studio.--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 00:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, if you are talking about traditional cel animation, then Toon Boom Studio is the industry leader. --71.158.216.23 (talk) 14:49, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Samsung i85 mp3 problems

It seems to be a bug in the camera software but ever since I changed the background on the camera, I have been unable to use it as an mp3 player. I tried formatting my SD card and resetting the camera (from the camera menu) but to no avail. Does anyone know what I can try to fix the issue? Thanks a lot. Kushal (talk) 21:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

:I am already wondering if this question is so one off that I will not get a reply. :( Kushal (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)I want to be optimistic. Kushal (talk) 01:39, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Equal lenth columns works in standards-compliant browsers, but not IE

I've searched all over Google for an answer, but I haven't found anyone else with a situation like mine. I have two divs as columns on User:Dudemanfellabra/Sandbox2. The first column is 60% width floated left, and the second one has a 61.3% left-border to give a little space between the columns. I'm trying to make the two columns equal length (without using tables), and I've found a solution for lengthening the right column if the left one is initially longer than it, but this only works in standards-compliant browsers (I have FF3, Opera, and Safari) and doesn't work when the right column is longer than the left one initially. To make the right column expand to the left column's length, I simply added a <br style="clear:all"/> to the end of the column and removed the bottom padding. This expanded the right column all the way down but left it one pixel longer than the left, so I removed the bottom border and replaced it with a div with negative margins and zero padding to make a faux bottom border. This is not possible to do when the right column is initially longer than the left because the left column is loaded before the right and placing a br clear:all results in a regular br because there is nothing to clear yet when it is loading. On top of that, I can't get this solution to work in IE at all; the br clear:all does nothing to the end of the right column.

So I guess I actually have two questions. The first is how to get it to work when the right column is initially longer than the left, and the second is how to make the fix (or a new fix) compatible with IE. Any suggestions? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I also tried floating both columns left, but that doesn't even work in FF3 etc.. I can do it with javascript, but I'd rather not have to use it. Anyone? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 23:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

This is the faux column problem, is it not? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)