Computing desk
< July 15	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 17 >

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.

July 16

my xbox

win i plug in my power to my xbox it will not come on why is that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.205.201.13 (talk) 02:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you getting the Red Ring of Death? Any error codes? Perhaps call 1-800-4MY-XBOX. Useight (talk) 03:10, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can attest that their support does not suck. Try it out! Is this an original Xbox or Xbox 360? --mboverload @ 05:32, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you have to send it back for repair remove all accessories including the disk cover and faceplate if you have a xbox 360; they remove those and you don't get them back..87.102.86.73 (talk) 11:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

iPod touch and comcast

Does anyone know if the iPod touch allows someone to access Comcast email through the Mail application? I know how to access it through Safari, but I really want to figure out how to use Mail. --Dem393 (talk) 03:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does Comcast email have POP3 or IMAP access? --antilived^{T | C | G} 05:21, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comcast POP3 access on iPod Touch. Or try their web portal built for mobile devices. [1] Forgive me if I'm out of line but you should try gmail.com. I'm not telling you that it's better - just that it provides a lot of interesting and cool features. Good luck! --mboverload @ 05:31, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help! I guess I can use gmail someday. If I happen to delete a message from my iPod, then that doesn't affect my actual account, right?--Dem393 (talk) 13:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

itunes

if a song u bought gets erased off ur computer...how can u get it back from itunes without paying again? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.14.124.175 (talk) 03:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Apple considers all tracks bought from iTunes the same as selling you a physical copy. If you "loose" it there is no way to get it back. Apple has not figured out the difference between physical and digital yet I guess. Sorry mate, you're out of luck =(. However, I'm sure Copyright Jesus won't smite you if you download it off a P2P application. --mboverload @ 05:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this the case even on the DRM infected stuff? If so, what's the point of the DRM? Nil Einne (talk) 11:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. DRM files as well. The point of DRM is so that you can't give it to someone else, not for Apple or anyone else to keep a running database of everything that you ever bought from them. Dismas|^(talk) 12:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's right, Digital Rights Management is completely one-sided, with only protections for companies and none whatsoever for consumers. Another consumer protection which should be offered is the right to get any song you've paid for in any digital format. If you paid for a song and some day want it in the "new MPEG-9 format, which allows you to remix the song as desired, since it contains separate tracks for each instrument and voice", there shouldn't be an extra charge for that (or at least not as much for a song upgrade as for a new purchase). StuRat (talk) 15:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why shouldn't there be a charge? Just because I buy a cassette today doesn't mean I get a CD tomorrow (and don't tell me it's because the medium costs money, because we all know that's a very small part of the overall price). --98.217.8.46 (talk) 02:22, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The basic issue is what you bought when you bought the cassette: Where you only buying the physical cassette or the rights to the music on the cassette or both ? If they argue you only bought the physical cassette, then this is saying the music on it has no value and thus can be copied freely. For this reason they argue that you are buying both, so that either stealing a blank cassette or copying the music on it is a crime. However, if they have sold you the rights to the music, distinct from the medium which carries it, then it's not proper for them to try to sell you the rights to the same music repeatedly, every time they change the medium on which it's carried. Some charge for the new medium itself is reasonable (although, as you've said, this cost is negligible), but you shouldn't be forced to buy the music on it again, as you've already paid for it. This is similar to buying other information, like a computer program. Upgrades are either free or much lower cost for most computer programs, you aren't normally expected to pay the full cost again. And, in this case, the program has (presumably) been improved, it's not just the same old program on a new medium. StuRat (talk) 13:13, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well and freight and shelve space and rent and wages and other assorted costs, which are basically removed by digital distribution. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

← Simply put, there's a reason Apple has a backup feature in iTunes. Any time you buy new songs/albums, you should make a backup of your purchased music to CD/DVD with that feature. From what I've read, the DRM isn't Apple's fault as much as the music industry was unwilling to allow end-users to copy files on their own, and they imposed fees on Apple for each song downloaded (so it costs Apple a lot of money to let users re-download songs free). At least EMI is allowing non-DRM songs to be sold on iTunes. I just wish more labels would follow suit. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:11, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Call Apple. They allow a one-time re-download per lifetime. In the future, back up your music. And/or use Time Machine --70.167.58.6 (talk) 18:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Websites, directories, subdirectories, and the like....

How does one go about creating something like a subdirectory but ending up with a web address such as "www.abc.com/def" and not "www.abc.com/def/". nat.utoronto 08:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(please nothing too complicated...thx) nat.utoronto 08:46, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can't. example.com/abc refers to the file named abc whereas example/abc/ refers to the directory named abc. --antilived^{T | C | G} 08:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see... nat.utoronto 08:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

so how do you get an html file without the .html (i.e. "www.abc.com/def.htm" → "www.abc.com/def") nat.utoronto 08:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can have a file named anything you want, as long as you set up the web server to somehow know what type of file it is and send the correct MIME type. It might not even be a regular file; it might be some kind of script; again, the web server would have to be set up to run this script. --Spoon! (talk) 09:15, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you wanted an address such as "www.example.com/abc" one would create the folder named "abc" in the document root and then create a file called "index.html" in the "abc" folder. When someone enters the URL "www.example.com/abc" the server or the browser (I forget which) would automatically add the trailing slash "www.example.com/abc/" and the server would then serve the file "www.example.com/abc/index.html". Depending on your browser and/or the server the URL showing in the address bar would show "www.example.com/abc/". -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 09:11, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above answer is probably the one you want. The rest of them do not seem to answer the question correctly. The way you have it display a directory like that is by using the index file, which is the file automatically displayed by a server whenever you go to just a directory and don't specify the file. It is usually "index.html" or something like that (index.htm, index.php, index.cgi, etc.), but this can usually be configured at the server level. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 13:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You could set it up with mod_rewrite, but I'm not really sure why you would. Any half-decent web server (certainly Apache) automatically redirects the unslashed version to the slashed version — Matt Eason ^{(Talk  Contribs)} 12:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The question is ambiguous. He could be asking whether you could have http://abc.com/def display a page but http://abc.com/def/ display a different page or a 404 or something. This obvioulsly could be done, I don't know if mod_rewrite would do it but you could write a mod_xxx that would look at the original request URL. I don't know why you'd want to though. -- Q Chris (talk)

The server can't just quietly rewrite the URL. If the browser asks for a directory without the trailing slash, the server must redirect it to the URL with the trailing slash, or else relative links won't work correctly. For example, if a page at:

http://abc.com/def

has the link:

<a href="something.html">link</a>

the browser will interpret it as "http://abc.com/something.html". But if the page is at:

http://abc.com/def/

then the browser will interpret it as "http://abc.com/def/something.html". In action:

$ telnet www.gnu.org 80
Trying 199.232.41.10...
Connected to gnu.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD /software/tar HTTP/1.0
Host: www.gnu.org 
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:42:21 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.55
Location: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/
Cache-Control: max-age=-8031789
Expires: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:39:12 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Connection closed by foreign host.

--Sean 13:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A typical url of http://example.com/some/path/file?a=b can be split into different bits. The host ("example.com") is used to connect to the correct computer on the internet. All the rest ("/some/path/file?a=b") gets fed into the web server software running on that computer. Normally this software will treat the path ("/some/path/file") as giving the location of the web page to return, but it doesn't have to do this (Django, for example, looks up the path in a list of accepted paths to decide what to do). The details depend entirely on the web server software.

Common web server software like Apache have configuration files which describe what file to display in a number of different situations, such as what file to display if the path given refers to a directory and not a file. It also describes what other programs are used on the file before it is displayed: for example, any file ending in .php will be passed through the PHP software before the web server returns it.

This is all general advice really - we can be more specific if you say which web server you're using (Apache, IIS, ...?) --h2g2bob (talk) 22:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Disable mouse shortcuts in Firefox

How do I disable mouse shortcuts in Mozilla Firefox 3.0? Neon Merlin 19:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Compile it without mouse shortcuts support.

I suspect that thats not that useful of an answer given the circumstances. What shortcuts do you wish to modify? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- - - If you type 'about:config' in the address bar you will get a lot of config options. In the filter field type 'mouse'. Try editing some entries. Be careful though, as it can really mess up the Firefox installation, for which I may not be held responsible. :D Link -Google Spider (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Audio Files (eg WAV, AIFF, MP3) to MIDI converter?

Does anyone know if such a thing even exists? And were might I find one if it does? 76.166.21.149 (talk) 23:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Search for program called mp3 to midi" or mp32midi ;)

Note that converting to MIDI is very difficult and rarely works well, as the software has to distinguish the different instruments playing in the recording, plus filter out noise and vocals. — QuantumEleven 15:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Audio hosting on the Internet

I was wondering if there exists any site similar to YouTube but with the focus on audio files, not video. There is Flickr for images, but I don't know of any audio equivalent. Is there anything like this? I don't mean just a place to store files, but one with the focus on listening to them. I'm also aware that YouTube has some audio focussed videos with little or no visual component, but it's hardly a paradise if you just want audio. Richard001 (talk) 23:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- There is: www.wrzuta.pl  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.222.86.16 (talk) 23:41, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are a bunch of sites that are kind of like that. The first two that come to mind are Last.fm and Muxtape, neither of which are really directly comparable to YouTube, but both of which let you browse things and listen to music. (Muxtape in particular is pretty cool.) Oh, and as slow, clumsy and horrible as MySpace is to use, it's still very popular with a lot of bands, so you can certainly find a lot of music there as well. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 00:07, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are www.anywhere.fm and www.mybloop.com, anywhere.fm only allows uploads of music files, while mybloop allows all types of files less than 1 GB in size, but has ads between music playback. Both can stream music and have no limit on the number of uploads... SF007 (talk) 02:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2008 July 16

Contents