Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 February 3

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February 3

Problems with iTunes

I just got an iPod touch and I downloaded and installed iTunes and I'm having problems with it. My PC uses XP and it meets all the requirements stated but something seems to be wrong. When I first connected my iPod iTunes opened automatically, I did somethings like organising music and then when I tried closing iTunes it wouldn't. I had to go to End Task in Task Manager and now it won't open at all. --RMFan1 (talk) 00:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like the program is stuck in between opening and closing... Try restarting your computer and try it all again.– Elliott  00:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I restarted my PC and it seems to be working fine now. However, I have another problem: I have some mp3s (lets say 10) that all belong to the same album and I have given them all the exact same album name but some of them appear as belonging to a different album. Why is this? --RMFan1 (talk) 00:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, i am not that familair with iTunes. try removing the mp3's from iTunes and then draging them back in. – Elliott  00:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd try selecting all the tracks in the album and edit the tags (get info). Go through all the tags (except track number and track name), rewriting them. The problem may lie in the fact that although you know they're the same album, you may have a typo in the album name, or the "year" field may differ – giving three "different" albums. Cycle~ (talk) 01:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I've experienced the same issue and it drove me nuts initially. The problem is with the ID3 tags. What happened with me was there 2 different artist tags. One of them is simply artist the other is album artist. If they're both present and don't match, iTunes and your iPod Touch will treat them as different artists. Hope this helps. Best regards. --Chasingsol^(talk) 03:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The easy way to do it is to select all the songs of the same album at once and change all their album titles at the same time. It'll guarantee they are in sync. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 04:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I had the same problem, also solved by going into the album, selecting a track, right or control click, 'Get Info', info tab and checking the 'Part of a Compilation' box - then rinse and repeat. Also stops compilation albums overflowing your cover flow. For forced quits you will need to Ctrl-Alt-Delete and finish terminating some other programes - they are most 'i' prefixed, e.g. iExample. Means you can run it again without rebooting. Lanfear's Bane | t 12:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, LB that was it! As I said the album names etc were exactly the same it was just that "part of a compilation" tag that was the problem. Also, thanks to everyone else as well for your suggestions —Preceding unsigned comment added by RMFan1 (talk • contribs) 16:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Spyware

Who does information collected by spyware go to? JCI (talk) 00:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Advertisers, in particular. Deep understandings of a target demographics browsing and purchasing habits can be funneled into quite a revenue if one knows what one is doing. Though I wonder how many of the makers of spyware actually channel that well. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the answer to your question would be the same as the question: 'When i buy a computer, who gets the money?'. – Elliott  00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the OP was asking about the ultimate destination of it, not that it went to whomever made the program. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If the "spyware" (per its name) "spies", and steals your personal information, then I imagine that it could end up in the hands of identity-thieves. --71.106.173.110 (talk) 08:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are just making it up as you go along, please... don't bother. --98.217.14.211 (talk) 12:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

To your bank for instance. With a request to transfer your money out. Dmcq (talk) 15:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

How often is Launchpad updated and what is the criteria for including a language in the installer?

How often are the projects that Launchpad hosts updated? I looked all over the Launchpad website but didn't find anything (I'm talking about the translations for Ubuntu in particular). Secondly, what criteria does a language need to fulfill to be included on the Ubuntu live CD installation disk? Is it chosen by the number of native speakers or by how much the debian-installer has been translated? I would really like to know. --BiT (talk) 02:43, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone know the answer? Should I send an e-mail to Launchpad, I asked at Launchpad itself but got no answers. --BiT (talk) 04:38, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Image search engine

Are there any search engines that will take an image from me as input and search and find other similar images on the web? Thanks for the reply.--202.88.229.115 (talk) 08:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

There are a number of services that claim something similar: TinEye, tiltomo, Live Search, GazoPa (limited beta--probably not much help here), pixolu. You can find even more search engines with Google. – 74  09:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Pixsta does something similar. Jay (talk) 10:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.196.141.3 (talk) 20:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

PHP safe mode

Resolved

Sometimes I have problems on my website, and they are related to "PHP safe mode". Now... my host offered to disable it. Should I say yes? Or would my website be more insecure with that disabled? Any disadvantages of disabling that? Thanks. SF007 (talk) 15:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Since you don't say what the problems are, I can only assume that you are attempting to use $_POST and $_GET variables without fully declaring them. For example, instead of using $_GET["username"], you are just using $username. You should not enable this "feature". It is a terrible security hole that hackers know how to exploit. If that is not the case, please explain what the problems are. -- kainaw™ 16:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

At this time I have no problems, but sometimes I have errors that I know are from PHP safe mode in my MediaWiki installation. I don't mess around coding, I just use the software the way it is... Anyway, all I want to know is if it is safe to disable PHP safe mode... What are the advantages of having that on? SF007 (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you haven't run into limitations with safe mode then just leave it on. There are a few places where having it off is necessary but usually if you learn to program with it turned on you can get around it. If you want to know how to get around the problems of your website related to safe mode, post them here, there is almost always a "safe" way of dealing with it. --140.247.249.208 (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but I just asked for them to disable that. I don't think there were any advantages in having that enabled. SF007 (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to a botnet. Just putting that in as they often miss out on the welcome message when they recruit you. Dmcq (talk) 21:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Why? From what I have learned PHP safe mode is designed to protect the server from scripts that run on the server, not from the outside. Besides, even the developers say it is defective by design, and it will be removed in the next version. I see no reason to keep this on... SF007 (talk) 23:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, but if someone outside gets your PHP to execute arbitrary code.... you can see the problem. The reason the developers removed it is not because it is "defective by design" but because one really ought to be taking care of this at the server level, not the PHP level. But many ISPs do not do this.... again, if you're running into problems with safe mode, it's probably because you're doing something dangerous... --98.217.14.211 (talk) 02:32, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What file types can one import into Blender?

What is the most cross-platform 3d file type? --80.58.205.37 (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

.3ds and .obj, which are very common 3D file types, are both supported, though a quick google search discovered a "they're patchy" thread from 2002. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 20:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Collada is designed for maximum portability. Dunno how well blender supports it though. There is a plugin. Personally, I load and save in blender's native format and write my own Python plugin to write files in a format that my application can understand. When I have to move files to another editor - I pick a format that they both support the best - there is no "one best". There are an enormous number of file importer/exporters in blender. SteveBaker (talk) 03:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but .max files are not supported. Apparently due to some proprietary issue... :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.205.37 (talk) 18:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

What are "stand-alone, unattached server side processes/deamons"?

Resolved

I am looking for a new webhost, and I came into one that says that "stand-alone, unattached server side processes/deamons" are not allowed... What the hell is that? Can you give some examples? Does it include MediaWiki? TorrentFlux? Opentracker? SF007 (talk) 19:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It's a daemon that runs on their server, one that runs all the time (rather than just a process that is created to handle a request from a web browser, email client, or whatever). They put this stipulation in because it's a shared system, wherein their calculation as to how much capacity to provide (for a given price) depends on most customers using 0% of the system almost all the time. If someone made a program that ran all the time (like a p2p program, or something that crunched the CPU like BOINC) then you'd be using much more than they'd planned for. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 19:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

So that means Mediawiki would be allowed (because it just runs when a browser tickles php scripts via the hosting company's web server) - but if you wrote a special "image cleanup" script that ran in the background all the time and resized uploaded images to a given size, that would be "unattached", and something they'd not want you to do. I don't know much about TorrentFlux, but it itself appears just to be a web interface to BitTornado - and it's things like BitTornado that they're worried about. 87.113.74.22 (talk) 19:34, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I think I understand now. It is something that is always running even if no one is visiting the website. Thanks. SF007 (talk) 23:08, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki question

How does MediaWiki store the version history of articles? Does it keep an exact snapshot of each version, or does it only keep the earliest version and maintain a list of differences, or does it employ a sophisticated combination of both? Or does it do something far more sinister? JIP | Talk 19:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

It stores the current version in a MySQL table called "cur". For older versions it stores "backwards deltas" made using a variant of the diff algorithm in a separate MysSQL table. So to recover the current version, it need only query cur. To get the second newest, it recovers the cur version, and then recovers a single diff, which it patches against cur to recover the second newest. To recover the 3rd newest it as to find and apply first the newest patch then the 2nd newest patch, and so on for older versions. So getting the current state of an article is very fast (deliberately so, because that's overwhelmingly what it is asked to do), and recovering older versions becomes more and more time consuming the more you're trying to move back (which again is wise, as that's an infrequent operation). 87.113.74.22 (talk) 19:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so it just maintains a list of differences, but in the opposite order as it is usually done. Thanks! JIP | Talk 20:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This way is a lot easier on the server, if you think about it. If you save the earliest revision and the diffs, then you have to re-make the current version every single time someone visits the page (even with Squid caches that's still a big task). When you save the current, then it'll only have to re-make the old ones, which are visited far less often (plus the Squids, making it almost 0 server load). flaminglawyer 03:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

WordPerfect table to text

Office software has become so advanced, some things that I could do with a single keystroke ten years ago are now obscure or impossible. Is it still possible in WordPerfect 9 to convert a table to tabbed text? —Tamfang (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)