Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2007 January 16

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January 16

IRC Poker

I'm looking for an IRC dealer bot. I've tried looking for one, but all I can come up with is graphical front-ends and such, or cheating/observing bots. Does anyone have an idea? aznshorty67 00:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Something like this Texas Hold'em bot? --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 01:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

converting nanograms to kilograms

I have completed the conversion of 175 nanograms to kilograms. My answer is 1.75*10 to the 11th power kilograms. Would this be a correct answer? If not could you explain?

71.29.135.78 01:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, according to Google's conversion feature, 175 nanograms to kilograms is 1.75 × 10^ -10 kilograms. Can be found here conversion. Deltacom1515 02:02, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

But for the sake of learning, nano is 10^-9, kilo is 10^3, and you want kilograms, so it's (175 nanograms) * (1 kg / 10^12 nanograms) = 175^-12 kilograms, or the 1.75 kilograms. The 12 comes from the difference between the -9 and the 3, or 12. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 02:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Now that I look at this, Google would be wrong then. Interesting. Deltacom1515 03:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

You should really learn scientific notation. 175 * 10^-12 kg is the same thing as 1.75 * 10^-10 kg. Notice the decimal has moved. --24.147.86.187 03:59, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

And for the record, I forgot to put 10^-10. So yes, 175^-12 = 1.75^-10. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 09:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I thank you all for your help! I am learning [scientific notations] for the one that has concerns, and thanks for you help too.12.13.183.220 17:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Line Rider

If this isn't in the right desk, then someone feel free to move it. Anyways, how does one go about taking their line rider tracks and turning them into movies to display on YouTube? Deltacom1515 01:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

• No idea, I guess it involves video screen capture technology. Why not ask someone who already did it on YouTube? No doubt, they know how to do it. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Have a look here

I use HyperCam, and I think you can use FRAPS, but I have never used it before. x42bn6 Talk 21:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

No, fraps doesn't work since it's not a fullscreen app or directx/opengl --froth^T 22:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Searching with exact grammar

How do I make a search engine include punctuation in my searches? For example, I'm trying to search for "Push!!", and I don't want all of the search results to just give me "push".--SeizureDog 03:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I thought "Push!!" would do it (with the quote marks). But looking at advanced search in google it doesn't appear that punctuation counts at all! Vespine 03:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, you'd think wouldn't you? It's been somewhat frustrating in some searching. Gave me trouble in doing research for Shuffle! as well. Darn these simple Japanese titles >:( --SeizureDog 04:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Put more key words in ur search. Thats probably the only way to find wat ur looking for. See here --|K.Z|Z.K| Do not vandalize... 04:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I've been having to resort to. I was hoping there was a better way though.--SeizureDog 04:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I dream of an exact-string search engine. I wish there was a way to force these exact searches with Google or Yahoo search, but I guess there isn't. :( ~~ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kieff (talk • contribs) 09:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC). damn you, bot! — Kieff 10:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Google used to have the exact word search, but they changed it to suit user convenience. Seems it hurt more than it helps. I checked most of the other major search engines and the closest i got is in ask.com, which gives u a result if u do at least three exclamation marks. [1] --|K.Z|Z.K| Do not vandalize... 04:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Telecom

What is ASTIC in tele-communication?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.138.120.38 (talk) 11:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

• My Spanish language skills are pretty bad, but I suspect it may refer to http://www.astic.es - Mgm|^(talk) 12:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

80.7.69.103 17:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Podcast

My Mum wants to download one, or if possible all, of these Paul McKenna podcasts onto her MP3 player that is not an iPod. Her MP3 player uses Sonicstage software. Is this possible? The blurb at the bottom says "The audio can be played on your computer, or moved to any MP3 compatible device, such as an iPod, other MP3 player..." However, when you click on "Download Podcast", we find that it only lets you listen, it doesn't let you get the files to put anywhere. Having installed iTunes, we can download the podcast from the iTunes music store. However: a) It seems to only let you download one episode. When we tried to add others, they overwrote the original one (that she really wanted). How can we avoid this? b) How can you get it from iTunes to a non-iPod MP3 player? Our article iTunes suggests this is different in the UK and the US (we're in the UK).

Any help appreciated. Otherwise we're going to try putting them one-at-a-time into iTunes, writing them to a CD, copying into SonicStage and downloading to her player. Don't even know if that will work. :-S Skittle 16:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Instead of left clicking on "Download Podcast", right click on it and find the equivalent of "Save Target As", and they're already in mp3 form ready to use in mp3 players. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, if you are managing them in iTunes already (which I recommend) all you have to do is go ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts/ to find the directory of the mp3 files that you already have. On a Windows computer I'm sure it isn't much different. X [Mac Davis] (DESK|How's my driving?) 21:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Probably My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts on windows. I wouldn't know- using mac software counts heavily against you on the day of judgement :) --froth^T 22:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh c'mon, everybody knows iTunes has the superior file managing system. X [Mac Davis] (DESK|How's my driving?) 05:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiktionary question

I have uploaded wiktionary xml file into my webspace and also uploaded mediwiki. But I don't know how to extract the information from wiktionary if someone search a word e.g. "absonded" or some other words.

I have uploaded the xml file of wiktionary in my doc folder.

How do I extract and display the content from xml file if someone searches the words?

thank you —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.7.69.103 (talk) 17:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

You may wish to check http://www.mediawiki.org/ for infos about setting up/importing MediaWikis. 68.39.174.238 15:15, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

spam-injection protection

To protect against spam injection, I've added code to search for the following:

• Newline characters %0A, %0D, \n, and \r in the "to address" and the "subject"
• Email headers "content-type:", "to:", "cc:", and "bcc:" (case insensitive) in the address, subject, and body
• Invalide email address characters in the to

Is there anything I'm missing? --Kainaw ^(talk) 20:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "spam-injection"? This isn't a computing term as far as I know. Can you describe what you think it is? --froth^T 22:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

More commonly known as email injection, I think. It's [ab]using online email forms to send spam by injecting extra headers to add extra recipients. Kainaw, I can't think of anything you've missed, but it's probably worth Googling around and/or reading the article I just linked to. Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 22:59, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed we also have an article on it at E-mail injection. Matt Eason ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 23:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

you are probably referring to the method used in the recent Stanford trackback spam case. In this case was escaped or html-encoded HTML code passed to the search query and the site un-escaped or html-decoded it when it showed the search phrase on the site. The easiest way to prevent that from happening is by using a HTMLEncode function, if it is supported by the programming language you are using. If that is not the case, simply replace manually the "<" with "&lt;" and the ">" with "&gt;" in the string that was entered by the user or passed as querystring parameter to the script before you return it to the user on the site. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 11:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Optimum Online

Is there any way to make you default email program, Optimum Online?68.193.147.179 20:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems that Optimum Online allows POP3 access. Please look at their instructions for further details. --Brad Beattie (talk) 00:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Determining authoritative name servers

This seems like it should be easy, but I can't figure it out. How can I find out what the actual authoritative name servers are for a given domain (as opposed to what a whois or NS query give)? —Chowbok ☠ 20:53, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that root nameservers serve IP addresses of the TLD nameservers, which push IP addresses of normal website domain nameservers, which push the IP address(es) of the website's server. You know the root nameservers' IP addresses because a file containing a list of root nameserver IPs is distributed with operating systems (I forget what that file is called right now, sorry), and the list updates itself once a connection has been established with at least one root nameserver. Frankly I have no idea how private networks handle domains without broadcasting (like I guess the windows home networking host does); I imagine the address to the "root nameserver" must be set up maunally when the computer is hooked up to the network. By the way, I don't know if there's an easy way to view the nameserver being given to you in each step of DNS resolution, but that information does pass through your computer at some point; it's not all behind-the-scenes --froth^T 22:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I found the answer, thanks. Just do an SOA query on the domain to one of the root servers and it will respond with the TLD's authoritative name servers. Then do an SOA query there, etc. —Chowbok ☠ 17:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Audio / Video

I have downloaded an old film, but the audio and video are not playing in sync. I watched the movie by opening it in two sessions, one for audio and other for video with a time gap.

is it possible to run them in windows media player using any other method. I have windows xp. 22:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC) slmking

I'm not sure about Windows Media Player, but VLC can shift the audio track down to the millisecond. It's free to download and I'd certainly recommend it. --Brad Beattie (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

In-browser chatting

I'm working on a project for an internal website at my company, and I want to have some lightweight in-browser chatting. I've considered using a Shoutbox or setting up an IRC server and either using a Java client (meh) or some sort of AJAX, buzzword compliant alternative to access IRC (so we can scroll back and whatnot). Does anyone here have any suggestions as to specific apps to check out? I can try a bunch on my own, but I figure someone out there must have solved a similar problem for themselves, so it's worth asking. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 23:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

YShout, an AJAX/PHP in-browser chat app, was just featured on digg.com today. Hopefully that satisfies your requirements. --Brad Beattie (talk) 00:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I installed YShout on one of my pages a couple months ago, it's a good and simple shoutbox, but like I mentioned, it'd be nice to be able to scroll up. But thanks anyhow! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)