Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 June 23

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June 23

pronunciation

why doesn't wikipedia provide pronunciations for entries? bruceb76.201.170.152 00:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

It does for some -- some even have audio pronunciations you can listen to. (For example, our article on France lists IPA transcriptions of both the English and French pronunciations, and our article on that nice street in Paris, the Champs-Élysées, has an audio pronunciation, too.) But adding a good phonetic pronunciation accurately is hard work, that not nearly every Wikipedia contributor knows how to do. —Steve Summit (talk) 00:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, the brits talk funny and put incorrect pronunciations.--71.185.141.218 04:46, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Funny compared to whom? I seem to recall the English language originated in Britain, and others later diverged from the true path. -- JackofOz 06:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you want to get serious, it's more complicated than that. But the Language reference desk would be the right place to discuss it. --Anon, June 23, 2007, 09:25 (UTC).

Just as humans are supposed to have originated in Africa, and there is more genetic variation in Africa than in other countries, the English language has more variation in England than in other countries. In the north of England, I have seen people living a hundred miles or less apart who profess to be unable to understand the "funny" speech of their countrymen. This has been the case for hundreds of years. Edison 15:37, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

brick wall removal

am taking down a brick wall, non-load bearing, and am wanting to save as much brick as possible for re-use. What is the best way to do this?

You could use some type of circular masonry saw to cut through the mortar only, but I suspect the cost of even renting such a saw would be far greater than the value of the bricks saved. I'd just use a sledgehammer to break up the wall, knowing it will break many bricks. Some will be spared. For the broken bricks, you can still use them for landscaping, fill, etc. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you could also try to use a pressure washer to wash away loose mortar, which might be effective on an old wall where the mortar is in bad shape. StuRat 05:04, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

You could try an old hammer and chisel, I used this to take out an old tile counter once, but a brick wall is going to be much more difficult. If you want the bricks because they *do* look old and weathered, you could try a sledgehammer, but put a bit of wood/metal up against the wall to help spread the blow out some to prevent cracking -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 05:22, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

When our contractor was pulling down an exterior wall where we needed to keep the bricks, he just popped them from above and behind, using a crowbar. They tended to come apart along the mortar lines and very few were broken in the process. I suspect that exact placement of the bar with respect to the wall hehind and the bricks in front was important, but I couldn't see that part, just the results. It was a labour-intensive process, however. I wouldn't have wanted to have paid for more than the 10 foot x 10 foot area that we rescued. Bielle 05:29, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The mortar in an old brick wall may have a little or a lot of adhesion to the bricks, depending on how much portland cement was in it. I have seen brick structures where the mortas was soft and crumbly and ones where the bricks were so tightly stuck together the bricks could not be taken apart from the wall without destroying them. Ideally, the mortar (a replaceable element) is softer than the bricks (a permanent element). Ideally you would be popping the bricks loose by a hammer and chisel with the force directed upward (not horizontally) and many of the bricks will just pop free. Some will break. If the mortars was high in cement, the part of the brick next to the mortar may stick and the bricks may all fragment. Edison 15:34, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

It depends entirely on the initial quality of the bricks and the mortar, their age, and the weathering they've been subjected to.

I had an abandoned chimney (close to 100 years old) in my basement which I dismantled by hand -- I didn't even need the hammer and chisel. The mortar had decayed to a crumbly powder.

I had another brick wall, just a few feet away along the stairs leading to that basement, in which the mortar had stuck to the bricks so tenaciously and hardened so exquisitely that it had become one with them; this wall broke into pieces which had nothing to do with the mortar joints.

And then there are lower-quality bricks which decay over the years and become less strong than the mortar binding them.

Using a wide-bladed cold chisel on the mortar joints, and attempting to remove residual mortar from the removed bricks with a chisel or a wire brush, is the way to go, but other posters are correct, it's labor-intensive, and you're not likely to get a 100% yield. —Steve Summit (talk) 15:37, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Contacting Other Users

How can I contact, communicate with, talk to, tell something to, or send messages to other users of Wikipedia? Is there any right way or correct way to do so? If so, then how? How should I contact other users? In what way are we allowed do so? How and in what way should I tell them something, especially if it's something personal and private?

Bowei Huang 02:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Every user has a user page and a user talk page; your user talk page is the primary place where people can communicate with you (or, conversely, their talk page is where you can communicate with them). For example, my user page is User talk:Ummit, and yours is User talk:Bowei Huang.

Guidelines for talk page usage are at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.

Of course, everyone else can see (and even comment on) messages you've left on talk pages. If a user permits it, it's also possible to send email. You can send me email by visiting Special:Emailuser/Ummit, and I could try to send you email by visiting Special:Emailuser/Bowei Huang. Note that if you use these pages to email a user, your email address is also revealed to them (so that they can reply).

My impression is that most people consider it good form to communicate out in the open (i.e. on regular talk pages) whenever possible. Certainly there are good reasons to carry out truly private conversations via email, but if you try to construct policy or make plans to manage a debate or issue that way, people could accuse you of conspiring behind their backs. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, the main contact route is to click on their user name (eg User:SteveBaker - me), then click on the 'discussion' tag and leave them a message by appending one to the end of the file - just like you asked this question. Leaving a message there causes a big orange banner to appear on the top of the next Wikipedia page that this user visits. Some users (me for example) also leave an email address - you can email those people by going to their user page and clicking on the 'E-mail this user' link in the 'toolbox' menu to the left of their user page. If that link is missing - then it's safe to assume that the user does not wish to be emailed. Yet other Wikipedians leave other contact information on their user: page - so in my case, you'll find a link to my personal website. SteveBaker 02:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Emailing users for details. Rockpocket 02:12, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, when you post a question on somebodies talk page they might want to reply on your talk page (so you will get the big orange banner with "new message") and will expect you to reply to them on their talk page... while others will prefer to keep the discussion on one talk page only to keep it centralized and easier to read. — Shinhan < talk > 13:57, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Be aware that many people may have a given user's talk page on their watch list, thereby seeing everything posted on the page. Edison 15:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Can I use E-mail or a user talk page to send messages to other users to request them to look at some particular websites? If not, then what I can use to ask them that?Bowei Huang 01:48, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

If you wish to promote some website by advertising it to other people than I'm sure most would be opposed to that. SPAM is bad no matter how is sent. While, if you just want to send a link to a website that might be useful for a certain Wikipedia article than you should post that URL on that article's talk page. — Shinhan < talk > 06:20, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Can I post a link to a website to someone that might be useful for an article in Wikipedia about criticism of a belief or idea? Or for an article or section of article about the responses and reactions to criticism of it? What about perhaps one that is useful, for writing an article or section of article about criticism or reactions and responses to criticism of it?Bowei Huang 05:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Party

My Mom and I are planning to go to a party tomorrow(june 23). My aunt has been counting on this for a long time. My family has too. But I dont know if we should go tomorrow. I have an EXTREMELY bad feeling. I think somethings going to happen. Im not sure if it will happen if we dont go but im pretty sure that it will if we do. I always stick with my instincts, and everything that i trust inside me is telling me not to go. What do i do? Is it a precognition? Any help would be nice.

We can't help you here. I'd say go, you only live once -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 04:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd call it a premonition. You may be interested in this site. Despite what Phoeba said, we can't give you any advice about whether to go to the party or not. It's something only you can decide. -- JackofOz 06:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Think about it logically. What could your attending actually bring by way of danger/disaster to the party? Your worry about it could mean that you make this into a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you don't go nothing will happen so it will fit your plan, but if you do go your worry/concern about something bad happening could be the cause of the 'bad' thing happening, meaning that you are ensuring what you don't want to occur will occur. ny156uk 12:17, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

And, as Phoeba has previously decreed, "Death is natural", so, go.

Did you go? Did anyone die? I'm on tenterhooks here! DuncanHill 22:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe they died, but they weren't a registered user, so no big loss.. Vespine 23:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Taxi service

outside of the train station on 30th street in philly is there taxi transporation at the ready or must taxis be reserved.--logger 06:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Having no knowledge at all of Philidelphia it would amaze me if it wasn't possible to get a taxi from a train-station within say a 20 minute period. I suspect they will have either a taxi-rank, a flag-down policy so you can flag down a taxi on the street or a freephone number to one of the major private-hire firms that can come and get you. Depends on time of day or not but it is, i'm sure, unlikely that you wouldn't be able to get a taxi pretty rapidly (unless 30th street station is some time little station in the middle of nowhere). ny156uk 10:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The one time I was in Philadelphia, I arrived by train, walked out the front door, and there was a taxi rank. I got one instantly. Unfortunately, I have no idea if it was the train station on 30th Street. —Angr 11:15, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

If you are able to call the station (Facility/Station Management – 215.349.3196 or 215.349.2455) then I would try them and they would be able to give you a definitive answer. If you cannot do this, there may be some information on their website [1]. Xarr☎ 13:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, during the day there are generally plenty of taxis right outside. Go to the big hall (you'll know it when you see it) and one side has doors straight outside where taxis are. There are also subways and other trains for throughout the Philly/south Jersey area. (For that last, look for the SEPTA regional rail signs.) zafiroblue05 | Talk 19:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

cleaning carpets

How do you remove candle wax out of carpets?

With a warm iron, apparently. See this ehow article. But do heed the warning to not actually let the iron touch the carpet. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 09:24, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I would place a paper towel over it and use a hair dryer (on hot and low fan settings) to heat the wax to melting without any risk of damaging the carpet. StuRat 13:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

And then the paper towel will absorb the wax. Without something to absorb it, you will just get a puddle of wax in your living room. A.Z. 15:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Before using the paper (brown wrapping paper works well, dull-side down) and heat-source, cool the wax (eg with an ice-cube) and scrape off as much as you can with the back of a knife. DuncanHill 19:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Death by virus

How many people are there in the united states who are beleaved to die from something (Like AIDS, cancer, or even a cold, anything like that,) each day as well as year depending on what ever source that relayable.

You'll have to dig through the data, but some of what you're looking for can be found via the links from here. 152.16.59.190 09:33, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

This is really hard to determine: You don't die from AIDS but rather the opportunistic infections at the terminal stages. Aside from physical trauma or exposure, you can pretty much blame every death on infections, and unless the cause is determined in autopsy you don't really know what infection is it (bacterial? viral?). Death is very complicated. --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's very simple - every death is caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. Natgoo 17:52, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I do remember reading that (in the uk at least) at some point in the 50s they took away the option "old age" as a cause of death on death certificates. I suspect something similar has been done in the US. (http://www.avert.org/usastaty.htm) Shows you aids info. You might not die of 'aids' itself but what it does to your body certainly means that death could be attributed to aids. For a rather sombre read look at (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005110.html) the top 10 killers in the US. ny156uk 10:40, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is the OP looking for though? The heading says "by virus" but then the ailments listed include cancer which is not caused by a virus. Dismas|^(talk) 12:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Except when it is, of course. Cervical cancer, for example. Algebraist 13:01, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, forgot about that one. Dismas|^(talk) 21:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Miscellaneously, I knew someone with AIDS who said once that he was suspicious of HIV orthodoxy because Uncle Sam's top AIDS guy was someone who had spent the Seventies trying to prove that all cancer is caused by virus. —Tamfang 06:41, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Why does that disqualify him? Quite a few cancers are known to be caused by viruses - and it's not at all bad that he attempted to extend that useful finding to cover all cancers. Providing he took a sensible non-dogmatic scientific approach - and was prepared to be open about his findings (which we now know would disprove his initial hypothesis) - I don't see a problem with his credentials. Back in the 70's, we didn't know much about the causes of cancer. Of course it might also be that he was terribly unscientific about it - but you didn't say that. SteveBaker 12:57, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Amount of text in a certain type of page?

Is there any page that could tell me something like this, or a script for it? Mainly, I want to find out how much text is in all articles starting with "S". I have a friend that said he had read all of the articles that start with "S", and honestly, I'm not sure whether he was kidding or not. Mainly, I want to know how much text there would be there, that way I could imagine how many books it would be worth (counting of course articles added since then) -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 10:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I would be amazed if your friend has read all articles beginning with S. If there are 1.85 million articles (just about) and 26 letters in the alphabet so that would be, assuming an even distribution, at least...71,000 articles. Taking into account that S is a popular occuring letter (see Scrabble letter distributions and I suspect that you could easily surpass 100,000 articles starting with the letter 's'. Not very scientific but anything near that ballpark would be amazingly unlikely that they have read all of the articles. Additionally I would not be sure how a user could find all the articles starting S in the first place. A useful tool for 'word counts' however is to copy/paste the text into a Word document and it should show the word count at the bottom of the screen in the bottom menu-bar (otherwise it can be found on one of the drop-down menu lists under 'word count'. ny156uk 12:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

(As an aside -- and I suppose I shouldn't mention this, my bigotry is probably showing -- that sounds to me like about the least useful way of getting word counts! If you're in a strictly-GUI environment, I suppose copying and pasting into some application is probably all you'll ever be able to do, but if you've got the benefit of a CLI, simply pipe into wc. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:06, 23 June 2007 (UTC))

I truly don't know the answer but it's huge. S is one of the more common letters in the English alphabet. My Linux spell-correction dictionary has 82,000 words, 9,200 of which start with 'S' - so statistically, we might reasonably assume that at least 10% of of English words start with 'S' - and therefore that at leat 10% of Wikipedia article title do too. We have 1.8 million articles - so we'd expect well over 180,000 of them to start with the letter S. OK, so let's be generous and assume that your friend has been reading articles for five years. That's 36,000 articles per year - about 100 articles every day. If your friend does this for 10 hours a day every single day of his life - then he has to have been doing nothing but reading one article every six minutes for five solid years all day without a break. No time for school or work - little time for friends - if this were true - you'd definitely know about it. It's just about possible to read an article every six minutes because some 'stub' articles can be read in maybe 20 seconds - and that would make up for the half hour it would take to read some of the longer articles - but it's very unlikely that someone could be that dedicated. Please tell him: "Steve Baker says you are a liar." Even if it's true (which we know it isn't), he's not going to be able to make that claim for much longer. New articles are added to Wikipedia at a rate of about 2000 every day - so if he really is reading them for 10 hours a day every day of his life without a break, he's going to have to up his rate to 20 's' articles per hour to keep up, so now he has to read one every 3 minutes - and the pace is increasing. He should probably have claimed to have read all of the articles beginning with 'X' there might only be 6000 WP articles that start with that letter so a mere one hour per day of dedicated reading for a year would be enough! SteveBaker 12:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

OK - I realised that the Special:Allpages page has one line for every 1,000 articles - there are 358 lines indexing the letter 'S' - so there much be between 358,000 and 359,000 articles that begin with 'S' - that's twice as many as my estimate above. So your very dedicated friend has been reading an article on average every three minutes, ten hours per day for five years without a break...and he's got to read one every minute and 30 seconds to keep up. But I just realist that there is a problem with that - five years ago there were only 10,000 articles - so only maybe 2,000 starting with 's' - so in that first year, your friend couldn't possibly have read more than 2,000 articles. So he can't have been reading at a rate of 70,000 articles per year for 5 years because there just weren't enough article 5 years ago. This makes it harder to calculate - but my previous estimate of an article every six minutes is too generous - for the past year he's had to be reading them at a rate of one every minute and a half. SteveBaker 12:45, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh - and to answer your other question - the average article length is 3300 bytes - on a 'typical' page, I measured an average of 5 bytes per word of english text - so at leat 600 words per article. At your friends target rate of 90 seconds per article - that's 6 words per second (10 hours per day for 5 years without a break) - I can't read that fast. So now we can categorically say that no human could possibly have read all of the WP articles beginning with 'S' - no matter how dedicated and no matter how long they've been doing it. In the words of the 'Mythbusters' BUSTED! SteveBaker 12:56, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Are you talking about Wikipedia pages/articles, or all pages that have ever been written, anywhere?

I have here a copy of enwiki-20070402-pages-articles.xml.bz2, one of the Wikipedia database dumps from http://download.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html. It contains 1,862,780,563 bytes of wikitext. I also have an index which makes it trivial for me to compute this breakdown by initial letter:

letter	# articles	# bytes
A	237,000	496,198,231
B	202,447	428,011,959
C	485,285	696,941,202
D	146,059	314,761,032
E	114,618	248,033,931
F	118,300	253,391,698
G	134,776	286,253,363
H	139,872	326,478,955
I	853,669	638,967,977
J	127,327	289,777,673
K	99,803	187,574,396
L	197,955	696,402,478
M	239,551	512,146,281
N	113,315	240,769,538
O	65,803	136,250,939
P	216,654	439,231,532
Q	12,386	24,052,714
R	147,346	321,363,322
S	317,499	647,077,360
T	324,963	654,021,204
U	67,875	149,757,943
V	56,160	110,362,443
W	332,324	2,017,361,538
X	7,289	13,457,802
Y	24,374	44,382,560
Z	17,635	30,822,264
other	81,698	248,864,820

Now, these are raw sizes, counting wikitext (not text as displayed to the typical reader). And the collection also includes all sorts of redirect and stub pages. But it should give you some indication of how much text Wikipedia has on subjects beginning with "S".

By way of comparison, this reference desk page currently contains 108,754 bytes of wikitext (including the transcluded pages for June 20 and 21). So, roughly speaking, reading all the "S" articles would take you 647,077,360 ÷ 108,754 = 5,950 times as long as reading this reference desk page through once. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:18, 23 June 2007 (UTC). Commas by --Anonymous, June 23, 16:53 (UTC).

[addendum] If we imagine it'd take half an hour to read this reference desk page, it would take 30 minutes × 5,950 = 178,500 minutes ÷ 60 = 2,975 hours to read all the S's, or 297 days at 10 hours/day. That's less than a year, and seems (remotely) doable. I haven't yet figured out the discrepancy between my estimates and SteveBaker's above. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:32, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's the discrepancy: other Steve is estimating 6 minutes per article. My analysis shows 647077360 ÷ 317499 = 2038 bytes per article, on average, for "S" articles. 2038 bytes is 1/53rd of this reference desk page. So if this reference desk page takes half an hour to read, the average "S" article would take only 30 ÷ 53 = a little more than half a minute. So that's a factor of 12 or so, explaining the difference between my 297 days and other Steve's 5+ years. You can dial in your own estimate anywhere along that spectrum, depending on how fast you think you (or Phoeba's friend) can read. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:45, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah - there are plenty of ways that little differences between our methods could have crept in - and I think we both agree that Phoeba's friend is without doubt a dirty, stinking rotten liar. So let's get real specific. The easiest, most manageable way to understand how impossible this is is to look at the article creation rate. [2] shows that article creation rate is now levelling off at something like 2,000 articles per day. Both sets of data show that 15 to 20% of article titles begin with the letter 'S' - so we are certainly talking about needing to read 300 to 400 articles per day - every day for at least the last three or four years in fact. That same data table says that the average article size is now 3317 bytes - turning that into 'words' is tough to do accurately - but I took a couple of long-ish articles and fed the visible text into the Linux 'wc' (wordcount) program and arrived at 5.43 bytes per word. Do the arithmetic: 300*3317/5.43=183,259 and 400*3317/5.43=244,346. So I conclude that you need to read between 180,000 and 245,000 words per day just to stay current with new 'S' articles. A typical paperback novel contains 50,000 words - so we're talking about reading four or five full length novels every day! (Only most of it is going to be MUCH harder going than a novel!) Even if you could keep up this blistering pace - that's just to stay up with the current creation rate. That rate has been reasonably stable for a couple of years now - so if you only started a year ago - you'd be up around 10 to 15 novels per day to have caught up...it's just not even close to being credible that you could read all of 'S' in a year.

I didn't say he said he read every "S" article ever, just at the time he read them. Still, it would've had to have been a long time ago, so I suppose he's likely joking, or was referring to another encyclopedia. you people enjoy math way too much. -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 14:45, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

You ask if there's a way to find out how much text there is in all articles starting with "S", and I give you a concise answer, and then you tease me for "enjoying math way too much." TANJ. Ah, well. :-) —Steve Summit (talk) 14:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

We do the math - but we hate every minute of it. It's just torture. SteveBaker 03:31, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Sit down. Write 'all of the articles that start with "S"' on a piece of paper. Read it. Pull leg of friend. Clarityfiend 23:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Antidisunmaterialism?

I looked at our article on materialism, but it wasn't really much help. What's the term for someone who gives up most or all of their (material) worth, or the act of doing it? -- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 14:12, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The first word that pops to mind is ascetic (viz. asceticism), though that's not quite right. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:23, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Christianity - along the lines of, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

That Also sounds like something along the lines of Transcendentalism. I recently learned about how the followers gave up everything in their lives and lived in nature.

None of those are really right... although they all touch on the same ideas, they don't really regard the act itself, and they're somewhat biased. Simple Living is the closest I can find, but that's not really right either.

Hand Strengthening for Martial Arts

Hello Everyone! I am having some trouble finding a good article on Hand conditioning (or Strengthening). I found Hand Training, but that doesn't provide much information at all. Basically all i am looking for is an article on exercises, techniques, or objects that will help improve my hand's Durability and Strength. Sorry if that is kind of a hard or odd request, and thanks to anyone that can help.24.3.125.157 18:16, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

You can buy one of those stress-toy like balls filled with a sort of silicone gel used for anti-carpal tunneling. Acceptable 23:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure if you are asking for ways to make your make your hand strong, e.g., as far as having a strong grip, or ways to make your hand strong for martial arts type breaking bits of wood and bricks. If it is the first, the best way is to strengthen your forearms, as most of the muscles that control your hand are actually in your forearms. This site seems to provide some good information, or refer to a good bodybuilding book. If it's the second, then other than belting your hand repeatedly against solid objects, I have no idea. --jjron 13:42, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

If you look up Iron Fist qigong (or chi kung) you just might find the Youtube video of my former tai chi teacher cutting a coconut with his hand. iames 13:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Make video of emulation

There's a video on youtube of a mario bros mod being played. I want to be able to make videos of me playing games. How?--71.185.132.87 18:56, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

On PC? Fraps — Shinhan < talk > 06:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Most game consoles output video to your television - so pretty much anything that can record a TV show can also record you playing your game. So a VCR, a DVD-RW video recorder, a TiVo, a CamCorder or a PC with a video capture card could all do it for you. If you are going to use a CamCorder, don't mess around trying to point the camera at the screen - that'll get you terrible results - you need a CamCorder with a video input. For some reason, the ones you buy in the USA commonly have this feature - but the ones you can get in the UK don't (why?). SteveBaker 12:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Most emulators also have video capture utilities. Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme 17:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Are Birds Rude?

My grandma wants to know how a bird eats a worm. Does he slurp it?

68.52.110.58 20:12, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Nathan

Yes, they don't have teeth, so can't chew them. When birds eat larger prey they tear them into pieces first with their beaks, holding them with their talons, and then swallow the pieces whole. However, most worms are small enough to swallow whole. StuRat 21:39, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

anime show quote question

There is a show called the Big O and in it whenvever the main char. jumps into his giant robot the biblical quote "Cast in the name of god; Ye not guilty" flashes across the screen in bold letters. What does this quote mean if anything?

Going to The Big O and reading it and its child articles might help answer your question. Sorry that I don't know more on the subject. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (ταlκ) 02:46, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1111483 from a quick google search. Definitely sounds like a reference to throwing stones to me.-- Phoeba Wright^OBJECTION! 02:57, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

It does look like it refers to John 8:7, but its not a direct quote. — Shinhan < talk > 06:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

name this album cover

A giant stone-like humanoid creature is holding a (lifeless?) man in its hand, on the corner of the giant's finger appears to be some blood from the man. The giant appears to be distraught that he accidentally killed the man (after picking him up?). Is there an albumn cover that matches this (vague) description? I seem to remember seeing the cover but cannot remember anything about it. NoClutter 21:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

News of the World, by Queen? —Steve Summit (talk) 21:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I got that as well! Beaten by a few minutes, bah :) --Richardrj ^{talk email} 22:01, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

i wasn't even in the race, althought that is a great album because it is one of the few rock albums were the groups album and song are not together (i.e. news of the world contains the queen song sheer heart attack, but the queen album sheer heart attack does not.