Announcing cbriver: a bidirectional chatterbox-IRC bot.
Cbriver is an IRC bot
that allows you to read and talk on the everything2 chatterbox
using any IRC client.
To read the chatterbox,
just connect your client to the irc server irc.freenode.net
channel #cbriver.
Whenever someone talks on the chatterbox,
cbriver copies the message to the irc channel.
Writing on the chatterbox is a bit more complicated.
Firstly, you need to register an irc nick on the freenode server.
To do this,
send an irc private message to NickServ saying ``register password''
where password is a new password you choose to protect your nick.
Then, whenever you connect to the irc server,
send a private message to NickServ saying ``identify password''
using the same password.
(You can probably set up your irc client
to do this for you automatically whenever you connect.)
The irc nick need not be the same as your everything2 screen name.
Then, you need to tell cbriver about your everything2 account.
In order to do this, after joining the #cbriver channel,
send a private message to MemoServ containing
``send cbriver plogin your-everything2-username your-everything2-password''.
(If your nick contains spaces, surround it with square brackets.)
After these steps, you can talk on the chatterbox
simply by talking on the irc channel.
For more information, see the
online FAQ.
Message me with any problems you should have.
Update 2008 june: the login mechanism described above will be changed in the near future.
Update 2008 nov 17: a vulnerability was discovered in cbriver yesterday. This allowed anyone to speak in the chatterbox or send private messages in your name if you used the persistent login feature of cbriver.
I disabled persistent login in cbriver, so now the bug is no longer there but you have to log in again every time you join the #cbriver channel. This was a long-standing bug: it has been there since the start (2007 Oct 27). Technical details of the bug can be found at http://www.perlmonks.com/?node_id=724058.
Given how I'm mostly abandonning cbriver these days (I still haven't ported the new login system nor the code that loads the new messages immediately when you speak, despite that each of these would be easy to port from cbstream), I might also not implement the correct persistent login code in cbriver unless many people complain.