AltME groups: search

yeah and even channels were not persistant so anyone could enter 
your channel and become the channel operator ( the first in joining 
a not already existing channel is set automatically chan operator)

well Altme serves as a knowledge base as well.

of course now in day clients have loging mechanism you can make you 
bot to log the conversation too that way you have a trace of conversation 
on your channel even if you are not there that's a client side issue 
server only share intputs/ output  and don't log the conversations 
I was adminsitrator on Undernet IRC like 17 years ago and ppl their 
was accusing use to log the conversations and sell them to CIA ... 
But reality is no I worked anough on the server source code (to fix 
those annoying bugs and extend them ) to assure you client side conversation 
are not store

no way never worked for CIA i hate the idea of having a stupid on 
your back watching what u doing ...

to have a bot running on your channel you had to ask permission to 
the server admins

Ok, my real question is ... do you think IRC is a good support mechanism 
to build into software?

plus as the conversation are segmented in channels and that a channel 
can prohibitate you from enterring logging all the conversation on 
one server was impossible and you have the user to user private chatting 
concept like in altme

so having the conversion not logged was such a needed thing to be 
sure to offer to the public a space of totally free discutions

you open a channel you create an object in memory that knows what 
client have enter every time some one join you channel it enter into 
the memory list

So, I need to setup a IRC server and write an IRC client in Rebol

when you type a message it is forwarded to all the people in you 
channel list and nothing more

having a conversation with a bot in general is very one sided lool

Looks like Paul also wrote a IRC bot

( In IA class i made a bot that could stand a conversation  lol when 
i presented that project my professor was dead laughing but after 
explaining the concept behind he was like hoooo that's great try 
to do it ...)

i mean making the computer standing a lively converstation that makes 
sens is quite not the joke really

yes I don't know if it's volatile or not msn messenger or yahoo messenger 
are based on IRC they have volatile conversation not stored on server 
side (but there can be a doubt since no one saw the sources of it)

IRC had that great point to be a public domain project anyone could 
get the server sources and see how things  are done

and htat was bothering some ppl so much lol ... free expression is 
not a light thing for some people. For example when i say to Paul 
or other here is not the place to discuss on some subject that's 
not that i deny them the right to speak about it that means just 
I don't want to be involved in it and having those conversation kind 
persistant pose me real trouble ...

why putting that on public place since this world have a defined 
purpose which doesn't feet with that kind of discutions plus why 
talking more about one religion than another ...

that's a thing i like in rebol too the hability to reach a software 
and run from the consol

i r c . g l a s s b i l e n . n e t

Yes Graham Paul did write a REBOL based IRC bot script long time 
ago.  It was more feature packed then eggdrop bots.  He kept revising 
it when he ran the REBOL channel on EFNET network.

A lot of us forget about the other channels out there.

Hmmm, not sure, seems it would be a big number.  If 1K peple logged 
in and all started downloading messages at the same time it could 
be a port issue?

it might have been a myth though ...

Hmmm, interesting...   Well, I'm not sure, but would also be interested 
in a proof of max....

I sometimes have a redraw problem on OSX. Anyone else having the 
same effect?

probably just a question of having to refresh some object to allow 
bigger rasters when window resizes.

If anyone wants to play with IRC in a safe environment, they can 
connect to my experimental server at www.compkarori.co.nz

Should I take this 50 user limit myth seriously?

I was going to use Altme for chat for a large group that could easily 
have hundreds online at onetime.

actually, its easy to figure out if rebol really has a 50 connection 
limit, just open a listener port and call a one line connection rebol 
script more than 50 times.

anyway, someone should do some testing to see what the limits are 
for concurrent viable connections for  a rebol based chat server

but don't you actually have a chat server software against which 
you can implement a client-side test connection loop?  ;-D

but it uses BEER so it might reach a BEER limitation

well if we can reach 100 connections to beer..  we definitely will 
have a party (or a brawl)  ;-)

It's disappointingly small. I wonder if there is a technical reason.

I think it was more a practical reason so users of dial-up or slower 
connections weren't forced to sit through extremely long downloads. 
 I thought this limit was adjustable per AltME server, but I haven't 
been able to find a setting, so maybe I was wrong.

If that is the case then I wonder if there is also a limit to the 
number of files per world; otherwise, it was not a well thought out 
limitation because 100, 6-megs files is still a lot of waiting on 
slow connections.

A setting would have been nice -- like you said.

I've always thought a nice feature would be to set the 'start-date' 
from where you wanted to receive data from, so you could ease into 
retrieving either the entire world's contents, or simply start fresh 
with only the recent submissions.  However, your search capability 
would be limited as the search is performed locally on the data you 
have available.  Maybe the next AltME will have more features like 
this.

That's a similar feature as the newsgroup readers. Along those same 
lines, AltMe could just download the file list with comments instead 
of the files themselves.

It looks like the next Altme is tied to R3. I don't have a full view 
of Altme's roadmap which seems more like a poorly marked trail. I've 
tried to follow it somewhat using sources like this group, Carl's 
blog and most recently his slides from DevCon 2007. However, I'm 
not involved in R3, so I suspect I've missed some important sources.

The grand plan of R3 seems years away, though. Since Carl now controls 
 the AltMe source code, I wish he would pick a trusted person from 
the community  to keep the R2 AltMe moving forward. I will probably 
have to drop AltMe as a customer service tool because of issues like 
this 6 meg limit that shouldn't even be an issue.

It's definitely a technical limitation. There was a limited release 
of a version with a much bigger file size limit, but AFAIR, it was 
unstable and quickly retracted.

I'm a little worried about granting everyone group rights in the 
world I'm creating. It will be mostly NYC firefighters, many of which 
have little computer/internet/web experience and might delete groups 
accidently or maliciously as the are a group that is not always as 
well behaved as most reboler's. 


But at the same time I want them to be able to create private groups.


If a group is deleted how difficult is it to restore it...if possible...with 
previous messages.

I wouldn't grant this then.  Have a group for "new discussion topics", 
and your trusted admins can create them when available.

That's kind of what I thought I would do but the attraction of the 
ability to form private groups is too great not to take the initial 
risk. I can form new policies later if problems occur. 

I just want to be able to restore a group or groups in the event 
of...

Is there anyway to read the server files data outside of altme to 
monitor users that are active (online) in a world?

As far as i can tell, the files stored under the world name show 
only when a user joined and when they last posted.

Clearly, AltME is sending connection information -- we can all see 
that if we sort the Users list by Status. But is there an API to 
access that? There may be an answer available here :-)
http://www.altme.com/feedback.html

<sigh> got one while trying to post a message about drop outs... 
irony if there is any in altme.

So, is this a network issue to rebol.net?

Reichart, can you confirm that nothing is screwed up on the machine 
running this world, or its internet access... it is seriously breaking 
up.


earlier, I had a drop every 30 seconds, I tried to post a message 
7 times...  graham and I had to chat elsewhere cause it was getting 
just to insane.

Just took me three AltME restarts to post a private message to Reichart. 

That "Internet Busy" text string deserves some extra remuneration 
for all the hours it is working.

I lost a message also.

I am guessing the altme server is near a critical memory limit.

or has a flaky web connection

After a while the client stops sending keep alives & the view changes 
away from the "chat" view.

Changing back to the chat view causes the client to create a new 
TCP connection (local port number changes) & exchange some ?authentication? 
data & some larger blocks of data too. After that the server stops 
responding to the keep alives again & the process repeats.

Oldes - btw - I got some reply from Carl. He said that it is not 
problem to post related sources to the area of interest we want to 
fix. It might mean he is not willing to release all altme source 
code. But I think it might be a good start. So if we e.g. want to 
fix the URL parse bug, I think we can manage it?

Good result, Petr.

Can we manage it?  Well, partially, it'll depend on how well written 
the code is:-)

If we can manage it, we may get a shot at some other fixes too. So 
let's at least try

the post dropping is the # 1 bug in Atlme.  lets just prevent it 
from flushing the text area before it receives the post, and at least 
we won't be frustrated.


the clearing of the view when a connection is dropped is also EXTREMELY 
annoying... you have to click back on the group, and it clears te 
"unread" bg color and resets the scrollbar.   these can be changed 
without any real coding change required... its just preventing a 
few things in the gui/network event handling.  maybe we could just 
the bg of the Network status to RED, that accomplishes the same goal, 
but doesn't turn us into enraged altme users.

If the code is being kept mostly private perhaps at some stage it 
will be developed further as a comercial product, in which case it 
would seem usefull if we as test users record a list of bugs & useability 
suggestions in a structured way perhaps?

[third repost]: There's a good list of bugs and suggestions starting 
here:
http://www.rebol.org/aga-display-posts.r?post=r3wp151x457

But I think the most important bug to be fixed is to stop losing 
messages.  Eg. create a buffer to store the outgoing message.

As a test I have both the r3-alpha world, the r2-beta world and this 
one open.  I got dropped multiple times from this one but the other 
worlds were  fine during this.

Sunanda, thanks for the link. I had a good read of that and was surprised 
to not find any requests for keyboard shortcuts, paticularly the 
use of the arrow keys to scroll lists & text.. That would be my top 
request I think.

I wonder if the problem comes from people with a bad connection (like 
me).

Strangly, each time my connection to internet makes a fuss, i can 
see complaints on Altme.
o_o'

The web is a flutter with how slow FaceBook is too...

messenger hasn't been giving me a hard time at all.  neither has 
google chat.

I've had a couple of dropped posts too, the past few days.

I think there was once, and also a FTPgadget channel

some code supplied from anton that I was about to use.... has disapeared... 
I'm pretty sure in was in a group called ftp

I did a full search in altme and didn't find it.

btw, IMHO,  the current altme droppings aren't due to networking 
speed/internet woes ... right now, when I post I get a turnaround 
well below half a second.

It almost feels instantaneous.  still I must relog every so often, 
If I want to be syncing again.  the server just stops responding 
after a few minutes.  :-(

NB: with regards to Prefixing group names... just today... had the 
groups been prefixed, I would have found a post I have been looking 
for the better part of an hour... just cause I'd have noticed the 
group name next to network related groups... I actually looked at 
the name and never *clicked* it was a network group...  ' : - /

as always... Carl passes by like a breeze hehehe

Graham: <17,000 posts in this world so far already this year>

That's [web-public] posts. Actual world size is around twice that 
(*), though I don't have a count of posts-by -year.


(*) No one of us can know the precise world size --- we do not all 
see the private groups; nor do we all see the PMs between everyone.

CommonTag has a press release

one of the companies involved in this is Zemanta.. a startup from 
slovenia.. I've been at their place few times..

Yes, me too --- AltME REBOL3 has gone erractic again....I am watching 
it connect and disconnect every few minutes.


AltME's world check repeatedly shows it as available and then not 
responding(or not available) in a very short cycle:
www.altme.com/check.html

I've sent  a feedback to RT about this.

I would like to see a channel for this.
concurrency + virtualisation + multicore = next step

It's not so much of probotional video .. more a possible discussion 
.. I posted it to Core

Also, when I drag a short cut to the startmenu, it no longer says 
shortcut to Altme, but Rebol -View System.

A way to improve AltME's hyperlink rendering.

Ashley, XP mode is a 440 Mb download!

I quite like Windows 7 .. so far it will be a stayer for me.  Only 
other bug was that I lost all my programs from the start menu.  no 
permanent fix has been published yet.

I hate Vista....

Anyone else have this prob:


Using altme to share many files. I see them in altme but they do 
not exist in the proper altme file folder.


From what I've gathered Vista with UAC enabled (default) does not 
allow programs that do not comply with their new security API to 
write to certain folders such as "program files" whrere Altme is 
installed.


So if I try to open it with notepad, notpad can not see it as it 
does not really exist in that folder that altme tells notpads that 
its in. Vista re-routes altme to the "safe" location without altme 
knowing this.

Anyone have a work around...


I could turn off UAC but that is suppose to be bad (security reasons).


I guess I could move altme to a non secure folder (not sure what 
that would be? I think the Desktop has the same issues...
maybe just C:??

Yeah . just move Altme to a another folder.

If you are on a system with more than one user, you can do what Chrome 
does and install under each user's Local Settings folder, or Application 
Data if you don't care about roaming profiles. Different folder names 
on Vista, but the same principle. Vista's "new" security behavior 
is just working around apps that don't obey the Windows 2000 directory 
usage rules.

Wondering if it's just me, but I'm getting a lot of "Internet Busy..." 
again.

I'm trying to start an altme world from a desktop shortcut icon using 
the target : "c:\Program Files\altme\altme.exe" -s "my world"'-p 
5401


It seems to start the server as I get the little server window stating 
the name of the world and # of users total and online...

But I can not connect to the world.


Is it somekind of port problem or can you just not do this with the 
regular version of altme.


I get alot of brownouts and I would like to place the shortcut in 
my startup drawer to auto strat the world....

scroll the history in this channel. Altme is a bit weird in behaviour. 
Me and others tried to describe the aproach ....

Brock wrote back in 10/07: 
<path to altme> -s 

<worldname>" -p 54xx         ; where -p is a port number 5400, increment 
by 1 for each additional world.  Use Safeworlds World Check feature 
to find out what port your world is assigned to  http://www.altme.com/cgi-bin/lookup.cgi, 
but your world must be started for the World Check feature to return 
the port it has registered for the word being checking."


When he says assigned does he mean by Safe worlds or the serving 
computer?


I tried his suggestion of the World check but it only tells you that 
its unavaiable nothing about the port...

Ok, I seem to have got it working....
So the port matters.
I guess Safe Worlds does expect it to be on a specific port.

It becomes more complicated if you want to remove the first world 
at a later date, cause launching your second world will use port 
5400 instead of the port number it was created under (5401), and 
the world server will be expecting 5401.  At least that was my experience 
when I was making some demo worlds a few years ago.

So if you have two worlds running on two seperate computers (both 
on port 5400) and you later wish to run them on hte same computer 
you are going to have a problem....

That would be my understanding.  The only way I know of getting around 
that is by creating a new world with a new name on the computer hosting 
the two (while the first is running remember), then copy the world 
files from the one computer to the new world and it should recognize 
the files as belonging to that new world.  I don't believe the contents 
of the world has any reference to the world name, so the files can 
be moved from one world to another without issue.

I ran into the trouble of a world becoming unavailable.  I simply 
created a new world, copied the world files over, and all was back 
in order in the new world name... except I had to click on all groups 
to make the unread after synching to the new world.

that would all be so much clearer in a diagram  :-)

A note on the resync bug.......I just accidently let my laptop run 
out of power while online. Under Windows, that sort of simulates 
a hard crash.
When I rebooted, AltME had lost my user name and password.
I surprised myself by remembering both.


Then AltME set about resyncing about 20 groups. In some of them I 
can now see messages dating back to 2005....Apologies if you'd been 
expecting replies from me.


So, yet another method that may trigger a resync if you have groups 
that appear stuck :-)

Another recipe how to get a resync: wait for a storm (quite frequent 
here these days) and a blackout while running AltMe. As opposed to 
Sunanda's experince I did not lose the password, just got a resync 
dating back to about 2005.