AltME groups: search

Every IT group I have visited has had nothing but trouble with Exchange 
Server...to make the point that it ain't ready for prime time.

That group will likely get tired of Exchange over time, so an after-sell 
is always possible.

Thanks. i try my best, but Altme and IOS are minority products, so 
they've got to be better than good to get to a shortlist..
Altme has at least three ways of losing data.

And having to rename the world every time there is a server crash 
doesn't make this group a useful reference site.

MASLOW'S MOTIVATION THEORY

The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow postulated that people are 
animals who continually want.  No matter how many needs they have 
satisfied at any one time, they constantly struggle upwards to reach 
higher levels.  He classified these needs in a sequence of five levels 
the he referred to as "the hierarchy of human needs".


The FIRST LEVEL is the lowest and most powerful.  Maslow describes 
first level needs as the physiological needs, which include hunger, 
thirst, sex, air and rest.

SECOND LEVEL: Safety and Security - Shelter, clothing, protection 
from enemies.

THIRD LEVEL: Love and Belonging - Acceptance, friendship, lovers, 
family.

FOURTH LEVEL: Esteem - Recognition, respect, achievement, prestige, 
independance, importance, attention and appreciation.

FIFTH LEVEL (Highest): Self-actualizatoin - To develop or achieve 
one's full potential.

Very good question, and one I've been asking myself for quite some 
time now...

Reichart is resistant to the first idea .. has been made many a time 
by me and others

Reichart is resistant to the first idea .. has been made many a time 
by me and others


Uh, no........I love the idea.  I love the idea so much that when 
we were building our other product the first thing we did was put 
this feature in.  However, on AltME, that is not at the top of the 
list of what we are doing next.

Yeah, better filters will be an issue over time.  Please send that 
one to feedback.

and does it allow to create an view of the world, in real time, or 
is that something which can already be done with the altme client 
version, when running a world?

Feature Request:  I'd like a one button push or automtated/timed 
solution to bring up the "Getting Started Window" OR remove focus 
from all groups.  Why?  If you aren't actually using AltME (it's 
running in the background), and you get new messages, the messages 
in the group you are currently 'in' aren't highlighted as new.  Which 
can make it confusing when the tool tells you a new message has been 
received, but you don't see a hightlight on any group (and don't 
check the time on the messages in the 'current' group).

Well, it will be interesting.  I'm now an advisor to the company 
"fellows" on collaboration and other issues.  So, I hope to be able 
to contribute some info some time to the management.

THen, Reichart, would you please change my username  to   J-F    
for the time being. thanks J-F

File exploder..didn't spend too much time diagnosing.. perhaps it 
was there somewhere.. but it sure wasn't working.. I recommend that 
you  don't use Altme to control any nuclear reactors without some 
extensive testing.

Tomc, two of them are used every week, one of them daily just not 
alot of users.  One time all my worlds did the very same thing without 
an World Server problem.

I do that, and click "Save". Each time I open the self profile, though, 
the group is checked again.

We are annoyed by it also.  It hits me about 2 times a week, I run 
3 clients on my system most of the time.

Sent feedback on the date selector.  It doesn't like TODAY.  Switch 
the value to any other day and try to select TODAY, you'll pull an 
error 100% of the time...

So our next update is coming along, aside from any features we are 
planning to include in the next build of AltME, we are looking for 
a new top 10 list of features or bugs for an interim release.


Please take some time to think about this before posting, in an attempt 
to keep this post clean and simple.


Even if you have posted to feedback in the past, I'm look for what 
is most important to you.


Also, the Recycle bug is being fixed, but can't be for this interim 
build, since it is part of the new architecture.

Reichart, One feature I posted a long time ago but not inside yet 
;-) --> "Mark All messages as read"

(1) mark all messages in all groups as read (handy is your not online 
for a long time)

(2) There are some bugs in the proxy configuration reading. mixedup 
config settings etc...
(3) Scaling Fonts..very handy for the disabled readers

(4) Web Interfacing towards ALTME! instead of using the client use 
a webinterface, no problems with proxy's etc anymore...i hope ;-)
(5) ALTME API/SDK... for users to build bots ;-)

RebolJohn - 6 mins? I switched on a PC that I don't connect very 
often and cleared them all in 2 mins of clicking. My problem is when 
you clear the RED, but dont have time to read them all, you forget 
that they are really Unread and dont go back to read them.

I think of communication software a little differently (in general), 
so I will share this.  

Read states

 (like the Red we are talking about) are a very interesting issue. 
  


Most computer software does a very poor job of replicating empirical 
or visceral conversations.  Email for example has a method of describing 
the "direction" you are speaking.  TO: Bob, CC: Carry.  Where the 
TO: indicates you are speaking directly to Bob, and that Carry is 
standing somewhere to the left or right of you.  BCC is someone hiding 
behind you. 


Email could have an interface where you first pick the people in 
the "room." And then use something like a 2D interface to move the 
listeners around a symbolic version of you.  This would be both silly, 
time consuming, and somewhat confusing, but you get the point.


What you have read and what you have not read though has a similar 
analogy.   There are thousands of sub states and markers people use 
to sort things they have read, will read, need to read again, need 
to respond to, etc.


In Box, Out Box, Papers upside down, putting papers you need to sign 
under your car keys on the floor in front of the door leading to 
the car, etc.


I have one friend who re-wrote some open source email program to 
have some huge number of states and then some simple filters.  It 
works VERY WELL, if you know his system.  He never forgets anything.


So the current model AltME has (right now) is a very simple interface. 
 Tantimount to "Have I ever seen this before."


We are playing with some other models in Qtask, which may get adopted 
into AltME.  I'm working on a system I call Venn Chat.  Some features 
include:

Have I read this before? (like AltME)
Mark this:  

Follow up (add to a list of messages you want to think about more)
Note (All should read this when they come into the group)
All Must Read (converts it into an AltME-like alert)


Convert to a task (and keep the context of the chat in place, this 
is opens up a whole other area)
Branch (something like forum threading)
Re-file (move from one group to another)

Re-post (copy to another group, at the same time, similar to branch).
Trigger (tell me when someone has finally read this).
Status (tell me who has read this so far).
Attach (files, links, etc)

1.  link tasks with the calendar

2.  "clear all" a simple button which removes red color of all groups. 
usefull when skipping a few days...

3.  HIDE groups (and users).  just add simple check mark to  window 
which lists all available groups and any you check-off are removed 
from the list you look at (yet you still receive their posts, if 
you want to look at them another time).

4.  per group moderators for private AND public groups (delete posts, 
insert posts, manage users, etc.   A part from "opting out", users 
are not able to change the setup (like deleting the group), group 
name, list of users in private group, etc ).  

5.  single file export of all selected task lists and their tasks 
(ascii or html)

6.  SORT task list... we cannot sort the task lists... only the tasks 
they contain... a real bitch when working with others...

7.  Also allows read-only mode for private groups for people not 
in private users list.   Great to manage announcements for private 
tools.
8.  'workdays only - weekend only' option for calendar

9.  properly support hours in calendar tasks, so that hours are always 
available, right now, the software often ignores any data we put 
in the hours field..

Yet another wishing feature:
     World [ Subject]

Sometimes there is more than one subject going on at the same time. 
 This will allow you to focus on the Subject you want..  = )

somthing  like networking [/subject question user message time]

Next time that happens I'll need to experiment a little..

This time it was not Safeworld, but Rebol.net or DNS problem.

First time I have this error :
** Script Error: Invalid compressed data - problem: -3
** Near: script: decapsulate
if none? script
** Press enter to quit...

Another thing would be it it would be possible to save the "most 
interesting folders" the ones I have used most in the last time, 
and to sync them first.

Yeah, I'm REALLY anti FTP.  It took us writing our own FTP Client 
to realize, FTP is simply not worth supporting, the people who originated 
it were kids, that did not know what they were doing.  We waste too 
much time, as has everyone that has written FTP client or Server 
software.


Basically, the standard should be rewritten such that every command 
that a normal DOS would use are available, even the simple stuff 
like getting the size of the volume the data is being stored on, 
and remaining space.


But also there needs to be systems in place for check-summing files 
in usable chunks, and also for doing metrics from both sides so that 
better predictions can be made about the time it will take to synch.

It goes on and on, just throw FTP away…


Build an x-internet interface to something new, and build it correctly 
to be global not local.


For example, every block (some unit of bytes) of a given file should 
be able to exist in multiple places (on the web, not just on a server), 
etc.

Let's solve everything in one place once and for all.

Yup, we need SDK.  for OSX

As to the next update, we are holding it this time to get a bunch 
of stuff done.  It is more efficient.

The other day, I cut off my dialup connection about 10 seconds after 
starting AltME. The next day I connected, looked in Advocacy group 
and there were no new messages. I posted a message, and then it synced 
about 10 messages that had occurred during the intervening time. 
Just a bit more feedback on this problem.. in case it helps. I usually 
don't notice any such sync problem.

Ladislav, yeah....we know, we are still waiting for the next update 
to do everything at teh same time.

exactly - I know Carl talks about principles ... but why to loose 
your time with fighting to get things stripped down to CD? I would 
go and bug DVD drive ....

but using some Sysinternals tools I managed to find out, where the 
stuff is hiding etc ... but no time now ...

I think part of the "mess" of OSS is the perception that it is a 
single movement, a unified army of developers. That is completely 
wrong, even though some of the louder proponents of open source work 
hard to make you believe exactly that. Even folks who understand 
the truth have their perceptions colored by all the from the Eric 
Raymonds and Richard Stallmans of the world. Then they wonder how 
this OSS army is going to take over the world when they can't get 
their act together and produce easily usable apps written in clear 
code. Individual developers and teams do all the time, but that's 
hardly an army.

The core of the problem is that OSS people write their software, 
then they move on. After all, they cannot spend all their time on 
it, because they need to feed themselves.

So black boxes are easier to comprehend and reproduce than others, 
but does it make sense to waste time when information can be free.

Nah.  We can add anyone to the escrow at any time.

Well.. I use the Freetype for some time now.. it even works with 
my GTK applications.. somehow it does not show up... Im using slackware..

I think the Ubuntu guys are doing a good job. the problem is that 
there are 20 other organizations that are almost doing the same jobs. 
it's an incredible waste of time and effort.

it sucks because those with the vision can only do so much on their 
time.  although everyone is happy to say free things are great, free 
things aren't worth any $$ and thus, you get none to feed your children 
when you work on them.

Looks like there's no way to install lilo if you skip it in setup. 
Unclear and misleading comments in the setup notes.

I have reinstalled successfully from scratch. It seems to me I made 
two errors the first time around: I had skipped installing both the 
linux kernel and lilo bootmanager.

we recently had to re-install mandrake and it appears that this is 
the same thign that happened the last time i installed rebol

my co-workers apparently had an issue lst time and had to reformat 
and install

in your case though... updating the glibc is a bit risky, i remember 
completely trashing a version of RH (or was it Mandrake?) by just 
a glibc update. it was a long time ago though.

hmm, I start to think, that if having Linux server (although it runs 
for 2 years or more without the assistance), is good for me. I simply 
have to struggle with getting into it every time I need to config 
something and maybe it is upon my skills :-( .... for occassional 
things, maybe I would better go with plain Windows XP profi plus 
some free Sendmail, FTP server and Apache ....

I know I had REBOL connecting to MySQL via ODBC on Linux...  I was 
playing with WINE heavily at the time though so I might have been 
running a windows version of REBOL on Linux to do it. ;-)

Let's put it this way: if I think about the technology under the 
hood, I don't like using Gnome, but working with KDE's user interface 
makes me cringe all the time

CALL was freed for use in unlicensed Rebol/View some time ago.

I will look into getting the Powerpack going.


I will need to spend some time reading through the archives to ensure 
that the original objective remains clear.

That should help serve as the guidelines for making decisions down 
the road.

I'm interested, but I am afraid that I will disagree with other people 
who have different ideas about what is the best way to implement 
a library/module system - therefore I am cautious before spending 
too much time here.

I am working on a "starterpack" when I find some time. It simply 
downloads the scripts I found useful or very interesting but they 
are not really managed/organised but for I put them in different 
directories depending on their main purpose

yes, it's modified randomly, I've done some test but the results 
were different all the time so I felt lost

fast fourier transformation. no way in current rebol (to much computations). 
On my Athlon XP 1700+ can REBOL do some 3milions computations in 
second (this is very aproximate number, some computaions are more 
time-consuming than other ). May sound like a big number, but if 
sound's sample rate is 44100Hz, there's only some 70 computations 
for each sample. And this is the ideal situation (no GUI and other 
CPU-demanding stuff). So there are two possibilities. 1) Some faster 
math, or JIT REBOL compiler  and 2) wait for faster CPU's. Let's 
see what comes first.

first comes faster CPUs :-) What about producing language extension? 
Ah, we did not get any yet, sorry, I forgot, it is long time we were 
promissed to get those ;-) Hmm, but what about external library calls? 
Could do the trick, no? If you use gcc, you should be able to compile 
for main platforms at least ...

I've got phase-distortion oscillator, FM oscillator, wavetable oscillator 
and my exponential oscillaor plus four types of filters and it's 
really time consuming in REBOL

Thanks :) maybe if you make it ready for c, i could do the rest. 
means make it use structures, not relying on contexts etc. for the 
time-critical things.

yes - it is a huge time save when i go to do loudness balancing

just a note to Sound. Some time ago, when Cyphre tried to do media 
player in REBOL for us, he complained about some bugs in smooth playback. 
Carl released C code for the sound system in REBOL - this is some 
2 - 3 pages of C code (mostly wrappers) IIRC? Maybe we could fix 
few things for next R2 release?

If your 3 waves happen to peak all at the same time, then the maximum 
amplitude is simply the addition of all three amplitudes. If not, 
then the max amplitude is some lesser value. Calculating this seems 
complicated to me..

All are going to be welcome, once we work this out, I plan to post 
the time(s) here, on Qtask, and on .Org.  WE need more community 
lessons, so I'm going to kick this off.

Nothing too heavy.  But sometimes people just need a little demo 
in real time, and also there is an energy to a bunch of people being 
around at the same time.  This will be good.  Since all are going 
to be welcome I think it may end up being 10-15 people online at 
the same time.

With Rebol, I do not see yet the "logic" or philosophy behind the 
syntax of instructions. Maybe there isn't one and I' m waiting to 
see something, a pattern, that is not there? So, in any case, I would 
like to be part of the "school" experiment you are planning, if possible. 
This is a good opportunity for me. And maybe I could supply some 
of my pedagogical experience in this project at some time in the 
future.

hmm, I never thought about it, but you are probably right - I tought 
one of my friends rebol for quite some time, and he was always nervous 
a bit, when I told him - look, there is special function for that 
....

No JaimeVargas. I teach programming to beginners (18 year old and 
+) in Science. I teach C++. A long time ago, I was a programmer: 
Cobol, RGP, assembler on the IBM 370.

Denis, I am not sure there is a shortcut to learning the philosophy 
or way of any language. A person simply has to read and write in 
that language a lot before the way is realised. Having said that, 
Carl Sassenrath wrote a long time ago a ten-point summary of rebol, 
which, being so short, had to be more philosophical, I think. Now 
to remember where that might be...

The values are typed, but you don't need to declare its type. The 
type is recognized at parsing time by the literal representation 
of the value, ie: 1 is integer!, #"a" is a char!, "hello" is a string!, 
1x1 is pair!, 1.1.1.2 is tuple! (not a struct!), etc.

It would be cool to build a sort of proto-tree.  So you can see where 
in the tree a word is related.

I created a graphic language that effectively had two commands:

Draw: at an xy point and
Circle: which had center coordinates, radius, angle and divisor.

The angle and devisor allowed you to pull an interesting trick.  


So to make a square, you simply called it with a divisor of 4.  this 
would build a string (block) with 4 pairs.  If you wanted a diamond, 
set the angle to 45.
 
You then passed the string to draw.


This may seem like a weird way to do this, but it was perfect for 
a real time rending system that was interactive.  We use this in 
a draw program like Flash.

Now another concept is that you can make those symbols designate 
 any value at any time. So 1 + 1 == 2 or a: 1 a + 1 == 2

no prob.  REBOL is more than 20 years ahead of its time.  If it takes 
you 5 years, you are still way ahead of the crowd.

If I had time I will translate the examples there to Rebol. Maybe 
you can do that while you learn. I can help you. My first attemp 
was to make the Class Factory from the book. I got it. However Oz 
the language of the book has bit better security than Rebol. But 
any how I was able to do this and in the process I learn a lot of 
good programming techniques.

time to move home too .... 18:30 here, enough of "work"

Values are released when there are no more references to them (and 
the GC decides it's time to do a recycle).

... so it's a long time ago that this concept is around.

Maxim thats not completely true. What you want to say is that you 
can manipulate code as it was data at  runtime, and the modifications 
will affect the program next time there is an eval.

47 if 
    35 all 
    17 func 
    14 find 
    13 in 
    13 not 
    13 print 
    12 do 
    12 either 
    12 get 
    10 = 
    10 next 
    9 clear 
    9 exit 
    9 insert 
    9 pick 
    8 compose 
    7 any 
    6 foreach 
    6 mold 
    6 tail? 
    5 - 
    5 as-pair 
    5 last 
    5 none? 
    5 object? 
    5 paren? 
    4 head 
    4 reduce 
    4 show 
    4 while 
    3 break 
    3 copy 
    3 remold 
    3 remove 
    3 same? 
    3 tail 
    3 use 
    2 * 
    2 + 
    2 <> 
    2 context 
    2 forall 
    2 form 
    2 make 
    2 prin 
    2 return 
    2 set 
    2 to-image 
    2 to-time 
    2 view

(I have been REBOLing full time for a while and yess many things 
are moving ahead :-)

Although the "choose a task first then learn what needs to be used 
to code it" approach is fine in many circomstances, in a 45 hours 
course, the student ends up knowing how to code a few tasks (hopefully 
more than one, but not necessarily), but often has a very hard time 
transferring this knowledge to other tasks.


So I think a better "generalist" approach would be to categorize 
generic tasks, like "file manip"', "math", "iterations", "series", 
"network sharing of data", ... and identifying just a few native 
words category that are enough to solve all or most problems given 
in those categories.

Jean-François: one of the courses I teach is an introduction to programming 
to science students. Some of which will follow two more courses in 
programming, in the same language. Over the years, I've done this 
in Fortran, Pascal and now C++. At one time the first two courses 
were given in Python and the last (which I was giving), in C++. We 
decided that it was better to give all 3 in the same language. I 
didn't think Python was a good choice.

I'm now giving the first course (and maybe all 3). I'm exploring 
the possibility of opting at some time for Rebol, if I can break 
down the language into subsets that are "easily" learned and that 
offer useful tools for some large category of problems. I did'nt 
find any tutorial that seems to be quite there yet. 

Of course, the language is not the only thing taught. Basic programming 
and computer science concepts are also taught. But these can be taught 
independently from the choice of the language, for a large part. 

Rebol is my preoccupation. Some languages need a very lot of reading/learning 
before you can start to use it for solving problems with them. Maybe 
this is the case for Rebol. But I'm not sure yet. My hypothesis is 
that nearly everyone has learned Rebol by reading the Core manual 
and looking at examples in tutorials. It's ok to do it this way if 
one chooses so. But the teacher is expected to devise smoother paths 
for the learning process.

I was really hoping for a release this week (it is ready codewise) 
but will not be able to document it properly, so it will be useless 
and will gobble time away, with me trying to explain how to use it 
!

but as usual, work comes first, so There is only so many hours to 
put on this stuff... in my free time.

I could have waisted time on some kind of generic node manager, but 
even after a year of work, it would still be useless... cause nodes 
are about processing.

source is synchronised with draw board in real time

but for some functions this can be fatal, so its a tricky game... 
which needs a lot of thought... so I will be going at it one step 
at a time.

We have already AltME - what do you need to be it more virtual and 
real-time?

yeah but not in time for Devcon2008

I tried the wiki approach to live broadcasting, but may have introduced 
it too late to have it in the attendees' conscienciousness.  Whatever, 
it didn't contain the depth of relayed information I thought it had 
the potential for.  Video is fine, but is fleeting (when it works). 
 Liveblogging may be easier to implement, but then there is little 
structure to information beyond time.

Yeah, if you put that way, that would be nice. Do we have an app 
that shows where were all from? I wonder if Terry could whip up us 
something? I recall at one time there was a link to a google maps 
page that posted little balloons.

The version of your script that I have is showing only the time-zone 
map in newer views.

Perhaps it's time we consider an eDevCon.

Perhaps it's also time to consider some REBOL tools for eDevcons.

Hmm, I will have to talk about it with Cyphre. But after all those 
years, I wanted to see Carl :-) And if we do 2008 in Prague, next 
time it will be another place (hopefully I will be able to visit). 
But I also planned small promo, some media interview with Carl, etc. 
Anyway - as for RT - there is not DevCon this year ....

Dr. Dobbs has meetings all the time in Second Life

Yes, it HAS to be live.  This is the power of a conference.  THe 
real time interaction.  To KNOW people are there...now...this is 
not to stop some talks from being recorded ahead of time.  But you 
will lose a lot this way.

We should do it perhaps over several days, around 12:00pm California 
time, since this allows for people in Australia to get up early, 
and join, and also most of Europe, for whom it will be night.

Hmmm, it would be interesting to have a DevCon at this time, since 
many people are at home.

May I suggest, that we do this another way, we create a list and 
let everyone post when is best, and when is worst, then we cull this 
to set a date.  this is SO easy to do in Qtask (we just create a 
form for this).  In AltME we could create a do list, and let each 
person just add their preference and follow a format.

Call for topics and presenters placed in the checklist.
Sent out an email on the mailist to inform and gather input:

Dear Fellow Rebolers (of the mailist faction),


There has been some interest in a virtual gathering of Rebol developers 
and users. These discussions have been taking place in the Rebol3 
Altme World. I know there are many here that do not regularly go 
there but nonetheless would be interested in participating. The date 
and time that has been looked at is December 27th from 12:00 PM. 
How does that sound to you?


There has been no decision on the technology to be used but you're 
input would be much appreciated. We are also in need of presenters 
and/or desired topics.

To summarize, we are looking for:

An agreement on the time and date
Topics desired
Presentors
Ideas for technology to be used
Other

12:00 PM in what time zone?

Ah, my bad 12:00 Pacific time