AltME groups: search

why not just turn off automatic updates

 - that's what i always do. better to do the updates manually. but 
 it's a waste of time, if only they could get these things right...

We are indeed using the top 10 to guide what we try to fix.  But 
for the record, we will attack which ever is easiest, and which eve 
 takes the least time first, but try to make that from the top 10.

Wow.. that was an incredibly long down time for this world?

Reichart, et. al., I haven't reported this but for the past 8 months 
or so we have been using Altme at work as sharing tool at work. This, 
after many years of struggle.  Sadly, the MS forces have decided 
that it's too good to be true so it mustn't and we are installing 
an exchange server. Actually that will be a good thing for me personally 
as the responsibility for the email servers gets transferred to the 
sys admin guy running the exchange server. 

It is interesting to note that while it has taken a team of people 
to get this thing running (not that it's running as I speak of course) 
to share a single file, Altme was what, a few minutes to set up and 
use? Most of that time is spent on deciding on passwords : ).

Yes, I know a few disillusioned IT guys, who are in it for the money, 
but still curse the systems they have to manage. They must've lost 
the intererst a long time ago. They have not had experiences with 
anything that is truly great, revolutionary or in other ways very 
different from what they are currently working with.

I've seen this error twice now, on machines where AltMe is connecting 
to this world. Once on a machine where the world has been for a long 
time, and it caused it to resync everything; the second time, just 
now, on a virgin machine:

For the time being I can switch the text fonts from "much too small" 
to "still too small", while the groups list stays on "barely readable".

I had lots of problems with this early on when trying to run multiple 
worlds.  At one time I had 4 worlds that I attempted to keep going, 
for free without reserving the world name (I know, i'm cheap), but 
found it was a pain to keep restarting the worlds in sequence one 
one of the worlds inactivated.

I just thought of a feature that a future version of Altme may want 
to look into, sub-texts.  I have an urge to make stupid off-topic 
comments sometimes, but also have a respect for keeping forums on 
track for the greater good and use of important time.  Perhaps some 
furture version could have a trigger or formatiing option for 'invisible' 
sub-text, only seen if requested.  Then we could make off-topic friendly 
comments without too much worry about disturbing serious discussion 
threads, while keeping said comments 'in the thread'.  Just thinking 
out loud.

(as previously reported) I regularly (most days) cannot connect to 
RT-hosted Altme worlds between around 18:00 and 24:00 utc.
The logon hangs with an "internet busy" message.

I've  no idea why. I have no such problem with IOS servers hosted 
by RT.

Evenings would generally be my most productive time for REBOL-related 
community things .... so it's a pity :-(

* Server clock check is now optional. You can enable or disable it 
from your Settings panel. This features checks that your server (world) 
clock matches your local clock (adjusted for time zone).

    * Fixes major bug in offline usage when you want to read your messages 
    while not connected to the net.

    * Fixes minor bug in icon pane when you right clicked on the help 
    part of the application icon panel, an error would occur.

    * Minor changes to AltME update notice. First, AltME will close when 
    you read the update news in your browser. Also, if you do nothing, 
    the update notice will close after 30 seconds. Both of these changes 
    are done to keep AltME from timeout problems.

    * Updates bug tracker applet (selected worlds). Removes unused fields 
    and buttons. Simplifies parts of the layout. Improves some of the 
    report modes.

I noticed that too some time ago....Which is why I can [have to] 
remember all my altme passwords :-)

It works better (ie forgets fewer passwords) if you click the dropdown 
at the top left to change words.

How does AltME launch web browser? I have my browser defaulted to 
FF, but it always starts IE. Not that it would be much of a problem, 
but IE proxy setting is set by our Active Directory rule with each 
log-in, so at home I have to constantly change the proxy setting 
each time I get home, in order to be able to start links directly 
from AltME ....

We must be seeing something different. I get the option for changing 
the different extension if I pick the second option. I think I will 
post an image later.  I am not in  my Vista computer at this time.

Before I make an ass of myself on my blog for the umpteenth time: 
Who can new people contact to sign up for AltME?

Last night, for the second time...  When I connected to Altme Reichart's 
name was "none" his color was correct though.  


The first time this happened it was on a different computer and Reichart 
remained "none" for the duration of the install so I had to reinstall. 
 


Altme seems to have corrected itself somehow this time.  Reichart, 
you will be pleased to know that you are no longer "none"

it may have been a DNS problem, because I was connected to the r3 
world the whole time and could send messages just fine. of course 
it's no fun if there is no one to respond. :-)

Maybe make optional expirable groups that way if a post doesn't take 
place for some time in a respective expirable group that group will 
expire and clean itself up.

Anyway time for a new build of Altme with 2.7.6 encap ... no more 
black dos boxes ...

As you can see, I was having trouble as this new install populated 
lists: any time that I hit the enter key the post vanished but the 
list would not refresh by just going to another topic and returning 
to this altme topic.  Hence the 3 stutters in trying to report what 
may be a known issue as I was not sure if my post was in limbo or 
lost in the ethereal bit bucket

Pekr, my limited experience with multiple altME worlds is you need 
to have the other worlds you are hosting running at the same time 
you create your new world.  It will assigne the next available port 
to that world.

it seems also to happen mostly when changing world from one to the 
other. I haven't been able to run multiple AltMEs on one machine 
for a long time.

Let me start over... host-port is what Gregg is talking about.  There 
is also a host-addr setting that might be the source of my worlds 
becoming unavailable all of a sudden even though they are used on 
 a daily basis.  I'll have to check that out next time my world locks 
me out.

I moved my AltME from program files to it's own directory so I can 
now browse the downloads.  Now I get a security requester each time 
I start up Altme ... I guess because it has not been signed.

seeing as i have a little free time i'll go sketch out an 'I wish' 
Altme interface ;)

I don't agree. Why should it be lost? Imo there is a bug somewhere. 
It seems like in-memory-only database or what? I can understand time-out 
of the world, if not used for some time. But not loosing world name, 
when the world is apparently running. That simply can't be regarded 
being a solid service ....

Something really weird happened to my AltMe instalations. 

Rebol3 and R3-Alpha opened as if it was the first time. It is downloading 
every messages again. Does anybody know what could cause this?

The next time one of you think that you are not seeing updates in 
group, instead of posting a ".", please try something for me to see 
if this works.  Just change yoru max message setting, say from "100" 
to "500" or even "1,000".  I just noticed something that might explain 
this bug....

One thing is clear - our world was not available, wifi node was down. 
So at that time, there might be some check, and the rest depends 
on engine at Safeworlds. It is just that upon the description, the 
world name should be reserved for 10 days, while it was not even 
24 hours. But it was not a problem to renew. We just re-registered 
the world, and it mapped to the data of our world, without any problem 
...

AltME feature request.  Include the date/time as a second column 
a group was last updated.  Since we don't have the ability to synch 
what was read between each instance of AltME that we read, having 
the last date/time listed we could quickly select through the groups 
we have already visited in a previous session on another machine. 
 Although synching what was last accessed would be the ultimate fix. 
:-)

it's not the first time people described this syndrom.

Saying it never happened before so it doesn't come from Altme, he's 
a special way to resolve (or not) bugs.

Now trying to autostart at boot time but having a trouble...

su -lc '/.../altserve -s world -p port &' user > /dev/null

according ot altme guide
does not seem to launching...

I know the example is for altmeserve but I thought it would work 
for client as well

sorry, my issue was with re-creating a world.  I had multiple worlds 
hosted on the same machine at one time and I cheaped out and didn't 
register the world for $10 US per world.  When the worlds expired 
after 10 days of no usage (which never happened, but they expried 
anyway), I had to recreate the worlds, the order was important in 
that scenario.  Sorry for misleading you.

I've been using Altme for a project with a guy who is very non-tech. 
He did not know how to drag a window. Anyway, it is working out great. 
We are using File sharing to re-format a bunch of text files and 
with the abilty to add comments and check lists its saving a lot 
of time over traditional Email. He is still not really up to speed 
so once he is it wil really shine. And with the abiltty to just add 
new members where they can read any old messages to see where we 
are and what we have been doing.


I regret not using it for my Appraisal business. My partner and I 
had to email files back and forth all the time. And sometimes we 
needed to get files from one another but one of us was away or not 
at our computer. If we used Altme we would never have had that problem.

Now anyone can use their karma to subtract from someone's karma ... 
so if you feel someone is out of line, you can take points from them, 
but you also lose the same amount of points.  If anyone loses too 
many points in a day or week or whatever, they are not allowed to 
post for a time period.

Beer pressure does work.... that is how I ask contractors to do things. 
 I call them over, and as I ask them to make changes, I pull out 
the ice from the bag, pull all the beer out of the boxes, and put 
it all in the cooler.  But the time I'm done talking it is all set 
up, and by the time they are done working, the beer is ice cold!


Graham, yes, great idea.  This is a model we have used in game rooms. 
 


It would be interesting in this context to see how people help each 
other.  I suspect it "might" be a zero sum game.  There are people 
that regardless of the facts simply help the underdog.    It is why 
so many hard criminals attract women from the outside.  


I have not seen anything like this though in Qtask.  I think the 
fact that you upload your picture makes you a little more "accountable", 
and that a moderator can kick you out.  Slashdot's system works pretty 
well, it might be fun to play with that more too.

but the time - by the time.

I am aware what I said and with what attitude. I am used to be direct 
and stright, and I know that some ppl might have problem with my 
behavior. I got to such "state" with the work overload, which is 
not good, I know. But the less time I have, the faster I need to 
make my decisions, not having time for BS. So - your REBOL related 
domain redirection is really a bad move, no matter what. I do remember, 
how Amiga Inc. tried to protect their TM, so I wonder what would 
Carl say to above mentioned link. As a joke - OK, but other than 
that, I would not do it myself, from various reasons. And that is 
what I expect from others ...

Reichart - and as for abbhorent behaviour. Interesting thing is, 
that ppl I work with, are never facing anything abhorrent. Some ppl 
(is it US specific?) are not used to "pressure" or how to call it. 
E.g. we are here in CZ used to look into one's eyes, ask private 
questions, whereas I believe in US it would not be appropriate, because 
you enter someone's "private zone". When few of us from CZ were at 
yoga training camp, we asked them some questions, and they felt offended, 
that we don't have right to ask for anything which could be regarded 
being a private matter. It took some time for them to understand 
it. One manager which taught me once told me - you can be harsh, 
you can fight - but don't fight ppl, fight arguments. And when I 
said that I regard something a blatant lie, it has nothing to do 
with you personally ...

Vladimir, I randomly have trouble with copying text from AltME as 
well.  I'm running on Vista and occasionally right clicking will 
fail.  The notification that text has been copied pops up but the 
clipboard isn't updated with the new text.  Usually selecting text 
and hitting CTRL+C will copy the text but also fails from time to 
time.

I will try, once I will visit the target PC. The existing world WAS 
running, and I was even connected to it from outside PC. Yet when 
registering new one, it ended up registered with port 5400. Next 
time (once it expires), I'll try to open rebol console and check, 
if port 5400 is regularly blocked by trying to: open tcp://:5400. 
 I will report back my experience ...

ALtme wish list...

I would like to have the abilty to batch update all files in a folder. 
I'm sitting here clicking on each one at a time...

Also, an ability to import a folder with contained files. It seems 
you have to create a folder manually,,I had to creat about fifty 
folders the other day...

And even if the folder already exists with files in it you still 
need to iport the files manually.
But atleat you can import multiple files at a time...

To help read URL bugged posts I switch letter size to small, and 
most of the time I am able to correctly read the message :-)

I have been having a bit of trouble with AltME. for a while it could 
not log on today, and all the time I have been using it I see it 
disconnect quite often.

It also often comes up with the message under my name of  "Internet 
busy" which I dont understand.  Now just now it said "depot update"

Hmmn, not sure how to make sense of it, My local machined do connect, 
BTW, within my own office space.  But the AltME check fails on 3 
of them, and I can't reach them outside the firewall.  But Paul, 
on your TcpView thingamajig, I see 5400, 5401, 5402, and 5503 ports 
open, but the process names are unclear which is which.  I guess 
I have to bring them up one at a time while watching, and turn all 
other net stuff off

Paul, by bringing them up one at a time, I was able to identify which 
is which.  I see no problem in the ports being used, and my router 
allows 5400 - 5409 in DMZ

Could be Pekr, I never ran more than one world at a time.

You can at least start looking from the top of the list if you know 
they've been around a long time or the bottom if they're new :-)

You can sort on "Activity" date/time, which should make active users 
a bit easier to find.

The sync bug is a very old one.
Possible partial solutions:

-- leave world running for  a long time....some groups then resync 
if a message is posted to them

-- change your message limit, and then do a search for a fairly common 
word

-- send a message (just a dot is the convention) to every group you 
want to resync
-- delete all messages and restart the world.


http://www.rebol.org/aga-display-posts.r?offset=-1&post=r3wp151x920

r3 chat  is anti productive  and give me head hach i like spartiate 
interface but R3/chat is yerk and as I told you I have particed spartiate 
interface for a long long time (ok you want name ? Vi BitchX telnet 
etc..)

IRC = Inetnet Relay Chat basically design by norvegian to exchange 
information during the long and boring winter they have it was a 
good way to speak with thousands of people at the same time make 
the thing really live. of course you have ways to select the kind 
of conversation you want to go on your channel

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

and that even one of the ways to evaluate the intelligence of an 
AI how many time it will spend before saying supid things or repeating 
itself

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.

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?

at the same time.

there's about 10 users logged in here at present .. and the lag time 
is significant

If I remember right, once I had around 250 or 127 connections at 
the same time. Don't remember the right number, just that I thought, 
that's the limit to one port number.

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.

[fourth time of trying to post this]: thanks for the analysis of 
the connection problems, Mike.

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'

And for the exact time frame we have seen it heere too....hmmmm...

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

Maybe it's the Google's Wave which makes Internet busy.. updating 
conversations of all the planet in real time.)

The problem is sovled by auto-hiding the task bar.. though I prefer 
to keep it visible all the time.

So, it's important that if you intend to have two worlds running 
at the same time, to have your first world running (using port 5400) 
so when you create your second world it is given the next available 
port number (5401) and that is what Safeworlds will record for that 
second world.

well. being an account of 10% of posts and not having posted for 
2 months... I guess I am a sizeable part of the decrease... but its 
summer, vacation time, and many of us actually have less questions 
with R3.0 than its earlier releases...  what I find strange is the 
decrease in the number of people posting...

not sure how Robust R3 chat is. After all - it is just one of possible 
architectures. It is true that I doubt it is much advanced. It is 
good for Chat, even threading, moving threads here or there, ranking, 
etc., but we are imo not following latest developments of distributed 
apps. Some few years ago I read something about Cademlia etc. protocols, 
but not sure what it is all about. OTOH - look at Altme - it is running 
for years. And if its back-end would be DB based, it would be enough 
for a long time probably.

disconnected this time ... here and R3beta

it would be a good idea if he gets time to publish that part of the 
code.

These guys have been working on this for two years! WIth google resources? 
I guess ity takes a long time to make these thypes of apps when you 
are wedging technology not really ment to do it.

I'm not that impressed...(18 min. in to preseentation anyway...

This is the first time I lost my world and one has been running no 
problem for over a year...

amacleod -- it looks like AltME.com's world server went down for 
a time yesterday.
Could that have knocked your worlds out of orbit?

Time to restart the OpenAltme project.

BrianH, I still got the chat  file in the MSE quarantine, I'll take 
a look at it next time I boot into Windows and look if there's any 
javascript code in it. At the moment I don't use it that often since 
Windows 7 keeps rebooting every few hours and messes up my new harddrive, 
seems to be a common problem with Windows 7. And it worked so nice 
for a couple of days, meh.

I would like to know the mechanisms, which checks for the 10 day 
time-out period, so that it could free timeouted worlds. There must 
be bug there. Both my worlds were running yesterday, I visit them 
on regular basis. So I wonder how some script or whatever sits at 
altme.com, can fail on check here?

Carl - private message on R3 chat. I did not contact you with prior 
problems, but this time I got denerved, when it happened second time 
in one month :-)

I used to run a backup rebol altme server when it altme used to go 
down for ages at a time but that server is now otherwise occupied.

I agree.


its currently, totally, broken because the server seems to be freezing 
all the time. 

 there is a serious flaw in altme's tcp design.

I think that last time Carl told that this world is already too big 
and the best way would be to setup a new one.

I guess we should observe whether the problem is worse when many 
users are connected and whether it's self-amplifying, when users 
try to re-connect all the time when the problem is there.

when the server is instable, I can confirm its not really better 
even when we are alone in the world.  I checked the last time and 
was the only one here a few times and it was as bad as when some 
of you appeared.

to me the problem is that MS should have created a real application 
framework... actually, only Apple with OSX seems to be really close 
to this.


there should be THREE root directories and only three dirs for each 
application.  windows has dozens, which is crazy.
1. Application SOURCE data (.exe, libs, datafile, etc)
2. Application STORAGE data (game saves, defaults
3. Application Temporary data, flushed on program quit by the OS.


within Storage, you'd have application and user-based storage and 
that's it.


The os refuses to execute any file not within application source 
dir, so you have already clamped down on a lot of security issues. 
 a list of approved .exe is stored whenever you launch an application 
for the first time.


for a bit more flexibility, several application dirs could exist, 
so that you can do stuff like compile items and run them locally 
within your dev environment, but these dirs would be explicitely 
registered within the os.


on install the Application should be required to ask permission (like 
flash) in how much space will be stored within STORAGE if it exceeds 
a max default, independently of SOURCE.


The implementation of MyXxxx folders is completely horrendous, and 
should be a simple and ubiquitous form that has one entry for each 
media type, and a browser where you want to put your stuff (which 
might not be user-specific).


IIRC this was addressed in Vista, but then they went and added aliases 
to everything, which raises errors in the explorer, cause you can't 
use them.  They alias core windows directories in other languages, 
the result being that explorer and actual disk info are different! 
 this completely fucks up many applications (like rebol).


windows has a hard time "fixing" things... they always just patch 
it... its worse since they have a hard time starting with any good 
implementation of anything to begin with.

Maybe you check logs, and maybe when you reboot server, you loose 
the logs? Because - more users reported at the same time the same 
problem.

anyway ... some food for thoughts. If you need any assistance, or 
anything special I could install on my side, I can help. Other tha 
that, not sure if you want to lose more of your time with it ...

After startup, debug file is:
; AltME Debugging and Logging Options
debug: 0
file: %log.txt
events: [boot error note start halt wns wns-ping]
echo: none
net: none
time: none

debub file:

; AltME Debugging and Logging Options
debug: 0
file: %log.txt
events: [boot error note start halt wns wns-ping]
echo: none
net: none
time: none

You must start your world at least every 10 days (or keep it running 
all the time), or you will lose your world name. If that happens, 
nobody will be able to connect to your world, and someone else can 
take your world name. You can keep your world safe for a small fee.

hmm, so now I understand it. I have to restart world at least once 
in 10 days, or it might loose registration? But my condition of "keep 
it running all the time" is met.

Yep.. has been some time today.   Busy, doing some update, Busy, 
losing some posts..

its real bad this time...and a little different than previous slowdowns..

AltME updated to 1.2.18 .... you can now eg. set filesize transfer 
limit. Changelog states, AltME is going to be updated regularly now 
again. Maybe time to submit the most usefull proposal - add button 
to "mark everything read" (de-red button :-)

Carl, did you see the discussion with YueM? A new user who won't 
use AltME, because he claims it's broken, when in fact it's simply 
downloading all messages, which takes time and he can't post in the 
meantime. To him, the program appears unstable. An intended feature, 
I know, but maybe there could be done something to allow bulk downloading 
on first connect to a world.

Time on this is distracting from R3!

new installation of Altme is the only time you really want the group 
color reset ..

Yes, I want that too. One step at a time. ;)

OS X version not updated for quite a long time.  Let's jump forward 
with it and make it a 2.7.7 based build.   However, things are generally 
crazy today... even the weather... a powerful Pacific storm from 
here all the way to L.A. (1000km to the south).  Knocked out Reichart's 
power, it seems.

Yes, I've noticed that too. Makes the time difference much more obvious.