Monday, June 9, 1987 The following test is the total dump of all messages posted to message base in the developer support website as of Friday, June 6, 1997. I used autoformat in MS word to help the readability of the messages, but I understand that it is not perfect, the next web dump will improve substantially. Please be mindful to check the date of these messages as some may become inaccurate after time. -Peter Forum: General Messages Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Greg LaBrec on Thu May 08 07:41:26 1997 We are at the stage where we need to make a decision. We can either move to the next stage of developing the current message base system (search all forums, mark read/unread, cookies, etc...) or we can deep 6 the current system and switch to Usenet Newsgroups. I welcome your thoughts on this topic. Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Jeremy Gordon on Tue May 20 21:07:10 1997 To Greg LaBrec: Yeap, ditch this system. Usenet newsgroups on a private, passworded system is the way to go. All the features of this one, including HTML and binary attachments would still work great. This system makes it really painful to read and post messages. · jeremy Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Dave Scheele on Mon May 12 13:44:10 1997 To Greg LaBrec: I advocated using UseNet Newsgroups ‘way back when the BBS was still up. Check there for my thoughts on the matter. Nice to see you’re thinking of dumping this system ... it’s too cumbersome compared to newsgroups, imho. I think the poster who mentioned the difference in volume of postings here vs. the BBS is dead on. I also like the fact that I can archive usenet postings that interest me locally using my favorite newsgroup reader. I don’t think security is an issue ... my ISP has had local-user-only newsgroups since day 1. I don’t know much about such setups, but it seems to me a separate password-protected server would do the trick. However, please DON’T copy over the password file from here ... let us set up our own please! or allow the ability for us to change them Dave Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Christer Ericson on Fri May 09 22:22:44 1997 Usenet newsgroups are far superior to this system in all aspects. However, considering the fears that feed the NDA system, I don’t see how it would be possible (even though it is highly desired) to take all discussions into a usenet newsgroup, even were it to be moderated. Do you plan to have a specific server that we would connect to? How would you solve the logging in problem? Newsreaders do not have password capability built in AFAIK. Going to some other BBS-like system I don’t know about. What makes usenet newsgroups good is just the ability to use a full-featured newsreader of your choice. A BBS system will most likely be a fraction as poweful as your average newsreader, which pretty much would make it on par with this system, thus making the question moot. All IMHO, of course. Re: Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Tom Plunket on Thu May 22 02:39:15 1997 To Christer Ericson: >Newsreaders do not have password capability built in AFAIK.< Actually, the “good” ones do... I know that Netscape supports it, and I use FreeAgent (a freeware newsreader), and it supports password logging-in to servers. In fact, I use it that way every day. Another note on this, on the password scheme, if each company had their own logins, then your user name and email address would be yours on the posting, but you’d log in using your company’s login. Make sense? It would work, since the .newsrc (or equivalent) file is stored locally, so you’d only get messages that you personally hadn’t read. · Tom Re: Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Mike Fulton on Fri May 09 23:04:21 1997 To Christer Ericson: I don’t know if the password protection thing is a recent addition to newsgroup server software, but we do have it setup for our Net Yaroze pages. Basically, we would set up a separate news server for commercial developers, and configure it for password access. I think we may be able to just copy over the web site password list, or maybe even use the same password database. I don’t know how that part works. Mike @ SCEA Re: Re: Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Greg LaBrec on Tue May 13 16:18:43 1997 To Mike Fulton, Christer Ericson: The only way we could keep it from becoming an administrative nightmare is to copy over the existing logon/password file. A user would set up their newsreader to access our private server using their company logon. Then, in the “identity” section of their newsreader they would set their own “username” and e-mail address. Re: Re: Re: Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Dave Marshall on Thu May 15 17:21:48 1997 To Greg LaBrec: The fact that the original message has been posted for a week and only 3 people responded, proves my point that fewer people are using this system versus the old BBS system. Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Rob Vawter on Thu May 22 18:47:57 1997 To Dave Marshall: Actually, it doesn’t prove anything. There is no way to check here how many people have read a message, (unlike the BBS) which was a really good way to tell how much traffic was on the BBS. BBS traffic had its ebbs and flows; as the documentation has improved, the libraries have been improved (via bug fixes and additions of new functionality), and developer skill has improved through experience and training sessions, the BBS traffic decreased markedly. Also, we now have far more messages coming into the devtech_support address than before. So, the perceived drop-off may be due to other things rather than the current web-site system. I’m actually for implementing a new system, but the new system certainly does not guarantee that more developers will read the messages. Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Dave Scheele on Fri May 30 18:17:32 1997 I think Dave Marshall’s point was that there is less public interaction amongst developers here than there was on the BBS, or would be on a better newsgroup-based system. Your comment that you are now getting far more email at devtech_support kind of points this way too— rather than post in public easily and get input from other developers, it’s now easier to just email you folks A less-cumbersome system would hopefully encourage informal information sharing again. I, for one, miss the “good ol’d days” of gleaning tidbits and chit-chatting on the BBS that just don’t happen any more ... for us poor folks located out here in the wilds of PA, it’s almost the only way to get to know you Californians! Dave Re: Current Message System vs. Usenet Written by Dave Marshall on Thu May 08 17:37:40 1997 To Greg LaBrec: Junk this crappy message system. It takes too much time to hunt thru this system looking for new messages. You need to be able to look at one screen and tell which conferences have new messages in them (like the BBS). I’d like to know what the average number of postings per day is for the Web site vs. the average number of daily postings for the old BBS. It seemed like the BBS had a lot more message activity on it. If this is true, has anyone there thought about the possible reasons for the decline in message postings? dave LOADEXEC Written by Joseph Wilkerson on Tue Apr 22 22:33:13 1997 Can you Loadexec a program on top of your current program Re: LOADEXEC Written by frank on Wed Apr 23 18:32:18 1997 To Joseph Wilkerson: Yes. But we don’t really recommend using this method. If an error occurs while reading the new program, you’re hosed. You may have noticed that there’s no return value for LoadExec(). When you call it, you’re putting yourself at the mercy of the O/S, and the control you relinquished (your program) is overwritten (or ignored if it’s still in memory). If the new, expected program isn’t delivered as promised, the O/S just sits there and pouts. It’s much safer to use Load() followed by Exec(). It’s true you won’t have quite as much memory available for the new executable, but the dependability gained is worth sacrificing a few K for a launcher program. Frank Sheperson SCEA Re: Re: LOADEXEC Written by Tom Plunket on Thu Apr 24 00:17:11 1997 To frank: As a note on this topic, and from experience: You can LoadExec() over your current program. The problem with being hosed on a failure, however, can be overcome. LoadExec() _will_ return if the load fails, the problems occur when you’ve loaded far enough to overwrite where your LoadExec was called from. Bubsy 3D still uses LoadExec()s, but it’s done in a “safe” way to trap errors.