Jan 24, 2003 03:54 pm I am trying to think of a good way to have HRC facilitate collaborative efforts of it's members...thus far I have not come up with a good plan...any suggestions welcome...
Do you collaborate? If so, how?
Posted on Jan 24, 2003 03:51 pm
TheRealWaldo
Member Since: Jan 08, 2003
Ever participate in online collaborations? How have you done it?
How would you prefer to do it?
W.
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Jan 24, 2003 03:54 pm I am trying to think of a good way to have HRC facilitate collaborative efforts of it's members...thus far I have not come up with a good plan...any suggestions welcome...
Jan 24, 2003 04:20 pm Excellent idea! It would have to be Mp3 wouldn't it?
You could even do a vote at the end!!
Well I think it's a good Idea :-)
But who gets to play the triangle!!!
Jan 24, 2003 04:36 pm Perhaps a good model would be the way that it's done on www.nowrecording.com. I think some slight variations to the theme they use would work pretty well.
db, I'm a web developer by trade and would be more than happy to help with getting something like this going. You're doing an outstanding job with this site, but if you need an extra set of hands, just say the word.
Jan 24, 2003 05:01 pm Thanks for the offer dude. Are you the web developer that emailed me a while ago with a comment on the drums (I think drums) article? If so, I have added the option to add comments to article so if that was you, comment away! ;-)
More than development, it's back to my old concern of bandwidth costs and stuff like that, not really the development of the site itself, I have enuf scripts in my library that I could probably actually build it pretty fast...I think...
I dunno, I have lots of ideas...just don't have the resources to back them up, I have also considered putting the collaboration features in a "paid member" section so it could gte paid for that way, but who would pay, anyone? I dunno, to many ideas, too little brain :-)
Jan 24, 2003 05:08 pm NWR4 has a collaboration system that's quite a bit more advanced than most sites you see out there.
I'm doing some follow up research to prepare for the release, as we still need a few bits and pieces before the release can go through.
If any application developers are out there (VC/VB) that have experience with writing TCP applications, that want to volunteer, get in touch.
W.
Jan 24, 2003 06:00 pm I hear ya db with the bandwidth and so forth. Everything comes down to that it seems. In a few months, I'll be moving to a new home and will have a very good Internet connection. When that happens, I plan to put up a couple of servers in my office in the house so that I can stop paying hosting services and have total control over the servers. I might be able to offer you some server space when that happens. As it is now, I have plenty of space on one of my servers, but it's a shared box and I can't install anything on it. That, as you know, creates big problems with stuff like this collaboration thing.
Sounds like NWR4 might be the answer for us all if they can get it up and running. Waldo, I'm happy to help if I can, but I'm mainly a graphic designer/ASP developer and not familiar with the type of stuff it sounds like you need. But, if I can be of any help at all, let me know.
As for the article thing db, I did send you a comment, but it was for the article about building a studio. I'll go add my comments.
Jan 24, 2003 06:10 pm 'They' is I ;)
It'll happen, I just have to come up with the cash for some new hardware and new lines to handle the expected extra load.
W.
Jan 24, 2003 06:14 pm Ah yes, another one man operation. I know how it is. Well, I hope you can get what you need to get it going. I'm definitely anxious to check it out.
Jan 24, 2003 07:45 pm Hey Waldo, thanks for the info, I don't recall collaborative efforts being mentioned in our emails back and forth, that sounds very cool, I guess that is another service I will outsource to an affiliate like No Where Radio.
But sorry, I don't VB, I know VB Script, ASP, JSP, PHP, JavaScript, some perl and getting into some .NET and other web-related languages, but not much for app programming...my main forte's outside of multimeida is all web based programming and web security.
I am totally looking forward to NWR4, I gotta get myself a little site set up one of these days...in all my free time :-)
blueninjastar, studio building, that's right, I remember now, and now that I look in my Outlook, I still have a copy of your comment, I wanted to add it, but didn't know which member emailed it to me :-)
Jan 24, 2003 07:52 pm Since you guys have a bit of web dev experience, what collaborative environments do you use there?
Familiar with DW UltraDev4's collaborative IDE?
W.
Jan 24, 2003 07:56 pm Heck, I still code in NoteTab Pro and good ol' WS FTP Pro :-)
www.notetab.com/
In collaborative environments I have used UltraDev 4 quiet often with SourceSafe version control and syncing, but honestly, as great of a tool as Macromedia made with Dreamweaver/UltraDev, they can't make an FTP client to save their darn lives!
But I'll tell ya, my employer loves the fact my development tool of choice is a $20 shareware editor :-)
Jan 24, 2003 08:01 pm I'll agree that their FTP client blows, but no other tools have enough options to support multi-national collaborations on projects as large as NWR4.
We're talking a few million lines of base code, and billions of lines of database code...
W.
Jan 24, 2003 08:07 pm Ya, based on that I would say UD is about your best option for a tool...maybe look into Visual Studio .NET, I have taken a class on it and been to a couple of Microsoft's .NET seminars here in Minneapolis and it looks like a heck of a cool tool.
Jan 24, 2003 08:45 pm And actually, Waldo, if you dig through some threads in these forums, there are a few people here that do tracks for each others tunes andstuff, it's actually goes on quite a bit...so if you can help facilitate it for HRC members, just tell me what I can do to help in whatever way I can...
Jan 24, 2003 11:02 pm I've got VS.NET Enterprise here, and use it quite often for Windows based coding. It does not, however, function with my *nix based servers.
I don't trust Microsoft products much, after many years of issue after issue, so all my critical systems are *nix based. I only have 1 Windows based server (to support WMS), and 1 Windows workstation, but I have 10 *nix based servers and workstations!
Most of the help needed at this point, is detailed in the NWR forums under the new section, title 'gear needed'. Once all the hardware is together, then further software dev can take place, and my guess is 2 mo. to release after that. At the point the hardware is together, and the lines upgraded, I may also ask for volunteers to put the code together and beta test the hell out of the entire system.
W.
Jan 25, 2003 05:23 pm I'm pretty much a slave to the Microsoft world myself. The web-based software company I work for is a MS shop so I couldn't much help it. I'm using Visual Studio and, for MS technologies, I love it. We also use Visual Source Safe, but are getting ready to dump it because of it's many shortcomings. Even Microsoft doesn't use it!
I wish I had some gear to throw your way Waldo, but I'm just getting my stuff together myself. All of my websites are running off of hosting providers and I'm just coming out of the black hole of being a bass player. As a result, I don't have much in the way of spare gear. However, once I get a few more songs down the road and am ready to start really promoting, I will definitely be interested in throwing some cash your way for some advertising space. And I am more than willing to volunteer my time to help with coding, designing graphics, testing etc. That goes for you too db.
Jan 25, 2003 05:31 pm Since you're using VS, which version?
Also, any experience with VB/VC? Particularly interested in VC.
W.
Jan 26, 2003 06:04 am I sort of understand peoples mistrust of MS, but lately I think they have finally done some things right. Their 2000 Advanced Server I find very nice, stable and secure, and Windows XP I am VERY impressed with as a desktop OS...
Most of the prob with Windows from a server vantage point is lazy admins that don't take the time to lock it down. In the interest of user-friendliness MS ships IIS Servers wide open and leave it to the admin to tighten, where as every other server in the world is locked down and the admin has to open it up.
With the RC2 of .NET Server MS has taken the other approach...MS finally is changing it's mind on a few things and I can see it in their products as of late...
Honestly, Nimba and Code Red were both very basic attacks that even the simplist security measure would have stopped both of them...Windows prob is more lazy admins combined with their attitude of "user-friendly first". WHen they set up a server, boot it up, assign and domain and everything work, so they leave it alone from there...THAT is the main prob.
Jan 26, 2003 02:36 pm Well, try this on for size. You say it's laziness on the part of the admin? Okay, Windows 2000, since inception, has released over 325 patches for security holes that they discovered after a period of time.
In that period of time, several machines were downed, if not thousands, until MS addressed the problem with a patch.
Now the admin has to install it, once that 'patch' is created, located, and downloaded. In the installation process, more than 40% of the time, the machine needs to be COLD BOOTED. I don't know about you, but my main Windows server, it's RAID array, server cards, etc. takes over 30 minutes to reboot. That means in a given year, due to Microsoft, that machine HAS HAD to be down 325 x 30 minutes, the equivalent to 6.8 DAYS of downtime. Even a machine that took an astounding 1 minute to reboot (highly unlikely in a well used server), that'd be 5.5 hours of downtime. And I'm being nice here, not including the time that software such as IIS has to be shut down whilst the install is being done, or any damage being repaired from a security hole being breached.
Now, on a *nix based machine, there is the odd security hole found. The version of Debian I run has had 3 patches since I installed it. The PLUS side is that the kernal can be restarted IMMEDIATELY, WITHOUT a cold boot. Often never exceeding 1 or 2 SECONDS of down-time. So, in a year with *nix, the servers been down for, you guessed it, less than a minute.
BTW, what do you think of the nice new virus that took down over 30% of the worlds MS SQL 2K servers due to a security hole in 2K that MS didn't know about until now? 30% of the MS machines in the world were infected in a matter of hours, and thus were down for more than 9 hours! Not only that, but net lines all over were loaded down by its attempts to infect other machines. Even cost me money and down time, even though it didn't touch any of my machines (I'm not stupid enough to run MS SQL 2K).
I've been a tech for 15 years (and still am, it's how I make my living), and have NEVER found an operating as AWFUL as XP. In the past 7 weeks, I have removed the operating system from more than a dozen machines for people who had too many problems with it. I wont even bother going into the reasons why, but I would NEVER EVER wish my worst enemy to install XP on a machine.
As much as I hate MS, I still have to work with it constantly. When I get the opportunity however, I do my damndest to avoid it.
W.
(A fully certified MS tech, and the owner of a hosting company)
p.s., on the security side, unless you got a *nix based firewall sitting on your line in front of your MS machine, I can get in and do what I wish within 10 minutes.
Jan 26, 2003 02:56 pm Anyways, enough MS bashing. Blue, do ya got experience with MS-VC? If so, I may have a rather direct way you can help out.
W.
Jan 26, 2003 02:59 pm Well, I am not going to get into an argument about it, cuz honestly I don't care, that virus that was out this weekend was running basically the same type of attack that Code Red did. Nimba and Code Red would have been totally stopped if people would have properly secured their servers when warned about it's forthcoming, I remember many emails to apply patch "x" or this virus coming would take you down, those that applied it were not taken down.
MS SQL Server is a crappy database, runs on those stupid "name pipes" things that basically open your system up to any ol' null session hack from any ol' script kiddie, I wouldn't use SQL Server to save my life.
As far as XP goes, I have never been happier with any OS in my studio, I have used 95, 98, ME and XP (2000 on a trial basis, but not for long) and XP has been fast and stable as hell. I would NEVER recommend it for a server however.
I am no MS evangalist, my sites usually run on Linux RedHat and MySQL database. but I have a few that run on Windows 2000 with an Oracle database and have had great luck with them. More than anything, I am just so tired of listening to people complain about MS...as tired as I am of people complaining about anything...my basic thought is "then don't buy it and shut up"...it's just soooooo old...
30 minutes to reboot? sheesh, I get p***ed when mine take 3 or 4...
Jan 26, 2003 03:12 pm Lol, well, it does have a 14 drive sequential RAID, and on 2&2+1XOR, so they have to be synced prior to shutting down, then re-spin sequentially up when power is regained, then go through intial integrity tests, then re-sync, before data can be read from them.
The server NIC itself takes nearly a minute to boot up. It in itself is equivalent to a 200MHz machine, complete with *nix based OS.
The fans are rather huge (it's a dual Xeon machine), and take a while to spin up, which are of course monitored to ensure they are running at the right speed to cool the machine before power is allowed into the main board, the dual power supplies run their own little diagnostics prior to sending power to the board, the BIOS runs full checks on the 1GB of RAM, taking a couple minutes... Etc.
It's a pretty damn decent server hardware wise, redundancies up the yin-yang, and self-diagnostics up the yin-yang. It'll usually let me know that there is going to be a problem before there is one...
p.s., this latest virus attack had no patch for SQL 2K until a few hours into the 'serious' part of it (redalrert/codered and nimda attacked via. IIS, not SQL2K). So many admins couldn't do anything but sit on their hands until MS released the patch. Same with Nimda and Code Red. Sure, after the patch is around some admins are lazy, but even the most adament admins can't protect against what is unknown to even MS at the time.
I wouldn't buy MS products ever, but lets face it, if you are a coder, tech, developer, host, or otherwise, you HAVE to deal with their products. I think that qualifies for the odd *****.
Heck, I don't want to argue either. All I really said before is that VS.NET does not work with *nix servers. And there ain't no arguing that...
W.
Jan 26, 2003 04:26 pm if($product!="Microsoft")
{
$platform="cross-platform";
}
else if($product=="Microsoft")
{
$platform="on only Microsoft";
}
echo $product." runs ".$platform;
Jan 26, 2003 04:36 pm P.S., a small modification should be made to your subscriptions so that the person posting doesn't recieve an e-mail telling them that they just posted (I'm pretty sure they already know!)
It'd save a bit of server load as well.
W.
Jan 27, 2003 11:02 am Unfortunately, no VC experience here. I started out as a graphic designer and then began learning to code. That being the case, my coding experience started with "front-end" stuff and is working it's way twoard the back end. Basically, I'm very experienced with design as well as HTML, Javascript and CSS (and DHTML). I'm now becoming quite comfortable with ASP. I'm also extremely good with Flash, but nobody really uses that anymore!
Jan 27, 2003 04:00 pm Does that mean you know how to handle dynamic flash?
W.
Jan 27, 2003 05:08 pm Absolutely. I was doing dynamic flash back to Flash 3! Although, I do it using ASP. Don't know if that will work for you, the concepts would be the same regardless.
Jan 27, 2003 05:17 pm All "dynamic" flash really comes down to is writing some variable values into the embed tag that's placing the flash on the page. You can pretty much do that with the technology of your choice. Then you just have to create a Flash movie that does whatever you need it to do based on said variables. There's really not that much to it beyond programatic flash designing. The same is basically true for passing values back out of the flash to write to a database or whatever. Let me know what you want to do and I'd be glad to help you out with it.
Jan 27, 2003 05:21 pm I know how it works ;) I started working with dynamic flash as soon as they introduced the ability.
For NWR4.5/NWR5 I have planned to integrate some of the features of FlashMX into the site for those who wish to use the option. I'm always on the lookout for people to help, since we'd be talking about a great deal of work.
I'll be in touch when the time comes.
W.
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