For the record, this post is my words, and my words only.
Matt,
You bring up some very valid points. I don't disagree with most of what you said. However, I would like some alternative solutions to the current situation. I honestly don't know what else to do.
Let me give you some background.
When we moved over here from the PP, the regulars followed immediatly. When the next January came (the next med hunt), we went back to the old PP to round up those that are only around during the hunt.
When we did this we learned we had a couple thousand lurkers. Lance, the sysop of PeoplesForum informed me that PeoplesForum had a huge spike in registrations during the med hunt. Keep in mind this does not count the lurkers that never even register.
Well, if you look at the posts in the med hunt thread, you'll realize that maybe 150-200 people post. We had no idea we had that many lurkers.
Are we to let those people just come in and gain from the hard noodling of those that actually contribute?
This doesn't even address the issue of the assholes that come in here just to create havoc. That in itself has brought me to the edge of just shutting this place down several times. I would never do that because the Cooler Crew means too much to me, so I just grit my teeth and plug ahead.
Another note, I don't get paid for this. Ares doesn't get paid for running coolercrew.com. He's even forked over the cost for the server on his own... He's looking into an alternative to this place because it's in a very bad financial situation.
See what I'm getting at?
Now that I've rambled, let me say, I don't like excluding people. Not one bit! It's actually a pain from my perspective.
Pleasedo not tempt my pleas to read my posts and reply to what I've said, not what you think I'm saying.My gripes are not with the community, it's with the way it has become a private and exclusive community that discourages everything it was built on to date.
 i don't recall you doing any legwork on the 8th of february of 2002, the day after the plug got pulled over at the pp.
Can your ATM line even handle half of the number of packets peoplesforum generates at crunchtime? Really man it's not something you want to host off of, and I can show you if you'd like me to bring down coolercrew.com with apache benchmarks.
do you even have statistics for what peoplesforum generates at crunch time? and beyond that, do you have even half a clue what is running in my basement right now? dude, i've got a more complex network, and a better protected one for that matter, than most small businesses have. i'm willing to show my pedigree. care to show off yours?
what's funny about that, thx, is that you and i found pf at about the same time. i just didn't do enough looking into it to see that it was as flexible as it really is. just think. ares could have been the stern controller here (:: listens as jake trembles thinking ares was the stern controller all the time ::)
I agree with the way the invitational thread has been used to leave out the people who have nothing better to do than cause problems. To come onto a community thread, just to start trouble is very disconcerting (yes I used a dictionary for that----thanks L4V). It allows for a very useful thread flow.
I spend a lot of time slogging, and I don't mind reading about other peoples lives. I like the people here and like to share in their joys and pains, as I am sure (READ: as they have shown me) they feel the same way. This place is like family to a lot of people, and to me as well. My home away from my home away from home. But I would rather share a friends joy or sorrow, than to slog through someone trying to bitchslap someone for no apparent reason than to wreak havoc. That is unneccesary, and uncalled for.
So ( I guess this is my 10 cents worth..) I agree with the invitational principle to that extent. From what I have seen or gathered, the only obligation you have to get into the invitational thread is to post, and to post nicely. I have no reason to believe otherwise. In my opinion, for what it is worth, I believe that THX has done an outstanding job as the 'stern controller' or whatever you choose to call him.
All involved in the making and running of this site, to the best of my knowledge are doing the best they can with what they have.
Thats all...
Have a great day!! And thank you Cooler Crew, for making this the best hunt of my life, especially since I can't hunt personally this year.
I don't remember anyone reacting to my offers. I am by nature a recluse. If you question my loyalty to the cooler crew, I would hope you understand that I'm still a few years off the mean age of the members and even just 3 years ago don't identify with many of the people around here for anything beyond the hunt.
This isn't to say I don't want anything beyond the hunt, but rather to say that beyond the hunt, when being qualified, especially during this time of the year, should be secondary to the hunt itself.
Reorganizing this is probably not a one-man task. I do not believe that singly THX, ares, myself, or superman could determine what exactly to do that would solve the problem. I am an asset to the back-end as the rest of everyone is as asset to other ares.
ares- I have investigated quite thoroughly what peoplesforum runs through. I wouldn't have brought up the offer if I hadn't made a clear observation. I have contacted Mark Richter and have been handed off to some information about the impact this system makes.
I'm not questioning your home network. I am making a statement that it isa home network, and it's being fed by a consumer product for connectivity. You have no redundancy, you have no incident protection, and you are completely shut off if and when Visi's equipment or its upstream providers have problems. Please do not take offense, don't get hostile. I'm willing to bargain for brains but what I have already said is true. If you don't know what Equinix is, please to be looking at http://www.equinix.comfor more information about what kind of connectivity I'm talking about. We're located within the Chicago facilities routed by multiple Juniper tanks to handle more than triple our commits can throw. Our border network can take 20 times more packets per second than Visi's core routers.
Look, man, I'm not here to start fights, but I'll roll with the punches when they come.
I subscribe to the idea that the Cooler Crew was to be public. I’ve made this statement several times so I won’t go into depth again.
I also understand how people feel about their private information and the information one might want to share with, say, the “close knit” group of people they’re comfortable with. While I wouldn’t personally agree, there are better ways to cater to this behavior. Abuse can be curtailed too with a marginal effort made to quell user uprising, but not on WebX, or whatever this has become. There needs to be a few leaps and bounds made to better the way the community is presented. There are modern options available. Ares has several quality candidates mentioned already.
Overall, I greatly appreciate the idea of making a separate Cooler Crew community which can involve both public andprivate content sections. The organization of this forum system is truly confusing and enough people exist with enough volunteer staff to justify a self-sustaining entity. Nothing that I’ve offered to date is something someone is trying to sell. I provide my resources at great personal expense as everyone else does, and I’m willing to make a large concession to help clean up the Cooler Crew and its content. I know a great many tricks and have access to the means to do it with nominal cost.
Basically, that’s the alternative I present. Get the smart people together roundtable style, move everything into a fortress, and fire away.
 I am making a statement that it is a home network
then you haven't a clue what's in my basement. sure, it may not have the redundancy, but don't ever equate it to a home network, unless you know what it is that you're talking about.
let's just say that the insurance rider on our homeowners policy won't even cover all the hardware thats down there.
I provide my resources at great personal expense as everyone else does
and you know what, it doesn't cost a damn cent for me or anyone else in this room to host it privately either.
I know a great many tricks and have access to the means to do it with nominal cost.
well then give us specific details, none of which have been shown here.
bottom line, matt, the contributions that have been made to this site (by all the users, and not just those in the cooler), aren't enough to sustain something of this magnitude, or a dedicated coolercrew site, and funding it is just something that one person alone should nothave to do. that's why coolercrew.com didn't get moved over to coolercrew.com. qwest turned up the outgoing bandwidth on the lines last february.
Did you visit Equinix? My cooperative is primarily running a big Apache server running on a P4 something or another. I have successfully output 950 megabit of traffic on its gigE interface to the Internet. I'm not sure if you're aware of the precise order of magnitude at which I'm describing, but I can sure hope you know it's a lot.
This one server could handle cooler crew stuff without a problem. I have access to additional resources, and we can colocate additional hardware if we send it out, no problem.
This is redundantly connected to a 35xx catalyst which is redundantly connected into the two Foundry Bigirons, redundantly, which switches traffic for some crossconnects. Then, it goes (redundantly) into the Junipers, which breathe the network traffic into the cloud at Equinix. From Equinix it goes to any Tier-1 provider you can think of and a lot of blah, blah, blah.
This is an already established cooperative with public users already utilizing its public services. Traceroute to www.iddx.net if you'd like to peek at the machine I'm talking about.
Bottom line, you need bandwidth, and you need it delivered to you properly in a production environment to take care of thousands of users. How much do you think you need? How much do you think I can provide? Let's talk it out, man, I'm not the enemy, I'm just aware of what I'm talking about.
it's about the capacity of your connection. DMT DSL cannot handle the pps of the traffic generated by 2000 people hitting reload without problems,
do you have half a clue what the current dmt dsl rates are from qwest? any idea whatsoever. and just so you know, i don't masquerade in the least that its running on windows. although if you'd like me to i could.
I subscribe to the idea that the Cooler Crew was to be public. I’ve made this statement several times so I won’t go into depth again.
Well, not exactly. That was the case when the Crew was over at the PP because frankly, we didn't have a choice in the matter. But when we moved over here, and learned how many lurkers we had, things changed a little. Can you understand that we didn't want thousands of people that contribute nothing leeching off of us?
We like the WebX format. That's why we moved here versus somewhere else, but the format isn't the issue I'm trying to get at. The issue I care about is what to do with having an invitational or not.
ares- last I heard it was advertised at "1.5mbit/1mbit" but for many instances it's getting training something like 960kbit/s. Back when I had DSL I had a 1024/1048 config, or something like that. I really can't remember. Has it improved?
THX- The proof is in the pudding. It's not about the sustained bandwidth, it's about the packets-per-second. Packets can be considered "fat" and "thin". "fat" packets usually contain binary information like images on a site, or downloading content. "thin" packets are usually just control information and ICMP traffic, like pings and the client request for the site.
This leads into the complaints about WebX in general because the forum can also create significant load on the webserver with the "reloadreloadreloadrelaod*clicklicklicklick*" action it provokes. It's largely unoptimized and really it could use a good kick in the pants. There are many more modern forums with more robust methods, even ones that display in a similar format to WebX. Really, it's clear that even a large community such as peoplesforum can exist with tens of thousands of users... just not all at once. Perhaps not a conversation for now, though.
It'll be a lot more than 2000 requests. 2000 users will generate tens of thousands of concurrant requests. I can simulate this, or you can conduct your tests.
All in all, this is mucho dollars in Internet infrastructure that I am willing to extend in the efforts of seeing a unified community once more. I don't want to run it, I don't even want any credit. What I want to see is the kind of connecting we made when I first started the hunt. I'll go to great lengths to get that enabled.
This leads into the complaints about WebX in general because the forum can also create significant load on the webserver with the "reloadreloadreloadrelaod*clicklicklicklick*" action it provokes. It's largely unoptimized and really it could use a good kick in the pants.
and that's why thx asked people to turn off their avatars. each one generates a distinct non-cached request to the server, as opposed to the generic one which is merely a "thin" packet, and what do you know? the performance improved for most people.
all this, and the subject matter of this thread still isn't being addressed. and given what i've seen, i doubt that it ever will from you.
"problems" becomes a relative term when you're queueing packets at the router. You'll start getting packetloss and get hit with retrans up the poop chute if you saturate any line, DSL, DS-3, OC-12. Then suddenly you've got 10%pl, which is 10% more traffic trying to figure out what happened to their data, all at 2000ms ping times. Maxing out a connection at home uploading games to your friends when you have people simply browsing the internet and downloading movie trailers is usually no big deal since the actions you're taking are not latency intensive. Admittedly serving sites is usually not latency intensive either as when you have a few unique visitors browsing a site, they can wait.
Cue my pps argument. You're not dealing with 10 or 15 users. You're dealing with thousands of users, and they're all checking for new posts, so the actions repeat. Come 11:30ish, people are generating enough traffic to make the baby Jesus cry. If the peoplesforum traffic is generated largely by cooler crew members towards the 11pm-12am hour, and this machine is served on $whatever_machine on nLayer transit, there are a couple clear problems to grasp. This would be a good time to measure the mileage to see exactly WHERE and WHY, but my confidence lays where it is.
Ares- Why are you disengaging from the conversation suddenly with such a silly comment? Furthermore, it's as much disregarded from you as anyone who isn't listening. :) Come on, it's not as if the general populace is happy with the hoops one has to jump through to maintain nominal functionality.
People shouldn't have to lash the boats onto the deck. Get the act together, move into a bigger house, make yourselves comfortable. See what you can see.
furthermore, i'm not willing in the least, nor does it appear that anyone else here is either, to move into the house of someone who's here for 12 days a year, leaves, and then rants about how things are going when he comes back, even if he's providing said house for free.
I've said what I've said, and I'll say it again. I've challenged people to embrace and react and they've done so largely in an insulting manner, and all the while I've played along the best I can to keep my topics steady.
The lurker perspective is not a problem to me. Doesn't the cooler crew wish to merely have an impact on the hunt? Or, does it need to keep itself woven so tightly until one of its members finds the medallion? I can't perceive any reasonable answer other than attributing the closed-doors nature to natural group behavior.
There was more information in the public in 1998 when it was free to all than I see this year, and I've seen the private thread's contents too. People apart from the constructed group just don't interact with this place for a wide number of reasons.
There isn't an easy way to repair this, either. You can't tell people to not discuss their stuff in private. There needs to be many actions taken to clean up the active userbase and encourage new people to post their thoughts and ideas. Terms which require a glossary and large talk about who saw who at the bar last night are things that should be minimized when you're supposed to be talking about the hunt. Abusive users need swift judgment, and so on, and so forth....
THX, I'm not able to provide to you an alternative that doesn't involve migration from WebX. I'm sorry. Perhaps this effort was in vain.
Always fun to try reading through techo-speak. I'm sure glad someone understands all that.Â
I believe the issue is about whether or not there should be an invitational thread.
The only reason there is one here at all is because of the lurkers. Why should we all share our noodling so someone else can go out and pick up the medallion?
On the other hand, often some great ideas get overlooked at the time as being way outside the box.  Lurkers also have to weed through the ideas and put together what works best for their way of thinking. And how often have we seen lurkers become active participants that we're happy to have be a part of our community?
If there is to be an invite thread, anyone offering ideas about the hunt should be a participant on the invite thread. It is what the Cooler Crew has been about...an open, welcoming, fun-loving community. If someone can't behave, their access should be pulled.Â
As for hosting the coolercrew.com domain - ares has that and is doing a fabulous job. That site is something I hold very dear and he has my trust to care for it.
I've been a part of the Cooler Crew since the beginning in 1997. I am a bit of an introvert, so I tend to prefer discussing clues online, as opposed to going to a bar to hang out with people. While we have had good intentions of going to the Pre-Dig Gig and the Re-Hash Bash each year, we end up not going for whatever reason.
What I'm wondering is how the "Cooler" Cooler Crew people have determined who is part of the invitational and who isn't? I have both lurked and contributed over the years. The past two years I haven't been able to hunt much due to tendonitis.
So what happens to someone like me (us) who feels like we're a part of the Cooler Crew? But maybe we're not the cool people who tend to hang out at bars with the rest of the folks?
Has the Cooler Crew now become a closed society, and if you didn't get in while the gettin's good, then too bad, even though you have come to know and like and appreciate the cooler people over the last seven years?
You can't tell people to not discuss their stuff in private.
nor can you force them to discuss it in public, which is what you seem to advocate. at the same time, the very head of the thread says "the regulars are not required to post here"
There isn't an easy way to repair this, either.
yup. so deal with it. bottom line, there's noway to repair it. there's this wonderful thing called instant messenger, and all of them allow you to set up a private chat room etc. etc. etc. why can't/shouldn't we be able to do the same thing in a threaded form such as this if we so choose? because you don't like it? please. you're not running the show here, nor are you anything close to representative of the cooler crew, and i'm beginning to think that your musings about what to do website wise going forward, and your willingness to provide the bandwidth are entirely about changing that. and buddy, let me tell you that such a thing requires a hell of a lot more participation than what you've shown in here.
ares- If trust is your issue then I leave it to you, since you are the means by which the traffic for the community is directed. I would think that the unification of (how many?) 3 or more largely visited sites would be an intriguing opportunity.
I've participated in the HUNT discussion every time I'm here but this year. My gripes about WebX are always loud and short, and they will be so this year as well. The difference between this and the past is the truly impressive opportunity I feel I'd like to grant.
The reason for this years silence is because I don't see ANYTHING to talk about that isn't a sandwich of rickety logic and friends talking to friends about private matters. The hunt to not-hunt ratio is silly.
Gladly keeping with the house discussion, I may have built, but I don't want to own the house. This is up to the proprietors of the community, and ultimately yourself since you own the IP. This would be your deal, I'd just be there to accomodate the tech requests.
As for hosting the coolercrew.com domain - ares has that and is doing a fabulous job. That site is something I hold very dear and he has my trust to care for it.
thank you terry! the 172000 pages, images, whatnot since the hunt began. if i were experiencing any trouble with that you can bet your ass that i'd look at something else for the site.
This is going to be a good place to hear it all out.
Doh Kitch
[Edited by on Jan 31, 2005 at 02:12pm.]
TFP just for the heck of it...
duh!
Oh good, another thread! I love chasing red flags. ;)
I knew OT would be along soon :). I love the flags too!
F.A. flagaholics anonymous
See... cocorosie is in the same group.... You guys wanna get shirts made up or something?
Matt,
You bring up some very valid points. I don't disagree with most of what you said. However, I would like some alternative solutions to the current situation. I honestly don't know what else to do.
Let me give you some background.
When we moved over here from the PP, the regulars followed immediatly. When the next January came (the next med hunt), we went back to the old PP to round up those that are only around during the hunt.
When we did this we learned we had a couple thousand lurkers. Lance, the sysop of PeoplesForum informed me that PeoplesForum had a huge spike in registrations during the med hunt. Keep in mind this does not count the lurkers that never even register.
Well, if you look at the posts in the med hunt thread, you'll realize that maybe 150-200 people post. We had no idea we had that many lurkers.
Are we to let those people just come in and gain from the hard noodling of those that actually contribute?
This doesn't even address the issue of the assholes that come in here just to create havoc. That in itself has brought me to the edge of just shutting this place down several times. I would never do that because the Cooler Crew means too much to me, so I just grit my teeth and plug ahead.
Another note, I don't get paid for this. Ares doesn't get paid for running coolercrew.com. He's even forked over the cost for the server on his own... He's looking into an alternative to this place because it's in a very bad financial situation.
See what I'm getting at?
Now that I've rambled, let me say, I don't like excluding people. Not one bit! It's actually a pain from my perspective.
Given all this, what's the alternative?
Please, keep this for serious discussion.
responding to matt over here:
Pleasedo not tempt my pleas to read my posts and reply to what I've said, not what you think I'm saying.My gripes are not with the community, it's with the way it has become a private and exclusive community that discourages everything it was built on to date.
 i don't recall you doing any legwork on the 8th of february of 2002, the day after the plug got pulled over at the pp.
:-)
::logs into the PP WaterCooler::
[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on Jan 31, 2005 at 02:41pm.]
Can your ATM line even handle half of the number of packets peoplesforum generates at crunchtime? Really man it's not something you want to host off of, and I can show you if you'd like me to bring down coolercrew.com with apache benchmarks.
do you even have statistics for what peoplesforum generates at crunch time? and beyond that, do you have even half a clue what is running in my basement right now? dude, i've got a more complex network, and a better protected one for that matter, than most small businesses have. i'm willing to show my pedigree. care to show off yours?
what's funny about that, thx, is that you and i found pf at about the same time. i just didn't do enough looking into it to see that it was as flexible as it really is. just think. ares could have been the stern controller here (:: listens as jake trembles thinking ares was the stern controller all the time ::)
I agree with the way the invitational thread has been used to leave out the people who have nothing better to do than cause problems. To come onto a community thread, just to start trouble is very disconcerting (yes I used a dictionary for that----thanks L4V). It allows for a very useful thread flow.
I spend a lot of time slogging, and I don't mind reading about other peoples lives. I like the people here and like to share in their joys and pains, as I am sure (READ: as they have shown me) they feel the same way. This place is like family to a lot of people, and to me as well. My home away from my home away from home. But I would rather share a friends joy or sorrow, than to slog through someone trying to bitchslap someone for no apparent reason than to wreak havoc. That is unneccesary, and uncalled for.
So ( I guess this is my 10 cents worth..) I agree with the invitational principle to that extent. From what I have seen or gathered, the only obligation you have to get into the invitational thread is to post, and to post nicely. I have no reason to believe otherwise. In my opinion, for what it is worth, I believe that THX has done an outstanding job as the 'stern controller' or whatever you choose to call him.
All involved in the making and running of this site, to the best of my knowledge are doing the best they can with what they have.
Thats all...
Have a great day!! And thank you Cooler Crew, for making this the best hunt of my life, especially since I can't hunt personally this year.
------Zephyrus.... too tired for a tagline...
ares-
I don't remember anyone reacting to my offers. I am by nature a recluse. If you question my loyalty to the cooler crew, I would hope you understand that I'm still a few years off the mean age of the members and even just 3 years ago don't identify with many of the people around here for anything beyond the hunt.
This isn't to say I don't want anything beyond the hunt, but rather to say that beyond the hunt, when being qualified, especially during this time of the year, should be secondary to the hunt itself.
Reorganizing this is probably not a one-man task. I do not believe that singly THX, ares, myself, or superman could determine what exactly to do that would solve the problem. I am an asset to the back-end as the rest of everyone is as asset to other ares.
THX, a specific reply follows.
/m
ares- I have investigated quite thoroughly what peoplesforum runs through. I wouldn't have brought up the offer if I hadn't made a clear observation. I have contacted Mark Richter and have been handed off to some information about the impact this system makes.
I'm not questioning your home network. I am making a statement that it isa home network, and it's being fed by a consumer product for connectivity. You have no redundancy, you have no incident protection, and you are completely shut off if and when Visi's equipment or its upstream providers have problems. Please do not take offense, don't get hostile. I'm willing to bargain for brains but what I have already said is true. If you don't know what Equinix is, please to be looking at http://www.equinix.comfor more information about what kind of connectivity I'm talking about. We're located within the Chicago facilities routed by multiple Juniper tanks to handle more than triple our commits can throw. Our border network can take 20 times more packets per second than Visi's core routers.
Look, man, I'm not here to start fights, but I'll roll with the punches when they come.
THX- reply to come still. sorry for delays.
[Edited by on Jan 31, 2005 at 03:02pm.]
THX-
I subscribe to the idea that the Cooler Crew was to be public. I’ve made this statement several times so I won’t go into depth again.
I also understand how people feel about their private information and the information one might want to share with, say, the “close knit” group of people they’re comfortable with. While I wouldn’t personally agree, there are better ways to cater to this behavior. Abuse can be curtailed too with a marginal effort made to quell user uprising, but not on WebX, or whatever this has become. There needs to be a few leaps and bounds made to better the way the community is presented. There are modern options available. Ares has several quality candidates mentioned already.
Overall, I greatly appreciate the idea of making a separate Cooler Crew community which can involve both public andprivate content sections. The organization of this forum system is truly confusing and enough people exist with enough volunteer staff to justify a self-sustaining entity. Nothing that I’ve offered to date is something someone is trying to sell. I provide my resources at great personal expense as everyone else does, and I’m willing to make a large concession to help clean up the Cooler Crew and its content. I know a great many tricks and have access to the means to do it with nominal cost.
Basically, that’s the alternative I present. Get the smart people together roundtable style, move everything into a fortress, and fire away.
 I am making a statement that it is a home network
then you haven't a clue what's in my basement. sure, it may not have the redundancy, but don't ever equate it to a home network, unless you know what it is that you're talking about.
let's just say that the insurance rider on our homeowners policy won't even cover all the hardware thats down there.
I provide my resources at great personal expense as everyone else does
and you know what, it doesn't cost a damn cent for me or anyone else in this room to host it privately either.
I know a great many tricks and have access to the means to do it with nominal cost.
well then give us specific details, none of which have been shown here.
bottom line, matt, the contributions that have been made to this site (by all the users, and not just those in the cooler), aren't enough to sustain something of this magnitude, or a dedicated coolercrew site, and funding it is just something that one person alone should nothave to do. that's why coolercrew.com didn't get moved over to coolercrew.com. qwest turned up the outgoing bandwidth on the lines last february.
it's about the capacity of your connection
Ares-
Did you visit Equinix? My cooperative is primarily running a big Apache server running on a P4 something or another. I have successfully output 950 megabit of traffic on its gigE interface to the Internet. I'm not sure if you're aware of the precise order of magnitude at which I'm describing, but I can sure hope you know it's a lot.
This one server could handle cooler crew stuff without a problem. I have access to additional resources, and we can colocate additional hardware if we send it out, no problem.
This is redundantly connected to a 35xx catalyst which is redundantly connected into the two Foundry Bigirons, redundantly, which switches traffic for some crossconnects. Then, it goes (redundantly) into the Junipers, which breathe the network traffic into the cloud at Equinix. From Equinix it goes to any Tier-1 provider you can think of and a lot of blah, blah, blah.
This is an already established cooperative with public users already utilizing its public services. Traceroute to www.iddx.net if you'd like to peek at the machine I'm talking about.
Bottom line, you need bandwidth, and you need it delivered to you properly in a production environment to take care of thousands of users. How much do you think you need? How much do you think I can provide? Let's talk it out, man, I'm not the enemy, I'm just aware of what I'm talking about.
[Edited by on Jan 31, 2005 at 03:41pm.]
it's about the capacity of your connection. DMT DSL cannot handle the pps of the traffic generated by 2000 people hitting reload without problems,
do you have half a clue what the current dmt dsl rates are from qwest? any idea whatsoever. and just so you know, i don't masquerade in the least that its running on windows. although if you'd like me to i could.
I subscribe to the idea that the Cooler Crew was to be public. I’ve made this statement several times so I won’t go into depth again.
Well, not exactly. That was the case when the Crew was over at the PP because frankly, we didn't have a choice in the matter. But when we moved over here, and learned how many lurkers we had, things changed a little. Can you understand that we didn't want thousands of people that contribute nothing leeching off of us?
We like the WebX format. That's why we moved here versus somewhere else, but the format isn't the issue I'm trying to get at. The issue I care about is what to do with having an invitational or not.
For the lurkers that don't contribute?
ares- last I heard it was advertised at "1.5mbit/1mbit" but for many instances it's getting training something like 960kbit/s. Back when I had DSL I had a 1024/1048 config, or something like that. I really can't remember. Has it improved?
[Edited by on Jan 31, 2005 at 03:48pm.]
absolutely, i know the kind of bandwith you're talking about. we have to deal with that kind of stuff on our machines at work all the time.
tell you what, when i get back to work i'll test my connection and see how long it takes to serve up 2000 requests. and then, perhaps, we'll talk.
THX- The proof is in the pudding. It's not about the sustained bandwidth, it's about the packets-per-second. Packets can be considered "fat" and "thin". "fat" packets usually contain binary information like images on a site, or downloading content. "thin" packets are usually just control information and ICMP traffic, like pings and the client request for the site.
This leads into the complaints about WebX in general because the forum can also create significant load on the webserver with the "reloadreloadreloadrelaod*clicklicklicklick*" action it provokes. It's largely unoptimized and really it could use a good kick in the pants. There are many more modern forums with more robust methods, even ones that display in a similar format to WebX. Really, it's clear that even a large community such as peoplesforum can exist with tens of thousands of users... just not all at once. Perhaps not a conversation for now, though.
It'll be a lot more than 2000 requests. 2000 users will generate tens of thousands of concurrant requests. I can simulate this, or you can conduct your tests.
All in all, this is mucho dollars in Internet infrastructure that I am willing to extend in the efforts of seeing a unified community once more. I don't want to run it, I don't even want any credit. What I want to see is the kind of connecting we made when I first started the hunt. I'll go to great lengths to get that enabled.
[Edited by on Jan 31, 2005 at 04:03pm.]
ltc- ? oh, heh. :) I am not a well trained coolerhead. I reckon they come often in private threads, no?
[Edited by on Jan 31, 2005 at 04:18pm.]
yup. 1.5 down, 1 up. and my modem is almost always trained to that speed. i can completely saturate that outgoing bandwidth as well, no problems.
This leads into the complaints about WebX in general because the forum can also create significant load on the webserver with the "reloadreloadreloadrelaod*clicklicklicklick*" action it provokes. It's largely unoptimized and really it could use a good kick in the pants.
and that's why thx asked people to turn off their avatars. each one generates a distinct non-cached request to the server, as opposed to the generic one which is merely a "thin" packet, and what do you know? the performance improved for most people.
all this, and the subject matter of this thread still isn't being addressed. and given what i've seen, i doubt that it ever will from you.
"problems" becomes a relative term when you're queueing packets at the router. You'll start getting packetloss and get hit with retrans up the poop chute if you saturate any line, DSL, DS-3, OC-12. Then suddenly you've got 10%pl, which is 10% more traffic trying to figure out what happened to their data, all at 2000ms ping times. Maxing out a connection at home uploading games to your friends when you have people simply browsing the internet and downloading movie trailers is usually no big deal since the actions you're taking are not latency intensive. Admittedly serving sites is usually not latency intensive either as when you have a few unique visitors browsing a site, they can wait.
Cue my pps argument. You're not dealing with 10 or 15 users. You're dealing with thousands of users, and they're all checking for new posts, so the actions repeat. Come 11:30ish, people are generating enough traffic to make the baby Jesus cry. If the peoplesforum traffic is generated largely by cooler crew members towards the 11pm-12am hour, and this machine is served on $whatever_machine on nLayer transit, there are a couple clear problems to grasp. This would be a good time to measure the mileage to see exactly WHERE and WHY, but my confidence lays where it is.
and you still havent addressed the issue at hand
Ares- Why are you disengaging from the conversation suddenly with such a silly comment? Furthermore, it's as much disregarded from you as anyone who isn't listening. :) Come on, it's not as if the general populace is happy with the hoops one has to jump through to maintain nominal functionality.
People shouldn't have to lash the boats onto the deck. Get the act together, move into a bigger house, make yourselves comfortable. See what you can see.
because i'm tired of ranting on a subject that isn't really related to the thread. its obvious what the subject of the thread is, put up or shut up.
The issue is people leeching, for lack of a better word.
furthermore, i'm not willing in the least, nor does it appear that anyone else here is either, to move into the house of someone who's here for 12 days a year, leaves, and then rants about how things are going when he comes back, even if he's providing said house for free.
Okay. The invitational thread.
I've said what I've said, and I'll say it again. I've challenged people to embrace and react and they've done so largely in an insulting manner, and all the while I've played along the best I can to keep my topics steady.
The lurker perspective is not a problem to me. Doesn't the cooler crew wish to merely have an impact on the hunt? Or, does it need to keep itself woven so tightly until one of its members finds the medallion? I can't perceive any reasonable answer other than attributing the closed-doors nature to natural group behavior.
There was more information in the public in 1998 when it was free to all than I see this year, and I've seen the private thread's contents too. People apart from the constructed group just don't interact with this place for a wide number of reasons.
There isn't an easy way to repair this, either. You can't tell people to not discuss their stuff in private. There needs to be many actions taken to clean up the active userbase and encourage new people to post their thoughts and ideas. Terms which require a glossary and large talk about who saw who at the bar last night are things that should be minimized when you're supposed to be talking about the hunt. Abusive users need swift judgment, and so on, and so forth....
THX, I'm not able to provide to you an alternative that doesn't involve migration from WebX. I'm sorry. Perhaps this effort was in vain.
Always fun to try reading through techo-speak. I'm sure glad someone understands all that.Â
I believe the issue is about whether or not there should be an invitational thread.
The only reason there is one here at all is because of the lurkers. Why should we all share our noodling so someone else can go out and pick up the medallion?
On the other hand, often some great ideas get overlooked at the time as being way outside the box.  Lurkers also have to weed through the ideas and put together what works best for their way of thinking. And how often have we seen lurkers become active participants that we're happy to have be a part of our community?
If there is to be an invite thread, anyone offering ideas about the hunt should be a participant on the invite thread. It is what the Cooler Crew has been about...an open, welcoming, fun-loving community. If someone can't behave, their access should be pulled.Â
As for hosting the coolercrew.com domain - ares has that and is doing a fabulous job. That site is something I hold very dear and he has my trust to care for it.
I've been a part of the Cooler Crew since the beginning in 1997. I am a bit of an introvert, so I tend to prefer discussing clues online, as opposed to going to a bar to hang out with people. While we have had good intentions of going to the Pre-Dig Gig and the Re-Hash Bash each year, we end up not going for whatever reason.
What I'm wondering is how the "Cooler" Cooler Crew people have determined who is part of the invitational and who isn't? I have both lurked and contributed over the years. The past two years I haven't been able to hunt much due to tendonitis.
So what happens to someone like me (us) who feels like we're a part of the Cooler Crew? But maybe we're not the cool people who tend to hang out at bars with the rest of the folks?
Has the Cooler Crew now become a closed society, and if you didn't get in while the gettin's good, then too bad, even though you have come to know and like and appreciate the cooler people over the last seven years?
You can't tell people to not discuss their stuff in private.
nor can you force them to discuss it in public, which is what you seem to advocate. at the same time, the very head of the thread says "the regulars are not required to post here"
There isn't an easy way to repair this, either.
yup. so deal with it. bottom line, there's noway to repair it. there's this wonderful thing called instant messenger, and all of them allow you to set up a private chat room etc. etc. etc. why can't/shouldn't we be able to do the same thing in a threaded form such as this if we so choose? because you don't like it? please. you're not running the show here, nor are you anything close to representative of the cooler crew, and i'm beginning to think that your musings about what to do website wise going forward, and your willingness to provide the bandwidth are entirely about changing that. and buddy, let me tell you that such a thing requires a hell of a lot more participation than what you've shown in here.
Green Team - You should be a part of the invitational. We aren't always as good about caring for that as we should be once the hunt starts.Â
We (Inks and I) tend not to hang out in bars either. Just not my kind of place.Â
I would like to invite you to the Rehash Bash personally. I'd love to meet you face to face.
ares- If trust is your issue then I leave it to you, since you are the means by which the traffic for the community is directed. I would think that the unification of (how many?) 3 or more largely visited sites would be an intriguing opportunity.
I've participated in the HUNT discussion every time I'm here but this year. My gripes about WebX are always loud and short, and they will be so this year as well. The difference between this and the past is the truly impressive opportunity I feel I'd like to grant.
The reason for this years silence is because I don't see ANYTHING to talk about that isn't a sandwich of rickety logic and friends talking to friends about private matters. The hunt to not-hunt ratio is silly.
Gladly keeping with the house discussion, I may have built, but I don't want to own the house. This is up to the proprietors of the community, and ultimately yourself since you own the IP. This would be your deal, I'd just be there to accomodate the tech requests.
As for hosting the coolercrew.com domain - ares has that and is doing a fabulous job. That site is something I hold very dear and he has my trust to care for it.
thank you terry! the 172000 pages, images, whatnot since the hunt began. if i were experiencing any trouble with that you can bet your ass that i'd look at something else for the site.
Thanks for the invite to the Rehash! Yes, the hubby and I do need to venture out more.
So, how does one get invited to the invitational? I suppose it needs to be done in person?
Don't thank me ares. Thank YOU for having the knowledge and tools to care for that and about it.
Green Team - THX gives the access. I'll egram him and that should take care of that.