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Feb 25, 2001, 11:59am

Um, NO.

Boreland bought Ashton-Tate, who made dBASE. They made dBASE for Windows. There is no
"xBase," that was a term a bunch of asses came up with for a standard that never existed
and obviously was never going to. There was also dBASE for Windows under development at
Ashton-Tate, and something much cooler which got canned by Boreland at acquisition time.

They also bought Wordtech, who made Quicksilver, which sucked ass by the way.

MS bought Fox Software.

Computer Associates bought Clipper by acquiring Nantucket. Clipper was not
Fox-compatible, in fact it predated Fox by quite a bit and was the best programmer's tool
of all of these by FAR.

And all of it's pretty much history now, as soon as everything started selling to other
people I looked for new things to do because it was obvious it would all get a lot worse
when bigger companies took it over. The one company that I liked somewhat was Boreland,
in fact I was working for them doing some stuff for dBASE for Windows but when they bought
Wordtech that was more than I could stomach. (Quicksilver sucked, did I say that? hehe)
The codebase that they had before they bought Wordtech was pretty damned cool.

Ah well, it seems like ancient history now, geez this was what 6-8 years ago? :)

Anyway, if you need to know anything about the history of the dBASE/Xbase shit, just ask
hehe. I was there for most of it and I met/knew the guys who wrote most of the products
including dBASE II and the thing that came before it whose name escapes me at the moment
(no not dBASE I [g].)


[View Quote] > xBase for windows comes from Foxbase Inc(FoxPro). which Microsoft bought. Boreland
> had a dBase clone called Clipper (a Foxbase compatible) which is now owned by Computer
> Associates...
>
> Holistic1
>
[View Quote]

Feb 25, 2001, 4:09pm

Yah I know, but basically when Rich and Basil and the rest of the coders left (at the time of
the CA acquisition) that was the end of Clipper for me. And yes, I still use it too. :) I
have a few programs written using Clipper including a CGI thing that uses a small C program to
hand off to it. Program generators? Bah! I have no use for em. Altho I did enhance Scrimage
(a UI-code generator I wrote) to do some Artful-Lib-style code. What generator you
talkinabout, UI? BTW I talked to Basil not so long ago, maybe 6 mos. (he wrote UI, good guy.)


[View Quote] > Maybe you will like to hear that Clipper is still not really dead.
>
> Few of our customers still sometimes request changes (Y2K, Euro) in
> their old Clipper applications (mostly 5.2 and few 87) - the people who
> use them all say that they are much faster to handle than any windows
> application and (written for 80386) off course run very fast now.
> Most are made with a Clipper program generator. The generator itself :
> Written in Clipper 87 (Data Dictionary is DBF off course) with few
> extensions (C, ASM UDFs) and produces Clipper 5.2 code that links
> together with a powerful library (few UDFs ASM and C in it).
>
> And have a look at http://207.178.22.52/lj-issues/issue14/1083.html -
> FlagShip is part of at least some Linux distributions.
>
> datedman schrieb:

Feb 25, 2001, 11:10pm

Personally I just write functions and call those with lists of stuff. Easier to maintain and all I
need is a text editor. :)

[View Quote] > :)
> The program generator is called BrainStorm, a german one with the
> ability to produce foreign language programs. It was never released in
> this multilingual version, only one installation of this version exists.
> BrainStorm just keeps you from doing the boring stuff like input mask
> handling and table display over and over again. All masks, tables and
> menus displays have the same look and feel. The application specific
> code, has to be written with an editor off course. I never made a large
> application with it (others did that) - but most of the generator and
> its libraries itself, and believe me, that was really fun.
>
> datedman schrieb:

Mar 3, 2001, 9:07pm

Actually, Clipper memo files are stored in the dBASE III format. Index files are not
compatible, none of em are but they are faster than dBASE III/IV indices (maybe not fox.)
Clipper was the sorta techie geekie "xbase," most of the heavy duty people used it because it
was more extensible and quick and small.

[View Quote] > I stand corrected about Boreland (been a long time since I have thought about it). I know
> what xbase stands for. As for Quicksilver,...LOL... it was a great product, expecially the
> compiler. And I too did alot of applications using most of those products back in the late
> 80's early 90's. Clipper was a dbase clone even though it wasn't a 100% compatible. Its
> databases could be used by the other programs except for the memos database. The extended
> functions of Clipper couldn't, Which mean't that it really sucked. :) Quicksilver could
> read all of the databases and its compiler was really great.. did I mention that :).
>
> Holistic1
>
[View Quote]

Mar 1, 2001, 10:44am

No it can take WEEKS!

I happen to host for this person so I know it's been WELL over 48
hours. I have had hosting customers who have had it literally take
weeks, even though they sent numerous reminders.

I'm thinking maybe Roland is the only one who turns worlds up, and he's
on vacation?

[View Quote] [View Quote]

Mar 1, 2001, 4:35pm

Yah as andras points out, sometimes it's a problem with LD charges and time
zones. The case where it took weeks was someone from Italy or France. And
they sent many emails...but basically the system for world renewal is screwed
up.

In this current case, the world is Lakota. The credit card transaction went
through and it took quite a while for the world to get renewed. THIS IS NOT
UNCOMMON in my experience.



[View Quote] [View Quote]

Mar 1, 2001, 11:22pm

I don't think the gripe is with the people doing so much work, but with the
company that doesn't hire enough people and/or put better procedures in place.
:)

Hell you could just write a backend for the web stuff that automatically turns
on the worlds, or at least adds them to a batch for periodic update.

And if I order something online, I get an instant reply, or I am not apt to go
back for anything else! Heck when I order something from Tech Data at 4:30,
it's on the dock waiting for UPS pickup at 4:45. There are plenty of
disorganized companies out there but people don't like doing business with them.

[View Quote] > this
> can
> you?
>
> Umm, you forget that we all do hundreds of different tasks per day Rolu -
> there is no one that "just" processes that things all on their own - we do
> every order and enquiry, world, technical support, orders, citizenship
> purchases, world hosting, password problems, universe orders, renewals,
> universe hosting, universe setups - *as they come in*, there is no
> preferential treatment , we take email enquiries as they come in, unless the
> situation is very important, or the customer has a valid complaint, then
> something might be prioritised - this is common support and billing practice
> throughout the modern world. I know for a fact Tom gets hundreds of emails a
> day (as I myself do) - and standard company customer support, for almost any
> company you see online, is 24-48 hours. Would you like it, if you sent an
> email yesterday, and then I started answering the tech support emails that I
> just got in five minutes before yours ? We do *many* different things here -
> I do wish that you guys could understand the sheer number of daily tasks we
> have - and that there is a limited number of people actually working here.
> We do not have preferential treatment of those things - we treat all email
> enquiries equally, renewals are on task out of hundreds of emails that come
> in daily - thus, the standard (standard for most companies) turn around time
> for support and billing email.
>
> Why are you not commenting on the thousands of other companies for who this
> kind of thing is common practice? It is not abnormal, it is not even
> strange - when you order something online, it can take up to 48 hours to
> process, from anywhere. In the case of "a few weeks", well, thats totally
> unacceptable, and if that kind of thing ever occurs I do assure you it is
> taken with all seriousness, but, those things do actually occur sometimes,
> due to things like emails not going through and such - the internet is not
> completely perfect.
>
> Please remember, that there are so many tasks to do in one day, and only a
> finite number of things that can be done in that day by two people - me on
> support, and Flagg on billing etc. Two people, handling literally thousands
> of things per day..no, I think we do very, very well in our jobs.
>
> I believe that our support is a heck of alot better than alot of other
> service providers you find on the internet, and I also believe that that is
> all I have left to say on this thread.
>
> Take care
>
> --
> Fletcher Anderson
> Active Worlds Support
> Activeworlds.com
> support at activeworlds.com

Mar 2, 2001, 1:23pm

I believe ya man but if you step back and look you'll see that you sound lame.
:)

Try not to defend incompetency in a company that is on the friggin NASDAQ (or
however ya spell that) and has been in business for years huh. :)

Nothin personal, it's just how yer comin off to me. As I say, I wasn't
criticizing you personally, but now I suppose I am in another way heehee.

Like Eep saying "well they aren't making any money..." look, it's a BUSINESS.
It's PUBLIC COMPANY. So it's subject to real criticism, can't act like it's
just some kids who are putting on a show in the barn. In fact, when it *was*
effectively some kids putting on a show in the barn, the people who were in
charge of the barn managed to put on a better front. But then, they were
*trained* assholes, having Ivy League degrees and all that. (Talkinabout
Worlds, Inc. They didn't actually have much to do with AW besides providing the
bandwidth and salaries, and getting investment money and such but they talked
the talk anyway. And they weren't charging for the service at all, nor were
they a public company, so the rules were different.)


[View Quote] [View Quote]

Mar 3, 2001, 4:21pm

Heehee, I used to run TS and AW on a 486-100. :)

If yer usin PC100 RAM, you can decide to upgrade to a < 1 mhz Intel "flip-chip"
pretty cheaply right now, since both old and new mboards will take PC133 RAM
which is cheap as all getout right now. Or you can just throw some cheap RAM in
there for now, I get PC133 256m sticks for around $80 now.

But really, what are you doing that is slow? Usually the things that bog
systems most are (1) configuration, (2) disk I/O, (3) video. You can upgrade
to SCSI and I guarantee it will speed you up. (I assume yer usin IDE because
you don't mention SCSI.) Can run both at once too.

If SCSI is too expensive for you (I suspect it may be if yer upgrading in steps)
or for a quick fix, get a Promise Fastrack 100 board (< $100) and some fast IDE
drives. What kind of hard drives ya got now? The Fastrack supports ATA/100 but
it also is a RAID board so you can stripe up a coupla drives and get double /100
speed. Or double whatever yer drives will do. Still not nearly as good as
UW2SCSI, but a heckofalot cheaper.

As far as config goes, defrag yer HD completely and then set your system to use
the same size for min and max under virtual memory (say 2-3 times the size of
RAM.) This will keep Windoze from continually allocating/deallocating HD space,
which also leads to a lot more fragmentation. With a contiguous, permanent
swapfile Windoze usually performs a lot better. If yer loading stuff you don't
need in startup (run MSCONFIG, be careful you do need to load some stuff [g]) it
will slow things down. Typically RealPlayer and it's gang of ill-behaved apps
wanna live in yer system tray and they are really a drag on the system. Also MS
Office Startup seems to just garbage things up. Loading Findfast? Not searchin
yer HD all the time? Kill it.

That voodoo 3 card should work decently but newer cards seem to be more
compatible and probly faster, how much RAM does it have? Vid card is one thing
you can probly upgrade and no matter what kind of system yer movin to it'll work
in both.

[View Quote] > I am looking at upgrading my PC for AW and Truespace use. The only thing is
> I can't afford to do it all a once. So I need your advice on what
> components I should get first to upgrade my PC. I will get the case, cpu
> and power supply last. So what should I get first to boost performance on
> my old PC that I will also be able to use on a new PC later.
>
> Old PC .....
>
> PIII-500 intel cpu.
> Asus P2-99B MB
> Voodoo 3-300 graphics AGP
> 128 meg ram
>
> look forward to hearing your replies

Mar 4, 2001, 7:22pm

That's my wholesale price, but basically the retail stores usually lag way
behind market prices. When PC100 went high, some friends made out like bandits
buying from Office Depot and such ;)

[View Quote] > I just got 256MB of PC-133 RAM down in Delaware a few weeks ago. I paid
> $149.95 for it from Best Buy. I guess I got ripped off...but at least I
> didn't have to pay sales tax :) The RAM was actually more expensive than my
> new WD hard drive. Well I guess I will just buy online for now on lol.
>
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 9:29pm

Even if yer mboard dont support it, if you get new RAM get PC133 because it's
cheap as crap now and will work fine as PC100.

[View Quote] > I've got a related question. I have 512MB of PC100 RAM, should I upgrade to
> PC133?
>
> Specs:
> Windows 2000
> Thunderbird 1.1GHz
> Maxtor 7200 RPM 40 GIG EIDE
> nVidia GeForce2 Ultra
>
[View Quote]

Mar 4, 2001, 9:27pm

Always the voice of reason, Scred. And the voice of psilocybin, but that's
another issue.

[View Quote] > you should stop using the product. they clearly take advantage of you.
> it's just not fair.
>
[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2001, 12:18am

Welcome to the wunnerful world of software development, newbie! :)

[View Quote] > Roland didn't go on vacation as soon as AW 3.1 was release, brant. He had PLENTY of time to respond to and investigate the NUMEROUS bugs posted to the beta newsgroup, yet didn't. Instead he immediately and mindlessly went on to AW 3.2 development.
>
[View Quote]

Mar 5, 2001, 3:11am

Heehee, better livin thru chemistry!

[View Quote] > Hmmm... C13H18(20)N2O3P2 . Interesting... :-)
>
[View Quote]

Mar 20, 2001, 10:36pm

Um, WHO CARES, is someone using a 300 baud modem or something? :)

[View Quote] > I noticed you hitting on Just In for his long messages.
> I'm NOT going to take any sides on the issues that
> Just In & Chucks Party are doing here... BUT dosen't that same
> message you gave to Just In about snipping his messages also apply
> to Chucks Party.
> AND for that matter... Most everyone here who loves to see the
> messages grow to some ungodly size...
>
> <rolu <rolu.university at bigfoot.com> wrote in
> <3ab5efe2 at server1.Activeworlds.com>:
>

Mar 22, 2001, 6:35am

Well if bandwidth is an issue for you, get a decent newsreader that tells you
in advance the size of the messags. Other than that, as far as I am
concerned the folks who run a newsgroup should say what the size limit is.
Everyone else can go soak their head. :)

Mar 15, 2001, 6:19am

You shoulda been there when I pushed through the concept that AW should run only
on Win95 machines with 16 megs of RAM :)

[View Quote] [View Quote]

Mar 15, 2001, 6:41pm

Used ta run it on a 486 with win 3.1, just a little bit of waiting involved. :)

[View Quote] > Actually, I believe I had one of those :) Ran AW on it towards the end of
> it's lifespan
[View Quote]

Mar 16, 2001, 4:13pm

You gotta be KIDDING. I throw away machines better than that. BALLAST!
PAPERWEIGHT! Hehe.

I mean, around here you can get a used P200 with 32 megs, 2 gig hard disk, etc. etc.
including mouse keyboard and monitor for $200 or so. WTH would you even think about
using a 386? OR EGA???? Man EGA has been dead for a LONG time, wouldn't expect
anything much to work with it. In fact I wonder if Win95/8 even know about EGA. I
suspect there will be no drivers for it.


[View Quote] > Any experiences on a Compaq DeskPro 386/16 ?
> It has Windows386 on a 130MB ESDI HD, 2MB RAM, an EGA card and a 80387
> Coprocessor, I could try to upgrade to WinME - but will AW3.1 work for
> me there?
>
[View Quote]

Mar 15, 2001, 6:42pm

what's the exact command yer using? (cut n paste it if possible)

[View Quote] > I ran accross a problem in 3.1 I can not use create noise ,evry time I
> do I get an ellegal operation. Here is the error I get evry time I use or
> try to use create noise.
>
> AWORLD caused an invalid page fault in
> module AWORLD.EXE at 015f:00446dce.
> Registers:
> EAX=00000000 CS=015f EIP=00446dce EFLGS=00010246
> EBX=00000008 SS=0167 ESP=0371ff5c EBP=0371ff98
> ECX=0000000f DS=0167 ESI=03752060 FS=410f
> EDX=00902c80 ES=0167 EDI=8167f944 GS=0000
> Bytes at CS:EIP:
> 8b 08 56 57 52 6a 00 6a 00 6a ff 68 48 b8 4d 00
> Stack dump:
> 0371ff98 00000008 0000000f 004c79f5 037520e0 8167f944 816c0fe4 00000008
> c0000005 0371ff70 0371fd8c 0371ffbc 004cb0a0 004dccf8 00000000 0371ffcc

Mar 17, 2001, 2:19pm

Anyone who hasn't gotten 5 copies of that by now is either a net newbie or a
statistical anomaly. :)

[View Quote] > It might be old but it seems to spread across AW at the moment. It
> didn't infect my PC, I never have scripting enabled and never open
> attachements before checking - but I think in this case it's better to
> issue the warning.
>
[View Quote]

Mar 17, 2001, 6:49pm

Hehe yeah yer anomalous! I see at least a couple a week of the dwarf4you come
through my antivirus gateway. Funny I hardly ever see happy99 tho... I suppose
we could trade some of our surplus virii. :)


[View Quote] > As far as I know I haven't gotten that virus yet. And I sure aint a newbie.
> Now a statistical anomaly is pretty likely concidering I get 9 copies of
> happy99.exe every damned day and never anything else and have never been
> infected by a legit virus. That I know of anyway. I should run a scan and
> see if anything turns up :)
[View Quote]

Mar 16, 2001, 4:18pm

hehe you should try building in that area, not fun :)

[View Quote] > Dosen't anyone think the AW gz is getting a bit old. I mean yeah its nice
> and everything but I think it would make a nice change for somthing new. Its
> not even like AW GZ is lagless either, on my old ocmp it used to lag me like
> hell at times...
>
> I mean look at AWGate GZ; simple yet impressive and AWGate is one of the
> busiest worlds in AW...
>
> AWTeen is a good example, with new GZ themes almost monthly and while I
> appreiciate that that isnt possible with AW GZ. Maybe a new design is in
> order?
>
> I mean AW could even hold a contest for AW's best builds to enter a
> competition and design a GZ the winner being used, or somthing like that...
>
> Anyone agree? or disagree?
>
> -Gamer

Mar 19, 2001, 7:44pm

Hi,

Just thought I would let y'all know that Genesis is always available for
large meetings or what have you. User limit is 64 or so, so plenty of
room there if your gathering won't fit in your own world. Plenty of
bandwidth here too, enjoy. :)

DM

Mar 22, 2001, 6:31am

Well, very little has been built in Gen for a long time...it was the first
worlds where people could do custom artwork at all and it served its purpose,
helped the Titans, Grover, Fishin, Opti, Spring Dew and others get started.
Since I was at least nominally in charge and I don't do AW much at all
anymore, I guess it will remain closed to building for the time being at
least. That sign at GZ seems new to me tho, I guess Fishin was doin some work
in there for a change and was getting bugged. :)

[View Quote] > Hey, I just checked Genesis out ....looks great....I'll remember the bit
> about hosting meetings there .... no building tho, huh?
>
> --
> art you!
>
> d'brute
> "Boogie when it's time to boogie; snooze when it's time to snooze."
>
> http://www.vuduvalley.net/
> Fax: 530-464-3013
>
[View Quote]

Mar 20, 2001, 10:37pm

actually probly the best place to search is the knowledge base at
www.microsoft.com

[View Quote] [View Quote]

Mar 20, 2001, 10:41pm

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q208/0/82.ASP
I kina guessed what they would say...turn off the recycle bin :) You got too
many files! Most likely this is virus-related.

[View Quote] > Don't kill me for this, I know it's offtopic.
>
> But, whenever I try to move, rename, copy, delete, whatever a file, I get a
> "File system error (1026)"
> Yes I've rebooted, and programs can still work with files, but I can't.
> Also, in the properties window, no file attributes are reported. Looks like
> Windows bit the dust, but does anyone else have any ideas?

Mar 21, 2001, 6:16am

Microsoft just provides a fertile medium for them to grow. :)

[View Quote] > is the virus called Microsoft?
>
[View Quote]

Mar 26, 2001, 8:03am

what you think someone will BUY it?

[View Quote] > Heh, I just heard AWCI is going to declare bankruptcy within the month.
> Probly unfounded but gives us a ray of hope of new management

Mar 26, 2001, 8:12am

Reunion has nothing to do with them, and if software companies are going down (or anyone
really) they try to maintain appearances til the end anyway...

[View Quote] > if they were going dead next month-why would they leave reunion scheduled so?
>
> --
> news://awjbell.com
> --
> J B E L L
> http://platinum.awjbell.com
> G O I N G P L A T I N U M
>
[View Quote]

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