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Apr 26, 2003, 5:26pm

Looking at some old birthday and get well builds show plain white walks
because of not being able to use other websites to show our pictures. Music
is gone too. Ever since they gave us picture walls and walks, I have been
very concerned about this happening. We want for things to be preserved for
future generations of citizens. There has to be a better way. We pay more
for citizenship, is there a way to incorporate some web space into that
which is never deleted? I'm not going to let this one go. Especially
birthdays, get wells, weddings, very personal acts of kindness from citizens
to citizens. The company needs to understand that while protecting
themselves legally it is a detriment in that it leaves us with nothing to
pass along to future generations of AW citizens.

Listen! You'll continue to hear me over and over and over until some kind
of agreement is reached. No way to leave anything for future generations of
AW if our builds don't stay the way we meant for them to look!

Apr 26, 2003, 6:30pm

I apreciate your efforts, but we're talking about JPGs here. This isn;t a
major issue, if anythign it will encourage people to buy their own webspace
and put something back into the internet, instad of relying on free sites.

And what about companies who explicityly complain to AW that they don't want
their hosting to be subjected to hundreads of downloads through what could
be considered a massive file sharing program.

Sorry, but I don't think AW are going to move much on this one.

- Ste

Apr 26, 2003, 7:00pm

I've been concerned about this too - especially with the "memorial" builds.
It's my personal feeling that AWI should ante up some webspace and allow a
team of volunteers (AWHS?) eminent domain rights so they can go around and
repair the damaged links.

And Stecloud, this isn't about future builds -it's about the ones that are
already there.


[View Quote]

Apr 26, 2003, 7:43pm

If AW would give us something such as Rootsweb does it would be workable.

For instance, you get so much space with your 6.95 per month. If you want
more, you have to pay for it. And it's never deleted. Now for birthday,
get well builds, AW could have a specific set of prints (donated by the
community) so that we wouldnt have to host that on our sites.

There's been no long term planning by the company or the community regarding
preservation of the most important aspect of our community which are acts of
kindness, gratitude, thanks for each other. And it is very upsetting to
view one of these - especially when someone has died, and it is all missing.
It makes me sick - like a graveyard full of bulldozed headstones. What's
the next step? Calling in Trashman to delete since we can't see it anymore
to make way for new builds? No, we can't wait any longer, we must start
taking steps now.

[View Quote]

Apr 26, 2003, 10:16pm

I believe what we are trying to say is...

Get over it!

- Mark

[View Quote]

Apr 26, 2003, 10:46pm

Sorry a little harsh, however what im trying to say is the data that is ate
by AW would be more than you could possibly ever imagine, I typically have a
misc folder of a gig just from AWTeen, AWRPG and 1 or 2 others, imagine that
for everywhere? It simply isnt logical or viable to go dishing out webspace
in such a way.

I agree they should be preserved, some websites do that, im some
circumstaces you can use web archive to get the pictures etc, not sure about
3.4+.

But simple maths... 350,000 users... x 20 mb free space
7,000,000MB
7,000GB
7TB

Yeah yeah I know its 1024 each time but you will live...

I must stress AW does not have the finance available to do such a thing to
the very best of my knowledge... not to mention 7TB HD's dont exist yet...

I know it is concerning, but its something we have to end up accepting, you
get nothing for nothing as they say.

- Mark


[View Quote]

Apr 26, 2003, 11:06pm

Complain to the free servers that disallow this sort of thing. This is only
happening because ActiveWorlds has finally gone to the standard that IE, NS,
and just about every other browser on the planet uses.

I'm sure AW didn't do this just because they wanted to piss you off.

-Dion

[View Quote] Listen! You'll continue to hear me over and over and over until some kind
of agreement is reached. No way to leave anything for future generations of
AW if our builds don't stay the way we meant for them to look!

Apr 26, 2003, 11:52pm

A 3TB x86/IDE server is only $9000. Revenue from 350000 cits is $2,100,000 a
year. And almost every cit up to 300000 is no longer active (From my random
right-clicking of people), so they don't need webspace. This also happens to
reduce citizenship revenue to $30,000 - still a significant chunk
considering that worlds and universes are not counted.

Sample configuration of server (I can no longer recommend the motherboard
described here however, but very similar ones are available at a similar
price):

Motherbrd A7n8x Deluxe $151
CPU Athlon MP2000 $131
RAM TwinX 1gb Black $280
Vid Old School Radeon $28
HSF Alpha 6035 $27
IDE Cards 5x Promise ATA133 $180
DVDRW Sony DRX-500UL $419
HDDs 25x WD 8mb 120gb $6,800
Case Custom Built $100
PSU 5x Enermax 550w's in // $795
IDE Cables 10 32" cables $20
SATA=>ATA 2x $44
$8,975


A few minor notes - the chassis has to be custom built because NOTHING on
the planet can fit that much stuff. I have drawings of a highly efficient
chassis design for this particualr system. The 5 power supplies each deliver
550 watts max, and will be (Warrenty-voidingly) modified so that their ATX
control pins are connected - so they all actually turn on when you press the
power button. An alternative to the warrenty voiding procedure would be to
connect their control pins to individual switches on the front panel of the
case so they can be turned on independently. The only disadvantage to this
is that you have to also turn them all off individually, and that you MUST
turn them on BEFORE you press the power switch which activates the power
supply connected to the motherboard.

Each server would be capable of dishing out 100mbit connections to the
Internet (I doubt AWI uses one that fat anyway), and is capable of providing
roughly 153600 citizens with 20mb of webspace, not accounting for the OS
markup of roughly 500mb. And technically, each cit only needs 10mb since
JPEGs are crazy small, therefore increasing the citizen capacity per server
to 307200. Each 10mb allotment could seat just over 100 100kb JPEG files.
With the server holding that many cits, each cit only costs AWI 3 cents to
build that server.

And for the more industrious users, they could purchase 30mb more for a one
time $3 fee. That portion of the server only costs NINE CENTS, so AWI makes
a 3333% profit whenever someone needs more space.

--
Wing

[View Quote]

Apr 27, 2003, 1:01am

You can't possibly be holding this against Active Worlds. If you're so
cheap that you expect AW to spend $9000 plus the annual fee to keep the
machine powered and hosted on a good server, you're crazy. There are tons
of expenses AWI has to pay already. Haven't you noticed their stock
figures? They haven't looked good at all in years.

-Dion

Apr 27, 2003, 3:23am

[View Quote] LOL! what a horrible waste of time! here's an idea - all the people losing
their freaking minds over the whole referrer disallow system - get over it!
we've suffered much worse changes here in AW, i think you can handle losing
a few JPG's that don't truly deserve to be up if they're hosted on such
horrible, chintzy cheap hosts. if you must, just use one of those scripts,
such as awtaz.net/p.php, no sense in changing the past though, may as well
leave the screwed up builds as they are - it's part of history now! those
images would soon be deleted by geocities or angelfire or whatever host
they're on and they'd become obsolete anyway. for once i agree with a quote
from strike - get over it!

maki

Apr 27, 2003, 8:59am

"dion" <Dion at digevo.net> wrote in
news:3eab4823 at server1.Activeworlds.com:

> You can't possibly be holding this against Active Worlds. If you're
> so cheap that you expect AW to spend $9000 plus the annual fee to keep
> the machine powered and hosted on a good server, you're crazy. There
> are tons of expenses AWI has to pay already. Haven't you noticed
> their stock figures? They haven't looked good at all in years.

The stock figures is a thing of the past, and does not have anything to do
with the current AWI. For all we know, things might have turned out very
well for them when they went private again.

KAH

Apr 27, 2003, 8:59am

for one thing AW is no longer listed on the stock exchange. your looking at
the wrong company.

[View Quote]

Apr 27, 2003, 9:03am

"dion" <Dion at digevo.net> wrote in
news:3eab2d10$1 at server1.Activeworlds.com:

> Complain to the free servers that disallow this sort of thing. This
> is only happening because ActiveWorlds has finally gone to the
> standard that IE, NS, and just about every other browser on the planet
> uses.
>
> I'm sure AW didn't do this just because they wanted to piss you off.

There is absolutely no need for including the Referer header in any HTTP
request. It's an optional header, and since AW cannot really produce a
valid one, it was a mistake to add it to the requests. What they could do
would be to add a custom header (just pop X- in front of the name) with the
AW location so for example OP scripts could identify your location.

The workaround: use a firewall or proxy that lets you remove headers
(Norton, McAfee, the list goes on...).

KAH

Apr 27, 2003, 10:09am

[View Quote] Duh, it was already happening before 3.4: either people change or delete their web sites
themselves, or then the web site provider changes name, puts restrictions to linking
like when trying to include a picture in a web forum message, cuts downloads when
"this member's web site has exceeded its maximum bandwidth limit", or closes down.
I think pictures are way overused in card sites anyway, making them too flashy for my taste.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Apr 27, 2003, 10:25am

You can piece together a server for pretty cheap... but you're talking about
Terrabytes of data!

You haven't even considered a backup solution. Once you start talking
terrabytes you start talking in the 100's of thousands of dollars.

You pay $80 a year for an AW cit, what's another $20 or $30 or some *real*
web hosting?

Regards,
Jeremy

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeremy Booker - Owner / Webmaster
JTech Web Systems
www.JTechWebSystems.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about
itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Mathew 5:34
[View Quote]

Apr 27, 2003, 10:29am

The referrer header is a part of the HTTP standard, just like any other
standard on the net.

There *is* a point for this header. It allows for more security (not
fool-proof) by letting servers filter based on the referrer. It also allows
for a little more intuitive log files, for those of use who like to analyze
those.

Regards,
Jeremy



--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeremy Booker - Owner / Webmaster
JTech Web Systems
www.JTechWebSystems.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about
itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Mathew 5:34
[View Quote]

Apr 27, 2003, 11:43am

It will affect the future builds though, hoever, I do admit I went off on
some weird tangent :)


[View Quote]

Apr 27, 2003, 11:56am

Hey Everyone:)

I have had many very important to my heart card sites made by very dear
friends.
A Birthday site.
A Wedding site, when My Darlin Alpha married'.
A Memorial site for my Darlin Alpha.
A Birthday site before he passed away.
A Memorial site for my Mother.
I go back and visit them on anniversaries, and yes, some links on pics
are dead.
However.....I had taken pictures!:)
They now live on my pc.
Btw...when Alpha passed, Legacy.com ran a guestbook sorta thing that
would expire unless I wanted to sponsor it.
Guess what?....I saved it to disk:)
What I'm trying to say is take pictures...take pictures...take
pictures:)
If you want to share an area that has had links go away, make a webpage
of it. But I suggest you keep copies of that also:)
Nothing is forever on the Net.

Hope this helps:)
Bit:)

Apr 27, 2003, 5:34pm

Backup is very simple - in the short term, it's provided by simple mirroring
to the blank drives. In the long term, a second server is activated that
mirrors the first.

Mirroring between the two servers can be done without even hurting
throughput to the Internet - almost all the motherboards that I could
recommend for use in this server have two onboard 100mbps NIC's. Connect one
to the internet, the other to the other server. Granted that mirroring 1.5TB
of data (The point where you can no longer mirror the data in the same
machine) across a 100mbps network connection is slow to say the least, it's
a LOT better than nothing. Net backup cost for AWI - $10k. Net cost per
citizen on server: Under $1.

This protects against hardware failure and such, but doesn't take into
account the possiblity of a catastrophic loss-of-facility incident such as a
fire. But if AWI were to lose their servers, chances are Active Worlds is
gone anyway. Insurance doesn't cover everything, and AWI is too small of an
organization to simply eat the difference.

Now what I DIDN'T take into account was the cost of operations, simply
because I don't know anything about AW's server hosting - whether they do it
themselves in their offices or if they colocate them out (ouch), nor do I
know the actual electricity draw of this system (Although I estimate about
400w - ONE of those 5 power supplies could power the whole thing, but the
wiring would suck severely at that point.)

People are intimidated by Terabytes, they aren't particularly big.

[View Quote]

Apr 28, 2003, 11:44am

"jerme" <JerMe at nc.rr.com> wrote in
news:3eabcd42$1 at server1.Activeworlds.com:

> The referrer header is a part of the HTTP standard, just like any
> other standard on the net.
>
> There *is* a point for this header. It allows for more security (not
> fool-proof) by letting servers filter based on the referrer. It also
> allows for a little more intuitive log files, for those of use who
> like to analyze those.

You obviously haven't read the standard (like I have many times). It's an
*optional* header, and requires a *valid* URI as referrer. Even if you use
the teleport.cgi URI it still won't be valid, because the document was
*not* referred from a URI, but from an AW location.

Thus, AW is actually violating the standard.

KAH

Apr 28, 2003, 4:02pm

While tearing though the cit database with a query bot it gives out
percentages... by my rough guess from the status bar, only 150,000 are
active citizenships and the majority are expired or so foth...

And egh... you just prooved yourself wrong.... the rev from the $350000 cits
isnt $2,100,000 cause most of em dont exist.

- Mark

[View Quote] > you
you
> the
upsetting
> to
> start
>
>

Apr 28, 2003, 7:42pm

Hrm, I made a good guess. That still gives $30,000 a year, plus world and
universe revenues. Which is cutting it a lot closer, and depends entirely on
the rest of AW's operating costs.

Hence why AW makes the decisions, not us. They know the details, we can sit
here and speculate.

[View Quote]

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