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Aug 20, 2001, 11:35pm

Looks like 3.2 beta has begun.

Does anyone know what criteria Roland used to pick his testers this round? It seems to be completely unrelated to pursuit of bug
detection.

Between the 3.0 open beta, 3.0 final, and 3.1 final, I've come across and informed Roland via email, telegram etc. of more bugs than
the entire 3.2 testing crew is probably going to find between themselves.

Among these: (The more annoying ones)
That pain in the arse sound/noise changing that causes crashes
Illegal ops upon closing
Various bugs relating to the playback of midis via create sound
The INCREDIBLY MASSIVE floating point errors at high coords in Alphaworld (Corrected in 3.1, so I got Facter to delete a few garbage
obs Roland left behind while fixing it)
An incredibly obscure login bug that seems to be related to my two accounts ONLY
And now the changing of icons after using AW for an extended period of time.

Since there are now THREE rendering modes, why not get people willing to do THREE times the testing on all THREE rendering modes
that know how to properly report bugs (Unlike Agent1 who has omitted his tech specs in his posts so far)

Perhaps my exclusion has somthing to do with this:
Immigration Officer: Warning: your citizenship expires in 4 days. To extend your citizenship for another year, press the Renew
button in the toolbar.

*shrug* If Roland asked, I'd have gladly given him the citnum of the account I'll be using in the interim between my renewals.

Okay, so that was somewhat self centered sounding, but I'm sure it applies to others.

Aug 20, 2001, 11:42pm

[View Quote] > Looks like 3.2 beta has begun.
>
> Does anyone know what criteria Roland used to pick his testers this round? It seems to be completely unrelated to pursuit of bug
> detection.
>
> Between the 3.0 open beta, 3.0 final, and 3.1 final, I've come across and informed Roland via email, telegram etc. of more bugs than
> the entire 3.2 testing crew is probably going to find between themselves.

Roland just wants "yes testers", it seems. Agent1 fits the criteria perfectly since he doesn't disagree with anyone and smiles all the time, as if mocking everything you say to him. Oh joy. Makes me want to smack his ass into next week it does...

> Among these: (The more annoying ones)

> The INCREDIBLY MASSIVE floating point errors at high coords in Alphaworld (Corrected in 3.1, so I got Facter to delete a few garbage
> obs Roland left behind while fixing it)

AW 3.1 still has MANY floating point errors. Just try moving (flying slowly shows it best) in a straight line at high coordinates. Avatars jig-jag and seesaw back and forth as if moving through invisible stairstep tubes or something.

> An incredibly obscure login bug that seems to be related to my two accounts ONLY
> And now the changing of icons after using AW for an extended period of time.

I get this sometimes, too, but not sure it's because of AW or what.

> Since there are now THREE rendering modes, why not get people willing to do THREE times the testing on all THREE rendering modes
> that know how to properly report bugs (Unlike Agent1 who has omitted his tech specs in his posts so far)

See above.

> Perhaps my exclusion has somthing to do with this:
> Immigration Officer: Warning: your citizenship expires in 4 days. To extend your citizenship for another year, press the Renew
> button in the toolbar.
>
> *shrug* If Roland asked, I'd have gladly given him the citnum of the account I'll be using in the interim between my renewals.

Oh, so you ARE renewing now?

Aug 21, 2001, 1:47am

You're right, I should have included my tech specs as it could be a hardware-related issue. I'll reply to my post with them tomorrow
morning.

-Agent1

[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 1:56am

If I find something wrong with the beta of 3.2, I'll report it. What sort of spin would you rather I put on it? Add insults that
simply dilute the information given in the report? Simply because I chose not to call someone a "fucking idiot" (or something
similar) in every post I make about a bug does not make me any less of a tester. What do you mean by "he doesn't disagree with
anyone"? I'm not going to say I like something if I don't simply because it came from AW. You must have been under a rock while I
was defending you to Facter publicly when he wanted to ban you.

Perhaps this is related to me not giving you a copy of the beta executables, etc. when you asked me for them...

-Agent1

[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 3:20am

yeah the open betas were one of the reasons i
registered... being able to have a sneak peak that
i didnt have before... then all of a sudden i dont
get that... btw that was one of the many reasons i
let my old cit expire and i justbought a world and
amusing the cits from that... once i get tiredof
my world though... be seeing you :P aw dont fix
half the bugs they find anyway and rarly add the
features we ask for... not every cit wants a beta
though anyway some people would actually rather
wait than be stuck with a buggy browser where
they have to report all the bugs
and how DO they pick anyway? ive seen way too
many people doing nothing but going to awagte and
bragging that theyhave it instead of playing
around with it to find the bugs oh well i guess
this is what happens when lots of people actually
startusing AW... they only pick a few to pay
attention to

[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 3:43am

ok someone said that they picked beta by hardware
specs... how do they know what hardware specs the
citizen have?

[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 4:33am

They don't. Plus, I'd think that Myrth's

"333 mhz
128 mb ram
Rage LT Pro 2x"

would not be preferable to someone that has a wide variety of hardware laying around to do nothing but test with *shrug*

Also, in a bug report of any nature for Activeworlds, there are certain information you should ALWAYS include, and more depending on
what it involves.

-CPU make/model/clockspeed/special attributes (Overclocked, underclocked, overheated)
-RAM count and breakdown to how many on each stick (if it's all on one you don't have to specify) and RAM speed (Normally PC100 for
Intel, PC133 for later AMD)
-Virtual memory settings
-3d card and it's VRAM count and interface to motherboard (VSA, PCI, AGP, ISA, onboard) and if there are any, any special attributes
to the card (overclocked, modified, uncooled)
-DirectX version
-3d card driver version
-OPERATING SYSTEM (Jesus, we have people on AW running Win95, 95C, 98, 98Se, NT4, 2k, ME, and XP, Roland isn't a mind reader)
-Any other running programs at the time, including systray programs and invisible TSR's (hit ctrl-alt-del for the list)



[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 6:48am

LOL at how much of a hardware geek you are. :-P
--
- Syntax -
www.swcity.net

[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 9:25am

The problem is that Roland doesn't even ask for these specs to begin with (not that he seems to know what to DO with the specs once he has them ANYWAY...). Standard quality assurance testing dictates that ALL system specs are known BEFORE testing even begins. Then if those specs are changed, no matter HOW slight, the CHANGED specs are included in the bug report.

Submitted bugs also need to be reproducible and EXACT occurance/setting (what was going on at the time of the bug). If a crash/hang occurs, the crash details should be posted along with any other debug info (especially if it's reproducable; then, in AW's case, the ini file "debug" section should be enabled and the dump included in the bug report).

Also, bug databases (Lotus Notes, etc) are used to track bugs, let other testers know what bugs have been found, fixed, etc). While AW 3.1's testing had a makeshift bug list (that had screwy formatting most of the time) it still didn't let testers update it with other things they found or whatever. The beta newsgroup is limited because it doesn't actually create a list of the bugs found; Roland (or whoever) still needs to manually make (and continually update) a list, which takes time away from actually FIXING bugs; hence the need for someone in charge of all that.

In short, AWC needs an actual test manager or "lead tester" that can manage all the testers and report to Roland (the "lead programmer"). This is STANDARD in the computer industry and which something AWC needs to learn how to do if they want to EFFECTIVELY and PROPERLY test AW.

This is yet another reason why I get so pissed at AWC's incompetence; they just don't know what they're doing...and it shows in their floundering stock price (still around $1) and continually slowly developing product: AW.

[View Quote] > They don't. Plus, I'd think that Myrth's
>
> "333 mhz
> 128 mb ram
> Rage LT Pro 2x"
>
> would not be preferable to someone that has a wide variety of hardware laying around to do nothing but test with *shrug*
>
> Also, in a bug report of any nature for Activeworlds, there are certain information you should ALWAYS include, and more depending on
> what it involves.
>
> -CPU make/model/clockspeed/special attributes (Overclocked, underclocked, overheated)
> -RAM count and breakdown to how many on each stick (if it's all on one you don't have to specify) and RAM speed (Normally PC100 for
> Intel, PC133 for later AMD)
> -Virtual memory settings
> -3d card and it's VRAM count and interface to motherboard (VSA, PCI, AGP, ISA, onboard) and if there are any, any special attributes
> to the card (overclocked, modified, uncooled)
> -DirectX version
> -3d card driver version
> -OPERATING SYSTEM (Jesus, we have people on AW running Win95, 95C, 98, 98Se, NT4, 2k, ME, and XP, Roland isn't a mind reader)
> -Any other running programs at the time, including systray programs and invisible TSR's (hit ctrl-alt-del for the list)

Aug 21, 2001, 5:16pm

Talk of harming Roland or anyone else is inappropriate in this newsgroup.

AW Explorer

[View Quote] Oh joy. Makes me want to smack his ass into next week it does...

Aug 21, 2001, 5:46pm

Are you an employee or somthing? Jeez, I bet you take offense to this whole thread, which is prettymuch tradition by now.
[View Quote]

Aug 21, 2001, 6:11pm

Um, ever heard of sarcasm?

[View Quote] > Talk of harming Roland or anyone else is inappropriate in this newsgroup.
>
[View Quote]

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