general forum threads

FIRST General Forum
1

Posted by Brandon Martus at 1/12/2001 2:53 AM EST

Other on team #47, ChiefDelphi, from PCHS and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Sometime Thursday night, around 11PM-ish EST the general forum went haywire.

Thanks to those who e-mailed me and let me know.
(most of the time i just read the threads in the chronological archive)

anyway. i’m sorry if your thread is not on the general forum anymore. i tried to fix it the best i could.

also, i have changed the archiving from 7 days to 4 days. after 4 days, your message will disappear from the main threaded page. the reason? 300+kb threaded forums. they take 30+ seconds to load on 56k modems.

so, i will look into why we lost the threads, and maybe find some more protection against this kind of problem so it won’t happen in the future.

thanks.
Brandon

2

Posted by Brandon Martus at 1/12/2001 3:53 AM EST

Other on team #47, ChiefDelphi, from PCHS and Delphi Automotive Systems.

In Reply to: general forum threads
Posted by Brandon Martus on 1/12/2001 2:53 AM EST:

Tonight I learned all about flock().
Hopefully there won’t be the risk of two people
accessing the same file at the same time ever again.

If you experience any problems when posting to the forums, or changing your account info, or voting, etc., please please please e-mail me and tell me exactly what you were doing, and when, and to what, etc.

Thanks.

: Sometime Thursday night, around 11PM-ish EST the general forum went haywire.

: Thanks to those who e-mailed me and let me know.
: (most of the time i just read the threads in the chronological archive)

: anyway. i’m sorry if your thread is not on the general forum anymore. i tried to fix it the best i could.

: also, i have changed the archiving from 7 days to 4 days. after 4 days, your message will disappear from the main threaded page. the reason? 300+kb threaded forums. they take 30+ seconds to load on 56k modems.

: so, i will look into why we lost the threads, and maybe find some more protection against this kind of problem so it won’t happen in the future.

: thanks.
: Brandon

3

Posted by Brandon Martus at 1/12/2001 9:36 AM EST

Other on team #47, ChiefDelphi, from PCHS and Delphi Automotive Systems.

In Reply to: Re: general forum threads
Posted by Brandon Martus on 1/12/2001 3:53 AM EST:

and the plot thickens…

any account changes/additions/etc from Jan11-2001 3:15am EST to Jan12-2001 9:40am EST (basically all of Thursday) have been lost.

same error.
should be fixed, thanks to flock().

: Tonight I learned all about flock().
: Hopefully there won’t be the risk of two people
: accessing the same file at the same time ever again.

: If you experience any problems when posting to the forums, or changing your account info, or voting, etc., please please please e-mail me and tell me exactly what you were doing, and when, and to what, etc.

: Thanks.

:
: : Sometime Thursday night, around 11PM-ish EST the general forum went haywire.

: : Thanks to those who e-mailed me and let me know.
: : (most of the time i just read the threads in the chronological archive)

: : anyway. i’m sorry if your thread is not on the general forum anymore. i tried to fix it the best i could.

: : also, i have changed the archiving from 7 days to 4 days. after 4 days, your message will disappear from the main threaded page. the reason? 300+kb threaded forums. they take 30+ seconds to load on 56k modems.

: : so, i will look into why we lost the threads, and maybe find some more protection against this kind of problem so it won’t happen in the future.

: : thanks.
: : Brandon

4

Posted by Matt Leese at 1/12/2001 10:33 AM EST

Other on team #73, Tigerbolt, from Edison Technical HS and Alstom & Rochester Institute of Technology.

In Reply to: Re: general forum threads
Posted by Brandon Martus on 1/12/2001 9:36 AM EST:

Brandon, leaving race conditions in the CD code? How could you? But seriously, here’s an idea for you. Instead of making the time that a post is left on the page static, why not make it a function based on the total number of posts. That will make it easier for people with modems because if we get a sudden influx of posts it won’t kill them.

Matt

5

Posted by Kate T190 at 1/12/2001 7:41 PM EST

Engineer on team #190, Gompei, from Mass Academy of Math and Science and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

In Reply to: Re: general forum threads
Posted by Brandon Martus on 1/12/2001 9:36 AM EST:

What is this flock() that you keep speaking of???

T190 XO
Kate

6

Posted by Matt Leese at 1/12/2001 7:48 PM EST

Other on team #73, Tigerbolt, from Edison Technical HS and Alstom & Rochester Institute of Technology.

In Reply to: umm?
Posted by Kate T190 on 1/12/2001 7:41 PM EST:

flock() stands for file lock, I believe. It allows a file to only have one instance open. Therefore, you can’t have two different programs writing to the same file at once. In the case of CD different people can be making comments at the same exact time and the Perl script that runs the site (least I think it’s Perl) executes once per person. Each one of those instances of the Perl script will open the file and both will write to at once. Basically bad stuff happens then.

Matt who realizes he’s way too much of a CS nerd even if he’s a CE major…

7

Posted by Hymnson at 03/09/2001 7:23 PM EST

Student on team #419, The Rambots, from Boston College High School and UMass Boston and Modern Assistance Programs, Inc…

In Reply to: u make me sick!!!
Posted by EJ on 03/09/2001 5:39 PM EST:

In the words of Eminem,

“I’m glad cause they feed me the fuel that I need for the fire to burn and it’s burnin…”

I’m not gunna write songs about hate and trashing people, but people like you are just pushing me more and motivating me to actually go thru with an actual boy band, so I’m not worried about what “haters” think. So the more replies and posts I get may actually result in a F.I.R.S.T. boy band, yea…what whaaaaat! lol peace