Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Try to break the forums!

This is topic Try to break the forums! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-01-2007, 06:44 PM:

Hi All --

I've just moved the forums to a new server running many different versions of supporting software.

Please try things out and report anything that isn't working.

Thanks,

Daryl

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 12-01-2007, 06:53 PM:

When viewing a page in a long thread (one that spans multiple pages), if I click on a page number link to jump forward or backward, I get "404" page not found.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-01-2007, 07:01 PM:

Gur dhvpx oebja sbk whzcrq bire gur ynml qbt'f gnvy juvyr gur qbt ngr n pna bs pnivne juvpu zl nhag, jub hfrq gb yvir va Ubobxra, oebhtug zr va pryroengvba bs gur pragraavny bs gur byq erq pbhegubhfr ba gur pbeare bs Jnfuvatgba Fgerrg naq Fgngr Fgerrg. Url, jul vf nyy guvf grkg ebg13'q?

[evil]

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-01-2007, 07:01 PM:

Fixed, thanks.

Scott --

x 5@?VE <?@H] #~%cfVD 36EE6CP

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 12-01-2007, 07:09 PM:

This is not a new problem, but for as long as I can remember, if I'm logged out for whatever reason (or I'm using a different/foreign PC -- no cookies), I get an error message when I log in.

FYI
A search or login error has occured. Please click here to go to the master forum index.

BTW, things seem very snappy. [Smile]

Also also, "occurred" has 2 r's. [uhoh]

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-01-2007, 07:19 PM:

That's the way Infopop shipped it!

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-02-2007, 04:43 PM:

It still doesn't have collapsing sections, a social network, web 2.0 style buttons, customization, style sheets, extensive use of AJAX and flash, the direct url blocking prevents threads from being able to go viral, and the url has to many vowels in it. Should be more like FilmTchr or something.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-02-2007, 05:27 PM:

I think it's a good thing the forums don't use flash.

flash isn't something that works particularly well on linux. And there's no version of flash at all for 64-bit computers (you'll have to trick the browser into using the 32-bit player).

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 12-03-2007, 10:23 AM:

Maybe this isn't exactly what you were wanting... but more smilies, please! [Wink]

I think we've always needed one of a BIG laugh - a regular guffaw.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-03-2007, 12:33 PM:

That's what this one is for: [ian]

If you've ever met Ian, you'd know.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 12-03-2007, 01:26 PM:

: rofl : [rofl]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-03-2007, 07:06 PM:

quote: Chris Slycord
I think it's a good thing the forums don't use flash.

There's a lot of good things about Flash. Flash Video is certainly taking over on a lot of sites that stream video -with YouTube being the biggest user. The only thing I don't like about Flash is how it behaves in sites with lots of CSS and DHTML. You can't put anything in a DIV layer above anything Flash-based since it always wants to be on top in graphical object stacking. Flash 8 and Flash 9 support alpha channel transparency, which helps things a bit.

The folks maintaining Film-Tech are free to choose what kinds of graphics formats the site supports. But I do feel it is missing something in not supporting any vector-based graphics file formats.

SVG, another Adobe creation (with input from the WWW Consortium SVG Working Group), is an alternative. Most modern web browsers now have native support for SVG -although Internet Explorer requires a plug-in (available from Adobe). And I'm pretty sure it is 64-bit friendly. The open source vector-drawing application, Inkscape, saves artwork in SVG format. Still, you're going to get far better results on creating and saving SVG files from Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator, Acrobat Pro and InDesign are also best at creating PDF files.

It's also worth mentioning that Adobe has released a lot of its own privately developed code into the Open Source realm via its ASL libraries. Some of this is a shrewd business move to make certain features of SVG, Flash and PDF technology more ubiquitous on lots of different devices -and head off any crap Microsoft tries to pull.

quote: Chris Slycord
flash isn't something that works particularly well on linux. And there's no version of flash at all for 64-bit computers (you'll have to trick the browser into using the 32-bit player).

64-bit operating systems and Linux are not mainstream computer user items. Likewise, Adobe isn't in a big hurry to recompile all of their applications in 64-bit form.

Perhaps 64-bit could come to pass when Adobe's "CS4" suites get released in 2009. The bigger pressure on Adobe right now is to get more of their applications coded in multi-threaded form to take advantage of multi-core or multi-processor systems. Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects are the company's only major applications which take advantage of multiple cores or multiple processors.

Still, the 4GB RAM limit with 32-bit applications can be a problem when dealing with really large graphics files. When you're editing a Photoshop file in excess of 1GB or 2GB a computer system can start really bogging down even if you have 4GB of RAM, the latest CPUs and graphics cards.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-03-2007, 11:35 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
The folks maintaining Film-Tech are free to choose what kinds of graphics formats the site supports. But I do feel it is missing something in not supporting any vector-based graphics file formats.

Pffft. We've tried that before... looooong ago. I still have builds of this website on my computer that I made from Flash. Like most Flash websites it was all style, little function. Bitmapped graphics load quickly, look less retarded and the site is much zippier and more easily updatable as a result.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-04-2007, 07:32 AM:

With a few exceptions (low-quality video that needs to load quickly, product demonstrations/training, and Flash-based "art" (some of which is actually pretty well done)), Flash pretty much sucks. It defeats the purpose of the web by not working on all platforms and with all browsers, is difficult to index and search, and is proprietary to Macromedia/Adobe.

Another issue is that Flash is commonly used for advertising and, as a result of annoying Flash-based ads, many of us don't install the plugin or use Flashblock (Firefox plug-in) to load Flash material only when necessary.

Agreed that Win64 and Linux aren't as "mainstream" as Win32 and OS X, but the whole point of the web is to make material available in a format that can be used on nearly any platform with a wide variety of client software. I'm presently using the Lynx browser (really) on 64-bit Solaris, and F-T (and pretty much any well-designed web site) is entirely usable.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-04-2007, 12:37 PM:

quote: Joe Redifer
Pffft. We've tried that before... looooong ago. I still have builds of this website on my computer that I made from Flash.

I'm not suggesting the entire F-T site be made in Flash. Most web sites that use Flash at all use SWF files composed within a regular HTML-based layout.

quote: Scott Norwood
Flash pretty much sucks. It defeats the purpose of the web by not working on all platforms and with all browsers, is difficult to index and search, and is proprietary to Macromedia/Adobe.

This is one reason why I mentioned SVG. Despite its Postscript origins and Adobe's involvement SVG is an open source format with XML-based code.

Entertainment and leisure are driving purposes for the Internet. Because of that, technologies like Flash will be here to stay -at least until something even better comes along. Flash is supported on the vast majority of computers in use. Systems where Flash doesn't provide good support are very proprietary themselves.

quote: Joe Redifer
Bitmapped graphics load quickly, look less retarded and the site is much zippier and more easily updatable as a result.

When it comes to logos, graphics and type nothing beats vector artwork on both file size efficiency and image quality -especially when the graphics are increased in size. Vector graphics are scalable and resolution independent, unlike a raster-based image in GIF or JPEG.

As to what looks retarded, I feel that type and graphics that have been eaten up with Photoshop filters often look very cheesy. Let's distort the type and throw in a lens flare while we're at it so we can get an even more cheesy, amateur-hour look!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-04-2007, 02:57 PM:

My basic point is that this site really wouldn't benefit in any way from Flash... not even aesthetically. Nothing really scales or shrinks here which would be improved by vectors.

Of course we could always go back to having the site look like this:

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-04-2007, 03:52 PM:

Man, I remember older versions than that (before the chat room). I must be an old timer.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-04-2007, 05:18 PM:

So do I, that's just the oldest screenie I had laying around.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-04-2007, 08:59 PM:

While posting a reply, I got:

quote:

An error has occurred:

I could not connect to the SMTP server.

Please inform the board administration of this error so that they
may fix the problem. Thank you!

--jhawk

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-04-2007, 09:38 PM:

quote: Joe Redifer
My basic point is that this site really wouldn't benefit in any way from Flash... not even aesthetically.

Again, I'm not suggesting the whole site be built in Flash...or even use Flash. There are other alternatives now.

All I'm saying is that when someone wants to show a graphical image in a image heavy thread it might be nice if someone could upload a .SWF-based image, or perhaps a more HTML code friendly SVG file or even a PDF. For example, that classic 70mm logo from the 1980s really sucks ass badly as a raster-based image. It works a whole hell of a lot better when displayed/reproduced from vector-based artwork.

Flash 8 has a hell of a lot more graphical capability to it than the older versions, especially anything used circa 2000. Flash 8 can animate both layered Photoshop and layered Illustrator graphics. It supports alpha transparency. It even has compatibility with alpha channels from Adobe After Effects. Put together some green screen video footage and Flash 8 will preserve the knocked out background. Of course that stuff is more file size intensive.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-05-2007, 03:52 AM:

Thanks John. The mail server runs under VMware and has been having connectivity issues ever since moving film-tech.com and cinematour.com over to the same host server. The extra load is causing the TOE maximum number of concurrent sessions to be exceeded which is causing the persistent connections between the VMware host and guest to be dropped when they're pushed between the TOE and the native Windows TCP/IP stack.

I'm hoping that the latest Broadcom NIC driver that I've installed will finally resolve the issue. I'm pretty sure that it's an issue with broken (or at least mismatched to the MS Scalable Networking Pack) TOE support in the Broadcom driver that came with the server. The issue being that I couldn't convince TOE to disable itself.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-05-2007, 01:00 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
64-bit operating systems and Linux are not mainstream computer user items. Likewise, Adobe isn't in a big hurry to recompile all of their applications in 64-bit form.

1) 64-bit not mainstream? Buy a new decent computer now and you'll find it can do 64-bit. Heck, even the lower-level computers have 64-bit capable processors now. Both Vista and XP are available in 64-bit too.

2) It isn't that Adobe isn't in a hurry to recompile; it's the fact that they CAN'T just recompile. People have been asking them for at least a couple years for a 64-bit capable flash but the problem is that they'd have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch since there's no way for it to work in 64-bit as they've written it. Apparently, it relies heavily on 32-bit.

And I really dislike the reasoning of "you should use a more mainstream OS." This is like when some webmaster puts up a website that doesn't use internet standards then when someone says "That doesn't render right because you did X" then they respond with "It works with Internet Explorer."

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-05-2007, 04:52 PM:

The new server seems to have some growing pains. Mail isn't working.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-05-2007, 04:54 PM:

quote: Chris Slycord
64-bit not mainstream? Buy a new decent computer now and you'll find it can do 64-bit.

Sure, newer CPUs can compute 64-bit code -at least to some extent. Certain versions of newer operating systems can as well. But that capability is pretty much like tits on a bull if none of your applications are compiled for 64-bit operation.

The vast majority of mainstream computer applications are compiled only in 32-bit form. Further, very few of them are compiled in multi-threaded form either. Most people are only getting limited benefits from dual-core and multi-core CPUs.

This is essentially why 64-bit is not mainstream and won't be for at least another couple of years.

To make matters worse, 64-bit versions of Windows actually "break" a lot of functions in mainstream software and drivers for peripheral devices. Whenever any graphics people ask me about 64-bit, I tell them to avoid it. There's just too many problems with it.

The only way graphics people can deal with 64-bit is when it is loaded on a special purpose machine doing specialized tasks, such as doing 3D animation and effects composition in native 64-bit versions of Maya and Fusion. If they're expecting to do a lot of common graphics chores using applications from Adobe, Corel, Quark, etc., they're bound to have trouble when trying to run them in a 64-bit OS.

quote: Chris Slycord
It isn't that Adobe isn't in a hurry to recompile; it's the fact that they CAN'T just recompile.

Umm, where exactly am I disagreeing with that?

I know it isn't an easy task for Adobe to redo their apps in 64-bit. Unfortunately a lot of "power users" who just had to run out and load WinXP Pro x64 Edition or get the 64-bit version of Vista didn't realize that fact. They've been flaming Adobe for the last couple of years in not rushing out a "64-bit patch" of Photoshop. Too damned bad folks. They had more important fish to fry, such as finishing the CS3 suite with all those acquired Macromedia applications and having to settle for doing it all in 32-bit form for this round.

quote: Chris Slycord
And I really dislike the reasoning of "you should use a more mainstream OS."

Anyone can load up whatever operating system he likes. But that doesn't change the situation about 64-bit and the fact it is not mainstream.

I'm certainly not going to "upgrade" to a 64-bit OS anytime soon. The 32-bit version of WinXP Pro I am using works. My software and wide variety of devices work reliably under it. That's not the same issue with anything 64-bit.

It's one thing if a new 64-bit OS on someone's home system craps out because it can't run a certain video game or video applet. It's a much more serious problem if the 64-bit OS isn't compatible with your business work flow. I've got some really expensive large format printing equipment and CNC routing equipment operating from my machine. That gear cannot be rendered idle by a 64-bit OS that doesn't know how to play nice with it.

[ 12-05-2007, 07:04 PM: Message edited by: Bobby Henderson ]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-05-2007, 05:39 PM:

The site seemed to "go down" last night for a while and then again today, but just for a few minutes each time. Also right now the chat room area has the blank "cannot display the webpage" look.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-05-2007, 08:02 PM:

Yeah, the network interface in the server has been acting up. I was up till 5am last night trying to get the data center staff to resolve the issue.

It is still locking up periodically today but I've been able get the machine rebooted and functional (for a while) each time. The bits of downtime is the 3-5 minutes it takes for the server to reboot.

I'm currently building a duplicate server (same hardware and software) at home so that I can see for myself what the heck is going on.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-06-2007, 07:54 PM:

Jebus Crackers, guys! I was joking about using flash and all that crap.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-06-2007, 10:45 PM:

So does that mean I should stop working on the html-to-flash.pl script I've been working on?

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-06-2007, 11:15 PM:

Bobby,

That whole statement about why you don't want a 64-bit OS has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

All I was saying is "I'd prefer to not have the site in flash because, for me, the site wouldn't work as well as it does now."

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-08-2007, 12:16 AM:

Aside from mail still being extremely wonky, I have found a weird forum error that occurs from time to time. For example right now when I am out on the main page I see this:

It shows the Senator thread has a new post that was made at 11:45pm by Mark J. Marshall.

However if you go in to Film-Yak, you see this (click for bigger view):

You can see that the actual forum has not updated yet and it still thinks the last post in the Senator thread was made by Bill Gabel over an hour before. If you actually click in to the thread, Mark's post shows up.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-08-2007, 12:30 AM:

Yeah, it's done that ever since we installed UBB 6 during the winter of 2002/2003. There's a bug in the cache generation code.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 01-08-2008, 01:21 PM:

What's up with these time stamps?

It happens after I post something.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-08-2008, 04:08 PM:

What OS, browser and time zone setting does that happen with? Does it only happen with times (in CT) that start with a 0?

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 01-08-2008, 05:58 PM:

OS: Windows XP SP2
Browser: Firefox 2.0.0.11
Time Zone: Eastern

Not sure about the time starting with zero thing. I'll check that and let you know.

- - - - - - -
Edit: Just tried it again, and time stamp line reads:

quote:
posted 01-08-2008 05:58 PM CT (US) (6:58 PM Local)

So maybe only with times where local time is 1x:xx ? Or 12:xx ? Or maybe when CT = 01:xx ?
I note a leading zero on the CT time, but not on the local time.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 01-10-2008, 03:32 PM:

Here's another... when someone posts something that causes the Soup Nazi (System Notices) to appear because no one has posted in that thread for a long time, the System Notices is shown as the last poster on that thread on this forum page, not the author of the last post. See Scott Norwood's post about the three stooges shorts in the FITA forum.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-11-2008, 05:09 PM:

Here's a weird one, I was responding to a thread in The Afterlife forum and when I pressed ADD REPLY I was met with this:

That sure is weird. I pressed the BACK button and hit add reply again and it went through just fine.

EDIT: Just happened again with this post!!

EDIT2: The forum doesn't seem to have registered this new post. This thread has NOT bumped to the top. It's on the outside page where you select which forum you go in to, but once you get in here, it's down at the bottom.

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 01-11-2008, 05:42 PM:

[sleep]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-11-2008, 06:57 PM:

Thanks for bumping the thread!

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 01-11-2008, 07:26 PM:

The "could not connect to SMTP server" means that someone has requested to be notified of new posts in that thread (why that stupid thread, I don't know) and the ubb software is having problems connecting to the mail server.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 01-11-2008, 08:25 PM:

Looks like someone subscribed to this thread as well. What I don't get is why the message for posting about feature info and trailers pops up when it is a completely different forum.

Edit: happened again as I posted this!

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 01-12-2008, 01:21 PM:

When I logged in just now it indicated that "The Afterlife" section has no new posts. Yet if I click on that section and enter it, I am shown one thread with several new posts since I last visited.

Then when I opened a new tab, only in that tab did it show (from the forum's top-level) that new posts exist.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 01-26-2008, 10:56 PM:

Anybody else having trouble uploading images? After I click "submit" it tells me that my login failed.?

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-04-2008, 04:29 AM:

quote: Jeremy Weigel
Anybody else having trouble uploading images? After I click "submit" it tells me that my login failed.?

I'm guessing that you didn't provide the correct login info.

Mark -- I'll look into the local time issue sometime within the next 5 years, I promise.

Chris -- If there's an error sending mail UBB bails before it updates its indexes. UBB sucks.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-04-2008, 04:45 AM:

Answer = Vbulletin... that is if there is software to transfer UBB content over.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 02-04-2008, 10:27 AM:

quote: Daryl C. W. O'Shea
I'm guessing that you didn't provide the correct login info.

Its the same login info that I have to use to login to post messages correct?.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 02-04-2008, 11:05 AM:

I'm sure the next version of Windows will fix it.

[Roll Eyes]

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-04-2008, 12:41 PM:

Funny... I never noticed a single thing change... except for short periods of downtime. Whats wrong with all yous guys puters out there????

Mark

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-04-2008, 07:27 PM:

quote: Jeremy Weigel
Its the same login info that I have to use to login to post messages correct?

Yes. If you can reproduce the problem while making sure that you're using the correct login info, provide me with the time of the failure and I'll look at the httpd server logs.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-04-2008, 07:39 PM:

Mark -- fixed now (on topics with posts posted after this one)? I think your time zone is 43 seconds ahead of the folks who live further west in the easter time zone. [Smile]

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 02-04-2008, 09:19 PM:

quote: Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Yes. If you can reproduce the problem while making sure that you're using the correct login info, provide me with the time of the failure and I'll look at the httpd server logs.

Hey Daryl,

The last time I tried uploading was just before posting my original post in this thread (that should give ya a close time reference). I was trying to upload pics for Mike Blakesley in his thread: "Wall-mount one-sheet frames" in the groung level section. I ended up just emailing them to him.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-04-2008, 09:42 PM:

Turns out the upload script doesn't log anything. So... I uploaded an image using your account and it worked fine.

So... if you can reproduce the error while using what you are sure to be your login creds (logout of the forums and log back in to make sure you're using the correct password; for a bonus copy and paste the password you use to login to the forums into the upload page password field) let me know.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 02-04-2008, 09:44 PM:

The login for the photo upload is case sensitive, in case you're too lazy to hit the shift key twice.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 02-04-2008, 11:20 PM:

I'll give it a try again tomorrow when I go in. Adam might be on to something with the case sensitivity issue as I can log in to post reguardless of case.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-05-2008, 01:28 AM:

Nothing to do with the forums, but the title graphic on the main page is missing.

Posted by Sebastian Binz (Member # 4567) on 02-05-2008, 05:13 PM:

I noticed that the Adblock plugin in Mozilla Firefox keeps blocking pictures uploaded to FT.
By default, the plugin will ban all pictures containing *ads*, therefore everything out of the /uploads/ will be blocked.
Took me a while to figure that out and set up a rule to allow these pictures.
Just in case anyone is wondering why he or she can't view any of the posted pictures in this forum.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 02-05-2008, 06:12 PM:

Adam nailed it. I need to capitalize the first letters of my name.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 02-05-2008, 10:23 PM:

quote: Sebastian Binz
Adblock plugin in Mozilla Firefox keeps blocking pictures uploaded to FT.
By default, the plugin will ban all pictures containing *ads*

Wow, that's moronic.