If you blinked you missed it!

[Rusty Stumps]

Well the RR-L Forum was up again for all of about 15 minutes or so.

Casey Feedwater and a few other notables, yours included, got to post one or two messages before it was deep sixed again.

Evidently even the powers to be (Joe) can't keep down a good thing as it is like the Pheonx and keeps rising from the ashes... all by it's self!

But it may be dead for good this time as it's getting close to Halloween and I think he drove a stake through it's heart!

 

[Casey Feedwater]

Down for Good

Yep, it's down for good this time.

I emailed Joe and asked him what was up. He explained it as some kind of glitch in the software that allowed the forum to resurface this morning for a few minutes.

He also wants to sell the whole forum setup and database. So if anyone has a hankering to own their own train forum... ... let me know, and I'll send you Joe's email address.

Now, back to trains.

 

[rockislandmike]

Yours truly surfaced there for a few minutes as well, although I figured it was some sort of software thing.

I wonder how much he expects to make ??? It's common for developers to drastically over-estimate how much they can get for software........

I know we got about 1/20 of what we had hoped for some e-commerce stuff we created, and then sold when things didn't go as planned.

 

[NYCentral]

I also was there. The software it's self is free, I think he wants money for the database and the alterations to the software he did.

 

[Rusty Stumps]

I don't know, maybe that was his intent from the word "go"!

Really, most everything in the database someone has somewhere else. As to his mods, maybe, maybe not.

I suggest we each chip in a $1 and go from there. Lets see that's 4 bucks so far. I hope we don't overpay!

The big thing is, right now, at least the way Joe ran it, there is no commercial value in what he has. No sponsors or anything sellable. I doubt he is including MS SQL-Server or any hardware.

He didn't say anything about including the URL name ownership.

I don't think it's worth much of anything as most people have moved on and it would be best to start it from scratch.

 

[Casey Feedwater]

Originally posted by Rusty Stumps
I doubt he is including MS SQL-Server or any hardware.

He didn't say anything about including the URL name ownership.

I don't know what any of this stuff means, so I don't even know if it's related to Rusty's statement. But this is what comes up if you try to access the forums.

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Cannot open database requested in login 'raillineforum'. Login fails.

/discussion/inc_top.asp, line 75

Strangely enough, the homepage is still up and running, though.

Oh well.....

 

[rockislandmike]

Agreed, Rusty.....with all of your statements............

 

[Wolv33]

Guys,

Had to work today, OR I would have downloaded the forum as much as I could have with the T3 line at work. Sorry. Was swamped under a whole load of admin policies and new accounts to create. I would have dled it...believe me!

What that error looks like is that Joe has taken the entire database link and edited in the configuration file so it no longer references to that database. Without the database, the forums cannot load correctly.

All pages of the software are .asp... I have the software running "locally" on the Intranet I setup here at home. I am using W2K Adv server with IIS 5.0 and access 2000 as my database link. I will upgrade it to SQL when the forums go operational, but for a few workstations, Access 2000 is fine.

All the MODS Joe spoke of are available to me, and I actually downloaded them all. That was when I made a list of features I could add to the existing forum software (see Tom's discussion forum).

Personally... I do NOT think WE should HAVE to PAY for our OWN POSTS! That is, buying them back!! I do understand about all the work Joe has put into the forum software and setting up the Mods, but to buy back our own posts? Come on!

Technically speaking, though I cannot speak for SQL, I have NEVER heard of software restarting itself. To get the forums to STOP running, you have to go into IIS and tell it to stop that service. The ONLY way I know to get it going again is to manually RESTART. Though you could probably reboot the server and it would restart the service. But if they were supposed to be down, then the person managing the IIS part of the server, should have set them up in a way to keep them down.

I do not believe there was a glitch in the software. I believe that was a show. I could be wrong though.

It doesn't really matter though. I for one WILL NOT put any money into that forum.

My 2Cents.

Later.

-Wolv