So what do you think of all this?

[ColinT]

I know we are brand new, but MANY people visited us today. Please rate how you feel about Free-DC.

[ken_valyi]

You're abandoning Tacos!

You are Traitors!

/me runs away screaming......

[Chinasaur]

Good idea... a purely DC place for people to congregate and share information and commune...very nice.

Good luck with it :)

[Jammy]

Great idea . . .I had to search to find this . . .so where does ubero go now?

Jammy

[ColinT]

Free Spirit:

When Scott gets Teams set up, we will have a FreeDC team. You noticed it already:)

Scott Hodson posts here. he is a big sweetheart!

[Jammy]

Colin . . .I guess you also noticed that "I" left Team Chili Pepper also. Something seemed wrong?????

I dunno . . .I like the ideaology behind Free-DC.

pssssst . . .am I an enigma?

Oh . . .now to get my Ubero stats transferred over to FreeDC . . .Scott ????

BTW >>> IB you are one great individual. Since Free-DC is new I can read ALL of the posts here and get caught up quite easily. This forum is great!


Originally posted by ColinT
Free Spirit:

When Scott gets Teams set up, we will have a FreeDC team. You noticed it already:)

Scott Hodson posts here. he is a big sweetheart!

[Richard Clyne]

Great Idea & Great Site.

This is what DC'ing has needed for a while, a fresh approach.

[ColinT]

Thanks Richard. It's a one of a kind for sure:)

[FoBoT]

i like it because:
i visit several sites most days, that all have DC teams, but i go there for various stuff, not necessarily for DC

hardware trading-
hardocp
pcabusers
anandtech
arstechnica

geek/computer/OS-
linuxnewbie.org
arstechnica
geek.com

so who am i supposed to DC for? :confused:

for the past several months, i have done RC5 for one team, THINK and SETI for another, g@h for several ( :o ) and when f@h2 started, i have done that for Ars

so i have been a bit lost/wandering in my DC efforts, i think this is what i need, a place to do DC, neutral of all the other reasons i go to all the great sites, most of which have DC teams :)

[Berg.the.Red]

there was --> NO TACO <-- choice in the poll. WHERE'S THE TACO'S MAN ??!!!! :p

[FoBoT]

p.s.

pie is better than tacos!

pie > tacos = 1

http://www.outofthefryingpan.com/recipes/images/pie.pumpkin.jpg http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols2/thumbs.up.jpg


http://www.chippewa-hills.k12.mi.us/images/Tacos.gif http://www.dine-online.co.uk/image22.gif

[NetMasterOC3]

I just dont know guys....

I mean I think in the end this will be good for the DC community as a whole, but most of you founders are what held, IMO, the ars DC teams togeater.

I wonder how the Ars DC teams will end up in a couple of months time now.

[MickFoley]

I like the idea guys.

Good luck :D

[TSpurrell]

Have to say I like the idea. Best of luck trying to recruit more to the cause. :)

[ColinT]

NetMaster:

New people will step in and everything will be fine again. It's the nature of things:)

Thanks for showing up here!

[Geordie]

Seems like a good idea. A "pure" DC team with no interest other than DC. Should be an interesting evolution.

[Detemeat]

I would be a hypocrite (sp) if I said anything other than "I love this idea". We (the 3 mug o beers) went through the same circumstances when we left Techimo for ExtremeDC. We felt that it would be better for the DCing community in the long run if there was a place for just DC projects. Good luck and "Cheers from the Beers"

[[H]Rockhammer]

Well, I guess I'm a little unsure of the whole idea, so let me play Devil's Advocate for a while and see if you can convince me.

[devil mode]

If the over-arching goal is to attract more people to the DC community to work on worthwhile projects, I don't see how the existance of Free-DC aids in reaching this goal. Few people wake up in the morning and out of the blue decide to DC. I think most of us were drawn in by a posting on the front page of some website like Ars, HardOCP, or Overclockers. When we got there, we found seasoned veterans, like yourselves, to help us get started.

Without some other "general interest" content to draw folks to the Free-DC website, I'm not sure how you plan to recruit new team members. I'm betting that a fairly high percentage of your membership will be drawn from existing teams, so the net affect toward over-arching goal is zero. In fact, it might be negative. If, in fact, the folk that join Free-DC from other teams are the more senior members, those teams will lose important mentors and cheerleaders for the cause. It also may lead to divisions and hurt feelings which, again, divert energies from the over-arching goal and may tend to "turn-off" potential new recruits who visit the fora of those sites.

[/devil mode]

[Dyyryath]

Hey Rockhammer, let me take a stab at answering this...

First, I think a lot of people are getting a little confused over our reasoning. The primary goal wasn't to pull more users into the world of DC from the outside. That would be a nice side effect, something that we'll work for, and it's something that we'd love to see if it happens...but that's not real reason for all this.

The primary reason for this was because those of us involved in the initial decision wanted a set of teams, and all of the support infrastructure to go with them, that would be completely free from anything that doesn't have to do with Distributed Computing.

Why? Well, that question has a long and complicated answer that would quite likely upset those people who misunderstood it. With that in mind, I'm not really willing to go into great detail there. ;)

However, the gist of it is, we don't want to be tied to anything outside of the DC world. This isn't because of bad feelings toward Ars. It isn't so we can pull users from other teams that aren't happy with their current allegiences. It's not even so we can pull new users who haven't joined because they didn't want to have to choose between one or more of their favorite tech sites (thought that would be a nice side benefit). It's simply because we want to be purely DC in nature.

I've heard a great deal of speculation about our goals with this. Some of it is so grand in nature it's unbelievable, while some isn't so very flattering at all. :)

Let me just say, that those of us who jumped in together with this were doing something for ourselves. We had a common vision of what kind of team we wanted to crunch for and what kind of infrastructure we wanted to see supporting it.

Is that just "the 5 on a power trip"? Sort of, yes. Sort of no. Yes, in the sense that we wanted more control over the team that we were a part of in order to make what we all wanted from it. No in the sense that part of "the dream" is to have a place where the DC people get to make all the decisions.

Having said that, let me say that we think (we hope) that what we see as the perfect team and support structure is also going to appeal to others like us. If so, we'll welcome them with open arms! If not, well then we will continue on comfortable in the fact that we've at least created a place that we'll be happy. :)

[ColinT]

Rockhammer,

Thanks for the post.

I have yet to reveal my hand. No one has yet seen all we plan to do. I am waiting for Dyy to post the completed web site, then I go into action. I will get us some legit members. As I have said repeatedly, FreeDC is not about raiding other teams. TYhat is pointless and not what we intend.

Re-read the statement I wrote in the lobby. I meant every word.

I have seen a few - a very few - defections for other teams. I would guess that they were unhappy where they were. their joining was incidental.

To reinterate: Our plans were announced too early. We have much to do that is not easily seen. Please give us time. Then judge us.

Colin, The Spin Doctor
Minister of Propaganda

[[H]Rockhammer]

Please give us time. Then judge us.

Colin, The Spin Doctor
Minister of Propaganda

Heh, heh, okay. I'll reserve judgement. One friendly word of advice in the meantime. You'll need tread very lightly in other DC fora lest you give the appearance of conducting recruitment missions for Free-DC.

Rock

[[H]Rockhammer]

BTW, you did invite us to pass judgement with the title of this thread.:p

But I'll hold off.

[trif]

I am hoping that this will become a site that I can send people who are more mainstream to. You know, people like my mom and dad, who surf the web, do email, play a little solitaire, and lots of other ordinary people type stuff. DC would be something they would put on their PC because I recommended it, and they want it to just run and they never have to bother with it. They would be uninterested in teams, but they probably would like a site that gave them a good rundown of the various projects so they could pick one. One that does not have a bunch of d00dz insulting each other and threatening to kick each other's butts.

[[H]Rockhammer]

DOOD, I'm gonna kick ur butt!. Just kidding.;)

[phlump]

I wish they had an indifferent emoticon on this, because that's exactly how i feel.

I *think* I understand your motivations for doing this, but then when i saw the other fora you have here (OS, hardware, trading) it kinda soured it for me. Sure, the spin in all of them will start out being DC-related, but even having them is just an invitation to expand beyond DC...

Anyway, don't mean to rain on you... cuz I *know* you have the best intentions. :)

GOOD LUCK GUYS!! :)

P.S. At some point, I'll introduce your new teams to my shiny chrome beatdown stick... and i mean that in the nicest possible way! ;)

P.P.S. Given the altruistic "mankind-improving" nature of some of the projects (UD, G@H, F@H), isn't your slogan a little misleading?

[ColinT]

At some point, I'll introduce your new teams to my shiny chrome beatdown stick... and i mean that in the nicest possible way!

Phlump: You have not seen all we are doing yet. It was leaked too soon. But yes, we intend to create a DC ONLY community for people new to DC. We will not raid other teams.

And I for one have tasted the bite of your shiny beatdown stick. I fear it :D

[relic]

Originally posted by phlump
I *think* I understand your motivations for doing this, but then when i saw the other fora you have here (OS, hardware, trading) it kinda soured it for me. Sure, the spin in all of them will start out being DC-related, but even having them is just an invitation to expand beyond DC...

You know, I thought the same thing when I first saw the other fora, but being that the "powers that be" are all DC veterans...I'm not too worried about the topics getting "off-DC".

Let's see how it shakes out. So far I'm loving the place.

[Ancala]

I think this is a reasonably thought out, good idea in general. If something like this had existed, I would have joined. But it took me forever (and alot of $$$) to reach the top 100 of TLC, and I am not just gonna throw that in the dumper :)...

My only fear is that this is just a noble face for the ugliness of selfishness. I know some members (I STRESS SOME) of free-dc did not get along with the forum moderation or some admins of the current IRC hosts. If it is as such, it will probably fade as all things based on tantrums must.

If it isn't, long live free-dc and if TLC were to ever go TU, then I am sure I would come sniffing around here sooner or later.


lata
-Ancala


edited: Still mis-spelling words.

[IronBits]

Well phlump,

If you have a computer, then it has an OS on it, and we know how all the clients on the projects work on every platform, right out of the box, with every piece of hardware ;)

If you are running a project, it is inevitable you will run into a Harware problem. Not that there is anything wrong with the clients themselves, or the OS mind you ;)

If you have multiple computers running, Networking issues will come up, and if you are upgrading, you need a place to help upgrade others by offering up the old, to build better stronger boxen, no? ;)

And then, we just gotta have a place to walk the walk and talk the talk, even for those of us that are not fortunate enough to have a well polished, shiny chrome beat-down stick :D

/me kneels neverously before his greatness and feels the power of the master and keeper, of that mighty sharp and heavy stick :)
/while peeking to keep an eye on that chrome thing :D

Thanks for stopping by - WOOF !

[Larry Loen]

I think most of us were drawn in by a posting on the front page of some website like Ars, HardOCP, or Overclockers. When we got there, we found seasoned veterans, like yourselves, to help us get started.


This may be true. But, in my case, it was false. I'm still hard over on the Arsian side of this, but simple fairness constrains me to point out that I came in via zAmboni's Team Lambchop site and had no idea there was a forum for many months.

There may be multiple roads to Rome here. I for one will not pass judgement and, at the least, you have provided me a caution not to assume that there is one path to the world of DC.

[fRaGgLe]

I have been an avid TLC reader for a couple of years, and I joined TLC around a year ago, I did not join ARSTechnica, more TLC, and the DC forum has seen around 99% of my posts, the other 1% being in Agora.....

So, as far as I am concerned all you are doing is....

1. Saying that you want a forum that has none ARSTechnica mods, otherwise you would be posting in the DC forum on ARSTechnica.

I understand that the moderation on ARS can be a contentious subject, I have had a number of minor skuffles with zoso over his handling of stuff, but honestly how many of you have ever actualy asked him why he has locked a thread, or stood up to him when you do not agree with it ? I have and I have received good answers, and had a thread unlocked.

So, lets solve it the other way - lets start our own place, and we can all be mods.

What happens when something is locked and you do no agree with it ? You unlock it ? or do you show moderation solidarity ? Moderation is a dammed difficult taks, and one that requires shit-loads more tact that the mods that I see here have shown in the past.

2. Offering a third alternative IRC channel, in addition to the official ARSTechnica one and the Kulish/Hashmark one.


Sheer stupidity, absolute and utter bullshit. Which moron came up with this plan ???

You are doing two things here

2a) Forcing people to choose

2b) Attempting to shuitdown Kulish/Hashmark

Either way its ****ing stupidity at its best.

Well thanks guys, now I have to figure out which set of friends to hang with.

This has to be the most moronic decision you have made.

If you had an ounce of brain between you, you would just piggy-back on the stable, releiable, professionally run IRC that is handled by hashmark.

Either way you have divided into a little group, and formed a private club, maybe having its own forums is a good thing, maybe not, but the IRC issue is sheer stupidity.

So long and thanks for all the fish

[fRaGgLe]

None of the options express my opinion

[Dyyryath]

Actually frag, it's a bit more involved than that, though I don't begrudge you your opinion on the subject. I would however, like to say a few words about the "Moderation" thing.

For me, this is not about 'bad' moderation. I have, in fact, approached Zoso when I thought he was a little over-zealous. He responded and we had a civil discussion about it. We were in a little bit of disagreement, but in the end, I could totally understand his position. He was doing his job.

Now, let me use that particular instance as an example. In this case, it was Larry's post about motherboards that was locked. His attempt at open discussion about the reason for locking it was also locked. I thought that Zoso was being just a tad over-zealous with this and I told him so.

He then rightly pointed out that as a moderator, it is his job to ensure that threads are put in the place in the forum where they most belong. In this case, he felt like Larry's post should have been in the Motherboard & CPU forum.

The problem here, is that Larry's post was aimed at the DC community. Most of us would never go to the Motherboard & CPU forum because only 1% of the posts there may have anything to do with DC. How do you fix this? It's not that anyone here is actually *wrong*. The problem, at least in my eyes, is that the forum covers too much ground at times and has too many users posting with no interest in DC at all.

That is one of the reasons (among many) that we've tried to create something purely DC in nature. The hardware section here won't force you to look through 80% of the threads looking for things related to DC or aimed at DC enthusiasts. It's just a more tightly focused community.

The issues with IRC I will stay out since I know very little about the motives and past issues involved. I've never been privy to any of that, having been only an occasional participant of any of the IRC channels...

[[H]Rockhammer]

Originally posted by Larry Loen


This may be true. But, in my case, it was false. I'm still hard over on the Arsian side of this, but simple fairness constrains me to point out that I came in via zAmboni's Team Lambchop site and had no idea there was a forum for many months.

There may be multiple roads to Rome here. I for one will not pass judgement and, at the least, you have provided me a caution not to assume that there is one path to the world of DC.

Note that I said "most" and I'll stand by that opinion. Just curious how you happened upon the Team Lambchop site in the first place. A google search for lamb recipies that went wrong perhaps, lol? There must be a story there.

BTW, I don't hesitate to pass judgement when I have a decent set of facts in front of me. Gawd, when did having "good judgement" get to be such a sin?

[Zoso]

In it's most basic form I think this is a good idea. There isn't any need for me to get into some of the underlying motivations for this move, as it would likely be counterproductive at best. It should suffice to say that I believe the underlying intentions to be essentially good ones, and the rest will turn out however they turn out. A little evolution never hurt anyone.

Best of luck gentlemen.

[fRaGgLe]

If the issues are simply over zelous moderation, and marc/IB's dislike of hagabard and his efforts to bring together an IRC channel then this is done for all of the wrong reasons.

If not, then I have misjudged the situation, and will quietly withdraw to a corner. Howerver, its a shame that the IRC channels are now split, and that forum moderation in ARS is being called out so often as a problem.

What happens when people post in the wrong place here ?

Polite requests to move, or acceptance that this is off-topic.

Why have all of the catagories, why not just one huge open warfare topic ?

[Dyyryath]

Well, let me say again, 'poor moderation' wasn't the problem. A forum with too many different sections and interests was the problem.

Obviously, there will be moderation here, too. There has to be. If I create a post in the lobby about a certain motherboard's instability while running SETI, a moderator will (and should) move it to the hardware forum where it belongs.

The key difference here (and the hope) is, the DC people that I've aimed that post at will see it there. It won't be buried in 500 hundred other posts about things that don't have anything to do with DC, or weren't intended specifically for the members of the DC community. All the posts there will be specifically for DC'ers.

It's not the moderation that was the problem, but rather the scope of the forums was simply too large to always be practical.

[Kosmaj]

I think this new site is a good idea.

The only thing I don't understand is why ColinT & co haven't stated clearly their reasons publicly (Ars DC forum). That would be beneficial in the first place for Ars DC community IMHO. For me there are many good things at Ars (specially zamb's TLC stas, I do only seti), and there are a few bad things. The problem is that you cannot even discuss bad things because an overzealous moderator comes over and locks you thread. Has the latest lock of the Larry's mobo thread been a drop over the brink? I think you have to articulate your motivation better and in a frankly manner.

In any case I wish you good luck and all the best. I'll come here to follow the events for the time being.

Kosmaj

[Dyyryath]

No, this wasn't spurred by the lock of Larry's thread. I've merely tried to use that instance as an example. In fact, I've come to feel like that wasn't even 'over-zealous'.

Zoso was doing *exactly* what he was supposed to do: ensure that posts go in the forum they belong in.

The problem, as I said above, wasn't the moderation, but rather the structure and incredible diversity of the Ars Forums as a whole.

As for discussing it in the Ars Forum, we're a little leery of that, quite frankly. We are now officially a new team. There are some very fine lines for us to walk. Would it be acceptable for members of [H]ardOCP's forum to come over to Ars and provide a disertation on why the Ars forum wouldn't work for them and why their forum is a better place for DC'ers? Do we have that right just because we originated there? Wouldn't that seem like recruitment?

We all said when we decided to do this that we wouldn't recruit from any Ars team. Even if that's not our intent, we don't want to do anything that might even give that appearance. It just wouldn't be right.

While some from the various Ars teams might decide that they feel the same way we do and join us, that's still a personal decision on their part and we think that's OK. We just want to make sure we don't cross the line by doing anything that looks even remotely like active recruitment on the Ars forum.

[ColinT]

Kosmaj

Our plans were announced WAY too early. Someone leaked it:) We cannot show you all there is yet.

As for our "reasons" We simply wanted to try Something Completely Different TM.

We and NOT recruiting from other teams, but anyone is welcome to post here and I am hard pressed to think of what would be an OT post.

You are always welcome here:) Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.

(I am not locking your post:)

Colin

[oldbiker]

Well Colin, since the cat is well out of the bag, why all the secrecy still?

Let's see the grand plan !!!

Hmmmm maybe Colin's cats were too big for the bag...


:p

[rstarr]

This is a great idea.

Combination Folding and hardware site.

Just what I've been looking for. Another forum that I'm in has a folding thread but won't even change it to a sub-cat like it needs.

Everything is posted under one thread in the General section.

Here, everything is spread out as it should be. Great job and keep up the good work. :)

[ColinT]

Thanks RStar. Enjoy!

[BNS]

I love it. I love Ars.

I like the idea behind Free-DC.

I respect the way Dyyrath, Iron Bits, JTrinkle, ColinT et al make considered decisions and try to improve the entire DC community withou letting rivalries get in the way of the greater goal.

I'm joining as soon as I can get F@H2 to run as a service in WinXP without problems.

[JTrinkle]

I'm joining as soon as I can get F@H2 to run as a service in WinXP without problems.

from the FireDaemon website:

The current version of FireDaemon does not run on XP

You might try this one instead.. Its for Win2K but its based on the srvany.exe by Microsoft

Lowcrawlers F@H as a service (http://www.incision.org/fah%20service.exe)

Instructions (http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=122097561&m=1910905923)

-Jim

[BNS]

Originally posted by JTrinkle


from the FireDaemon website:

The current version of FireDaemon does not run on XP

You might try this one instead.. Its for Win2K but its based on the srvany.exe by Microsoft

Lowcrawlers F@H as a service (http://www.incision.org/fah%20service.exe)

Instructions (http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=122097561&m=1910905923)

-Jim

Thanks very much Jim!

I have actually noticed that before in the Ars DC forums but at the time I really didn't take much notice of it - but now it comes in handy.

Free-DC +533MHz (hehe, pathetic I know)