[url]www.roadode.com[/url] RIP

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mattman422

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Hello i know there are some posters here that also posted at roadode. I just wanted to see when did ran close the site and if anyone knows a way i can email him. Roadode was such a great carpenters site and i enjoyed learning and laughing with people all over the world. Thanks ran for all the fun. Hopefully most of the members can still talk here? Thanks !~~~~~~Matt
 
Ran closed his site late last week claiming theft of property. Apparently there were some regulars who were linking directly to the multimedia material that he provided (video and audio tracks, etc.). Ran worked hard on providing those, and paid for the server space on which to provide them. His feelings, expressed on the remaining page of his site, are easy enough to understand.

Meantime, Matt, you're welcome to use this site to express your feelings about Carpenters or any other musical or non-musical interest in their appropriate forum.

Harry
...remembering Ran's, online...
 
Harry said:
Meantime, Matt, you're welcome to use this site to express your feelings about Carpenters or any other musical or non-musical interest in their appropriate forum.

And I second that! Feel free to get the word out to other Carpenters fans--we're here, we've been here for seven years, and we're not going away without a fight! :D

Harry said:
Apparently there were some regulars who were linking directly to the multimedia material that he provided (video and audio tracks, etc.). Ran worked hard on providing those, and paid for the server space on which to provide them.

Which is the same as what we do here, in fact--we live off of our donations and CDNow and GEMM purchases. :wink: While I don't (and won't) host anything multimedia for bandwidth and, especially, copyright concerns, it makes me wonder how this other site was hosted. Anyone trying to link any of our images or other files off-site are met with a "Forbidden!" error message. If roadode.com was hosted on a Microsoft IIS server, well *shrug* that's explanation enough for part of the woes. Anyone with a good hosting company that uses the Apache web server can easily protect against this IF the host gives them access to the proper configuration file. While you often can't stop someone from downloading and using the file on their own computer, you CAN stop them from linking to your images and files if they try to put them on their own website, as well as stop "directory browsing" so visitors can't snoop around find files to download w/o permission. (There are other protections in place, like image watermarking, to prevent someone from using any of our unique content w/o getting caught, like BSN Publications did...and still does.)

I remember when some silly TJB "Fan Club" site started pointing all their visitors over here to steal one of the MP3 files I had posted. I got rid of the file once I found out. If someone wants the file, they can download it, post it on THEIR OWN site, and let the world download it from there. It's as low and despicable as eBay users who, in the past, have linked to album images in our discographies. I serve my files for my site only; I can't afford to subsidize other websites unless they're willing to pay for the privilege.

No, it's not right to use something without asking, and many web surfers are unaware of the bandwidth issues when they're clicking on that 50MB video file for the tenth time in a single day, for example. However, for anyone posting any type of content online, they just flat out need to be prepared to DELIVER IT. In other words, if you have a multimedia file online (which, by their nature, are a lot larger than static images), you need to be aware that there WILL be a lot of people accessing it, and live with the fact that there will be some clueless individuals who will abuse the privilege, knowingly or not.

Those of us who do web development for a living know that disk space is cheap, but *good* bandwidth is not. It's a constant tradeoff of content over practicality. And an ongoing concern to make certain that nothing is either abused (as what unfortunately happened to roadode.com) or, worse, hacked into.

-= N =-
 
Roadode.com was an interesting site and there was a good group of contributors, (many of whom are A&M Corner members !) :D

There are always a minority seeking to gain something at the expense of the majority in all groups / workplaces / social clubs etc.This has caused the whole site to close down ....perhaps a forum only site may appear for the future with no downloads etc...... :o

I am surprised as with Rudy's comments over monitoring sites and partroling your resources that the site owner offered so much and was not protecting the whole site or warning off predators etc.

All very sad .....except A&M Corner offers wonderful forum's on Alpert , Carpenters and other A&M / Music industry issues :D :D

Long may A&M Corner continue to reign .......
 
PJ said:
I am surprised as with Rudy's comments over monitoring sites and partroling your resources that the site owner offered so much and was not protecting the whole site or warning off predators etc.

To be honest, there is no way a site operator can absolutely prevent a visitor from getting something from a website if they want it bad enough, but you can minimize the misuse as much as possible.

Part of the job is for me to monitor my usage logs--if I saw a spike in access for a particular file (say, 250 accesses), and the accompanying page was only accessed 62 times, that is a dead giveaway that something isn't right. This is how I discovered what that other TJB "fan site" was up to--the MP3 file was accessed more than four times as much as the page it was posted on. This is the same way I could discover if an eBay seller was linking to one of our images. (Our server logs are much more extensive, but following overall trends is often a better picture of what's going on.)

If content is that important, there's also an option to password-protect areas that are especially prone to abuse. Forums are a good example, and for websites containing downloadable files, many require a user to provide at least a valid e-mail address before downloading. (Especially true at software sites.)

It's also very host-dependent. If you use a free hosting service, or the free web space given to you by your internet provider, you have almost no control over your website. Low-cost hosting also has similar limitation--they make it easier for non-developers to create a site, but they also don't give access to many advanced features. (And any host that claims "no bandwidth limits" isn't being exactly truthful...you'll find out, when your host shuts you down, that there WAS a limit, and that you just crossed it.) The host we use here has different account levels for different levels of service--with our account, we pretty much have free reins to do whatever we want. Within reason. :wink: We can use just about anything on the server that we want, as long as it stays within the guidelines for resource usage (CPU cycles, memory limits, disk space restrictions, etc.)...very generous, in fact.

For any site operator, it's always a good idea to prominently display your copyright notices and any other advisory messages about forms of "protection" in place at the website. It can almost come off as "Gestapo-like" with too many rules, but to use a popular expression, it "covers our @ss", so to speak. To the website visitor, all we want is "ask before you borrow."

On the "site admin" side of things, we do have some good tools to help us cut down on misuse or unauthorized usage. Does a good job for the most part, but to ignore the problems or be unaware of them is almost inviting trouble. And many (most?) of us had to learn it the hard way, or hear it from someone who has.

As the programmers say: "practice safe hex." :wink:

-= N =-
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Grainne, the young Irish lass who introduced me to The Corrs -- and a great Carpenters fan as well.

Welcome Grainne -- and you must once again list the correct pronunciation of your name for everyone here!

Harry
...nice to see old friends, online...
 
Just the phrase "young Irish lass" gives me chills! :cool:

Welcome aboard, Grainne!

-= N =-
 
harry,

once again... my name is pronounced gra-nee-a (for apple). say it all together & quickly & it should sound ok!

Grainne ( as gaeilge for 'loved')

Harry - any sign of anneloes?
 
Grainne said:
harry,

once again... my name is pronounced gra-nee-a (for apple). say it all together & quickly & it should sound ok!

Grainne ( as gaeilge for 'loved')

Harry - any sign of anneloes?

Thanks. We have a chain of fake "Irish" restaurants in the States called Bennigan's. Currently they're using a tag word in their commercials, "Slainte" which they pronounce "slawn-cha". Therefore, I'd guess that the Gaelic pronunciation of "AI" comes out "aw".

I've emailed Anneoloes at her University address, but she might be away for the Summer.

Harry
NP: radio at work
 
Murray said:
Hi Guys,

Hello from another Rodeode refugee and Carpenters fan!

Murray

Hey Murray -- welcome aboard.

Harry
...happy the "roadode" gang is getting back together, online...
 
^^ Well then, SLAINTE!

Harry
...in a festive mood, online...
 
Hi everyone! Just returned from vacation and found roadode gone - I was upset! Great board ran - hope it can return at some point! Glad I found this place though - thanks to oceanking! Tim.
 
Timothy! See what happens when you go on vacation?

Seriously, welcome to the A&M Corner. It's always nice to have another Pennsylvanian among our ranks.

Harry
...welcoming another wayward roadoder (gee, that doesn't sound so good, does it?), online...
 
Harry: rather than closing up shop, the opposite has happened whenever I've gone on vacation. Remember August 1998, when Julius Wechter and Carol Kaye both showed up....and I was on vacation literally in their backyards?? :confused: Maybe I should take a couple of weeks for vacation, and see if Richard pops in here. :wink:

You may also want to rethink the use of the term "roadoder". Sounds too much like "road odor". :wink: RoadOde-er? :confused: OK, I'll give up!

-= N =-
...wishful thinker...
 
Hello Everyone!
Well, I'm one of the very earliest casualties from Ran's site. I guess I was booted, last year, because of being too disagreeable? Anyhow, I am reformed and I promise to behave. I've missed a lot of you guys: Bob, Harry, Anneloes, DanGa, Manon, and others
Ran had quite the excellent site for C's fans. I hope he simmers down and brings it back up.
Whatever evil rumors have been spread about me are not true...I'm stubborn but I'm a nice guy.

Steve
(alias steveatl, Atlanta steve)
 
Let's see. SteveAtl (new testerguy35). You're the one that swears that Karen's voice changed, right?... Oh -- let's not go there yet!

Great to hear from you again Steve! If you've got an email address for Manon, let her know where evereyone's gone. I seem to recall that she became enamored of Josh Groban and we hadn't heard from her in a while.

Harry
...happy at the turnout here, online...
 
oh no!! steve's back!!!! only kidding steve. i think i can remember having a few disagreements with you in the past, but never thought you deserved to be kicked off the site!!

anyhow, glad to see you here. it's like one big happy family again!
 
Hi Harry/Grainne!

It's so weird to be 'seeing' you guys again. Thanks for the welcome back. And you know, I have modified my theory about Karen's voice change, but i'll let someone else bring that topic up. There's more to it than just her health...
Harry, Manon got booted from Ran's site, I think, but I'm not sure...possibly because of what happened but I don't think she meant any harm. I've tried to e-mail her with no response. She's in the "Drummer Who Sang" Yahoo group that I'm in. Let me know the best way to try and contact her there, and I'll help. I could invite her to this group but it would also invite everyone else...
Steve
 
testerguy35 said:
Harry, Manon got booted from Ran's site, I think, but I'm not sure...possibly because of what happened but I don't think she meant any harm.

She was booted too? Gee, you guys must've been bad! :twisted:

I've been in email contact with Joan/Joni, who managed to register here but hasn't yet posted. I'm sure she'll show up soon.

Harry
...one big happy family, online...
 
Yep, it's me, the silent one.

Gee, Steve, you didn't mention missing me! I'm crushed... :cry:

I just got back from spending a few days in Southern California. I couldn't help but look in the cars next to me at stop lights, just wondering if fate would have it that Richard himself was next to me waiting at the same stop light. No such luck.

Good to "see" some familiar "faces" here.

Just what name is OceanKing lurking under?

BTW Rudy-LOVE the Redwing Logo with your posts. I have no choice but to follow Redwing hockey, as I was raised in Michigan and have 2 aspiring Gordie Howes in my household, (In fact, they're visiting Mich right now)

Thanks for the link Harry.
 
See -- I knew she'd show up soon!

Welcome Joan. Nice to "see" your smiling face here. :)

Harry
...tired, and off to bed, and offline...
 
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