TeleFinder Chat Log

Text of TeleFinder Chat from Friday, March 20, 1998 11 AM PST.

In attendance:

From Spider Island: Rusty Tucker,

Sysops: Donald McHose, mikael fredriksson, Jim Smith, Michael Davidson, Bob Wright, Bob Nunn

Rusty Tucker hola!
Donald McHose Howdy!
Bob Nunn Hey
Donald McHose Sooo..Rusty what's new around the corner for TF now that you close to another FReC.
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Bob!
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat Michael!
Jim Smith RT: Are you doing anything about Rhapsody?
Rusty Tucker The main thing is the transfer of Folders
Rusty Tucker Its going to take a little more time
Bob Wright RT: I got a question about the WWW function of TF
Rusty Tucker The latest rumors I've seen on Rhapsody is that the Inside Mac API will be fully supported
Rusty Tucker That's going to be huge news if it's true.
Bob Wright RT: when users connect to the BBS via WWW and want to post a message, it asks for their name. If I have opened up my BBS to the outside world to communicate, I want to know who it is or
Bob Wright RT: at least ask them on the form what their email address is. how can I change the form so it asks for more information BEFORE they post?
Rusty Tucker Welcome to the Chat Room chat mikael!
Rusty Tucker It means that since TeleFinder is 100% PPC native, it will not even need to be -ported- to Rhapsody, it will just run.
Michael Davidson Hi mikael!
mikael fredriksson Hi!
Rusty Tucker BW- the standard web sign up form does as for the email address..
Michael Davidson That would be nice for you RT
Rusty Tucker No kidding!
Bob Wright RT: When I hit POST, it asks me for my name...it does not ask me for my email address.
Rusty Tucker That was one of my main gripes last summer, Apple was throwing out the good stuff, and forcing developers to learn a new API and programming language.
Rusty Tucker That's all changed now.,
Michael Davidson Are you sure rusty? Or just pretty sure?
Rusty Tucker I really think Apple is getting things turned around, big time.
Donald McHose Will TF still have to run in a Rhapsody box? (Yellow)(Blue)(chartreuse).
Michael Davidson I even like their latest ads (burn baby burn)
Rusty Tucker I'm just going by what I read on the rumor sites...
Rusty Tucker More and more, it seems there are no "visible" boxes any more.
Bob Wright RT: it asks this: "please enter your real name here" "address the posting to another user" "enter the subject" "enter your message" That is all it asks
Rusty Tucker i see BW - just change the wording of the template then
Rusty Tucker Usually, only a 'logged' in user can post, and it just puts your login name in there.
Bob Wright RT: exactly, I am asking you WHAT FILE do I change? :-)
Rusty Tucker topic.spml
Bob Wright Only a "logged" in user? anyone on the internet can post :)
Rusty Tucker not if you put those topics inside a realm
Bob Wright ok...topic.spml...thanks! :) I thought so, I just wanted to make sure before I mess something up :)
Bob Wright no, the realm for this particular area is wide open for world :)
Bob Wright RT: anyway to capture a person's email address AUTOMATICALLY who post to the BBS and are outside or not "logged in" ?
Rusty Tucker not that I know of
Michael Davidson cookie, maybe
Bob Nunn You are asking for it. I would not allow public posts. Someone will get you.
Bob Wright RT: not their email address, I mean their domain?
Rusty Tucker You're email address is not part of an HTTP request, thank God!
Michael Davidson :)
Bob Wright Bob N: the state of Virginia has a k12 network, I have allowed them to post to one newsgroup only. actually, anyone can post there
Rusty Tucker sure, its in the "ADDRESS" variable
Bob Wright RT: how do I get TF to capture that variable?
Rusty Tucker #log
Rusty Tucker its already part of the standard logging
Rusty Tucker Speaking of logging!
Bob Wright I am asking this: I want the post to say: JOE BLOW @ real.domain.captured.here writes:
Bob Wright can THAT be done?
Rusty Tucker no
Rusty Tucker The next beta will introduce 2 changes in the web server logging..
Rusty Tucker - an option to log the USER_NAME variable
Rusty Tucker - a new error code 'PRTL' to denote a partial web transfer
Rusty Tucker ( goes along with OK, PRIV, and ERR! )
Rusty Tucker BW- that's every spammers wet dream!
Bob Wright RT: well, I have only announced the newsgroup to a k12 network. If you don't know about it, I doubt seriously you could find it
Bob Wright RT: but TF has a fault in the sense that it allows WWW, but does not try to find out who is actually posting to it. I mean a fault in philosophy
Bob Nunn Not the problem though. The worst stuff comes from those you know.
Bob Wright WWW opens the system up, yet TF does not "capture" the access
Rusty Tucker BW - that's why you're supposed to set up a realm
Bob Wright RT: give World a login and password? That's not the problem....when I open the system up, realm or no realm, I should know who is posting
Rusty Tucker The way that any web server finds out who a person really is, is by the user authentication requested when a user requests a www resource in a realm.
Rusty Tucker the name and password supplied is then bounced against the database of authorized users, in this case user manager, and then either accepted or denied.
Bob Wright RT: its not the actual user info I want, its just their domain. How can I capture the domain w/o looking at the webserver log?
Rusty Tucker You can't capture their domain in the sense of the email address.
Bob Wright RT: I did not say email address...I said domain name :-)
Rusty Tucker The best you can do is discover the IP Address they're pulling the page up from
Bob Wright exactly, that is what I want :)
Rusty Tucker In some cases, you'll get the domain name of that IP address.
Rusty Tucker like www-al96-proxy.aol.com
Bob Wright RT: and does not TF allow me to block certain domain names/IP numbers?
Rusty Tucker You can use that variable in any SPML page, its called "ADDRESS"
Bob Wright RT: right, therefore, if any user @ idiot.com causes problems, I can block the site.
Rusty Tucker You can use the ADDRESS variable in a lot of ways, including the #if command, which will let you selectively hide parts of pages from a user.
Rusty Tucker ..a ccessing the site from that domain.
Rusty Tucker You should really use Realms though.
Rusty Tucker I'd strongly recommend that you don't open any topic areas to everyone.
Michael Davidson ?
Rusty Tucker go ahead MD
Michael Davidson Rusty, (from last chat) about "my bot beating yours". What I meant was that when a user enter or leaves these chats, my Chat extension app, from my perspective anyway, enters hi or bye before yours does. I thought my comments didn't get posted in chat till it got to the server (your end), then if it made it, it is posted so I can see it. Is it different with Chat Extensions?
Rusty Tucker its no different, you we're probably gett ing the "leaving" notification before me, thus getting the response in first too.
Michael Davidson ok, good. Thought it was weird though that I would get it faster than you.
Rusty Tucker It may also be that I'm logging everything as HTML, and that slows my response down a hair
Michael Davidson speaking of logging, it seems the ":" are missing from the SI chat
Michael Davidson That is, after each chatter's name, the ":" is not there, which makes reading them a little more
Bob Wright RT: but realms does not supply me with where the person is located
Michael Davidson hey, I got my last words cut....think it's because I didn't change your script (chat) from word to text item :)
Rusty Tucker My script just puts the names in bold, it doesn't add a : too.
Bob Nunn It does make the text only version harder to read.
Bob Nunn the html with its bolding looks fine. Guess I could move off of BBEDIT and use another that keeps the bolding.
Michael Davidson Hmmmmm, but normally, and in the past, we got the ":" too
Rusty Tucker The realm should tell you exactly who a user is, if you need their email address too, then get that before you let them in the site.
Michael Davidson Can you add the ":" back into your script Rusty
Rusty Tucker sure
Rusty Tucker next week I'll put the : back in
Michael Davidson Hey, if you use a ":" in your text, it cuts the last word, using the Chat extension (without correcting it)
Bob Nunn I was hoping someone would have a script to use with the process users this week..
Michael Davidson what is process users script Bob?
Bob Nunn I was hoping not to have to think that much.
Bob Nunn I also figured it I brought it up Rusty would elaborate more on it.
Rusty Tucker :) It's a script that runs when a new user is added to the User Manager DB.
Michael Davidson I hope to have a GUI chat extension app next Tues with an easy to modify filters interface. (Got my taxes done
Rusty Tucker It lets you do fun things like add a "pub" folder.
Michael Davidson Is there an event triggered when new user is added to UM
Michael Davidson (or do we have to watch the mail folder)
Rusty Tucker Yes, take a look at the "ProcessNewUser" script with the new user manager
Michael Davidson the beta UM?
Rusty Tucker yes
Michael Davidson Better dload it then
Michael Davidson I assume the new users name, and maybe some more useful info, can be passed with the event?
Bob Wright do you guys have a script running to say goodbye?
Michael Davidson the latter BW
Bob Wright though so :)
Michael Davidson My script will only say hi and bye to "Friends"
Bob Wright tennis time...catch you guys later. keep up the good work, RT! :-)
Donald McHose Rusty have you noticed any difference between OT 1.2 and 1.3 with TFS ?
Rusty Tucker 1.3 is more stable,
Donald McHose Thanx
Michael Davidson Besides creating a pub folder BN, what would you like the new user script to do; e.g., create a default profile with the user's name
Donald McHose Gots to Run..C-ya
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Michael Davidson Bye Donald.
Rusty Tucker The event contains the user name, a "gateway or user" variable, the full user record ( for c++ programs ) and an alias of the mail folder.
Michael Davidson great!
Michael Davidson would that include info about whether they had web page privs?
Michael Davidson Gotta run guys, see ya all Tuesday
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Rusty Tucker Not to the script, but you could see if the "Web Space" folder exists
Rusty Tucker c-ya
Bob Nunn Sorry for the lapses every time I post it hangs me. Pub and Web Page is what I would like to do.
Bob Nunn Guess most everybody has left. Will need the log to see what I missed this time as well. Sure like the html log it saves time.
Rusty Tucker :) -- see ya all next week!