VP is Flawed - FP is far superior technology

I cant look into a peoples heads, much less so via some internetforum.

All i have to go by to form opinions and conclusions is a peoples de-facto actions, and the actions usually speak a clear enough language to arrive at the correct ones. Much like in every-day life too.

Im not saying this is an infallible method, but in most cases it serves quite well,...
 
Phoenixx, Bob is the only one who thinks that AJ was making huge profit from the site

I don't think he made huge profits, I think the site covered it's own expenses and helped to cover his other sites expenses.

I also agree after he screwed up the site, he was no longer getting very many donations or we would have heard from the donators as they wouldn't have received their green dollar sign $.

5,000 members had a green dollar sign.

It's just my opinion and it's not a new opinion, I've had it for as long as I can remember. The site had over 3,000 supporting members when it still said on the front page, "The list of supporting members would be too long to list as it now numbers about 100."
 
i've had (and have) docs' appts all through this week and when i get home the CFS usually has me scuttling onto the couch for a heavy nap.

still hoping to follow up with the RE companies and county courthouse if necessary to find out about AJ...
 
They are all listed in the post.
where?

the keypad 8 and 2 will swing the gun fast and 4 and 6 will swing them slow. this is the same of course with both tanks as it is turn based. ctrl fires the gun and R increases the power and F lowers it. The weapons are all the same for now other than the graphics and that is cycled up and down with the A and W keys.
actually it seems like F and G for power.

anyway, i started to get the hang of it but a shot got stuck on a rock midway between the two players and the game crashed.

also, maybe you could make a new thread for this game?
 
Seem to have gotten our threads mixed up. Some of this stuff should be in 'what happened to vpforums.com', some in WIPs.

Back to FP.

'Future' is the operative word! No emulator and a _ridiculous_ machine spec requirement. OK my machine is no Cray but on a complex table like 3Angels at 640x480 with miniumum graphics options I get 6FPS. Christ knows what further resources the emulator mooted in the article will hog!

Don't want or need to follow the ball 1mm from my nose all around the table or peer at the playfield from 1cm above the glass. And who cares what's in the room!!! You're not gonna get high scores unless you're glued to the playfield from a consistent aspect so you can learn the shots, and duplicate them.

Now if the room was a virtual arcade and you could wander around and check out a collection of pinball machines in VR, that would be cool. But when you play one you need a consistent POV and a decent framerate.

Just because you can technically implement something doesn't mean you should.

My daughter loves Virtual Pinball but because she gets 'hand-me-down' computers her machine will never have the grunt to run the latest graphics-intensive applications. She much prefers VP over FP because she can actually play and enjoy the experience.
 
Back to FP.

'Future' is the operative word! No emulator and a _ridiculous_ machine spec requirement. OK my machine is no Cray but on a complex table like 3Angels at 640x480 with miniumum graphics options I get 6FPS. Christ knows what further resources the emulator mooted in the article will hog!
Apparently all you need is a decent video card to be able to run FP with some decent speed. I say "apparently" because that's what I've heard others say, though I've never had a decent video card to be able to confirm it. My on-board nVidia 6150LE struggles to hit 30fps if I turn EVERYTHING off. 30fps isn't good enough to actually enjoy it though, so...
 
Then I'm wasting my time with a crappy AGP nv5500!!
 
Seem to have gotten our threads mixed up. Some of this stuff should be in 'what happened to vpforums.com', some in WIPs.

You'd think some of these guys would know how to start a new thread for a new topic.

offtopic8ys.gif


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You'd think some of these guys would know how to start a new thread for a new topic.

offtopic8ys.gif


18.gif

This thread is about as off-topic as it gets. It was so to start with, the first page basically contained almost no talk about a VP/FP comparison at all.

I say taking off-topic threads off-topic in a different direction isn't a bad thing. Weren't the last few pages discussion about the VPF.org namechoosing - which has found it's place at the "What happened to VPForums?" thread, where it actually doesn't fit either, since that thread is actually supposed to be about information about AJ and his whereabouts - and we still didn't get an answer from Destruk.

Off-topics are abdundant here. I'm just sayin'.

The McD

EDIT: When I finally get my laptop back, I'll re-install 3D Arcade, especially when I get an external hard drive to store that stuff.
 
Off topic is fine, single issue thread derailing, that's the exception.
 
after about a dozen calls i tracked it down to this:

jeremy charmack
he's the listing agent at-
lawrence realty in carmichael
916-879-4627

i represented myself as a long-time web-client (pretty-much the truth along with all of you) who was interested in knowing what happened to AJ.

he said that AJ is no longer in the area but went home to be with his mother (see my earlier post for two possible locations)

michelle (or varient) russo seems to be his estranged or divorced wife who is now selling the house.

i pressed jeremy for more details and that's how i got the info i did.
but he continued to insist on a right to privacy beyond those things. so i thanked him profusely and hung up.
 
Good to know he's not dead anyway. :)

Family issues will always come first but you'd think there would be some sign that he intended to return. You know even a splash page or something. So I very much doubt that he will bother returning after such a lengthy period, and the longer it goes the less likelihood there is.

Well done nic for your detective endeavours :)
 
thanks, elton.
and thanks to bob, also-- IIRC he's the one who found the original real estate listings.
 
anybody feel like picking up the ball on this? off the top of my head AJ's mom's house was in FL or maybe NY. (he sort of specified in that earlier post i made)

but "russo" is a pretty common name, so tracking it down further could be quite tough...

of course i understand many will see the dropping of all AJ's web projects as conclusive proof that he wishes to disappear and has no intention of ever returning. but by the same token, there will never really be closure until we find out what he intends. for example, there remains the possibility of him hanging low for many months and then reestablishing VPF and his other projects before their registrations expire. in that case maybe we need to let him know now that there is a new VPF and that it's too late to bring the original VPF back. (just a thought)

it also crossed my mind that when jeremy said "he joined his mother" he meant it metaphorically, in that AJ's mom had passed away and AJ was now with her up in heaven or afterlife of choice.
 
Nic, personally i would drop it
the guy has seperated from his wife, moved back to his parents place
I do not see what can be gained from further research
 
There are far more important things in life than running a website, especially one for this community. I suspect that is exactly what he decided, and it's not as if he owes anyone anything.
If he decided to shut down like that because of a divorce, then I can understand that, I went through the same similar thing, and it can be very rough. Personally, I also wouldn't appreciate being hassled either about a website that is easily replaced or because people just want downloads or to beg for roms. He should have maybe said something at the time, but that's his choice, and should be respected.
 
of course i understand many will see the dropping of all AJ's web projects as conclusive proof that he wishes to disappear and has no intention of ever returning.
I guess im not one of the many then. Because the sites didnt go down because AJ wanted them offline, they went down due to a major server crash which means he himself had nothing to do with this. The fact that it came at a time when AJ has more important things going on in his life is simply immensely bad timing, though in a more philosophical manner of thinking one could also see it as a 'test' thrown our way by fate to check out where this community really stands when it comes down to it. Obviously it failed miserably, (big surprise), but then again it made a couple of things crystal clear. Which again is good in a 'know thine fellows' kind of way, if you know what i mean,...

there remains the possibility of him hanging low for many months and then reestablishing VPF and his other projects before their registrations expire.
AJ has renewed the registration for vpforums.com on i think Jan. 28th. Since this cost him money it doesnt exactly look like the act of someone who plans on shutting everything down a couple of days later, not to mention the fact that he specifically said that he will provide the forum as long as there is a demand for it too. And that is a pretty bold and definitive statement for a site owner, so why would he say that if he didnt really mean it? Makes no sense at all, on the contrary, if he hadnt really had that intention he most likely hadnt brought up this topic at all.

maybe we need to let him know now that there is a new VPF and that it's too late to bring the original VPF back.
No offense, but this sentence makes me wonder how fast you experience the lapse of time. The fake VPF is online for what, 4 weeks? 5 weeks? Thats what, like 30, 40 days? Well i dont know about the others, but to me such a ridiculously short amount of time is hardly worth mentioning, let alone a reason to engage any 'its too late' attitudes.

Not to mention of course the fact that AJ is and always will be the one and only original VPF, which again means that he will always be the one and only person who has the right to run a forum under the vpforums domain anyway. When and how is not our concern, its his baby, his creation, his work and effort, and in spite of the shortcomings we owe him for this because if it werent for him we would probably not be here today to talk about this either.

On the contrary, the whole thing would most likely have died years ago, and what that means in turn should be clear to anyone. Perhaps the ROM emulation would have been further developed as a fork of the MAME project, all well and good, but without actual tables to use them with, who would have given a damn? The ability to play a couple of pinball machine sounds is hardly very attractive, its the ability to play the games that kept attracting new people. People like JP Salas for instance, who would never have become a VP table author if AJ hadnt provided the public platform for table development AND a place for people to upload and share their creations for all these years. It was the one thing that kept everything together and going, which means if the whole thing had died 5 years ago there wouldnt even have been a fix for SP2 anymore, let alone any VP9s.

Having to see how many people are prepared to dismiss all of this so easily makes me sad, but what makes me even sadder is when people now even start to talk about 'too late to bring it back'. I mean he ran the place for 8 years and it was no doubt the most important factor of all. Nobody else had the right to open a forum with this name to begin with, so what difference do a lousy 4 or 5 weeks of fake VPF make in comparison to the 8 years that contain the entire history of this community? In my opinion the fake VPF should be shut down immediately and PN made the new official VPinball Home. If and when AJ brings VPF back online then people may decide where to go, if he doesnt then at least the place died with dignity. People who want to open their own VPinball forums can do so with their own names and earn their own merits. That much respect do we owe AJ at the very least. Too bad only that only a handful of people actually really understand this,...
 
There are far more important things in life than running a website, especially one for this community.
No argument there. And today more true than ever. (Well, at least as far as the majority of people is concerned.)

If he decided to shut down like that because of a divorce, then I can understand that,
Thats the part that many people misunderstand; AJ has shut down nothing, the server crashed, and obviuosly it crashed at a very bad time. Whats in his hands is solely the decision whether or not to bring it back online, which he might not do now anymore even when he can because of his own staff stealing and running away with his forumname and pretending their place would be the real VPF now.

(After all not everyone can stomach that kind of 'gratitude', which is why even though it is only a possibility its still a damn likely one. Just goes to show the priorities of certain people,...you know, power-happy control-happy kind of people with 'i-dont-care-for-any-losses-as-long-as-i-have-my-way' kind of priorities,...)
 
Just curious about a few things Phoenixx...

1) You state that AJ renewed vpforums.com's domain registration in January. Are you sure about that? There is conclusive proof that there were changes made to the domain record on January 20th, 2009, but as far as I know public records don't say what those changes were. I know from looking at that page before and after that date that the DNS server addresses were changed. That doesn't mean the domain was renewed, it means that the record of which servers are authoritative for the domain was changed. Unfortunately I didn't notice if the expiration date (currently August 24th, 2010) had changed. If it had that would be signs of a renewal, but I don't know why 6 months prior to a domain expiring someone would renew a domain for only one additional year, especially when the site isn't online. Doesn't add up.

2) I have a dedicated server. I pre-pay for that server a year in advance. I last paid for it in April of 2008, and that payment will keep it running unattended (as long as no failure happens) until April of 2009, whether I touch it or not. If I "disappear" today, the sites on my servers will continue to run for the next two months, and then in April they would go offline without notice - what would appear to the outside world to be a crash. It looks to me like this is what happened with AJs server, yet you seem certain it was a crash anyway. Why? The whole "Miss America" thing doesn't prove anything, it could simply have been a corrupt or poorly edited zone record.

To me it all clearly looks like abandonment, perhaps temporary, due to unfortunate life circumstances. We know AJ upgraded VPF in August of 2008, and we all wondered why he upgraded it but left so much left undone. We also know his house went up for sale in September of 2008, and now we know that's likely due to divorce. In my opinion this all points to his life going pretty sour between those two events. My guess, and again it's just a guess based on the available facts, is that that's when he abandoned the server, and it continued to run unattended for as long as it was paid for - until January 2009.

I admit that your version of the events is possible too, but you seem so sure that it there was a crash rather than just offering it up as a possibility that I was wondering what I'd missed or if you know something more than I do.
 
1. If 'Updated' doesnt mean 'Renewed' then you might be right. On some german site it was called 'Erneuert' which literally means 'Renewed', but it could be used for 'Updated' as well, so again, you might be right. In any case i cant proove the opposite.

2. If my memory doesnt fool me completely then it has been said that more sites went down that day, sites not related to AJs sites. I even remember going to a site where one guy explained what happened, i will see if i can find it.

Found it. It was this post by sleepy. And apparently it wasnt really a 'crash' in that sense, but a (possibly unannounced) migration that went slightly wrong:

I spotted something at www.archive.org. The vpforums.com archives are once again available, and when I clicked for one of the archived pages, the page appeared with an "unable to retrieve data from site5 error.
The error was for the top header image which was missing from the archived page.
Site5 is migrating to theplanet. Read this post by another happy customer.
http://forums.site5.com/showthread.php?p=143771#post143771

So the site going offline was in any case the result of technical problems, not AJs doing. Of course everything you said is possible too, to be certain of anything we would need more facts. If we could reach one of the admins of that other site of his (the Dallas Cowboys one which has been restored in the meantime) that might shed some more light on it,...


EDIT: This site now says updated Feb 19th:


Domain Name: VPFORUMS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS1.JKOOKSERV.COM
Name Server: NS2.JKOOKSERV.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 19-feb-2009
Creation Date: 25-aug-2001
Expiration Date: 25-aug-2010

>>> Last update of whois database: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:37:26 UTC <<<
</pre>
 
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If 'Updated' doesnt mean 'Renewed' then you might be right. On some german site it was called 'Erneuert' which literally means 'Renewed', but it could be used for 'Updated' as well
"Updated" means changed or edited in some fashion. Renewal would be one of a number of possibilities, though it could be as simple as contact information being changed, or in the case of the Jan 20th update, a DNS server change.

If my memory doesnt fool me completely then it has been said that more sites went down that day, sites not related to AJs sites. I even remember going to a site where one guy explained what happened, i will see if i can find it.

Found it. It was this post by sleepy. And apparently it wasnt really a 'crash' in that sense, but a (possibly unannounced) migration that went slightly wrong:
I'm not so sure that's related, since VPF went down about a week earlier. Perhaps it's related to the Miss America thing though. Wow, what a mess.

So the site going offline was in any case the result of technical problems, not AJs doing. Of course everything you said is possible too, to be certain of anything we would need more facts. If we could reach one of the admins of that other site of his (the Dallas Cowboys one which has been restored in the meantime) that might shed some more light on it,...
I'm willing to bet that DCT just found a new server host and re-opened. They did claim that the lost all their old data, which is consistent with both a server crash and a non-payment shutdown with an absentee admin. From what I've read, I don't think DCT knows any more than we do, they just rebuilt and moved on.

EDIT: This site now says updated Feb 19th:
Well that's strange ... scroll down on that page and it shows the Jan 20th date. No idea why there would be a conflict.

Whatever happened, I doubt we'll ever know the full story unless AJ comes back and tells us. I don't think anyone is going to volunteer to contact every Russo in New York and Florida as Nic suggests. ;)
 
"Updated" means changed or edited in some fashion. Renewal would be one of a number of possibilities, though it could be as simple as contact information being changed, or in the case of the Jan 20th update, a DNS server change.
Makes sense, especially since it seems to keep changing. And the fact that beginning and end of the registration both fall exactly onto the 25th of August (something i didnt pay attention to before) would suggest that he either had a 9 year registration (less likely) or that he renewed it on a year-by-year basis (more likely).

So i stand corrected in this case, according to this new detail he did probably not actually renew the registration in January of this year,...


I'm not so sure that's related, since VPF went down about a week earlier. Perhaps it's related to the Miss America thing though. Wow, what a mess.
A mess in deed. Of course thats possible too, however, i just remembered why i thought it was a server crash and that was because the site displayed a 'Technical Problems' page or something like that during the first days of downtime. The thread sleepy linked (and that whole Miss America thing) then just seemed to proove that there was really something on the fritz. So perhaps there was a crash first and then came the migration thing, (or maybe it was related after all), at any rate, add to this the fact that AJ was distracted at the time and a lot of shit has happened at exactly the wrong time. The mess is in fact humongous.


I'm willing to bet that DCT just found a new server host and re-opened. They did claim that the lost all their old data, which is consistent with both a server crash and a non-payment shutdown with an absentee admin.
I agree. It is both plausible and possible. What we need here is better data.

From what I've read, I don't think DCT knows any more than we do, they just rebuilt and moved on.
Cant hurt to ask anyway. If nobody else does it, im willing to do it.


Well that's strange ... scroll down on that page and it shows the Jan 20th date. No idea why there would be a conflict.
Im not seeing another date on that site but then thats not really important anyway,...
 
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BTW, does anyone know what that is supposed to mean?

Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Does that mean AJ has no longer control over the site, and that he cant even renew or update anymore?
 
Here are the definitions, though they don't shed much light on it for me. I would guess you're right, it looks like AJ may be locked out from making any changes. That's strange though, why would that be the case if it's paid for until 2010? Unless the server provider paid for the domain name registration and revoked it for non-payment, but since AJ ran his own mini-hosting company, I can't see why he'd do that. More mysteries. :(

ClientUpdateProhibited. The Registrar of the domain name sets the domain name to this status. If a domain is under ClientUpdateProhibited status, a Registrar cannot modify the name servers linked to the domain name, the auth info code cannot be updated, the domain cannot be synced, and the Registrar cannot modify the status of the domain without first removing ClientUpdateProhibited. When a domain is on ClientUpdateProhibited it is included in the zone files, it can be transferred, deleted, and can also be renewed.

ClientTransferProhibited. The Registrar of the domain name sets the domain name to this status. If a domain is under ClientTransferProhibited status, the domain name cannot be transferred from one Registrar to another. When a domain name is on ClientTransferProhibited status it can be updated, deleted, renewed, and is included in the zone.

ClientDeleteProhibited. The Registrar of the domain name sets the domain name to this status. If a domain is under ClientDeleteProhbited, the domain name cannot be deleted. When a domain name is on ClientDeleteProhibited status it can be updated, transferred, renewed, and is included in the zone.

ClientRenewProhibited. The Registrar of the domain sets the domain name to this status. If a domain is under ClientRenewProhibited status, the domain name cannot be explicitly renewed. When a domain name is on ClientRenewProhibited status it can be updated, transferred, deleted, and is included in the zone.
 
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