GPaL Anticipation...

Brian Heiland left an entertaining comment at the GPaL web site. Here's what Brian had to say: ***************************************************************** A hit counter to your page? I think I have been here a thousand times! And that's a good thing Anticipation ! Brian Heiland ***************************************************************** Well, Brian's comment piqued my curiosity...so I checked. As of 10:20pm EST, the GPaL site has had 43,656 hits since 4/28/99 when GPaL was announced. Wow! Thanks to you, Brian, (for your thousand) and all you other enthusiastic GPLers! Your enthusiasm is gratifying and, to me, indicates that the market's affection for the ultimate racing sim may not be as dismal as is sometimes suggested! :) Anyway. Anticipation? Shouldn't be long now. I've decided to go ahead and get GPaL out with the essentials, with new features to be added on an ongoing basis. The initial download will be the biggie. Most subsequent updates will be primarily just the EXE file and should be a snap to download...200-300k...just twice the size of the screenshot! So stay tuned... I have one dilemma that I bet any number of you could help me resolve. If you've been to the GPaL site, you know that I promised to let those that joined the RaceLive/GPaL mailing list be the first to know about GPaL's release. So I now have a *large* Access database of anxious mail recipients. Could some of you "bulk e-mail enlightened" folks point me in the right direction so that I can translate database entries to mail recipients. Dear little Outlook Express doesn't seem to offer a solution short of pasting thousands of names in the "To:" text box. Your help will mean I get this show on the road just that much faster. Thanks! Incidentally, while I was reviewing the site stats, I thought I'd cut some out that some of you might find interesting. Curious about where there's GPL enthusiasm (albeit among English-reading residents) ? Here are the top 15 countries that have hit the GPaL web site: --- Country of Origin --- 1 US 51.48% 2 UK 10.69% 3 Australia 6.10% 4 Germany 4.97% 5 Netherlands 2.48% 6 Finland 2.42% 7 Canada 2.20% 8 Sweden 1.74% 9 France 1.56% 10 Italy 1.55% 11 Japan 1.30% 12 Austria 0.68% 13 New Zealand 0.61% 14 Norway 0.43% 15 Belgium 0.41% Total 88.62% This table doesn't total 100% because the stats package I use only shows the top 15 countries. Sorry Monaco. And here's a couple of tables of interest to developer types and proponents of multi-platform support. --- Browsers --- 1 Microsoft Internet Explorer 67.15% 2 Netscape 27.49% 3 Other 5.36% Total 100.00% Interesting. I wonder if VROC has seen a big increase in users with the arrival of Spy Boy, since prior to it's arrival, VROC lacked IE support? --- Platforms --- 1 Windows 98 53.00% 2 Windows 95 26.23% 3 Windows NT 10.77% 4 Others 7.71% 5 SunOS 0.58% 6 Linux 0.58% 7 Macintosh PowerPC 0.55% 8 HP Unix 0.15% 9 OS/2 0.12% 10 Windows 3.x 0.11% Total 99.81% Not much incentive for Papy, or us baby-Papys, to port to Linux, huh? As I've said many times before, your enthusiasm, support, and patience are appreciated! Jack Rambo www.RaceLive.com/GPaL

That's great Jack! Just don't push it out when it's still buggy as hell, like NASCAR Revulsion! Dan Belcher Team Racing Unlimited

Buggy?!? Hehe. The irony here lies in what you don't know about me, Dan. I'm such a compulsive perfectionist that sometimes it's tough to get anything out of me until I'm totally satisfied. Rest assured that as the various versions of GPaL are released, they may not be feature-complete, but what's there won't be bug-laden! Count on the fact that it will have been poked, prodded, examined, considered and reconsidered. Call it a clinical obsession if you will. I like to call it professional pride! :) Jack Rambo www.RaceLive.com/GPaL

The anticipation level for GPaL here is high!

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>--- Country of Origin --- >1 US 51.48% >2 UK 10.69% >3 Australia 6.10% >4 Germany 4.97% >5 Netherlands 2.48% >6 Finland 2.42% >7 Canada 2.20% >8 Sweden 1.74% >9 France 1.56% >10 Italy 1.55%

[snip] These figures of course don't relate to the real world. These country counters only look at the root domain name (.com, .net etc.). Take me for instance. If I browse GPaL site from work I have root domain name of .com and the counter lists me as "US" but I still am from Finland ... Hena

Woohoo!! I'll take a 'light' GPaL and updates any day over waiting for the whole thing! Keep up the good work, Jack! -- Kirk Lane Tempe, AZ ICQ: 28171652 RMRL #119

I assume that allmost everyone who has interest in GPaL has subscribed to the mailing list. I really don't see the point anymore of emailing these persons first to avoid big downloading problems... Andre

Andre... Just trying to insure a high level of service for those that have waited so patiently for GPaL, by controlling access to the site. We've all experienced the frustration of trying to download a large application from an overwhelmed site. As it stands now, you'll have to have your own unique password to gain access to the download site. While the GPaL site resides on one of the largest, most well-equipped commercial web hosts on the Internet (Hiway Technologies), until I've experienced the bandwidth requirement, I'd prefer to err on the conservative side. the mailing list.< There continues to be a steady stream of new subscribers, many of whom are not names that you see around RAS and have indicated in the driver survey that they do little or no online racing. Jack Rambo www.RaceLive.com/GPaL

I'm just curious Big Jack, how many people do you have on your Mailing list? It would be a good indication to the rest of us how many people are using GPL on a regular basis. Plus we might get a clue on how many copies were sold. Thanks for all your work, your da man! "ZZ" -- Official member IGPS (Internet Grand Prix Series) And Sim Racing Mag Honda Challenge ---------------- Busch Motorsports "Remember racecar is racecar spelled backward" ----------------- Busch Carpentry "Plans?"

I think I would be doing a disservice to Papyrus to quote a number that others might attempt to correlate to GPL sales. While I've been pleased by the GPaL response, regardless of Papy's level of success with GPL, GPaL's numbers are surely paltry by comparison! Perhaps I'll have to go to corporate and petition for a larger ad budget? Ha! Jack www.RaceLive.com/GPaL

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> >That's great Jack! Just don't push it out when it's still buggy... > Buggy?!? Hehe. > The irony here lies in what you don't know about me, Dan. > I'm such a compulsive perfectionist that sometimes it's tough to get > anything out of me until I'm totally satisfied. Rest assured that as the > various versions of GPaL are released, they may not be feature-complete, but > what's there won't be bug-laden! Count on the fact that it will have been > poked, prodded, examined, considered and reconsidered.

But not by 1000's of users on 1000's of differently configured systems I bet. Comes before a professional fall. Seriously, I wish you the best of luck :-), but very little software is released bug free. Even companies that spend millions on software Quality, even companies that simply *have* to get it right... rarely fail to get something wrong. -- Suck The Goat

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> I have one dilemma that I bet any number of you could help me resolve. If > you've been to the GPaL site, you know that I promised to let those that > joined the RaceLive/GPaL mailing list be the first to know about GPaL's > release. So I now have a *large* Access database of anxious mail > recipients. Could some of you "bulk e-mail enlightened" folks point me in > the right direction so that I can translate database entries to mail > recipients. Dear little Outlook Express doesn't seem to offer a solution > short of pasting thousands of names in the "To:" text box. Your help will > mean I get this show on the road just that much faster. Thanks!

I'm not sure how well you know Java, but there is a brilliant JavaMail API that allows you to send mail without too much of a hassle. Just write a small program and let it iterate the database. Using the ODBC to JDBC bridge, it's quite easy to hook up your Access database to this program. If you need help, mail me. I don't know, perhaps somebody at VROC can comment on that. But supporting IE's Java isn't always easy, since it really isn't Java. Not many people nowadays make the effort to install Netscape. Hey, IE is already installed, it seems to work, so let's use it! :-) That's too easy. People must run GPL on a Windows machine. So will they really switch to Linux just to visit a GPL related site? I don't know how big the Linux market is. I only know that if there was a GPL version for Linux, I would not only buy another copy, I would also run it on Linux only and forget all about Windows. Hey, I am an Amiga user, I have a lot of patience. Just keep up the good work and rest assured that there are a lot of people who will be happy with the end product, whenever it will be released! Greetings, Marcel

Just a suggestion - you may want to put it up on mirror sites, even if they are just temporary accounts at GeoCities or Xoom - as slow as they may be, they may help take a little load out of your server. -- Kirk Lane Tempe, AZ ICQ: 28171652 RMRL #119

writes: Sounds like a line from 'Alice's Restaurant'.<g> __ Put your message in a modem, and throw it in the ***-sea... remove SPAM-OFF to reply.