Debugging isn't really interesting just because you do it in the air. A lot of people do that on longer flights and call that "Tuesday". On the other hand, the endless potentials for hacking this thing to display something obscene are going to be nearly irresistable to a certain kind of person. You know the type I'm talking about. (dramatic pause)
Yes, you.
I can summarize in two words: Management cock-up.
Want a few more? Irresponsible. Reckless. Stupid. This was institutional idiocy and ego, and that's it. No software glitch. No big conspiracy. No market "eating" the profits. Nope. Plain, simple, human stupidity.
So relativity is just the universe's way of saying the local server is currently way too crowded with rest mass?
Not exactly. The servers might have stayed up but the health of the cluster was poor. I was logged in at the time, and was getting live reports from people on grid for the battle. There were a lot of disconnects across the entire eve universe; And this amplified the losses to the individual players. Many petitions were filed for damages due to getting "DC'd" and being unable to reconnect.
The cluster architecture for Eve is actually quite amazing, and the underlying logic exceptionally sophisticated. But the main failure point, which has been mitigated but not eliminated with the time dilation feature, has always been the database. Every action in the game generates dozens of database updates. When you have 3,000 people frobbing the gun buttons and the heal me buttons, things get ugly fast. Time dilation is a way of creating a queuing system so that the actions are accepted to the server, and then serially updated into the master database. The server tries to compress and reduce the amount of updates to this, doing a lot of calculations and updates, but ultimately, this link is of finite size.
The other bottleneck is that because of the caching and buffering mentioned above between each server and the central database, is that a server can't swap its resources to another server. If that server is managing, say, 40 (in game) systems, and one of them goes all nuclear, the other 39 also suffer from lag and such because those other 39 can't be offloaded to another server -- that state information stays on the server because of the buffering and caching issues mentioned earlier. It's a syncronization nightmare -- there's no way to cleanly break the flow of data and redirect it, and if any of those database updates get lost, it can mean real money lost to the players.
And real money was lost in Eve, not just because of player actions, but also cluster architecture. Those big ships don't just disappear when their pilot disconnects: They stay on the field, taking hits. And without a pilot, a lot of defensive actions (like warping away) aren't available anymore. I know at least 1 of those titans was lost because of a disconnected pilot. You can blame the ISP for that, but it was happening across the board, to all Eve players.
This behavior of the eve servers is well-known to regular players. Some alliances (large groups of players) even intentionally try to provoke such server failures, knowing it'll lead to losses like what's described in the article. Far from this being a success story... it's an example only of avoiding a worst-case scenario. The servers saying up means exactly dick if the servers aren't processing the requests in a timely fashion. Ask anyone on Wall St., why there's so many data centers ringed around it; Latency. It costs a fortune to host servers there, but those extra milliseconds matter.
As it turns out, MMOs have similar architectural features to our largest financial institutions. This one, more than most.
while its OO system isn't perfect its a damn site better than the nailed on dogs dinner that is Perls.
It's not really object oriented until it can do true multiple inheritance. Otherwise, it's just like naugahide... it looks like leather, feels like leather, but it ain't leather and you probably overpaid. That said... yeah... Perl's attempt at OO makes Python look downright sexy.
However with faster systems and lower cost or free databases available, Perl need has declined.
I don't think that's what's driving the numbers down; It's the Web 2.0 culture. There are a lot of self-contained solutions (such as content management systems) built on PHP, etc., that pretty much you unpack into a directory, set the permissions and tweak a config file, and you have a usable app. Perl was never about that. Perl is like duct tape -- you use it to glue things together.
It's not failing because it's not changing, it's failing because less people are using it.
Compared to the alternatives the author suggests? Ruby and Python combined are doing less than Perl. PHP is the runaway favorite, but if you dig into the numbers, you'll find that most of the change is due to Content Management Systems which by and far have been developed on PHP. So these massive zomfg numbers PHP is pulling in isn't due to people programming with it as much as they are copy-pasting it en masse.
Perl is often custom back-end stuff with little visibility. It runs in cron jobs. It happily links various back-end pieces to one another... doing its unglamorous jobs with ease. Yes, Ruby is pretty and shiny. Yes, Python is a hot thing right now. But I've developed for all of them, and you know what? Perl is still what I'd turn to for back-end work over either of them because it's easy to work with and in many use scenarios I encounter professionally... faster as well. Python starts to choke (badly) in a take-down-the-server kind of way when it gets taxed. Ruby is the same way. But Perl seems bulletproof... even in a resource-constrained environment, it just. doesn't. die.
And for me, writing code for corporate use... Reliability trumps shiny any day of the week.
Perhaps a few mandatory rules could fix this problem? Doubt it though because it seems PERL programmers seem to value code over hardware..
You're blaming poor programming on the language. Perl isn't meant to be a replacement for, say, C, but considering its an interpreted language, running at 1/56th speed of compiled code is not bad. The author here mentions PHP, Ruby, and Python. A separate analysis reveals that PHP is worse. The others are only marginally better because they have a specific function by that particular benchmark test optimized. A separate and equally simple benchmark has Perl on top. I'm sure many will be able to come up with more comprehensive benchmarks, and then a flamewar will erupt... But my point (soon to be lost forever in the ensuing tsunami of replies) is that the usage scenario determines language performance, and in many usage scenarios, Perl is the winner amongst the author's picks. Don't blame the language because the programmer either (a) uses it incorrectly or (b) uses it for something other than it was designed for. Perl is fundamentally about string manipulation and I/O between various datasets and is a high-level language. If you aren't using it for that, you're doing it wrong. Not to say it won't work... but it's not the Right Thing.
So let me get this straight: A programming language that found a niche, became massively popular, and is now widely used... is a failure in your eyes because it's not in a constant state of change?
You're kidding, right? The epitome of a successful programming language is that it has become flexible enough to meet the needs of its users without requiring more than maintenance fixes. This is like saying "grep is useless because nobody's completely redesigned in in the last few months!" Dude, stop drinking the Web 2.0 kool-aid. There are things in the computer world that aren't meant to change every day. I know it's hard to imagine when every pundit is screaming "release early, release often" from every rooftop, but speaking from experience... If you go mangling your programming language every few months like (cough,
Do you think somebody handbraking untidily across car parking spaces and jumping out in the way you imply isn't going to arouse suspicion?
In many locales, parking a car correctly and legally is out of the ordinary. Also... they tend to blow them up as soon as they're out of range... so I don't think anyone's going to call the bomb squad because someone double-parked... at least not before the boom.
I think it's more a case of it's appropriations time, and with the looming new fiscal cliff, budget talks, and taxes and cuts, well, departments are going to inflate their needs with hyperbole to indicate that cutting their budget is a bad idea.
I'll buy that for a dollar. Just don't tell me and my peers we're incompetent from your arm chair deep in your mother's basement, that's all. You hit the nail on the head, unlike the previous poster, who apparently lives on a diet of Fox News conspiracy theories and trade magazines far removed from the realities of this industry.
Maybe you should read the article:
Oh, I read it. I also saw a rather large blinking red arrow over the word "Assumed" that comes from real world experience with such things, unlike the journalist. Expecting a criminal to keep up his end of the bargain when there's potentially millions to be made selling to multiple parties is like expecting a terrorist to care his car bomb is taking up TWO parking spaces.
this is why the banks are a perfect hacker target. they are full of arrogant, ignorant people whose main judgment on whether something is important or not, is what their buddies think. since their buddies are all bankers, they kind of have a myopic view of the world.
I assure you, the people who do IT here know exactly what they're doing. You're talking to one of them right now. Besides a corporate culture and management that supports and leverages their IT resources, the lawyers and reams of federal laws governing the business simply won't allow what you're proposing to happen here or at any other major financial institution in this country. Again, I cannot comment directly on specific business practices, nor can I act as a spokesperson for the business I work for, but as an IT professional, I would stake my reputation on the security here being sufficient to prevent the kind of damage discussed in the article. Is it perfect security? Of course not. It is sufficient security.
i used to work at a 'financial institution', and let me tell you, its running everything from DOS to WinNT to WinXP ---- everyone brings their cellphones and USB sticks and plugs them into their computers to charge, everyone visits any website that pops into their mind without thinking about security. machines are running all kinds of versions of IE, sometimes back to 6.0, often unpatched.
You should call the government then and step forward to collect your million dollar whistleblower bonus then. Cell phones aren't connected to the network, and as to anything being plugged in via USB... I happen to know for a fact that any unrecognized devices that are connected to any workstation generates a security alert in realtime. The offender usually has a visit by security accompanied by his/her manager in a matter of minutes. And speaking as someone who works in software packaging and deployment, There is no "all kinds" of anything on the network. As soon as a new version is approved for use (the approval process is extensive, I admit) , it is deployed to all workstations as quickly as labor resources can handle it. There is no "IE6" running anywhere in production here.
everyone visits any website that pops into their mind without thinking about security.
Which is why there are numerous proxies and realtime scanners. I'm sorry if you've been living under a rock these past eight years or so, but google "Intrusion Detection System" sometime. Internet access is something any office worker demands, and worker morale is very negatively affected if it's unavailable. This is a happy medium for most corporations. You're right that an airgapped network would be "more secure" but then so would unplugging the computer and locking it in the closet. I work with security reality, not the security fantasy you're laboring under.
nobody understands even the basic principles of computer security - and despite the banks strong profits,
"Nobody" is standing right in front of you telling you that we not only understand them, we exceed them by leaps and bounds. And in a recent article, those "strong profits" only came about in the last few months. In Fantasy Security, a large business with over 130,000 workstations spread across over 5,000 retail locations can simply push a button and revamp their security because the money is now available, but in Realworld Security, the budget is approved in January, and the plans are made the year before. Everything we're doing now is based on last year's "profits". And by profits, I mean... in the red. Something about a subprime mortgage crisis we're just getting over, I suppose.
the bank branches are full of minimum wage employees who have something like 90% turnover for a year,
Dude, lay off the cheap $3 crack. It's 30%. Still high, but 10 seconds on google could have prevented making an ass of yourself.
. the apps where you can deposit checks now on your phone have been sent out - again, little or no discussion of security issues.
There is simply not enough space in this already long rebuttal to address just how wrong you are, but those check-deposit apps are only validating information that's already sitting in a database somewhere. There's about a hundred checks and balances that go into validating that check and making the funds available in your account. You cannot simply write yourself a million dollar check and "scan it in".
you get more training working for a call center cube farm for $10/hour than you do when you work at a bank moving around millions of dollars of negotiable instruments.
Yes, because the systems are setup to have a staggering array of auditing, checking, and controls. There is very little training needed because most of it is automated. The drawers are counted down hourly or so, and everything is double-checked and accounted for several times a shift. It's been that way since, uhh, about the mid-80s. A teller trying to skim the till is about the stupidest thing you can do... there hasn't been a successful case of it happening for more than pocket change in many years.
the real thing going on here is that since the banks watched themselves all get bailed out in 2008
And now you've switched off the topic completely and are on to some kind of political rant, which I won't even dignify with a response. Please mods, frob that "overrated" option. It's irritatingly obtuse and I'll lose faith in humanity if you don't. Do it for the kittens.
Since Slashdot's purchase, there's been numerous signs of a "shift" in moderation, of which the only two explanations are an external force (say, new management) or a shift in the opinions and attitudes of the entire userbase.
You can guess what my money's on.
Chrome: $80-200k
Keep in mind, that's the sale price; It does not mean you get it exclusively. You can sell it to multiple parties, unlike Google.
For exploits like that, the black market still pays somewhat better than Google is. All I'm saying is, if I were sitting on a chrome exploit that allowed remote code execution, I wouldn't sell it for a measily $150 grand. That's worth a couple million, easy.
To do nothing is to be nothing.
