KWSN Orbiting Fortress

[John Galt 007]

Simple enough...vote yes or no...
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( • )Y( • )

[Sir Hamster of Elderberry]

A provisional yes. A newer version might be nice, but I'm not the guy who has to install, update, and otherwise maintain it. The first question should be: Is there a better version to which we can upgrade?

ni! i!u

[John Galt 007]

The outhouse annex is using a newer version...v3 if I remember correctly...and this forum is using v2...

There have got to be some advantages to a newer version of phpbb...like being able to link to a dynamic image for youur sig....like I am unable to do so in my sig below...
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( • )Y( • )

[JerWA]

No, I'm quite happy we're running software that's several years out of date, easily defeated by spammers because the CAPTCHA is also several years out of date, that doesn't support file attachments or streamed inline images, and is ugly ta boot . That's not even mentioning the extremely improved back end for the moderators and such.

I mean it's not like I've been trying to get things changed since January of 2007 or anything. I mean, what kinda moron would setup an entire site just to showcase the changes that COULD be made which a few users even liked.

It was made pretty clear then that the powers that be didn't give a flying rats ass. My enthusiasm was easily squashed by their laziness and apathy, and bringing this whole subject back up is also bringing back the bitterness that led me to leave these very forums for over a year after all that.

And as much as I hate to say I was right, oh no wait I love it, membership and activity has steadily declined the entire time since then. Even NOT counting the forum, our team is going to land in 12th place over all [ edit: Sorry, just noticed our RAC puts us in 14th now ] and will continue to fall because we have less than 50 active members on almost every project. But why make any changes, who cares, right?

Grrr. Going to go take a break before this really pisses me off again. I'm really, REALLY trying not to grow to hate this team. What the hell happened? In the SETI Classic days we were on top of the game, with our own custom stat sites (plural!) and a busy community. In the 10 years since all we've done is stagnate. YAY!
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[mohrorless]

I vote a cautious yes. I think we should do a bit more to attract and KEEP shrubbing users. Let's face it, this team is a shadow of it's former self. It used to be that if I didn't come to the forum for a day or 2 , it would take me an hour to read all the posts that were made since my previous visit. Now I can miss a week and read them all in a couple of commercial breaks.
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Fetch me the Holy Hand Grenade!




Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery



Plus

[Sir Hamster of Elderberry]

Five things (twoSir) Two things that are true:

1. Change is good.
   
2. People hate change.

Things change, but we can't lay all the blame on the old software. The fact is that the internet is a bigger place than it used to be, and there is a lot more competition for our time and attention. I'm not sure that a newer version of a bulletin board is any sort of a fix either, not when we are competing with social networking sites, RSS, Twitter, You-tube, and whatever the next internet phenomenon may be.

I think we should consider a more serious upgrade - Something like a dedicated social networking site for the group, but more private than MyFace/SpaceBook. Some research may be needed.

Dan

[John Galt 007]

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1374925

This link shows how to upgrade from v2 to v3...seems easy enough...but then again, the whole NSFW thread was "lost" some time ago....
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( • )Y( • )

[Sir Papa Smurph]

I kinda like the way the site looks....

It all seems kinda 1960's BBC-ish,,,,,,,,,,,,Seems appropriate to me

I mean,... I know how to attach an image and do a Quote and I can post a link (I still have trouble with getting it to say "Clikey" though).
If we upgrade I will have to learn all that over again, and Streaming Media?? Well that is likely beyond my capabilities....

Y'all gotta keep in mind us "Old Fogies" who can't learn new tricks
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a.k.a. Licentious of Borg.........Resistance Really is Futile.......
and a Really Hoopy Frood who always knows where his Towel is...

[JerWA]

All of those things are the exact same in phpbb v3.
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[Killerrabbit]

What do I know, maybe the software needs an upgrade it has been awhile. Maybe we are behind the times and all the new kids with those social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. A forum is useful.

Ni
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[mohrorless]

[bpowe]

I doubt that the software version is the difference but... I don't see a ton of spammers here while I delete and ban 3 or 4 a day at the outhouse.
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You can't leave footprints in the Sands of Time while sitting on your butt and who wants to leave Buttprints in the Sands of Time?

[mohrorless]

Kill them all!
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Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery



Plus

[Killerrabbit]

But eat the fresh spam.

Ni
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[JerWA]

For anyone curious, there's a new CAPTCHA function coming in phpbb 3.0.6 that allows mods like this one:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=1795905



Simple but effective CAPTCHA. I'm sure it'll eventually get broken too, but it's a lot harder for bots than just recognizing text.

The other mod I miss (they have one for phpbb2 as well) is the resize images thing:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=1696215

Unfortunately there's still really no good chat mods that are free.
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[Nuadormrac]

We do have a number of times where the forum servers hiccup and die at occasions. I've noticed several times in the month or so I've been back; and though software is only part of the picture with a server (there's also hardware along with the ISP and networking hardware), it's rather true that older versions of software tend to get a dirth of support from the company responsible for it's sale, vs. newer versions.

For instance, if someone has a problem with Windows 95, try calling Microsoft for win95 support these days, and see what they say. If there's a bug that needs fixing, nadda, not going to happen. Unless an independent developer makes a fix, which due to it's closed source nature, which is not covered by the open source licensing terms is a touchy matter at best. True MS doesn't support or sell it anymore, but they could still try to claim intellectual property issues with someone reverse engineering it, and making a fix.

That said, it can happen, though I will not go into specifics. Needless to say, someone came up with code to allow Unreal's CD of extra large textures to be used with a 3dfx card back around 2000. I knew the person, and I will not give names; but he maneaged to acquire the source code for it's rendering on an nVidia card, and being a computer engineer himself, re-wrote the routines to operate on cards not supported by the game itself. The individual in question (and I won't mention specifics, even though it's 9 years past) sent me his executable to test on my machine, using the extra large textures on officially non-supported hardware for it.

Many in BOINC will be aware of this, from Einstein@home, where Askoff or whatever his name was, was able to reverse engineer the science app, and make an optimized app for their project. Good enough his app was, though he didn't in his case have access to the source code itself (he reverse engineered it), that einstein@home brought him on board, as one of their own apps developers, after incorporating many of the changes he introduced into the stock app.

Nevertheless, it's touchy, and old software doesn't tend to enjoy the same level of support, bug fixes, patches, etc when something does go wrong. Also, as to the spammers on the outhouse, to weigh against this, is the number of security bugs which can be detected overtime. Without security hotfixes, one is more open to would be hackers. In fact one of the best ways to insulate one's self from hackers is to incorporate a sandbox or honey pot, where one:

- places a fictitious server box, laden with honey

- gives a bare bones OS install with no service packs, no hot fixes, no nothing to help protect it's security. Yes this can include no anti virus protection, and no incoming firewall (more on that in a moment) By all appearances it's running in the DMZ, or demilitarized aread of the network

- honey can be anything of interest, fake accounts, bogus email addresses (for them email crawlers used by spam bots, to search out new email addies for their spam lists, payroll records (a bogus copy of payroll in a company if the company wants to detect people trying to hack in to change their payroll records, aka defraud the company, bogus "insider info" to feed disinformation to those involved in economic espionage, etc

- some form of honey pot software that lets them in, but makes it hard for them to leave (doesn't send a FIN packet, when they request to disconnect from the server), but performs a little surveillance on them to detect who's connecting, what they're doing, and get a detailed logfile on their activities while in there. The methodology of compromising the servers are thoroughly documented, so their activities can be tracked, and how the servers are being exploited are known (ways to increase security to make it more difficult to attack in that way are implemented to harden the real network from such intrusions).

- The only remaining thing, is one doesn't want the intruder to be able to launch attacks against the Internet (which other organizations/ISPs could track back to one), so the firewall is sorta in reverse. Instead of protecting from outside attack, it lets everyone in from the outside, but restricts them so that they CAN NOT attack the Internet once inside. This is sorta the reverse from the standard, where one wants to protect them self from an outside attacker, as one wants to protect the outside instead.

But all of this is predicated upon old, and insecure software, which one doesn't try to harden, to make it easier for the would be hacker to go there, instead of where you don't want them to go instead
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[JerWA]

For what it's worth phpbb is free, so upgrading involves no cost other than the hours invested in the process, troubleshooting, etc. I volunteered to take that on, but they decided then they'd rather be years out of date and let the site stagnate than bring anyone in that wanted things to be better.
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[KWSN - Sir Brian C.......]

I quite like ShHoE's idea of a social networking site, that'd be a first for DC, I've spent way too much time on facebook lately and not here, mainly due to mafia wars / Farmville,

maybe it's just that forums are so last century!


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Oh, it's blessed are the meek!, Well I'm glad they'll get something as they have a hell of a time!

[JerWA]

Yeah, well, we're on Facebook. It's even less active than here. I finally gave up putting the PoTM there.
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[LanDroid]

Since there's no major expense involved (other than man-hours to implement), we should upgrade. If the new system has more capability and is more "fun", new kanigits might post more/stay longer/crunch more...