Access denied

[Bishop]

I read your article, and I'm not very tech-savvy but I notice this under the "Drawbacks" section:



That sounds like the problem SG is having, correct me if I'm wrong there Bishop. So I think your article only confirms that it's a problem with those ISPs, Napoleon, not Utopia.

You are 100% correct.

[DHaran]

You are 100% correct.

He shoots, he scores!

[Napoleon]

I read your article Napoleon, and I'm not very tech-savvy but I notice this under the "Drawbacks" section:

Some Internet service providers (ISPs), especially in India, Russia, parts of Asia and other "developing" regions provide their customers only with "local" IP addresses, due to a limited number of external IP addresses allocated to those entities[citation needed]. Thus, these customers must access services external to the ISP's network through NAT. As a result, the customers cannot achieve true end-to-end connectivity, in violation of the core principles of the Internet as laid out by the Internet Architecture Board[citation needed].

That sounds like the problem SG is having, correct me if I'm wrong there Bishop. So I think your article only confirms that it's a problem with those ISPs, Napoleon, not Utopia.

That's not quite true. It only means the connection can only be initiated from one end (the client). However, HTTP protocol only connects from the client to the server, and never the other way around, so that is not a problem.

Other protocols can require connections being initiated from either (or both) ends, and it will affect those.

[Napoleon]

And Bishop, you should learn what you're talking about before you tell someone they are correct or incorrect. You just make yourself look even more foolish.

[DHaran]

Coming from the guy who wants to insult extremely successful software developers and say they don't know what they're doing? That's not foolish?

You presented an article that has a specific section describing everything Bishop has been saying as truth, unless I'm missing something.

[Bishop]

Coming from the guy who wants to insult extremely successful software developers and say they don't know what they're doing? That's not foolish?

You presented an article that has a specific section describing everything Bishop has been saying as truth, unless I'm missing something.

You aren't missing anything. This is why there is no point arguing with him - he doesnt understand the issue.

[Napoleon]

DHaran, the article discusses problems with can occur with SOME protocols. HTTP(S) is by far NOT the only protocol used on the internet. There are hundreds of others.

HTTP(s) is a request/response protocol. The client makes a request, and the server responds to that request. The server cannot initiate anything on it's own; it can only respond to requests.

There are many other protocols where that is not true. For instance, there are protocols which supply data from remote sensors when a particular event occurs. This could be as simple as the expiration of a time interval, or as complicated as a seismograph sending a signal when a certain level of seismic activity is exceeded. These types of protocols cannot connect to a server behind a NAT without some special (and limiting) configuration of the NAT front end.

As for "insulting extremely successful software developers" - I have yet to see that. The problems with Utopia ever since they took over have been very obvious. Lack of testing, constant problems with ticking (or even needing to stop the game every hour!) and it continues. And this is with < 10% of the number of players we had a few years ago. If there were 80K+ players playing the game, it would fall over completely. Mehul's code had a few problems, but never as many as we have now, and his code was able to handle 80K+ players (without stopping the game for ticking). I would consider them average, but no more.

The fact that Sean was CITO of a company is completely immaterial. That's like saying the manager of a restaurant would make a good chef. I know of very few CIO's who make good programmers (or programmers who make good CIO's). The two are entirely different jobs requiring entirely different skill sets.

[DHaran]

I think your memory does not server you well. Mehul's code had consistent downtime, the likes we haven't seen on this code in some time (2 words: CGI Error). OOP now is much smoother than under Mehul. Ticking is the only major flaw I've seen in what the devs have done, but that's a 40 second inconvenience and stopped bothering me some time ago. They've done an awful lot while running the game in their spare time at their own expense.

You are still placing blame on them for an ISP issue for a reason that continues to elude me.

[Bishop]

DHaran, the article discusses problems with can occur with SOME protocols. HTTP(S) is by far NOT the only protocol used on the internet. There are hundreds of others.

HTTP(s) is a request/response protocol. The client makes a request, and the server responds to that request. The server cannot initiate anything on it's own; it can only respond to requests.

There are many other protocols where that is not true. For instance, there are protocols which supply data from remote sensors when a particular event occurs. This could be as simple as the expiration of a time interval, or as complicated as a seismograph sending a signal when a certain level of seismic activity is exceeded. These types of protocols cannot connect to a server behind a NAT without some special (and limiting) configuration of the NAT front end.

As for "insulting extremely successful software developers" - I have yet to see that. The problems with Utopia ever since they took over have been very obvious. Lack of testing, constant problems with ticking (or even needing to stop the game every hour!) and it continues. And this is with < 10% of the number of players we had a few years ago. If there were 80K+ players playing the game, it would fall over completely. Mehul's code had a few problems, but never as many as we have now, and his code was able to handle 80K+ players (without stopping the game for ticking). I would consider them average, but no more.

The fact that Sean was CITO of a company is completely immaterial. That's like saying the manager of a restaurant would make a good chef. I know of very few CIO's who make good programmers (or programmers who make good CIO's). The two are entirely different jobs requiring entirely different skill sets.

Are you not able to use google or something?

[Napoleon]

DHaran, yes, I remember the CGI errors. But they didn't occur nearly as often as you intimate they did. 80K+ players would not have continued if they had. And I also remember the crashes on this game (very recently, in fact), when the game was down for hours because it occurred at 1-2AM Ireland time. No, I don't blame them for not getting up in the middle of the night and fixing it. But then you can't blame Mehul for doing the same thing.

I also remember all the problems with ticking. I remember the hundreds of bugs which continue to appear in the game (I've seen beta code with fewer bugs!). I remember how the game goes to its knees at the start of every age when everyone comes OOP - despite the game running with 10% of the number of players on more advanced hardware than Mehul ever had.

Heck - they can't even keep KD pages current - you have to wait 1/2 hour after making a hit to see the results of that hit in their KD pages. Mehul could keep the pages updated in real time.

And last of all, the abortion they instituted which does nothing to prevent cheaters (there are hundreds of thousands of anonymous proxies around the world - and the list changes daily) but causes lots of problems to legitimate players. Good programmers understand that an IP address is only valid for the current request. That IP address may be validly shared with thousands of other users, as occurs in Singapore. And the address can change at any time, i.e. via DHCP, or via round robin proxies used by many large businesses and some ISPs.

No, I think the devs are average programmers, but not great. They probably are OK at coding a restaurant web site. However, they have no idea how to properly code a complex website with lots of users like Utopia. Sure, they can get something working. But Mehul understood what was needed and coded accordingly. It is completely different.

And Bishop, I don't need to google. I've worked with several CTO's over the years. How many have you personally done business with?

There are none so stupid as those who will not learn.

[DHaran]

The fact that you think it does nothing to prevent cheating has made me decide to ignore you completely now for being completely clueless.

[Bishop]

And Bishop, I don't need to google. I've worked with several CTO's over the years. How many have you personally done business with?

There are none so stupid as those who will not learn.

Why do you keep making such vague and uninformed comments then? Sean developed the the software so your little dig about CTOs not coding well was ill-placed, anecdotal and really did not help your argument.

Mehuls codebase was a nightmare. While some aspects may have been better (for want of a more appropriate word) we can blame this on a lack of understanding of the game rather than a lack of ability. Don't forget, this code was pushed out before it was ready due to mehuls "database" falling apart. For every good aspect you can attribute to Mehul I can name 2 ****ty mechanics, or respond with 2 positive ones the new developers added.

"(there are hundreds of thousands of anonymous proxies around the world - and the list changes daily)" <-- and google lists every single one of them, as do numerous anti-spam websites.

I'm going to have to lock now. We do appreciate efforts to assist , don't get me wrong, but this subject seems to be well outside your expertise. Thanks anyway.