Jard_Y_Dooku

I'm well aware of the shortcomings of the Tip.It website, which was designed back in 2000 or so. You only need look at the footer to see how old it is. I'm also aware that functionality currently doesn't exist where it could, this is generally because of limitations with the current layout or backend coding. I've come on board within the last 18 months and I will admit that I wouldn't have coded a lot of things the way they are myself. That being said, perhaps the reason you're not seeing all that much activity on the site front even though we have coders on staff may indicate that there's something going on which you can't see? Just a thought. :roll: Good luck with your article. No. I'm sure you have stuff going on we don't know about, but it's nothing near what I am envisioning and going to detail in my article. Hmm. Funniest thing, you could view my draft if you liked. >.> Best I store it off your servers for that reason and the fact they'll be deleted. :D

What exactly have you seen?... The Tip.It website is not exactly designed as best it could be - it's evident in its coding and functionality. Also, don't come back with "there's more on the sever than just HTML". I know that, but being someone like me, external observation of various things about a system can reveal much about its internals. I'm not trying to be a pain, I'm just constructively criticizing the website from a software engineer's point of view. In fact I will be writing an article on how Tip.It's systems could be improved over the next month or so. Will drafts be kept in the phpBB > IPB switch?

Thanks. Well, from what I've seen... :? // Relevant Files require_once( $forum_path . '\initdata.php' ); require_once( IPS_ROOT_PATH . 'sources/base/ipsRegistry.php' ); require_once( IPS_ROOT_PATH . 'sources/base/ipsController.php' ); // Initialise $this->ipbRegistry = ipsRegistry::instance(); $this->ipbRegistry->init(); // Create IPSMember::create( array( 'members' => array( 'email' => $email, 'name' => $name, 'members_l_username' => strtolower($name), 'members_display_name' => $name, 'members_l_display_name' => strtolower($name), 'joined' => time(), ), 'profile_portal' => array( ), 'pfields_content' => array( ), ) ); Done. Not too bad, but still a bit messy - PHP can't really do much better, I suppose. Also, creating accounts is just one tiny bit of integration. Think of it this way: Jagex wants to use phpBB/IPB for its forums. They need entirely separate installations for RuneScape, MechScape and FunOrb. They need to integrate user names, IDs, account existence, banning, display names, and all sorts of other data and properties. That would be quite a task for a system of that type, which is what I am referring to. For Tip.It you pretty much use it standalone, with very minimal integration into the main site - and no, static links do not count. Also, code. DatabaseContext db = new DatabaseContext(); try { // If this user doesn't already exist... if (db.Profiles.SingleOrDefault(p => p.UserName == username) == null) { using (TransactionScope ts = new TransactionScope()) { var profile = new Profile(); profile.LanguageID = 1; profile.FirstName = firstName; profile.MiddleName = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(middleName) ? middleName : null; profile.LastName = lastName; profile.BirthDate = birthDate.Value; profile.Gender = (byte)gender; profile.TimeZone = timeZone; profile.EmailAddressInfo = null; profile.UserName = username; profile.Password = password; profile.PIN = integerPin.Value; profile.LastLoginAttempt = DateTime.UtcNow; db.Profiles.InsertOnSubmit(profile); var emailInfo = new EmailAddressInfo(); emailInfo.EmailAddress = emailAddress; emailInfo.Profile = profile; db.EmailAddressInfos.InsertOnSubmit(emailInfo); db.SubmitChanges(); profile.EmailAddressInfo = emailInfo; db.SubmitChanges(); ts.Complete(); } this.errorDisplay.Attributes["class"] = "infobox"; this.errorDisplay.InnerHtml = string.Format(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, Resources.Resources.CreateAccountSuccessful, emailAddress); this.loginbox.Visible = false; } else { this.errorDisplay.InnerHtml = string.Format(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, Resources.Resources.CreateAccountUserNameInUse, username); } } catch (SqlException) { this.errorDisplay.InnerText = Resources.Resources.CreateAccountFailed; } catch (SqlTypeException ex) { this.errorDisplay.InnerText = Resources.Resources.CreateAccountFailed; this.errorDisplay.InnerText += ex.ToString(); } As you said, your opinion, clearly not the opinion of the majority of web software developers out there though. The use of PHP, yes. I'm not saying it's not a bad language or that no one should use it, I just prefer type-safe object-oriented languages over it by far, because of their many benefits. Hungarian notation, no. Linus Torvalds (inventor of Linux), Bjarne Stroustrup (inventor of C++) and Joel Spolsky (a famous software developer) can back me up on that. Bill Gates and/or other well-known Microsoft authorities too. If you wish to go directly to a topic without need for a title you can use index.php?showtopic=12345 which will in turn direct you to the correct "SEO" URL. Hmm. I suppose that is somewhat useful. However, consider this: index.php?showtopic=897607 > index.php?showtopic=897607&title=Jard-Y-Dooku's-Ultimate-Monster-Examine-Guide ...that's fine. However, index.php?showtopic=897607&title=X remains the same, even though it is inaccurate. If we actually check the title and do another redirect to the correct one, that means titles are no longer semantic only. Relying on the tag for SEO is less problematic.

Debatable. For most users, there will be relatively little difference between both, just where profile options and sig options are and stuff like that. For administrators, phpBB and Invision both have features that the other doesn't, such as Invision's new separation of admin privileges (some can be restricted to the themes interface, some can get full admin privileges, etc.) But both are as easy to install, as easy to administrate, as easy to add MODs to... That's all that counts. IPB may be a little better than phpBB, but I think I worded this wrong - I meant for it to be combined with my second statement, if that makes sense to you. If you want good forum software, you use something with a good policy regarding patches and a security-conscious programming team. You don't want your forum to get hacked by some noob who thinks he's cool because he can URL hack his way into &action=delete for all threads... and you mistakenly only hid the &action=delete button from forum threads, and didn't bother to check for permissions in the delete script. While I don't think Tip.it's web staff is that bad at security, they're just too few people to provide the needed code oversight. phpBB and Invision, on the other hand, have dealt with these security issues and provide patches quite frequently. Now would you say that using phpBB or Invision is that bad? Although Tip.It's programmers do not have the skills for such a task, what I said still stands true. Tip.it Forums and Tip.it are pretty much completely separate, except for Tip.it Times article and discussion links (which link into the forum) and Community Events, RuneScape News and all that stuff from the front page. The only thing for Tip.it to do, as I see it, is to change the links to point to the new URLs. Hell, they could make /viewtopic.php?p=123456 still work with some mod_rewrite magic. All you did was reinforce what I say. Integrating 3rd party stuff into your own systems is usually difficult, unless they are designed with that in mind. phpBB (and probably IPB - I haven't used it) don't really fulfill that. As a simple example, creating a phpBB user account is a bit messy outside of phpBB itself. In system designed with integration in mind, there would be an Account class with simple methods for adding, banning and deleting users, among other functions. It should be one line of code to add an account, by default. Neither phpBB (and I highly doubt IPB either) fulfill that. If PHP is junk, why do so many Web sites use it? (Many of these sites are even phpBB and Invision forums! Also includes Wordpress, which is written in PHP.) Good naming conventions for variables can give you some insight into their types without needing to think much. Would you think $numTopics is a string, or an int? What about $userMessage? Cases where you have a variable named $topic can also be disambiguated by using $topicID or $topicTitle. Now, which is a string, and which is an int? Type-based Hungarian notation has been hated for a long time now. Most people will intelligently discourage its use. If 'programming' was a standard, Hungarian notation would be deprecated. You see, when Hungarian notation was invented, the wrong word was used - "type" never referred to the data type, but the KIND of data. I recommend reading this article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html If it's junk, why do so many people use it? It being junk is my personal opinion - I like strongly-typed languages because they leave a 0% chance of unintended incompatible type conversion. If you pay extremely close attention to what you are doing, you can achieve the same thing with a weak-typed language, but there's always that chance. And arguments could be made that strongly-typed object oriented languages (C#, Java) are more productive than weak-typed scripting languages (PHP, Perl). PHP is so widely used because it's open source, easy to use and widely supported. My websites are written in PHP, too. But I'd still rather write them in an strongly-typed object-oriented language like C#. It's faster and more productive. Plus, interpreted languages are slower. And Linq-to-SQL in C# is a gift from the Great Computer (our equivalent of God). I believe you're horribly misled here; I think you're thinking of Wordpress and its long SEO links, such as /blog/2009/09/03/how-to-make-money-in-runescape-12345/, which does not have anything to do with either phpBB or Invision. Recent Invision software has links like /topic/123456/, where 123456 is the Topic ID, or /topic/123456/2/ where 2 is the page you want. edit: After seeing a link to a thread from an Invision Power Board forum, which seems to use slightly different software than what I'm used to, they do have the title in them, and trying to remove the title from the URL makes the forum go back to the Index. Myyyy bad! Though the title itself is indeed not used by the software, you could just as easily go to /topic/123456-X and it'll stil give you the right thread. Removing the title redirects to the index. See? That is bad. As I said, titles should be semantic only. The software cares not whether &title=blah is present, only id=blah. The reason 123456 does not work on IPB, but 123456-X does, is because of poor regex in their mod_rewrite.

Enterprise server penetration testing. All white hat stuff. But the GTX 295 absolutely rips through hashes with Elcomsoft's distributed agent. I can easily break the 1 billion\sec mark on NTLM hashes, and I'm sure a SLI\dual computer setup can double that. Update on the build: I found out I can get a high quality water cooling system for fairly cheap, something that'll be literally noiseless (19 db fans, 31db pump). I might wait and get the Radeon HD 5870 x2. If I can get a quality liquid block in it for 150-200 extra it would only up my total cost by 100-150$ and it appears to be significantly faster then the GTX 295, and who knows what it'll look like in SLI. Bleeding edge FTW (can you see why I wanted to oversize my PSU? Once I get started down the slippery upgrade slope I always end up at the high-end bleeding-edge jump at the bottom :-# ). So anyway, I edited my 1st post with my current build + cooling system. Comment\question\advise\voice concerns \ I'm getting a new hat soon, actually. I prefer the black one, which is annoying since the white one would open up plenty of good jokes. They have a gray one too, but it doesn't look very nice.

Why do you want to crack hashes? [/is-suspicious]

The solution to your problem. [*:1gc7avnh]Make a virtual machine [*:1gc7avnh]Install your OS on to the virtual machine [*:1gc7avnh]Snapshot the hard drive [*:1gc7avnh]Download Trojans on to your virtual machine [*:1gc7avnh]Snapshot the hard drive [*:1gc7avnh]Compare snapshots [*:1gc7avnh]Using information, remove Trojan from actual machine [*:1gc7avnh]Never download shifty programs on to your actual machine again - that is what virtual machines are for - installing viruses and having nothing happen Of course that is not guaranteed to work (the Trojan may perform different actions depending on the date and time or your system's configuration), but has a very high chance of.

Camstudio cannot handle videos with over 100,000 frames in them and if he plans on making long videos that is bad. Another thing is that you only have the option of "Avi" and if you try to down convert videos that were recorded in Camstudio the quality suffers very badly. A problem with Camtasia on the other hand is that depending on the height and width of your video everything that is recorded will end up with a lot of herky jerky movements. here are some free screen recorders: http://www.nbxsoft.com/screen-recorder.php http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack_FreePlayer.aspx http://www.brothersoft.com/free-screen- ... 60122.html It has nothing to do with the frame count. It is because CamStudio uses version 1.0 of the AVI format, limiting the file to 2 GB in size. Once CamStudio uses the OpenDML (AVI 2.0) format, files with extremely large sizes (larger than anyone's hard drive) will work fine.

Also make sure you check your pages with these: http://validator.w3.org/ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

IPB is no better than phpBB. If you want good forum software, you write your own. 3rd party stuff is too difficult to integrate into existing systems. Selling software based on a database that wasn't designed by the organization using it generally tends not to work very well. Also, IPB is written in PHP just like phpBB, so it's still junk. Weak-typed languages are an invitation for trouble in advanced systems. Also, lollables at friendly URLs. Just append &title=Title-of-your-thread to the end of every URL. The integrated index.php?/topic/xxx_Title-blah-blurgh/ looks pretty stupid compared to index.php?id=xxx&title=Title-blah-blurgh It's only for looks anyways, the title should not even be read by the software.

Why don't you come back when you have something intelligent to say that isn't ludicrously inflammatory? I haven't said anything untrue, and I'm not baiting you. I'm asking for a legitimate debate on this topic. If you don't think what I said is true, then respond with a debate. I'd like to know what part of PKing takes skill, please. PKing is one of the aspects that DOES require skill in RuneScape. I'm level 137 but would get killed easily in a fight with someone even 20 levels lower since I have no clue what I'm doing. You have to know what weapons to use, when to switch, when to run, when to do this, what to use for that, etc. It's actually fairly complex. Wake up and see it.

Your point is widely known and is true. We just don't care... well, I'm pretty much retired so I guess I do care, but yeah.

Sorry Henrique, that's the biggest load of bull I've heard all week How come? Runescape does have 9 years of content. It is really the pioneer of browser based MMOs. I don't take their word as law, I just like to think that the people who make the game probably know a little bit about what they're doing with it and what they consider it to be. Just because you say it's a demo doesn't mean it is, the fact that you can have a full gaming experience with just F2P does mean that it's not a demo. You have a game and more if you have P2P but like they say, P2P is an expansion. I think Jagex are one of the biggest bunch of donkeys there is, and I still agree with Racheya.

Yes, I do.

Lol. My hero is Renez, because she(?) has kept every stat at the same level, advancing all of them one level each in one go. Pretty impressive in my opinion, something that would test even my level 95 Patience skill.

Generally, I don't like one-word or one-symbol posts... well I guess it's neither now, but: :thumbup:

In fairness when "in the first place" occurred. - they didn't have a company at all, let alone one filled with software engineers. Just a couple of guys who were almost still hobbyists. Yup pretty much straight out of university and started up with 2-3 people. [/hide] Granted, and yet - I'm a very inexperienced student, just about to start a Computer Science course in September and I would of never considered using a username as the primary identifier in a database. ;) Maybe it's a sign of the change over the years, or just me - but it seems a rather bad move, they understand that now though obviously. Shame they didn't sort out a better identifier than the username with this update, although I don't want to imagine the work involved in Runescape's systems to straighten out that issue... -.- Awesome, you possess brains. As a software developer I find it as confusing. :? Maybe some parts of the game use modules whom need fast access to the actual names (not id's), because if only the id's are stored it makes 2 requests. One to the corresponding module and one to a different module for the actual username. :? Anyway, I like this update, I will change my name as soon as it's possible. Good job, Jagex! : You find ID numbers as primary keys confusing? Usernames are used and viewed by users. ID numbers are NOT viewed or used by users. Except in URLs, to know which record to access... but those are generated by software and are only viewed by the user if they care to look at the address bar, or used to copy the link. IDs NEVER change because there is NO reason to do so. A user (unless they are insane, like me) NEVER cares or wants an ID number to change, because it does not matter. It means nothing aside from the SOFTWARE (NOT users) being able to uniquely identifying them. ID numbers separate recognition into two groups - by software, and by user. It is a logical, more modular design, and considering IDs never change, and usernames may, who in their right mind would assign a username as a primary key? In fact, Microsoft SQL doesn't even let you change the value of a primary key field AT ALL unless you remove the bindings. While I do agree that is a bit silly because of cascade updates, it just goes to show - IDs do not change. About the performance issue - most of these types of arguments are invalid. Generally, queries (not "requests") are extremely fast*, and as far as I'm concerned, if you can't handle less than a millisecond for an extra query simple as ("SELECT username FROM master_users_table WHERE id = ;"), program something else. There are many games and other applications that express far less concern over much longer and more complex queries. Functionality over performance nonsense. Obviously it's not BAD to express concern over performance, but you need to judge it well. We're not in the days where you had to be like Howard Hughes over the size of your variables, or the time for a tiny query like fetching the value of one field of one row with a indexed primary key. I hope you've all enjoyed this lesson on database design. :) * GENERALLY, I said. Obviously it depends on the complexity of the query, amount of data requested and returned, state of the indexes, etc, etc, etc...

9223372036854775807, or perhaps 79228162514264337593543950335.

Min 1, Max 12

Now theres what, a 9 year backlog on RuneScape, prevention is better than cure, but it's going to be a nice feature just I hope too many people don't change their names, people coming up to me; Him: "yo do you remember me?" Me: "not really" Him: "my name was propker34" Me: "no?" Him" "b4 dat it was pwnage66" Me: "no." Him: "b4 dat it was zezima9462" Me: *teleports* Why did you quote me lol? I was talking about technical stuff, your post doesn't...

My word... they use player usernames as the primary key?! It is incredible that a company filled with software engineers doesn't appear to have heard the concept of an unique ID number for each account as the primary key. If they'd done this in the first place, there would be no issues whatsoever. ID numbers are meant to be transparent to the user of the application and never change. Usernames are very poor record identifiers. Consider the way phpBB is designed (correctly). All our usernames are not the unique reference to our ID. Yes, they are unique, but they are not identifiers. We have ID numbers for that... for example, mine is 189809. This number, in the Tip.It's phpBB database, references everything about my account, and is why username changing is easy and efficient.

Honour Guards on Neitz? Sorry if it is on the list. Has a combat but not attackable. Confirmed: Not on your list. 115 combat, has HP. Do I get a prize? :D I'd known about them, but didn't realize they count. :P Thanks. How about Vannaka on tutorial island? Didn't he have a cb lvl on tutorial island? On-topic: My greatest achievement so far isn't that great but I'm happy with it. It's the quest cape. I don't know any great achievements that would make my RC-life "complete" but some 99's don't hurt do they? Another achievement I'm going to try again is the fire cape. That's about it for now. Well Vannaka on tut island is impossible because you can only get 3 mage on there. He isn't attackable by player or by monster, so to find his HP would be impossible, therefore he is not in the list. The condition I gave was for my bestiary rather than the guide so it's a bit flawed in this context.

I believe the problem with that and the whole 200 mill exp thing has to do with the limit on Java coding. Nah, they're just greedy bastards. :P http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/Long.html :thumbup:

Honour Guards on Neitz? Sorry if it is on the list. Has a combat but not attackable. Confirmed: Not on your list. 115 combat, has HP. Do I get a prize? :D I'd known about them, but didn't realize they count. :P Thanks.