Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Fighting Back: Exploits, Vulnerabilities, Hackers.

02-17-2005, 06:43 PM

Maybe I ought to quantify it with a specific type of bug.
Mud crashes daily: you really really suck, -20 to your saving throw
Mud crashes weekly: you really suck, -10 to your saving throw
Mud crashes monthly: you suck, -5 to your saving throw
Mud crashes a few times a year: you might not suck, no modifier

This handy formula can be extended to all bugs depending on their severity. The highest progression you can attain in is you might not suck. It's an unforgiving system designed to keep the coder's ego in check whether it be oneself or another. . ;-)

There's is something interesting in the Beizer quote. Maybe...

“Punishment for what? For being Human? Guilt for what? For failing to achieve inhuman perfection? For not distinguishing between what another programmer thinks and what he says? For failing to be telepathic? For not solving human communication problems that have been kicked around... for forty centuries?”

...that instead of taking the blame and punishing ourselves for our crappy code and misbegotten designs, let us instead take it out on our users and punish them! That's what I think the cop out is. "We're only human, therefore people who take advantage of our failings are bad."

Programmers should aspire to code stuff free from bugs, and fix them when they find them (unless of course the bug is one of those rare happy side effects we actually like).

I doubted that at one time but if you look at it closely, they are counting bugs revealed in all life-cycles of the product. The life-cycle thing was big in the early 90's, well still is. Does it mean that there are 15K+ bugs in Linux? No. Are there 127 bugs in Diku-Alpha? Yes and probably a lot more. Of course it might not be you that sucks just your codebase. How come a stock dikurivative out of the box can't make it past the "you really suck" level? I mean before the newbie coder gets their hands on it. How is that younger servers with far smaller user base, like Genesis ColdC and some others, easily surpass the "you might not suck" level? Bear in mind that some have moved that bug bar quite a bit by using higher level languages and unit testing.

I don't have to imagine that. Banking software is what I do. It's the source of my nightmares (except for one where I'm being hunted down and eaten by tigers). You ought to treat exploiters of bank software bugs differently than those who exploit your games. Games are liesure activities, with little to no consequences. Banking is highly regulated activity with substantial real life consequences.

I'm suggesting one throw punishment model out the window. I've nothing against the reward model. Punishment never fixed bugs. It ain't socially productive neither. Instead of just a bug now you've got a bunch of angry players because you made some moral calculation based on the bug. Now you got bugs, social bugs.

02-17-2005, 06:43 PM	#18
Posts: n/a	Maybe I ought to quantify it with a specific type of bug. Mud crashes daily: you really really suck, -20 to your saving throw Mud crashes weekly: you really suck, -10 to your saving throw Mud crashes monthly: you suck, -5 to your saving throw Mud crashes a few times a year: you might not suck, no modifier This handy formula can be extended to all bugs depending on their severity. The highest progression you can attain in is you might not suck. It's an unforgiving system designed to keep the coder's ego in check whether it be oneself or another. . ;-) There's is something interesting in the Beizer quote. Maybe... “Punishment for what? For being Human? Guilt for what? For failing to achieve inhuman perfection? For not distinguishing between what another programmer thinks and what he says? For failing to be telepathic? For not solving human communication problems that have been kicked around... for forty centuries?” ...that instead of taking the blame and punishing ourselves for our crappy code and misbegotten designs, let us instead take it out on our users and punish them! That's what I think the cop out is. "We're only human, therefore people who take advantage of our failings are bad." Programmers should aspire to code stuff free from bugs, and fix them when they find them (unless of course the bug is one of those rare happy side effects we actually like). I doubted that at one time but if you look at it closely, they are counting bugs revealed in all life-cycles of the product. The life-cycle thing was big in the early 90's, well still is. Does it mean that there are 15K+ bugs in Linux? No. Are there 127 bugs in Diku-Alpha? Yes and probably a lot more. Of course it might not be you that sucks just your codebase. How come a stock dikurivative out of the box can't make it past the "you really suck" level? I mean before the newbie coder gets their hands on it. How is that younger servers with far smaller user base, like Genesis ColdC and some others, easily surpass the "you might not suck" level? Bear in mind that some have moved that bug bar quite a bit by using higher level languages and unit testing. I don't have to imagine that. Banking software is what I do. It's the source of my nightmares (except for one where I'm being hunted down and eaten by tigers). You ought to treat exploiters of bank software bugs differently than those who exploit your games. Games are liesure activities, with little to no consequences. Banking is highly regulated activity with substantial real life consequences. I'm suggesting one throw punishment model out the window. I've nothing against the reward model. Punishment never fixed bugs. It ain't socially productive neither. Instead of just a bug now you've got a bunch of angry players because you made some moral calculation based on the bug. Now you got bugs, social bugs.