Vivisector
Daggers and Spears and Songs => FA Obsession Collection => Topic started by: Freehaven on February 07, 2011, 04:07:47 pm
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http://kb.furaffinity.net/
It uses this software (http://www.nextagetech.com/buy.html), which is sold for $1,000.
Part of the site's code:
</table> <table align="center" width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="top" height="100%" width="20%">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<tr height="5" bgcolor="#387ED4">
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr height="5" bgcolor="#5899E9">
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr height="5" bgcolor="#8CBEF9">
<td></td>
They overpaid by $1,000. I've seen Geocities sites with better coding than this. WTF was Dragoneer thinking.
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You'd be surprised just how much money some things cost. The licensing costs for enterprise software licenses are nuts. Regardless, that site looks like something any competent with basic HTML could put together in a day or two....
My delicious, completely unfounded idea is that this is being funneled to someone associated to Dragoneer and he is receiving a kickback through the use of site donations. That's complete speculation mind you but I don't know if I could put defrauding idiots who donate to FA past Dragoneer. :)
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That's complete speculation mind you but I don't know if I could put defrauding idiots who donate to FA past Dragoneer. :)
If FA donations bought that, every donator should ask for their money back. For fuck's sake, the software that runs my imageboard still uses tables for layout purposes, and it's still better coded than that pile of crap.
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Looks like this company is based in places Lahore, Pakistan and Doha, Qatar. The UK office site seems fake too. Pretty sketchy.
I do wonder if FA's mostly gay userbase will care about possibly sending money to countries such as Qatar and Pakistan where homosexuality is still a crime and can be punished with prison, caning, or even death?
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I would really like to know if they paid $1,000 for that. Because that would be really fucking funny.
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I would really like to know if they paid $1,000 for that. Because that would be really fucking funny.
I'm actually truly horrified.
Look at some of the JS, like in the admin panel's login page:
<script language="javascript">
function getheight()
{
if (screen.width = 1024)
{
return
}
else
{
}
}
</script>
There should just not be that much wrong in those few lines. It's amazing. The bug-per-code-line ratio is over unity. I'm sure this violates the laws of conservation of bad code.
It kicks out links like:
http://kb.furaffinity.net/index.php?main=contact&sub=index&view=%3C?=$_REQUEST[%27view%27]?%3E
And guess what, it's even vulnerable to XSS (what a FUCKING surprise, huh?)
http://kb.furaffinity.net/managing-your-account_%3C/title%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert%28document.cookie%29%3C/script%3E.html
I'm ... I'm at a fucking loss, here. I could beat my dick against my keyboard and wipe my ass with my mouse and produce something better than this.
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Hahaha, they paid $1,000 to a company based in Pakistan.... and got a piece of software just as vulnerable as FA is/was. I didn't think of trying XSS but I'd bet you that it has SQL injection vunerabilities considering they're hiring "web developers" in places like the UAE, Qatar, etc.
Edit: Most likely they paid $59 for this piece of shit: Order Site (http://www.kblance.com/order.php)
Here's the admin page: http://kb.furaffinity.net/admin/index.php
And here's the demo admin page: http://www.kblance.com/demo/admin/index.php
Oh my, hope that doesn't have SQL injection vulnerabilities. Worse yet, you could probably just write a XSS exploit to grab the session ID cookie from an admin; I checked out the demo version site and it looks like a MD5 hash.... probably the same session hijacking FA was weak against as well. :I
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Looks like someone realized their horrible, horrible mistake; the link to the support site now redirects to FA's neglected wiki.
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Mod note:
I don't know why this got locked, so I unlocked it. Maybe I accidentally fatfingered it while on my phone. Sorry. Carry the fuck on.
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http://help.furaffinity.net/
It's baaaaaack, and now it costs $50/month.
And what happened when users called them out on the cost and why they don't just use MediaWiki? Dragoneer deleted the thread.
Web version. (http://clanspum.net/~pi/fa_2011/%20help.furaffinity.net%20.html)
Image version. (http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/162/forumsfuraffinitynet201.jpg)
They also deleted the first thread from yesterday, found here (http://clanspum.net/~pi/fa_2011/FA%20Knowledge%20Base.html).
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It doesn't surprise me that they closed the thread on FAF, either. You know, instead of letting it turn into "hey this isn't so bad" (lol) they just made more fools of themselves by silencing critics once again. It's pretty disappointing but also pretty hilarious.
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<script language="javascript">
function getheight()
{
if (screen.width = 1024)
{
return
}
else
{
}
}
</script>
You know, it's actually a kind of interesting exercise to see what that would actually *do*. My guess is if it doesn't throw an error, then nothing, but I suppose it depends on how Javascript decides the truth value of the predicate for an if statement.
But it would be interesting to perhaps study the way JS would digest such a thing...sort of like how Linux uses while(0) for some stuff (I forget why they do that, there's a reason).
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It's baaaaaack, and now it costs $50/month.
And what happened when users called them out on the cost and why they don't just use MediaWiki? Dragoneer deleted the thread.
I can understand not wanting to use wiki software, since the format is so, um, ad-hoc; but it's not like the only good issue-tracking systems out there cost a jillion dollars an install. Why not use Bugzilla (http://www.bugzilla.org/), or Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/), or any of a number of other issue trackers that don't cost penny one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems)? Is it the OPEN SORES LOL factor, or falling for "who can you sue" logic, or what?
Seriously guys, why not? D=
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You know, it's actually a kind of interesting exercise to see what that would actually *do*.
Assignment in JS is always true except in cases where assignment is impossible or invalid.
sort of like how Linux uses while(0) for some stuff (I forget why they do that, there's a reason).
Most likely performance-related. I'd look at how gcc emits IR for 'for (;;)' versus 'while (0)' and go from there. Take good note of how things are aligned when you do this.
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It's baaaaaack, and now it costs $50/month.
And what happened when users called them out on the cost and why they don't just use MediaWiki? Dragoneer deleted the thread.
I can understand not wanting to use wiki software, since the format is so, um, ad-hoc; but it's not like the only good issue-tracking systems out there cost a jillion dollars an install. Why not use Bugzilla (http://www.bugzilla.org/), or Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/), or any of a number of other issue trackers that don't cost penny one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems)? Is it the OPEN SORES LOL factor, or falling for "who can you sue" logic, or what?
Seriously guys, why not? D=
I had linked them to Request Tracker FAQ Manager (http://bestpractical.com/rtfm/), which relies on the Request Tracker (http://bestpractical.com/rt/) ticketing system to run. This would fix both the trouble ticket system AND would give them an integrated knowledge base. Also, RT supports canned responses, so they could do even less work. But see, RT involves using the scary command line to install, so they probably would never use it.
Oh well, this paid solution will just speed up the eventual bankruptcy of Sean Piche and the ultimate closure or sale of the site.
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Request Tracker is open source. Huh. I've seen it used in places generally populated by people smarter than Sean Piche (they have a minimum IQ of 60). I don't know about you, but when people who know what the fuck they're doing do something, it's generally worth at least a little consideration.
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History of the Site, the Universe and Everything (http://help.furaffinity.net/article/AA-00226/0/History-of-the-Site-the-Universe-and-Everything.html)
I haven't seen the following machines mentioned anywhere other than this page on the knowledgebase, and I can't quite work out whether they're serious or if they're just trolling the people who joke about them using RAM to solve all problems.
Shivan -
Server named by FA donator TlaiLaxu.
Twin dual-core 2.4Ghz Opteron 2216 system with 48GB of RAM. This server is currently unused.
Sparkz - Data graphing/network monitor server.
Server named by FA donator Dax.
Twin dual-core 2.4Ghz Opteron 2216 system with 48GB of RAM.
Tonberry - Not yet in operation.
Server named by FA donator YiffyHusky.
Twin dual-core 2.4Ghz Opteron 2216 system with 48GB of RAM.
Lapse - Not yet in operation.
Twin dual-core 2.4Ghz Opteron 2216 system with 48GB of RAM.
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History of the Site, the Universe and Everything (http://help.furaffinity.net/article/AA-00226/0/History-of-the-Site-the-Universe-and-Everything.html)
I haven't seen the following machines mentioned anywhere other than this page on the knowledgebase, and I can't quite work out whether they're serious or if they're just trolling the people who joke about them using RAM to solve all problems.
Twin dual-core 2.4Ghz Opteron 2216 system with 48GB of RAM, times fucking four, all but one marked as inoperative
Nope, they're serious. People throw hardware at them, and they don't know what to do with it, so they just e-penis it around instead of selling it. Because if they sold it, it would be rude to the donators.
Sparkz is either 70.33.186.222 or 70.33.186.194 depending on whether you believe their stated purpose or my interpretation of nmap results after a fat bowl of weed.
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Boy with all those extra servers around they could maybe spread them out and create an actual CDN instead of making it look like they have a real CDN. :o
But that will never happen since it's a "security risk".
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Or run their app on a machine that isn't the data server. Or have a non-primary database server. Or do backups of the art.
192GB of RAM, doing nothing.
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192GB of RAM, doing nothing.
that is a crime scene
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I doubt FA would actually know what to do with any sort of clustering, or for that matter, use, of all that hardware. I have a feeling they'd use it all for the same thing they're using it for now: nothing.
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192GB of RAM, doing nothing.
The really funny part is that, if they were running Linux, the 192GB worth of RAM would, by default, go toward an aggressive filesystem cache. They're running FreeBSD, though, and they're demonstrably unable to manage it, so I highly doubt that they've configured their machines to this end.
we;lp
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Seeing that FA is apparently being run on a behemoth pile of hardware, what do some of the other sites like Inkbunny and SoFurry manage with? Granted, they probably get something like twenty percent or so of traffic compared to FA, but seeing them compared with what each one has under the hood would be interesting. You guys mapped the network topography for FA, what does IB and SF look like?
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You guys mapped the network topography for FA, what does IB and SF look like?
I suppose I could throw some nmap at those two sometime, but I'm not sure how fruitful it'd be. Most sane network admins hide the internals.
OTOH I could also throw up my own network diagram. I did throw down the 60 bucks for OmniGraffle for an actual reason.
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Seeing that FA is apparently being run on a behemoth pile of hardware, what do some of the other sites like Inkbunny and SoFurry manage with?
e621 routinely pushed 20-30TB/mo from a virtual machine with 4GB RAM and ~200GB disk running on an eight-thread Xeon box.
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e621 routinely pushed 20-30TB/mo from a virtual machine with 4GB RAM and ~200GB disk running on an eight-thread Xeon box.
And I'm pretty sure it cost a fraction of what FA's hardware costed. Hell, with the disk space and a little extra RAM, I'm sure they could have run on it without having to spend $16,000 of donation money on it.
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And I'm pretty sure it cost a fraction of what FA's hardware costed. Hell, with the disk space and a little extra RAM, I'm sure they could have run on it without having to spend $16,000 of donation money on it.
The physical hardware for e621 was something inordinately stupid cheap, and it definitely performed as such during the last month or so I was performing system administration tasks for Varka in exchange for booze. "Sure, your cheap Taiwanese hardware won't ever fail!"
As a data point, I'm building out a pair of PowerEdge R415's with dual 6-core Opterons, 8GB RAM, and 3x250GB SATA disk in RAID 5 for about $5,500 all in. If I add another 56GB worth of RAM to both of them and throw in a SAN (another, what, $15,000-20,000?), given the performance metrics I've seen for FA, I can host the damnable site three times over, in virtual machines, and still have plenty of capacity to spare.
Protip: Do not develop your infrastructure around your power; instead, develop your power around your infrastructure. If you're constantly concerned about power usage in a datacenter, you're being too much of a tree-hugging hippie. Business-critical systems draw current like a horse drinks water on a hot summer day. That's just a fact of life.
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"Sure, your cheap Taiwanese hardware won't ever fail!"
Can we just ban Taiwan from doing anything with computers, ever?
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Can we just ban Taiwan from doing anything with computers, ever?
i wish.
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But this ASUS product is both ROCK SOLID -and- HEART TOUCHING!
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COCK SOLID
DICK TOUCHING
(ANUSUS)
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As a data point, I'm building out a pair of PowerEdge R415's with dual 6-core Opterons, 8GB RAM, and 3x250GB SATA disk in RAID 5 for about $5,500 all in. If I add another 56GB worth of RAM to both of them and throw in a SAN (another, what, $15,000-20,000?), given the performance metrics I've seen for FA, I can host the damnable site three times over, in virtual machines, and still have plenty of capacity to spare
But but but... FA is a BIG site and BIG sites require a LOT of hardware!!!!! Two 1U servers is not big!!!!!
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"Sure, your cheap Taiwanese hardware won't ever fail!"
Can we just ban Taiwan from doing anything with computers, ever?
I for one welcome our Taiwanese motherboards.
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So in other words, they need gargantuan hardware to run poorly planned configuration and unoptimized code with the illusion of efficiency? Like needing a P2 350 to pretend it is a 4mhz SNES?
But then I suppose there needs to be capacity for TF2 server too. Can't forget the important stuff, huh?
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Like needing a P2 350 to pretend it is a 4mhz SNES?
Uh Z80 opcodes don't turn into x86 by magic you know.
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some guy named mrtheplague sent me these:
Regarding iron artist:
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Been working on two 'em tonight
Regarding kb.furaffinity.net:
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague The software was a POS (I admit it - bad idea in retrospect). I got a refund for it, and got a new kb software. It's now help.furaffinity.net
Regarding Ferrox, the commissions page, and security:
<TheDragoneer> MrThePlague: Ferrox was abandoned quite some time ago. Coding is moving in a different direction - part of what we're aiming to beta/preview in May.
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: did you like entirely give up on the commission page btw
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Honestly? Yes. It's being abandoned for an entirely new system. No date, no ETA.
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: and what about the code?
<TheDragoneer>MrTheCode: What about it?
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: will anyone who has a single clue about security be having any kind of look at it, or will you just do the usual thing you do and throw up some unreviewed thing that "mostly works"
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Yak wants to get the code into a presentable state, then pull other people to review it as I recall. He just needs to resolve some things with it first. But that's a question for him
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: oh, so the usual thing, alright
<dothack-Locke>'Neer, will there be an option to keep the old appearance?
<TheDragoneer>dothack-Locke: Possibly, but no new features will be added to it.
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer what guarantees do we have that any of the new features being planned won't have the same holes as the old ones, and the
<MrThePlague>ones that yak also introduced
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Sorry about that. Working on FAU's site right now. The plan is to beta test it live. Test first, fix first. We're not going live with it until it's ready.
Apparently there were also some questions asked that didn't get answered. Then Princess Piche took off, because he had to work on FA:U's site some more. (and those iron artist commissions.)
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aka sit around and do nothing.
I like how we went from "new site at FA:U" to "beta by FA:U" ::)
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The plan is to beta test it live. Test first, fix first. We're not going live with it until it's ready.
I'm betting they'll do it with the actual mainsite instead of a dedicated testing server/domain or whatever. Any takers?
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Durp. Beta testing does not find security holes.
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Durp. Beta testing does not find security holes.
As long as it works it's good enough amirite?
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Bumping this thread with something I just found.
Remember how they bought this to replace their wiki? Guess what! KnowledgeBase Manager PRO is, in fact, a wiki! (http://www.web-site-scripts.com/wiki-software) They're paying $50/mo for something that can be done for free with ten minutes of installing mods on MediaWiki. From a company that has a poor grasp on the english language and refers to Wikis as "Wikipedia Software".
You can also take a look at all the big-name clients (http://www.web-site-scripts.com/knowledge-management/live-customer-examples.html) that use this software. Big names like "Highland Community Colledge", a secondlife sex furniture store (https://www.getxcite.com/support/) and one of their BIG customers is "Laser Printer Help".
:I
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I'm imagining Dragoneer found this by clicking on something like this:
MediaWiki Admins Hate Him!
Local digimon discovers $60 trick for porn site support.
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"I set up a knowledgebase for my fetish porn site using this one weird old tip!"
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It was probably a little more professional than that, e.g.:
Need a support solution for your growing business, but only have a SOHO budget? Click here!
With that said, I don't think it's a monthly subscription sort of thing. If you go to "Buy" on the website you can see the costs, and as I interpret it there is a one-time licensing fee and a one-time fee for support, if it's added to the ~package~. Even so, it's a pretty interesting thing to take into account when considering Neer, because, in a fandom filled with geeks and gurus and a world turning toward open-source software, what benefit is there with a licensed software?
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I thought this started when everyone was outraged about him spending $2,000 on this damn thing and then his "defense" was he was doing the monthly $60. Or was that a different system?
a fandom filled with geeks and gurus and a world turning toward open-source software, what benefit is there with a licensed software?
This fandom is full of helpdesk burnouts who think that because they can install Windows and/or Ubuntu that they "know computers" and thus know absolutely everything. I can probably count on one hand the people I know who are "in computers" whom I really respect their talent. They tend to work for big names in software and hardware that most of us have heard of.
Open source is great for problems that are a known quantity- and a support site sure as hell is that. Start thinking outside the box though and things get a little less clear.
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I can install Windows!
Granted, many people with any inkling of technical know-how in the fandom are likely to exaggerate it to a critical point, I have no doubt there is someone or a handful of someones familiar enough with that sort of software to help implement it for FA. I could agree with you about people "in computers" < 5, but we both know the keywords in that statement are "the people I know". Besides, what makes you think that an obligation to provide support (e.g. the paid support subscription) implies the ability to provide support? For all I know the people behind the help desk over at web-site-scripts.com are those that become the burnouts.
It just seems to me like the cost of the software (not solely monetary either) is high enough to make something that's free a lot more appealing. I imagine paid support of the software might be useful when critical problems arise that need immediate attention, but the knowledgebase probably isn't necessarily important enough to warrant paid support. Right?
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It's a porn site, for cryin' out loud. How much 'support' and 'knowledge base' does something like that even require?
Though I suppose you could say if the site were more intuitive and not built/run by idiots, it either wouldn't need a knowledge base or could integrate help documentation in a contextual way. Even the cheapo forum software we use here has context-sensitive help provided by simple HTML 'alt' tags.
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Let's be clear here. I guess I should have looked back at the beginning of this thread before now but here's what I'm referring to. When this thing came out as help.furaffinity.net, folks did research on it and realized it cost $1,000 to buy it outright. That starts to get around and people are muttering about how FA bought a thousand-dollar wiki. So at some point the site went away, and came back as a $50/mo. option. This isn't for support. Maybe support is included, but I think it's a hosted instance of the software that Piche pays $50 a month to have branded as help.furaffinity.net. Now, it's only gonna take them just shy of 2 years to rack up $1,000 at that rate- so it's really an even shittier deal than buying it outright. That plus the entirely unprofessional nature of the sales site basically makes you wonder how Piche found this stupid thing in the first place.
This thing basically exists to get market share. It's like smartphone apps in a way, there's just so much demand for Internet related stuff that there's room in the market right now for cynics to put out a crap product and rubes like Piche will buy it. They don't have any compelling new feature or advantage over anyone else, and they sure as hell can't justify that price tag for a MediaWiki clone. But things being what they are right now they get away with it.
I'm personally looking forward to the day when these operations crash and burn.
It's a porn site, for cryin' out loud. How much 'support' and 'knowledge base' does something like that even require?
I'm sure 90% of FA's userbase has no idea it exists, and had no idea the old MediaWiki instance existed, useless as it was. It's one of those things Piche really has no justification/need for, but he thinks when you run a website/computer system this is what you do, so he has it.
Sure, you have a point, but you're also applying critical thinking skills to the situation at hand.
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It's a porn site, for cryin' out loud. How much 'support' and 'knowledge base' does something like that even require?
This was purchased following the hacking, when Dragoneer was taking suggestions about how to make the site better and one of those was that they needed better interaction with the members or "better support". Using his patented Furry Logic, he came to the conclusion this must mean they need to offer a help website that people could submit questions to. Of course, this requires people actually update the site and answer the questions, something that hasn't happened since shortly after it launched in February.
With that said, I don't think it's a monthly subscription sort of thing. If you go to "Buy" on the website you can see the costs, and as I interpret it there is a one-time licensing fee and a one-time fee for support, if it's added to the ~package~. Even so, it's a pretty interesting thing to take into account when considering Neer, because, in a fandom filled with geeks and gurus and a world turning toward open-source software, what benefit is there with a licensed software?
See this page (http://www.web-site-scripts.com/hosted-knowledge-base-service) for the hosted prices.
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See this page (http://www.web-site-scripts.com/hosted-knowledge-base-service) for the hosted prices.
Welp, my bad; I didn't realize it was actually being hosted until I looked at the dns for help.furaffinity.net again. :/
Still not worth it, in my opinion.
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Though I suppose you could say if the site were more intuitive and not built/run by idiots, it either wouldn't need a knowledge base or could integrate help documentation in a contextual way.
Speaking non-idiot-built sites, has anyone anywhere managed to accomplish anything with the Ferrox codebase? How usable was it when it went dead?