Site Down Time

Admin writes: In your browser's address box, does it say or just ?

As you navigate around, does it change at apparently random times between and ?

No, it doesn't change.
I have never seen it be only before. But I'm not always looking. I did just take a quick tour around and check it, and it was always

Go to http://http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/bc.cgi and click on "Board Settings", then click on "Print Cookies". Cut-n-paste the result into your reply.

Cookie Cut 'n Paste:

---

Current server date/time: 03-06-2009 07:32 AM (UTC = 1236342726)

Cookies provided to server by client:

Password = !!!!!!!!
SessionBeginTime = 1235577516
ThreadTracker = ^^
UseUserTimeZone = 1
UserID = 3079
UserName = Stile
WithinSession = yes

Cookies on the client:

Password = !!!!!!!
SessionBeginTime = 1235577516
SessionBeginTime = 1236342433
ThreadTracker = ^^
ThreadTracker = ^^292,1235577670
UseUserTimeZone = 1
UserID = 3079
UserName = Stile
WithinSession = yes

Edited by AdminModulous, : obfuscated the password

Percy should probably have reminded you to not include your password in that copy/paste. I've obfuscated it out and reset your password to something else.

Ha! :)

Thanks, I even skimmed over that info and didn't notice. I guess I didn't skim well enough.

Yes, it's good to get terminology correct. And since I'm ignorant about website design...

I'm not having any trouble with the favicon.

I'm referring to the part of the page that is supposed to display the "Creation versus Evolution" graphic. Below that are all the links (Profile, FAQ, Rules, etc). Below that is the box that tells me when my current session began, who's online, and whose birthday it is.

I hope that's a little more clear.

abe: it seems to have itself out now. The graphic is displayed and at the normal width. why must my computer suck?

Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

Okay, I see the problem, but first I should mention that if we continue to store passwords in cookies that with the next release they'll be encrypted. But I'm leaning against saving passwords as cookies at all - we'll probably switch to saving a randomly generated key, thereby improving security.

Now back to the problem, which is that you have the ThreadTracker cookie saved twice on your machine, probably once as and once as . This confuses the browser.

You can fix this problem by deleting cookies. If you use FireFox then you can delete cookies for just EvC Forum alone. If you use IE then you can only delete all cookies. You'll have to log in again, so be sure you know your password.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Admin writes: You can fix this problem by deleting cookies. If you use FireFox then you can delete cookies for just EvC Forum alone. If you use IE then you can only delete all cookies. You'll have to log in again, so be sure you know your password.

Thanks for the help, worked like a charm!

I do use IE (I know, FireFox users despise me...) but, well, I'm just too lazy to bother screwing around with another browser. I'm a sheep :)

Anyway, I didn't have to delete all cookies. I went into the folder where the cookies were stored and just deleted the "" one. So I didn't have to delete them all. But you are correct that there is no way "from IE" to delete just one or a certain few.

That is, after I waded through the miles and miles of porn-site cookies... how did they get there? :)

Anyway, thanks for the help!

So it seems like catholic scientist's message 40 (www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=14&t=2369&m=40#40 -->www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=14&t=2369&m=40#40">http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=msg&f=14&t=2369&m=40#40) replaced my message 40.

My profile log (www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/Threads.cgi?action=tml&mbrid=4652 -->www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/Threads.cgi?action=tml&mbrid=4652">http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/Threads.cgi?action=tml&mbrid=4652) has my last post in that thread as message 40.

I can always retype it, but...

Some may have noticed we experienced some slowness yesterday. The load on our server peaked above 80 (that's the number of active jobs trying to run at the same time) because literally hundreds of computers were trying to access the site at the same time. Peering down the list of IP addresses, they appeared to be completely random.

While under an attack like this the vulnerabilities in this site's software become more exposed. I've known for some time that there is a hole of vulnerability in the message number assignment routine, but under normal conditions the code executes so swiftly that falling victim to this vulnerability is very unlikely. However, when the server is under a great load then software passes over the hole of vulnerability more slowly, and there is a greater chance of mishap, as happened here.

I apologize for the lost message and hope it isn't too great an inconvenience. I know it provides no solace, but I'll mention anyway that the next release of software fixes this bug.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hallo Herr Direktor (Admin),

There are some strange (and I think new) symbols appearing again in the posts of our members.

Here is the latest example:

Found here:

sil, found in Indonesia in 2003 and known as the “Hobbit,” is not hu

I found some stuff on google and it seems to be an issue relating to the apostrophe marks and quote marks. If you google the error is shows quite a few discussions of the error symbols.

The issue is that the user in question is using the utf-8 character set and this website isn't setting the charset attribute to utf-8. Since this is an English message forum, that is probably fine. My company has some internal web based client server apps that need to support utf-8 since we are a worldwide company. The real pain in the butt is trying to determine what character set some user is cutting and pasting so that it can be correctly saved in utf-8!

In IE you can left click your mouse, click on Encoding and then select utf-8 to see the "funny" characters.

Ah yes, I can get it to display correctly if I flip the firefox tab into an IE tab and then switch the coding as you said into UTF-8. Nice one.

Spam content deleted.

Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Guess.