2013 Support of the site!

alexander38 · Post by **alexander38** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 6:47 am

kicked my 15 in ...invoice said to tell Trojan owners of the site...don't know any others, So I'll tell Carver owners.....

RWS · Post by **RWS** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:54 am

I've just re-upped.

SPECIAL THANKS TO THOSE WHO SPEND THE TIME TO PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF THIS WEBSITE FROM THOSE WHO HAVE ATTEMPTED TO DISRUPT THIS VALUABLE ASSET TO US ALL.

RWS

Allen Sr · Post by **Allen Sr** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 9:12 am

RWS wrote:
SPECIAL THANKS TO THOSE WHO SPEND THE TIME TO PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF THIS WEBSITE FROM THOSE WHO HAVE ATTEMPTED TO DISRUPT THIS VALUABLE ASSET TO US ALL.

RWS

DITTO!

captainmaniac · Post by **captainmaniac** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 9:03 pm

Big D wrote:Though we can choose not to show our email address here, it is a requirement of signing up and resides in a place accessible through this software. My concern is that it and everything else can be accessed through a program with limited/outdated security features.

Glad to hear the guys are on top of it and considering options.

If this is a key decision point, you need to understand software and web systems security before making decisions of which way to go. The proposed alternative to what we have now will ALSO need to know your real email address. Just because it is a newer version of software, it doesn't make this information any more secure. The email address is still stored in a database. The software proposed is still built on PHP and mySQL (which is what our existing phpBB board is built on), and will run on the same OS, so it is just as easily hackable and exposed as what we have now.

If our key issue is age of software there is also a newer version of phpBB that could be considered.

Plus... beyond the software - the person you have doing the upgrade also has access to ALL private information stored on the site. Can THEY be trusted, or do you have confidentiality terms in place in the contract you have with them re their ability (or inability) to use or disseminate any information they get their hands on as part of the job?

Flashy does NOT equate to better. Only moron executives and marketing people truly believe that..... hopefully the rest of humanity understands the difference between pretty flashing lights, and something that actually does the job.

Sorry - but I am in the business and have been doing systems development and integration work for 25+ years, for multi-million and multi-billion dollar companies. I have seen a lot of people do stupid things, do things for the wrong reasons, or do business with scammers and con artists.

Again - I don't have issues with upgrades - lets just do it a) RIGHT, b) FOR THE RIGHT REASONS, and c) BY THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

captainmaniac · Post by **captainmaniac** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 9:08 pm

Commissionpoint wrote:you can block a MAC address instead if need be.

It takes negligible effort to spoof a MAC ID, so blocking them is not an effective measure. If someone wants to attack your site, the hackers and spoofers already have more tools than you can defend against. Your only hope is that they decide it isn't worth it, give up, and just go somewhere else.

Big D · Post by **Big D** » Sun Jan 13, 2013 10:41 pm

We'll never be able to stop someone in the know with enough time and know how from getting in if they want to. We can however make it a little more difficult, and as you said hopefully that will deter them. We all want a little more functionality too. If a newer version of the current one provides that then I'm sure we'll happily accept. We've put the concerns out there, and asking questions hoping that someone in the know will lead us in the right direction and make suggestions in hopes it will all make for a better site.

CP is looking into a different software and has some friends that know it well who are willing to help. We'd welcome your input and help to set something up also.

Post by **Moderator** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 6:51 am

Don is looking into different up grades . I looked that V-bulletin myself and it looks lot like a copy of what we have now . But as captainmaniac said there both are PHP based so it would similar . I know Don will put a lot of care and thought into what is chosen .

Thanks to all that have given support ,and that reminds me I need to do mine.

ready123 · Post by **ready123** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:21 am

What is really the problem with what we have now?
I can't see the security concerns being easily prevented and personally I have little concern about that.
I have an Internet persona that I use for the internet only, which is different from any real life email data.
I can't see the advantage to the list owner to move away from link support of images to hosting images....... that would be a cost.
Now upgrading phpbb to latest version may have value.....

Just how it looks to me......

Big D · Post by **Big D** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 8:05 pm

ready123 wrote:....I can't see the advantage to the list owner to move away from link support of images to hosting images....... that would be a cost...

Part of the point here is that the money we are paying to keep the advertising out would be used for perhaps upgrading equipment to host pics and vids and support. Right now, we gain nothing from the money except keep ads away as a result of using the current software. At least that's my understanding.

captainmaniac · Post by **captainmaniac** » Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:30 pm

Big D wrote:
ready123 wrote:....I can't see the advantage to the list owner to move away from link support of images to hosting images....... that would be a cost...
Part of the point here is that the money we are paying to keep the advertising out would be used for perhaps upgrading equipment to host pics and vids and support. Right now, we gain nothing from the money except keep ads away as a result of using the current software. At least that's my understanding.

Thought I said this before, but maybe not clearly enough. We aren't paying 'to keep the advertising out' (it wasn't forced by someone else) - we are paying so Beacon doesn't have to resort to carrying the advertising to pay for the costs of running the site. To cover costs, Beacon chose to carry the advertising (for which they got paid).

We wouldn't be redirecting the funds, we would be needing additional funds.

Sorry - going to go techno-weenie again here...

The site will be hosted on a sever somewhere, and Beacon will be paying for access to that machine. They will pay for access to the machine, for how much disk space or processing power it has, and for the volume of data being backed up from that machine.

Right now, the only data on the machine and being backed up will essentially be the text content from the posts. Text doesn't take up much space (1 byte per character in the post).

Photos and Video can be HUGE - one of my typical iPhone photos is over 1MB - that's the equivalent of a post with 1 MILLION characters in the text! Videos are waaaaay bigger. If you are storing this locally within the forum (ie on the server hosting the forum), doesn't take long for photo and video storage to eat up very large amounts of disk space. Photos I have stored at home : less than 10,000 photos with some video clips interspersed, over 30GB of disk space - equivalent to 30 BILLION characters.

How many photos or videos would get posted in a year? 10,000 a year would be less than 30 a day. The forum would easily have at least that much posted in a year. Needing an additional 30GB of disk space and backing up an additional 30GB every year will increase the costs of hosting the site.

I'll shut up now.

jhalb · Post by **jhalb** » Fri Jan 18, 2013 5:49 pm

Just paid my $15 and bought a hat. Let the season begin.

cmcmjk · Post by **cmcmjk** » Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:00 pm

We just contributed!

Thanks for all the info that was kept available thru older posts and help that was offered for the questions I have asked. It was a tremendous help when we were looking to purchase our Trojan.

I guess you folks are stuck with us! We think the next one might be a 13 Meter, if we can find one!

alexander38 · Post by **alexander38** » Sat Jan 19, 2013 3:54 am

[quote="cmcmjk"]We just contributed!

Thanks for all the info that was kept available thru older posts and help that was offered for the questions I have asked. It was a tremendous help when we were looking to purchase our Trojan.

I guess you folks are stuck with us! We think the next one might be a 13 Meter, if we can find one![/quote]

Find a 14 or a 440 Trojan by Carver and be done with it....