Cocks.net
I suppose that most of the readers of this blog have wondered why it hasn't been around the past few weeks. Interestingly enough, it appeared up to Beth and myself, so I didn't really suspect anything was wrong.
It turns out that around May 20th, Cox.net (my ISP) started blocking port 8080, which is the port I was using for the old web server. I don't know why, and I don't really care to be honest. They block a lot of ports, including the regular web one (80) and the smtp outgoing port (25), presumably to deal with viruses and worms that spring up. I wouldn't be surprised if a new trojan or worm used port 8080 and that ended up on the blacklist.
I do have a URL forward service with pobox.com - you can always get to my website by using the URL http://www.pobox.com/~boliver/blog, although that defeats the purpose of the vanity domain and it's hard to bookmark since the forwarding process simply replaces it with the destination URL.
I'll be looking into alternative (and hopefully more permanent) solutions in the future, since I have no confidence that port 8081 will remain unblocked indefinitely.
Comments
Hey Brad!
A little off topic, but I had a quick question. I am writing a little article on software for my school newspaper in Oregon, and I wanted to quote you if that's alright! I was wondering if you could give me a definition of what the difference is between beta software, and software that is ready to be commercially released.
I was looking for something with respect to bugs that cause the occasional random crash, showstopping bugs that don't let you progress any farther in the game, and lazy programming. Nothing too technical; and it doesn't have to be much longer than a short paragraph. If you had the time to do this it would be perfect! You can email me at sh200x (at) gmail-dot~com
Thanks so much!
-Nick
Posted by: Nick | June 12, 2005 05:15 PM
I'm not a coder but I did spend the night in a Holiday Inn Express last night... At my company, our thinking has long been that beta software is "feature complete"; all features are in place and working for the most part. The purpose of the beta process is to get that software with all of its new features in as many hands as possible to find as many of the bugs and usage problems as we can before shipping.
Several to dozens of beta cycles typically occcur, bugs being squashed and functionality changes being made due to feedback. Some of these beta cycles may be distributed to the public, but I see this happening less and less outside shareware/freeware apps.
The goals of beta testing? Get the bugs uncovered and cleaned up. All show stoppers need to be gone before release, all known bugs that will inhibit use of the product or make it disappointing to users need to be gone as well. Minor graphical or behavior issues and quirks sometimes are slated for fixing in x.0.1 and released a week or three after the product's ship date though. There are several deadlines aside from code-complete that need to be met when creating new software (CD duplication, Box and Manual printing, etc). These things are set up in advance and sometimes bugs end up shipping as "acceptable until x.0.1" because of these deadlines.
Posted by: Morrigan | June 13, 2005 09:29 AM