The End of an Era
I was informed via e-mail from my web hosting provider that Dice Service 3.4 must be shut down forever.
Dice Server 3.4 is a Perl script that I developed a few years ago that allows on-line board gamers to roll various types of dice. Unfortunately, as my dice rolling form requires the use of e-mail to distribute dice rolling results, spammers have been trying to exploit my dice rolling script for their own purposes. In so doing, they have uncovered a possible coding flaw that spawns multiple copies of the script which effectively drags the physical server to its knees.
Because of this, my web hosting provider has told me to stop running this script forever. I can’t say that I blame them as they’ve had to deal with this problem on four prior occasions. Unfortunately, as I don’t have the physical server in front of me, I can’t install real-time probes to effectively debug this problem. Therefore, I have no choice but to comply.
When I discovered that spammers were trying to exploit my code, I began to think of an alternative service that would avoid the use of e-mail. My idea was to embed the dice rolling service into a forum-based approach. To see the results, one need register. It fit within my idea of context-based forum topics/threads, an architecture which will eventually become Effluency 2.0. I thought that I had plenty of time to implement such an architecture. I was wrong.
My original idea for implementing Dice Server 4 was going to be as a service inclusion into a more general Effluency 2.0. Instead, I will have to build a standalone Dice Service 4 as a precursor to Effluency/Dice Service 5.
Stay tuned.