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OBEX full of spam — Parallax Forums

OBEX full of spam

Take a look at the SID Cog comments in the obex.

Is there some way this can be cleaned out?

I'd be willing to help if needed.
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Comments

  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2017-01-30 16:54
    cbmeeks wrote: »
    Take a look at the SID Cog comments in the obex.

    Is there some way this can be cleaned out?

    I'd be willing to help if needed.

    Thanks for bringing that up. As a Forum Moderator, I can not delete OBEX material. I will report it.

    In the future, if you find any problems in the OBEX, you can report it directly to:

    webmaster@parallax.com

  • Clean OBEX!
  • Thanks. :-)
  • I've been on Obex in the past week and I didn't notice any spam or anything different.
  • Chris SavageChris Savage Parallax Engineering Posts: 14,406
    DigitalBob wrote: »
    I've been on Obex in the past week and I didn't notice any spam or anything different.

    Spammers will randomly comment on certain objects. If you're not reading the comments on the affected objects you wouldn't see the spam.

    :cool:
  • Ahle2Ahle2 Posts: 1,178
    edited 2017-02-03 14:12
    This needs to be fixed!

    Apart from the garbage in the comment sections, SIDcog went from 2 votes and 5 stars to 36 votes and 1 star! :(
  • Can I ask why there needs to be open comments in Obex?

    Can't any questions and comments be handled here on the Parallax Forums.
  • Chris SavageChris Savage Parallax Engineering Posts: 14,406
    Unfortunately that is a question I do not have an answer for as I do not make those decisions. :innocent:
  • My suggestion has always been to remove the OBEX and move the code to GitHub.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Me too.
  • Long live Obex. I don't read any comments I'm only interested in code. You have to log in to make comments so it couldn't be too difficult to track the spammer's and delete their log in. Github can be a Smile shoot I see a lot of Arduino code that doesn't work until you debug it.
  • I say keep the OBEX under Parallax's control. There have been too many examples of late where third-party or "cloud" services have folded, leaving their clients without recourse.

    -Phil
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    DigitalBob,

    As a user of code from a repository you don't need to be looking at the issues and discussions there. Just fetch the code. No matter if it's OBEX, github, whatever. So no difference there.

    Certainly GitHub can be a "Smile shoot". There are millions of users putting up millions of projects. Much of it junk (Some of it is my junk :) ). This is natural. People will put their little half baked projects there. Or experiments and such. Even they do intend their code for use by others it may be poorly constructed, untested, unmaintained etc.

    On the other hand there is a huge lot of serious projects maintained or at least mirrored on to GitHub. Good quality and well maintained. The owners of which want you to use, find bugs in the code, raise issues, suggest improvements and enhancements so that it can be improved. These are active and very useful repositories.

    Parallax has a GitHub presence. We would not expect what they put there to be a "Smile shoot".
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Phil,

    I totally agree. One should not become dependent on the unique service of some fly by night cloud outfit. As you note these have a habit of vanishing. Even services offered by the big guns like Google.

    This of course is the magic of git. Git is a distributed system. All instances of a git repository have the same status. If I clone your repository then there are two. A git repository is not dependent on GitHub.

    Just because the primary repos of Parallax, OBEX, etc are in github does not mean that Parallax does not get to maintain clones back at home base or where ever. Or perhaps what one sees on github is a mirror of something "upstream".

    Example: My company kept all it's code on in house git servers. When we started hiring developers in far flung locations it became much more convenient to put those repos on GitHub so that we could all work together easily. At some point it was decided to move the projects to BitBucket. Not sure why, thing it was the better pricing structure for private repos, although I don't think there is much in it now a days. Still we have all repose cloned to in house servers. In fact every developer has probably got a clone of everything at home. No way do we give up control to GitHub.

    Meanwhile, would't it be great if a user of your object in a repo could post issues to it easily, for bugs, enhancements etc. You get to discuss it on the issue tracker. Collaborative development and all that.

  • DigitalBob wrote: »
    Long live Obex. I don't read any comments I'm only interested in code. You have to log in to make comments so it couldn't be too difficult to track the spammer's and delete their log in. Github can be a Smile shoot I see a lot of Arduino code that doesn't work until you debug it.

    I don't see how Arduino code has anything to do with Propeller or anything else.

    If I upload code to GitHub...or anywhere else....and it's Smile, then it's Smile. If it's amazing...it's amazing. Has nothing to do with GitHub.

    Unless GitHub were guilty of changing my code without permission. Which it certainly does not.

  • Our IT checks for and cleans out OBEX spam regularly on business days (Monday to Friday).



  • Heater,

    With so many git repositories, how do they stay sync'd, and who determines which changes have priority? Sounds like a recipe for chaos to me.

    -Phil
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-02-06 18:50
    Phil,

    When I first came across git I had much the same questions and worries. I had used many version control systems over the years. Typically a developer had a copy of the code and "checked out" any files he was about to work on. When done, reviewed, tested, etc he would check the files back in to the repo. This sounded like it made sense. It stops two or more guys screwing with the same files as the same time. It has a massive downside in that when a developer has files checked out nobody else can check them out and work on them. Their progress is halted until the files are check in again. A pain if the guy is on holiday or dead or whatever.

    With git, potentially anyone can "clone" the repo, hack whatever they like, even if someone else is hacking the same files in their own clone. Then push those changes. Which may well conflict with the other guys changes. Chaos you might think.

    Turns out not. Turns out all this is manageable and it all depends on how you want to run things. Let's look at a couple of simple examples:

    1) Small team. You trust everyone.

    Currently our company has a big Pascal program. Hundreds of files. Anyone one can clone that and hack on it. When they are done they push their changes back to the main repo. On BitBucket as it happens. We are all in communication all the time so we know what everyone is doing and what files are involved. We work on different areas and features so its not often we want to change the same file at the same time.

    We trust that nothing gets pushed that is not tested by the developer on his clone. In the odd occasion that two developers have hacked the same file git will not allow the push. The developer has to resolve conflicts on his local clone first. Git has very nice mechanisms for showing where changes to the same file by different developers conflict.

    If the worst comes to the worst and the main repos code gets broken git allows one to step back easily

    2) Distributed, perhaps unknown, untrusted developers.

    I have a couple of simple things on github. I was amazed to find there were people actually using some of this. I was even more amazed that sometimes people fix bugs!.

    So, they have cloned my repo. They have made their changes. Then they raise an issue on my github repo describing the bug. They make a "pull" request asking that I pull their changes into my repo.

    I can ignore that if I like. Or I can fetch their code, review and test it for myself. If it's good I pull the changes from their repo into mine.

    Github makes this part easy because their clone is also on github. It a "fork" in their own project space. I can see it easily. This can all be done without github though. As long as their repo is somewhere I can access it.

    Of course things can get a lot more complex. The Linux kernel is maintained by Linus Torvalds. He pulls changes from a bunch of trusted guys. Those guys might take changes from anyone to their local repos and review/test them there.

    That's before we start to think about the wonderful world of branches....

    Basically git gives you the tools. It's up to you to decide the management policy.


  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2017-02-06 19:44
    Well I can safely say the OBEX is not full off ells eels.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Is that "elves" or "eels"?
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2017-02-06 19:47
    Heater. wrote: »
    Is that "elves" or "eels"?
    Spell check did not take care of that.

    Probably wouldn't notice hoovercraft. :)

    Why, yes it did!



  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Well, "ell" is a word. It's a cubit.
  • Matter of opinion whether you like Obex or Github. Obex is exclusive to the Prop
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    That is true.

    However there is no reason github repositories, or other git repos. cannot be exclusive to the Prop.


  • Now with GitHub topics and organizations it's becoming easier than ever to "group" related code/projects. Maybe adding the "OBEX" topic to prop code would be an easy way for those with prop stuff out there to make it easily findable? I'm happy to do it with mine.
  • Clock LoopClock Loop Posts: 2,069
    edited 2018-12-13 05:49
    I ran a crawler on the OBEX and it has spam again.
    And I saw some alarming keywords, like (the word used for patching software to get around protections) , tons of advertisements, many links that didn't belong.

    I'll post em as i find em!

    Links removed after report was made.

    it takes a while think of keywords to put into the file crawler
    ....search running....
  • Thanks Clock Loop.

    The grand-master Obexian has been notified!
  • Clock LoopClock Loop Posts: 2,069
    edited 2018-12-13 05:50
    List keeps growing.. and growing, theres no way of knowing....

    The bad links are in the file --> https://forums.parallax.com/discussion/download/124701/SPAM.txt


  • When you guys get those cleaned up, let us know and I'll run my search again and see if it spiders me out to bad spots, and i'll post them if i find them.
  • We will be starting out the P2 code base on GitHub. OBEX will likely be moved as well, if it's easy to do (which I really, really doubt!).

    Details to follow - waiting on Jeff to return to the office :)

    Ken Gracey
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