Non quis, sed quid.

Whatever happened to this age old courtesy?

Definition:
give someone the benefit of the doubt

to believe something good about someone, rather than something bad, when you have the possibility of doing either. After hearing his explanation, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
-Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms

It seems to have sadly been vaporised from existence in this Scene. Each time some new face tries to become known they are faced with more skepticism than any Developer should ever get in their entire time as a Developer for this Scene…well unless you suck or are a poser developer of course… Why is it that every time someone new makes something Noobz or one of the big groups/developers could not make people love to flame them? If you think about it, this brings up a few points of concern:

Are you seriously the right person to be attacking anyone?

What gives you the right to flame someone for something you haven’t even attempted nor done yourself? Or to flame someone when you’re nothing but an ungrateful member of the “great” PSP Scene?

Why do you believe you have the intelligence to call out someone for lack of ability when you, yourself, lack the exact same thing you’re assuming the developer has nothing of?

In order for a Scene to prosper, we need to be open minded, mature and welcoming. All of which this scene really annoyingly currently lacks. And which has caused a few knowledgeable, skilled developer (groups) to leave your precious Scene. Too bad really, your really big loss because some really great groups have not shown their potential; have not released some amazing things you will probably never see the light of as a result of your immaturity and lack of respect. But like a wise friend of mine once said – and many other wise persons – “people as a whole never completely acknowledge a problem until it is too late.”

This time I am ranting in the hopes that people might notice my rant, read it and realise what they’ve been doing wrong all this time.

Seriously, why does anyone have to prove to you that they are skilled enough to contribute something worthwhile to the Scene? Chances are none of the Developers you see get paid for what they do for the Scene; are developing for the Scene because they have to. So why does everyone expect people to care about what misguided and ignorant opinion they have?

If you’re a respected developer like jas0nuk, MaTiAz and the rest of the Malloc crew then I’d understand and I’d probably support your efforts in making sure none of these phonies see the light of day. But if you aren’t anyone of their level of skill, expertise or knowledge then you really have no right to tell others to “go die”, “get a life” etc. etc. because regardless of if you think they’re a worthy addition to the Scene – unless you’re a Developer yourself, you have little to no legitimate say in the matter. When you finally do become known in the Scene through releases or contributions then, and only then, will you truly understand what it means to be a part of the Scene. And then, and only then, will you have a right to expose people for their lack of skill.

Until then, you really have no right to push new developers around or set a standard for the Scene of what requirements a “real developer” should meet before they are taken seriously.

But please, have a heart and give people a chance. I assure you, if people are fake – we’ll have their heads mere minutes after their debut. You guys aren’t the only ones who really, really hate posers in the Scene. We’ve shut down a few projects – one more notable one being Project EE – and we will continue to do so until lamers see that there is no point in trolling this Scene. Or so one would hope…

How many of you have taken a few seconds to reflect on the one thing you all apparently hate happening – developers leaving your precious Scene? That’s right. A mere few seconds – possibly even one second – of thought would have brought you to the realisation that your actions do in fact impact what Developers do or not do. So, consider the following and then see if you can tell me why any of us need to sit here taking crap from the “Scene” and still have to release things to keep you happy:

You are a PSP developer.
And by PSP developer I do not mean that YOU think you are one but that you have proven yourself as a PSP developer through releases, contributions to the PSP SDK or something of similar nature. That means you are not the equivalent of test30, becus25 (or whatever the hell he goes by now – Dark_Moon [someone idolizes someone too much]), noob2psp or whatever (other) bullshit developer wannabe that respectable developers like jas0nuk, MaTiAz and FreePlay have flagged as being posers. Still, at least test30 and bec…Dark_Moon actually do *some* work unlike retards like Project EE and Team AoP.

You’ve just released some really big project.
Be it a custom firmware, a great discovery or…whatever. You get a lot of praise for your hard work…and then you get the usual trolls that seem to purely exist to put down your work – which, sadly, you are used to. But what you don’t expect is the lamers that decide to hex-edit and remove your credit before posting it on their site, hex-edit your work and re-release it under their own name or take your work and other Developer’s work, throw it all together and claim it as their own.

How do you feel now?
How would YOU feel if you had a team like AoP claiming to be better than you when all they are doing is stealing your work? How would YOU feel if a website removed your name from the things you’ve worked SO HARD on and then released it? How would YOU feel if I were to take your program’s source, change a few things, recompile it and call it my own?

How do you think Dark_AleX, Mathieulh, jas0nuk, FreePlay, Wildcard and the rest of us feel? I’ll tell you how some of us feel. We’ve had enough of this crap and we’re thinking of leaving.

Face it people. The PSP Scene sucks. It might have taken some of the Developers a while to realise – or maybe we were just in denial the whole time, but we’re slowly getting there. Having people piss on our hard work by releasing our work modified and under their name or having groups pop up that don’t know their left from their right yet insist on belittling the better Developers by stating they’ll “show [insert good Developer (group) here] how it is done” is really the last straw. If any of you truly care for the thing you call “our Scene” then you’ll stop supporting these phony startups and show them that they are not wanted here.

This rant is of a very serious nature. Choose to ignore it at risk of losing the best Developers in the Scene because some of them feel the same way. And some of them, like myself, have contemplated leaving the Scene because they – or we – are really tired of having to deal with the crap that people give us and the appalling lack of support or thanks.

So before you decide to throw out a “you suck!”, “[developer] is better than you”, etc. take a few seconds to think things over. Who knows, maybe the developer or group or team you are targeting has had enough and that one small comment sends them over the edge? Or, even worse, maybe they were working on something much more advanced and unheard of…and your seemingly small comment is the last they want to hear, forcing them to give up and leave the Scene? Don’t believe this is possible? Well, all I will tell you is that it has happened. Yes, there are a lot of things you have not seen released by many very skilled Developers because of the immaturity and lack of respect the Scene has.

If you truly want for the aspiring Developers out there who are near Dark_AleX’s level to stay, then the Scene seriously needs to wake up, grow up and show some respect for everyone else. When a new developer (group) shows up, don’t attack them…give them the benefit of the doubt until a respected individual or a known, proven, Developer shows that they’re fakes. And PLEASE, when that happens, don’t go flaming the known and respected Developers and don’t even think of stating they’re “just jealous” – instead, help them in ridding the Scene of the filth and trash that has caused a few of your most favourite developers to leave.

Lest you lose more than your precious Dark_AleX.

Another weird thing that happens when you switch the storage systems you use on the pastebin script is that, for some reason, you lose the ability to flag pastes as yours (through the usage of the remember me checkbox) and as such are unable to delete pastes that you made. I admit, I completely overlooked this built in feature – somehow – and decided to add my own paste flagging mechanism.

I decided to not use cookies and instead to associate your IP to your pastes so that you may delete ANY paste you make, provided your IP is the same as when you made that paste. Still, for those people who are cursed by damned dynamic IPs, this implementation obviously does not work and I’ll probably make my other features work with the cookies pastebin sets (if you check the remember be checkbox) or implement another way of flagging pastes as yours.

pastebin.com’s script has two storage methods: sql and flat-file based storage.

Though I prefer SQL for ease of use and easier interaction with code, I did not like the “public” way the script  handled pastes (the paste ID was associated with a primary key in the SQL database which was how paste IDs were assigned too – a clever way to not have to worry about IDs getting re-used) as anyone could just guess URLs to find pastes: http://pb.malloc.us/1, http://pb.malloc.us/2 etc. I really preferred the way pastebin.com currently handles it – which is also the way the flat-file storage method handles it.

Since Malloc’s pastebin was meant to be more tuned to the needs of developers, it needed to be less public than the stock pastebin script was. As such, I modified pb.malloc.us to use a more random ID assignment system and I think it works out just fine.

So now that I have pastebin installed and working on http://pb.malloc.us. I’ve been looking at the code and decided I don’t really like the way things currently are.

So, for starters I have made a few changes:

• I don’t really agree with how “public” pastebin currently is, so I’ve removed the Recent posts section on the side.
• There used to be a feedback form on the side too. I’ve removed that since anyone who’d want to give me feedback knows where to find me.
• We all know how annoying spammers are and for that reason I have added a CAPTCHA to pastebin using Recaptcha and its wonderful API.
• Having looked at the code… I’m considering just making my own pastebin instead of modifying pastebin.com’s source.

I know, I know. You’re all probably saying: “but it is a pastebin, all people need it for is to paste things in” which is true and from that perspective the pastebin.com script does it justice but I’m still not satisfied.

I’ve fixed the SQL statements we were told to use in the INSTALL file.

For anyone who encounters this problem, here’s the solution.

The problem:

The SQL statements in the INSTALL file that come with pastebin’s source aren’t following the correct syntax and as such, we encounter this error when we try to run the provided SQL statements.
[sql]#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version
for the right syntax to use near ‘KEY `expires`’ at line 16[/sql]
The solution:

Not sure how it previously eluded me…but the fix was quite obvious.
[sql]CREATE TABLE `pastebin` (
`pid` int( 11 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
`poster` varchar( 16 ) default NULL ,
`posted` datetime default NULL ,
`code` text,
`parent_pid` int( 11 ) default ‘0′,
`format` varchar( 16 ) default NULL ,
`codefmt` mediumtext,
`codecss` text,
`domain` varchar( 255 ) default ”,
`expires` DATETIME,
`expiry_flag` ENUM( ‘d’, ‘m’, ‘f’ ) NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘m’,
PRIMARY KEY ( `pid` ) ,
KEY `domain` ( `domain` ) ,
KEY `parent_id` ( `parent_pid` ) ,
KEY `expires` ( `expires` )
);

create table recent
(
domain varchar(255),
pid int not null,
seq_no int not null,

primary key(domain,seq_no)
);[/sql]

Well, I lied. I haven’t installed/setup a pastebin yet but I have tried and…failed.

I keep running into this error when trying to create the appropriate tables in my database.
[sql]#1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version
for the right syntax to use near ‘KEY `expires`’ at line 16[/sql]
So for now, I am sticking with the flat-file DB setup. Well at least we have something to work with for the time being.

So I’ve been a busy busy person and installed a pastebin for Malloc.us. But one must be wondering why on earth I would have a WHOLE category dedicated to, what may seem to some, a short discussion of pastebin(s) and to that I answer thus:

Although there are…, what? 3 different pastebin scripts out there now? Maybe 4? I’m not really satisfied with what features they offer out of the box and so I’ll probably be working on or hacking at the script(s) to get them just how I like them.

Stay tuned for more…

If you are reading this, it’s probably too late.

I’ve finally done it, I’ve finished working on my.malloc.us. Which should be one of our defining features that encourage our users to interact with and get to know each other. The main emphasis for this move would be, of course, community.

I have a blog now – …there goes my free time. Or whatever little I had anyway. Although I do have this blog, I do not promise anything. I cannot promise that I will make frequent posts or post anything at all. But what I can promise is that if you do subscribe to my thoughts then I assure you, whatever I do end up writing and posting on this blog will be a worthwhile read. So read on.

For those of you who know me, you probably know I love writing and though I stated to myself that I would keep this introductory blog post short…I highly doubt I am capable of doing that. We’ll see. If you’ve spoken to me lately, you’re probably aware of the frustrations I have with the way things are going and as such will probably be able to guess what my first (few) blog posts will be about — I just hope people care and listen; that it is not too late.

I do warn you, though, that from this point on, this blog will contain my uncensored thoughts and so some of its contents may offend you. And I don’t really care if it does as it is your choice whether or not you would like to subscribe to my ramblings and unsanity.

Perhaps this might just be a door to what people seem to think is a cryptic mind. Or perhaps, …not.

See? I told you so.