[Webfunds-users] midas touch

Wed Sep 29 09:01:26 1999

> > Another bug to light, it has multiplied all my gold by
> > a thousand...  I hope nobody abuses this generosity
> > before I fix it tomorrow :-)
>
> Somehow, this bug must not REALLY work, otherwise the entire concept of
> the system would be fatally flawed.  My (foggy) impression has been that
> the receipts were somehow divided between client and server, so that if
> one goes bad, it won't affect the other (well, at least if the client goes
> bad, the server isn't affected).  So if you caused a bug in the WebFunds
> software it would only make it APPEAR (on the client end) that you had
> 1000 times the balance, but the server wouldn't agree and hence you
> wouldn't really be able to draw on it.

That's more or less correct, and I can even guess at the problem, as the
1000x is the same factor as the contract specifies for the unit of contract
to currency conversion.  I.e., the contract specifies grams, but the underlying
unit is in milligrams.

> The client would get a message from
> the server that it was out of sync, and have to refresh itself (well, at
> least it would know that it was overdrawn).  Does it already do that?

In all probability, the client will continue to work, but the presentation
will be in milligrams.  There is no way for the client to refresh itself
from the client, that's a design feature.  The client has to get it right
or leave the party.

> Do
> you do development work on the issuer software along with the client,
> usually?

Sure, but not out of choice :)

> Haven't tried the new ones yet.  Soon.
>
> What is recovery?  Do you mean converting the old data to the new version?

Yes, sorry, exactly that.  I've been too long on this, slipping into tech talk.

iang