Do PD have a trojan horse inside sabotaging them?
- Thread starter NixxxoN
- 92 comments
- 59,021 views
- 2,006
- Port Washington
- GTP_skeeter23
Let me try my hand at an analogy here for people who don't understand how even simple changes can produce an unintended and incorrect result...
You have a pizza in the oven on the middle rack like you always cook it. It always works out well and cooks as expected. Now you decide to make another and put it on the rack below the first pizza. You haven't directly changed anything with the way you are cooking the first pizza but now adding the second pizza blocks some heat to the first causing it to cook differently. Now you end up with a softer crust on the first one unintentionally. To fix the problem you need to move the second pizza to the side of the first on the same rack as the first.
Sometimes the code doesn't even have to interact at all with previous code or objects and only needs to be in the wrong order at runtime. If each pizza had been cooked individually in order instead of at the same time each one would cook correctly but it would take more time. This is where performance issues can happen because your either fighting the limited space resources of the oven or slowing down the process.
It's an oversimplification and leaves out a lot of aspects but does that make any sense or help explain it?
Also, lets not forget that we are trying to cook two pizzas inside the smaller less powerful PS3 oven whereas in the PS4 oven we can easily cook four at the same time.
You have a pizza in the oven on the middle rack like you always cook it. It always works out well and cooks as expected. Now you decide to make another and put it on the rack below the first pizza. You haven't directly changed anything with the way you are cooking the first pizza but now adding the second pizza blocks some heat to the first causing it to cook differently. Now you end up with a softer crust on the first one unintentionally. To fix the problem you need to move the second pizza to the side of the first on the same rack as the first.
Sometimes the code doesn't even have to interact at all with previous code or objects and only needs to be in the wrong order at runtime. If each pizza had been cooked individually in order instead of at the same time each one would cook correctly but it would take more time. This is where performance issues can happen because your either fighting the limited space resources of the oven or slowing down the process.
It's an oversimplification and leaves out a lot of aspects but does that make any sense or help explain it?
Also, lets not forget that we are trying to cook two pizzas inside the smaller less powerful PS3 oven whereas in the PS4 oven we can easily cook four at the same time.
- 3,603
- London, Ontario
- voodoovaj
WHAT HE SAID 👍
The lines of code number somewhere between the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. It's all logic too and the hardware doesn't know if a typo is intentional or not.
For instance (2+3)*6 is not the same as (2+3*6). Something as minor as that can crash the whole thing.
Everyone is up in arms about this transmission issue, but it doesn't effect online players. So it's isn't simply a change to the transmission code as some have assumed. If it were, everyone would be affected across the board. For all we know, they could be working on improving the performance of the bots and this was an unintended consequence. There is simply too many things to be able to keep your eye on all of it.
Some people think that bugs are obvious, but that only seems to be the case after they've been found. Millions of people can always find bugs faster than a handful of testers.
The lines of code number somewhere between the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. It's all logic too and the hardware doesn't know if a typo is intentional or not.
For instance (2+3)*6 is not the same as (2+3*6). Something as minor as that can crash the whole thing.
Everyone is up in arms about this transmission issue, but it doesn't effect online players. So it's isn't simply a change to the transmission code as some have assumed. If it were, everyone would be affected across the board. For all we know, they could be working on improving the performance of the bots and this was an unintended consequence. There is simply too many things to be able to keep your eye on all of it.
Some people think that bugs are obvious, but that only seems to be the case after they've been found. Millions of people can always find bugs faster than a handful of testers.
- 2,121
- Chicago
- mustang622006
Oh great, now I want pizza 
- 16,417
- United Kingdom
I new my PS3 ran warm, but I didn't realise I could 
thanks photon
Last edited:
- 2,006
- Port Washington
- GTP_skeeter23
- 7,436
- Canada
- photonrider
- 8,698
Pyrolysed Pizza FTW! Or, no, the exact opposite, in fact.
My favourite seems to be to carefully plan out all the logic, cover all possible input states, and still end up in some logical no man's land because it turned out that "all the logic" actually omitted something very important...
A close second is switching between languages that 0-index and 1-index; it generates all kinds of "interesting" problems when you get that wrong.
- 3,603
- London, Ontario
- voodoovaj
OMG, I am so thankful for useful compiler message errors.
Let's not forget the dreaded race condition.
For those that don't know, a race condition is when two (or more) commands are sent at the same time. For things to work out properly, they need to arrive in the proper order. That isn't always the case. All the logic is correct, but the bug persists. These are awful to try and ferret out.
Last edited:
- 7,436
- Canada
- photonrider
Yes. Sometimes one has to read beyond the title, beyond the TS's personality, (or maybe with a deeper understanding of the human behind the post) before addressing the concept.
I had to read the OP three times. I think that was enough for me to understand; not because of any literary shoddiness in the OP, but because of the complexity of the concept in the context in which it was presented.
How about we also the apply the thought - is Sony/PoDi worthy of industrial sabotage - if not espionage, or downright hacking?
True.
As far as I know, if you dont do it on purpose, the bugs should not appear for themselves, as they seem to do
That's not entirely true. As far back as two decades ago there have been instances of self-replicating code - there are many other factors involved in 'bugs' - as in simply put - unwanted code either existing by willful, accidental, or 'erroneous' (though logical) calculations the system sums-up off the code.
There could be lots of explanations, Nixxxon, but that's not an explanation. When you say that : 'thinking' there might be a trojan in there - yes, anything is possible, but only believable once perceived - so how do we find out?
Send some kind of Mission Impossible team in there?
Would make for a good movie, no?
But truth is stranger than fiction - which is why movies mirror reality so well sometimes - past, present and future.
And we will know the truth when there is an explanation.
What you have is an opinion.
A 'possible' solution to the 'problem'. An assumption from so-far-perceived facts.
Let's address this 'possible' solution, immaterial of the emotional responses to its credibility.
What are the facts you've perceived - the 'dots' you've connected - to come up with this line of reasoning?
I''l give you that Sony is big, has been attacked before, is always under attack - as most online giants are - and may be susceptible to hacking as well as some industrial espionage we would have no clue about (otherwise it wouldn't be espionage
) - but to apply that same type of thinking to the fact that some 'coding errors' (as has been discussed recently about the latest 'bug' in the latest download) may have been planted by a trojan is pushing the 'possibility percentage' down to the realm of fiction.Unless of course these dastardly savages, these video-game saboteurs, are using these trivial hiccups to throw us off while they plant a huuuuuuuuuuge bug.
Also, Nixxxon, I understood you were provoked into saying what you said, but you'll find more or less as you go on that this sort of thing happens - the internet is a playpen that holds everything from toddlers to grandads but it's all smoke and mirrors - turn away from the screen for a few seconds and look over your shoulder - there's a really great, big world out there.
Yes, the insult was barbed - as well as brought in a strawman called 'expert' from the poster in question first, when you had only humbled your self in the OP as a 'worker' - but there are finer ways to fence with words, than buttoning the rebuttal with just thrust versus thrust.
Got me, too. See? I'm in here sounding off already.
It's a conspiracy!The PD crew (in IMO) is a cult. Okay - I'm not trying to be harsh here - I love them, and they don't even know it; WWIW, they have given me a lot of pleasure - and I'm grateful for that.
The actual crew that sits there, sleep under their desks, live, breathe and eat this game raw from dream to daylight to dream - they are a different breed, oblivious to the marketing hype, to the spacing in the copy-writing, to the half-baked 'explanations' given to new wrinkles in the game. They'e making this for me. They don't owe me anything, but they do it. Whatever they do, whatever they have done . . . from there the Sony train starts to build up chaff as well as chuff before it gets to our eyes, ears and wheels.
That 'skeleton' crew - as you refer to (and I've head that term many times before relative to PD) - that skeleton crew is allegedly a very tight, closed, yet humble community. It is apparantly very hard for anybody new to enter that circle.
Makes me wonder. I have no answers or stories to fit the scenario.
I can gather they are extremely protective of their code - or maybe certain parts of it, and that maybe newcomers have to have a certain mental/physical discipline obviously extant before they can become one of the knights around the round table.
I can agree that they need more help managing and evolving this version of skynet's driving life, but they are also people; they have lives of their own to live - and what they are doing now expresses that.
Will that peculiar 'Gran Turismo' feel to the game get diluted as soon as they let new workers in?
Well, yes, diluted with new ideas, innovative ways of coding, and independent tinkering, but also with possible mistakes in coding.
Yeah, to agree with you - it's their whole 'skeleton' crew philosophy.
I hope Sony is not being stingy with the payroll.
True, when taken independently of each other, and probably mutually inclusive when applied to the latest 'bug'.
It does. Or should.
This explains why our pizzas are so small?
Obviously, the PS4 cooks party pizzas.
Dang you, you small-brained PS3!
Edited for bugs - but there's too mnay crawling around now.
Last edited:
- 895
- Limbabwe
- DDDsprayshop
Yeah, ok, look at my flag, but lets start different.
First: IT, some people call themself I.T. guy/girl, but what is it that they really do in computer land.
Software install?
Hardware install?
Network config?
Website admin?
Or all of the above?
But is it programming/debugging/coding? IT is not a Programmer/Debugger/Coder as far as i know.
But prove me wrong and i will accept that.
Second: Bugs.
The first error occured in computer land, and don't think like modern computer, think way back when some of us weren't even born.
Bug, is error, or more a hidden error like a needle in a haystack, like a little (real) bug hidden in the computer box.Try to find it.
Third and last:
Last year i created a program to have a database for tunes.Some members use it.
Then i got a new compiler and a bug appeared.
Found out that the bug only appears when someone uses a different "theme" of a special kind, in windows.
I had to roll back to my old compiler, and lost some newer compiler commands, so i had to go thru the whole program again.
Missed some bugs, and when they showed up, fixed them and released an update.
But that didn't mean that all bugs got fixed, only the bugs that appeared.
For some bugs i needed a day, for some a week, and the program source code is 266KB and 5760 lines of code.( just checked lengts)
After compiling and combining code with buttons and images and runtime it is just over 2MB
Now GT6, the game is how big?
There's a lot of adresses and bits, so it will happen that someone uses the same bit per accident.
In Gt6, that's not a needle in a haystack, that's a needle in a needle factory.
The bug can be found quick, but the new line that used the double code has to get a new adress, and wich one is free?
And what about the hardware, how many adresses are free?
So give PD a little break( a little, not a normal break), and yes i'm also pissed for the bugs, but pissed or not, it happened/happens.
\edit
And maybe your right, theres a trojan or mallware on someone pc at PD.
Last edited:
NixxxoN
(Banned)
- 2,712
- Barcelona
Yes. Sometimes once has to read beyond the title, beyond the TS's personality, (or maybe with a deeper understanding of the human behind the post) before addressing the concept.
I had to read the OP three times. I think that was enough for me to understand; not because of any literary shoddiness in the OP, but because of the complexity of the concept in the context in which it was presented.
How about we also the apply the thought - is Sony/PoDi worthy of industrial sabotage - if not espionage, or downright hacking?
True.
That's not entirely true. As far back as two decades ago there have been instances of self-replicating code - there are many other factors involved in 'bugs' - as in simply put - unwanted code either existing by wilful, accidental, or 'erroneous' (though logical) calculations the systems sum-up off the code.
There could be lots of explanations, Nixxxon, but that's not an explanation. When you say that : 'thinking' there might be a trojan in there - yes, anything is possible, but only believable once perceived - so how do we find out?
Send some kind of Mission Impossible team in there?
Would make for a good movie, no?
But truth is stranger than fiction - which is why movies mirror reality so well sometimes - past, present and future.
And we will know the truth when there is an explanation.
What you have is an opinion.
A 'possible' solution to the 'problem'. An assumption from so-far-perceived facts.
Let's address this 'possible' solution, immaterial of the emotional responses to its credibility.
What are the facts you've perceived - the 'dots' you've connected - to come up with this line of reasoning?
I''l give you that Sony is big, has been attacked before, is always under attack - as most online giants are - and may be susceptible to hacking as well as some industrial espionage we would have no clue about (otherwise it wouldn't be espionage
Unless of course these dastardly savages, these video-game saboteurs, are using these trivial hiccups to throw us off while they plant a huuuuuuuuuuge bug.
Also, Nixxxon, I understood you were provoked into saying what you said, but you'll find more or less as you go on that this sort of thing happens - the internet is a playpen that holds everything from toddlers to grandads but it's all smoke and mirrors - turn away from the screen for a few seconds and look over your shoulder - there's a really great, big world out there.
Yes, the insult was barbed - as well as brought in a strawman called 'expert', when you had only humbled your self in the OP as a 'worker' - but there are finer ways to fence with words, than making the kill too obvious.
Got me, too. See? I'm in here sounding off already.
The PD crew (in IMO) is a cult. Okay - I'm not trying to be harsh here - I love them, and they don't even know it; WWIW, they've given me a lot of pleasure - and I'm grateful for that.
The actual crew that sits there, sleep under their desks, live, breathe and eat this game raw from dream to daylight to dream - they are a different breed, oblivious to the marketing hype, to the spacing in the copy-writing, to the half-baked 'explanations' given to new wrinkles in the game. They'e making this for me. They don't owe me anything, but they do it. Whatever they do, whatever they have done . . . from there the Sony train starts to build up chaff as well as chuff before it gets to our eyes, ears and wheels.
That 'skeleton' crew - as you refer to (and I've head that term many times before relative to PD) - that skeleton crew is allegedly a very tight, closed, yet humble community. It is apparantly very hard for anybody new to enter that circle.
Makes me wonder. I have no answers or stories to fit the scenario.
I can gather they are extremely protective of their code - or maybe certain parts of it, and that maybe newcomers have to have a certain mental/physical discipline obviously extant before they can become one of the knights around the round table.
I can agree that they need more help managing and evolving this version of skynet's driving life, but they are also people; they have lives of their own to live - and what they are doing now expresses that.
Will that peculiar 'Gran Turismo' feel to the game get diluted as soon as they let new workers in?
Well, yes, diluted with new ideas, innovative ways of coding, and independent tinkering, but also with possible mistakes in coding.
Yeah, to agree with you - it's their whole 'skeleton' crew philosophy.
I hope Sony is not being stingy with the payroll.
True, when taken independently of each other, and probably mutually inclusive when applied to the latest 'bug'.
It does. Or should.
This explains why our pizzas are so small?
Obviously, the PS4 cooks party pizzas.
Dang you, you small-brained PS3!
"SABOTEUR" might be a more appropiate word, yes... That's what I meant by trojan horse.... So people dont confuse it with a computer trojan (malware/virus)
edit: sorry for double post.
- 895
- Limbabwe
- DDDsprayshop
I just read your last post.. and put my previous text into spoiler.
I think what they mean and i mean:
Being an IT worker is to know and to expect that bugs are part of hard- and software.💡
And as long as humans do the basic programming, bugs will be there.
Humans aren't and never will be perfect and buggless.( maybe some or in the future)
Having a bad day (stress) can result in in a wrong action and voila.Wrong cable in the wrong switch or wrong adress in the wrong line of code.
Can you live with that explanation?
Being an IT worker is to know and to expect that bugs are part of hard- and software.💡
And as long as humans do the basic programming, bugs will be there.
Humans aren't and never will be perfect and buggless.( maybe some or in the future)
Having a bad day (stress) can result in in a wrong action and voila.Wrong cable in the wrong switch or wrong adress in the wrong line of code.
Can you live with that explanation?
NixxxoN
(Banned)
- 2,712
- Barcelona
No need to be exactly an xbox fan.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft destroyed Nokia from the inside using Stephen Elop as a massive trojan horse, so worse things have happened.
- 1,492
- Germany
- KiroKai
- KiroKai
Wrong. It is a change affecting transmission code, completely independent of whether the car is driven online or not. The game's security against hybrids/cars it defines as having illegitimate parameters was improved a couple patches ago, and certain parts of those checks could be bypassed if you only drove your car online. To me it seems very likely that changes introduced in this patch cause the game to think certain custom transmission settings are illegitimate, therefore it resets them. The reason it doesn't do this when you drive your car online is that your car isn't going through as many checks when you go on track online. This is most likely intended due to performance limits, as PD take their game's security quite seriously. Or it could be due to another bug that simply doesn't trigger them online.
- 5,588
- Dahlonega, GA
- ryzno
Be it the transmission code or the security code something is wrong.
I still believe it is the transmission code(or the code that checks the transmission, again the new VGT. It has rediculos ratios that the flip trick can't achieve, much less the final gear...
I still believe it is the transmission code(or the code that checks the transmission, again the new VGT. It has rediculos ratios that the flip trick can't achieve, much less the final gear...
- 3,792
Its because they contaminated the code with alien life form when they modeled the moon, I knew that damn moon buggy was bad news
- 669
- Italy, Sardinia
Most of the modern games have these problems... and some of them are even left as they are.
The lack of proper testing is a big factor, they use a lot alpha/beta like ''they will find problems for us'',it's basically the lazyness of the ''we can patch it later, it's ok'' attitude of these years.
I have some kind of experience on how it's easy to ruin a lot of things by messing a single = or something, though.
I worked on a browser game, an rpg thing in php,a friend mine was programming, i had to take care of the graphic stuff, and testing too. One day i've found a little bug,..my friend, after checking the code for like 2 days discovered the a ; was in the wrong spot.
When we opened to the public for the first time, we had like 1xx playing, a few of them discovered other bugs related to that old one.
A small game, a few friends working on it, nobody was paying us, too.
So, even if we can't really ''forgive'' BIG companies making A LOT of money for giving us games with a lot of issues, we should be aware of how these things happens...no sabotaging needed.
The lack of proper testing is a big factor, they use a lot alpha/beta like ''they will find problems for us'',it's basically the lazyness of the ''we can patch it later, it's ok'' attitude of these years.
I have some kind of experience on how it's easy to ruin a lot of things by messing a single = or something, though.
I worked on a browser game, an rpg thing in php,a friend mine was programming, i had to take care of the graphic stuff, and testing too. One day i've found a little bug,..my friend, after checking the code for like 2 days discovered the a ; was in the wrong spot.
When we opened to the public for the first time, we had like 1xx playing, a few of them discovered other bugs related to that old one.
A small game, a few friends working on it, nobody was paying us, too.
So, even if we can't really ''forgive'' BIG companies making A LOT of money for giving us games with a lot of issues, we should be aware of how these things happens...no sabotaging needed.
- 10,904
- Sweden
- eran0004
- 600
- 22,549
- Arizona
- HamiltonMP427
Because as an IT worker I cant figure out the problem with the bugs.
These bugs that happen here and there are the cause of some code lines that get messed up I suppose.
As far as I know, if you dont do it on purpose, the bugs should not appear for themselves, as they seem to do
So I've been thinking that perhaps some people inside PD might be sabotaging them on purpose, I dont see any other explaination.
Please someone elighten me and correct me if I'm wrong...
Code is tricky, and easy to mess up even for those that are well traversed in it. You don't have to purposely go out of your way to mess up code, mistakes happen all the time especially when you write out algorithms with code for things like this that aren't integrated correctly with what ever system you use or perhaps made from scratch. Also when you change other parameters of the game, sometimes that previous could may not fully be taken into account by accident and thus some of the system works with it while other parts reveal to have logic bugs or what ever else.
Then you have to debug it and it takes time when working with hundreds of lines of code.
- 1,793
- Gambleboyen
