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[Angus Gratton]

It's an interesting story (and cautionary tale), thanks for sharing it.

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Martin Schwenke <martin at meltin.net> wrote:
> max_wait is how long approx will wait before it tries to retrieve
> another copy of the file.  The default value for max wait is 10.
> That's 10 *seconds*.

I'd bet the developer responsible for the max_wait default lives
somewhere like Western Europe or Japan, has some kind of 100Mbps
internet connection, and is wondering what all the fuss is about. ;).

I think this kind of thing happens a lot, though. We develop a
software service at my work, and we've certainly had naive client
implementations that will send a complicated request that requires
heavy processing, time out quickly (because most requests are handled
quickly), and then reconnect and send it again, over and over.
Defensive design required to prevent a complete DoS.

- Angus


PS Back on the subject of 3G access, a friend pointed me to Three, who
have now taken the cake. They'll sell you the internet on a per-site
basis. $8/mo for Facebook, $2/mo for Banking, $5/mo for Twitter, etc,
etc. Forget Net Neutrality arguments, you can bypass the whole thing
when you only sell a certain subset of web sites. Walled gardens for
everyone!