Thursday, September 5, 2013

Cache Scraping SNAFU in Odyssey 1.1

This article was a pretty quick turn around for how many external resources I needed to reference:
First off, I'd like to thank the sources on this one.  Fuzzysteve was paramount in breaking the story and bringing the initial coverage.  Also, I have to thank him and K162space for fact checking me on some of the softer parts of the article in draft.

Also, I'd like to thank the other sources who were so good about getting back to me in a timely manner and sharing the kind of insights and links that really brought the piece together:
  • Yann Ramin of EVE-Central
  • pmchem of GARPA
  • Tazuki Falorn of GARPA
  • Entity of Reverence
Specifically Tazuki Falorn sending me the best response:
Not-an-official-GARPA-response: 
It's a ridiculous situation and one that should have been fixed years ago. Apart from CCP's general incompetence (see: anything to do with the current API server), there's no reason at all that this data shouldn't be available via some sort of API. Update it every x minutes with data from y minutes ago to limit the use in market bots. Cache data heavily. Spit out data in multiple formats, JSON would be nice since it's no longer 2005 but XML works if we really must. History data is even easier since it only changes once a goddamn day, ugh. 
Mood: mad because people bug me about goonmetrics not working and I'm lazy.
I didn't want to share that directly in the TMDC piece, but it's pretty on-target with most of the feedback I ever receive on this topic.  I didn't want to completely rehash my previous article, The Machines Are Taking Over, but ended up giving a TL;DR review of that piece to build this one

Furthermore, as I was pitching the article to Ali Aras, she was keenly interested in the topic as a CSM member.  Kind of highlighted how narrow I've been with my personal lobbying scope focusing almost exclusively on Mynnna.  We had a pretty decent discussion of the state of things as they are today and I expect to be in more regular contact with him as this topic continues to evolve.  I anticipate another pretty serious round of threats from CCP and counter lobbying from the community around the next expansion, especially since Stillman has hinted at changes to the EULA in the works since last spring.  I sure am glad the CSM is there to help promote some of the less-sexy, but generally important, topics.

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