Quote from: theymos on November 09, 2011, 04:20:45 AM

Quote from: mjcmurfy

So the best way to ensure ideas can be expressed effectively is to ban any form of imagery and limit people's means of communication to text only? This is broken logic.

You're not limited to text. You can easily include a direct link to an image, and readers can access the image with a single click. It's not a huge barrier.

Why not write a server side script that would allow users to input ad-hoc an external image link, it would then be tested for various properties (i.e. the size of the file, whether it is a valid image file, whether it is a dynamically generated image, whether it obeys the dimension restrictions) and if the image passed the criteria, permission would be given to the post parser to display the embedded image. If not, then the image would not be embedded.

Quote from: theymos on November 09, 2011, 04:20:45 AM

Either the forum needs to check and recheck images constantly, which is expensive, or client-side code needs to be used to prevent large images, which might not work for all users. I don't find either of these solutions acceptable.

Validated images could potentially be replaced with something else later, necessitating continuous checking - granted, but you just need a database table that keeps track of validated images that the parser can re-query at runtime. If the image has been modified, the image 'hash' would be different and the image would have to be reverified manually by the poster else it would not be displayed, and no further checking would be done until the OP revalidated the image.

You wouldn't have to do this image hash checking each time the thread is loaded, you could just set up a daily cron that would reverify a certain % of the embedded external images table. Maybe have it so that each image is checked once every 2 days or so, or spread it out slowly over a period of time.

You could make it a quite efficient process that would not require that much by way of server resources. We have gotten pretty good at driving down the cost of hashing power, have we not? And it would seem that it would be better in terms of resource usage than actually storing the images, using up potentially huge amounts of disk space and a heckuva lot of bandwidth - simply to ensure their integrity.

This way requires no additional disk space and much lower bandwidth costs as the server only has to download the image once every two days, instead of uploading it hundreds of times per day to individual users.

Quote from: mjcmurfy

They do NOT use up any of this server's bandwidth. Are you kidding me? The request is not sent from this server, it is sent from the users viewing the images - using up the bandwidth the image is hosted on, not bitcointalk's bandwidth.

Quote from: theymos on November 09, 2011, 04:20:45 AM

Obviously I was talking about the bandwidth of readers...

Then why were you using it as justification for getting rid of embedded images? It is trivial in comparison to the cumulative bandwidth that delivering locally stored images would clock up. And why should the operators of the forum care about how much bandwidth a few images take up on the end-users side? If you watch a single youtube video, I'd imagine it would still account for more bandwidth use than a week's worth of surfing this forum.

Quote from: theymos on November 09, 2011, 04:20:45 AM

Quote from: mjcmurfy

Why not hold a vote on the issue to find out how correct your assumptions are?

I know that my security concerns are justified.

A vote would determine only what the majority of current users want, which is not very important. It's easy for the majority to be wrong.

Yes, they are of course justified. It is just the conclusions you are drawing that I have questions about. We don't need to crack this walnut with a sledgehammer. There are workarounds that can be put in place.

Your lack of respect for what the users of the forum think is quite cynical and arrogant. At the end of the day, you have to keep your members on side, as they are the ones that produce all of the content and make this forum what it is. Telling them directly that what they think is not important is a highly presumptuous move for you. People remember statements like that.

Yes it's easy for the majority to be wrong, but it's even easier for a single individual to be wrong.