Dinking around with resurrecting JinxBot for Win8

[MyndFyre]

Playing around with Metro-style apps and the Win8/WinRT API and am curious how far I can take a bot.  If there's any interest at all I'll probably dump it into Gcode, otherwise it'll stay private.

[Sidoh]

JinxBot is for the new battle.net? I might have some interest. Unfortunately, I'm less interested knowing it'll be on a Microsoft platform. :)

[AntiVirus]

I couldn't participate since I am not that well versed in programming, but I wouldn't mind taking a gander at the code to see what I can figure out from it.

[rabbit]

I'm interested in a Bnet 0.2 bot, but I don't think I'll be getting Win8 any time soon.

[MyndFyre]

Yeah, well, it's kinda my job.

[nslay]

You're publicly known to be a Microsoft employee on this forum. So why would you openly violate the Battle.net TOS/EULA and potentially make the code open source? Once you're known to be affiliated with a company, then the company expects you to behave yourself.

I knew someone who worked on reversing the Battle.net 2.0 protocol and Blizzard lawyers knocked on his door (quite literally in person). I think you're risking a lot playing with these bots that violate licenses (potentially even DMCA) now that you have your job at MS and it's not worth risking. Just move on.

[MyndFyre]

You're publicly known to be a Microsoft employee on this forum. So why would you openly violate the Battle.net TOS/EULA and potentially make the code open source? Once you're known to be affiliated with a company, then the company expects you to behave yourself.

I knew someone who worked on reversing the Battle.net 2.0 protocol and Blizzard lawyers knocked on his door (quite literally in person). I think you're risking a lot playing with these bots that violate licenses (potentially even DMCA) now that you have your job at MS and it's not worth risking. Just move on.

I said nothing about Battle.net 2.0.

[Sidoh]

I did ask what platform the bot would be for. If not for bnet, then what?

[MyndFyre]

Bnet 1 or IRC or something similar.

[nslay]

I think it would be really interesting if chat clients could, for example, play the role as both web server and browser. Perhaps web technologies are ill suited to this, but certainly dynamic content that can be efficiently "chatted" with one or more users would be a curious tool. I mean something beyond a white board and video chat ... something that is as extensible as current web technologies.

Though, this would require something more sophisticated than a BNET 1 or IRC communication medium.

[MyndFyre]

I think it would be really interesting if chat clients could, for example, play the role as both web server and browser. Perhaps web technologies are ill suited to this, but certainly dynamic content that can be efficiently "chatted" with one or more users would be a curious tool. I mean something beyond a white board and video chat ... something that is as extensible as current web technologies.

I've definitely thought about things like that.  I think that opens up a lot of potentially scary attack surfaces though... security would be a bit of a challenge.  I don't think it's out of the question, by any stretch, though.

[nslay]

I think it would be really interesting if chat clients could, for example, play the role as both web server and browser. Perhaps web technologies are ill suited to this, but certainly dynamic content that can be efficiently "chatted" with one or more users would be a curious tool. I mean something beyond a white board and video chat ... something that is as extensible as current web technologies.

I've definitely thought about things like that.  I think that opens up a lot of potentially scary attack surfaces though... security would be a bit of a challenge.  I don't think it's out of the question, by any stretch, though.

Text chatting would be a subset of the capabilities of such a chat client. Just drag a text box into the chat "canvas" and then the text box can be used for the typical text conversation. I'm trying to imagine what you could do with this.

How about buttons? You could create a poll widget that you drag into the canvas for all conversational participants to participate on.
CGI-like widgets would allow participants to demo external programs in a conference.

I don't know, it seems like an ad-hoc Second Life. In Second Life you have a simulated environment (sort of like your "chat canvas") and you can program prims which are like the aforementioned "widgets" (quite literally object-oriented programming!). Such a chat client would be similar, except it would lack the simulated 3D environment. Maybe that would be a good thing.

[MysT_DooM]

i'm down if its bnet2.0. 
Also the only reason blizz came knocking on rob's door was because he was posting the info in public domain. 

[Joe]

i'm down if its bnet2.0. 
Also the only reason blizz came knocking on rob's door was because he was posting the info in public domain. 

What's the difference between posting in public domain and just open source? I know the difference from a licensing standpoint, but why would Blizzard be any less pissed? Regardless, as far as I know, if he's doing it for educational value it's totally fine. I can say that I've learned a lot from the first generation of bots.

[MysT_DooM]

I don't remember him explicitly writing that the info was for educational purposes.  Most of the information released was through posts through a public forum like this.  Also, but not 100% sure but pretty sure, that the site was on US servers, which doesn't help much either. 
Now on the other hand with D3 reversing, they (dev's of main d3 server emulator) haven't received a C&D yet and they have explicitly written that it is all for educational use.  (http://mooege.org).  However they haven't posted actual documentation regarding the bnet2.0 auth like rob was doing, which is probably why.
But I really don't know what makes blizzard pissy without being part of their legal team.  I can just speculate, but speculate quite well though.