Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="-jeffB, post: 1244832, member: 27832"]The seller promptly refunded my money, thank goodness. This doesn't absolve eBay, though. Sometimes you see a computer error, and (if you've been through the ranks yourself) you think "that's a sophomore-level mistake" -- anybody who's had more than two years of comp sci should know better. This isn't one. This is a "nobody should even THINK of building something like this without several higher-level classes under their belt" mistake. It's a well-known and well-understood problem -- we know how to prevent the mistake, it's just a lot of work, and it requires people who know what they're doing. Deploying code on a system the size of eBay that's vulnerable to "race conditions" like this? That's a "fire the whole department and start over"-level offense. I was lucky that the seller turned out to be honest. ("Lucky" in a limited sense -- this also implies that somebody's getting $100 face of silver quarters for $1300, and it isn't me. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie3" alt=":(" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />)[/QUOTE]