The datacenter in which the dedicated server hosting POV-Ray recently changed. As we have our own class C (/24) subnet, this (in theory) should not have affected us (outside of a few hours of downtime as the machine was physically transported) as no IP addresses needed to change: our host only had to alter the appropriate BGP announcement to indicate the new route to/from our network.
However it has since come to our attention that many parts of the internet are unable to access resources on our server. Sites such as wiki.povray.org and www.irtc.org continue to work as they are cached by Cloudflare, and Cloudflare can still talk to our server. The problem lies in the fact that whilst we are receiving the incoming traffic sent our way, outgoing traffic that needs to pass through Comcast is black-holed only four hops from our server. This means anyone who is behind Comcast addresses are unable to access anything on our server.
We have used our class C network for more than a quarter of a century with no real issues; this is the first time we've been black-holed by a major transit point in the US and we have no explanation for it. A request has been lodged with the Comcast NOC to fix this but as of the time of writing it remains in place.
We're posting this message on our front page primarily to raise awareness amongst those who are not affected but are in communication with those who are (via means outside this site) to let them know why they can't connect, since of course affected users aren't able to read this message right now. Additionally once the issue is resolved, this will serve as an explanation as to why we were "down" for so long.
After a long break in releases of 3.8 beta test candidates, development is resuming, though not at the pace of past releases.
One impediment we have yet to overcome is code signing for the Windows platform. Currently we have no means of doing so as our previous key has expired. The difficulty is both cost and the need for flexibility in verifying us as an organization. Despite the fact that we have a company registered in Australia (Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.) and it is visible on the ASIC website, it is our experience that the verification process gets hung up by the fact the company doesn't sell anything, have a street address, or have a phone number.
While we do not generally sign beta releases, it is our policy that official releases for the Windows platform are expected to be signed.
David K. Buck - the creator of DKBTrace, the pioneering raytracer that was the genesis of POV-Ray - has created a KickStarter campaign to fund creation of an open-source IDE for PigeonTalk (PigeonTalk is a smalltalk implementation created by David that is aimed at being a programming environment to explore computing).
"I chose Smalltalk as a language because it provides the most immersive experience I've encountered. Smalltalk allows you to create, use, and explore software in a very hands-on way. It's an ideal environment for learning and playing with software.
This Kickstarter project is to provide a development environment for this Smalltalk which I'm calling PigeonTalk. The development environment would run in a web browser and would communicate with the Smalltalk engine using WebSockets. Once this is available, PigeonTalk becomes a viable programming environment that others could use."
We wish David the best in this endeavor and are hopeful the Kickstarter will meet its goal as POV-Ray itself would not exist if it were not for David's kind contribution of the DKBTrace source code.
POV-Ray 3.8 is now in beta-test. You may obtain beta releases via our GitHub repository. Discussion regarding the betas should be directed to the beta-test group in our forums.
On July 29 1991 the first beta of what would become POV-Ray became ... ... [read more]
The POV-Wiki is now back online ... ... [read more]
Following more recovery work since the server crash we're happy to say our ... ... [read more]
The www.povray.org site is now back in read-write mode ... ... [read more]
Our server recently experienced a catastrophic hardware failure ... ... [read more]
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