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Clicking noises indeed. Since they sold me a Jaz drive that ate disks, I have lost trust in them. What's the point of external storage if you don't believe you will be able to read it when you need to? I will never never buy from Iomega again.

I wonder how long until these too suffer the click of death.

IO Mega was notoriously famous for the 'click of death' on its zip and jazz removable drives Check out http://grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm this site.
I stopped using IOMega stuff a long time ago. Since this patent is just a technology, I may buy the product (if affordable) ONLY if it is manufactured by somebody other than IOMEga.

Making a clicking noise when it dies?

As anybody who's ever used (or had to use :-( ) SpinRite will tel you, your HDD not only lies to you, it cheats and steals as well. To whit: It makes it seem there are no bad sectors, when in fact the surface is riddled with them, only the manufacturer hides this fact from you by having a bad sector table. Also errors are corrected on the fly by some CRC checking. You can ask the SMART for the stats, but you can do very little about the results it gives you, other than maybe buying a new disk (which most likely has a different set of problems - you just don't know what they are). And where have you ever seen a 40Gb drive that is exactly 40 billion bytes big? The bottom line is: Reliability is NOT profitable. Where would Hardware manufacturers be if we didn't have to buy a new disk every 2 years!

In this case yes. Steve Gibson's ID Serve" tool shows that www.hackiis6.com reports itself as "Microsoft IIS/6.0".

From http://www.grcsucks.com/.

Steve Gibson often is referred to as being a "Security Expert", yet one has to see his appearances on *real* security boards/interviews/gatherings. Where was Steve Gibson at Defcon/BlackHat Conference ? Why doesn't he comment/ on Bugtraq or other Security Focus mailing lists ?

The answer is quite simple: he would get nailed down by arguments and facts from real security experts in less then a minute. These persons tend not to be very impressed by self-proclaimed Security Experts and his obfuscation of the real issues and intentions.

As you can read on his resume page, Gibson worked for years as a marketer "Gibson founded a proprietorship specializing in media advertising and public relations" , and that's what he is really good at.

There is usually always an amount of truth behind stories in tabloid newspapers. However, everybody knows that the tabloid newspaper will sensationalise the story to make it sound worse than it already is. Of course they do this to sell more newspapers.

Steve does the same thing, and while he does have a few things to sell, it appears that the main reason he does it is to stroke his inflated ego.

His technique is the same as tabloids - use loaded words to spread Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt among his readers, such that they tend to think that only he knows and understands the whole truth, and only he is the one that will "save them". Notice how he liberally also uses HTML features, such as colour, font sizing and emphasis to highlight some of the loaded words. His DoS attack description could be a canonical example of this technique.

You may be interested in my first attempt at doing it, in regards to the possiblity that your house could be burgled - GRC.com has a new Sheilds UP Test .... It's not that hard to do, and for somebody who lived in a house, yet wasn't aware that they could be burgled, it would be quite scary to find out, particularly in the way I've presented this information.

Read Gibson's site, it is most informative. In answer to your question, my understanding (based on my recollection of his site) is that raw sockets are used not as a tool to distribute viruses, but as a way to attack sites and do other ReallyBadThings.(tm) Read up on it here.

Microsoft can't win no matter WHAT they do.

Steve Gibson (author of Spinrite, among other things), has been on a crusade for years to get raw sockets taken out. See his web page. And I tend to trust this guy. He makes Windows programs in assembly! That is the geek equivalent of crushing a beer can on your head! That may make you question his sanity, but certainly not his technical knowledge.

Implemnt raw sockets, get blasted by one security "expert." Take them out, and get blasted by another.

For what it's worth, I think that raw sockets in user-mode are a bad idea. The average user does NOT need raw sockets.

So now they are getting blasted for taking them out.

Sounds like MS gets to choose: make Gibson happy, or make Fyodor happy.

Steve Gibson's crusade againts Windows raw socket capabilities. Did Microsoft listen, and now is being criticised for doing that?

Wow, talk about going back on their word. Anybody remember of GRC.COM had this concern before XP came out? He did all the yelling and screaming that he could and MS just laughed at him. Guess he gets the last laugh.

Microsoft is just responding to Steve Gibson, of Gibson Research, who has hounded them for making raw sockets accessible to all programs in the past.

"Supporting packet sends from simple user-mode raw sockets makes it entirely too trivial for compromised systems under control of hackers to launch massive distributed denial of service attacks," Microsoft warned in a statement to ZDNet Australia .

If not? Well, I don't need a deliberately broken OS. Who knows what monstrousitys MS hid in that "pack".

Raw sockets let the application create an IP packet by specifying every part of the packet -- source and destination MAC address, source and destination IP address, and the packet data.

If your machine can pretend to be another machine (not even on your network), tracing who's responsible for sending Denial of Service or Flood attacks is made rather difficult.

Use Shields UP at grc.com At least you'll know if your firewall is up to scratch

Ah, thank you Steve Gibson from grc.com for that lovely nickname.

Why is I that we always hear about attacks on 'this server', 'that server', yet nobody's ever thought of planning a DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service, read here for more info) Attack on Spammers? Why not? We could potentially get rid of them, make their machines crash... I just don't get why we have to wait for the law to take matters into their incapable hands.

Not that I'm trying to incite you or anything.

Windows NT 4: Ports 135, 139, and typically one other port in the 1020s range. No 445 here.
Windows 95: Just port 139. Nothing else.
Windows 3.x: NO ports open. :)

Ding ding ding! It looks like Windows 3.x is our winner! Guess we haven't really gone so far since the early 90s after all.

Check for open ports on your pc. https://www.grc.com/

I think they put bugs in on purpose. Check out this interview with some of MS engineers... http://grc.com/dos/xplaughter.htm

Going off his description, you might have heard of them under the different name of zombies or DDoS bots.

The idea is that when a box - almost always a domestic DSL-connected windows machine - is compromised by a worm or trojan it is quite common for part of the payload that is installed on the machine to include at least one IRC bot. The bot will attempt to connect to a prearranged network and channel and sit and wait for instructions. At some point the owner of the zombies comes into the channel and passes instructions to the bots, telling them to attack a certain IP, update themselves or pretty much anything you can think of that can be easily automated.

Steve Gibson may be somewhat... overzealous (I'm picking my words carefully)... but this page on his site has a fairly good explanation of what these things are and what they can do.

Here's a great overview of what cleartype is and does and how it works. Also, in OS X, go to System Preferences, Appearance. If you choose "medium - best for flat panel" that will activate sub-pixel rendering.

An additional problem is that there are too many loons on the internet screaming hysterically about Spyware at the slightest opportunity rather than helping people really understand the issues and make informed choices.

You are right; reads happen at the sector level. However, they are normally discarded in the case of a bad read (and a read is re-attempted). Spinrite claims to access the hardware at a lower level so that it stores in memory the result of the defective read. When this is done repeatedly, theory has it that hopefully it will get a perfect read at least once, or, if that is not the case, get enough reads to guess at whether each bit in the sector is a 0 or 1 based on statistics.

(Speaking of replacing, basic troubleshooting steps would suggest trying it in another drive too... :)

Not a great idea-- the click of death can be contagious.

I had this happen at my last job. One person's Zip drive went, and when they moved to another machine to work while I checked it out, they put the bad Zip disk into that machine's Zip drive as well. Click.... click... click... We confirmed the second drive was hosed with a second blank, freshly-formatted in a good drive Zip disk and then placed in the second drive.

Luckily it was the very late 90's and CD-R drives were becoming ubiquitous-- Iomega got no more of my then-company's money after that incident.

While GRC's Spinrite is an awesome product (I've been using it for 15 years - since 1.0!) and it can also work on all types of removeable media and most all partition-types (Mac disks must be moved to a PC), I suspect that your disk's problem is more fundamental.
However, while we're on the topic of GRC, Steve Gubson does have a different utility to cure the click'o'death on Zip disks.
And while you're at it, you might even be able to get IOmega to replace it even if it's out of warranty!
(Speaking of replacing, basic troubleshooting steps would suggest trying it in another drive too... :)

While GRC's Spinrite is an awesome product (I've been using it for 15 years - since 1.0!) and it can also work on all types of removeable media and most all partition-types (Mac disks must be moved to a PC), I suspect that your disk's problem is more fundamental.
However, while we're on the topic of GRC, Steve Gubson does have a different utility to cure the click'o'death on Zip disks.
And while you're at it, you might even be able to get IOmega to replace it even if it's out of warranty!
(Speaking of replacing, basic troubleshooting steps would suggest trying it in another drive too... :)

While GRC's Spinrite is an awesome product (I've been using it for 15 years - since 1.0!) and it can also work on all types of removeable media and most all partition-types (Mac disks must be moved to a PC), I suspect that your disk's problem is more fundamental.
However, while we're on the topic of GRC, Steve Gubson does have a different utility to cure the click'o'death on Zip disks.
And while you're at it, you might even be able to get IOmega to replace it even if it's out of warranty!
(Speaking of replacing, basic troubleshooting steps would suggest trying it in another drive too... :)

Despite the bullshit on the Gibson Research website, it essentially repeatedly reads bad data and uses some statistical analysis to determine whether each bit was more likely 1 or 0, depending on which came back most often.

This page has some more information on Spinrite and Zip Disks.

If you can't read the disk at all, I think you are screwed. Sorry.

OK, we got spyware remover programs trying to keep up and remove 90%+ of the junk and now we got anti-spyware companies joining spyware companies for the purposes of removing themself as spyware? That's crazy!!

I invite you all to see how the whole spyware thing came about on one of the first sites to report on it at http://grc.com/downloaders.htm and also check out some of his freeware to help you protect yourself (Three Musketeers) which are directly on the home page @ http://grc.com/default.htm.

Good Spyware prevention and removal programs which are free, google for them:
SpywareBlaster (Prevent Spyware activex install)
SpywareGuard (Prevents spyware activity, similar to AV software)
AdAware SE (Spyware removal)
Spybot S&D (Spyware Removal+)

NOT FREE:
Webroot's Spy Sweeper (Good for preventing and scanning, no free version)
PestPatrol (Junk Removal for advanced users only!)

OK, we got spyware remover programs trying to keep up and remove 90%+ of the junk and now we got anti-spyware companies joining spyware companies for the purposes of removing themself as spyware? That's crazy!!

I invite you all to see how the whole spyware thing came about on one of the first sites to report on it at http://grc.com/downloaders.htm and also check out some of his freeware to help you protect yourself (Three Musketeers) which are directly on the home page @ http://grc.com/default.htm.

Good Spyware prevention and removal programs which are free, google for them:
SpywareBlaster (Prevent Spyware activex install)
SpywareGuard (Prevents spyware activity, similar to AV software)
AdAware SE (Spyware removal)
Spybot S&D (Spyware Removal+)

NOT FREE:
Webroot's Spy Sweeper (Good for preventing and scanning, no free version)
PestPatrol (Junk Removal for advanced users only!)

Maybe because some of us can't get to good ol' 8090 anyway?

I can get to exactly 4 external ports:
80/443 - http/s
20/21 - ftp (cmd/dat)

So all the coralized links in the world won't help me. I couldn't even get to an 8080 if there was one, and that's a fairly well-known alternate HTTP port.

[The GBA] isn't even up to the standards of the SNES (far worse sound,

IAAGBAD. Super NES sound is based on hard-mixing eight hard-decompressed samples, where the fixed ratio is 9 bytes per 16 samples, and the loading time to get sound onto the DSP's RAM can be unbearable in poorly designed games. GBA sound is based on soft-mixing any number of uncompressed samples. However, soft-decompression of audio streams is possible on the GBA, allowing for GSM 06.10 audio at 33 bytes per 160 samples, making Bemani music games possible in theory).

lower resolution,

The screen on the GBA (240x160) is only 6% less wide in pixels as the screen on the Super NES (256x224). In fact, many games use ClearType style subpixel rendering (see here or here) to make diagonal lines even cleaner than was ever possible on the Super NES. In addition, compare 3D games on the Super NES (e.g. the Super NES version of Wolfenstein 3D, which used pixel doubling and a black border; think 112x80 or so) to 3D games on the GBA (e.g. the much cleaner port of Wolfenstein 3D).

poorer controls

Do you merely mean "lack of X and Y buttons" or did your GBA's controls wear out prematurely?

screen is too dark).

I'll grant you an initial production run of developer units with too-bright screens (dev units used 0-31 ranges for RGB components while final hardware used 8-31 ranges, causing visibility problems in launch titles). However, later games take this into account.

but the games are still going to look really blocky.

But will it matter? Remember that the PS1, which lacked bilinear filtering, beat the N64, which had bilinear filtering, in the American market. Also remember that Nintendo's battery life über alles strategy has worked in the past, defeating Sega's Game Gear which was superior in every way but sound and battery life. Sony has to ask developers to downgrade PSP games to GBA graphic levels and PS1 loading times in order to compensate.

That weak hardware is the bottleneck though.

OK, granted, the frame rate of some of the launch titles may suck, but do you think the launch titles' T&L will represent the performance that can be had with the dirty tricks in future titles' engines?

Yes, you did :) I think you wanted this: DDos attacks on GRC.com

Although he is slightly a douche bag, read about what Steve Gibson () did when his site was attacked. It's pretty interesting.

OK guys. If anybody here thinks this is new, you need your head examined. Here is a great explanation of how it works, along with a demo, by Steve Gibson:

How Sub-Pixel Font Rendering Works
The Free & Clear Demo

Also, this technology has long been available in your pirated copy of Windblows XP (and quite possibly long before XP). Right click desktop | Properties | Appearance tab | Effects | Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts: ClearType. This works best on your notebook's LCD.

OK guys. If anybody here thinks this is new, you need your head examined. Here is a great explanation of how it works, along with a demo, by Steve Gibson:

How Sub-Pixel Font Rendering Works
The Free & Clear Demo

Also, this technology has long been available in your pirated copy of Windblows XP (and quite possibly long before XP). Right click desktop | Properties | Appearance tab | Effects | Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts: ClearType. This works best on your notebook's LCD.

Here's a very good writeup on how subpixel rendering works:

http://grc.com/ctwhat.htm

It goes into detail with pictures and everything, demonstrating how the technology takes advantage of the separate red, green, and blue subpixels to achieve additional smoothing.

I'm not sure how Samsung intends to implement "white subpixels" though.

Wrote about this some time ago; http://www.grc.com/cleartype.htm

Actually its been around a lot longer then you think. The Apple II used a form of sub pixel rendering written by steve wozniak himself.

The article is really short, but it says that the screen will use sub-pixel technology to allow a half-VGA screen to render VGA resolution. MS Cleartype also uses sub-pixel technology, though to make text sharper.

A linkie with information about sub-pixels in general (though it's on grc.com, whatever.) http://grc.com/cleartype.htm

I will say that I agree with him on hyper-human skills. Computers are being used in the wrong way. When I worked for a dot com, everyone was raving about alltheworld.com, a flash in the pan search engine. I pointed out that I didn't want 60,000 matches--I just wanted the one that I was really looking for. They all looked at me funny. Computers are being used to flood people with data. What they should actually be doing is giving people the few pieces of data they actually need. And nobody in the dot com world seemed to grasp this. They had no idea what people actually wanted or needed. As Winston Churchill put it, "Give me this day, on one sheet of paper, the following information..."

But the current great extinction has nothing to do with any of the things he's talking about. It has to do with the outsourcing, the bust of the dot com bubble, and a popular belief that now that the dot com bubble has burst, you don't have worry about that computer stuff anymore (I kid you not--a lot of technophobes out there actually think it is all going to go away.)

There is no question that programming will evolve, and that we will work at higher and higher levels in the future. But it is equally true that as the methods ramp up, so will the target, and competition to produce software that reaches that target quickly, efficiently, and easily will demand the best solution, which is always hand tweaked. Build by number tools are always general--2,000,000 lines of code used to do what 1000 lines would do better, because the code is literally written with no idea of what the real task is. And to use these high level tools effectively there are always "Tips, Tricks, and Traps," which require a background knowledge of the underlying architecture to grasp.

And by the way, assembler still does everything better than anything else. Check out Gibson Research (http://www.grc.com/) for proof of that.

As for genetic programming, allow me to contrast the hand coded solution to the genetically designed solution:

Hand coded: 2 + 2 = 4;
Genetic: 1 + 1 + 3 - (4 * 3) + 3 + (6/2) + 2.5 + 1.5 + ln(e) = 4

Yeah, it will give you the right result... eventually. But if you want to read your email, you better book a couple days time with WETA's server farm. Not to mention that it takes as long to train one of these as it does a human--and it takes someone who knows a lot about computers (a very good programmer) to specify the criteria. A good example: the Pentagon wanted a genetic algorithm that could recognize a tank. They got one that seemed to work, until a new set of photos were used. It turned out that all the criteria photos with tanks were taken on a sunny day, and all the others were taken on a cloudy day. So if the sun is out, it's a tank. Doh!

The more sophisticated the software is, the harder it is to fix when something goes wrong. Superficially simple applications for complex tasks are that much harder to diagnose and fix when they fail. Windows appears easy, until a bug rears its head, and then it takes thousands of man hours just to track down the cause. Linux has a steeper learning curve, but a core simplicity once you're over the hump. Simple software is simple because the brain is built in. But that doesn't mean that the brain will always work.

Eventually, someone will have to go down and sing to the metal.

Hmm, I always knew google wasn't being completely honest with their 'software'. I have been using the google toolbar for awhile and using my packet sniffer I kept seeing packets being sent back about my activity although I chose the setup which would not send any data back to google. E-mail to google about this went unanswered.

I also notice that this sounds strangely famaliar to what Real Networks did (read http://grc.com/downloaders.htm) back around 2000 with their download program and Player.

I moved a few months ago.

Power in Watts: 130
Hours/Day: 24
Days/Month [365/12]: 30.42
Hours/Month: 730.00
Watt-Hours/Month: 94,900.00
Kilowatt-Hours/Month: 94.90
$/KW-Hour 0.07
Cost/Month: $6.64

Something along these lines, I'm certainly no expert, but everything I learned about DOS attacks I picked up on Steve Gibson's site. He believed Windows 2000 and XP would lead to even larger and more dangerous zombie fleets because of the inclusion of direct access to raw sockets which better enables IP spoofing.

You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

The infamous "click of death", was not because of "...read heads were ripping off..."

The following quote is from the link provided above, "The clicking sound itself is nothing more than the sound of the heads being retracted from the cartridge into the drive then immediately reinserted."

AKA the infamous "Click of Death".