Slashdot Mirror
First IBM PC Plays Full Motion Sound and Video
wally writes "Something for the older geeks; it 'started as a bit of a joke around the office, about doing stupid things with old technology' he said. 'Stupid things like, "Well, I can calculate fractals on an abacus!" or "Well, I can surf the web on my Game Boy!". Then one person said, "Oh yeah? Well, I can display video on my XT!". And later that day I kept thinking about it and came up with a way to do it.' And he really did. With video proof and a full explanation with all the needed code, full motion video on an original 8088 IBM."
Is it broken, or did someone spill a pot of Instant Slashdot on the server?
If you're behind a firewall, you have to have port 8090 forwarded. This makes the CC useless for most people who are at work or don't know how to configure their routers, which means it's generally useless. Anyone know why they have to use a specific port to accomplish the function of CC?
No, you don't need to forward port 8090.
Making a connection to Coral is an OUTGOING connection. You only need to forward ports for INCOMMING connections.
So, the people who "don't know how to configure their routers" can still uses it, which means that it ISN'T generally useless.
Now, firewalls that restrict outgoing traffic, that's another story. But there are ways around this. HTTP proxies through Hamachi or SSH tunnels for example. Or if the only connection to the outside world that your workplace gives you is their own transparent HTTP proxy, TCP over HTTP. That's where TCP packets are encapsulated and sent as HTTP requests. The overhead isn't as bad as it sounds since the endpoints simply create neverending HTTP GET and PUT (or GET and POST) requests. Proxies have to let these through due to all the bad web servers that don't report Content-Length.
My theory is they chose a non-standard port specifically to limit their usability - by using a typically blocked port, they've stopped all the slashdotters who surf from work from overloading their service, for instance...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!