Of course, I was talking about the normal email we know nowadays.
My comparision was not with any eventual future email protocol that
may or may not ensure privacy. My point being: it's not secure
right now, don't trust on it. Simple. Laws are not going to
change that. In real mail you can easily detect when someone
opened your mail and read it (damaged envelope), with email
this is just impossible. How can you put up laws that are not
enforcable anyway because no proof of snooping is left?
Besides, it is not an historical accident, email existed long
before I was born (and I'm not the youngest either), when
computers coudn't cope encrypition as we know it. Back in the
days, simple text was good enough and even today it is good
enough...for email...as postcards... privacy not included
What you want is a whole new set of email protocols that push
encryption, digital signing and all the like. I'm all for it!
Go and implement it, I'll help as far as I can. You just forget
the existing userbase of SMTP/POP3 that is around and that you
don't get to move to something new and better. You need a big
(bad) company to be behind such a move, remember the HTML-free
days? I do! Microsoft pushed Outlook and now I get HTML emails
daily now. If Microsoft (for example) would set Outlook to be
defaulting to encryption (PGP-like), I bet we'll have encryption
established within a few years. It's not likely to happen but I
talk about the critical user mass we need.
For no company it
would be wise in the current political climate to push
encryption.... Sad but true.
Sorry for replying my own mail: I overread the part about SSL. There is still yet another difference between email and real post. The postal service is "trusted", this means, you trust the Postal service *not* to read your mail. This would be on par with a "trusted network" (you trust every node on the network for ensuring your privacy), and that is in *no way* the internet.
That is because email is not like real-mail. The real-world comparision is more like a postcard: on a postcard you write the address and the message on one and the same visible "body", just like in email. If you consider encrypted mail on the other hand, you have a postcard with a readable address and "invisible" content, ergo, the same as a mail in an envelope. It really is that simple, once you think about it.
....instead, they should allow advertising from breweries. Let's get it straight: there are two things you do during your student time, sit in (boring) classes and party at night drinking beer after beer. So an obvious advertisement partner would be a brewery. Now, *that* would be usefull...I think I'd enjoy going to classes more, with scantly-dressed ladies advertising [insert brand here] beer. Aaaah! Student life....too bad it's long gone for me.
Woudn't the obvious solution be: lower drinking age to 18? That's when they go to College and go to keg parties, isn't it?
Where does that 21years old drinking rule comes from anyway? You're 18, you're adult, you can marry someone, and you can vote but you cannot have a beer with friends? You americans can drive from 16 year old on, that's even before being considered adult... sometimes the logic is difficult to grasp.
Ehm, we can drive faster than the usual 55MPH in the US, but not the 120MPH you claim...make it 120kmh (or 130kmh in france and germany I believe)...which is roughly 75MPH. If you get caught driving 120MPH you can be sure you get a nice big fine and your driving license revoked for a couple of months. In Germany certain highways allow unlimited speed, but it is at own risk: no insurance covers you when exessive velocity can be proven when you had an accident.
To stay on topic: I don't understand what liberties an eventual ID card in the US would take away? Last time I had to show my ID (I'm european) was about 2 years ago, and that was when entering the US....go figure. I think my drivers license has been asked more than my ID but that could have to do with my horrendous driving style *grin* . (Including driving 150MPH...oops...yes that is MPH)
Something like what Ellison's proposing would be similar to a mandatory European Union-wide ID card
Ehm, inform yourself a bit before stating such a thing, because that *exists* in Europe. It is standardised and everyone has one. Well, that's what I though all the time, just to check I asked a French guy, a Belgian guy and a Luxembourgisch guy here at the office to show me their ID: all the same format, just a bit different in colour/pattern layout. I'm pretty sure it is standardised in the EU. My collega just tells me that in the UK it is not mandatory, well those Britons always do special in the EU;-) Slashdotters of other EU countries, tell me if it's mandatory, please, now this really made me curious. In some cases you don't have one, but that is due to Administrative fuckups. I am a Belgian living in Luxembourg and the Belgian embassy refuses to issue ID's outside Belgian territory. Luxembourg only gives forgeiner-ID's that are only valid when presented together with national ID. Only solution: ask a real passport to Belgian Embassy and be very very pissed because it costs quite some money.
Thank you for the pointer, for the moment my home network consist of Linux machines an NT/W2K workstations...it really sucks to synchronize an eventual changed password on all machines. Hmmm, now all I need is an older box running Samba as a domain controller and a wireless network and it will look completely transparent:-) Hehe, I'll put the wireless controllers on my christmas wish list. Good luck to you when you try it....
I didn't know I could install it additionaly, I'll take a look this evening in the Add/Remove Programs section -> Windows Components. It could be there. Not that I need it, for development I use Apache and that's more than enough for me.
And I don't underestimate stupidity, unfortunately I'm confronted with ignorance every day...Sometimes makes me wonder if I look that ignorant to other people too:-) About administering: learning it is something that takes time, curiosity and investigation. Installing is not the end of any OS, maintaining is more important. It took me quite some time to understand NT4 well (and numerous reinstalls to fix the unfixable), and I still don't get every finesse (notably with NTFS right management I have trouble in some cases).
:-) I knew what I was talking about, I was playing silly and it was quite more a rethoric question. Actually those people that think that the Sever version is more powerfull need to understand that all those "extra things" take up memory and hence decrease the performance of their machine. But then, I'm a minimalist. Oh, well, if you want of course an NT Domain server you'll need W2K Server or NT4 Server because to my knowledge I can't do it with Workstation. Anyway I want to see the first Joe User (or wannabe 31337) to set up remote profiles and all that stuff;-) (Yes I did that, profesionnaly of course) If I need a filesever I'll take an old box, put *BSD on it with Samba and off I am...but then, I don't know if you can do an NT Domain Server that way. Anyone knows a HOW-TO?
I may be dumb, but I have W2K Profesionnal and NT4 Workstation running on several machines and at install I never saw such a checkbox. That's perhaps because there is no IIS with those versions? (AFAIK there isn't) Or perhaps I have IIS and I'm not aware of it, though that would astonish me since I didn't see it in the "Services". What the heck are all those people doing with W2K Server or NT4 Server on their workstations? It doens't makeany sense, does it? It's not because the word "server" is in the name of the product that it's better suited to do your normal surfing.
Weird thing is that everyone stated that before the release of Windows 2000 too, but yet many slashdotters are using it (including me). The reputation of Win XP here is not very high, but W2K didn't have a good one either.
As for the Linux desktops, I tend to disagree...there are teriffic desktops under Linux, you just need to get used to them: this means, using them more than 10 minutes and say "bah, it isn't like windows, I'm going back". I personally use WindowMaker as desktop under Linux, first it was very weird but after a week or two it's just like any other environment (in some case I feel that it's even easier).
Well said! I think that just like programming you must learn "the hard way first", that is: work with a text editor exclusively. If you get better you *can* use generators. I made my site using just a texteditor, no it is not perfect, but at least I got the satisfaction of knowing it's guts. Learning HTML is usefull, learning a tool is just that: learning a tool. The day it is obsolete (because Windows XYZ refuses to run the older version of FrontPage ABC), you can start from scratch learning a new one.
One of my best friends is a "webdesigner" and I thought he was knowledgable....was I surprised when he wanted a form-based site accessing a database and I had to explain him *what* CGI was and *what* a database was. He thought all that could be done with some JavaScript and a plain text file. Ouch! He's still my friend, but his ignorance shocked me.
You're not rambling....not at all, I was only trying to show that older PC's can perform well in certain conditions.
The Pentium Pro in question is the family PC and it doubles as Router/Firewall, Seti@Home cruncher, Office PC, surfing and all the stuff you can imagine that a modal family PC does. It performs really well in that function and to me it seems that the overall performance is about equal under NT4 and W2K. I already tried Linux on it, but since it is the family PC and not my personal tinkering toy, I don't have much time on it except for administering it in order that my siblings can do their work/have their fun. There is a partition reserved for Linux, but just experimental for the moment. I should perhaps also have mentioned that the Pro is full SCSI and the PIII isn't, so I/O works really well on it. I don't think the AGP aperture is used in 2D, but the Pro has a good 2D card (Matrox) and for 3D it's a Voodoo2. I'm well aware I was comparing apples with oranges trying to compare a 5 year old machine with a modern PC:-) But then, I love my hardware...even the "older" boxes.
It really depends on the machine if 128Meg is enough or not. I have a new machine (PIII) with 128Meg and running 2000 was dog slow, especially in games. I have an Pentium Pro 200 with 128Meg RAM that runs 2000 now too, and there is virtually no big difference with NT4-SP6, even under games...halflife, unreal: no problem.
What makes the difference, well, I suspect the fact that one machine (the PIII) has an AGP video card and the other has PCI video cards. No doubts that AGP is superior to PCI in terms of throughput, but it take a lock one quite a non-negligable part of your main memory. On the AGP system suddenly I have 32Meg "less" while running the game (depending on aperture size). The PCI cards don't have this "disadvantage". Well, I might misunderstand how AGP works, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Of course adding RAM to the PIII solved all my problems.
In productivity apps (a la Office) it really doesn't matter, of course I just use Office 97 because it suits my needs more that enough and I kick OSA.EXE out of the startup folder...but that is another discussion.
Next time when such thing happens, you will have a chance to see IE has a huge majority on Slashdot too.
Well, this *could* have a logical explanation. Some geeks probably are like me: they read slashdot at work and at work IE is company policy. No choice possible.
My whole surfing needs (and those of my family) are covered with Netscape, but that is at home... I visit slashdot at home, but not as much as at work. So, from a statistical point of view I'll contribute to the IE part, but from a "choice" viewpoint I'm all Netscape.
Agreed on the "joe user" part: they use IE exclusively....but that's not out of choice, that's because "it comes with the computer".
I'm not a browser fanatic, not at all, and on my Linux machines I prefer Konqueror anyway.
Ehm....WAP? Why would I need WAP?
on
WAP Bashing
·
· Score: 1
I don't need WAP....Don't misunderstand me: I tried it, my cell phone is WAP enabled and for kicks I tried it once or twice. I saw no use at all. Especially because I have an alternative, let me explain: Psion Revo+ with Opera browser for EPOC and infrared connection to my cellphone. Basic email, with header downloading (so I don't have to wait for huge attachments)? Check! Slashdot with images and all? Check! What more do I need? Okay, the speed is not really on par with dialup. It is quite expensive too, I admit that, but I can use any regular ISP that supports dialup. A bit more than 0.12 € per minute is fair while on the move or during emergencies. This morning for example they shut down our internet connection (because of the Nimda worm) and I checked slashdot + my mail (with an attachment of about 300K,...important document...) in about 10 minutes. As far as I checked, WAP costs about the same for less functionality.
So I think that you have to expect that, with the raise of the processing power you predict, you will see PDA/Cellphone integrations with real browsers that cope with real ISP's. I don't think that situation will be far off, since right now I do it with two devices. No more WAP needed, it has become obsolete. It is quite disappointing that you didn't elaborate on the extra functionalities that WAP offers except the "click to dail a number" thing. I would have been interested to *know* what I'm missing. (Because click to dial...well, ehm...doens't sound very usefull to me, just annoying).
Simple: I signed a contract that binds me to the fact that I cannot tell anything about what happens at work. This includes what systems are used. Banking secrecy is quite harsh in some countries, you know. I know that in the context of Bugzilla this sounds ridiculous.
Technically I violate the contract I signed by sharing some information on slashdot (even if it is for the good of the community), but then I do not share the name of the bank nor you know who I am. You only know that Bugzilla is used in a fairly large geman bank on a certain ebanking project and that jawtheshark works or has been working on that project. Quite vague, isn't it? (Note that I posted this from the bank's network and hence I'm monitored...it's just to avoid trouble for me...really)
Just ran it under NT4....explorer (not internet explorer) crashed with a Dr. Watson. The window at 6000,6000 however stayed open. No clue if I'm infected now. (Internet Explorer 5.5 here)
I work for a fairly large German Bank (I can't tell you which one for obvious reasons) and before we had just verbal communication and eventual email between testers and developers (me being developer) on a fairly large eBanking application. It was a complete mess.
Fortunately we got a project manager with some sense and it seems quite he has some influence on the internal IT managers (damnit, it's a bank, they are really paranoid...they refuse nearly anything we ask for!) and we used Bugzilla in the second phase of the project. Developers and testers loved it, tough testers were first pissed because they had to do more effort, but when they saw the quick results they were converted in no-time.
Gotta love Bugzilla, I'll recommend it to any project:-))
but a system administrator had to spend the next day and a half, [...] updating virus definitions
Sorry, but that was the admins responsibility is the first place: a good admin will prevent virus infections at all cost. Hey, I'm just admin of our family network and I update virus definitions each month twice.... In a company he should even filter out all executables at mailserver level. Sorry, I don't condone writing viruses but companies should be protecting themselves. Normal people, I mean, granny using her computer, are of course not protected that way....Companies and admins administering the networks have no excuse. They are in fault when a virus gets through.
I don't think the towers should be rebuilt, but the space should be turned into a park with a nice monument remembering the victims. On the other hand, NY city real estate is so expensive that it is probably isn't economically feasible to keep this space unused.
Strange, I have a Satellite 210CT which is technically seen a P120 with 32 Meg RAM and I run Peanut Linux with kernel 2.4.8 and on top of that WindowMaker. Easy compile/install, very sleek. Peanut comes with KDE2 and a lot of apps....KOffice works perfectly on the machine, tough it is quite long at first load. I already did surfing sessions with Netscape 4.76 with about three browsing-windows open, a LICQ session open plus some other little tools. Works okay to me. I have been using this machine for 4 (5? years) and this was the most accountable upgrade I ever did from W95-OSR2.
Of course the 640x480 resolution might be a little on the low side, but even then with W95 things get cluttered fast too on that res. (Mine does 800x600 and sometimes I find it too small)
I guess you don't use VESA modes for the console, do you? Besides, I in termemu I alway have to increase font size in order to read it halfway okay, that of course reduces the visible characters without need to horizonally/vertically scroll...not everyone has excellent eyes you know.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, it is not an historical accident, email existed long before I was born (and I'm not the youngest either), when computers coudn't cope encrypition as we know it. Back in the days, simple text was good enough and even today it is good enough...for email...as postcards... privacy not included
What you want is a whole new set of email protocols that push encryption, digital signing and all the like. I'm all for it! Go and implement it, I'll help as far as I can. You just forget the existing userbase of SMTP/POP3 that is around and that you don't get to move to something new and better. You need a big (bad) company to be behind such a move, remember the HTML-free days? I do! Microsoft pushed Outlook and now I get HTML emails daily now. If Microsoft (for example) would set Outlook to be defaulting to encryption (PGP-like), I bet we'll have encryption established within a few years. It's not likely to happen but I talk about the critical user mass we need.
For no company it would be wise in the current political climate to push encryption.... Sad but true.
Sorry for replying my own mail: I overread the part about SSL. There is still yet another difference between email and real post. The postal service is "trusted", this means, you trust the Postal service *not* to read your mail. This would be on par with a "trusted network" (you trust every node on the network for ensuring your privacy), and that is in *no way* the internet.
That is because email is not like real-mail. The real-world comparision is more like a postcard: on a postcard you write the address and the message on one and the same visible "body", just like in email.
If you consider encrypted mail on the other hand, you have a postcard with a readable address and "invisible" content, ergo, the same as a mail in an envelope. It really is that simple, once you think about it.
....instead, they should allow advertising from breweries. Let's get it straight: there are two things you do during your student time, sit in (boring) classes and party at night drinking beer after beer. So an obvious advertisement partner would be a brewery. Now, *that* would be usefull...I think I'd enjoy going to classes more, with scantly-dressed ladies advertising [insert brand here] beer. Aaaah! Student life....too bad it's long gone for me.
Woudn't the obvious solution be: lower drinking age to 18? That's when they go to College and go to keg parties, isn't it?
Where does that 21years old drinking rule comes from anyway? You're 18, you're adult, you can marry someone, and you can vote but you cannot have a beer with friends? You americans can drive from 16 year old on, that's even before being considered adult... sometimes the logic is difficult to grasp.
To stay on topic: I don't understand what liberties an eventual ID card in the US would take away? Last time I had to show my ID (I'm european) was about 2 years ago, and that was when entering the US....go figure. I think my drivers license has been asked more than my ID but that could have to do with my horrendous driving style *grin* . (Including driving 150MPH...oops...yes that is MPH)
Ehm, inform yourself a bit before stating such a thing, because that *exists* in Europe. It is standardised and everyone has one. Well, that's what I though all the time, just to check I asked a French guy, a Belgian guy and a Luxembourgisch guy here at the office to show me their ID: all the same format, just a bit different in colour/pattern layout. I'm pretty sure it is standardised in the EU. My collega just tells me that in the UK it is not mandatory, well those Britons always do special in the EU ;-) Slashdotters of other EU countries, tell me if it's mandatory, please, now this really made me curious.
In some cases you don't have one, but that is due to Administrative fuckups. I am a Belgian living in Luxembourg and the Belgian embassy refuses to issue ID's outside Belgian territory. Luxembourg only gives forgeiner-ID's that are only valid when presented together with national ID. Only solution: ask a real passport to Belgian Embassy and be very very pissed because it costs quite some money.
A life? What's that?
Thank you for the pointer, for the moment my home network consist of Linux machines an NT/W2K workstations...it really sucks to synchronize an eventual changed password on all machines. Hmmm, now all I need is an older box running Samba as a domain controller and a wireless network and it will look completely transparent :-) Hehe, I'll put the wireless controllers on my christmas wish list.
Good luck to you when you try it....
I didn't know I could install it additionaly, I'll take a look this evening in the Add/Remove Programs section -> Windows Components. It could be there. Not that I need it, for development I use Apache and that's more than enough for me. :-)
And I don't underestimate stupidity, unfortunately I'm confronted with ignorance every day...Sometimes makes me wonder if I look that ignorant to other people too
About administering: learning it is something that takes time, curiosity and investigation. Installing is not the end of any OS, maintaining is more important. It took me quite some time to understand NT4 well (and numerous reinstalls to fix the unfixable), and I still don't get every finesse (notably with NTFS right management I have trouble in some cases).
:-) I knew what I was talking about, I was playing silly and it was quite more a rethoric question. ;-) (Yes I did that, profesionnaly of course)
Actually those people that think that the Sever version is more powerfull need to understand that all those "extra things" take up memory and hence decrease the performance of their machine. But then, I'm a minimalist.
Oh, well, if you want of course an NT Domain server you'll need W2K Server or NT4 Server because to my knowledge I can't do it with Workstation. Anyway I want to see the first Joe User (or wannabe 31337) to set up remote profiles and all that stuff
If I need a filesever I'll take an old box, put *BSD on it with Samba and off I am...but then, I don't know if you can do an NT Domain Server that way. Anyone knows a HOW-TO?
I may be dumb, but I have W2K Profesionnal and NT4 Workstation running on several machines and at install I never saw such a checkbox. That's perhaps because there is no IIS with those versions? (AFAIK there isn't) Or perhaps I have IIS and I'm not aware of it, though that would astonish me since I didn't see it in the "Services".
What the heck are all those people doing with W2K Server or NT4 Server on their workstations? It doens't makeany sense, does it? It's not because the word "server" is in the name of the product that it's better suited to do your normal surfing.
As for the Linux desktops, I tend to disagree...there are teriffic desktops under Linux, you just need to get used to them: this means, using them more than 10 minutes and say "bah, it isn't like windows, I'm going back". I personally use WindowMaker as desktop under Linux, first it was very weird but after a week or two it's just like any other environment (in some case I feel that it's even easier).
One of my best friends is a "webdesigner" and I thought he was knowledgable....was I surprised when he wanted a form-based site accessing a database and I had to explain him *what* CGI was and *what* a database was. He thought all that could be done with some JavaScript and a plain text file. Ouch! He's still my friend, but his ignorance shocked me.
You're not rambling....not at all, I was only trying to show that older PC's can perform well in certain conditions. :-) But then, I love my hardware...even the "older" boxes.
The Pentium Pro in question is the family PC and it doubles as Router/Firewall, Seti@Home cruncher, Office PC, surfing and all the stuff you can imagine that a modal family PC does. It performs really well in that function and to me it seems that the overall performance is about equal under NT4 and W2K. I already tried Linux on it, but since it is the family PC and not my personal tinkering toy, I don't have much time on it except for administering it in order that my siblings can do their work/have their fun. There is a partition reserved for Linux, but just experimental for the moment. I should perhaps also have mentioned that the Pro is full SCSI and the PIII isn't, so I/O works really well on it.
I don't think the AGP aperture is used in 2D, but the Pro has a good 2D card (Matrox) and for 3D it's a Voodoo2. I'm well aware I was comparing apples with oranges trying to compare a 5 year old machine with a modern PC
What makes the difference, well, I suspect the fact that one machine (the PIII) has an AGP video card and the other has PCI video cards. No doubts that AGP is superior to PCI in terms of throughput, but it take a lock one quite a non-negligable part of your main memory. On the AGP system suddenly I have 32Meg "less" while running the game (depending on aperture size). The PCI cards don't have this "disadvantage". Well, I might misunderstand how AGP works, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Of course adding RAM to the PIII solved all my problems.
In productivity apps (a la Office) it really doesn't matter, of course I just use Office 97 because it suits my needs more that enough and I kick OSA.EXE out of the startup folder...but that is another discussion.
Well, this *could* have a logical explanation. Some geeks probably are like me: they read slashdot at work and at work IE is company policy. No choice possible.
My whole surfing needs (and those of my family) are covered with Netscape, but that is at home... I visit slashdot at home, but not as much as at work. So, from a statistical point of view I'll contribute to the IE part, but from a "choice" viewpoint I'm all Netscape.
Agreed on the "joe user" part: they use IE exclusively....but that's not out of choice, that's because "it comes with the computer".
I'm not a browser fanatic, not at all, and on my Linux machines I prefer Konqueror anyway.
Okay, the speed is not really on par with dialup. It is quite expensive too, I admit that, but I can use any regular ISP that supports dialup. A bit more than 0.12 € per minute is fair while on the move or during emergencies. This morning for example they shut down our internet connection (because of the Nimda worm) and I checked slashdot + my mail (with an attachment of about 300K,...important document...) in about 10 minutes. As far as I checked, WAP costs about the same for less functionality.
So I think that you have to expect that, with the raise of the processing power you predict, you will see PDA/Cellphone integrations with real browsers that cope with real ISP's. I don't think that situation will be far off, since right now I do it with two devices. No more WAP needed, it has become obsolete.
It is quite disappointing that you didn't elaborate on the extra functionalities that WAP offers except the "click to dail a number" thing. I would have been interested to *know* what I'm missing. (Because click to dial...well, ehm...doens't sound very usefull to me, just annoying).
Technically I violate the contract I signed by sharing some information on slashdot (even if it is for the good of the community), but then I do not share the name of the bank nor you know who I am. You only know that Bugzilla is used in a fairly large geman bank on a certain ebanking project and that jawtheshark works or has been working on that project. Quite vague, isn't it? (Note that I posted this from the bank's network and hence I'm monitored...it's just to avoid trouble for me...really)
Just ran it under NT4....explorer (not internet explorer) crashed with a Dr. Watson. The window at 6000,6000 however stayed open. No clue if I'm infected now. (Internet Explorer 5.5 here)
Fortunately we got a project manager with some sense and it seems quite he has some influence on the internal IT managers (damnit, it's a bank, they are really paranoid...they refuse nearly anything we ask for!) and we used Bugzilla in the second phase of the project. Developers and testers loved it, tough testers were first pissed because they had to do more effort, but when they saw the quick results they were converted in no-time. :-))
Gotta love Bugzilla, I'll recommend it to any project
Sorry, but that was the admins responsibility is the first place: a good admin will prevent virus infections at all cost. Hey, I'm just admin of our family network and I update virus definitions each month twice.... In a company he should even filter out all executables at mailserver level. Sorry, I don't condone writing viruses but companies should be protecting themselves.
Normal people, I mean, granny using her computer, are of course not protected that way....Companies and admins administering the networks have no excuse. They are in fault when a virus gets through.
I don't think the towers should be rebuilt, but the space should be turned into a park with a nice monument remembering the victims. On the other hand, NY city real estate is so expensive that it is probably isn't economically feasible to keep this space unused.
Strange, I have a Satellite 210CT which is technically seen a P120 with 32 Meg RAM and I run Peanut Linux with kernel 2.4.8 and on top of that WindowMaker. Easy compile/install, very sleek.
Peanut comes with KDE2 and a lot of apps....KOffice works perfectly on the machine, tough it is quite long at first load. I already did surfing sessions with Netscape 4.76 with about three browsing-windows open, a LICQ session open plus some other little tools. Works okay to me. I have been using this machine for 4 (5? years) and this was the most accountable upgrade I ever did from W95-OSR2.
Of course the 640x480 resolution might be a little on the low side, but even then with W95 things get cluttered fast too on that res. (Mine does 800x600 and sometimes I find it too small)
I guess you don't use VESA modes for the console, do you? Besides, I in termemu I alway have to increase font size in order to read it halfway okay, that of course reduces the visible characters without need to horizonally/vertically scroll...not everyone has excellent eyes you know.