> That is why I limit the width of text to 30em. That ends up with about 12-14 words > per line, which is much more comfortable to read than 50 or 60 words per line that > you would see if I let it "take advantage" of your 1600x1200 display.
Well, you (or HTML) could take "better" advantage of the 1600x1200 display than just by extending the lines until they break. For example, the text could be arranged in columns (like a newspaper), and those columns could fill the whole 1600x1200 space.
In todays HTML that shoud be possible with tables, although a "better" HTML could be specified to take in account this and similar things we learned in the last 10 years of WWW experience.
Until then I am happy that OPERA offers a zoom feature that amplifies all (including images and tables), so I can fit those damn "designed for 800x600" pages onto my screen as well. For others I can disable tables "on-the-fly" and have the text flowing as it should be, which is especially useful with screwed-up designs that try to fit the text into 3-word-wide columns between the navigation bar on the left and the advertisement bar on the right.
> Even if Google was his sole source of traffic (which it wasn't), nearly 25% > of the clicks they were reporting and billing for weren't reaching his site.
They might have reached the very surfers' http proxy.
You know, many ISPs cut down backbone traffic by caching pages. Even if the surfers didnt configure their equipments to use a proxy, the provider might intercept and proxy all of their http requests.
> What I would like to see is a Knoppix Based anti-virus for windows.
The german CT magazine has created such a version, called "KNOPPICILLIN":
http://www.heise.de/ct/03/09/210/
(german description, but if you skip through to the statements in courier font, you should get the picture)
Re:Well.... it would depend on the target market.
on
7 Megapixel Camera Phone
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> What these cameras need is higher aperture... dont they get it??
A larger aparture (less depth-of-field) would create the necessity of focusing. This in turn would require adding focusing mechanics (focus ring), focus feedback (deep zoom on LCD, or "good/bad focus" indicator based on edge contrast detection, or auto-focus (motored focus ring for large lens, or piezo mount for small lens).
All this would either add to the cost, size and weight, reliability, and/or easy-to-use-ness of the product. The best choice for the manufacturer is to simply go with small apartures (= fix-focus) and crank up lightness of dark pictures in software (increasing pixel noise as well).
> 1.) That's 1,920,000 individual pixels you want to work perfectly from a source > that produces millions of displays. It's hard to do. Life sucks, sorry.
Throwing in high numbers isnt really a convincing counter-argument. After all you also return defective 512MB DIMMs, although they contain 536,870,912 individual bits. Or defective 160GB harddrives which contain, let me see, how many bits?
I know that its difficult to produce such a large panel without any error. But OTOH there are ways to fix the problem:
a) panels can be binned. Actually the ISO standard suggests this, but manufacturers
simply dont do it. If they were to sell zero-defect panels as such, all non-
zero-defect panel would have to have at least 1 defect. Currently manufacturers
prefer to sell "0-5 defects" instead of "0 defects" and "1-5 defects".
b) panels can be repaired. The most visible types of defect are stuck-on pixels,
and stuck sub-pixels (which change the color of the intended pixel). With laser
technology any pixel can be "burned away" and be turned into less annoying
stuck-off pixels. While this doesnt make the panel "zero-defect", it certainly
would combine well with suggestion a), because getting a "1-5 defects" item at
lower price would only mean 1-5 dark pixels. Which is more tolerable than todays
surprise-bouquet of colored pixels.
c) panels can be designed fault-tolerant. It would perfectly be possible to use
redundancy to tolerate the loss of pixels. If, eg, 2 transistors were used
instead of one, with separate control wiring, the loss of one wouldnt matter.
Only when both were to be damaged (both of any one pixel), the pixel would
actually be unusable. This method costs panel space to implement, of course.
You wouldnt be able to fit the highest resolution into lowest dimension anymore,
or would have to improve the process resolution. This is the price to be paid
for higher yield.
Unless customers start to vote with money, things wont change. Today people complain about defective pixels, but only few actually go out and get a "zero defects guaranteed" product. Most just hope the best, and some try to return the bad ones with a made-up excuse.
> A one-minute TV program isn't going to take that much of a bite out of your > one-and-a-half hour comute, though......which certainly wont keep them from charging 99 cents per "episode".
> > However, in reality all security is through obscurity. For one you need to keep the (private) key secret. > > That is not what "security through obscurity" means. The term refers to keep things other than > the key secret, such as the algorithm, the magic key combination needed to get the password prompt, etc.
To elaborate a bit on this:
Its difficult to keep things secret, and even more so if there is A LOT to keep secret. Staying with the example of the server, theres the electrician who wired the secret server closet. Theres the cleaning woman who has a key to it. The air condicion guys know about it, and the ISP as well. Etc
The idea is to peel off layer by layer, moving things from the "secret" side of the project to the "public" side of it. If the server is encrypted, even with a keyless algorithm, the aircondition guys are out of the game. You dont have to worry about them anymore. The worries are now reduced to your technicians who installed the key less program and thus might have a copy of it. And the manufacturer of the program of course. Etc.
The next step is obviously to use a keyed algorithm. Then the manufacturer is also pushed to the "public" side of things, and the "secret" is easier kept secret.
At this level you gain even another advantage: you can have your algorithm inspected for flaws without giving away the secret.
Thats whats meant by "security through obscurity doesnt work" - it CAN work, but its helluva difficult to achieve in reality. Miss a single link and the chain breaks, revealing all the secrets. It happens with keys too (all the time), but a lot less. Its so much easier to keep a key secret than a whole server infrastructure and its user base and the network connecting them.
>... then the country that the person is in can try them because they pulled > the trigger in that country. This same thing can apply to the internet.
But then the question remains: WHERE is an internet crime committed?
a) in country where the content was created and/or hosted? (here: australia)
or
b) in the country where the content is received and viewed? (here: US, among others)
If you go with b), one could arbitrarily choose any country at wish. Clever delinquents could even go one step further:
1) commit horrible internet crime 2) choose country with weak and light law 3) let someone from this country view content 4) get prosecuted for it in that country 5) dont get prosecuted in any other country (nor home country, nor US) anymore,
because one cant be prosecuted twice for the same crime
> Isn't there hardware in these devices that prevents very loud noises/extremely high > pitched noise? I mean, how hard is it to put a volume hardware filter on these devices. > There's no reason to have something as loud or as high pitched as was being described, > is there?
There is reason.. All modern cellphones play "poly-phonic ringtones" (music/voice/noise instead of the simple beep melodies that older phones provide). To do that, they need a real speaker w/ amplifier (instead of a piezo beeper).
Since a speaker is also required for the earpiece, manufacturers dont want to outfit the cellular phone with two independant speakers. Thats unnecessary weight, volume, and price. Instead, a single speaker is used and the amplifier is programmed to a low power high quality "earpiece" operation during calls, or to high power low quality for "ring" operation.
The problem now is that the SIEMENS cellphones power down when the battery is too low to maintain the call, and while doing so switch from "earpiece" (call) to "ring" to play the shutdown music. Two independant pieces of software dont interoperate well.
The obvious fix is to maintain a flag somewhere that indicates likeliness of the user holding the phone to his ear. This flag could be set by the call function, and wont be reset until the call ends PLUS a few seconds of reaction time ("Hello? Can you hear me now? Oh damn").
> Windows CE is actually more secure than Windows XP because the majority of the OS > is in ROM. Those files are protected at the file system level - it is not even > possible to read or copy the files, let along modify them.
Keeping files in ROM does not inherently constitute a better virus protection. Of course, altering a ROM file is (usually) impossible. However, any complex operating system has a lot of options for RAM or FLASH based files to "hook-in", and RAM and FLASH are certainly not impossible to alter.
A virus that hooks into the startup sequence of a pocket device is as effective as a hypothetical one that managed to alter the ROM of that device. Sure, a ROM device might have a "wipe-all" reset button that gets rid of the virus, but it would get rid of all personalization data as well - files, installed software, addresses etc.
So, how does that make the ROM device less vulnerable to virus attacks? It can't be rendered completely unusable. Ok. But all the other threats continue to exist. You can loose your data, you can spread the virus to other devices, you could even sync a multiplatform virus to your desktop PC, etc.
> I've been using apt-get for several years and never got in the situation you mention
I used loop-aes for encryption on a Linux server. Once I thought why not give the automatic update (SWUP) a try? A few weeks later I rebooted the machine and found my harddisks inaccessable. The reason was that SWUP updated the MOUNT command and thus removed support for loop-aes partitions.
Lesson learned: automatic updates work only if the updated machine doesn't contain any unexpected custom modifications. Every piece of software can possibly be such a modification, although some types of software are more likely to be, than others.
If, on the other hand, all software you use has been installed through that same mechanism, probably all interactions are being taken care of.
> I can't wait to have this on my cell phone ! It could improve > battery life or reception (depending on how it's calibrated).
I didn't check in detail, but the article talks about antenna SIZE, not power efficiency. That is, your cellphone might be smaller but still have the same battery life.
Also, cell phones usually work with smaller than 1/4 lambda antennas anyways. Here is an example:
> You need a central certificate authority to validate the autheticity of users.
A way-out is to make it expensive to infiltrate the P2P network at large-scale. For example, files could have a quality record attached, that lists what each previous downloader voted about the quality ("good" vs "fake" file). Cryptographic algorithms could be used to make it excessively expensive to compute a valid quality record. Time for one computation should be a decent portion of minimum download time, eg 10-60 minutes for a 700MB file. The P2P system could pre-compute the vote record while downloading the file and then let the user make his vote. If you were to insert fake votes into the system, you would have to go through the expensive algorithms for each and every individual fake vote.
When searching a file, the P2P system could cryptographically verify the votes, and weed out the "cheap" fake files (that didn't go through the expensive computation).
The cost of cryptographic effort could be configurable. The releaser of a file could judge the risk of "his" file being attacked (and with how much effort), and thus choose a cost setting that is low enough to be reasonable for the downloaders, but high enough to void all attacks.
> The idea is that you can use the static, printed data (the barcode) to retrieve > dynamic data (the bus location and how long until its arrival)--not just to > retrieve more static data. Static data would still be printed, human readable as > always, on the sign in the first place.
That sounds interesting. However, I still don't get why the URL should not just be printed in human-readable form on the bus stop sign. Passengers could then enter it manually in their WEB enabled cellulars and have the same "dynamic" functionality. Those passengers without the necessary tech gadgets could still take a note of the URL (which they couldn't with the barcode) and use it from their desktop at home (eg to find out when they should leave for the bus at a snowy day).
> The idea of putting both a standard core w/ a generic instruction set AND a > programmable core ont he same chip is very interesting.
I don't see how this is new. Typically this is called a "SoC" (System On Chip). Atmel for example puts their AVR RISC CPU together with their AT40K FPGA on one chip. Brand name of this product is "FPSLIC", see http://www.atmel.com/products/FPSLIC/ ACTEL puts an ARM7 CPU with an FPGA area on one chip, and call it EXCALIBUR. There also is an 8051 CPU core with CPLD area around, I forgot who produces it. These designes are around since years.
An additional problem with sticker labels is that they mechanically deform the media. It is then more difficult to read it. When this adds up with other aging effects, the sticker-labelled CD "dies" earlier than non-labelled CDs.
> even the smallest Windows virus won't fit in 32K.
I once wrote a C64 virus (but didn't put it in the wild). It occupied 9 blocks, and if I recall correctly, one block as 512 bytes. It was a "link virus", meaning that it attached itself to every file that was executed while the virus was resident in memory. It was a kind of proof-of-concept, because back in those days link viruses were a new invention. People claimed they could not affect the C64 (but only "those new" Amiga and PC DOS type of computers).
The 9 blocks covered only the reproduction code, no payload, and it actually worked. It basically added code to the end of the file, and replaced the first few bytes by a call to the virus code. A copy of the original first few bytes was kept to "fix" the executable image in RAM after making the virus code resident.
For FPS games like Quake3, nothing beats dialup. The ping time on an ISDN line can be as low as 10ms. On DSL you have 90ms typically (due to FEC interleaving). Analog 56K is worse (~250ms), and only topped by Satellite (>500ms).
If you really want to compete in Q3, you have to get ISDN.
The sales people are not your enemies. They may be annoying from time to time, but they are the ones who convert your knowledge and work into money, money that pays your salary. They are your friends, you should support them where possible.
> Unfortunatly McAffee requires registration/drm product activation to use it. > > Of course I can always lie about my email address but my guess is before long > they will require for you to recieve an email to use the product like many forums.
Answer #1: McAfee already requires the email for some features, eg manually initiated download of updates.
Answer #2: Check out www.spamgourmet.com which is a very easy to use (and free) email forwarding service. You can have it forward eg the first 5 emails from McAfee and then silently "eat" all future emails. After the initial registration there's no need to go back to the site to get more "disposable" email addresses, they came up with a nice solution.
> Most pages these days are lots of little images which totally lags on satellite.
You may want to try Opera. It lets you configure the number of simultanous connections to servers. If you increase it to 100 or so, you will have to wait once for the HTML, and once more for all the images.
Slashdot Mirror
> That is why I limit the width of text to 30em. That ends up with about 12-14 words
> per line, which is much more comfortable to read than 50 or 60 words per line that
> you would see if I let it "take advantage" of your 1600x1200 display.
Well, you (or HTML) could take "better" advantage of the 1600x1200 display than just
by extending the lines until they break. For example, the text could be arranged in
columns (like a newspaper), and those columns could fill the whole 1600x1200 space.
In todays HTML that shoud be possible with tables, although a "better" HTML could be
specified to take in account this and similar things we learned in the last 10 years
of WWW experience.
Until then I am happy that OPERA offers a zoom feature that amplifies all (including
images and tables), so I can fit those damn "designed for 800x600" pages onto my
screen as well. For others I can disable tables "on-the-fly" and have the text
flowing as it should be, which is especially useful with screwed-up designs that
try to fit the text into 3-word-wide columns between the navigation bar on the left
and the advertisement bar on the right.
Marc
> Even if Google was his sole source of traffic (which it wasn't), nearly 25%
> of the clicks they were reporting and billing for weren't reaching his site.
They might have reached the very surfers' http proxy.
You know, many ISPs cut down backbone traffic by caching pages. Even if the
surfers didnt configure their equipments to use a proxy, the provider might
intercept and proxy all of their http requests.
> What I would like to see is a Knoppix Based anti-virus for windows.
The german CT magazine has created such a version, called "KNOPPICILLIN":
http://www.heise.de/ct/03/09/210/
(german description, but if you skip through to the statements in
courier font, you should get the picture)
> What these cameras need is higher aperture ... dont they get it??
A larger aparture (less depth-of-field) would create the necessity
of focusing. This in turn would require adding focusing mechanics
(focus ring), focus feedback (deep zoom on LCD, or "good/bad focus"
indicator based on edge contrast detection, or auto-focus (motored
focus ring for large lens, or piezo mount for small lens).
All this would either add to the cost, size and weight, reliability,
and/or easy-to-use-ness of the product. The best choice for the
manufacturer is to simply go with small apartures (= fix-focus) and
crank up lightness of dark pictures in software (increasing pixel
noise as well).
After all its a camera phone, not a phone camera.
Marc
> 1.) That's 1,920,000 individual pixels you want to work perfectly from a source
> that produces millions of displays. It's hard to do. Life sucks, sorry.
Throwing in high numbers isnt really a convincing counter-argument. After all
you also return defective 512MB DIMMs, although they contain 536,870,912 individual
bits. Or defective 160GB harddrives which contain, let me see, how many bits?
I know that its difficult to produce such a large panel without any error. But
OTOH there are ways to fix the problem:
a) panels can be binned. Actually the ISO standard suggests this, but manufacturers
simply dont do it. If they were to sell zero-defect panels as such, all non-
zero-defect panel would have to have at least 1 defect. Currently manufacturers
prefer to sell "0-5 defects" instead of "0 defects" and "1-5 defects".
b) panels can be repaired. The most visible types of defect are stuck-on pixels,
and stuck sub-pixels (which change the color of the intended pixel). With laser
technology any pixel can be "burned away" and be turned into less annoying
stuck-off pixels. While this doesnt make the panel "zero-defect", it certainly
would combine well with suggestion a), because getting a "1-5 defects" item at
lower price would only mean 1-5 dark pixels. Which is more tolerable than todays
surprise-bouquet of colored pixels.
c) panels can be designed fault-tolerant. It would perfectly be possible to use
redundancy to tolerate the loss of pixels. If, eg, 2 transistors were used
instead of one, with separate control wiring, the loss of one wouldnt matter.
Only when both were to be damaged (both of any one pixel), the pixel would
actually be unusable. This method costs panel space to implement, of course.
You wouldnt be able to fit the highest resolution into lowest dimension anymore,
or would have to improve the process resolution. This is the price to be paid
for higher yield.
Unless customers start to vote with money, things wont change. Today people complain
about defective pixels, but only few actually go out and get a "zero defects
guaranteed" product. Most just hope the best, and some try to return the bad ones
with a made-up excuse.
Marc
> A one-minute TV program isn't going to take that much of a bite out of your ...which certainly wont keep them from charging 99 cents per "episode".
> one-and-a-half hour comute, though...
http://www.googlefight.com/cgi-bin/compare.pl?q1=% 22digital+versatile+disc%22&q2=%22digital+video+di sc%22&B1=Make+a+fight!&compare=1&langue=us
> > However, in reality all security is through obscurity. For one you need to keep the (private) key secret.
>
> That is not what "security through obscurity" means. The term refers to keep things other than
> the key secret, such as the algorithm, the magic key combination needed to get the password prompt, etc.
To elaborate a bit on this:
Its difficult to keep things secret, and even more so if there is A LOT to keep secret.
Staying with the example of the server, theres the electrician who wired the secret
server closet. Theres the cleaning woman who has a key to it. The air condicion guys
know about it, and the ISP as well. Etc
The idea is to peel off layer by layer, moving things from the "secret" side of the
project to the "public" side of it. If the server is encrypted, even with a keyless
algorithm, the aircondition guys are out of the game. You dont have to worry about
them anymore. The worries are now reduced to your technicians who installed the key
less program and thus might have a copy of it. And the manufacturer of the program
of course. Etc.
The next step is obviously to use a keyed algorithm. Then the manufacturer is also
pushed to the "public" side of things, and the "secret" is easier kept secret.
At this level you gain even another advantage: you can have your algorithm inspected
for flaws without giving away the secret.
Thats whats meant by "security through obscurity doesnt work" - it CAN work, but its
helluva difficult to achieve in reality. Miss a single link and the chain breaks,
revealing all the secrets. It happens with keys too (all the time), but a lot less.
Its so much easier to keep a key secret than a whole server infrastructure and its
user base and the network connecting them.
> ... then the country that the person is in can try them because they pulled
> the trigger in that country. This same thing can apply to the internet.
But then the question remains: WHERE is an internet crime committed?
a) in country where the content was created and/or hosted? (here: australia)
or
b) in the country where the content is received and viewed? (here: US, among others)
If you go with b), one could arbitrarily choose any country at wish. Clever
delinquents could even go one step further:
1) commit horrible internet crime
2) choose country with weak and light law
3) let someone from this country view content
4) get prosecuted for it in that country
5) dont get prosecuted in any other country (nor home country, nor US) anymore,
because one cant be prosecuted twice for the same crime
-> get away cheap with horrible internet crime
> Isn't there hardware in these devices that prevents very loud noises/extremely high
> pitched noise? I mean, how hard is it to put a volume hardware filter on these devices.
> There's no reason to have something as loud or as high pitched as was being described,
> is there?
There is reason.. All modern cellphones play "poly-phonic ringtones" (music/voice/noise
instead of the simple beep melodies that older phones provide). To do that, they need
a real speaker w/ amplifier (instead of a piezo beeper).
Since a speaker is also required for the earpiece, manufacturers dont want to outfit the
cellular phone with two independant speakers. Thats unnecessary weight, volume, and
price. Instead, a single speaker is used and the amplifier is programmed to a low power
high quality "earpiece" operation during calls, or to high power low quality for "ring"
operation.
The problem now is that the SIEMENS cellphones power down when the battery is too low
to maintain the call, and while doing so switch from "earpiece" (call) to "ring" to
play the shutdown music. Two independant pieces of software dont interoperate well.
The obvious fix is to maintain a flag somewhere that indicates likeliness of the user
holding the phone to his ear. This flag could be set by the call function, and wont
be reset until the call ends PLUS a few seconds of reaction time ("Hello? Can you hear
me now? Oh damn").
Marc
Once you detect fraud being done with your biometric identity,
where can you revoke your fingerprint and have a new one issued?
> Windows CE is actually more secure than Windows XP because the majority of the OS
> is in ROM. Those files are protected at the file system level - it is not even
> possible to read or copy the files, let along modify them.
Keeping files in ROM does not inherently constitute a better virus protection.
Of course, altering a ROM file is (usually) impossible. However, any complex
operating system has a lot of options for RAM or FLASH based files to "hook-in",
and RAM and FLASH are certainly not impossible to alter.
A virus that hooks into the startup sequence of a pocket device is as effective
as a hypothetical one that managed to alter the ROM of that device. Sure, a
ROM device might have a "wipe-all" reset button that gets rid of the virus,
but it would get rid of all personalization data as well - files, installed
software, addresses etc.
So, how does that make the ROM device less vulnerable to virus attacks? It
can't be rendered completely unusable. Ok. But all the other threats continue
to exist. You can loose your data, you can spread the virus to other devices,
you could even sync a multiplatform virus to your desktop PC, etc.
Marc
> Architect is not a verb ... so don't verb it.
> I've been using apt-get for several years and never got in the situation you mention
I used loop-aes for encryption on a Linux server. Once I thought why not
give the automatic update (SWUP) a try? A few weeks later I rebooted the
machine and found my harddisks inaccessable. The reason was that SWUP
updated the MOUNT command and thus removed support for loop-aes partitions.
Lesson learned: automatic updates work only if the updated machine doesn't
contain any unexpected custom modifications. Every piece of software can
possibly be such a modification, although some types of software are more
likely to be, than others.
If, on the other hand, all software you use has been installed through that
same mechanism, probably all interactions are being taken care of.
> I can't wait to have this on my cell phone ! It could improve
p ?p roject=75
> battery life or reception (depending on how it's calibrated).
I didn't check in detail, but the article talks about antenna SIZE,
not power efficiency. That is, your cellphone might be smaller but
still have the same battery life.
Also, cell phones usually work with smaller than 1/4 lambda
antennas anyways. Here is an example:
http://www.ee.kent.ac.uk/research/resproject.as
> You need a central certificate authority to validate the autheticity of users.
A way-out is to make it expensive to infiltrate the P2P network at large-scale. For example,
files could have a quality record attached, that lists what each previous downloader voted
about the quality ("good" vs "fake" file). Cryptographic algorithms could be used to make it
excessively expensive to compute a valid quality record. Time for one computation should be
a decent portion of minimum download time, eg 10-60 minutes for a 700MB file. The P2P system
could pre-compute the vote record while downloading the file and then let the user make his
vote. If you were to insert fake votes into the system, you would have to go through the
expensive algorithms for each and every individual fake vote.
When searching a file, the P2P system could cryptographically verify the votes, and weed out
the "cheap" fake files (that didn't go through the expensive computation).
The cost of cryptographic effort could be configurable. The releaser of a file could judge
the risk of "his" file being attacked (and with how much effort), and thus choose a cost
setting that is low enough to be reasonable for the downloaders, but high enough to void
all attacks.
> The idea is that you can use the static, printed data (the barcode) to retrieve
> dynamic data (the bus location and how long until its arrival)--not just to
> retrieve more static data. Static data would still be printed, human readable as
> always, on the sign in the first place.
That sounds interesting. However, I still don't get why the URL should not just
be printed in human-readable form on the bus stop sign. Passengers could then
enter it manually in their WEB enabled cellulars and have the same "dynamic"
functionality. Those passengers without the necessary tech gadgets could still
take a note of the URL (which they couldn't with the barcode) and use it from
their desktop at home (eg to find out when they should leave for the bus at a
snowy day).
> The idea of putting both a standard core w/ a generic instruction set AND a
> programmable core ont he same chip is very interesting.
I don't see how this is new. Typically this is called a "SoC" (System On Chip).
Atmel for example puts their AVR RISC CPU together with their AT40K FPGA on one
chip. Brand name of this product is "FPSLIC", see http://www.atmel.com/products/FPSLIC/
ACTEL puts an ARM7 CPU with an FPGA area on one chip, and call it EXCALIBUR.
There also is an 8051 CPU core with CPLD area around, I forgot who produces
it. These designes are around since years.
> It's the glue. It can corrode the top layer.
An additional problem with sticker labels is that they mechanically deform the media. It is then more difficult to read it. When this adds up with other aging effects, the sticker-labelled CD "dies" earlier than non-labelled CDs.
50 -> 157 km/h in 4 seconds... This must be quite a powerful car.
> even the smallest Windows virus won't fit in 32K.
I once wrote a C64 virus (but didn't put it in the wild). It occupied 9 blocks,
and if I recall correctly, one block as 512 bytes. It was a "link virus", meaning
that it attached itself to every file that was executed while the virus was
resident in memory. It was a kind of proof-of-concept, because back in those days
link viruses were a new invention. People claimed they could not affect the C64
(but only "those new" Amiga and PC DOS type of computers).
The 9 blocks covered only the reproduction code, no payload, and it actually worked.
It basically added code to the end of the file, and replaced the first few bytes
by a call to the virus code. A copy of the original first few bytes was kept to
"fix" the executable image in RAM after making the virus code resident.
For FPS games like Quake3, nothing beats dialup. The ping time on an ISDN line can be as low as 10ms. On DSL you have 90ms typically (due to FEC interleaving). Analog 56K is worse (~250ms), and only topped by Satellite (>500ms).
If you really want to compete in Q3, you have to get ISDN.
The sales people are not your enemies. They may be annoying from time to time, but they are the ones who convert your knowledge and work into money, money that pays your salary. They are your friends, you should support them where possible.
> Unfortunatly McAffee requires registration/drm product activation to use it.
>
> Of course I can always lie about my email address but my guess is before long
> they will require for you to recieve an email to use the product like many forums.
Answer #1: McAfee already requires the email for some features, eg manually initiated download of updates.
Answer #2: Check out www.spamgourmet.com which is a very easy to use (and free) email forwarding service. You can have it forward eg the first 5 emails from McAfee and then silently "eat" all future emails. After the initial registration there's no need to go back to the site to get more "disposable" email addresses, they came up with a nice solution.
Marc
You may want to try Opera. It lets you configure the number of simultanous connections to servers. If you increase it to 100 or so, you will have to wait once for the HTML, and once more for all the images.