obduro

If you would re-read my post you might notice that I do not justify virus creaters, if they release their "products" into the wild. However, I believe that releasing a virus into an isolated enviroment can be both educational and entertaining as it can teach you quite a bit about computer networks, OS in a network enviroment and so on. By the way 5614. Comparing a virus to a terrorist attack is not that a strong argument against them. Consider for example this, do you think your government wouldn't use one if it was more or less just as effective as sending in the army, with the slight advantage of being a lot safer? Would you still call it a terrorist attack? (Although the above example is not very descriptiv it is still valid). As for you pulkit. Writing a virus is a good way to hone your skills. Now. I have no intention to discuss this any further as it is off topic (and I'm ill).

In general, viruses are neither pointless nor uncreative, some viruses are indeed true master pieces, others are usualy test/failed projects or remakes. Computer viruses, just like their biological counterparts simply want to multiply and the results of such actions are merely unavoidable side effects. What makes a virus a master piece then? It's simply the method by which it fulfills its purpose. I personaly admire polymorphic viruses and their creators (NOTE: In no way do I incline that they do nothing wrong. Indeed they are fully responsible for any damage their creation causes, and should these actions be against their societies established rules then they should be punished accordingly), since those are among the most difficult to stop. Simply because it's so hard to create a usefull signature of one. Even a heuristic scan has trouble detecting it. What you described as a virus, 5614, is by my definition a malware.

FSB stands for Front Side Bus and it's used by the microprocessor to communicate with other hardware inside the computer, like memory. It is possible to overclock your machine this way but that is not recommended since with higher speeds of the bus (above 100 MHz) the possiblity for error is also higher. It does sound interesting that they were capable to get the CPU up to 5 GHz

Don't worry 5614, pretty much all I know is self learned too, and I have to agree with you about schools and what little (if anything) you can learn about computers if you had enough exposure to it before. Imagin this, I'm 18 and when I started at the business school last year the first chapter in our IT books was about how to turn on the computer. Following that the book was filled with chapters on how to use the different software you get in a Microsoft Office pack. I'm not saying that they shouldn't teach that stuff because there are many people who know nothing about computers, and couldn't care less. But I think that you should have the option to opt-out of those classes if you already know the stuff and can prove it, because for me it was a torture to sit there 60 minutes and explore schools network, for 10th time...I even made a few homepages in those classes simply to kill the time.

In my opinion this issue is caused by Zone Alarm. The same behavior can be observed with 2 3rd party software firewalls run simultanesly. The same thing goes for anti-virus software and so on. The reason for this is because both firewalls need priority access to your network card(or modem if that's what you use) in order to decide what to let trough and what not. Now you can imagine what is going on in there where both are taking over the control from each other...chaos...with unpredictable consequences I would recommend you to turn off you windows firewall, trust me you won't miss it because Zone Alarm is far more advanced. The windows firewall is pretty much the simplest firewall you can get, it blocks all unrequest incoming traffic, just like a routers hardware firewall. the only diference is that routers firewalls can be configured while windows firewall has all options hard-coded.

I assure you 5614 that my knowledge is rather limited, and in my opinion I spend far less time learning then I should. But I hope that will change soon

The link FireDragon52 provided seems good, rather similar to what I found myself: http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

If I remember/understood it correctly then it's: 1) Background radiation. 2) Expansion of the univers. 3) hmmm...Nothing seems to pop up...

Couldn't agree more.

The answer is simple and you probably already know it...MONEY!!!! Although they have to make a decent product and provide good support for it if they hope to earn anything. So although their 1st priority is to make cash, they have to balance that with spending cash first to improve their product. And with the recent increase in competition (Mac OS X, linux, etc...) they have really pulled themselves toghether(or at least they might be getting desperate, judging by some of the ridicules ideas they came up with lately ).

The script kiddy mode applies only if you won't spend time to learn how the tools you download acctualy do their job. If that's the way you want to go you should remember that any "abnormal" activity intentionaly directed from and/or towards a machine you do not own, or have not been granted a permission if you do not, is illegal. In some cases it might cause you problems to simply use a network (the internet, or at least a part of it that belongs to an ISP, etc...), even though you have the appropiate rights for both machines. That is why I strongly suggest you build your own network to experiment on. Having said that, make a search for a trojan server and client...install the trojan server on the target machine and the client on your own...tunnel the connection trough a firewall(if any) and that's about it. (the short, undescriptive version you could learn anywhere on the internet). A word of warning regarding trojan clients, their makers usualy include a small server into them so that they may connect to them the same way you connect to the server on the target machine. But that shouldn't make a difference if you isolate the sandbox network from the rest of the internet.

An out-of-the-box installation of windows might be garbage, but once you learn how to tweak and bend it to fit your needs it starts to show its beautiful side Before anyone starts bashing me and labeling me as a Windows lover or Microsoft employee, know that I used to think as you do, that windows sucks. But then a wise person showed me the truth. There is no one OS that is better then the other. They are all equal as they all have been made to fit different roles, or to fit the same role in a different way. Besides, you can't judge what you don't understand. (NOTE: My last statement does not imply that everyone who says that any single OS sucks doesn't know anything about that particular OS) EDIT: Forgot to mention that I also have linux on my notebook and prefer to use linux as a server on the network that I administer, as in my opinion it's much easier to configure.

The routers firewall wouldn't cause any compatibility problems with windows built-in firewall, that is why I asked him if he has a 3rd party software firewall on the same machine

How rude of me. Here I am posting around the forums without coming here to introduce myself first... Well here it goes. I have been lurking on SFN for quite some time now and I have already learned a lot. When in the "real" world (I day dream whenever I can ), I am a 2nd year student at a local Business school. After my 3rd year I plan to take a quick 2½ year of a programming "course". Following that I hope to continue at a university going for the bachelor degree in Software Engineering (if by the time I get that I will still be interested in going to school, I'll look into getting myself a master degree). My level of knowledge in the area of computers is, by my own estimates, between intermediate and advanced. I don't drink alcohol, don't smoke or take drugs. I even prefer not to take medication unless it's nesecary, usualy waiting untill headaches or other pain passes by itself (which remainds me that on average I have 1-3 headaches a year). Well, I think that's about it. As you can see I'm a very boring person Oh and almost forgot...I'm an 18 (soon 19) years old male

In my opinion dave is on the right track...linux is still capable of running on those ancient machines with just 66 MHz and 4 MB ram...it would make a good machine to learn on how an open source OS works, by manipulating with the kernel and stuff...see if you can break into it over the network...the possibilities are endless. Otherwise you could frame your motherboard and hand it on a wall A crule reminder to your existing machines of what happens when they become obsolete.