Couldn't this be mitigated by redirecting all DNS packets to corporate DNS servers and logging all requests for something else?

But does it talk to you about the weather or other small talk like stuff that the hair was (usually girl) does at the hair cut place? At least have it say stuff like "wow, that's really funny" or "yup yup"...

More like Species 8472

Change the port and use private certificates for authentication.

However, changing the port to something will get the bots off your back. They still don't try other ports.

wxWidgets (aka wxWindows) does windowing, sockets, thread. I am not sure about DB, but I think it does. I haven't used it for DB yet.

Just the workarounds for the floating point math must be cool to see. Or the optimizations they would use in a simulation like this.

If everyone started connecting to many other random other services on the network all the time, you could effectively hide in the crowds. Just make sure that the connections last long enough to be meaningful. Something like a web spider that constantly probes at a specific data rate. Throw in some sophistication with regards to data transfer, repition of connnections, etc and you may be able to hide. Also, if enough people do it, it will cost the ISP much to store the information and make it irrelivant. The trick is to make your browsing look random, which can be difficult; also you would need to filter for stuff like child porn and other stuff you definitely do not want associated with yourself.

This must have been a bureaucrat level 34 or better that started this. A 35 wouldn't know how to fill out the proper acquisition forms.

You can do it "well" on a dual core with 4GB of ram. Even less, but with todays prices you can get a system for a couple hundred if you watch for sales. RAM is you biggest killer that you will notice. Then again, with quad cores with VM assistance going for under $200CDN, thats relatively cheap. If you're worried about HD performance a couple 500GB drives striped will give you over 100MB/s of read speed a relatively small investment.

Yes, I believe the MS gamebook says to Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. Or as their competitors liked to say EEE!!!!