renaissance poisson

you probably don't need this advisory, because you better know what you're doing.

microsoft has released a patch for the latest security problem. if it's not coming down the pike for you automatically, read the release bulletin, which will also point you at the update centre where you can download it. note that contrary to lots of suspicion in the blogosphere this doesn't appear to require upgrading either from windows 98/ME nor from XP SP1.

if you followed the directions in the post i pointed at, you should now uninstall the unofficial patch (from control panel -> add/remove software). you can do so either before or after installing M$'s patch.

the state of the piranha: cranky, tired, but not unhappy per se, just mired in tedium. i've been incessantly fighting with my system, trying to get my video card driver upgraded to handle a newer version of openGL for a new piece of software to run adequately, which is a horrid chore -- install a driver, reboot, find out whether it works, uninstall, reboot, rinse, lather, repeat. dear toshiba: you suck. just because nvidia's reference drivers rule doesn't mean you should have just fallen down on the job of keeping a finger on the pulse. so now they no longer support the card; how about you do?

this explains my absence in IM. i am not keeping up with LJ or email either; sorry everyone. but all this rebooting is getting me to pare my startups down. ghod, how overloaded windows gets with crap that people decide should all run at startup time. ASK ME whether i want it or not! period cleaning; not just for spring anymore.

XP service pack 2 quietly limits the TCP-IP stack to 10 simultaneous connection attempts. ostensibly this was done to avoid the spreading of worms, which is all good and well -- except that i fucking want to be TOLD what is being done to my system, and i want to be given the option to ignore microsoft's idea of "best practices". i know, this must be so hard for bill to believe, but some of us do know what we're doing with our systems, and -- *gasp* -- we actually know better than him!

that limit is a problem for any applications that open a lot of TCP connections -- such as p2p programs. it'll slow them down. why is that so? TCP connections are initiated with a 3-way handshake: the client sends a SYN packet, and waits expectantly for a SYN and ACK response from the server. once the client gets that, it sends back an ACK. as long as the initial response from the server hasn't been received, the connection is "half-open", and the client waits for a certain period of time before giving up (and trying again a bit later). limiting the number of half-open connections means any further attempts to initiate a connection are put into a queue and have to wait their turn. windows will also consider writing to the event log. all of this takes processing time away from actually exchanging data.

if your system event log contains several 4226 events each day, this is happening to you. there is alas no registry fix, but you might want to grab ahold of the patch that's available; it allows you to raise the limit. the defaut of 50 should work fine, and still provide protection against the fast spreading of worms (if you are worried about that), but you can rerun the patch with a higher limit if you still find a lot of 4226 events in your event log.