Internet mode as default

[EricL]

There is a risk if some hacker out there sniffs this up and want to exploit it. I just hope Internet mode can only transfer bot data and not any data.

It only transfers bot and population files and then only attempts to load them as bots within DB.  In particular it does not listen on any port nor attempt to run anything out of process.  Replacing a bot file with an arbitrary exe would accomplish nothing.   I can think of no feasible exploit of DB's internet mode and I can claim some expertise in the area.

[EricL]

I just tried 2.43r and on load it immediately started asking me to load up a bunch of bots that I did not have (Martian tank etc). Hitting cancel helped, but it was a bit annoying. I assume the program hooked up to internet, because some bots appeared and a sim got started.  I could not open any internet-mode graphs (species or sims populations). The new "internet" icon had a green and red computers. I clicked on it, got "error 5" and program froze.

It is asking you for bots you don't have because those bots are named in the lastexit.set file, which you did not delete.    They are named there becuase the last time you existed, those bots were in your sim.   You don't have the DNA files for them becuase they arn't native to your machine - they teleported in when you were running Internet Mode.   A true newbie user would not hit this as they would never have run Internet Mode before.  Once I finsih the new installer I'm working on, first time newbies won't have the need to install 2.11, we can dump that old version and they won't have the opportunity to run prior versions to create a lastexit.set file prior to the first time newbie path at all.

I will fix this in 2.43s so that settings files do not save non-native species.

The "error 5" problem has already been fixed for 2.43s and is described in a separate topic.

[EricL]

Maybe it's a Visual Basic driver issue somehow. Or a regional setting messing something up?

I don't think so.  I just tried it again and I found a way to make not crash. Went through the whole "Give me million of these non-existing bots" routine, sim got started, internet icon had red and green computers. Then I manually loaded up one of my older sims. Clicking on internet icon, internet got turned off. Clicked on it again and now it's all fine and dandy. So, it's not VB or other stuff, it's something about the way the program loads the very first sim during startup.

FYI, the act of loading the older sim before turning off internet mode saved you.  I add the path name of the loaded sim to the title bar, making the whole thing long enough so that when I mistakenly attempt to remove "Internet Mode" from the title in the newbie path, the titel bar name with the path of the loaded sim is now long enough not to cause a crash.  Lucky.  Fixed in 2.43s.