Why 3583 Bytes & What’s With the Blue Box?

My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20; it had 3583 bytes of available memory. That’s about 1 millionth of a modern laptop! So little memory, but still so much you could do with it. While all the cool kids had a Commodore 64, the really cool ones hacked away on their Commodore Vic-20s!

Vic20 Ready Screen - 3583 Bytes Free

The standard Commodore Vic20 greeted user with “3583 BYTES FREE”; Ready.
Amazing tech for the early 80s!

I hope to be able to communicate and introduce complex security ideas in about 500-600 words – about the same amount of memory available for a whole Vic-20 program.

The 3583byte articles aren’t intended to make you an expert on a topic. Instead, they’re supposed to raise questions and provide you with some background on an issue. With so few bytes to use, I need to get straight to the point!

So, when you see the blue box at the bottom of a post like so:

PRINT FRE(0)
 2338

READY.

You’ll know I made it with 2338 bytes free memory to spare! 🙂

I have some longer reads too; these articles will explore in-depth issues and information about my (our) research in detail. But, really, are you here to read a paper on “A Network Timestamp Verification Mechanism for Forensic Analysis” (Hampton & Baig, 2016) — or do you just want to know what’s going on in the security/tech world? 🙂