Re: port -1?

From:

Eric Sosman <esosman@acm-dot-org.invalid>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:37:26 -0400

Message-ID:

<oaydnTGGqpASBujbnZ2dnUVZ_uOmnZ2d@comcast.com>

brunoredneck wrote:

I'm trying to help a friend who is going to a website that has a
system checker. She's getting this exception I don't understand:

Java version: 1.6.0_01
HTTP Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (Windows XP 5.1)
http://techsupport.esylvan.com/pccheck
next selected
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: port out of range:-1
    at java.net.InetSocketAddress.createUnresolved(Unknown Source)
    at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at
com.esylvan.pccheck.download.FileDownloadManager.downloadFiles(FileDownloadManager.java:
62)
    at
com.esylvan.pccheck.wizard.pages.DownloadWizardPage.download(DownloadWizardPage.java:
96)
    at com.esylvan.pccheck.wizard.pages.DownloadWizardPage.access
$200(DownloadWizardPage.java:22)
    at com.esylvan.pccheck.wizard.pages.DownloadWizardPage
$4.run(DownloadWizardPage.java:113)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Exception: port out of range:-1

The folks at E-Sylvan seem less then anxious to help... not a good
sign. It sounds like their system checker wizard is trying to open
port -1 to downlod a file. Does that make any sense to anyone?? I
don't remember port -1 having any significance.

I'm suggesting that my friend uninstall the JRE she has and try it
with an older version like 1.4.2. I'm grasping at straws but I wonder
if earlier JREs attached some significance to port -1??

Another straw: Is it possible that the port number is
really 65535 but was stored in a short? Maybe all that's
needed is a `port & 0xFFFF' somewhere.

(Having taken a brief look at the site, though, I find
that all my mental alarm bells are clanging and every hair
on the nape of my neck is standing on end. There is NO way
I would cough up all the information these people demand,
and NO way I would allow their software to have elevated
privileges on my computer. Not until I learned a whole lot
more about them, anyhow. The site has the appearance of a
marketing dragnet, if not an outright phishing firm or worse.
If you have reason to believe they're on the up-and-up, then
fine -- but I'll just stay here in my hole and pull it in
after me.)

--
Eric Sosman
esosman@acm-dot-org.invalid