Since subprime mortgage loans will probably mostly go away, it can’t hurt to learn how they work. Here’s a really funny slideshow that does just that:
https://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1
This is interesting (and not surprisingly, not even reported in the mainstream media). Apparently, ol’ Barry Obama is taking any and all contributions, even from other countries. This is illegal according to our Federal Election laws. He apparently has a lot of contributers in Gaza and Palestein. Check out the article here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/obamas_donor_contributions_sil.html
In sharp contrast, John McCain’s contribution records are squeaky clean. All even dollar amounts (characteristic of contributions in dollars) as opposed to Barack’s donations that have a lot of uneven amounts (like $200.45). Let’s see if NBC, CBS, or ABC even pick up on this. Think what would happen if it were found that John McCain were receiving illegal foreign contributions…
I’m actually very surprised this hasn’t been picked up on any of the major tech sites. Here’s the first sentence from the article:
“The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc.”
Wow! This would seem to be a complete reversal of the PTO’s position (patenting world+dog is ok). If true, it could certainly be beneficial for Free and Open Source software, but more importantly, it could restore some much needed creativity and competition to the tech world that now goes to filing, defending, and getting sued over patents.
Full article is here.
With all the recent hubub about ISP traffic management, I figured I’d start an article series on QOS: what it is, how it works, and where it is implemented in a network. After all, my day job is networking so I may as well share some knowledge.
Since the Internet first went commericial in the mid-90s, network traffic has grown significantly (that’s a bit of an understatement really). These days there is talk of an impending “exaflood” of network traffic - an increase of network bandwidth of epic proportions so high that all Internet traffic becomes jammed. This is little more than a theory at this point; an earlier prediction in the 1990s of a “petaflood” never actually materialized thanks to the dizzying pace of speed increases in computing power both in generic PCs and networking equipment and the phenomenal increases in network bandwidth (in the early 1990s most of the Internet was connected by 45Mbps DS3s; nowadays there are multiple 10Gbps connections between most ISPs).
The most obvious way to manage a network is to implement quality of service. QOS is called both “managed fairness” and “managed unfairness” because it attempts to provide better service for some things while providing worse service for others.
Part 1 of my QOS series lays down the foundation of QOS. Subsequent parts will discuss technologies in more detail.
Read on dear readers and learn the fundimentals of quality of service!
So over the past few days, I’ve moved my websites to new hardware. I got a used Sun Enterprise 420r and decided it was time. Pretty nice box: 4 UltraSPARC II processors at 450Mhz each, 1 Gig of RAM, and 72 GB of drive space. Of course it’s running my favorite server operating system - FreeBSD. I considered and even tried to install Solaris 10 but it was being a PITA so I threw my hands up and just downloaded the FreeBSD ISO instead. In the process, I’ve learned how to move a site and minimize the impact of doing so (not that I have a heavily trafficed site anyways). For the curious, my old hardware was a PIII 800 with 512 MB RAM and 160 GB of drive space. If the day ever comes that I need more space I can always pop in another drive. I don’t see that happening soon though.
I love the Firefox web browser. Even more than Opera. However, Firefox tends to be a memory hog. The reason for this is that once you load a web page and begin viewing it, Firefox begins prefetching the pages that are linked to the page you’re viewing. I can only assume that this is intended to make subsequent pages you click on load faster. This feature would have been great twelve years ago when everyone was on a 56Kbps dial-up modem but in today’s world of multi-megabit broadband it really isn’t needed.
One very undesirable effect prefetching has is to swell the amount of memory Firefox uses. Don’t believe me? Load up four separate web pages in four tabs and leave them idling over the weekend. When you come back, don’t be surprised if you see that the Firefox executable is using nearly 800 Megs of RAM. Yikes!
Even though you’re probably reading this on a quad core Xeon with 4 Gigs of RAM, you may as well disable prefetching so you can put your memory to other use. To do this, first open a new tab or window. Next, in the location bar, type ‘about:config’ (without the quotes). This will bring up a list of internal Firefox preferences. You can tweak many aspects of the browser but we’re interested in disabling prefetching. In the Filter field, type the word fetch. You should see a screen similar to the one below:
Simply double clicking the ‘network.prefetch-next’ value will set it to false (disable prefetching). Restart Firefox and look in amazement at how much less memory it consumes.
Now that it uses less memory, why not make it faster? Try this other tweak here.
Okay, so I’m two weeks late on posting this but it’s still exciting! I’m actively working towards the CCIP so I wanted to take this test before June so I can stick to my “study and pass a test within a reasonable timeframe” schedule. It’s pretty difficult and I actually failed it on the first try (with a 750 out of a 755 passing score. Argh!). This time around I passed with a more respectable 912.
Without divulging too much, you should definitely know all of the testing objectives cold. They can be found here. Pay particular attention to the differences between IBGP and EBGP and all of the features each offers. I used the “Internet Routing Architectures” book by Sam Halabi and it was excellent. Even if you’re not taking the BGP test, it would be a good idea to have that book on hand as a reference. Read it twice and the test should be a piece of cake.
Wrote up a new article on how to connect your home router to the IPv6 Internet. Have fun visiting all 10 IPv6-enabled websites ; ) Check it out here - article.
Interesting article back from 1975 on how the earth was experiencing “global cooling”. You might see some interesting parallels with the hysteria about “global warming” going on today. Check it out here - Article.
Ok, so I finally got frustrated with the whole situation in my previous post and decided I would try to revert my firmware back to 1.1.1 (what the iPod Touch shipped with when I bought it). It was slightly tricky but not too difficult. In a nutshell, you will need:
* A Windows computer (can be 2000 or XP)
* iTunes 7.5
* The 1.1.1 firmware
* Nerves of steel
Just kidding about that last one. Seriously, I don’t understand why you can’t do this on a Mac, but whatever.
First, download iTunes 7.5 from here (link) and install it.
Next, download the 1.1.1 firmware from here (link) and put it in a safe spot.
Now, the fun part. Hope your iPod’s data has been backed up. Connect your iPod to your Windows machine with the USB cable. iTunes will tell you it belongs to another library and that you will need to erase it if you want to sync it to this computer’s library. Go ahead and do so. I think you can probably ignore the warning but I’m not sure if the iPod will show up in iTunes.
Once that’s done, make sure you are on the iPod sync screen. Next, hold down both the home button and the power button at the same time. The home button is the round button at the bottom of the iPod and the power button is the small square button at the top. Once the iPod disappears from iTunes, release the power button but continue to hold the home button. A screen should appear saying you’re in recovery mode. Bingo!
Now, hold the shift key on the keyboard and click the restore button on the iPod sync screen. You should now be able to select the firmware file you just downloaded. Select it and let iTunes restore the firmware. Now you’re back in business! You can now re-jailbreak your iPod (if that’s what you wanna do) or just bask in the glow of not having to see that annoying nag screen again. If you buy music from the iTunes store you will want to follow my previous post to undo the changes you made to your hosts file. Though, if you’re as frustrated as I was, I doubt you’ll want to anymore.
As an aside, I find it a bit saddening that Apple is becoming the new Microsoft. They really have changed into something I no longer like. I remember early this decade when Mac OS X first came out and it seemed as though Apple was the little guy who had finally had some legs to stand on. Now they just want to sell you overpriced hardware and could care less about treating you as a customer. I guess when you’re winning you don’t care who you walk all over. Lame.
