Posts

How fragile is the Internet?

Update June 3, 2008 Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO, joined the TWiT podcast on Sunday (posted June 2nd) and talked about the DoS attach quite extensively. Jim's a real class guy; check out what he had to say about the DoS attach, BitTorrent, and MediaDefender. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Internet TV company Revision3 suffered Denial of Service (DoS) attacks from MediaDefender . What specifically did MediaDefender do to Revision3 servers? MediaDefender flooded the Revision3 servers with 8,000 requests per second. With that type of volume, the Revision3 servers couldn't keep of with those requests, let alone legitimate requests for Revision3 content. Revision3 has posted an article with the details . From the MediaDefender website, MediaDefender, Inc. is the leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention (IPP) industry. We provide services that stop the spread of illegally traded copyrighted material over the Internet and Peer-to-Peer n

Follow Roz Savage as she rows across the Pacific

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Not many folks try to row across an ocean; Roz Savage has already rowed across the Atlantic , and Sunday morning she left from the San Fransisco Bay to row across the Pacific. You might ask, "What does this have to do with technology?" Well, Roz is keeping us all informed of her progress using technology. If you visit Roz's website, you can follower her through a tracking console that shows her current location and where she's been. This includes a date-time stamp of her last report, her speed and course, and her latitude and longitude. Perhaps that's not for you... also on her site is daily blog posts. For others, well you can track her Twitter feed , subscribe to text alerts on your phone, or listen to her podcasts (look for it to show on TWiT.TV -- the first recording happened today). Now you know why I posted this on a tech blog. And if that's not enough, get a look at her boat , it looks pretty hi-tech too.

Get a glimse of Windows 7 and the multi-touch UI

Ballmer and Gates promise a late 2009 release of Windows 7 (and not a minute too soon). Here's a brief look at the UI. Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7 I think it looks good, but I don't like the idea of reaching over my keyboard to the screen -- I think it needs to be a tablet PC to really enjoy the multi-touch screen, not unlike the Microsoft Surface product. (Of course it works well on the iPhone, too.) I also wonder how it'll work for handicapped people -- those missing fingers, hands, or even just tremors.

Firefox issue? Create a new Profile

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At work I was having trouble with any Google web property not displaying images when I used Firefox. I tried everything I could think of from changing Options to clearing cache to searching for a solution. I finally decided that setting everything back to "new install" state would have to be the way to correct it. Of course I searched Google, and I found an answer on the Mozilla site that told me that by deleting the Profile file, Firefox would create a new one and I'd be good to go. Sure enough, it worked. I did lose most (maybe all) of my Extension configurations. Deleting your Profile (manually): Close Firefox Enter %APPDATA%\Mozilla\ Firefox\Profiles\ into Run... Open the folder of the Profile you want to delete (the folder name will end with . ProfileName ) Delete prefs.js Start Firefox Well in researching this tonight to post, I discovered that I could have just created a new Profile - giving me the opportunity to see if that fixed the problem. If it did (which in

Mini-blog post stream -- in real time

I just discovered this new web service, Cover It Live , that enables bloggers to post short commentary instantly onto a website. If you're familiar with Twitter , it is similar, but with a feed for a single event. As you can see on my right-nav column, I have added my own live Twitter feed; with Cover It Live, you can add a feed for a single event as a replacement or addition to a blog article. The first example I saw was from Rafe Needleman , on his WebWare site. Rafe was blogging live (streaming) using Cover It Live while at the Google Factor Tour for Search event on Monday. I missed the live posting, but I was able to follow the commentary that he posted. I was also able to see the questions posted by those who were following Rafe. I found another example being used by a Yahoo! blog, Ball Don't Lie , where four bloggers posted commentary during the NBA Draft Lottery, followed by Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals (Celtic and Pistons). I haven't posted myself, but

Look up values in Excel

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Formula explanation clarified 22-May-08. I recently had the need to compare a long list of values with another list, and for the matches get a value from the same row. For example, if you have a long list of phone numbers and you want to find who they belong to, you could compare the phone numbers to a contact list, and for every match pull out the name. Oh, and if there is no match, you don't want to get an error message, but rather something more intelligent. It takes 4 Excel functions to do this: IF (logical_test,value_if_true,value_if_false) ISERROR : Value refers to any error value (#N/A, #VALUE!, #REF!, #DIV/0!, #NUM!, #NAME?, or #NULL!) INDEX (array,row_num,column_num) MATCH (lookup_value,lookup_array,match_type) Here's how to do it: =IF(ISERROR(INDEX(phone!$B$1:$B$25, MATCH(A8,phone!$A$1:$A$25,0))),"NA", INDEX(phone!$B$1:$B$25,MATCH(A8,phone!$A$1:$A$25,0))) (I used carriage returns for display, this should be one continuous string) phone!$A$1:$A$25 refers to

Buy GM and Ford for less than Yahoo!

John C. Dvorak posted a great opinion piece in his PC Mag column on Microsoft buying Yahoo!. He reminds us that for the same $44 billion we could by GM and Ford and have enough left to have a great party too. You could buy General Motors lock, stock, and barrel for $14 billion, name all the cars "Google Sucks," and get more bang for the buck. Heck, you'd have enough left over to buy Ford for around $16 billion, and you could name all those cars "Google Sucks More" and still have $14 billion left over for a big party. He also points out Microsoft's (lack of) success with prior mergers. Give this one a read for yourself .