I went to a local Safeway grocery store to buy some milk the other day. Once I picked up the desired half gallon of milk I went directly to the Express Line because I had only one item. The line clearly says 15 items or less. I noticed that in front of me the two ladies had a huge pile of groceries and quietly talking to each other how they want to sneak in and pretend they didn’t know it was 15 items or less line. Once it was their turn the cashier lady patiently was assisting and registering each of the item from this huge pile. Once done the cashier made a note to the two ladies that this is the Express line just so they know next time. The two ladies said “Oh, we’re so sorry. We didn’t know it was an express line.” and left the store. I was next in the line with my half gallon of milk, paid for it quickly and went directly home.

Once I got home and opened the Safeway bag. Other than my milk, to my surprise I found a Chapstick. It appeared I was even charged for it $1 and I didn’t even notice that. I immediately remembered that the two ladies in front of me had this Chapstick in their pile of groceries and somehow it got into cashier’s hands when it was my turn.

Frankly I don’t really use Chapstick and I don’t like this brand anyway. One dollar is not much money, but I really felt like returning this thing and getting $1 refund which I did the following morning.

Have you had similar mess ups?

As Apple is gaining impressive share of its computers and Mac OSX, they should stop showing this hate and continue strongly compete with Windows. There is no need to keep adding oil into the fire. To users who like and use both Windows and Macintosh, this is just unpleasant and unnecessary. But anyway, it’s kind of ironic and funny that Apple did this.

First of all, many news outlets are misunderstanding the whole concept of IP addresses and reporting it incorrectly. They claim that 98% is used and only 2% left unused which is incorrect. By ‘used’ a networking professional would understand as the IP address being actually configured to a specific computer or device, active and live on the network. Even if 100% of IPv4 addresses allocated to ISPs which happens this year, it does not mean that all 100% of IPs currently in use. In fact out of all allocated IPv4 addresses only about 3/4 is really used, reused and live on the Internet.

Second, why create a panic and rush everyone to switch to IPv6? Other than marketing by many big corporations and making a lot of money on IPv6 stickers and labels, there is no real technical reason.

IPv6 technology was created couple decades ago so it’s not new to any network hardware manufactures and 100% of all switches and routers on the market today support IPv6. All operating systems support IPv6 as well.

When companies really run out of all their IPv4 reserves they will slowly start using IPv6 as they go. There is no need to actually migrate all IPv4 networks to IPv6 by changing IP addresses on all computers and devices.

IPv4 address is a 32-bit address. There are only 4,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses possible. As an example an IPv4 address looks like 8.8.248.248. It is short, easy to remember and convenient to work with. It is similar to a vanity phone number that we all prefer using when calling our favorite businesses.

IPv6 addresses are 128-bit. An example of such an address is fe80::70cc:dad4:a37d:e26a%13:. This IPv6 is actually active on one of the networks and blocked by firewall so it’s not accessible to the public. All professional computer networks use a static IP address assigned to a particular server. Imagine spelling out that IPv6 address over the phone to a network engineer who is troubleshooting a router in a loud datacenter.

There can be 3,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 IPv6 addresses. That should be enough for our lifetime, comparing to only 4,294,967,296 that we ran out in 2 decades of Internet growth.

Because there are more than 4 billion computers and other devices that use Internet connection on the planet, IPv4 was not maxed out thanks to a NAT (Network Address Translation) technology that is used by most offices, homes and cell phones. NAT translates external ISP IP address and your internal home address. It creates a home network like 192.168.0.15 and your friend across the city can have the same home IP without conflicting with yours. Two different business or corporate networks can have the same IP 10.10.1.15 on their internal NAT’ed networks and work with no issues. With IPv6 there is no need for NAT and each device on the planet can have its own unique IPv6 address.

There are pros and cons for using IPv4 with NAT and IPv6 without NAT. NAT works almost like a firewall on your home router where you can browse Internet freely, but a hacker will not be able to get into your home computer. With IPv6 and absence of NAT, a hacker will have a direct access to your home computer, so you’d better use hardware or software firewall. Though some might say that IPv6 is more secure because IPsec – a security protocol is built-in and is a requirement on all IPv6 networks, in reality most IPv4 networks are configured to use IPsec in all home and business routers as well.

Some companies advertise that they support IPv6 and force customers to switch as if this is some kind of advantage and outstanding step to be better than the others. But in reality that company was forced to use IPv6 as a desperate move because they ran out of nice IPv4 addresses.

For example, ASPnix Web Hosting supports IPv6. A few paragraphs above IPv6 address is a live sample taken just by pinging one of the servers on the network. But the great news for all ASPnix customers that ASPnix has huge reserves of IPv4 addresses that will last for at least 5 more years. Customers can enjoy using their dedicated IP addresses at ASPnix and remember the nice vanity addresses such as 8.8.248.248 or even 8.8.248.8.

So I hope it’s now clearer what this is all about and eventually we’ll all be using IPv6, but there is absolutely no need to panic and rush to switch from current IPv4 to IPv6 protocol.

The city of Rome, once the centre of the Roman Empire and now the keeper of an invaluable artistic heritage and a landmark destination for millions of tourists, deserves its own Internet Address.

Everyone knows about .com, .net and .org and course there’s .it for domain names. Wouldn’t it be great to have a chance to register a .ROMA domain like hotel.ROMA, shopping.ROMA or travel.ROMA?

For years our team has been working hard at bringing .ROMA to life and letting Romans — people, businesses, associations and institutions — get a .ROMA domain name to use for email and web sites. Now, finally, ICANN (the group that approves new web addresses) is going to allow .ROMA to move forward.

You can enjoy using ra.vg for your twitter needs because ra.vg supports API. For this you will need to contact api@ra.vg to get you API access. It takes just a few minutes. Also just in case you need you can contact ra.vg support at help@ra.vg

Now look at the tags they used. How unethical can they be to use a tag “death” for this sad news? Shame on you, Slashdot!

UPDATE:

I got lots of feedback on this post and decided to dig more about the topic. It appears it’s not the first time news outlets pronounce Steve Jobs dead. This is so sad. Couple years ago Bloomberg even wrote an Obituary and electronically distributed by mistake.

What do you think? Would you use such tags about a living person?

I just can’t have any single program outdated on personal computers. If there is a windows or mac update I have to update it the second it came out and became available. I would signup for all possible nightly builds and update constantly all my programs.

On linux I have to run “apt-get update” and “yum update” every hour to see if there’s an update available

iPhone Apps? Have to check if there’s new update for my 197 apps every hour

What about you?

Also discussion on Forums

The fraudsters try to come up with new ways to fool us into thinking it’s a real customer so we accepted the order and later we would get a chargeback request because the credit card number that used was stolen.
This is from todays signup.

Update:

This story did not end yesterday. Today we got a Texas ID from this client trying to prove he was real. I will not go into details how we determine fraud, but we had a great laugh at the office. Some day I might share more on this interesting topic.

Notice the new tabs and the settings on the right. It’s looking so much better than the previous version, but when clicking on Calendar or other tabs you loose the interface. So looks like Google is still working on updates and interface unification across other sites.

What do you think? yay/nay?

I’m a big fan of taking pictures, but I never liked bulky professional D-SLR cameras even though I respect them. If I ever buy one, I would be lazy to take it with me all the time. I’ve had a few cameras in past, but today I own and enjoy my Panasonic DMC-FX48.

It’s time to take my words back. As I said I always respected the D-SLR cameras but had problem caring it around. Well, the quality of images that it takes cannot be compared even close to soup-bar cameras and it’s worth caring the bigger D-SLR camera with you.

The other reason I was finally sold is that Nikon released this new D3100 is an upgrade of D3000 which was an upgrade from even older D40. The new D3100 is much much lighter and feels incredibly firm in my hands. It weighs only 16 oz (455g)!

Additionally to the stock camera I purchased a UV filter which other than protecting lenses from UV Sun light and making all colors much stronger also protects lenses from scratches which was my initial intent.

Like on all my gadgets, I got a Zagg InvisibleShield to protect the 3″ display from scratches. The shield is indeed invisible and I don’t notice it at all.

One of the unique features that I feel is worth mentioning here and I think is amazing for someone like me who switched from non-DSLR camera is that this Nikon D3100 can preview in Live what you are going to shoot not only via viewfinder, but actually on the LCD display similar to what you see on non-DSLR cameras. This camera can also shoot a 1080p HD Video with sound and has VR lenses to help agains vibrations.

I started shooting in RAW+JPEG mode which records two files of each shot into my 8GB HighSpeed SD card in a stunning 14 megapixel and 4608 x 3072 resolution, but today I disabled RAW and will now shoot only in JPEG until I actually feel a need for RAW.

I have five image management applications: Picasa for Mac, iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture. I have also installed Nikon ViewNX2. Which program I use I will tell you in a separate post and will do some comparisons and reviews of the each piece of software.

Couple sample shots for you:

And some home-made sushi:

I’ll keep experimenting and maybe will post some new shots here soon. I highly suggest this camera to anyone!

If you have any comments or suggestions please post below.