The CDN just sends you to the edge servers that are closest peer to the DNS server. I thought there was a very elaborate geolocation scheme, but there is not. They merely use the location of the DNS server that resolves your query.

I was so disappointed. There is no magic. They do not know nor care about the end user's IP address. The CDN just sends you to the edge servers that are closest peer to the DNS server. Certain companies actually seem to own patents on this simple technique.

For public wireless networks, there is a popular solution to extract revenue, aptly named the Revenue eXtraction Gateway, or rXg, by http://www.rgnets.com/. It explicitly and effectively works by filtering content and inserting advertisements along with the usual wireless gateway tricks.

This is an honest revenue extraction service and, while it can be done at the ISP level, it does not pack affiliate cookies. It's probably one of the more legitimate ones available. It does require a significant back-end infrastructure to support its operations, though, which may or may not cover expenses.

Yes, that is, if the CDN has also implemented EDNS0 extensions, which some have not.

Thanks for the info!

Saw this in Reddit this morning but thanks for reposting it.

Seriously, the drawback to using public DNS like OpenDNS and Google DNS is that they present a serious performance problem.

Even though the physical DNS servers are "anycast" and geographically diverse, the IP addresses are still the same. Threrefore, the large content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai and LimeLight still use the IP address of the DNS server to judge your location.

Therefore, any service that uses a CDN (even Google's use them in spite of their own network) will really serve your content out of a data center that is not geographically or logically near your machine's location.

The article (if you read it) mentions that his ISP, like most that have similar revenue-extracting services, really does offer alternative DNS servers that do not pack affiliate cookies. You should use those if you want to enjoy high-performance, edge-serve content via Akamai (AKAM) and LimeLight (LLNW).

Otherwise, you'll all get your edge content served from some random data center in the central USA.

RSA SecurID tokens have absolutely nothing at all to do with this.

Having worked with pre-2000 versions of RSA BSAFE, the thing that the NSA paid RSA to do was to change the default selection of the random number generator with a weaker one. Nobody had to use the default version--it was just picked if you didn't specify one (or a callback to your own RNG). We had our own multi-threaded rendezvous noise generator thing since this was back before hardware entropy engines.

Oh, and before that, the NSA had unsuccessfully tried to get RSA to tell people that 512-bit keys were safe enough. It wasn't successful mostly because the old guard was still running the company then.

In our area, the phone company, before installing FiOS, installed these boxes on the telephone poles that had miniature DSLAMs on them about seven or eight years ago. A side-effect of this project was nearly perfect 56k connections (which cannot be reached due to FCC limitations, but whatever).

It's not the same kind of "digital" line that you're thinking of when talking about DSL, but it was much better than it was more than ten years ago when I dropped my faulty cable modem for 56k dialup for a few months time.

We all probably know that AOL has Turboweb, now called TopSpeed, which compresses graphics. On broadband you have to specifically turn it on by clicking "TopSpeed" and "Use AOL Proxies for broadband" and "Always compress graphics" and "Turn on maximum graphics compression" for extreme cases. It works very, very well on 768 kbps DSL.

If you don't use AOL, you can use a number of accelerator programs but they constantly come and go. One of them is known as Slipstream but there are many more. They work just like AOL by using proxies that compress the graphics.

More on the period: At this time I had been a die-hard TRS-80 Color Computer aficionado but I did appreciate the advances in which the Commodore camp had triumphed. I eventually embraced, for better or worse, the Commodore Amiga line, from 16- to 32-bit both in AmigaOS and Amiga Unix.

While not originally designed under the auspices of Commodore, the Amiga was also designed with VLSI custom chips. The prototype did not have the chips available, either. Instead, their larger-scale prototypes were the size of a small room. The booth they used at a trade show to demonstrate the Amiga was designed to hide the fact that the walls of the booth itself consisted of the prototypes of the custom chips hidden behind curtains.

It would be cool if we could find a photograph of it.

RIP Jay Miner.

The Raspberry Pi is great for software hacking.

The Arduino is great for both software hacking and hardware hacking.

The Pi can be expanded to add effective hardware abilities, but it's more of a software platform. The Arduino is much better for hardware hacking.

I'm glad to see they are both being offered. Just don't offer a soldering iron kit with the Raspberry Pi. That's for the Arduino.

It's the whole "getting stranded" thing that doesn't exist with conventionally-fueled vehicles. I don't want to get a $300 towing charge to a recharger just because I want to drive around.

I think fuel cells are the real answer. Batteries, even the express battery replacement option, won't answer the demand for people who don't want to get stranded in their overpriced electric vehicle.

This is just reality.

This is the single most important factor in a successful Raspberry Pi installation. Get a good power supply. The merchants selling Pi kits have the best-tested power supplies. I have a revision 1 Model B, a revision 2 Model B, and one of the newer Model As. The power supply matters much more on the rev 1 Model B than the rev 2 B or Model A.

The second most important factor is that you have to factor the power being drawn by all USB devices plugged into the Pi. I know I don't have to tell people this, but USB hubs must be externally powered, and that hub must also not be providing the power to the Raspberry Pi. Model A doesn't have ethernet so you can use that power for a wireless adapter, BlueTooth, or one of those handy USB Y-cable hubs.

There wasn't a cheap and affordable Arduino until some time after the Raspberry Pi models came out.

Of course, adding the I/O daughterboards puts the price a little higher. Most of them cost more than the most expensive Pi model does which is probably why the Arduino is so expensive.

Oh, and that 16-megabyte framebuffer in the Pi at such a low price makes the platform very compelling.

Sears was the target of multiple TV news magazine scandals in the 1990s. NBC had an axe to grind with Sears and pummeled them on Dateline. As a result, Sears exited the full-service Sears Auto Center market but kept installing batteries and tires.

Some Sears Auto Center locations remained in operation as Sears Tire Centers with a side business of installing batteries, but even the battery upsell business was targeted by a new wave of TV news magazine "scandal" reports.

After the battery upsell "scandal" (there really wasn't one), Sears had finally had enough with the auto centers. Some Sears Auto Centers changed into Sears Tire Centers which only sold tires and nothing else. Some contracted to independent firms like Jiffy-Lube and retained much of their former Sears Auto Center function but without the Sears liability.

Other locations were abandoned in-place and their environmental problems were remediated and the sites sat as polluted, idle brownfields with an unexpected future potential. These are the stand-alone buildings that sit in the parking lot, separate from the main mall building. These are apparently going to be the data centers.

It's a brilliant plan. Stable power and lots of cooled, open space, in bunker-like buildings with plenty of city water. Ideal data center locations.

But they still smell like used motor oil.