UPC Breaks the Internet

UPC continues to manage to make me irate, today its the fact that *every domain* whether it exists or not, on UPC it exists. How is this so? because UPC has unilaterally decided that should a website, server, or domain not exist that they will serve advertising to me instead – how very helpful (sarcasm!).

Only its not at all helpful. Most modern browsers have the option already at the application level, without breaking the inherent functionality of the Internet. Effectively this is what happens:

• if a website exists, UPC will give you its correct IP Address.
• if a website does not exist, UPC will pretend to be that website, and give you the IP Address of a server in the United States, which currently shows a search page with advertisements.

There is a couple of issues I have with this. First and foremost, I’m already paying a hefty fee by European standards for my Internet access, and don’t appreciate having my internet experience co-opted so that my ISP can earn an extra buck or two… particularly when I did not sign up to this!

Secondly is the privacy concerns this raises, if every domain thats misspelled goes to this server in the US, what is stopping UPC from simply logging all these requests – privacy laws are much more lax in the United States than here in Europe. Particularly why this is worrying is there is no other obvious motive for having the server over there in the first place, why not a Dublin hosting provider? I’m very suspicious of this.

This is in direct contradiction to how the Internet, or any network for that matter, is designed to work. If something your looking for doesnt exist, whatever program is looking for it has functionality to handle that absence smartly. Since all domain queries return a site address, its fairly obvious that applications that rely on being able to know if a site no longer exists will stop functioning correctly. This will likely be a subtle change and not something thats readily obvious to the observer – which makes those of us with home networks have even more overhead to deal with. Thanks UPC!

If you feel this is all a bit too much, you can change your DNS settings to the following, which I’m assured by UPC tech support will not behave badly when a site doesnt exist:

1. 89.101.160.8
2. 89.101.160.9

You can also use the various free dns providers out there.

Getting self-signed SSL certificates to work on Firefox 3.5

Theres alot of discussion lately about Mozilla’s decision to annex self-signed certificates in Firefox 3.x; up until now Firefox would have grudgingly lived with self-signed certificates – when reaching a website that was self-signed all you had to do was click the ‘add exception’ link at the bottom of the warning message, but no more!

When you visit a website that secures itself with a self-signed SSL certificate your now more likely to recieve a much more ominous warning telling you that the certificate is invalid and no obvious way to allow you to proceed regardless.

Having recently setup a secure subversion repository I had this exact problem also. This morning I found a solution, its not ideal but it works perfectly. To make Firefox play nice you have to add your CA (certificate authority) certificate AND your server certificate to Firefox’s list of allowed authorities, then and only then do you get the option to add the server as an exception. Here’s how you do it:

You will need a local copy of the ca.crt and server.crt certificate files.

Open the certificates window

Firefox Preferences -> Advanced Tab -> Encryption -> View Certificates

Import your Certificate Authority file

Authorities Tab -> Click Import -> Browse to your ca.crt file

Import your Server Certificate file

Servers Tab -> Click Import -> Browse to your server.crt file

Thats it! Next time you visit your website (https://mywebsite.com/ for example) you should now be able to add an exception to allow the self-signed certificate.

Reaching the Firefox preferences window differs slightly from OS to OS. In Mac OS X its Firefox -> Preferences, in Linux its often Edit -> Preferences and in Windows its Tools -> Preferences. Its beyond me why Mozilla couldn’t keep it consistent, but there you go.

I hope this post helped you.

@dubtwestival pics n’ things

I went to the Dublin Twestival (@dubwestival on twitter) last night. It’s described as a ‘festival’ of twitterers to meet, drink and chat, and to give to charity.

In fairness ‘festival’ is a bit of a stretch, the Dublin Twestival was hilarious for the pure fact that me and Phil were quite possibly the youngest people at the event, of about 120+ and had somewhat of a 30-40s singles club vibe for a while.

That said, it was good fun! Free drinks were definitely had, while they were available. It was all for a good cause, the water charity, so a couple of raffles were held…..I won twice!!! how awesome is that?!

We spent most the night just joking about how we were the youngest there, talking geek, and how the crowed seemed much more ‘normal’ than we expected.

I won a ‘vibrating directors chair’ and a normal wooden directors chair – carrying them home, in addition to my bag which was already overladen with two laptops (my new laptop was delivered to work a couple of hours earlier), after having a few drinks, was…interesting!

Met a couple good people too: @redmum @martharotter @qhussain @kevin_noonan

Heres a few pics I took with my blackberry (not an iphone!! )

The Future of Computing is Google – Should we be worried?

The Future of Computing is Google – Should We Be Worried?
By Jonathan Huie

I didn’t just say that Google is the future of the Internet – that is scary enough – and virtually true today. I said, The Future of COMPUTING.

Google has always been a gentle giant – unlike the bravado Microsoft. No rantings and ravings – no pronouncement that “our way is best,” or “we know what is good for you.” No, Google’s way is to welcome open standards and actively promote their competition. For example, their tool to move a blog off their (free) Blogger service is fully as complete and usable as their their tool to transfer a blog onto Blogger. Try getting your data out of a Microsoft product such as Outlook or Hotmail.

Perhaps Google has learned from Microsoft’s mistakes. Gentle wins in the long run. This is really good for Google, but is it good for the rest of us. Because Google take such great pains to offend no one, because it is so capable, and because it now has tremendous momentum, Google is taking over more of the world of technology every day.

Google completely dominates my own professional life as an author and blogger to an extent that is more than a little concerning. Google search and Gmail are the least of it. My blogs are on Blogger, but I could use another service. It’s not even Picasa, or YouTube, or FeedBurner.

AdSense/AdWords – that’s the stranglehold. Google is essentially the only channel for a small business to either advertise of receive advertising revenue on a website or blog. Yahoo and others aren’t even on the radar. If I had to, I could use Yahoo’s search engine, but if I lost AdSense/AdWords, 80% of my professional activity would vaporize.

In its own gentle giant kind of way, Google is now creeping up on computing and enterprise information sharing. Shared calendars and shared documents for starters – moving quickly toward a complete collaborative computing environment. Just watch – for most users, personal and corporate, the only local software will be a browser, perhaps Google’s Chrome. Google’s individual and collaborative on-line productivity and authoring applications will dominate for all but the most demanding users.

Should we be worried? Perhaps not, but don’t become too complacent.

For blogging tips, visit Jonathan’s Blogging Tips – Techniques blog.
To brighten your day, visit Jonathan’s Daily Inspiration – Quote blog.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie is an author of self-awareness books. He has been dubbed “The Philosopher of Happiness” by those closest to him, in recognition of his on-going commitment to seeing Joy in all of life.

** “Today is your day to dance lightly with life. It really is.” – jonathan lockwood huie**

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jonathan_Huie
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Future-of-Computing-is-Google—Should-We-Be-Worried?&id=1953296

Make Courage Wolf Speak!

Courage Wolf (YouTube, Kyle Brady’s Blog) is an internet meme which follows the formula:

1. Background image of a snarling wolf, starburst background behind it.
2. Two lines of text, one at the top and one at the bottom
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!

So I created an object-oriented PHP script which you can use to customise your own Courage Wolf images for… profit? or forums, blogs and/or random internet stuff -whichever comes first.

Its just a basic GD script using PHP, but I needed to brush up on my PHP skills.

Make your own [Courage Wolf images] or [download the script]

Dublin Twestival – Thurs 12th Feb

The Twestival is a global twitter community initiative to get twitterers to meet face to face and to donate to charity.

The Dublin Twestival will be held at 6pm on Thursday 12^th February 2009 at the Sycamore Club which has a max capacity of 250 people and free WIFI ‘natch.

The official Dublin Twestival blog mentions that there is no dress code, but you must be an active Twitter user.

More info at the [official Dublin Twestival 2009 website], you can also purchase tickets from [Amiando]

Edit: and yes, I’m going to be there

Trying out TweetSuite

Im hip with the kids, on the down low. I am.

So I’m trying out TweetSuite on the Spoofscript.com blog. It should help integregrate my twitter account and my blog, but consider it on trial. I’m not yet convinced of its usefulness.

Have you used TweetSuite before, or do you have any good Wordpress Plugins for twitter to suggest? Leave a Comment!

Choosing the right web host

By Derek Anders

Choosing a web hosting company for your online business is a job within it self. There are tons of web hosting companies that you can choose from, but how do you choose the right one?

Follow The Crowds

One of the ways to find a good web hosting company is by following the crowd. This is one of the only times that we recommend following everyone else because it is a great way to find that amazing web hosting company.

Reading Reviews

Reading reviews about web hosting companies is also a good way to find a great host. The only thing about reading reviews is that most people that write reviews had a bad experience with the company, so take what you read with a grain of salt.

Look At Many Companies

Since there are a lot of web host out there, research a lot of them. Find the one that really fits your needs with what they offer as well as the price of their service.

Do not let price alone be your deciding factor on which company to go with. It has been said that “you get what you pay for” and this is 100% true with web hosting companies.

Conclusion

Finding a hosting company is hard work due to the fact that there are so many to choose from. Do your self a favor and look at many different companies to find the one that best fits your needs. When you do a company that you like, they usually have a “live help” chat that you can use. Send them a message to see what their response time is. If you get a slow response, we recommend keep searching!

My name is Derek Anders and I love to learn new things about business and the internet. I also like to share the information I learn with out people. You are free to use this article any way you see fit as long as this stays with the article. derekanders.com Small Web Biz Info

Article Source: EzineArticles

ALTO disaproves of Eircom/EMI deal

Silicon Republic is reporting that ALTO, the Alternative Licensed Telecoms Operators group whose membership includes BT Ireland, Magnet Networks, NTL, Chorus, Smart Telecom, Budget Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Colt Telecom, Complete Networks, Digiweb, ESB Telecoms, Verizon and 3 Play Plus, dissaproves of the “draconian deal” struck between Eircom and EMI which would put customers at risk of having their Internet connection cut off after a 3 strikes and your out rule.

While we obviously do not condone illegal downloading or any illegality on or over the internet, we firmly disapprove of any draconian measures that would compromise the privacy, speed or services offered to broadband users. We do not need measures to further impede the development of next generation broadband in Ireland – Ronan Lupton of ALTO

You can read more about ALTO’s reaction at Silicon Republic.

Eircom makes a deal with the devil

The IrishTimes reports that Eircom has settled a lawsuit with EMI Records that puts all of its customers’ connection to the net at the will of EMI with a 3 strikes and your out policy. After 3 unsubstantiated accusations of copyright threat by EMI, Eircom will disconnect customers from the Internet.

We live in a world where connectivity to the Internet is as important as the ability to use public roads. How safe would you feel if your car could be taken away from you after 3 unsubstantiated accusals?