Techie :: Techno ::: September 2006 Archives

I'll be at Bar Camp in Cork today.. .. I'm just grabbing a quick coffee and checking some mails before heading up to the city The lineup looks like it could be very interesting See you there!

Inex, the Irish neutral exchange hit it's highest peak to date earlier this afternoon with traffic across the exchange being recorded at 882.8mbps It seems this also coincided with questions in the Dail (Irish parliament) :)

Anyone know of any decent guides to IPv6 that are really idiot proof?

Why on earth can't someone in Microsoft create a knowledgebase entry for a known issue? Thank God Jimmy found the solution (on a non-Microsoft blog!!) to the black screen issue we had run into. As per the blog entry that provides the solution:

Turns out this is a known issue, but not enough people have called in for it to become a knowledgebase article.

The solution is so simple as well ... Gah!

I'm on a large number of mailing lists that cover a wide range of topics including open source software, web technologies, spam filtering, dns, networking and a range of other topics.

Nearly all of the lists show who the message poster is and allow them to include their own email signature.

Only very rarely does any of the list content get "out of hand".

Unfortunately not all lists are made equal.

The Enterprise Ireland eBusiness list is not equal by any stretch of the imagination.

Why?

All messages to the list are moderated, so any hopes of a "conversation" or "discussion" are doomed to failure.

If you post a message at 9am in reply to a message that appeared at 8.45 am it may not make it to the list until hours later.

The moderation of the list also includes the headers and all other "normal" content associated with emails.

If the poster has included a signature this "may" be included, but there is no guarantee. (On the plus side the twenty line signatures favoured by some people are banished)

For example, this morning someone posted the following:

Hi Have any members got any ideas on a practical eBusiness project for an eBusiness course? Any ideas welcome. Thanks

So who is asking the question?

How can you respond to them? "Dear Anonymous"??

On other mailing lists you are "laid bare".

If your posts are seen to contribute positively then any messages from you will be viewed with a higher level of respect than those from a "newbie".

That's how peer networks tend to work.

You become a "trusted" source and your opinion increases in value.

Anonymous lists are a bit like anonymous comments on blogs.

They lend little value to the "web".

It could be argued that forums lend a degree of anonymity, however they generally encourage the development of an online identity that is as identifiable as a person's "real" name.

Until recently I was under the impression that search engine spiders conformed to "sane" standards. If a page returns a HTTP status code of 404 you would have thought that the page / link would be removed from the index. Seemingly this is not the case... I've now been advised that I should try to use either a 410 status code There are some interesting differences between the two HTTP responses:

10.4.11 410 Gone The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities SHOULD delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise. The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to individuals no longer working at the server's site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as "gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time -- that is left to the discretion of the server owner.

While the good old 404 response code is defined as:

10.4.5 404 Not Found The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

That's a bit of a head wrecker. I suppose if you know exactly which pages you want to remove, then a 410 response code is easy enough to generate, but in my case it isn't. I'd either have to change the 404 page to a 410 for the entire site, or simply wait it out.

Ripe is proposing a further two policy changes with regard to IPv4 allocations. One is in relation to the allocation periods, while the other is in relation to the number and way blocks of IPs are allocated

I've bought two gadgets from iWorld in the last couple of months and I have to say I am really impressed. Their site and service simply works. There are no silly delays. You get nice informative tracking emails and best of all your order arrives nice and quickly (courtesy of DHL) I just got my latest toy - I can't wait to play with it this afternoon / evening :)

If you spend much time on blogs and forums you may have noticed that the admins are bringing them closer together. Tagging forum posts or viewing "tag clouds" may have been a dream (or nightmare) a year ago, but now it is becoming increasingly popular. Over the past couple of months I've been working on the Irish Webmaster Forum and have been playing with a number of mods. One of the coolest ones I've come across is VBSeo (aff) which not only takes all the pain out of making a vbulletin forum search engine friendly, but also adds a number of really cool bloglike features to it. The latest release candidate adds "social bookmarking" directly into the forum posts, so you can easily send a post / thread to a number of popular social bookmarking sites. You can now send pingbacks to blog posts and vice-versa directly from a vbulletin forum that has the mod installed. Pretty cool :)

Following on the Irish government's introduction of new legislation that outlaws holding a mobile while driving I expect there'll be a boom in the sale of hands free kits ... I've never been comfortable talking on the phone while driving and have always invested in some form of headset to make it a bit less painful. On Friday afternoon I took it to the next level and got myself a really nice solution. The only issue I've had so far is when my Nokia's battery isn't fully charged or it simply needs a reboot.

According to El Pais three hackers have been arrested. The group targetted several well known Spanish sites.

The 2006 IIA Net Visionary awards nominations are now open. You may nominate anyone you wish and you do not have to be a member of the IIA to nominate someone. There are a wide range of award categories that include blogging and podcasting for the first time this year. The nomination form is here