Hello everybody. This is my first post on Danny’s blog Tek Babble . My name’s Jim Khoury and I’m a good friend of Danny’s, and my first post on this blog is a bit on the lighter side of things. I was browsing the web and stumbled upon this interesting video on YouTube. Apparently, this guy got creative with some of the system sounds in Windows XP and 98, and the result is pretty darn cool. Anyway here’s the video:
Look out for more posts on other matters,
Jim
Not many people are fully aware of how the Internet really works, even though they use it on a daily basis and are higly computer-literate. The Internet is always something that’s just been there, no questions asked. Read on if you want a basic outline into how the Internet really does work.
Far too many people are under the impression that the Internet is based somewhere or is a huge room filled with high-spec servers which you connect to every time you connect to the Internet. This misconception might have come from the early Dial-up Internet which required one to have to enter a username and password to connect. The Internet is actually just the largest network of computers known to man. Very simple really. You are connected to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) such as Virgin or Cable & Wireless; your ISP is then in turn connected to the rest of the country which is then in turn connected to all neighboring countries. In theory, If you have an Internet connection which links you to your ISP through cable or your phone lines such as DSL or Dial-up, you could actually trace the wiring all the way to anywhere on the world with Internet providing there were no wireless networks on the way. Pretty cool.
An IP or Internet Protocol address is a unique number which identifies you on the internet. To be connected to the net you have to have a valid real IP address which is not in use by anyone else. This basically means that everything you do online is easily watched. An IP address consists of 4 sections known as octets, each containing a number up to 3 digits in length like xx.xxx.x.xxx. When you subscribe to the web with you ISP, they either give you a static or dynamic IP address. As the name suggests, a static IP is one which doesn’t change at all as a pose to a dynamic IP which might change every time you connect. There are also IP addresses which are not assigned by ISPs to connect to the internet as they are reserved for private networks. It’s not just the internet which you need to have an IP address, but any network, and so there are a some octects such as those beginning with 192 which are reserved solely for private networks. So why wouldn’t you get a static real IP address to keep for every time you connect to the internet? Well, the answer is simple really. There are not enough IP addresses to go around. There are only 4,294,967,296 possible different IP addresses and take away those which are reserved for purposes such as private networks, you end up with less than 3 billion addresses. Can anyone imagine why that might be a problem? Well, with coorporations like microsoft grabbing millions of real IP addresses for itself rather selfishly, IP addresses run out very fast. In fact, Microsoft has more IP addresses for itself than some countries such as Lebanon. Due to the shortage, static IP addresses become really expensive in countries such as these, with the service hitting almost $80 a month.
So what’s going to happen when we run out of IP addresses? Well, there is actually a new version of IP addresses known as IPv6 which is being implemented as we speak. There are 3.40282367 x1038 unique addressed with IPv6 so The right to real IP can be added to the universal declaration of human rights.
DHCP is not as confusing as it sounds. It really isn’t. Basically there’s a server sitting in the ISP’s HQ which handles every request to connect to the internet. Every network device such as your network card in you computer or your wireless network card, or even any phone with bluetooth has what’s called a MAC address (don’t worry there’s 281,474,976,710,656 of those) which the DHCP server can identify with. It then gives each MAC address an IP address from the ISP’s list and sends it sailing away.
So where does the website or file-transfer fit into the equation? Well, that’s actually pretty simple. Seeing as every computer has an IP address, you can connect to that computer (providing you have the right permissions) and access all the shared files on it. So you could, in theory, type in a random IP address into your browser and providing the IP was valid, the computer was online, and there were shared files in existence on that computer, and you had permission to see that list, you could see all that info. So every time you connect to a website, you are basically seeing text files on the server you’re connecting to. But I doubt you’ve ever used 216.239.51.99 to hit google before. Because the people who founded the net wanted to make life easier for you, they invented DNS. DNS stands for Domain Name Severs. It basically means that you can type a domain name such as www.google.com into your browser instead of 216.239.51.99 and redirect you to that IP address. Your ISP has a huge database with the list of domain names and their corresponding IP addresses. Life made easy. This technology is why a new website might take up to 48 hours to get fully up and running; it has to register with ISPs all over the world.
The Internet may sound confusing and be littered with tech jargon, but it’s actually a really simple concept in theory. A bit harder in practice. If this article left you with any questions or you didn’t understand anything, you can always e-mail me.
I’m not sure if the Guinness World Records has a recognition for the most over-hyped product ever released in an industry, but the iPhone definitely is deserving of such an award. I really respect and admire Apple for their innovation and originality and I see some potential in this product, but it is really not what Apple makes it out to be. Some 2.3 million iPhones have been sold in the first quarter of 2008, and I have to say, somewhere in their HQ in California, Apple has a really good marketing team.
I say this because, comparatively, the iPhone is actually average when you look at the other smart phones on sale. The proud owner of a HTC TyTN, I assure you that the iPhone has nowhere near the “smartness” the the TyTN has. This is, unfortunately, a fact, and you can see it right here. The iPhone doesn’t even have bluetooth! When it comes to style, however, the iPhone excels. The Mobile Mac OS is even more fluid than the desktop one, and everything works like a dream. Other smartphones tend to lose this fluid motion the moment they get filled with third-party software, fragmented files, and excessive memory usage. This is the only advantage I can see to not allowing third-party apps on the iPhone.
Until Now. That’s right, during his keynote speech at Macworld 2008 Steve Jobs announced that the Apple iPhone Software Development Kit was soon to come. Will the iPhone lose the one upper hand it currently has, or will it be able to find a compromise between fluidity and memory-intensive applications. Only time will tell.
There are many games consoles out there, Let’s start with the Nintendo Wii. The Wii is arguably the most original and innovative console on the market. It comes with a remote control which is based around physical motion rather than just pushing buttons, and this gives gaming a new dimension. The remote uses several accelerometers (The same thing used in the iPhone and the iPod Touch) and infrared to detect where it is and you can use it therefore as a golf club, ping-pong racket, baseball bat, you get the picture. This makes the Wii an appealing device to consumers of all ages. But the thing about the Wii is that it really has nowhere near the graphics or processing power of the Xbox, let alone the Playstation, and this means that once you have played Wii sports enough, and the classic Nintendo games like Zelda have been completed, it’s going to become excessively boring for anyone who strives to be called a gamer.
The Xbox on the other hand, actually has something going for it. For the time being. Yes, it’s a powerful console, and it’s online gaming is fantastic, and Halo 3, and it has good integration with Windows. Which is all good. In fact, I must really state at this point that the xbox 360 is a fantastic games console. Yes, it might sound like an airplane when it starts up; the motherboard might fry after a couple of months of purchase; it may still run on DVD; you may have to buy an extra little add-on to enable wireless; you may have to buy an extra big add-on to be able to use HD DVD on it; the list goes on. The point is, for a hardcore gamer, the xbox 360 is actually not that bad.
Unfortunately, the Playstation is just better. There are many reasons for this. First of all, it must be acknowledged that games are actually a very small component of what is knon as the games console today. That’s right. In today’s world, the games console is purchased by the majority of consumers not so much for its games capabilities as its place in the multimedia home. And the Playstation 3 definitely wins in this category as you can barely here it running so you can watch your movie in peace, it has a 60GB hard disk, it has a built in memory card reader, it looks nice in the living room, and it has a Blu-ray player. Second of all, it has much more brawn than the xbox. Although, admittedly, the current xbox games are dominating, xbox game developers have had a year longer than playstation developers, and this has given them a huge advantage. The price for playstation game development has also been significantly larger then that of the xbox until recently as well. It’s only a matter of time before the playstation overtakes the xbox in the games market. Last but not least, the playstation 3, despite being the most expensive console of the 3, is by far the most value for money, and has been the cheapest blu-ray player on the market ever since it came out.
In summary, if you just want a console to entertain you on the rare occasions that you have no work, you’re not out, the library is closed and you’ve read all the books on your bedside table, then the Wii is definitely for you. Otherwise, buy a playstation 3.
As this tends to get the most media coverage in the tech world at the moment, the High Definition battle is very fitting for my first post.
In our ever-advancing technological world today, (wow that sentence is so clichéd), standard DVD is not going to last much longer. High Definition is the new thing, and the picture quality is breathtaking. In fact many say that once you switch to HDTV, conventional Television will never look the same again. The switch to HDTV has already been initiated in thousands of homes across the world, with people already buying “HD ready” TVs to get ready for the arrival of the format into mainstream media. This is why a normal DVD, with only 4.7 GB of space, is nowhere near enough to hold the data needed for a full-length High-Definition film. RCA cables also don’t have enough bandwidth to get all that HD info in for each frame… That’s why you have to use component or HDMI cables for High Definition picture. But which format is best?
Blu-ray is a relatively new format, founded in 2002 by Sony and 8 other leading companies in today’s competitive tech industry. It has many advantages over the normal DVD format, foremost being its capacity. DVDs today have, on average 4.7 GB of potential space on them, wheras Blu-ray fits in up to 50GB of space on it, even though it’s approximately the same physical size as the DVD. Yes, I agree, it’s pure genius. HD DVD on the other hand, can only 30GB however, and capacity is probably the one most important thing that any upcoming format has to consider. The Definition is only going to get better, and it’s going to need as much space as possible. Also, with the arrival of HD games, I don’t see disks lasting much longer either way. There is going to be another solution to the transportation of data from media to your TV screen. So Blu-ray is definitely a better format, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that it should have won the format war. For those of you who remember the VHS-Betamax format war, Betamax was definitely a more advanced format technologically, but consumers preferred VHS due to it’s practicality and you know what happened.
Either way, after Wal-mart switched to Blu-ray, Toshiba gave up their HD DVD quest and folded their hand; they finally realized they couldn’t win.
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