Linux text-based browsers supporting IPv6

In my Linux box, I have been using lynx as a text-based browser for testing. Today, I tried elinks and w3m.  It is good to see all the three text-based browsers can access IPv6 websites.

Think it other way. Browsers should have no difficulty in supporting IPv6 websites.  The primary function of a browser is to display HTML, pictures and mutltimedia contents.  It is up to the OS itself to resolve host names to AAAA records and to reach the destination IPv6 address. What roles would browsers have in terms of IPv6 ?

".hotel" top level domain

Last year, when ICANN announced accepting applications for new generic top level domains, I knew for sure the ".hotel" top level domain would emerge quite soon. No need for me to mention that ".hotel" is extremely important for the hotel industry considering the large number of hotels worldwide. I am happy to know Affilias undertakes to manage the ".hotel" domain.

I am looking forward to seeing other useful and meaningful top level domains such as ".car" , ".bank", ".music" and probably ".nike" etc. My top interest is ".sex" which should be best used by websites with adult contents and pornographic materials. ".fuck" should not be allowed as this is explicitly an unpleasant name.  Stay tuned.

Why virtualization

Some friends have been asking why our organization need to go for virtualization ?  Is it because of Green IT or cost saving.  My answer is really simple.  We do not have enough rack space for individual servers.  Hong Kong is a place with very high rent. A sizable server room is unaffordable.

IT People's Silly English

Why IT people write this kind of clumsy silly English :

"The Android operating system software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java based object oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation."

After reading many times, I still can not figure out the relationship between individual components.

iPhone alarm clock

This is the 2011 new year  gift Apples offered to iPhone users.  All users were alarmed on 1 Jan 2011.

Experience of bypassing the China Great Firewall (GFW) to access Facebook and Youtube in China

I went to China yesteday.  Unfortunately, I could NOT access facebook via the hotel broadbnad line.

What I tried to do is to make my browser access through a proxy setting of 127.0.0.1 with port 7070. From PuTTY (a common ssh client), I forwarded the local port 7070 to my proxy server 202.81.252.116:3xx78. Of course, I had to use SSH to login sshd @202.81.252.116. This way, the browser would be accessing the Internet through a secure tunnel and there was a proxy server serving the secure tunnel. With these settings, I was able to browse any websites I wanted.


I just hope more people can master the skills of bypassing the GFW.

Fully DNSSEC-enabled domain

One of my domains “i3way.net” is fully DNSSEC-enabled. Thanks to Verisign for activating DNSSEC on .NET this month and my registrar, Godaddy which catches up technological development quite fast. I guess this is my biggest gift in this Xmas.

I have no difficulty with key-rollover.

Addding DS records in godaddy.com

I have the domain name i3way.net registered with godaddy.com  Now that .net TLD is running with DNSSEC, it is possible for me to pass my DNSSEC DS records (hash of KSK public key) from godaddy registrar to .net registry.  I am happy to see the interface which is clear and simple enough for me to understand.

My KSK, ZSK and DS are not yet ready.  I think I can pass the DS record to godaddy in Thursday evening.

No such facility as do-not-call register for email in Hong Kong or in any other part of the world

Last Saturday, while talking to the media appealing for the establishment of do-not-call register for person-to-person telemarketing calls, the Privacy Commissioner made a mistake that OFTA has already set up a do-not-call register for email. Here are the URLs below of local newspaper.


http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20101219/00176_015.html

http://news.mingpao.com/20101219/ggf1.htm

Actually, there is no such system as  do-not-call register for email in Hong Kong or in any other part of the world.  I can give three reasons below:

1. The majority (over 90 %) of spam emails are sent out by zombie computers, but not human email accounts. Will zombie computers look at the registry and do some screening before sending out ?


2. Even if spam emails are sent out by human email accounts, it is not possible to punish the senders as they are not in the same country as the recipients. Email has no national boundary.

3. Spammers can download the register and send more spam to those email addresses contained in the register. After all, these are live valid email accounts.


I hope that nobody will commit same mistake again in future.

Enhanced WiFi test facility

I have a Windows script to test the dowload speed of WiFi network based on ftp.  However, I discover that some WiFi only allows http, https and dns traffic to pass through.  In order to cater for such situation, I have changed my test program to use http:

@echo off

:loop
echo Hi! This is a http loop for WiFi download speedtest!
wget http://www.i3way.net/fire/science-fire.wmv
del *.wmv* -y
goto loop

Please feel free to copy and use.  Of course, any file in a URL can be used to verify the download speed.

Fuck her gently

"Fuck her gently" is the most interesting song I have ever come across.  It is played by Tenacious D.  If you know Jack Black of School of Rock, you might have known "Tenacious D".

The lyric is extremely lovable.

This is a song for the ladies
But fellas listen closely
You don't always have to fuck her hard
In fact sometimes that's not right, to do
Sometimes you've got to make some love
And fuckin' give her some smoochies too
Sometimes you got to squeeze
Sometimes you got to say "Please..."
Sometimes you got to say "Hey..." 

I'm gonna fuck you, softly
I'm gonna screw you gently
I'm gonna hump you, sweetly
I'm gonna ball you discreetly

And then you say "Hey I brought you flowers"
And then you say "Wait a minute, Sally"
"I think I got somethin' in my teeth, could you get it out for me?"
That's fuckin' team work!

What's your favorite posish
That's cool with me
It's not my favorite but I'll do it for you
What's your favorite dish?
I'm not gonna cook it
But I'll order it from Zanzibar

And then I'm gonna love you completely 
And then I fuckin fuck you discreetly
And then I fuckin bone you completely
But then I'm gonna fuck you haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard!

OFTA Speed Test Engine

This is the test results of my 6M ADSL line when performing speed test through OFTA Speed Test Engine:




It should be noted that IP addresses not in the HK range can not acess the website.

 

Dreamweaver and IE

I read a book about using Dremweaver CS5 and CSS to create websites.  The book says all web contents should be tested under Firefox browser but not IE.  The reason is that Microsoft IE does not follow W3C standards.  

Thats true.  It is a shame on Microsoft.

SOA of .hk nameserver

Strange !   The serial of SOA of .hk nameservers is 2071434190 (Unix time) which converts to 22 August 2035 :

[warren@dnssec ~]# nslookup

> set type=soa

> hk.

Server:         202.81.252.116

Address:        202.81.252.116#53

Non-authoritative answer:

hk

        origin = NS1.HKIRC.NET.hk

        mail addr = HOSTMASTER.HKIRC.NET.hk

        serial = 2071434190

        refresh = 5400

        retry = 1800

        expire = 3600000

        minimum = 600

Is there a hidden fault ?  

Server up for 401 days without reboot

This is a good news.  My server has been up and running for 401 days without reboot.  On one occassion, httpd suddenly disappeared and I had to manually start it up again.

I hope the situation can continue till 800 days. 

Dedicated Internet Access in Hong Kong in Year 1994

In clearing my drawers today, I found a quotation from Supernet sent to me in December 1994 about subscribing to its 256kbps Internet Dedicated Access.  The installation charge was HK$55,000 quoted as follows:

HKT DDS leased line installation – HK$4,000

Supernet Dedicated Installation fee – HK$10,000

Router installation – HK$41,000

As for the monthly recurrent cost, it was charged at HK$45,900 a month made up as follows:

HKT DDS leased line rental – HK$5,900

Supernet Dedicated monthly rental – HK$40,000

That was not the end of the story.  Supernet adopted a cap on monthly throughput of 8000 MB per month.  If the quota was exceeded, user would be charged HK$8 per MB.

It should be noted that in the early days of Internet, routers and switches, firewall and other networking equipment were not highly reliable and the committed availability of Supernet was just 99 %.  We all know that the Service Level Agreement used today always require the serving ISP to provide 99.9 or 99.95 % availability.

Looking back, I could not imagine how network administrators could have paid such high cost for Internet provisions and yet the services were not reliable. On top of that, how could they ensure that the maximum throughput was not exceeded.  Of course, having said that, network administrators today have easier jobs as they can ask ISPs to provide the best possible services without worrying the bandwidth usage.

What the hell is Google on this planet !

What the hell is Google on this planet ! Google is testing intelligent cars that can drive by themselves.

The technolgies involved are video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder. I believe digital road maps are also required. Ultimately, the number of car accidents can be reduced.

When such cars are available in the market, I don’t need to learn driving and get a drive licence in order to use a car.

Google please keep up with the good work and give us more surprise in whatever new inventions.

Nobel Peace Prize 2010

Though I can download or copy and paste the statement by the Noble Committee about the Nobel Peace Prize Award 2010 granted to Liu Xiaobo, I prefer to buy a newspaper and type the content word by word by myself and post it on my blog. This way, I am paying a tribute to the winner.  Here comes the statement:

The Nobel Peace Prize 2010

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.  The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace.  Such rights are a prerequisite for the “fraternity between nations” of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.

Over the past decades, China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal.  The country now has the world’s second largest economy; hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty.  Scope of political participation has also broadened.

China’s new status must entail increased responsibility.  China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights.  Article 35 of China’s constitution lays down that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration”.  In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China’s citizens.

For over two decades, Liu Xiaobo has been a strong spokesman for application of fundamental human rights in China.  He took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989; he was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China which was published on the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 10th of December 2008.  The following year, Liu was sentenced to eleven years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights for “inciting subversion of state power”. Liu has consistently maintained that the sentence violates both China’s own constitution and fundamental human rights.

The campaign to establish universal human rights also in China ie being waged by many Chinese, both in China itself and abroad.  Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China.

Oslo, October 8, 2010/10/9

***** End *****

In memory of John Lenon

Anybody still remember John Lenon was born on 9 October 1940. Google certainly do. Look at the Google logo on the left.

SOA expiration time and DNSSEC signature period

My DNSSEC-signed zone bya.org.hk has SOA expiration timer set to one week (604800) which is not aligned with the published DNSSEC operational practices, RFC4614 bis. It is advisable to have SOA expiration timer between 1/3 and 1/4 size of the signature validity period (30 days = 2592000 seconds). If this is not handled properly, secondary nameserver could keep serving out of date RRSIGs. This can only happen when a primary nameserver is unreachable for AFXR update.

I have decided to set it to 720000 which is easy to remember.