del.icio.us links for 2005-05-31

• Time to Go Biodegradeable?: Sydney, Australia--Oceanographic scientists say they have discovered a vast, floating "reef" of the world's disposed condoms in the middle of the South Pacific, about halfway between Tahiti and Antarctica. The phenomenal mass is almost two miles long, an (weird)
• Andy Budd::Blogography: 10 Bad Project Warning Signs: "One of the great things about being a freelance web designer is the ability to turn down projects. I’ve come across a few projects recently that sounded interesting but made me feel nervous." (design web)
• Common Errors in English: Also available in Dead Tree format (funny howto reference tool writing)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-30

• AMAZING X-RAY EFFECT: Clever CSS trick (css image mozilla xhtml)
• The Cyborg Name Generator: Filthy humans: Determine your true cyborg name with this automated process (humor)
• XHTML2: Accessible, Usable, Device Independent and Semantic: XHTML2 is the next version of the XHTML family, and is going to last call Real Soon Now. This presentation gives an overview of what XHTML2 is trying to achieve. (html w3c web xhtml xml)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-24

• New Attack Can Recover Complete AES Keys: Daniel Bernstein, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recently released a paper showing how an attack against a server running the OpenSSL AES implementation could recover the entire encryption key. (cryptography djb privacy security)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-23

• How to Make a RJ45 Cable Tester: Includes general information on RJ45 cable standards for Ethernet (ethernet howto network rj45)

DirecWay: Broadband provider of last resort

If the intent of DirecWay is to be the broadband provider of last resort, then they are quite successful, since it is the worst broadband provider I've ever heard of. Normal download speed seems to be about 768 kbps. However, if you download more than 169 MB in a four-hour period, you get jacked down to about 32-48 kbps, slower than dial-up. If you think you might ever want to download an ISO image, stay away. Since it's a satellite service, you are subject to the basic laws of physics as they apply to geosynchronous satellites, which means, latency is terrible. It takes about a quarter of a second for your signal to reach a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, so this means to initiate a TCP connection, it takes 1.5 seconds: The TCP handshake is SYN, SYN ACK, ACK, and each packet must take a trip to the satellite then back to the base, or 6 trips total. It gets a lot worse if you are using SSL, since there is an SSL negotiation phase. This also makes it completely unusable for online gaming: In Quake 3 for example, this would amount to at least a 1000 ms ping. Any DSL or cable modem setup is better than DirecWay. A lot of dialup schemes are better, too.

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-12

• dm-crypt - a device-mapper crypto target: a device-mapper target that provides transparent encryption of block devices using the new Linux 2.6 cryptoapi. (cryptography linux security)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-11

• Flickr: Photos from [c21de] Vintage Images: These chicks were hot... 50 years ago. Vintage girly-mag cover gallery [via BoingBoing] (art image photo)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-10

• Dive Into Greasemonkey: Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. (extension firefox greasemonkey javascript)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-09

• How to Perform Strong Man Stunts by Ottley R. Coulter: All the World Loves a Strong Man (howto)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-07

• Death Star Repairmen: a featurette about two Imperial handymen who fix things on a certain very large Imperial Battle Station. (humor starwars video)
• lila center: ...a home for lila theme resources (art firefox gaim gentoo gnome grub gtk kde linux rox theme xfce xmms)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-06

• FAQ: How Real ID will affect you | CNET News.com: Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. (liberty politics privacy)

del.icio.us links for 2005-05-04

• ITworld.com - Naked programming on naked street: Not as exciting as it sounds: Static and dynamic typing compared traffic controls and the lack thereof. (programming python)