Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Wed, 2006-08-30 (Aug 30)

Vista Public Beta for Download!

Filed under: beta,Blog,download,free,General,Tech (General),vista,windows — David @ 10:56

You can download the Windows Vista Pre-RC1 Beta version here, limited to the first 100,000 downloads! No registration required, it’s publically available. You’ll have to burn it to DVD to install it, and it’s a big download (2.58GB). My copy is downloading as I write this, but I’m not sure if I’m going to test it out or not. I might get a chance to! Not on a system that matters, of course :-) Thanks to 4sysops.com for the link!

UPDATE: Apparently, according to the Windows Vista Team Blog, the download can only be activated if you install with a key as being an existing beta tester. So…not as nice as it would appear, since they never mention this on the download page!

Thu, 2006-08-10 (Aug 10)

OpenDNS steps up to Cameroon .cm challenge

Filed under: Blog,General,In The News,Internet,Spam,Tech (General) — David @ 14:25

The guys at OpenDNS have responded to my (and the general online community’s) issues with Cameroon and .cm domains by allowing you to turn on the option to fix this individually from their prefs page. Turn on filtering if you want, or leave it off, it’s up to you. They even have a great blog post about it. OpenDNS has been doing a great job of setting up a service that lets the user choose what they want for their scenario, something that’s been lacking in the DNS arena for a long time. There are many charges I’ve seen claiming OpenDNS is trying to “control” DNS and they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. But as long as you’ve got control of whether or not to use their service, or even better which options of theirs to apply to you (which this post shows they are actively providing and expanding), they’re only going to help, not hurt, the internet in general. It doesn’t hurt that they’re doing it so openly and transparently on their blog! Thanks to David Ulevitch and his team!

You want me to try this out where?

Filed under: Blog,Funny,Photos — David @ 14:15

Saw this sign the other day at Wal-Mart…apparently they want me to head to their demo table and try out some toilet paper. Really? You really want me to sample it there? What language did the person that put this up speak, anyway? Darn funny, though :-)

Sample Toilet Paper - At Wal-Mart!
(click for full-size version)

Mon, 2006-08-07 (Aug 07)

Cameroon takes over all .cm typos of .com

Filed under: Blog,cm com domain typo squatting typos Cameroon wildcard dn,General,In The News,Internet,Spam,Tech (General) — David @ 09:17

The country of Cameroon has redirected all unregistered domains ending in their country top-level domain (TLD) of .cm to advertising pages in attempt to capitalize on people that mistype .com. Slashdot is where I read about it this morning, and their source was an article at CircleID.com, and someone else has more details and opinion over here.

Further investigation by a Slashdot commenter at the article above shows that the ads are being served by a company called “NameView Inc,” which is the owner of the IP block 72.51.27.0 – 72.51.27.255 (72.51.27.0/24), a subnet I’ve easily blocked access to from work (which at least gives an error when mistyping domains as .cm, I haven’t stumbled upon an easy way to redirect .cm to the correct .com using the Microsoft ISA 2004 firewall). OpenDNS doesn’t yet fix this but I’ve asked them to, so we’ll see what their decision is on this! If they re-start typo-correcting .cm to .com as they used to before Cameroon’s new trick, it should just work on top of my firewall block since they won’t be redirecting to the advertising IP addresses I’m blocking!

Wed, 2006-08-02 (Aug 02)

Stephen Colbert and Wikipedia, and how good is it, anyway?

Filed under: Blog,College,college colbert comedy humor wikipedia IUPUI britannica,General,In The News,Internet,Personal — David @ 14:01

Apparently on his TV show, Steven Colbert actually modified the Wikipedia entry about himself “live” (while the show was being recorded) on-air!ร‚ย  And got a bunch of other users to modify some other pages as an example.ร‚ย  Interesting stuff, especially when compared with an article in Nature showing that the Encyclopaedia Britannica has an error rate of less than but still comparable to Wikipedia.ร‚ย  (Britannica didn’t like Nature’s article and Nature responded…follow the thread here.)
Personally, I like Wikipedia, but I’ll proably stay on the safe side and use it only for basic information and links to more credible information when writing college papers (oh yeah, I’m starting college this month since you probably didn’t know :-)

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