The Web Rider

Domain names are essential in order for the web to work correctly. With out using domain name your website cannot be found easily. The domain name is a human friendly way of finding out server IP addresses using a system called Domain Name System (DNS). To identify a specific device within a DNS namespace the hostname or fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is used, for example, www.mydomain.com identifies the ‘www’ device in the ‘mydomain’ domain.

The domain registration process is used for claiming a domain name to utilise within the public DNS infrastructure (internet DNS). This process is very simple and costs next to nothing. If you want to run a website a domain name is an essential prerequisite. There are numerous levels to the domain name system. A top level domain makes the foundation of all internet registered domains. There are now many top-level domains, like:

• .co.uk
• .org
• .net
• .com

+ many more.

Second level domains exist directly under one a top level domain, for instance, mydomain.com, in which ‘mydomain’ is this second level domain.

These days there are many domain name extensions readily available for use. In the early days of the internet, there were only a few like .com, .net, .org, etc. Nonetheless, because of the boom in internet sites being built over the years, many more domain extensions have become available, such as .tv, .me, etc.

All domain names must adhere to a specific naming convention. The following restrictions are applied to all domain names:

• Must use ASCII letters (A-Z and 0 to 9)
• Maximum 255 characters in total.
• Can include hyphens (-)

A domain tree is made by separating each level of the domain with a period (.) character.

You ought to register your website name for as many years as you possibly can, having said that, many domain extensions allow you to pay on a yearly basis. There are some domain name extensions that employ a minimum two year registration restriction, thus yearly registration isn’t an option. An example of a domain extension that applies this restriction is the .co.uk domain.

The domain name system (DNS) is utilised to convert human friendly names, for example www.example.com, to network addresses known as IP addresses, for instance 192.168.1.1 which computers use to exchange data. There’s another service for converting IP addresses to domain names, called reverse DNS (rDNS). This is used when you know the IP address, but don’t know the domain name.

The mother to a 10-year-old youngster from Coventry has been expressing her shock after having a display unit of Apple’s iPhone 4S swear at her child.

Kim Le Quesne informed the Coventry Telegraph that her son Charlie had been out shopping together with his father inside a nearby branch of Tesco, saw the smartphone in a display and asked the Siri personal assistant software program what number of people there were on the earth. The phone replied by means of telling the lad that it wasn’t sure exactly what he was saying, and telling him to “Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***.”

“It’s verbal abuse,” Mrs Le Quesne claimed. “We can’t believe the filth it came out with. He showed my husband what the phone had said to him and my husband found the store manager and said “it shouldn’t be saying that.”

Tesco promised the device would be shipped off to Apple for diagnostics, nonetheless it seems very likely that some merry prankster had changed the user name on the system to the offending seven words, so that the device would default to the phrase regardless of what the query. Apple is unavailable for comment during the holiday period.

Mrs Le Quesne informed the newspaper the woman’s son went back to the retail store the following day and saw the very same mobile phone was nevertheless within the display case. The paper doesn’t note if the unfortunate lad was feeling abused, or maybe rather tried it once more and dissolved into fits of giggles.

Google today publicised that they have procured more than 200 more US patents from IBM so as to defend itself from likely legal cases with regards its current and future products and services.

The patents cover numerous aspects and technologies, for instance:

• near-field communications (NFC)
• server infrastructure
• cell phones
• wireless telephone systems
• databases

These patents are in addition to the pre-existing 2,053 purchased from IBM by Google within the last year or so. IBM aren’t the sole benefactors of Google’s rising patents acquisitions, as Motorola Mobility have also traded close to 17,000 patents and 7000 patents pending, totalling $12.5 billion US (£7.7 billion). The acquisitions are currently being evaluated by competition regulators. Google has also attempted to obtain an additional 6000 telecoms relevant patents from Nortel, but was unsuccessful in its bid.

Amongst one of the latest patents is one specifically addressing “identifying common interests between users of the communication network”, which is thought could possibly play a future role in Google+. Google’s ever-increasing patents purchases have come about to try to defend itself against its competition, which Google accuses of buying up what it has called “bogus patents” so as to slow up the development of Google’s mobile operating-system, Android.

Google have a number of legal disputes open with the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Apple regarding a number of the technologies used within Android. Oracle are currently in dispute with Google for potential Andriod patent infringements.p>

Presently there is currently enormous level of competition around with regards various os’s, especially mobile versions. In an additional technology patents associated case earlier this week AT&T have been required to compensate TiVo US$215 million, and also an extra undisclosed regular monthly licensing payment. Currently its anticipated that we will notice more of these types of patents, software acquisitions and cases from the major players inside the technology industry throughout the coming months. No conditions had been released from either Google or IBM with regards to these latest patents exchanges.

Adding Linux kernel modules is a crucial aspect of any Linux server administrator’s job description. This article will give you a basis in understanding the principles and tools concerned. The official terminology is “loadable kernel modules”; however they are often referred to as just “kernel modules” or “modules”.

The modern day Linux kernel uses a modular model allowing users to add additional functionality to the core of the operating system as and when required. This is the opposite of the monolithic kernel model, which requires all functionality to be compiled into the kernel prior to loading the operating system. In the past a monolithic kernel was preferred, as it is more efficient with regards the usage of memory resources, however nowadays most computers have multiple gigabytes of RAM available, so this is less of an issue. Nowadays, the advantages being able to dynamically load kernel modules far outweigh any disadvantages of slightly increased memory consumption.

So what is a kernel module? Well, it is very similar to a Windows device driver Modules often provide hardware specific software functionality. Examples include:

• serial devices
• delivering access to hard drives
• DVD players
• video adapters

It is normal for kernel modules to be loaded at boot time, however due to their dynamic nature they can also be loaded at any time. There are a number of Linux commands available in order to facilitate loading, unloading and gathering information about a module.

The most basic commands for loading and unloading modules consist of “insmod” and “rmmod”. The insmod command inserts a module in the kernel, the rmmod command removes a module from the kernel. You will find a variety of other commands which are necessary to understand when working with kernel modules. These are:

• modinfo – displays the .modinfo section of the module object file (i.e. a file with a .ko or .o file)
• depmod – ascertain any dependencies a module has
• lsmod – shows all currently loaded modules

Each of the above commands are vital when manually loading modules into the kernel. The modinfo command delivers detailed data about the module, for example the kernel version which the module was compiled for, which is critical when troubleshooting any issues encountered when trying to load a kernel module. In addition there is a higher-level Linux module command which is most often used by administrators. It is:

• modprobe – intelligently inserts or removes a Linux kernel module and all dependencies.

The modprobe command is basically a wrapper around insmod, rmmod and depmod, supplying a single, user-friendly command. It is strongly recommended that you read the help guide for modprobe should you be considering doing any work with loading or unloading Linux kernel modules.

Linux kernel modules are normally found within /lib/modules/[kernel-version] where by [kernel-version] will be the kernel version number you are looking at. The kernel version you are doing work on ought to have a matching directory in /lib/modules, it is important that you ensure you are doing work with the right directory whenever adding your modules.

For a number of years an operation named The HTTP Archive have devoted themselves towards following the web page size of the leading 1000 internet websites on the internet. The organisation has just now produced its statistics for the period of January to December 2011 which displays a 33% increase in page size since 2010.

On average a page had been 726 KB throughout 2010. This statistic went up to 965 KB during 2011 displaying a sharp increase relating to the month of October. Having much more users working with mobile online gadgets the increasing web page size may considerably decrease the performance of web sites on these kinds of gadgets which might have a unfavorable effect as more and more individuals surf the net while traveling.

It is thought that the increased utilisation of HTML 5 and JavaScript are the main contributing factors to the page size increase phenomenon. Furthermore to JavaScript it has also been suggested that the increase in webpage size may also be attributed to the increasing utilisation of on-page internet analytics.

Also contibuting is an upwards tendency in the size of graphics used on web site webpages and this is also attributed as a key contributor to the total webpage size.

In future we are expecting website pages to continue growing in size, thus applying increased load on the underlying hosting infrastructure (e.g. servers, network, etc.). Due to lack of online data transfer currently offered for mobile gadgets, we believe many websites will begin to deliver content based on which type of device is accessing the web page.

The concept of delivering different website content based on the device accessing the page is not a new idea, however not many sites currently employ this strategy. Many website owners currently believe there is no requirement for such device dependent optimisation and thus there is a general lack of sites using this capability. In addition the knowledge and techniques required to apply content delivery optimisation are not widely distributed within the web design industry. The current thinking is that due to the self taught nature of most web designers the ability to create such optimisation techniques just isn’t generally available. As such, is it is expected that there will be a booming market place for web designers that can exhibit knowledge and experience in delivering optimised web content based on device recognition techniques over the next 3 years.