Check this video…

http://www.cisco.com/cdc_content_elements/flash/netsol/sp/getready/index.html?POSITION=bannerCOUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=GetReady&CREATIVE=Corner+Banner+Ad+go/getready&REFERRING_SITE=CISCO%2ECOM+INDEX

Some mysterious new router from Cisco…? Maybe a replacement for the GSR? Nah… I guess we’ll find out next week.

So, you might have heard me complain recently about the performance of FF3. I have been experiencing issues on the Windows, Linux, and Mac versions across the board with general performance. Some people have written that it is the fastest browser yet, but I have experienced anything but speed.

I was blaming some of the plugins I have been using:

Finjan
NoScript
Foxmarks
Adblock Plus
Distrust

But, even on Suse 11 with a stock browser, I have seen cruddy performance, slow downloads, and so on.

I read an article this weekend at Tech Radar:

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/8-hacks-to-make-firefox-ridiculously-fast-468317

I enabled some of the settings these guys recommended and immediately noted a big positive difference.

Our gas prices in the area, as of yesterday afternoon, jumped over a dollar. Prices are currently running anywhere from $4.29 to $5.59 a gallon. Many stations have run out, and the credit-card machines have “conveniently” stopped working and many of those that still have gas are only accepting credit.

Not a single article on Google news about any of this… pathetic but totally expected.

The only thing I could find was an empty promise from Mike Easley saying he will “activate the price gouging law” and doesn’t expect gas to increase more than $0.20 per gallon.

Raleigh is apparently even more out of touch than Washington.

This is totally off-topic…

Argiope aurantia

This thing is about the size of my hand.

One of the challenges of having kids and computers together at home is trying to keep the kids from viewing the wrong kind of content. Sure… there’s rules you need to set and all that, but unfortunately, the Internet not only doesn’t know your own rules at home, but wouldn’t respect them if it did.

There’s a couple of options to pursue here:

1. Build a server, load Squid, Privoxy, or another proxy system, and add a content filtering control like DansGuardian. You need to sharpen your geek-skilz to get this done but it also offers the highest level of performance, flexibility, and scalability.

2. Use a host-based content filtering system like something built into Norton Internet Security (no link because they suck!). As your kids get smarter, they’ll figure out a way around this. My 8-year-old did. Plus this is the least efficient way to apply this kind of control, because you have to duplicate your effort on every computer you want to apply the control on. Also, the control usually drives the performance of your Internet connection on that host into the ground.

3. Use a content filtering system built into hardware. Something like SecureSpot from D-Link. These offer a high-level of flexibility, security, and scalability. I use this solution at home, but it can be viewed as expensive. My initial investment was about $80.00, and the yearly subscription is about the same as well.

Recently, I found another way, and assuming you don’t mind someone tracking everything you’re looking up (I do, but the average person doesn’t for some reason) it is a pretty good way to deliver effective content control on the cheap. OpenDNS offers category-based content-filtering and it’s very easy to set up. Here are the steps you need to take to get set-up:

1. Navigate your browser to http://www.opendns.com and click on the “Start using it now” link on the front page.

2. Follow the instructions on setting up your router so that it hands out the correct IP addresses for DNS servers when you connect your computer to your router. This the important part. Make sure you test by putting in a bogus URL into your browser. You should get an OpenDNS search page back if you’re using the right DNS servers.

3. Create an account. It’s free to do and use.

4. Once you’re signed-in, get on the dashboard and set up your content filtering. Add a network, which in your case, is probably the IP address of your connection, which is displayed on the top of the dashboard. You might want to download the dynamic updater, which runs on Windows or Mac. I don’t use it as my IP doesn’t change very often but if you want to do this, you need to turn on the dynamic updater in the advanced settings page as well.

5. Next, go to settings and create a profile with the categories you want to block. There’s some pretty obvious ones and there’s a whitelist/blacklist feature as well. You can also customize your default pages for when things are blocked to let the person who gets the page know why they landed there. I put a nice logo that gets displayed along with some messages for the kids.

So a couple kewl things about this whole setup are; there’s a category for phishtank and another category for malware. I don’t know who’s feed they use for malware site blocking, but the Phishtank is community-based and I like that approach.

So there’s an article on the Washington Post talking about Comcast capping bandwidth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/28/AR2008082803858.html

My understanding is that Time Warner is looking at a tier-rated bandwidth program as well with a total per-month cap on downloads. Cox apparently already does it. How sad… they are heading the opposite direction from the voice companies, who learned their lesson the hard way and couldn’t hold a customer to save their lives.

I don’t pay for usage on my cell-phone plan… I can talk 24×7 and my price stays the same. When I had a landline I didn’t pay for usage… I could talk all I want. The problem here is a real lack of competition among the cable providers. I already ditched my TV. I ditched my Vonage landline (not because I didn’t like it… I just didn’t use it). I am prepared to ditch anything else related to Time Warner here shortly as soon as I can find a better alternative.

I don’t think I am an abuser. Once in a while, I will download the latest Ubuntu or Suse .iso. Once in a while, I will get on a kick and buy a bunch of music or movies at once. Once in a while I will listen to Internet streaming radio like Frequence3 or Virgin Radio. But now, if I do jut about anything outside of ordinary web-browsing I am going to be punished?

All this made my gears turn and I started thinking. Now is the time to open a coffee shop that has lots of good free bandwidth… people will be clamoring for it. Or better yet, I have 86 homes in my neighborhood… maybe we ought to build an Internet co-op.