Hello Mac

As I've written before, I always had the passion of installing and messing around with different OSes. Having VMs is fun. Moving from single boot to dual boot to multi boot is even more.

My current victim is Mac OS 10.5.5. Actually these lines are written from within the Safari browser running on that OS. A friend of mine told me he moved from Windows to Linux because it was more fun, and moved from Linux to Mac because things are simpler and everything just works.

After using the Mac OS for two days I really don't get it. Things don't just work. If you're used to something different (say Windows or Linux), you'll need some time to adjust to the interface and to the whereabouts of applications and other stuff.

I guess what all those Mac users are so proud about is not their super-easy super-strong OS, but the very well-done integration between the hardware and the software. Having limited choice between the available hardware (which is also very expensive in Israel), makes the OS design much simpler and easier. No quirks about some obscure WiFi or RAID adapters. All the drivers you need are supplied with the OS, and the OS is built to put this hardware to good use.

Didn't have the chance to go over all of the applications bundled with the OS (time-machine, spotlight, i[Placeholder], etc.), so I can't judge it fully. I think I'll be smarter once I'll be able to compile my first Objective-C "Hello, World!", so I'll be able to compare what's in this OS for developers.

ISP traffic shaping - cont. (2)

Still continuing my posts about Israeli ISPs which perform traffic shaping without admitting it. This time: does a certain ISP encourage piracy?

I must admit it - I consider myself as a PC gamer (the only real reason to have Windows installed). Generally, computer and console games in Israel are expensive. Too expensive. A while ago I became familiar with a cool service from Valve: steam. I believe this service is the right direction of gaming companies, so they could survive the on-going piracy in the field.

Now check out this forum question in steam. You read it right, 012 is known to be blocking steam and games traffic. I checked it, and it is true. Without firewall or anything else to disturb steam, it simply can't connect steam servers to update itself.

Whether this is done on purpose or by ignorance doesn't matter. 012's customers are left without the option to use steam. So a customer which wouldn't afford itself the 3x price of the store, might turn to the less legal option... everybody loses.

Helping sysadmins

Ever since I worked as a sysadmin, I was waiting for something like serverfault to come out. This is a sister-site for stackoverflow, which I have blogged about before. Last night I logged in for the first time to serverfault, entered my OpenID (based on my blogger account), and my profile was converted from stackoverflow. Now I already own the first badge there.

Sorry for the short post, I hope I'll get back to blogging soon.

ISP traffic shaping - cont.

Thought it might be a good idea to update you regarding latest developments and research results since the previous post.

I've been trying the 1.9 beta of uTorrent (available for Windows, runs perfectly under Wine on Linux), since I heard it supports uTP. The reason uTP is important, is because it is believed that ISPs aren't "shaping" this sort of traffic. The experiment seems to be progressing well, as download speeds increased, but still not perfect - not everyone uses uTP-enabled torrent client. But still, now my computer downloads from other computers accross the world, at high speeds, using the new protocol.

So there are few problems which still keeps me from getting my full bendwidth:

1. No open-source implementation of the protocol - slower adoptation.
2. Few closed clients are implementing the protocol, and are still in beta - slower adoptation.
3. ISP still "shapes" other protocols. Annoying.
4. Future problem: will the ISP "shape" uTP?

Happy passover.

Conficker coming to Linux

I guess that by now you've all read about the latest threat over Windows-running PCs - the Conficker worm. So far Conficker had shown some very impressive capabilities, both in infecting innocent machines, and in evading AV products and other security measures.

Today I found at work a Conficker mutation which affects Linux-running computers. Currently it seems to be targeting only specific, debian-based, distros, such as Ubuntu.

Users of older versions of Ubuntu (7.10 and below) are protected due to usage of older kernel.

Everyone who uses newer versions, hurry up and downgrade, or install a more secure and solid OS such as Windows Millenium Edition.

ISP traffic shaping

As I've written before, I'm using file-sharing every now and than, to download a new version of my Linux distro (and other distros for testing), or to download a TV show which doesn't show in Israel, or I cannot watch by other means. Also, as you may all know, the best way to do so, is using a torrent client, such as Transmission, uTorrent, Vuze, etc.

It seems ISPs in Israel (and probably world wide) are playing a double-game. Their first interest is to sell us as much bandwidth as possible. Only recently a new commercial went on-air telling us how much more music and movies can be downloaded if one would double their bandwidth. On the other hand - it seems some ISPs are doing traffic shaping.

Me and a friend of mine are both subscribers of a large ISP, which has the word "gold" in its name, and we are quite sick and tired of this. After doing some thorough tests, we came to a conclusion that torrent traffic is being limited during most of the day. In those hours, the torrent would download at full throttle only from clients subscribed to the same (our) ISP. As for the rest - download rate was roughly 1KBPS. At about 2AM, the limitation is removed, and all of a sudden those same clients started sending data at blazingly fast rates, which lasted until morning.

What bothers me more is the fact there's no transparency regarding traffic shaping. If I'm being limited - I want to know about it. Some uses are legitimate, and consumers must be aware for those limitations. Moreover, what if other services are "shaped" as well, such as the bandwidth-consuming youtube? I like watching youtube videos at HD, and don't want those to be choppy (and I noticed they sometimes do).

So what do you think? Is your ISP shaping your traffic? Also - what can be done about it?

IE8 optional in Windows 7

Is this true? If so, it doesn't mention how could one install a different browser (so you have to use IE8 to download another browser). Interesting.

Either way - this is a good step toward making Windows a safer OS.