Google released their new Chrome web browser shortly before the end of a video announcement about it at 11am PST. I had the download page ready at the beginning of the video (http://www.google.com/chrome) and was only getting a “404 - not found” error. At around 11:45a I hit refresh on it and there it was.
The install was amazingly fast and simple. Didn’t even require a file that needed downloaded to my HDD and run from there. The install launched directly out of my Firefox and was done in less than 1 minute.
It is very heavily based on Apple’s Safari Webkit engine. Here is the HTTP_USER_AGENT from a test PHP page I made:
“Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13″
Overall, I’ve always sort of liked Safari, but always had issues with minor glitches and random lagginess. I’ve not encountered any issues at all with Chrome so far. Google has probably done massive internal testing to insure that there are no obvious glitches and/or bugs. The GUI is very simple and seems fully functional and the memory usage is EXCELLENT compared to Firefox.
I’ve had Firefox take up to 400-500mb RAM without much even going on. Even just after starting Firefox is the Google homepage, it takes up 62mb RAM. On my system, Chrome only consumed around 25mb.
The only thing I’ve run into when it comes to rendering is my company’s Intranet. It is only optimized for IE and Firefox and looks pretty bad with Chrome/Safari but is still usable.
All other sites I frequent are just fine, loading faster than ever.
UPDATE 5pm EST:
After running some memory tests, I opened up 4 tabs in Firefox, IE8, Chrome, Safari and Opera, which included logging into 2 of the sites and just displaying two others.
Tab 1: My company’s ticketing system
Tab 2: My personal GMail (Google Apps for Domains)
Tab 3: This blog’s admin section login page only
Tab 4: MSN Money Stock quotes with 6 stocks on it
Firefox 3.0.1: 124.5mb RAM (1 thread)
Firefox loaded everything pretty well, was a bit sluggish on GMail tab.
IE8 (version 8.0.6001.17184): 95.5mb RAM (2 threads)
IE8 loaded everything that it loaded pretty quick too, but completely failed to load GMail, getting stuck on the loading <Email adress> progress meter… Rendering on the front page of my company’s site was screwed up, but was fine in all other browsers tested.
Chrome: 112.5mb RAM (6 threads)
Perfect loading of all tabs, very fast, no issues.
Safari 3.1.2 (Windows): 98mb RAM (1 thread)
Loaded all sites, a bit sluggish, but not as bad as Firefox.
Opera 9.52: 75.5mb RAM (1 thread)
Loaded all sites, little slow on GMail, but it came up. All other sites where just as fast as Chrome.
In conclusion, I like the feel of Chrome the best. Very simple and easy to use, I really like the multiple thread/tab paradigm. Safari has that nice “Appley” interface I like. Opera is Ok, but does have more rendering problems, on sites not tested above, than the others. IE8… Bleh… no comment…
And as for Firefox, and I thought I’d never say it, it falling behind on both memory usage and speed. I’ve also encountered quite a few Firefox crashes when shutting down the browser. This is happening occasionally on all my machines on all operating systems I use, Mac, Linux and Windows.
Later today Google is expected to release a new web browser based on Webkit (what Safari uses) and Firefox. I feel that it will be a welcome addition to the browser wars.
I used Firefox, but have notice a lot more browser crashes with 3.x than previous versions and it feels quite laggy sometimes even on a Quad processor machine with 3gb RAM. It gets to the point sometimes where I just load up Safari or Opera to surf sometimes.
IE just sucks. I ONLY use IE for site testing during web development and for the “best” experience accessing my day job’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) for email. Other than that, IE is not a part of my day to day browser use.
If this Google takes the best of Webkit and Firefox and makes it “better, faster, stronger”, then I will use it. Of course I will be frank on my review of it and will do my best not to be biased since I use Google almost exclusive for my search needs, Email (Google Apps for Domains), Analytics for stats, etc.
I will post up a review once I get my hands on it and can put it through it’s paces.
I think Google will have more downloads of this browser in the first 24 hours than Firefox did on it’s 3.0 launch day if it posts up something on the front page of Google. This could be huge.
Sarah Palin is the best choice McCain has made. I’m not huge fan of McCain and have nothing in my mind for the Obama/Biden ticket, but Sarah Palin, I think, will take McCain over the top for the republican campaign.
Sarah Palin on Vogue Cover
I’ll have to be honest, I had only heard a little bit about Sarah Palin in the past. I don’t keep up too much
with Alaskan politics, but after reading her bio, article about her, her family, record and Wikipedia entry, I connect with her 100% on the issues.
Superfically, any female politician that can look this good on the cover of Vogue and still have the brains, political conviction and garner an ~85% approval rating in her own state, has my vote.
More pictures at the bottom of the post
Here is her Wikipedia entry:
Early life
Palin was born Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter of Sarah (née Sheeran), a school secretary, and Charles R. Heath, a science teacher and track coach. She has English, Irish, and German ancestry. Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant. The Heaths were avid outdoors enthusiasts; Sarah and her father would sometimes wake at 3 a.m. to hunt moose before school, and the family regularly ran 5 km and 10 km races.
Palin was the point guard and captain for the Wasilla High School Warriors, in Wasilla, Alaska, when they won the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982; she earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” because of her intense play.She played the championship game despite a stress fracture in her ankle, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds. Palin, who was also the head of the school Fellowship of Christian Athletes, would lead the team in prayer before games.
In 1984, after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, Palin finished second in the Miss Alaskabeauty pageant which won her a scholarship to help pay her way through college. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.
Palin holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho where she also minored in politics. She married her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin, on August 29, 1988, and briefly worked as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations while also working as a commercial fisherman with her husband.
Pre-gubernatorial political experience
Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996. In 1996, she challenged and defeated the incumbent mayor, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes. The ex-mayor and sheriff tried to organize a recall campaign, but failed. Palin kept her campaign promises by reducing her own salary, as well as reducing property taxes by 60%. She ran for reelection against the former mayor in 1999, winning by an even larger margin. Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.
In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a four-way race. After Frank Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in mid-term to become governor, Palin interviewed to be his possible successor. Instead, Murkowski appointed his daughter, then-Alaska State Representative Lisa Murkowski.
Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the “lack of ethics” of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her whistleblowing complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest. After she resigned, she exposed the state Republican Party’s chairman, Randy Ruedrich, one of her fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, who was accused of doing work for the party on public time, and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail. Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who both resigned; Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.
Governorship
In 2006, Palin, running on a clean-government campaign, executed an upset victory over then-Gov. Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Despite the lack of support from party leaders and being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she went on to win the general election in November 2006, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles. Palin said in 2006 that education, public safety, and transportation would be three cornerstones of her administration.
When elected, Palin became the first woman to be Alaska’s governor, and the youngest governor in Alaskan history at 42 years of age upon taking office. Palin was also the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood. She was also the first Alaskan governor not to be inaugurated in Juneau, instead choosing to hold her inauguration ceremony in Fairbanks. She took office on December 4, 2006.
Highlights of Governor Palin’s tenure include a successful push for an ethics bill, and also shelving pork-barrel projects supported by fellow Republicans. After federal funding for the Gravina Island Bridge project that had become a nationwide symbol of wasteful earmark spending was lost, Palin decided against filling the over $200 million gap with state money. “Alaska needs to be self-sufficient, she says, instead of relying heavily on ‘federal dollars,’ as the state does today.”
She has challenged the state’s Republican leaders, helping to launch a campaign by Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell to unseat U.S. Congressman Don Young and publicly challenging Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings.
In 2007, Palin had an approval rating often in the 90s. A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008 showed Palin’s approval rating at 80%.
Energy policies
Palin’s tenure is noted for her independence from big oil companies, while still promoting resource development. Palin has announced plans to create a new sub-cabinet group of advisors, to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska.
Shortly after taking office, Palin rescinded thirty-five appointments made by Murkowski in the last hours of his administration, including the appointment by Murkowski of his former chief of staff Jim Clark to the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority.[19][20] Clark later pled guilty to conspiring with a defunct oil-field-services company to channel money into Frank Murkowski’s re-election campaign.
In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) as the new legal vehicle for building a natural gas pipeline from the state’s North Slope. Only one legislator, Representative Ralph Samuels, voted against the measure, and in June Palin signed it into law. On January 5, 2008, Palin announced that a Canadian company, TransCanada Corp., was the sole AGIA-compliant applicant. In August, 2008 Palin signed a bill into law giving the state of Alaska authority to award TransCanada Pipelines a license to build and operate the $26-billion-dollar pipeline to ship natural gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48, through Canada.
In response to high oil and gas prices, and in response to the resulting state government budget surplus, Palin proposed giving Alaskans $100-a-month energy debit cards. She also proposed providing grants to electrical utilities so that they would reduce customers’ rates. She subsequently dropped the debit card proposal, and in its place she proposed to send Alaskans $1,200 directly and eliminate the gas tax.
Social issues
Palin is strongly opposed to abortion and supports capital punishment. While running for Governor of Alaska, Palin supported the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools, however, she noted she would not use “religion as a litmus test, or anybody’s personal opinion on evolution or creationism” as criteria for selection to the school board.
She opposes same-sex marriage, but she has stated that she has gay friends and is receptive to gay and lesbian concerns about discrimination. While the previous administration did not implement same-sex benefits, Palin complied with an Alaskan state Supreme Court order and signed them into law. She disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling and supported a democratic advisory vote from the public on whether there should be a constitutional amendment on the matter. Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage, in 1998, along with Hawaii. Palin has stated that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment.
Palin’s first veto was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. In effect, her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto occurred after Palin consulted with Alaska’s attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation
Matanuska Maid Dairy closure
When the Alaska Creamery Board recommended closing Matanuska Maid Dairy, an unprofitable state-owned business, Palin objected, citing concern for the impact on dairy farmers and the fact that the dairy had just received $600,000 in state money. When Palin learned that only the Board of Agriculture and Conservation could appoint Creamery Board members, she simply replaced the entire membership of the Board of Agriculture and Conservation.The new board, led by businesswoman Kristan Cole, reversed the decision to close the dairy. The new board approved milk price increases offered by the dairy in an attempt to control fiscal losses, even though milk from Washington was already offered in Alaskan stores at lower prices.In the end, the dairy was forced to close, and the state tried to sell the assets to pay off its debts but received no bids.
Budget
In the first days of her administration, Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased (on a state government credit account) by the Murkowski administration. The state placed the jet for sale on eBay three times. In August 2007, the jet was sold for $2.1 million.
Shortly after becoming governor, Palin canceled a contract for the construction on an 11-mile (18-kilometer) gravel road outside of Juneau to a mine. This reversed a decision made in the closing days of the Murkowski Administration.
In June 2007, Palin signed into law a $6.6 billion operating budget—the largest in Alaska’s history. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to nearly $1.6 billion.
Commissioner dismissal controversy
On July 11, 2008, Governor Palin dismissed Walter Monegan as Commissioner of Public Safety and instead offered him a position as executive director of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which he subsequently turned down. Monegan alleged shortly after his dismissal that it may have been partly due to his reluctance to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a divorce and child custody battle with Palin’s sister, Molly McCann. In 2006, before Palin was governor, Wooten was briefly suspended for ten days for threatening to kill McCann’s (and Palin’s) father, tasering his 11-year-old stepson (at the stepson’s request), and violating game laws. After a union protest, the suspension was reduced to five days.
Governor Palin asserts that her dismissal of Monegan was unrelated to the fact that he had not fired Wooten, and asserts that Monegan was instead dismissed for not adequately filling state trooper vacancies, and because he “did not turn out to be a team player on budgeting issues.” Palin acknowledges that a member of her administration, Frank Bailey, did contact the Department of Public Safety regarding Wooten, but both Palin and Bailey say that happened without her knowledge and was unrelated to her dismissal of Monegan.Bailey was put on leave for two months for acting outside the scope of his authority as the Director of Boards and Commissions. Commissioner Monegan received no severance pay, though at the same time another dismissed Commissioner, Charles Kopp (who served only 11 days) received $10,000, implying some animus on Palin’s part toward Monegan.
In response to Palin’s statement that she had nothing to hide, in August 2008 the Alaska Legislature hired Steve Branchflower to investigate Palin and her staff for possible abuse of power surrounding the dismissal, though lawmakers acknowledge that “Monegan and other commissioners serve at will, meaning they can be fired by Palin at any time.” The investigation is being overseen by Democratic State Senator Hollis French, who says that the Palin administration has been cooperating and thus subpoenas are unnecessary. The Palin administration itself was the first to release an audiotape of Bailey making inquiries about the status of the Wooten investigation.
2008 Vice-presidential candidacy
On August 29, 2008, Palin was announced as presumptive Republicanpresidential candidate John McCain’s vice-presidential candidate, or running mate. Palin’s selection surprised many Republican officials who had speculated about other candidates such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, United States Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.
Palin is considered to have similar policy positions to John McCain in most respects. One major exception is drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which Palin strongly supports and McCain has opposed. Palin is expected to try to convince McCain to change his position on ANWR drilling.
Palin is the second U.S. woman to run on a major party ticket, after Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, under former vice-president Walter Mondale in 1984.
Personal life
Palin’s husband is a commercial fisherman. Outside the fishing season, Todd works for BP energy corporation at an oil field on Alaska’s North Slope and is a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2000-mile “Iron Dog” race four times. The two eloped shortly after Palin graduated from college; when they learned they needed witnesses for the civil ceremony, they recruited two residents from the old-age home down the street. The Palin family lives in Wasilla, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Anchorage.
On September 11, 2007, the Palins’ then eighteen-year-old son Track, eldest of five, joined the Army. He now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September 2008. She also has three daughters: Bristol, Willow and Piper.
On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome. She returned to the office three days after giving birth. Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”
Details of Palin’s personal life have contributed to her political image. She hunts, eats moose hamburger, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane. Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it. In December 2007, Palin posed for a photo spread in the fashion magazine Vogue.
McCain/Palin Logo
Office Sarah Palin Portrait
Sarah Palin
Palin in a car
Misc Sarah Palin Photo
Governor-elect Sarah Palin announces members of her cabinet during a news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday, Dec. 1, 2006
Want an simple and easy way to access your Amazon S3 account?
I’ve tried JungleDisk. It’s good and provides lots of features to those who need them. I’ve also use Bucket Explorer, but it seems very slow on loading the file list on large folders.
How about for the rest of us that just need to be able to upload/download and set permissions?
I googled around today and ran across S3Fox. It is a Firefox plugin that runs within the browser and was amazing quick and easy to configure and access S3.
Once installed and configured, you can easily access files under “Tools”, “S3 Organizer” where it loads up a nice FTP looking interface.
Once a file is uploaded, you can right click on it and change permissions (in case you need to use the files on a public website).
I use Amazon S3 for a client site that has a page with LOTS of images. With the Mosso Compute Cycle issue I mentioned in the last post, this offloads 400+ small 10-15k images off that server and onto Mosso. I also use it for miscellaneous personal file storage and it seems to be working out great!
I’ve been moving my blogs and the other’s I host through a lot of transitions lately after having a HORRIBLE experience with GoDaddy and then Compute Cycle concerns with Mosso.com.
Mosso’s new compute cycles are heavily counting Wordpress and other DB driven site hits. 5 relatively low hit blogs, ~150,000 TOTAL hits, were taking up as many Compute Cycles as one of my non-DB driven sites getting > 2,500,000 hits with lots of graphics.
I still like Mosso and most of my sites are still using email on them, but a bit more predictable monthly bill is nice.
So I happened to run across SliceHost.com yesterday… The site is simple and clean and I was impressed at the speed of their own website. Some of the hosting providers I find while searching around have sluggish sites, which really makes me question their server/network capacity and so on.
Here is their basic blurbage from the front page of their site.
BUILT FOR DEVELOPERS
We’re just like you. Sick of oversold, underperforming, ancient hosting companies. We took matters into our own hands. We built a hosting company for people who know their stuff. Give us a box, give us bandwidth, give us performance and we get to work. Fast machines, RAID-10 drives, Tier-1 bandwidth and root access. Managed with a customized Xen VPS backend to ensure that your resources are protected and guaranteed.
No contracts, no setup fees.
Upgrade, downgrade, add a slice or remove a slice anytime.
Billing is monthly, cancel at anytime.
Payments of $240 or more receive a 10% credit.
Full root access and rebooting
Choice of Linux distro
Dedicated IP address and Tier-1 redundant bandwidth
Slicehost management portal for reboots and software installs
Mobile management portal for smartphones
Ajax console access
Bootable rescue mode
Machines running with fixed usage limits, below full capacity
So I decided to go ahead and give them a try and signed up for a 256mb Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy “Slice”. That slice is a virtual machine running on a nice large powerful server. For $20/mo I get a VM with 256 RAM, 10GB space, 100GB bandwidth.
Some may think that’s so little, but it’s plenty to run a quite a large handful of decent sized Wordpress blogs or other similiar CMS systems. 10gb is plenty for people who aren’t uploading massive uncompressed images, videos and other media. 100gb is also good especially if your web server is using mod_deflate to compress output.
Provisioning only took like 5 minutes, it was assigned a static IP and a default (hard) random root password that I went in and changed to my harder password.
I ran the apt-get install commands I used to get the lighttpd setup running on it like in my post back in April.
Basically in about 30 mins I was setup, I went ahead and moved over idude.org here and then 5 of my other friend’s blogs and am in a “testing phase” now.
Back to SliceHost…
I really like their control panel, it is very simple and sweet and has pretty much everything you need to manage your VMs. The backup is very simple and can be automated to daily as well as a weekly. These backups are FULL VM snapshots to take your entire machine back to a previous state.
A Unique feature is an AJAX powered console to your server. I don’t think it really full supports CTRL functions and stuff, but it’s enough to change some permissions, delete some stuff, create new folders, etc.
If you outgrow the 256mb/10gb/100gb Slice, you can scale it up, without losing data and minimal downtime, up to a 4096mb/160gb/1600gb Slice, which is 16x the power/space at only 14x the cost. ($280)
There are also nice stats to show CPU use, CPU time, disk I/O, and network I/O. You can do soft/hard reboots as well plus much more.
A few months ago, I had a VM of about the same size at GoDaddy running CENTOS 4 (only Linux option at the time) and it was horribly sluggish and had all kinds of “default” crap on it. This Ubuntu install on SliceHost is virtually a base install allowing me much more flexibility over what goes on it.
The performance of it was also generally lightning fast. I’ve used Ubuntu directly on a powerful server and it appeared just as responsive both in the console running commands and hitting the sites remotely.
Network speed was excellent as well… Got 16mbps uploading some files to it, which again, isn’t bad for a VM.
One last thing. SliceHost is running out of St. Louis. After pinging it from a web-based “multiping” site, it got excellent low latency from all parts of the country, as compared to hosts I’ve used on either the left or east coast, due to it’s central location.
More updates will follow as more is experienced. I think I’ve finally found a long term home for my Linux sites.
Ice on Mars is a pretty big deal… If the Phoenix was able to scrap just this much soil and hit water ice, then it is most likely prevalent just below the surface of Mars. The implications are numerous.
Life on Mars was almost guaranteed in the past if this ice was originally liquid water. Microbial life probably lives on within the soil.
Water Ice becomes a means of fuel (the “H” in H2O) and a source of Oxygen (The “O” in H2O) by breaking it down.
Plants can be cultivated in labs on the surface and have a water source to survive. Those plants can then be genetically modified (to survive the cold, etc) to provide a method of terraforming Mars into a planet someday being able to support human life. (Remember the movie “Total Recall”?)
I am not a War opposer, I support it overall, but I do wish the government would drop as much money as they are putting into the war into space exploration. Imagine what could be accomplished.
Since I am starting to focus this whole place more on technobabble, I try to avoid non-techy subjects, but having posted on Amtrak before, I will do so again.
Last week, Congress appropriated 15 billion to help Amtrak “steam forward” (sorry! ;-) ) into the the future.
In a veto-proof 311-104 vote last week that mimics a Senate decision late last year, the U.S. House wisely pumped $15 billion into the national rail system, allowing for capital improvements and providing operating funds for the heavily-subsidized service through fiscal year 2013.
While cross-country service will continue - Amtrak serves 500 destinations in 46 states - the House turned a switch and sent passenger rail service barrelling in new directions.
The bill provides about $500 million in each of the next five years for grants to allow states to contract with Amtrak to expand or establish rail service between cities. It also instructs the federal Department of Transportation to seek proposals from private firms to establish rapid rail service between New York City and Washington, the nation’s first foray into high-speed rail.
I’ve taken Amtrak in the past on various trips mostly from Ohio to DC or vice-versa on the Cardinal. They have been fun and full of socializing with new people from all over the world (mostly while smoking in the smoking car, if they still exist). From students to lawyers, hackers, rural commuters who were taking the train from Prince, WV to Manassas, VA to work construction, the people and their stories can be mesmerizing. I even happened to run into a Shawnee “tribesmen” (who rolled us cigarettes when we ran out) who actually knew my old minister who married my wife and I. Besides being a minister in Oxford, Ohio, he is also the story teller (AKA: Neeake) for the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band. Small world!
In my few trips, Amtrak service was plagued by delays, mostly due to CSX and other freight lines that hit their crew’s time limit and had to stop, wherever they were, and bring in a new crew. Sometimes these stops were made in the middle of the night on a single track with no secondary track nearby for them to “pull over”. Sometimes the delays were up to 12 hours, but at least there was food (and self brought vodka and coke) to pass the time. Even with the delays, there was plenty to do and we were able to move about the train and stretch, unlike the recent airline debacles this past winter. Fortunately, I had no schedule to meet, but others did and problems like these turned a lot of people away from rail.
Hopefully this new federal funding will change this and allow infrastructure upgrades possible that will minimize or eliminate these massive delays and bring back the “good ol days” of passenger rail in the U.S.
To conclude, trains are an American past-time, a mode of transportation that made expansion across North America possible. Most people these days don’t give trains their due when it comes to this “forgotten” piece of history. Lets embrace this funding and encourage your elected officials not to let it die before it is fully realized.
PS - Gas prices aren’t getting any lower any time soon.
I’ve always have used simple WiFi routers to be the “first device” connected to my network here at home. Over the last year or two, I have been experimenting with SveaSoft Talisman Opensource Router Firmware, on my BuffaloWHR-HP-G54, as well as DD-WRT. DD-WRT has been my favorite and seems the easiest to use firmware with the slickest interface.
But it just didn’t feel like “enough” protection.
Enter Clark Connect Community Edition 4.2
Clark Connect Community Edition, CCCE for simplification, is the free edition of this OS. It is a Linux firewall based on Red Hat Linux and contains many excellent features to protect your network and give you services that only much more expensive solutions offer.
I grabbed one of my “old” Dell servers, an SC430 Dual Core machine that I’ve used for reviews here in the past and started install of the ISO I burned (~487mb). To utilize the firewall “gateway” mode of the OS, I installed a second old 100mb NIC card to be the external WAN side and kept the faster GB NIC for “internal” use.
Installation was a breeze, as most are these days, and within 20-25 minutes, I had the core system up and running. It took a little bit of configuration to get both cards recognized and to get my cable modem provider to reset the ARP table (by rebooting the cable modem) for the external WAN side to kick in. I just put a ping from a commandline on the gateway and watched it.
Pings were replied to…
The console interface is limited and mostly allows you to do simple things like configure NICS, view a traffic monitor (IPTraf) and other minor things. There is a relatively new “graphical” GUI that lets you see some more, but it is still mostly limited.
The best way to configure the gateway is by logging into the web interface. The web interface can be accessed by the URL https://yourgwIP:81 and entering the root password you chose during installation. Once in, virtually every feature can be configured, services started/stopped and a full statistical interface can be seen. More stuff can be installed/configured from the commandline via SSH or direct console access.
As stated above, in my network, this CCCE gateway replaced my DD-WRT WiFi router as the “first device” connected to the internet. I then plugged the internal LAN NIC into a 24 port gigabit switch and connected my nearby workstations to it. For my “remote” WiFi devices like my Laptops and iDudette’s Mac Mini, I reconfigured the DD-WRT router to be an internal device on the network.
The CCCE machine become the primary DHCP server on the network and the DD-WRT provides a seperate subnet that is not routable directly to the CCCE. I may change this in the future to make sharing a bit easier between the two networks.
I also run a 4 node Meraki network directly off the CCCE gateway and now I can better control the bandwidth and service usage of possibly “unknown” people to limit torrenting and other “illegal” activities.
There is so much more I can say, but you gotta see it for yourself. This is the simplest of all the linux firewalls I’ve tinkered around with, even those who aren’t familiar with all these things should be able to figure it out.
Clark Connect also has a subscription level which will give you more features within the gateway, like Exchange Connectors and so on, and online DNS and other services. See their website for more.
Here is the feature list from the site.
ClarkConnect provides all the necessary software and tools required for an organization’s server needs. The details of the following features are described below:
Gateway and DNS Services
To complement the ClarkConnect feature set, we offer a suite of services to help deploy, manage and maintain a ClarkConnect system:
* Gateway Services
* DNS Services
Firewall, Networking and Security
ClarkConnect provides several levels of security. At the network level, the firewall restricts access to your systems and provides advanced features, including DMZ, 1-to-1 NAT and Port Forwarding. At the protocol level, the Peer-to-Peer detection system lets you manage peer-to-peer file sharing usage. At the application level, the Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Prevention systems provide another layer of defense against threats to your network.
Multi-WAN
With the Multi-WAN solution, you can connect two or more Internet connections to your ClarkConnect system. The solution not only increases your available bandwidth, but also provides automatic network failover.
Bandwidth Management
Some applications are more important than others. The Bandwidth Manager lets you prioritize network traffic — downloading the latest Windows updates will no longer interfere with your Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls.
1-to-1 NAT - DMZ - Peer-to-Peer Management - Intrusion Detection - Intrusion Prevention - Multi-WAN / Dual WAN - Bandwidth Management - DHCP Server - Caching DNS Server
VPN / Virtual Private Networks
With the PPTP VPN solution, you can use the built-in VPN client that comes with Microsoft Windows to connect remote desktops and laptops to your network. There’s no need to purchase and install expensive third party software — the PPTP VPN solution works right out of the box.
VPN - Connecting Local Area Networks
If you need to securely connect two or more networks via the Internet, using our unique Managed/Dynamic VPN fits the bill. The VPN solution not only makes connecting remote networks easy, but also more reliable. This solution is based on the standard IPsec VPN protocol, so you can count on industry standard encryption and authentication technologies.
Web Proxy and Filtering
The Web Proxy server reduces bandwidth usage and speeds up web browsing. In addition, the proxy can be configured with user authentication. With authentication enabled, you can control and monitor access to the web.
Content Filter
Whether you are concerned about students accessing pornography or employees checking their personal webmail during office hours, the Content Filter provides a flexible way to enforce web usage policies for your network.
Banner Ad and Pop-up Blocker
If you find that banner ads and pop-ups are slowing down your network, you can enable the Banner Ad and Pop-Up Blocker to speed up web page loading times.
E-mail
ClarkConnect has integrated the same scalable and reliable POP/IMAP and SMTP servers used by large organizations. Thanks to the open-source revolution, it is possible for a small business to enjoy an enterprise class e-mail system.
Webmail, Outlook and More
End users can access their e-mail using any number of standard e-mail clients. Though Microsoft Outlook is the most popular way to access mail on a ClarkConnect server, you can also use the built-in Webmail module and other popular e-mail software packages.
Multiple Antispam Engines
Our server solution provides several different antispam techniques to maximize the spam detection effectiveness. The antispam engines include the SpamAssassin, Dspam and Greylisting.
Affordable Antivirus Protection
Expensive antivirus solutions are a thing of the past. The Antivirus solution not only detects viruses, but also phishing attempts. In addition, both antispam and antivirus scanning can be configured in Mail Gateway Mode so you can protect existing mail servers (including Microsoft Exchange) on your network.
Groupware
The suite of groupware features allows your organization to share and manage information. With the Microsoft Outlook connector, you can share Calendars, Contacts, Tasks Lists and Notes. Whether you need a company calendar or a sales contact list for a few members of your staff, sharing information is simple and affordable.
Flexshare
The powerful Flexshare feature allows people in your organization to share files and helps bring out the value of of all the information in your organization.
Database and Web Server
Do you need to install a web-based application on your network? ClarkConnect provides the LAMP application engine with easy-to-use web-based administration tools:
* Linux
* Apache Web Server
* MySQL Database
* PHP
File and Print Services
The ClarkConnect solution provides both an FTP and Windows/Samba file server solution. These two file server modules coupled with Flexshare Groupware gives you a powerful tool for sharing files in your organization.
Backup, Backup, Backup
There are two kinds of people — those who have lost important data, and those who will lose important data. Backup is often overlooked, but it is one of the most important tasks for any organization. The comprehensive LAN Backup and Recovery solution provides all the necessary tools to protect against disasters.
The new Apple iPhone 3G was announced today (6/9/2009) at WWDC 2008 in San Francisco. The new price is only $199 (8gb) and $299 (16gb) due to carrier subsidies. It has tons of new features built into it, notably GPS and 3G (of course) and will definitely make inroads not only into the corporate market with the new MS Exchange functionality, but also into the more frugal consumer market. $199 makes this phone very competitive with the higher end blackberries and cheaper than most of the Microsoft Smartphones.
Most of the base features are the same, like the flash storage capacity, but Apple did take suggestions from the community and improve the design, such as making the headphone jack flush as to not require a special adaptor to use non-Apple headphones.
The 16GB model also has a white backed version as well as the new Black backed and the front of the phone is wholly unchanged…
Included accessories, everything is pretty much the same:
iPhone 3G
Stereo Headset with mic
Dock Connector to USB Cable
SB Power Adapter (A bit smaller now)
Documentation
Cleaning/polishing cloth
SIM ejector tool (a paperclip!)
Look for the new iPhone to reach stores around July 11th. Hopefully supply will be able to hit the demand that I anticipate. I plan on getting ahold of one for myself.
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Posted by iDude
