Hashemian Blog
Huh? What?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Oil and the nuclear charade
With oil prices at record levels, and therefore anything else that is remotely connected to it getting expensive fast, I recently began to wonder about the reasons behind the meteoric rise. Geopolitical issues are certainly at the top of the list of culprits, and zooming in on those, the Iranian nuclear ambitions tops the rationale behind the madness that has gripped oil prices.
As the general view goes, the more risky and unstable the circumstances surrounding a commodity, such as oil, the more it fuels the fire of the speculators who foresee tight supplies, and drive up the prices of the futures and thus lifting the spot (current) price of that commodity by default.
True that Iran has had the nuclear ambition for many years, and true that they have enlisted the cooperation of Russia and China in building their reactors, but common belief was that they were years away from the capability of enriching nuclear elements to the point that they can be utilized as weapons. Suddenly all that changed when a few days ago the Iranian president proclaimed reaching a milestone in enriching Uranium. The veracity of this claim remains to be substantiated, but imagine for a moment that it is just an empty bluff. Who is to benefit from it?
For one thing the Iranian government with the rest of the oil and gas-exporting countries including many in the Arab word would be the beneficiaries. Russia, Venezuela, and Nigeria would also get a substantial income boost from the current high prices. Russia and China would suddenly be thrust into prestigious positions on the world scene by trying to quell tensions using their diplomatic muscles. Iraq would also receive much needed extra cash from whatever amount of oil it can export. That could help stabilize the country by creating a better economic landscape and that also benefits many foreign companies engaged in rebuilding the country.
In the US and Western Europe, oil and other energy companies will see their bottom lines continue to rise as they report record profits quarter over quarter. That in turn benefits their constituents and shareholders, many of which are in the current US administration (think Dick Cheney and Halliburton).
So while you and I and the average Joe squirm every time we stick a nozzle into our gas tanks, a bunch of rich people get richer, be it here or abroad. In some sense the fallout from the Iranian nuclear program couldn't have possibly worked out better for them. the Iran's nuclear claim could be nothing more than a calculated maneuver. If Iran was an American corporation making fraudulent claims, it could eventually find itself in court, Enron style. Who needs corporate malfeasance to drum up profits when you have a corrupt government taking care of it for you? Like we're ever going to see Ahmadinejad facing a judge for falsifying records.
oil prices,gas prices,iran,nuclear weapons,uranium <Oil and the nuclear charade>
// posted by rh
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Fighting DDoS – Part I
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack starts by the attacker recruiting an army of computers on the Internet ready to strike at a moment's notice. Recruitment involves luring the unsuspecting computer owners around the world with weak safeguards into visiting sites or opening emails that would result in a malicious program being executed leaving their computers in a compromised state. The collection of compromised computers are referred to as zombies and they stand ready to wreak havoc at the attacker's command by directing as much traffic to the victim's server as they can muster, bringing the server to its knees. When they receive a green light from the attacker, that's exactly what they do. All the victim sees is a flood of data coming from all direction, thus the name DDoS. The deluge renders the server incapacitated, unable to accomplish its usual work as it becomes confounded, much like a confused gazelle attacked by a pack of hyenas.
Why wouldn't the attacker simply use his own equipment to carry out an attack? Simply because attackers seldom have enough bandwidth and computing muscle to carry out large-scale attacks. Besides they risk getting booted off the network by their ISP, and easily getting blocked by the victim, if they misbehave. By controlling the zombies, attackers need very little bandwidth to send the attack command, delegating the dirty work to the compromised computers.
There is usually little a victim can do to defend against the attack. The site's owner can contact his ISP for help. What happens next is a careful adjustment of bandwidth and filtration by the ISP as well as the possible relocation of the victim's server to another address. Meanwhile the victim may have to endure days of outages before the remedies are effective, and still there is no guarantee that the attacker won't recruit a fresh batch of computers to carry out another attack.
Large companies with enough financial strength, might pre-empt such attacks by having a collection of servers distributed geographically around the world attached to large data pipes with sufficient bandwidth tolerance for network traffic surges. This renders most attacks ineffective, unless they are ultra-large, highly distributed, and adaptable. That is why you rarely hear about attacks on sites such as Google, eBay, or Amazon, even though they are prime attack targets.
So what can be done to combat DDoS more effectively? Stay tuned for part II.
ddos,dos,Denial of Service,zombies,ISP <Fighting DDoS – Part I>
// posted by rh
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Windows file search and desktop search
When it comes to searching for files, the standard Windows file search seems to be good choice, until you realize that it doesn't always deliver. I'm not sure why this utility, that has probably been around since Windows itself, has never done a good job. Windows also comes with another utility known as Index Server. This one, when activated, runs as a service in the background, digesting files using special filters, and creating a database of keywords associated with files. By itself, Index Server, doesn't have much in terms of a search facility, but it does allow for other programs to plug into its interface and query its database.
The Windows file search utility is configured to use the Index Server by default which can lead to faster and more accurate searches, but not all files are searchable, only those that have corresponding filters installed. Realizing this drawback, online search outfits such as Google and Yahoo have released search utilities known as Desktop Search that do a better job of indexing and searching files. MSN (a unit of Microsoft) also offers its own version of desktop search. This begs the question, if Windows search was a good product, why would MSN be peddling a desktop search program?
Desktop search is still and evolving industry and it gets better and more powerful as vendors jockey for bigger market shares and integrate them with their own vast online indexes. Meanwhile there are times that one needs a simple utility that can search for files and produce a list of matches. Some, myself included, would opt to write their own programs to do the job. I have since decided to make my own version of simple search available on this site. you can download the program, inspect the code, and use it when a simple file search is all you're looking for. You can find it here.
desktop search,file search,search utility <Windows file search and desktop search>
// posted by rh
Saturday, April 08, 2006
The US debt
Imagine, if you will, that you are under a mountain of debt. Credit card bills, car payment, a big mortgage, and who knows what else. Of course you still have to meet regular life expense obligations, such as food, utilities, and clothing. After much stress you sit down one day to try to figure a way out.
You fire up your calculator or spreadsheet and figure out the incoming and outgoing funds, and you notice that you are stretched way beyond your means. What are your options at that point? For most people, there is really one option. Cut back on expenses and set a realistic goal to climb out of the hole.
The US government's financial picture is not unlike the above scenario. It is true that the finances of the US government is much larger and more complex than that of an individual, but when you boil it down, and cut the mumbo jumbo, it comes down to the same simple idea of balancing income with expenses.
Today the US government is up to its proverbial neck in the red. The national debt is nearing 8.5 trillion dollars. That is nearly $30,000 per each citizen. It is a staggering sum and there seems to be no end in sight in reducing this amount. So what does the US government do when faced with such a dire situation? It raises the debt limit!
Wouldn't you love to be able to do the same when faced with the same issue? Imagine picking up the phone and calling your bank with the news that you have decided to raise your own debt limit. Of course they will laugh at you and then hire a bunch of collectors to hound you around the clock.
The US government is in effect doing the same thing. When they over-spend, they just raise the national debt ceiling and print more bonds to sell. Who are the buyers? Some are domestic, but many are foreign-based. China, for example, is one of the biggest buyers of US bonds and that means they own a big piece of this country's future. The US has never defaulted on its debt, but there could come a time when buyers may begin to get uncomfortable with the debt levels and pull back on their spending. That could result in a precipitation of confidence in US bonds, and would force the US government to offer higher interest rates to attract buyers. But even then, there is so far it can go before igniting rampant inflation and throwing the country into financial disarray.
The specter of impending doom and gloom might sound alarmist, but the US had better get its financial house in order soon. Otherwise we will have years or inflation and higher taxes to look forward to at best. At worst, the US government could default on its debt, declare bankruptcy, and put itself up for sale to the highest bidder. How do you pronounce Washington in Chinese?
debt,bonds,treasury,usa,china,national debt <The US debt>
// posted by rh
Sunday, April 02, 2006
AJAX overload
Years ago SUN proclaimed that the network was the computer. Nowadays, one can also say that the Web page is the application, thanks to AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). When I think of creating an application, my first instinct is to create it as a Web application. I have been using that approach for some years now. Not only Web applications are easier to create, they offer a kind of interoperability that perhaps no other platform can rival. All a user need is a Web browser, and they can run the application.
The Web is an inherently stateless technology. Generally that means that each Web page is independent of other pages, even within the same application. There are of course several ways to retain and store (persist) data as users are passed around various pages. In this fashion each action causes a new page to be loaded as the user navigates the application. That makes the pages less interactive than other types of applications. To address the interactivity issue, technologies such as Java applets and Flash have been used to make the process more fluid. Eventually DHTML reached a point where pages could be manipulated using JavaScript responding to users' action. The final piece of the puzzle was the XMLHttpRequest object, through which Web pages could communicate to the Web server in an out-of-band model, updating data without making a full round-trip back to the server and refreshing the page. The technology was dubbed AJAX and ushered in a new era of Web, known as Web 2.0.
AJAX has been a great leap forward in Web applications. The problem however is that many sites have now gone overboard with it shifting the burden of processing to the client browsers. On the surface this is a welcome change, but there is a drawback when applications rely too heavily on the client side. Many sites that employ AJAX and DHTML end up with slow and unresponsive pages. While bits and pieces of a page are being loaded and formatted from various sources, users must wait until the whole page is rendered before they can proceed.
In many cases, those pages go into a frozen state until all components are properly loaded and formatted and many don't respond to user inputs while completing their tasks. The problem is not widespread yet, but as many sites begin to deploy AJAX, those Web pages will begin to crawl wearing users' patience thin. One notable example is Microsoft live. The site looks great, but the site's home page takes an inordinately long time load. At times I have just abandoned the page while it attempts to load its various parts.
AJAX is a great tool for making Web pages more interactive and flexible. But there is a point where too much technology can hinder usage instead of helping usability. Sites shouldn't just throw in new technologies indiscriminately hoping that users would come in droves. In the end, if a site proves too slow and unresponsive, users would just get turned off, no matter how bleeding-edge.
ajax,XMLHttpRequest,dhtml,javascript <AJAX overload>
// posted by rh
|
Links
Technorati Profile
TMCnet.com
ARCHIVES
09/01/2003 - 10/01/200303/01/2004 - 04/01/200404/01/2004 - 05/01/200405/01/2004 - 06/01/200406/01/2004 - 07/01/200407/01/2004 - 08/01/200408/01/2004 - 09/01/200409/01/2004 - 10/01/200410/01/2004 - 11/01/200411/01/2004 - 12/01/200412/01/2004 - 01/01/200501/01/2005 - 02/01/200502/01/2005 - 03/01/200503/01/2005 - 04/01/200504/01/2005 - 05/01/200505/01/2005 - 06/01/200506/01/2005 - 07/01/200507/01/2005 - 08/01/200508/01/2005 - 09/01/200509/01/2005 - 10/01/200510/01/2005 - 11/01/200511/01/2005 - 12/01/200512/01/2005 - 01/01/200601/01/2006 - 02/01/200602/01/2006 - 03/01/200603/01/2006 - 04/01/200604/01/2006 - 05/01/200605/01/2006 - 06/01/200606/01/2006 - 07/01/200607/01/2006 - 08/01/200608/01/2006 - 09/01/200609/01/2006 - 10/01/200610/01/2006 - 11/01/200611/01/2006 - 12/01/200612/01/2006 - 01/01/200701/01/2007 - 02/01/200702/01/2007 - 03/01/200703/01/2007 - 04/01/200704/01/2007 - 05/01/200705/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
|
