As an Amazon Associate (you can see the banners even on this page), I have been following the spat between Amazon and the cash-strapped states that are legislating Internet sales taxes. The states argue that Amazon Associates in their jurisdictions are tantamount to company branches constituting presence and therefore any sales made to their residents — Continue reading »
Oracle Buys Sun
📆 April 20, 2009
When today I heard the news of Oracle buying Sun Microsystems, my first thought was that I wished I had picked up some JAVA shares after the IBM deal had fallen through. It was just a matter of time before a suitor would snap it up. My second thought was about its impact on the — Continue reading »
DNS Mystery, NameServers, IP addresses
📆 June 18, 2008
Today I was trying to reach 1&1's home page, but the browser kept failing to pull up the site. Mysteriously I was able to reach 1&1's home page when I changed my DNS servers to those of OpenDNS.org. Feeling curious I decided to investigate the matter in depth. My default DNS server was reporting the — Continue reading »
Google, Blogger in German?
📆 March 19, 2008
Here's a head-scratcher for tonight. When I got home one of my kids was trying show me something on blogger.com and suddenly everything was in Deutsch, as in German. At first I though that it was a mix-up. Some programmer at Google (which owns Blogger) had screwed up and suddenly everything had gone Teutonic. Now — Continue reading »
DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Amazon Unbox, Part 3
📆 April 11, 2007
Up to this point I had downloaded a Star Trek WMV file from Amazon Unbox to one PC. Having experienced performance issues, I had copied it to another PC and learned that the WMV film was protected by Microsoft's Windows Media DRM (Digital Rights Managements). Finally I had dismantled the first PC and had built — Continue reading »
DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Amazon Unbox, Part 2
📆 April 10, 2007
I have to admit when it comes to DRM (Digital Rights Management) my knowledge is pretty dismal. I always knew that it was meant to prevent piracy but not being a fanatic of music and movies, DRM was never in my priority list of things to learn. But when I tried to run the Star — Continue reading »
DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Amazon Unbox, Part 1
📆 April 8, 2007
I have been running the Amazon Unbox ad banner atop my site's pages for a while now, but never used the service until recently. Unbox is the name of Amazon's TV and movie download service that went online a few months ago. So in the spirit of using what I advertise, I decided to take — Continue reading »
Give a few Sats