It’s over. Finally, the long running DVD format war has effectively come to an end. Toshiba declared yesterday that it no longer will develop, make, or market HD-DVD players and recorders. Because Toshiba is the biggest proponent of HD-DVD, their action essentially concedes defeat to Sony’s competing Blu-Ray format. The beginning of the end came about when Warner announced early this year that it will produce content only on Blu-Ray. Warner has a huge amount of content and when they shifted to Blu-Ray, it’s just a matter of time. Less than a month it turns out. So now i guess everyone will be producing Blu-Ray players, recorders, and media hopefully driving down prices. So what? The future of content is online.
Month: February 2008
Rating: 4/5
Trend Micro is suing Barracuda because the latter supposedly infringes on a patent the former owns regarding the implementation of a anti-virus through an SMTP and FTP gateway. Apparently, Trend Micro is threatened by the less expensive solution of Barracuda which involves off-the-shelf hardware components and the open source Clam Anti-Virus. And so, instead of lowering its cost or improving its own features and services, it decides to sue on the grounds of its stupid patent. It only goes to show that they’re not really concerned about the security of computer users but only on their own profit. That’s just lame.
A day or two ago, I stayed at home. I have my notebook, a bunch of DVDs, a good speed Internet connection, pizza, and unlimited beer. Okay, not the beer, I’ve sworn off it. But what else do you need, right? The answer came as soon as I tried sending my first email. Connection failed. I did some sleuthing and concluded that for some bizarre reason, my ISP seems to be blocking SMTP. WTF! Anyway, rather than complaining and getting it solved by them (what’s the fun in that?) I searched for another solution.
Enter SSH tunneling. This technology allows you to forward most any network traffic through an SSH connection to your SSH server and on to the target server. You login to your SSH server, preferably one with unlimited access to the Internet. Then you can map local ports to be forwarded to your SSH server which will then act as an intermediary between you and your target server. Of course, although the communications between your computer and the SSH server will be pretty much secure, the communication between the SSH server and the target server may not be.
So how did this all work for me and my problem? I loaded up PuTTY and created a new session to my SSH server which is on an ISP who doesn’t block SMTP. Then under Connection->SSH->Tunnels, I added source port 25 and destination port mymailserver:25. I then connected and logged on to my SSH server. While connected, I reconfigured Thunderbird‘s outgoing email server to localhost and then pressed the send button. Voila! Mail sent! :)
Time to make that complaint.
I don’t know what it is about today :P but I found myself thinking back. Yes, for most of us life is good even with its ups and downs but sometimes it does get monotonic. And so once in a while we would go out and do something adventurous. Something, anything to stop that feeling of being trapped in the daily grind. These adventures are welcome respite. A reminder that there is more to life, a lot more.
Of course, if you have adventures, you inevitably would have misadventures. Though definitely not as much as some of my friends, I have my fair share including:
- Crashing onto a center island on a drive. It was due to miscommunication with my co-driver. She was saying left, then right, then center. Luckily we both had seat belts on and the damage was limited to a blown-out tire and a slightly dented rim.
- Going hypothermic on a climb. We were hiking up and it rained slowing us down and causing a drop on the temperature. Then night fell and the temperature dropped some more. We had to pitch a tent in the middle of the trail. I was shaking uncontrollably. Good thing my buddy helped me dry out and kept me warm.
- SUV I was co-driving running out of control on a drive. We found ourselves heading straight at the concrete center dividers. Fortunately, my driver recovered and got it back on its direction, Unfortunately, she also slowed down and the pig truck behind crashed in and totaled the rear window.
- Running low on air on a dive. It was my first time on that site and the current was stronger than what I was used to. Good thing the divemaster was around and gave me his octopus.
- Crashing while karting. I was going at high speed and took a hairpin turn. I plowed into the crash barriers. I injured my hands and my knee. More here.
- Getting food poisoned after eating spoiled fish. This actually happened twice. More here and here.
Will I let these misadventures stop me? Hell no! They’re nothing compared to others’. And as the last one illustrates, we run risks in even the ordinary and mundane things we do. So might as well try to make it extraordinary and fun, right?
Skydiving anyone?