Lorenzo Celsi

Rain on a sunday morning

Sunday, 22. November 2009, 14:52:29

News on the Internet

Friday, 20. November 2009, 13:13:38

1. Skype (the company) has been sold for 2 billion USD to a group of investors among which there a private equity Silver Lake, Joltid Limited, Andreessen Horowitz and Canada Pension Plan Investment. In the past I've seen those acquisitions lead soon or later to an involution of the original company, like the owners/founders want to get money and run away before it is too late. We will see if it is the case of Skype.

2.Chrome OS from Google has been officially presented yesterday.
Here you find the description:
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/software-architecture
To me it looks like a simplified Linux distro aimed to people who use some sort of "mobile" device like the "netbooks" and who use it to be always on the Internet and accomplish "Internet-related" tasks. Being Open Source software, it will be extensible but also "fork-able" in any possible way.

8 comments

I need your help

Wednesday, 18. November 2009, 18:49:20

software, windows, Internet

Can somebody suggest a free HTML editor that is still under development?

This is one of the reasons why I am pessimistic about the future of the Web.
Less and less software is available.

15 comments

Again about bandwidth

Wednesday, 18. November 2009, 10:12:50

Internet, life

In case somebody is interested in more details about "*DSL" Internet connections, here are two links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsl
This explains why my line is so asymmetric.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_bitrate_digital_subscriber_line
This is what I would like to have instead.

Now, the limitations about your Internet connection come mostly from the underlying business model. On one side there are the costs for upgrading the traditional "copper" phone line network with new local "nodes", on the other side there is the money that comes from the subscriptions. I don't think any "private" ISP can make money providing Internet connections across the whole country so probably the only option is to consider it as a public service. But even in urban areas where it could be possible for "private" ISPs, the problem is to define what "minimum service level" MUST be granted. And again this leads us to the old question "what the Internet is good for".

2 comments

Bandwidth

Tuesday, 17. November 2009, 08:23:01

Internet

This morning around 8.20 I made some tests with Speedtest on my Internet connection, that comes from the main Italian provider, Telecom Italia, and should be an ADSL line for 7Mbps in download and 0.38Mbs in upload. Here are the results (single pass for each location).

Milano	Vicenza	Roma	Paris
ping 67 downlod 6.48 upload 0.23	ping 68 download 10.40 upload 0.33	ping 77 download 16.13 upload 0.39	ping 157 download 15.10 upload 0.27
London	New York	San Francisco	Tokio
ping 161 download 8.90 upload 0.39	ping 168 download 17.22 upload 0.22	ping 240 download 6.80 upload 0.34	ping 366 download 4.11 upload 0.19

You can see the line is too asymmetric (20:1 - DL:UL ratio) and basically I don't use all that download bandwidth while I am very limited by low upload. This is the lower service available, otherwise I would subscribe one even lower. Another bad thing about it is when everybody is up and connected the network tends to collapse and you either lose the connection or the performance degrade badly. On a side note: the italian government is discussing about financing the "broadband Internet" in rural areas currently not covered by the ISPs with at least 800 million euros. IMHO that is just a gift to the ISPs that currently do what ever they want with their customers.

6 comments

England

Sunday, 15. November 2009, 12:35:58

life

Besides the fact that they don't know the bidet, the English seem to have strange ideas about saving water by not flushing the toilet. Some of the proposed tricks are stuff like pissing in the shower, pissing in the garden (it also helps the making of fertilizer it seems), waiting till everybody has pissed before flushing and stuff like that. Last time I checked it looked like England did not have much problems with shortage of water so it sounds a bit weird from here.

14 comments

Proof of life

Thursday, 12. November 2009, 11:22:20

life

Me Myself and I

19 comments

Martina is a cat

Wednesday, 21. October 2009, 10:24:26

Martina

Today I grabbed a torch to look for a thing that had fallen under some furniture. Martina was there looking at me. At some point she saw the circle of light on the floor and she tried to touch it. I moved the circle and she chased it. Then she saw I was holding the torch, tried to touch the light with a finger, then came closer and licked it. Then, since she could not understand what it was, she lost interest and went away chasing something else.

9 comments

You Can't Get What You Want

Sunday, 11. October 2009, 10:54:05

life, music

This is a famous song from Joe Jackson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GasFKkVkgSI

------------------------------------------
But, on a side note, Joe Jackson was famous for another song from the end of '70s that tells a life story we all know pretty well.

Ma Joe Jackson era famoso per un'altra canzone della fine degli anni '70 che racconta una storia di vita che tutti noi conosciamo bene:
------------------------------------------

Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I'm staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! (Where?)
There's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here

Tonight's the night when I go to all the parties down my street.
I wash my hair and I kid myself I look ***really*** smooth
Look over there! (Where?)
Here comes Jeanie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don't count for much
If so, there goes your proof

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here

But if looks could kill
There's a man there who's marked down as dead.
Cause I've had my fill
Listen you, take your hands off her head
I get so mean around this scene

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5BaurXMmMU

Edit: I just edited this very old post to change the Youtube link and nice MyOpera has changed the post date like I have written it right now. Note to myself: editing post changes the post date. Second note to myself: bomb MyOpera. I hate them.

7 comments