Today it is considered the modern laptop (portable computers) are turning 30 years old. The notebook grandparent is a COMPAQ – GRiD Compass 1011 – a “mobile computer” with a electroluminescent display (ELD) screen supporting resolution of 320×240 pixels. The screen allowed the user to use the computer console in a text resolution of 80×24 chars. This portable high-tech gadget was equipped with magnesium alloy case, an Inten 8086 CPU (XT processor) at 8Mhz (like my old desktop pravetz pc ), 340 kilobyte (internal non-removable magnetic bubble memory and even a 1,200 bit/s modem!
The machine was uniquely compatible for its time as one could easily attach devices such as floppy 5.25 inch drives and external (10 Meg) hard disk via IEEE-488 I/O compatible protocol called GPiB (General Purpose instrumental Bus).
The laptop had also unique small weight of only 5 kg and a rechargable batteries with a power unit (like modern laptops) connectable to a normal (110/220 V) room plug.
,br /> The machine was bundled with an own specificly written OS GRiD-OS. GRID-OS could only run a specialized software so this made the application available a bit limited. Shortly after market introduction because of the incompitablity of GRID-OS, grid was shipped with MS-DOS v. 2.0. This primitive laptop computer was developed for serve mainly the needs of business users and military purposes (NASA, U.S. military) etc.
GRID was even used on Space Shuttles during 1980 – 1990s. The price of the machine in April 1982 when GriD Compass was introduced was the shockingly high – $8150 dollars.
The machine hardware design is quite elegant as you can see on below pic:
As a computer history geek, I’ve researched further on GRID Compass and found a nice 1:30 hour video telling in detailed presentation retelling the history.
Shortly after COMPAQ’s Grid Compass 1011′s introduction, many other companies started producing similar sized computers; one example for this was the Epson HX-20 notebook. 30 years later, probably around 70% of citizens on the globe owns a laptop or some kind of portable computer device (smartphone, tablet, ultra-book etc.).
Most of computer users owning a desktop nowdays, owns a laptop too for mobility reasons. Interestengly even 30 years later the laptop as we know it is still in a shape (form) very similar to its original predecessor. Today the notebook sales are starting to be overshadowed by tablets and ultra-books (for second quarter laptop sales raised 5% but if compared with 2011, the sales rise is lesser 1.8% – according to data provided by Digital Research agency). There are estimations done by (Forrester Research) pointing until the end of year 2015, sales of notebook substitute portable devices will exceed the overall sales of notebooks. It is manifested today the market dynamics are changing in favour of tabets and the so called next generation laptops – ULTRA-BOOKS. It is a mass hype and a marketing lie that Ultra-Books are somehow different from laptops. The difference between a classical laptop and Ultra-Books is the thinner size, less weight and often longer battery use time. Actually Ultra-Books are copying the design concept of Mac MacBook Air trying to resell under a lound name. Even if in future Ipads, Android tablets, Ultra-Books or whatever kind of mambo-jambo portable devices flood the market, laptops will still be heavily used in future by programmers, office workers, company employees and any person who is in need to do a lot of regular text editting, email use and work with corporative apps. Hence we will see a COMPAC Grid Compass 1011 notebook likes to be dominant until end of the decade.
I'm watching iGenius – How Steve Jobs changed the World movie. I heard about a movie from Alex a friend of mine who said this movie sheds some light on history of Apple Computers Inc, Macintosh and the great significance of Steve Jobs work as a manager and visionary to change the world for good.
The world has suddenly been astonished by Steve Jobs sudden death so surely the interest about him is tremendously up.
I do respect Jobs as under his leading the computer industry has received some innovations, still I don't agree with many of the movie aspects which turn Apple and the consequent company products IPhone, Ipad, Ipod etc. into a mega hype products.
I'm being honest to myself and I should say many of the innovations they did are not something too much, but just a product which popularized or minituarized some older invented technology.
The product quality of Apple in the past is a fact so one cannot argue with this however with recent years I wouldn't say the company quality is so much supreme as presented in the movie.
What I don't understand why is Jobs receiving so much praise and recognition but rarely somebody could show his bad sides as well. We've been again manipulatively mislead that he is a mega genius or like an angel on earth. However the achievements of Apple and the mass production and involvement of the field of marketing which lies basicly and makes profits based on great deceptions of Jobs doesn't make Jobs to a super hero.
As an enterpreneur and businessman his achievements are unquestionable but for many years now the reality of business is sad and a honest man could rarely be found to be dealing with business.
Usually the people who like dirt, lies and fame are into business. Most of the times these are people who are ready to kill in the name of Public Recognition and Success.
Jobs has been said to be a Buddhist according to what I've red in Wikipedia. If that is true its rather strange to me on fruits his buddhist faith produced.
I don't believe that any rational man who observes nowdays technology and how it is used doesn't see the great harm technology did us and is continuously pushing us down.
Buddhist teachings in my view teach on helping the neighbor educating and giving up things for free. Apple products however are not giving anything for free, yes some of them do education.
Therefore in my view the philosophy of apple and its application is not really fitting up to helping the neigbor as they don't come free of charge like the free software does.
Apple products actually enslaved their users, all of apple products are nowdays connected to Apple's Inc.
Mega Corporation IStore or they report somehow to apple during updates or purchases more or less about users likings or behaviours.
This obviously doesn't respect users freedom and makes Apple an example of a company that doesn't respect completely the user natural right of freedom and privacy.
To sum it up iGenius – Or How Steve Jobs changed the World is a highly manipulative movie just like most of the movies or books dedicated to super heroes are. Steve Jobs was lucky to get this recognition and status in life, however this doesn't make him too much different from all of us. He just used to be in the right time in the right place and achieved what he did explicitly by God's mercy.
As a known fact Jobs was an Orphan and as we can see from many life examples God helps and has helped many orphans to have a good lives eventually.
Also I'm quite curious if Steve Jobs success was just a fruit of his good fortune or there were just too many circles of people behind him (Jewish or Masonry) possessing big fortunes who found it practical to sponsor his (??) products and ideas seeing a lot of potential to keep the world under siege through technology.
Nomatter what the complete true behind Jobs and his achievements are, he is still an inspirational person and an "icon" in the field of IT. Even I'm a bit Jealous on his overall achievements.
Anyways for people who want to loose some approximately 42:00 minutes on a hype Jobs praise movie and see some of apple's products and pictures of Jobs and Apple / Macintosh products the movie is a good choice
I needed to use another computer (IPad 2)to add one guy as a future business contact. I was suprised by a message which you see in the screenshot. Facebook your account is temporary locked
obviously Facebook are becoming more and more impudent, so now apart from tracking all my activity in facebook and having the copyright rights over all my pictures uploaded, they now want to bind me to use their shitty service only from a single computer.
“We don’t recognize the device you’re using.” is scary to me personally and it shows a very bad direction, we have taken. Now its supposed that any normal member of society is using his personal personal computer equipment (notebook, desktop, mobile tablet etc.), where the direction is that unification of devices is happening with development of handheld devices, so suddenly, we might soon be forced to only use only one personal device for all kind of activities phone calls, entertainment, checking online … etc. you name it Then imagine, we might little by little be forced by mass adoption to only use this devices for all kind of communication. Let me explain a bit thoroughflly what I mean. With the invention of the radio, people part of modern society has little by little started adopting the TVs as a device to retrieve information from various types from a centralized sources.
A time came, where everybody in the developed countries were using the radio, then came the TV and the television as a mass media, people who previously used the radio has comparatively quickly migrated to TVs and little by little, the radios use from the masses died. Then came the more advanced kind of technologies the computers, first they were used by only choosen “elite” people who were beneficial to live in the developed society where first mainframe computers were invented, the technology was advanced and when the personal computers went out, the decrease of computer price allowed practically almost everyone from the developing or the development world to buy and start using it. The increased use of computers and the emerge of Internet in the end of ’80s has suddenly shifted the mass use of TV to computer use. People were crazy about computers, now most of the young and mid aged people from developed societies has almost completely abandoned the TV as a mean to get informed as the computer is doing the same. The emerge of pagers and mobile phones little by little and the development of the mobile phones has lead many people who actively was using a PC to switch to use of mobile or handheld devices and therefore forget compeltely about old desktop computers. These days even laptops use is getting threatened by tables like IPAD or Samsung’s Android tabloid. The trend therefore is that people who actively use their computers switch to tabloids and mobile phones in the next 10 years at worst. It’s more and more rarely now that people use a random computer device to access the internet or in there daily lives this creates a very severe possible short-coming future issue as its possible we reach the time that most services available online might only be accessible via only certain devices which has “a hardware” (hard or unchangeble way to identify us). This might sound a bit like a scenario for a sci-fi movie but unfortunately I see it as one very possible scenario. If the idea of online provided resources and services social networks like twitter,facebook, xing etc. is originally to provide easy access to piece of information from anywhere in the world they shouldn’t definitely try to restrict us on how we use their services (especially if this is not illegal or in contradtion in country’s law.
I really feel my privacy violated by facebook and I’ll probably delete my account there or always access it via a proxy further, I don’t like the idea that facebook is able to detect based on my IP change from country to country, the cookie shit it stores int he browser and browser and OS version of my computer what exactly is my computer and that I’m the only one to use this computer. What would it be if I was in a poorer country where the computer is used by many people, or I have borrowed my sister to travel abroad and use my notebook to access the internet and surrounding daily services she uses. She might for example used the desktop at home and when travelling outside with my notebook access facebook, its a perfectly possible scenario. I don’t like the idea that I’m currently associated with a single computer really this is too much.The idea of linking my credentials for a shitty website like facebook to my personality is something I really don’t think is right. If the Cloud Computing and online services should continue, there at least should be a government law to enforce, monopolists in online services to encrypt the user data in order to prevent, some facebook sysadmin or programmer or even the facebook Management board or CEO to have immediate access to privat information one puts in.
Same goes also for google, yahoo msn etc. Having an email account at any of the services and searching online reveals a lot of sensitive personal data, i’m quite sure that google/msn’s information stored for all the mail user accounts using the search engine services contains very sensitive information about a person’s personal private life and likings. I’m quite sure google and the most of the big elephant companies are spying on their users and do create a thorough personal records for their users. Scroogle instead of Google, improving browser security to secure, browser leaked personal identity data, Anonymizing ICQ and MSN to route traffic via tor , anonymizing Skype to hide your IP with Tor , Install torbutton to route Firefox browser traffic via Tor or use a combination of all to try to increase the level of anonimity online. Also with the mass production and deloment of GPS integrated with most modern mobile phones, notebooks, cars etc. its pretty easy for one to be found nomatter where he is. Its getting almost impossible for us to keep privacy and anoimty. While looking in the future and the latest technology development it appears situation will be getting worser. Maybe the only way in future times for a man to be free will be completely abandon technology, as every piece of technology nowdays is doing some kind of tracking and leaking information about its user. The increase of public security on airports, bus stations e.g. in airplanes, buses stregthens general society security, however it does this on account of decrease of personal privacy and makes us humans more and more dependent on “the system”.
All this induces a serious threat especially with the increase of unification of local countries and country adhering societies as a direct cause of globalization. The globalization also leads to unification and merging of laws in countries around the world. The result from all this is also absollute necesity of internationalion of banking and financing system which is currently happening in front of our eyes. They say it’s security measure but is it reall, just imagine if Gail, Yahoo or any otherBut let’s be optimistic, maybe I’m over-exaggerating, maybe things will go for good in short future and the “Doom scenario” will not happen
These days, I’m managing many, many servers. The servers are ordered in few groups. Each of the servers in the server groups contains identical hardware, identical Linux distribution as well as identical configuration.
Since managing multiple servers normally, takes a lot of time, applying changes to every single host loosing time in looking for the password is not a a good idea.
Thus I was forced to start managing the servers in a cluster like fashion, by executing commands on a server group using a simple for bash loop etc. To be able to use this mass execution of course I needed away either to pass on the server group password just once and issue a command on the whole server group or use a passwordless authentication ssh key pair.
Before I switched to using SSH keys to authenticate passwordless, I first tried to use a bit of tools which were claimed to be helpful in the task of executing the same commands to a group of servers. I have tested the tools pssh, sudossh and dsh but none of them was capable of logging in and executing a bunch of commands to the group of remote servers.
I gave my best to make pssh work on Debian and CentOS distributions, but even though all my experiemnts and efforts to make the so much talked about pssh to work were bad!
I’ve seen also another tool called Cluster SSH which was said to be capable of issuing commands simultaneously on a number of hosts.
Cluster SSH looked promising, however the only problem was it’s supposed to run under xterm or some kind of X graphics based terminal and therefore it did not matched my desired.
Finally I got pissed of trying these mostly useless mass command linux server administration tools and decided to come COME BACK TO THE PRIMITIVE and use the good all known, well established method of Passwordless SSH server login with ssh public/private DSA key auth.
Therefore here the problem come to this to generate one single DSA ssh authenticatoin key and replicate/copy it to the whole group of 50 servers.
These task initially seemed quite complex, but with the help of a one liner bash shell script, it seemed to be a piece of cake
To achieve this task, all I had to do is: a. Generate an SSH key with ssh-keygen command and b. Use a one liner shell script to copy the generated id_rsa.pub file, to each server. and c. Create a file containig all server IP addresses to pass to the shell script.
Here are the two lines of code you will have to use to achieve these tasks:
1. Generate a DSA ssh key
linux:~# ssh-keygen -t dsa
Generating public/private dsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/home/hipo/.ssh/id_dsa): y Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in y. Your public key has been saved in y.pub. The key fingerprint is: b0:28:48:a2:60:65:5a:ed:1b:9d:6c:ff:5f:37:03:e3 hipo@pc-freak.net
Here press enter few times and be sure not to fill in any passphrase when asked ’bout it.
2. Create a file containing all server IPs
Just create a file let’s say server-list.txt and make sure you include all the server IPs, one per line.
3. Use the following little script to upload the newly generated id_dsa.pub to the server list
linux:~# while read line; do ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub root@"$line"; done < server-list.txt
Now you will have to paste the server password for about 50 times (if you have a file with 50 servers), however the good news is it will be just a wait and paste 50 times, if the servers are all configured to have the same root administrator pass (which was the case with me).
So until you do the boring pasting part, you can start up a nice music and enjoy Cheers
If you're an administrator of a shared hosting server running mail server on localhost, you've definitely come across to issues with your mail server ip entering into public blacklists like spamhaus's CBL,XBL, PBL etc.
The usual procedure after one's ip gets listed in blacklists is to delist it manually following spamhaus or any other blacklist website's web interface, however often even after delisting yourself from blacklists you get back into them in a couple of hours, since your mail server continues to send a mass amounts of spam.
To track issues like as a system administrator I always use the good old network swiss army of knife tool tcpdump
tcpdump is really precious in tracking all kind of traffic oddities or mail server traffic.
To check if there are oddities with traffic flowing from a mail server on localhost after I login to a mail server with issues I use tcpdump command with following options:
tcpdump -nNxXi eth0 -s 0 proto TCP and port 25
The usual output of it should look something like:
In this example the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the hosting server (my mail server) and the other IP is the interaction of my mail server's smtp port 25 with tther machine 212.235.67.205.
If after issuing this command there are tons of repeating address IPs the mail server interacts with this is possible sign of spammers who sent traffic via the mail server.
Of course this is not always the case as sometimes, some clients use to send large newsletters or just some planned advertisements, however in most cases as I said it's a spammer.
To futher get the abuser I check Apache logs and the mail server logs. Also in many cases a spammer can be catched via observing the mail server logs (/var/log/maillog, /var/log/qmail/current or wherever the mail server logs it's interactions).
In the above tcpdump output you can even read some of the information flowing in between mail servers in a very raw form for example in above tcpdump output notice the 250.OK . This is obviously an interaction between the two mail servers where the server running on my hosting server with ip (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) sends to the remote mail server the command 250 OK
I don’t know how many of you have realized but today our societies, especially in the Developed and the second world are suffering from a serious problem that not-many still realize.
I’m talking about the problem of NO IDENTITY ! In this dynamic world, where technological changes happens every second and we are required to change our lifes and behaviour too rapidly suddenly this problem is becoming to become a real society peril.
Let me explain what I mean. Everyday, more and more people are using the Internet and all kind of technological gadgets (IPhones, Ipads, Tablets, Notebooks, desktop computers, E-readers you name it).
While we do constantly and daily are forced to adopt and become part of this virtual realities, be it social networks like Facebook , Xing , micro blogging online services like Twitter or even a simple user blog, most of the times we interact with this puvlic services or technology, we are supposed to come with a new identity.
Each of this services urge us to have a new login account attached to some kind of a new virtual reality one has to build.
Therefore the fake online identities, we constantly build which often are established around our dreams and wanna bees (something we’re not in real life) is constantly growing for each of us in every single day.
Most of the middle or hardcore Internet users today has already built an imaginary online image of ourselfs (in this number including myself).
To give an example I’ll again take facebook, as it is one of the most heavily used online fake identity generators today. If one enters facebook and finds, some of his old a real life buddies from the past and matches the online identity the person has built for himself with the person we used to know, very often the difference is quite shocking.
Online almost everybody want to look cool the coolest to attract other people to himself. As people online look and does “judge” on one’s self competencies, qualities and goodness simply based on the outlook of how one presents himself.
Suddenly from normal sane persons million of persons are getting into the “self-presenting” competition which is getting, more and more severe with every new person that gets into a certain online community. Most people online today in building this multiple false images of themselves, try to present only the their good positive sides, while the bad sides are often left behind.
Of course the definition of what is good and what is bad is dictated by the opinion of the masses, as most people prefer to be like the rest in order to escape of the terrible reality of being isolated from the society mass.
With all said if we consider that today’s families are highly disfunctional and the people’s relations are already quite fake and people are building this multiple-fale faced images even in real life makes things even more tragic.
Now to put everything above in order, let me go back to the NO IDENTITY ISSUE and what I mean by that. Let me settle it down, during our interatction with technology and the Internet, little by little as a consequence of being exposed to all this identities and to our multiple newly created virtual identities one starts to loose his own self-established identity and starts constantly looking to have newer and newer identities.
The tendency is instead of look in yourself and be what you’re, that you follow some fake vague virtual dreams of million of people online who try to share and expose mostly things which are not created just to catch the attention.
The whole things with technology and Internet and the heavy use of it as a logical consequence, learns people to put multiple masks and hide behind the masks their own natural-self. The story of masks is so bad that nowdays, many people put the masks of themselves created in the virtual reality pleading that this is their new self.
Many people today act without having any core philosophy, rules or a stable reason to step into. Money, human lust, wordly vanity and popularity are the main drives for the masses.
Our Christian faith who has sustained us through the centuries and helped us grow a sane societies is starting to get into the back-stage, moved by some openly anti-christian hollywood super stars.
I believe the story of NO-IDENTITY corresponds well with buddhistic ideas (highly embraced by modern societies). This buddhistic ideas preach that one must loose his identity to join the state of Nirvana (yet another anti-chrisitian philisophy). The story of NO-IDENTITY is a story of constant unceasing change and lookup for something that never can be found. It’s like a endless prizeless race.
If many of us take the time and ask themselves the question “Who am I?”, I’m quite sure rarely there will be persons able to answer.
As I mentioned facebook earlier I would also suggest you to read Why open social networks like facebook and twitter are big evil as it also quite much relates to the whole problem of people little by little loosing their identity.
Today many businesses and companies are trying to preach some cohesion through a shared people identity. From a normal sane person perspective this kind of ideology is seriously flawed, it even contradicts basic science.
Yet there is hope, I believe many people will realize sooner or later that this fakeness and a fake face images that we build daily doesn’t lead us anywhere and will stop the ideotism of trying to pretend different on the net.
Today according to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church calendar we commemorate the memory of probably the greatest saint of Bulgaria, second in saintship after St. John of Rila
St. King Boris was the ruler of the First bulgarian Empire (852-889). He received holy baptismal in year 864, receiving the Christian name Michael (Mihail) receiving his Christian name from his godfather, Emperor Michael III.
During his holy reign he has established mass Christianization of Bulgaria, where the traditional ancient pagan traditions and belief in fake gods like Tangra were abolished completely.
St. Tsar Boris has secured the bulgarian church an autocephalousy, he also received the saints Cyril and Methodius, when they were banished from Great Moravia.
Our saint king has secured a refuge for st. Cyril and Methodius and provided them with assistance to develop the Slavonic alphabet and literature. After he abdicated in 889, his eldest son and successor tried to restore the old pagan religion but was deposed by Boris I. During the Council of Preslav which followed that event, the Byzantine clergy was replaced with Bulgarian and the Greek language was replaced with Old Bulgarian as an official language of the Church and the state.
In 889 Boris abdicated the throne and became a monk. His son and successor Vladimir attempted a pagan reaction, which brought Boris out of retirement in 893. Vladimir was defeated and blinded, and Boris gathered the Council of Preslav placing his third son, Simeon I of Bulgaria on the throne, threatening him with the same fate if he too apostatized. Boris returned to his monastery, emerging once again in c. 895 to help Simeon fight the Magyars, who had invaded Bulgaria in alliance with the Byzantines. After the passing of this crisis, Boris resumed monastic life and led a holy life until he pass out in year 907.
Here is the daily troparion assigned by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church sang at the churches today (the text is translation from Bulgarian):
St. Boris-Michael, prince of Bulgaria, Troparion Full of the fear of God, and enlightened by holy baptism, thou becamest a habitation of the Holy Spirit, O right-believing King Boris; and having established the Orthodox Faith in the land of Bulgaria, and set aside the scepter of kingship, thou madest thine abode in the wil derness, didst flourish in ascetic struggles, and found grace before the Lord. And now, standing before the throne of the Most High, pray thou, that He grant unto us who entreat thee salva tion for our souls.
Bio: I am a Free Software enthusiast, hobbyist and a unix geek. Presently my competences are into the field of System administration.
I am also a devoted Orthodox Christian. I have deep interests into
religion in general and in Christianity in particular.
I am a big fan of all kind of Unix like systems like: GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, DOS and other various obscure computing. I'm also interested into philosophy and business administration.
My hobbies include playing old arcade games, trips to a new places,
preferably nature filled places, Mountain, Waterfalls, Woods etc.
In my free time I also like watching movies: Mostly spiritual movies, or movies with a deeper meaning.Currently I am a student in Arnhem Business School in the stream of HRQM (Human Resources and Quality Management).
Herein my blog you'll find mostly stuff about my unix/linux adventures, personal life, thoughts on life, religion, philosophy and art.
), 340 kilobyte (internal non-removable magnetic bubble memory and even a 1,200 bit/s modem!
,br />
