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We often see server uptime statistics when looking for hosting providers, for example 99.8%, 99%, or 99.99% server uptime guaranteed. Though 99% server uptime may sound good, but is it really and what does it mean?
99% server uptime means that in a year of 365 days, your server will be up 99% of the time, which is 361.35 days (365 days x 99%). This is not really good, because even with 99% uptime your site could be down for 4 days. It would be disastrous if you owned an online store because even an hour’s downtime would cost you. Imagine, not only lost revenues, but also customers who switched to your competitors while your site was down.
Here are some server uptime examples with calculations showing what various percentages mean.

100% server uptime
Up = 365 days
Down = 0 days = 0 hours = 0 minutes

99.999% server uptime
Up = 364.9964 days
Down = 0.0036 days = 0.0876 hours = 5.256 minutes

99.99% server uptime
Up = 364.9635 days
Down = 0.0365 days = 0.876 hours = 52.56 minutes

99.9% server uptime
Up = 364.635 days
Down = 0.365 days = 8.76 hours = 525.6 minutes

99.8% server uptime
Up = 364.27 days
Down = 0.73 days = 17.52 hours = 1051.2 minutes

99% server uptime
Up = 361.35 days
Down = 3.65 days = 87.6 hours = 5256 minutes

Initial hosting offerings of very low prices bundled with a lot of disk space and server features may be lucrative, but when it comes to server uptime, you could be paying a heavy price.

You can use other tools like ping and traceroute to measure server response times and hops required to reach your server.

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Information and Education Can Be Relayed
You don’t have to market to sell something. While that seems odd, and even contradictory, consider that consumers no longer want to be talked at or sold to, rather they want to be the chooser, and if you can educate them, they just might choose you.
Think back to the last few purchases you made. You probably purchased because you needed (or thought you needed) the item in question. We purchase, usually, to fill needs. If your podcast can educate listeners as to thier needs for your product, without ever mentioning the product, then you’ve created a need where there once was not one. If your company sponsor’s the podcast, they’ll be reminded on open and close of your product, it’s really not beneficial to actively market during the podcast.
Ask about having intros and outros created to market your product, and keep the actual podcast dedicated to general education. People trust those who help them. You have a wealth of knowledge on your subject matter, market that knowledge.

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Roll over lumbering desktop computers, the limber laptop is here, and it’s here to stay! For a while now notebooks have outstripped their ageing desktop PC siblings, easily winning the gold medal in the computer sales olympics. We will illustrate how the PVP effect has contributed greatly to the increase in popularity of notebook computers.
(P) Portability:
Firstly it may be stating the obvious, but people buy laptops because they can take them anywhere. Office workers need no more be confined to their claustrophophic cubicles. Instead those statistic charts and data reports can be compiled on a train, in the comfort of an arm chair, or even on the beach! Portability equals flexibility, but alas this hasn’t always been the case. Todays ultra portable laptop computers have a come along way since the bulky, sewing machine sized machines of the late seventies and early eighties. Indeed one of the first portable computers was built by IBM, and this machine (IBM 5100) weighed in at a hefty 50lbs! Today’s corridor warriors would have trouble lugging that puppy from meeting to meeting, unless of course they subjected themselves to an intensive dose of steroids :)
(V) Value:
In the seventies the aforementioned IBM 5100 would have set you back a staggering 20,000 dollars. Today a top of the range IBM Thinkpad can be bought for around 3000 dollars. Cheaper Thinkpads can often be obtained for well under a thousand dollars, especially if you don’t mind purchasing a used or refurbished model.
(P) Performance:
Many laptops today come fitted with Centrino processors which offer superb performance and improved battery life. What is Centrino I hear you ask? Well this is Intel’s name for their new notebook technology that combines their Pentium M processor, 855 chipset and the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 WiFi 802.11 network interface. Laptops fitted with these processors are usually lighter because of the smaller components used.
Couple this attractive feature with wireless networking technology and you have a powerful technological package. Wi-Fi is short for “Wireless Fidelity” and it’s usage is growing quickly amongst home users, office workers, even coffee shops. If you enter Wi-Fi areas with a properly equipped notebook, you can access the Internet at broadband speeds.

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From the CCNA to the CCIE, ISDN is one of the most important technolgies you’ll work with. It’s also very common in the field; ISDN is frequently used as a backup connection in case an organization’s Frame Relay connections go down. Therefore, it’s important to know ISDN basics not only for your particular exam, but for job success.
ISDN is used between two Cisco routers that have BRI or PRI interfaces. Basically, with ISDN one of the routers places a phone call to the other router. It is vital to understand not only what causes one router to dial another, but what makes the link go down.
Why? Since ISDN is basically a phone call from one router to another, you’re getting billed for that phone call — by the minute. If one of your routers dials another, and never hangs up, the connection can theoretically last for days or weeks. The network manager then receives an astronomical phone bill, which leads to bad things for everyone involved!
Cisco routers use the concept of interesting traffic to decide when one router should call another. By default, there is no interesting traffic, so if you don’t define any, the routers will never call each other.
Interesting traffic is defined with the dialer-list command. This command offers many options, so you can tie interesting traffic down not only to what protocols can bring the link up, but what the source, destination, or even port number must be for the line to come up.
One common misconception occurs once that link is up. Interesting traffic is required to bring the link up, but by default, any traffic can then cross the ISDN link.
What makes the link come down? Again, the concept of interesting traffic is used. Cisco routers have an idle-timeout setting for their dialup interfaces. If interesting traffic does not cross the link for the amount of time specified by the idle-timeout, the link comes down.
To summarize: Interesting traffic brings the link up; by default, any traffic can cross the link once it’s up; a lack of interesting traffic is what brings the link down.
In tomorrow’s article, we’ll take a look at some common scenarios that make the ISDN link stay up, and what can be done about it. Keep studying, and I’ll see you tomorrow!
Chris Bryant
Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert #12933

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The net-domain - the backbone of the web
We do not always realize, that figures are just quantity and can deceive about quality.
In spite of the fact, that the net-domain is only the No. 4 in terms of the number of domain names registered, it works as a backbone of the web.The net-domains build the largest Top Level Domain by number of hosts, or machines connected to the Internet. More than 44 percent of name servers use net-domains. We presume, that programmers and other technical experts have a more narrow emotional relationship to .net than to .com. Their sympathy for .net is just greater than for .com. Historically .net was once reserved for providers. This might have still an influence to the technical use of .net and the importance of this use. Every programmer and hostmaster has an idea of .net, but not every programmer and hostmaster has an idea of .com. In some way .net stands for the web.
Other facts:
– 31 percent of all page views are dependent on a net-domain for resolution
– 32 percent of all B2C e-Commerce in 2004 is dependent on a net-domain for resolution.
Hans-Peter Oswald
https://www.domainregistry.de/net-domain.html

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As consumers, especially on the Internet, we are constantly bombarded with promises like the title of this article. 80% off, save $300, or even get your free Xbox 360. We are pummeled by so many of these false promises, that they lose their meaning. Not to mention almost all of these claims are either totally false or loss-leaders. But there are actually ways to save large chunks of cash online, specifically when purchasing a brand name computer. You just have to know where to look to find the deals.
If you have decided you want to purchase a big name computer online, your choices will most likely be one of the top 4: Dell, HP, Gateway, or IBM. All offer similar customize-your-own system interfaces on their websites. Now it’s a matter of finding who is going to offer the best deal. Of the big 4, Dell is the most aggressive in their Internet marketing and promotions. Almost weekly they start new deals, which are in addition to whatever is offered on their site. These deals are offered in the form of a string of random numbers and letters called the coupon code.
These glorious little snippets of digits are worth their weight in gold. Like searching for gold, trying to find a valid coupon code on the Internet is similar to going on a treasure hunt. Often your search will lead you to invalid codes, expired codes, or even the codes themselves for sale. But when you plug that code into the checkout cart, and watch your total price fall by sometimes hundreds of dollars, the hunt is worth it.
So how do you find these codes? A well thought out search strategy is helpful. Try to get as specific as possible in your search terms. Bookmark any good deal sites you find, and watch them regularly to get to know flow of the deals, so when a great one comes along you are ready to jump on it! You really can end up saving $500 or more.
A great example of a site that keeps its coupon codes valid and current is http://www.dealsondells.com

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In early 2005 Webroot Software released its State of Spyware Report which was conducted by Webroot and Earthlink. In the survey over 4.6 million computer systems were scanned during 2004 and the results have shown how threatening spyware has become.
It was suggested that more than 90 percent of all computers with internet connections are infected with spyware. During the first quarter of 2005 approximately 88 percent of systems scanned with Webroot’s SpyAudit software had some sort of unwanted application detected.
On corporate computers over 55 percent of PCs had unwanted programs, excluding cookies because they are thought not to be as intrusive or detrimental. The corporate computers averaged 7.2 non-cookie spyware infections per computer.
In 2004 the last quarter yielded 19 percent of consumer and business computers with keyloggers and in the first quarter of 2005 that number had dropped to 7 percent, according to systems scanned with Webroot’s software. In both the last quarter of 2004 and first quarter of 2005 19 percent of consumer PCs and 7 percent of business PCs had Trojans.
Another daunting piece of information gather through online research by Phileas is that 4,294 sites were found to have some type of spyware. This information has proven that in a short amount of time spyware has skyrocketed into the top internet threat. As the internet become a rapidly growing medium used by millions online threats such as spyware can thrive and spread a quick rate, infecting and damaging nearly all user unless protective measures are taken.

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DTG defines photo mosaics as photographic images or pictures made up of many, usually hundreds, of smaller photographic images. Viewed very closely, the small tile images can be recognized as individual photos, but at a distance, the composite of these images make up an entirely different image.
This exciting branch of art has been going on for quite some time now and has gained a wide interest from all over the world. The meaning of these artworks has a profound effect on anyone who sees it. It can be a powerful medium of expression that conveys strong emotions. I myself was very moved upon seeing a photo mosaic of US president George Bush made up of all the servicemen that have died in Iraq. Just imagine the many soldiers making up that picture and you’ll see why it brought out a lot of emotions for all who’ve seen it.
This type of art is a very effective tool to convey different types of meaning whatever the artist likes. It allows you to make the viewer make connections and this connections will serve as the medium where you communicate to them whatever it is that you want them to know.
Creating photo mosaics has been made easy by new software that has been developed for this particular art. You just need to look for one that suits you and then learn what the best steps to make excellent pieces are.
William Hunt, considered as a photo mosaic guru presents these simple principles that are essential to creating good photo mosaics:
(1) The large image MUST look good without too much jaggedness or color distortion. To achieve this use more and smaller tiles, use duplicates, modify the tile images or add another photo collection.
(2) The small tile images should be sufficiently large to view comfortably in the renderings final form. If this is a display on a computer monitor or a 8×10 print, you will need to use as few tiles as possible and still satisfy rule(1). If it is a poster size printout you can get by with over a thousand tiles.
(3) If duplicate use of the small tiles is needed, they must not be placed near to each other.
(4) If the small tile images need to be modified to achieve 1-3, it should be as little as possible.
(5) The target image and the small tile pictures should as much as possible have some coherent theme or connection.

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More and more internet users are understanding how important it is for them to find security software that allows them to remain invisible to possible intruders. Threats such as spyware, Trojans, viruses, worms and other malware are difficult to avoid because they have become so widespread. To partially prevent these malicious codes from sneaking in you must first secure you computer with a firewall that will notify you of any unauthorized intruders.
Even by setting up your security so that you remain invisible to most intruders, users will be exposed to spyware and viruses by visiting web sites and downloading freeware and shareware. If you computer is invaded by spyware or viruses you must download both anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Technology experts recommend using more than one spyware tool because its threats are so prevalent no one scanning tool can catch all infections. Utilizing two or more anti-spyware tools will help better protect your computer from the consequences of spyware build up.
Each of the security tools necessary to keep your internet surfing safe can be downloaded for free. Numerous anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall programs can be downloaded for free and most offer equivalent protection to those you purchase.
Because all the tools necessary for security are free, there is no reason users should not take advantage of the safety nets.
Once you have your security tools in place you can run a test through a trustworthy source to ensure that your computer is virtually invisible online and secure from intruders.

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Cologne, October 10 2004. ICANN Registrar Secura announces today, that the company is now accepting the registration of jp-domains from companies and individuals outside of Japan.
The jp-domains are the domains of Japan. The jp-domains belong to the popular domains in Asia.
You need a local contact to register these domain. ICANN accredited registrar Secura provides automatically this local contact in the registration process, if you have not a registered business in Japan.
There are domains at .jp and at .co.jp. You have to pay for the more attractive domains at .jp 300 US-Dollars per year.
It is paradox: But you have to invest 4000 US-Dollar in the first year, if you want a co.jp-domain, as you need for a co.jp- domain a Japanese business licence. In this price of 4000 US-Dollars is not only the co.jp-domain, but the business licence, the contacts with japanese authorities, the translation and everything else included.
ICANN accredited registrar Secura has access to the registration system of jp-domains. Secura can register a jp-domain at once, if the domain name is available.
Hans-Peter Oswald
https://www.domainregistry.de/jp-domain.html

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