January 17, 2012

10 Minute Facts On Domain Name Registration

In order for the internet to work, domains are essential. With out using domain name your website cannot be found easily. The domain name system (DNS) is used for converting human friendly names to IP addresses. A hostname or fully qualified domain name (FQDN), identifies a specific device within the DNS namespace, for example www.example.com identifies the device ‘www’ within the example.com domain.

The process of claiming a domain name within the public DNS infrastructure is called domain name registration. This process is very simple and costs next to nothing. If you want to run a website a domain name is an essential prerequisite. There are numerous levels to the domain name system. All internet registered domains stem from a top level domain. Nowadays there are many top-level domains, like:

  • .com
  • .net
  • .co.uk
  • .org

+ a lot more.

Second level domains exist directly under one a top level domain, for example, mydomain.com, in which ‘mydomain’ is this 2nd level domain.

Currently there are numerous domain name extensions readily available for use. During the early days of the internet, there were only a few such as .com, .net, .org, etc. Nonetheless, due to the boom in internet sites being developed over the years, many more domain extensions have become available, such as .tv, .me, etc.

There is a specific naming convention used for all domain names without exception. A domain name has the following restrictions:

  • Can include hyphens (-)
  • Maximum 255 characters in total.
  • Must use ASCII letters (A-Z and 0 to 9)

Every level of the domain is divided by a period (.) making a domain tree.

Most domains can be registered on a yearly cycle, but it’s advised that you register your domains for as many years as you can manage upfront. However, some domain extensions do not allow you to register on a yearly basis and demand that you pay for a minimum of two years registration upfront. The.co.uk domain name extension is one such example of this.

Computing devices use IP addresses, such a 192.168.0.1 to exchange data with each other, however, remembering these addresses is hard for humans, so the Domain Naming System (DNS) converts human friendly names to IP addresses. There is another service for changing IP addresses to domain names, called reverse DNS (rDNS). The system is used to match IP addresses to domain names, i.e. the opposite of DNS.

January 15, 2012

Apple Siri Swears At Young Child

The mum to a 10-year-old boy in Coventry has been expressing her shock after having a demonstration unit of Apple’s iPhone 4S swear at the woman’s child.

Kim Le Quesne explained to the Coventry Telegraph that her boy Charlie was out shopping along with his father in a local branch of Tesco, discovered the device in the showcase and asked the Siri personal helper program the number of people there was worldwide. The product replied by means of informing the lad that it wasn’t sure what he was saying, and telling him to “Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***.”

“It’s verbal abuse,” Mrs Le Quesne stated. “We can’t believe the filth it came out with. He showed my husband what the phone had said to him and my husband found the store manager and said “it shouldn’t be saying that.”

Tesco promised the unit would be sent away to Apple for diagnostics, nonetheless it looks very likely that some merry prankster had changed the user name on the unit to the offending 7 words, so that the device would default to the sentence regardless of what the question. Apple is unavailable for remark during the holiday period.

Mrs Le Quesne informed the paper her son went back to the shop the next day and discovered the same phone was nevertheless on the display case. The paper does not say whether the poor lad felt abused, or maybe rather tried it again and dissolved straight into fits of giggles.

January 13, 2012

The Future Of Tv With Ubuntu

Canonical will be pitching a TV-of-the-future approach maximising their touch-based Linux distro and Ubuntu cloud.

The Ubuntu shop used the spotlight among the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) during Mon to allow them to preview Ubuntu Television, a endeavor percolating inside Canonical which in turn experienced a burst of promotion late recently from Mark Shuttleworth.

The idea behind Ubuntu Television, Canonical claims, will be to supply TV the way it seemed to be intended: simply no cabling, boxes or problems.

Canonical director of communications Gerry Car blogged the following: “The goal is to uncomplicate television for the average viewer while delivering to him or her all the services and options that they are becoming used to.”

Ubuntu have been tightly associated with PCs and servers – though Canonical this past year shifted in to cloud solutions through the unveiling of its Ubuntu 1 facility.

Canonical’s existing rallying cry used to be “Linux for human beings”. The motto regarding Ubuntu TV will be “TV for human beings”.

The Ubuntu Television concept shadows and expands developments within the combination of TV, computing and internet. It also produces the Ubuntu media cloud – together with Ubuntu One for the “web hub” of all things.

We’re told Ubuntu Television can offer people the opportunity to pause as well as watch shows on several Televisions along with other devices, such as smartphones.

The enabler to do this seems to be Ubuntu One, Canonical’s cloud storage along with data-synching service, that currently means that you can stream audio and access material on different devices. You can currently stream songs in Ubuntu One to iPhone, iPad and Android products.

January 7, 2012

More IBM Patents Sold To Google

Google today reported that they have procured more than two hundred further US patents produced by IBM to try to safeguard itself from future litigation with regards its current and coming products.

The patents deal with numerous aspects and technologies, including:

  • mobile devices
  • databases
  • near-field communications (NFC)
  • wireless telephone systems
  • server infrastructure

All of these patents are in addition to the existing 2,053 purchased from IBM by Google within the last year or so. IBM aren’t the only benefactors of Google’s increasing patents purchases, seeing that Motorola Mobility have likewise ended up selling around 17,000 patents and 7000 patents pending, adding up to $12.5 billion US (£7.7 billion). The acquisitions are currently being evaluated by competition regulators. Google has also tried to get hold of an additional 6000 telecoms relevant patents from Nortel, but was unsuccessful in their bid.

Amongst one of the latest patents is one specifically dealing with “identifying common interests between users of the communication network”, which is believed may well enjoy a future part in Google+. Google’s ever-increasing patents purchases came about to try to safeguard itself against its competition, which Google accuses of buying up what it has labelled as “bogus patents” in an effort to slow up the progression of Google’s mobile OS, Android.

Google have many legal disputes open with the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Apple regarding a number of the technologies used within Android. Oracle are at this time in dispute with Google over potential Andriod patent infringements.p>

Presently there is currently massive competition around with regards various os’s, particularly mobile variations. In another technology patents associated lawsuit earlier recently AT&T were required to compensate TiVo US$215 million, and also an additional undisclosed regular monthly licensing fee. It’s expected that we will notice more of these patents, software acquisitions and law suits from the major players within the technology market during the coming months. No terms were unveiled from either Google or IBM regarding these latest patents transfers.

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