It’s essentially PCIe over a wire, but also incorporates the DisplayPort standard which also allows the wire to handle monitor connections – the connections can also be daisychained, and it’s bidirectional. It supports up to 10Gbps in either direction (so 20Gbps bidirectionally).

For a sense of scale, in order:

- USB 2.0 runs at 480Mbit/sec (total speed in any direction)
- eSATA runs at 3Gbps (total speed in any direction)
- USB 3.0 supports 5Gbps (total speed in any direction)
- Thunderbolt can support up to 20Gbps, 10Gbps in each direction.

In real life, this wire will transfer about 3/4 of a Gigabyte (768 megs) to 1 Gigabyte in ONE second.

This is an Intel technology, but the only one using it right now is Apple. Apparently a really good reason to use this is to make devices (like tablets & laptops) lighter because it’s only 1 port, where you don’t need multiple ports to get things done. So a Thunderbolt wire could connect to a projector, monitor, PC, external hard disk, etc.. and they can all be daisychained…

Video demo from Intel: Video Part 1, video part 2.

A few articles on the topic: One, two.

Intel’s page on the subject.

To convert a PDF to a Jpeg, you’ll need Imagemagick (sudo apt-get install imagemagick).

convert -quality 20 -interlace none -density 300 input.pdf output.jpg

The quality setting can be from 0 to 100 (100 being the best, but often a huge file), I have found 20 to be a good balance of size vs. quality. The interlace option helps with readability, and density specifies the dots per inch (for printing). For PDF’s with color images, you may find you need to add the option -colorspace RGB.

The default print resolution when using the convert program on PDF’s is 72 dots per inch, which is equivalent to one point per pixel. Computer screens are normally 72 or 96 dots per inch, while printers typically support 150, 300, 600, or 1200 dots per inch. To determine the resolution of your display, use a ruler to measure the width of your screen in inches, and divide by the number of horizontal pixels (1024 on a 1024×768 display). Generally, I prefer to maintain enough density to support a possible print job.

This does work the other way around, so the command below will work just fine:

convert -quality 20 -interlace none -density 300 input.jpg output.pdf

When convertnig PDF’s to Jpeg’s, each page will be it’s own numbered Jpeg. You can then convert multiple Jpeg’s back into a single PDF (the page order will depend on the filename sorted order, so be sure to number your files in the preferred order).

The command below will take a series of Jpeg’s and convert them into a single PDF:

convert -quality 20 -interlace none -density 300 *.jpg output.pdf

The software is free for personal use, but not free for commerical use. It’s also not open source, but a good tool nonetheless.

Click here for the application’s home site and here for a good write up on using it.

This site got a 71/100 … not bad. One of the biggest suggestions was to recompress the jpeg’s on the site much more than they are currently for an estimated 50% improvement. Though, I think the site loads pretty quick, it’s still a great tool for analyzing your own sites.

Originally put forth as RFC 114 and used as such from 1971 to 1980, it changed when in 1980 it was put forth again as RFC 765 by Jon Postel of ITI. This standard retired RFC 114 and introduced more concepts and conventions that survive to this day, including: A formal architecture for separate client/server functions and two separate channels, Site-to-site transfers, Passive (a.k.a. “firewall friendly”) transfer mode among other improvements. RFC 765 was replaced by RFC 959, which formalized directory navigation in 1985.

The third and current generation of FTP was a reaction to two technologies that RFC 959 did not address: SSL/TLS and IPv6. It was essentially a security upgrade to FTP.

The latest RFC’s that handle the FTP protocol are RFC 2228 in 1997 (which added SSL extensions and is how FTP became FTPS) and RFC 2428, which added IPv6 suport in 1998.

While FTP matured into FTPS, it is not to be confused with SFTP.

FTPS is essentially a secured or hardened FTP protocol that uses two channels, one for the data transfer and one for directory listings and other data not associated with the actual transfer. It’s FTP + SSL.

SFTP is a complete departure from FTP and is part of the Secure Shell File Transfer Project and was built from the ground up as an extension of SSH. It is a secured file transfer protocol built as an extension of SSH itself. While many confuse SFTP with “an FTP session through SSH”, it isn’t. While FTPS is FTP with security extensions (namely SSL), SFTP is an extension of SSH that adds easy file transfer capabilities to the already secure SSH session. Also not to be confused with SCP, SFTP allows for many more dynamic commands than that of simple SCP.

It is interesting to note that many companies still use classic FTP over VPN connections as well.

Anyone lost yet? Just checking . . .

For the record, I prefer SFTP, since I love SSH and do everything I can over SSH, even mapping file systems over it with SSHFS (more info about SSHFS here).

Here’s some write-ups on FTP’s 40th: One, two.

In the meantime, take this opportunity to check your backups and make sure your treasured data is duplicated, because everything has a failure date.

…more posts to come.

From the article . . .

All of a sudden, Yahoo and Google want to make it easy for you to opt out of their ad targeting on both their sites and across the Web. Yahoo announced a new one-click opt-out policy today, and Google made it possible to opt out of both Google and Doubleclick ad targeting with one click yesterday.

At least Yahoo was honest enough to come out and say that the new policy was a direct response to Congressional scrutiny over the intrusiveness of online advertising and behavioral targeting. Google’s announcement was buried in a blog post about Doubleclick cookies.

. . . if you don’t want those cookies, you can decline Yahoo’s here and Google’s here.

A gallery of what people have done resides here.

David H. Shepard (Optical Readers, Farrington B numeric font), J. Robert Cade (Gatorade), Herbert Saffir (The Hurricane Scale), George Rieveschl (beta-dimethylaminoethylbenzhydryl ether hydrochloride — a.k.a. Benadryl), Arthur Jones (Nautilus machines), Jack Odell (Matchbox Cars), Raymond Douglas (Color in the NY Times), George Kovacs (The ubiquitous halogen torchiere lamp), Martin J. Weber (The Posterization technique), Ed Yost (Modern Hot-Air Ballooning), Theodore Maiman (The Laser), John Billings (The Rhythm Method), Paul C. Lauterbur (The M.R.I.), John W. Backus (Fortran), Florence Z. Melton (Slippers), James Hillier (The Electron Microscope), Iwao Takamoto (“Scooby-Doo”), and Momofuku Ando (Instant Ramen). So it goes.

Source: NY Times.