Category: Computer/ Tech Related
Gotta Love the Bandwidth Cap
One week left until I peace for spring break and we have a little condition here – the regression to 1997 internet speeds. Thanks to our wonderful network staff and some bandwidth caps (oops, looks like I went over), I get to spend the next 5 days on a 56k connection (I really don’t though if you know what I mean). It was interesting to test portfolioso.com load times on a dial-up connection. Let me tell you, I’m pretty damn impressed how snappy this site loaded on dial-up. As far as the rest of the internet… No good. Simple images, web 2.0 pages and especially Gmail take about two minutes to load.
On average, when the network is busy, I’d say we get about 500KBPS to 1MBPS. That’s pretty weak. When it’s empty, individual users can see up to 30MBPS. Of course, with QOS, traffic manipulation and deep packet inspection thanks to this piece of shit, web traffic is still pretty laggy. So that 30MBPS is pretty crippled when your webpages still load slowly.
I have a suggestion for you brainiacs who work in our intertube department. If you knew anything about networking at all, you’d automatically restrict bandwidth at the time of excessive usage, not after the fact. (For example, maybe 200MB+ within certain period of time, or speeds >10MBPS for an extended period. Capping there would literally cut the download off and save bandwidth, not watste it and then cap it later on when it doesn’t matter anymore). This is why our network sucks – when people use too much, they are not capped at the time of excess consumption. Capping me now is pointless. I was even considerate enough to do my [perfectly legal and school related, educational] video download at 4AM on the weekend while everyone was blackout drunk and not using the internet for any academic purposes. Limiting me now is kind of a joke. Although I do thank you guys for not shutting it off completely. That would be an hassle.
Screenshot of a Speakeasy test and NetMeter:
New Google Favicon
So Google changed their favicon again (the little icon you see by the URL in your browser, and if you don’t see it, stop using Internet Explorer 6). This is something I found interesting because their first one was a skinny blue upper case G which was decent. Last year it was changed to a lowercase purple g. This was supposed to be more modern, but got a lot of complaints for not using Google’s colors. So as of this morning when I woke up (and by morning I mean late afternoon) it has been changed yet again. Now it looks like a complete rainbow and is rather odd. At least it uses Google’s colors, but it’ll take some getting used to. Oh it’s the little things on the internet I point out. Have a look-sy (or just go to google):
Facebook Pisses Me Off Sometimes
May 20, 2009
Computer/ Tech Related, Rants
No Comments
Portfolioso
Facebook has gone to the shitter, and here’s why. It used to be cool and informative, but now it’s just useless. The recent redesign wrecked things. I am usually a fan of web 2.0 fancy, glittery, pretty AJAXified web apps, hell, I even supported the new looks when everyone hated it. However, I actually learned some usability testing from all that time I spent (checking email and reading Digg) in Systems Design and Implementation class. All the AJAX fancy shit doesn’t help when it’s asynchronously sending “poop wars” notifications back and fourth.
Speaking of notifications, that’s one thing the dev team ruined. Back in the day, notifications were useful and relevant to real life. Now, we get live updates on who became a fan of Edward Cullen and that Jimmy scored a blumpkin on the “Which blowjob are you quiz.” Number 1 pet peeve: They moved the birthdays to Oshkosh, all the way at the bottom on the right column. Well that doesn’t help me, I don’t look there. Put the damn birthdays and other real life useful information on top so we can actually remember things and people won’t hate me. I became enraged when I did my random profile check (for the first time in a while, because I used to have a life before summer break) of someone I haven’t heard from in a few months and realized I missed a birthday by two weeks. Fuck. Well if notifications were engineered better then… I don’t know, it doesn’t matter anyway, it just annoys me.
Random plugs: By the way the Yankees are awesome again, CC is the biggest boss that I’ve seen thus far and I just watched Taken which was a killer movie. Watch it now (yes 5AM) if you haven’t seen it. Oh shit, my server time is an hour off – it says 4AM. I should fix that.
Facebook