I feel compelled to make a post thanking my wonderful Web host Media Temple. As many of you are undoubtedly aware, this site made the front page of both Digg and Reddit a few days ago for a post about Doda Elektroda. What you may not be aware of, however, is just how much stress that can put on a server.

This site is currently being hosted on Media Temple’s Grid-Server (gs) service. What this means is that jonholato.com is hosted on a network of interconnected servers, each sharing resources with one another. Thus, Media Temple measures server load for jonholato.com in terms of Grid Performance Units (GPUs). Each month my site is given a monthly allowance of 1000 GPUs. At the end end of each billing cycle the number gets reset to 1000, unfortunately it’s not an AT&T rollover type of situation.

According to Media Temple’s Web site, GPUs are calculated as follows:

A GPU is a measurement that derives from CPU time required by every single hit/request made to your (gs) Grid-Service. This includes your web server activity, programs, scripts and all associated parent and child processes across all nodes within our system (100’s of processor cores). The GRID system keeps track of all the measurements taken from your server and adds them to a running total which is calculated about once an hour. Each (gs) Grid-Service plan is given 1000 GPUs monthly, which is equivalent to continuously using 10% of a processor core for one month. This breaks down to 1.4 GPUs per hour.

To give you an idea of just how much stress was put on my server a few days ago, my average monthly GPU consumption since switching to Media Temple has historically been around 200. However, on Tuesday it was 258.

I don’t want to get into the specifics of traffic, but for the sake of illustration once this site hit the front page of Digg it was getting about 15-20 visits per second for over an hour:

Despite the influx of traffic, not once did this site become unresponsive or go down. My previous Web host (which I won’t mention by name) crashed three times when I hit the front page of Reddit for the first time — not even during peak hours — and I had to dismantle large sections of code to keep it running. After that I switched to Media Temple for the reputation it has of being able to withstand the Digg effect, and I must say it has more than lived up to it’s reputation.

So a big thank you to Media Temple, for being the Web host I can depend on.

Today Apple released new iPhone software, which updates the firmware to version 1.1.1. An iPhone update was announced earlier in the week, but the exact day was unknown in advance. iPhone firmware 1.1.1 brings a host of new features and includes numerous bug fixes. The new features include the highly anticipated iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, which Steve Jobs announced a few weeks ago, and the following:

• Louder speakerphone and receiver volume
• Home Button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls
• pace bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space
• Mail attachments are viewable in portrait and landscape
• Stocks and cities in Stocks and Weather can be re-ordered
• Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status in the Status Bar
• Support for TV Out
• Preference to turn off EDGE/GPRS when roaming internationally
• New Passcode lock time intervals
• Adjustable alert volume

Apart from the new features and unspecified bug fixes, the iPhone update also includes a number of security updates and will essentially disable any third-party installed software applications.

The file is a massive 152MB, so make sure you’re on broadband or go watch some TV for a while during the download. I experienced some weird behavior during the install, my iPhone somehow lost sync with iTunes and had to be re-connected, restored, re-activated. It was anticipated that this could happen to those with unlocked iPhones and/or iPhones with third-party software, but my iPhone is stock and doesn’t qualify for either of those criteria. Let that be a heads up and make sure you have all of your information backed up before proceeding with the update.

In the end everything came back up fine and I have the new firmware 1.1.1. Here are some screen shots of the iPhone upgrade process:

1) New iPhone firmware is available.

2) Important upgrade information

3) Downloading iPhone update via iTunes

4) Preparing for software update

5) Preparing for iPhone restore

6) Restoring iPhone firmware

7) iPhone restored to factory settings

8 ) My iPhone settings restored

9) iPhone software version 1.1.1 upgrade complete

A confidential transcript of a meeting between President Bush and then-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has been published in the El Pais Daily, a left wing newspaper. In the transcript, dated February 22, 2003, Bush tells Aznar that nations like Mexico, Angola, Chile and Cameroon have to understand that the security of the United State is at stake. Specifically, Bush said that Angola would lose financial aid and Chile’s free-trade agreement with the U.S. would never make it out of the Senate.

Further, in the wake of an unsuccessful UN Security Council lobby by Bush to bolster support for a war with Iraq, coupled with millions of Spanish protesting in the streets of Madrid, Aznar called on Bush to help him boost Spanish public opinion of the war and said he was worried by Bush’s optimism. Bush’s response — and this is what most disturbs me — was:

“I am optimistic because I believe I am right. I am at peace with myself.”

How can any leader, including Bush, be at peace with themselves during the build-up to a war? War is one of the most horrifying atrocities human beings engage in, as the end result is always the same thing: death. It takes a truly evil and soulless man to be at peace with himself before and during wartime. Even if Bush didn’t care about all of the Iraqi lives (which he most certainly did not), how could he be at peace with sending thousands of Americans to die overseas?

This article should be a wake up call to U.S. citizens. If our President doesn’t have the moral capacity to cherish and value the lives of Americans and humans in general, then how will he know when the war and death and killing has gone too far and it’s time to end it and bring the troops home? He won’t.

Beginning Friday of this week, LinkedIn will start allowing individuals to upload photos to their profiles. The business-oriented site has been photo-free for the past four years, adopting a more conservative tone; however they claim that the most demanded feature from users was profile photos, so they have decided to give in.

LinkedIn’s Adam Nash says that many people recognize friends and colleagues more easily by face than by name, and that photos will provide for “richer professional connections online.” While that’s probably true, I can’t help but think of the negative repercussions that profile photos could have on such a wonderful tool as LinkedIn.

One of LinkedIn’s three main features is the potential for career advancement, or the ability to “discover inside connections when you’re looking for a job or new business opportunity.” In the past individuals have been able to find new or better jobs on LinkedIn based on their experience and skillset (and rightfully so). Adding profile pictures completely changes the game, as now decisions will in many cases be influenced on personal preferences. If a manager is looking at two profiles for potential candidates and finds one to be more attractive than the other, you can bet he or she will take that into account when making their decision. It’s unfortunate and it sucks, but it’s the way the world works.

I know it’s far too late for LinkedIn to reconsider this decision, so I will wish them the best in implementing this new feature. The good news, they have developed a pretty stringent array of privacy settings for profile photos, whereby a user can make their photo visible from everyone down to no one. The bad news, they have begun the trek away from the business-like and professional environment that created their 14 million user base.

Don’t get too excited, yet, but it appears as if the answer might be yes. Apple Insider is reporting that Apple is looking to give it’s original PDA — which helped to spur growth in the PDA market — another shot, this time with OS X and multi-touch technology. It’s original PDA, the Newton, wasn’t much of a success and never made it out of the 90s.

The future hand held device, which has yet to be named (one can speculate: iTablet? iNewton, iPDA?), will run the still in development Mac OS X Leopard on a 720×480 high-resolution display. It is described as being ultra-thin, similar to the iPhone, however in terms of size it will be rougly 1.5 times the iPhone. Additionally, the device will incorporate multi-touch concepts that have yet to be seen in the iPhone or iPod Touch, such as drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste.

The current release date is set for the first half of 2008, but with the delays Apple has been experiencing lately (read: Leopard development) I would take that with a grain of salt. Hopefully Apple CEO Steve Jobs will offer more information during his Macworld keynote in January.

This would represent the fifth business area for Apple (1. Mac, 2. iPod, 3. Apple TV, 4. iPhone), which means time to start saving for another Apple device, as my Apple collection would no longer be complete.

The universally-accepted intelligence gauge is the intelligence quotient, or IQ, test. While a full review of the IQ test and its calculation methods is out of scope for this post, the median IQ is 100 with +/- 15 standard deviation. The further you move away from the average score, higher or lower, the more or less intelligent you are, respectively. Here is a graph that depicts the IQ scoring curve:

As you can see from the graph, the majority of the population falls between 85 and 115. Persons with IQ scores of 70 or less are said to suffer from mental retardation. Conversely, individuals with IQs of greater than 130 are said to be of superior intelligence, and the higher the score the more intelligent the person.

It is estimated that Albert Einstein, who is synonymous with the word “genius,” had an IQ of around 160. While we can’t know for sure what his IQ was, we do know for certain that he was a genius, and therefore anyone with an IQ of a similar level can also be considered a genius. Now that we have set a benchmark for the IQ level of a genius, let me introduce you to the world’s most beautiful genius: Dorota Rabczewska aka Doda Elektroda.

Doda, who came in at #2 on the top 10 most beautiful Polish women, is a famous Polish singer formerly of the band Virgin but now a solo act. In 2004, at the age of 20, Doda Elektroda joined Mensa and it was revealed that she has an IQ of 156. Mensa is a society for highly intelligent individuals, as the only membership requirement is a verifiable IQ score within the top 2% of the population. Currently, there are 100,000 Mensans living in 100 countries around the world.

UPDATE: 9/27/2007 - Phil DeFranco talks about Doda Elektroda (and links to this post) in his new video on YouTube. Thanks Phil, keep up the great work!

Since the iPhone was first released people have been hacking away at it, unlocking it, adding functionality to it, etc. But not too many people have put a lot of thought into the long-term effects of modifying the iPhone’s software. Today Apple issued a statement saying that iPhone unlocking may cause permanent damage to the device:

“Many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.”

The next iPhone software update, which will include new features like the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, is expected to come later this week. Of course unlocked iPhone owners have the option to not upgrade their software, and maintain the current system if they live without the fixes and added functionality. However, they should be aware that their warranty will be voided:

“Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty.”

While I know people who have unlocked iPhones (Apple employees even) personally I’ve always been hesitant to do it. The iPhone suits my needs just fine as it is, and to me it just wasn’t worth the risk. Also, while Apple can “break” unlocked iPhones from updating their software, iPhone hackers can “un-break” them, so who knows. One thing is for certain, though, this battle of unlocked iPhones between Apple/AT&T and consumers isn’t likely to end anytime soon.

This past Saturday night Carin and I went to the mall which — as far as myself and this blog are concerned — means only one thing: a trip to the Apple store. I had been wanting to go since Steve Jobs announced a $100 store credit for early iPhone adopters, and what better time to pick up the last Apple gadget needed to complete my family of Apple products: Apple TV.

As always the in-store experience was very pleasant, we’ve made acquaintance with one of the Apple Reps so now whenever we go we get treated very well, and this time was no exception. I asked the rep a number of questions related to the Apple TV, we chatted about our iPhones, and discussed some support issues related to Carin’s PowerMac G4 and Sony MiniDV video camera. All-in-all a good time, and I walked out with an Apple TV.

When we got home I began the process of unboxing and setting up the Apple TV with the TV downstairs. The process was pretty straightforward and simple. The one snag we had was the HDMI to DVI hookup wasn’t working due to what appears to be either a faulty cable or TV hookup, so we switched to component cables and everything worked fine.

Configuring the Apple TV was a breeze, a couple of on-screen menus to select from and a code to type into iTunes on your computer. After that all the syncing is done between your main computer and Apple TV and you can begin watching your content. Also, you can connect additional iTunes libraries (5 maximum) and stream directly from them to Apple TV.

One final note: be sure to go into your Apple TV settings and run the update software function, as there is a newer version than what ships by default on the Apple TV. In order to use YouTube on the Apple TV you will need to run this update.

Here are some pictures (I apologize in advance for the poor quality in some of the pictures, the iPhone camera isn’t always the greatest) and screen shots of the Apple TV unboxing and configuration:

1) Apple TV in its original packaging.

2) Apple TV and remote control.

3) Power cord, Apple TV, remote control.

4) Apple TV instruction manual.

5) Component cables for Apple TV hookup to TV.

6) Select a language for Apple TV.

7) Choose a screen resolution for Apple TV.

8 ) Apple TV sources sceen.

9) Apple TV listed as a device in iTunes.

10) Apple TV registration.

This story represents a perfect example of why the government needs to be limited in its power and why our privacy as citizens needs to be protected. Benjamin Robinson, a 40-year old government agent from Oakland, CA within the Department of Commerce, has been charged with illegally accessing a Homeland Security Database in order to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her family. His indictment by a federal grand jury in San Jose this week was in connection with allegations that he accessed the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) over 163 times to track the woman’s movements.

Robinson is being charged with making false claims to a government agency and unlawfully accessing data from a protected computer (seems the computer wasn’t very secure at all). If found guilty, Robinson could face a $500,000 fine and a maximum of up to 10 years in prison.

The scariest thing about all of this is that if this individual got caught, imagine all of those who haven’t gotten caught and are spying on us. Everyone kind of expected in the back of their minds that this could happen, and it’s sobering to see it actually happening as perhaps this can actually incite some people to act. The only way to stop government spying on citizens is to limit the power of the government.

Persistent mobile phone use may lead to a slowing of brain activity and unbalanced behavior, according to a study published in the International Journal of Neuroscience this month. The study, which was limited to 300 people in Australia, England and the Netherlands, occurred over the course of 2.4 years. Researchers intend on expanding the study to 17,000 participants for a longer period of time.

Although the study showed that frequent mobile phone users exhibited slower brain activity, the slowed brain activity was still considered to be within the realm of normal brain functioning. The longer planned study would look into whether the slowed brain activity over an extended period of time could results in an adverse health effect.

On a brighter note, the study revealed the habitual mobile users actually showed an improvement in their ability to focus, which was declared to be a learning effect due to making phone calls in loud areas where background noise and other distractions needed to be filtered out.

The study was carried out with participation from Brainclinics Diagnostics, Radbound University in Nijmegen, the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and The Brain Resource Co. Ltd. in Sydney.

This is a pretty shocking discovery. Here’s a little food for thought, what kind of effect would it have on the global mobile phone market if long-term adverse health effects were proven to be a result of prolonged cell phone use?