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StickyGold - Programming
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The CodeProject is a developers dream. Each week, developers from all over the globe contribute source code, ideas and help each other with programming issues.
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For viewers considering their television programming options, satellite TV and cable television are their primary choices. Both services offer their customers hundreds of premium channels that provide quality entertainment in the home. For some consumers however, there still exists a misconception that they are not able to receive local channels with satellite TV services. Although this might have been true several years ago the situation began to change back in 1999 and is now merely a myth in most situations.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provides oversight for the rules and policies related to satellite stations in the US. In 1999, the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act was introduced and then revised in 2004. One of the primary results of the act was that it allowed satellite TV companies to provide local broadcast signals to subscribers residing in the market area for such stations as described by Nielsen Media Research. Consumers wishing to seek out additional detail about the SHVIA can visit www.fcc.gov
For viewers hoping to benefit from the programming offered by satellite TV providers and yet also receive programming from their local television stations, this was welcomed news. The previous inability to obtain local news and sports was a significant drawback for many viewers. Luckily, satellite TV providers were also motivated to offer this service as it would allow them to compete better with cable companies. Although the response of satellite TV in making local programming available was fairly rapid the need to enhance bandwidth to accommodate the programming resulted in a process that phased in the addition of local programming over a period of years. Now, nearly a decade later, the availability of local stations via satellite TV is prevalent.
At this time Dish Network for instance, is offering local channels in a few hundred of their service areas. The satellite TV provider routinely offers ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Fox, CW, and My Network TV as well as other area specific stations. UPN and WB super stations are also available rounding out their offerings to meet the viewing needs of most customers.
Where available local stations can be added on to any satellite programming package for around $5 per month. Determining the availability of local stations in any given area is simple. The Dish Network website for example allows users to search by address or zip code to check the availability of local channel services on the spot.
The days of missing all local broadcasts or erecting a large over-the-air antenna on the rooftop to receive the local signals are fading into myth. Most satellite TV customers are able to enjoy their local stations with the same satellite service that can provide the most diverse programming and largest volume of HD broadcasts in the industry.
What’s in Your Blind Spot?
Give Them a KISS Ad, or Traffic Exchange Programs - Ideas, T
I like traffic exchange programs! But you probably already knew that if you read my first article about this theme: Traffic Exchange Programs � Are they worth your time?.
�Why do you like them?�, you might ask. They are not the most effective way of advertising, they are not all quite cheat proof and they sure are not very targeted; 3 mayor flaws they share with most other types of free advertising. And yes, that�s all very true, BUT traffic exchange programs are free (mostly), you can do things to make them more effective and what if your target group is prone to use traffic exchange programs as well and it fits your business strategy? What if you are a beginner and you just need to start somewhere? What if you have a new site that just needs some initial traffic?
Of course your strategy should not be entirely build upon the use of traffic exchange programs, but if you have the time, why not take some advantage of them? Use a multi page browser, take heed of the following advise and if you enjoy surfing, these programs are right for you!
Strategic considerations
Questions you should ask yourself are: What is your business strategy? What is your target group?
A good strategy for beginners is to try to sell high ticket products in a niche market. The efforts and costs of selling a high ticket product are quite the same as trying to sell a low ticket, cheap product, so why not start with high ticket products? If this is your strategy, you would be wasting your time with traffic exchange programs.
I believe that most people that are surfing these programs are not interested in this kind of products. They are more likely interested in low ticket products and free offers. They are most likely interested in marketing tools (auto responders and such), free traffic, downline builders, new opportunities and programs.
My business strategy is largely build around getting downlines and targeted at people with lots of time but who are not willing to invest a lot of money. This is a very slow and long term strategy and does not involve a lot of actual selling. Traffic exchange programs are a good place to start recruiting. People who surf these programs expect to see ads for new opportunities and programs, downline builders, free ebooks, tools etc.
Normally I do not promote the idea of using your home page for traffic exchange programs or to use auto surf programs, but there are exceptions. When you have a new site and want some initial traffic, sign up for a few programs and benefit from the start bonuses. When you have a new page (offer) or site and you are not interested in Page Rank, you could use auto surf programs to get your ticker starting and get some traffic (but never do this with your main site!).
Who Are The Fastest Broadband ISPs??
About the Author
Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications ....delivering choices to business consumers for voice and data broadband services. Michael also authors BroadBand Nation Broadband Nation where you’re always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, and ramblings for the masses.
International Real Estate: What You Should Know Before Buyin
The Unbelievable Majesty of Savannah, GA Real Estate
Real Estate Professionals Need You to Write for Them!
Ask yourself these questions:
If you answered �yes� to any of these questions � or even better � several, you may have found a new career!
It�s more important than ever for real estate professionals to market themselves legally considering the laws regarding email and telephone sales seem to change daily - depending on which court is hearing the case. Many experts speculate though that eventually some sort of anti-telemarketing law will be enforced and while it�s much more difficult to regulate email, it�s still being made more and more difficult to use this form of marketing and sales. So basically it comes down to the fact that real estate professionals need an effective way to market themselves without breaking the law.
If you�ve ever done business with a Realtor or Mortgage Broker they probably still send you newsletters, recipe cards, sport�s schedules, notepads, etc. If they don�t they aren�t marketing themselves very effectively and you may have found your first client!
The majority of a real estate professional�s business comes from word of mouth - whether it�s repeat business from people who are refinancing their mortgage, applying for a home equity loan, selling their house, renting their house, or from clients who recommend �their guy� to friends and relatives. Whatever it is, it�s in the professional�s best interest to keep their name on your mind.
The frequency with which real estate professionals send out these marketing materials varies. My own Realtor usually sends me a quarterly newsletter along with goodies like flower seeds and notepads throughout the year. Some of the more industrious professionals actually send out newsletters on a weekly basis!
The key is for the professional to get his/her name and phone number in front of as many sets of eyes as possible. When the professional sends you a newsletter, that includes several interesting articles, such as how to increase the value of your home or budget decorating tips or how to clean up your credit before you apply for a mortgage, etc. you find these articles so fascinating you hang on to the newsletter. Or you know that your next-door neighbor is particularly interested in decorating on a budget so you pass it along to her and so on.
Next thing you know, many set of eyes have seen the real estate professional�s name and they decide to call him/her when they need the services of a real estate professional.
When your cousin Vinney calls you up out of the blue to tell you he�s moving to Arlington and �do you have a Realtor you can recommend� you do of course because the sport�s schedule/newsletter/recipe card your Realtor recently sent you is hanging on your refrigerator.
So what does all of this mean for you the freelance writer? It means more assignments and more money! After all, the real estate professional is either too busy or simply doesn�t have the desire or skills to write their own newsletters and other materials. What they need is a freelance writer to handle this crucial aspect of their business.
To be certain, like any business you�ll need to get out there and hustle and market yourself before you can expect to market for your clients. You�ll need to prepare professional looking samples to start out with and hawk these to as many real estate professionals as you can think of. You can find these professionals by looking in the phone book for addresses, pulling fliers from yard signs and introducing yourself to Realtors conducting open houses to begin with.
Writing for real estate
Fixing Financial Affliction
FIXING FINANCIAL AFFLICTION
By Dr. John E. Russell
Failing finances are a common problem now-a-days. How does one extricate himself from a heavy debt load? There are ads that offer to do that ... for a price. It may be the answer for some. However, there are things one can do for himself.
The first step to relieve debt is not to make any more. There are very creative ways to save money. Ben Franklin said, ’A penny saved is a penny earned.’ Bill Gothard said several years ago, ’A dollar saved is a dollar sixty earned!’ In other words, taking into account the multitude of revealed and hidden taxes, working expenses, etc., one then needed to earn $1.60 in order to have $1.00 to spend! How much do we have left today?! One of the best and most practical resources for saving money is Dr. Alfred W. Munzert’s book Poor Richard’s Economic Survival Manual (Franklinville, NY: Hemisphere Publications, 1982). Dr. Munzert raised a large family on a teacher’s salary and his children received a college education. I am still amazed by many of the strategies he used. Buy the book, or request it at your library.
Making arrangements for a reduced payment to each creditor is one alternative to get rid of debt. If you need help, call the National Foundation for Consumer Credit at 1-800-388-2227.
Bankruptcy is another alternative. In their anguish, some have chosen to use this law that provides protection from creditors. You can file for bankruptcy yourself, but it is probably best to hire a competent bankruptcy lawyer. I went through a chapter 7 bankruptcy and did the filing myself, since I could not afford a lawyer at the time. The best resource that I found was Kenneth J. Doran’s book, Personal Bankruptcy and Debt Adjustment (New York: Random House, 1991). It is written in plain English, with legal terms explained. Be sure to use up-to- date-forms (I had to re-submit some forms because of this). The new forms were expensive, so I copied them from Clark, Boardman and Callaghan, Bankruptcy Code, Rules and Official Forms (New York: The Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company, 1991). A friend paid my filing fee. I made it with God’s help and you can, too! Avoid bankruptcy if possible by solving financial problems early on. Financial stress will make you sick--I know from firsthand experience.
For a copy of my new book, essays exposing the myths of political correctness, send me two dollars. Read it. Then, if you want to keep it for reference, send an additional three dollars. You will not see much of this documented material in the media. This is IBM shareware written in ASCII and on 5 1/4 inch computer disk. Please refer to the name of this publication. Your comments are welcome.
Best wishes in your mailorder endeavor!
66 Ways To Save Money
66 Ways to Save Money
TRANSPORTATION
Airline Fares
1. You can lower the price of a round-trip air fare by as much as two-thirds by making certain your trip includes a Saturday evening stayover, and by purchasing the ticket in advance.
2. To make certain you have a cheap fare, even if you use a travel agent, call all the airlines that fly where you want to go and ask what the lowest fare to your destination is.
3. Keep an eye out for fare wars. Be prepared to act quickly.
Car Rental
1. Since car rental rates can vary greatly, shop around for the best basic rates and special offers.
2. Rental car companies offer various insurance and waiver options. Check with your insurance agent and credit card company in advance to avoid duplicating any coverage you may already have.
New Cars
1. You can save thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a car by selecting a model that combines a low purchase price with low financing, insurance, gasoline, maintenance, and repair costs. Ask your local librarian for new car guides that contain this information.
2. Having selected a model, you can save hundreds of dollars by comparison shopping. Call at least five dealers for price quotes and let each know that you are calling others.
3. Remember there is no ’cooling off’ period on new car sales. Once you have signed a contract, you are obligated to buy the car.
Used Cars
1. Before buying any used car:
a. Compare the seller’s asking price with the average retail price in a ’bluebook’ or other guide to car prices found at many libraries, banks, and credit unions.
b. Have a mechanic you trust check the car, especially if the car is sold ’as is.’
2. Consider purchasing a used car from an individual you know and trust. They are more likely than other sellers to charge a lower price and point out any problems with the car.
Auto Leasing
1. Don’t decide to lease a car just because the payments are lower than on a traditional auto loan. The leasing payments may be lower because you don’t own the car at the end of the lease.
2. Leasing a car is very complicated. When shopping, consider the price of the car (known as the capitalized cost), your trade- in allowance, any down payment, monthly payments, various fees (excess mileage, excess ’wear and tear,’ end-of-lease), and the cost of buying the car at the end of the lease.
Gasoline
1. You can save hundreds of dollars a year by pumping gas yourself and using the lowest-octane called for in your owner’s manual.
2. You can save up to $100 a year on gas by keeping your engine tuned and your tires inflated to their proper pressure.
Car Repairs
1. Consumers lose billions of dollars each year on unneeded or poorly done car repairs. The most important step that you can take to save money on these repairs is to find a skilled, honest mechanic. Before you need repairs, look for a mechanic who: * is certified and well established; * has done good work for someone you know; and * communicates well about repair options and costs.
INSURANCE
Auto Insurance
1. You can save several hundred dollars a year by purchasing auto insurance from a licensed, low-price insurer. Call your state insurance department for a publication showing typical prices charged by different companies. Then call at least four of the lowest-priced, licensed insurers to learn what they would charge you for the same coverage.
2. Talk to your agent or insurer about raising your deductibles on collision and comprehensive coverages to at least $500 or, if you have an old car, dropping these coverages altogether. Taking these steps can save you hundreds of dollars a year.
3. Make certain that your new policy is in effect before dropping your old one.
Homeowner Insurance
1. You can save $100 or more a year by purchasing homeowner insurance from a low-price, licensed insurer. Ask your state insurance department for a publication showing typical prices charged by different licensed companies. Then call at least four of the lowest priced insurers to learn what they would charge you. If such a publication is not available, it is even more important to call at least four insurers for price quotes.
2. Make certain you purchase enough coverage to replace the house and its contents.
3. Make certain your new policy is in effect before dropping your old one.
Life Insurance
1. If you want insurance protection only, buy a term life insurance policy.
2. If you want to buy a whole life, universal life, or other cash value policy, plan to hold it for at least 15 years. Canceling these policies after only a few years can more than double your life insurance costs.
3. Check your public library for information about the financial soundness of insurance companies and the prices they charge. The July, August, and September 1993 issues of Consumer Reports are a valuable source of information about a number of insurers.
BANKING/CREDIT
Checking
1. You can save more than $100 a year in fees by selecting a checking account with a minimum balance requirement that you can, and do, meet.
2. Banking institutions often will drop or lower checking fees if paychecks are directly deposited by your employer. Direct deposit offers the additional advantages of convenience, security, and immediate access to your money.
Savings and Investment Products
1. Before opening a savings or investment account with a bank or other financial institution, find out whether the account is insured by the federal government. An increasing number of products offered by these institutions, including mutual stock funds and annuities, are not insured.
2. To earn the highest return on savings (annual percentage yield) with little or no risk, consider certificates of deposit (CDs) and treasury bills or notes.
3. Once you select a type of savings or investment product, compare rates offered by different institutions. These rates can vary a lot and, over time, can significantly affect interest earnings.
Credit Cards
1. You can save as much as several hundred dollars each year in lower credit card interest charges by paying off your entire bill each month.
2. If you are unable to pay off a large balance, switch to a credit card with a low annual percentage rate (APR). For a modest fee, Bankcard Holders of America (703-389-5445) and RAM Research Corp. (800-344-7714) will send you a list of low-rate cards.
3. You can reduce credit card fees, which may add up to more than $100 a year, by getting rid of all but one or two cards, and by avoiding late payment and over-the-credit limit fees.
Auto Loans
1. If you have significant savings earning a low interest rate, consider making a large down payment or even paying for the car in cash. This could save you as much as several thousand dollars in finance charges.
2. You can save as much as hundreds of dollars in finance charges by shopping for the cheapest loan. Contact several banks, your credit union, and the auto manufacturer’s own finance company.
First Mortgage Loans
1. You may save tens of thousands of dollars in interest charges by shopping for the shortest-term mortgage you can afford. On a $100,000 fixed-rate loan at 8% annual percentage rate (APR), for example, you will pay $90,000 less in interest on a 15-year mortgage than on a 30-year mortgage.
2. You can save thousands of dollars in interest charges by shopping for the lowest-rate mortgage with the fewest points. On a 15-year, $100,000 fixed-rate mortgage, just lowering the APR from 8.5% to 8.0% can save you more than $5,000 in interest charges. On this mortgage, paying two points instead of three would save you an additional $1,000.
3. If your local newspaper does not periodically run mortgage rate surveys, call at least six lenders for information about their rates (APRs), points, and fees. Then ask an accountant to compute precisely how much each mortgage option will cost and its tax implications.
4. Be aware that the interest rate on most adjustable rate mortgage loans (ARMs) can vary a great deal over the lifetime of the mortgage. An increase of several percentage points might raise payments by hundreds of dollars per month.
Mortgage Refinancing
1. Consider refinancing your mortgage if you can get a rate that is at least one percentage point lower than your existing mortgage rate and plan to keep the new mortgage for several years or more. Ask an accountant to calculate precisely how much your new mortgage (including upfront fees) will cost and whether, in the long run, it will cost less than your current mortgage.
Home Equity Loans
1. Be cautious in taking out home equity loans. These loans reduce the equity that you have built up in your home. If you are unable to make payments, you could lose your home.
2. Compare home equity loans offered by at least four banking institutions. In comparing these loans, consider not only the annual percentage rate (APR) but also points, closing costs, other fees, and the index for any variable rate changes.
HOUSING
Home Purchase
1. You can often negotiate a lower sale price by employing a buyer broker who works for you, not the seller. If the buyer broker or the broker’s firm also lists properties, there may be a conflict of interest, so ask them to tell you if they are showing you a property that they have listed.
2. Do not purchase any house until it has been examined by a home inspector that you selected.
Renting a Place to Live
1. Do not limit your rental housing search to classified ads or referrals from friends and acquaintances. Select buildings where you would like to live and contact their building manager or owner to see if anything is available.
2. Remember that signing a lease probably obligates you to make all monthly payments for the term of the agreement.
Home Improvement
1. Home repairs often cost thousands of dollars and are the subject of frequent complaints. Select from among several well established, licensed contractors who have submitted written, fixed-price bids for the work.
2. Do not sign any contract that requires full payment before satisfactory completion of the work.
Major Appliances
1. Consult Consumer Reports, available in most public libraries, for information about specific brands and how to evaluate them, including energy use. There are often great price and quality differences among brands.
2. Once you’ve selected a brand, check the phone book to learn what stores carry this brand, then call at least four of these stores for the prices of specific models. After each store has given you a quote, ask if that’s the lowest price they can offer you. This comparison shopping can save you as much as $100 or more.
UTILITIES
Electricity
1. To save as much as hundreds of dollars a year on electricity, make certain that any new appliances you purchase, especially air conditioners and furnaces, are energy-efficient. Information on the energy efficiency of major appliances is found on Energy Guide Labels required by federal law. Check with your electric utility to learn if it has a program to help reduce the costs of any appliance purchases.
2. Enrolling in load management programs and off-hour rate programs offered by your electric utility may save you up to $100 a year in electricity costs. Call your electric utility for information about these cost-saving programs.
Home Heating
1. A home energy audit can identify ways to save up to hundreds of dollars a year on home heating (and air conditioning). Ask your electric or gas utility if they can do this audit for free or for a reasonable charge. If they cannot, ask them to refer you to a qualified professional.
Local Telephone Service
1. Check with your phone company to see whether a flat rate or measured service plan will save you the most money.
2. You will usually save money by buying your phones instead of leasing them.
3. Check your local phone bill to see if you have optional services that you don’t really need or use. Each option you drop could save you $40 or more each year.
Long Distance Telephone Service
1. Long distance calls made during evenings, at night, or on weekends can cost significantly less than weekday calls.
2. If you make more than a few long distance calls each month, consider subscribing to a calling plan. Call several long distance companies to see which one has the least expensive plan for the calls you make.
3. Whenever possible, dial your long distance calls directly. Using the operator to complete a call can cost you an extra $1 to $3.
OTHER
Food Purchased at Markets
1. You can save hundreds of dollars a year by shopping at the lower-priced food stores. Convenience stores often charge the highest prices.
2. You will spend less on food if you shop with a list.
3. You can save hundreds of dollars a year by comparing price- per-ounce or other unit prices on shelf labels. Stock up on those items with low per-unit costs.
Prescription Drugs
1. Since brand name drugs are usually much more expensive than their generic equivalents, ask your physician and pharmacist for generic drugs whenever appropriate.
2. Since pharmacies may charge widely different prices for the same medicine, call several. When taking a drug for a long time, also consider calling mail-order pharmacies, which often charge lower prices. See the October 1993 issue of Consumer Reports (available in most public libraries) for a list of several of these pharmacies and their toll-free phone numbers.
Funeral Arrangements
1. Make your wishes known about your funeral, memorial, or burial arrangements in writing. Be cautious about prepaying because there may be risks involved.
2. For information about the least costly options, which could save you several thousand dollars, contact a local memorial society, which is usually listed in the Yellow Pages under funeral services.
3. Before selecting a funeral home, call several and ask for prices of specific goods and services, or visit them to obtain an itemized price list. You are entitled to this information by law and, by using it to comparison shop, you can save hundreds of dollars.
The Consumer Literacy Consortium is a working group of representatives from federal and state government agencies, consumer groups, business organizations, and educational institutions that seeks to develop and disseminate essential messages to inform and educate consumers. Membership in the Consortium does not imply endorsement of all of its messages or the products and services of other members.
Cooperative Extension System Federal Trade Commission Federal Reserve Board Minnesota Attorney General’s Office National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators U.S. Consumer Information Center U.S. Food and Drug Administration U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs
American Council on Consumer Interests American Association of Retired Persons Center for the Study of Services - Checkbook Magazine Consumer Action Consumer Federation of America National Coalition for Consumer Education National Institute for Consumer Education TARP, Inc.
Alamo Rent A Car, Inc. American Insurance Association Direct Selling Education Foundation MCI Consumer Markets NYNEX Corporation Sprint
Name at birth: Cicily Isabel Fairfield
Rebecca West published her first novel in 1918, The Return of the Soldier. She is perhaps best known for her journalistic studies of the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg: The Meaning of Treason (1947) and A Train of Powder (1955). In 1959 West was made a Dame of the British Empire, and in the late 1970s she gained new popularity, thanks largely to the feminist movement.
West famously had love affairs with movie star Charlie Chaplin, author H.G. Wells and businessman and politician Lord Beaverbrook (William Aitken).
Dame Rebecca West
Yahoo has quietly begun testing blog-search technology in Korea, a sign of coming tools for the U.S. market that will take on existing players such as Technorati.
In recent days, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has introduced new search technology on its Korean blog site, which is designed to let people sign up to publish personalized Web journals.
The various search tools, which are available from a pull-down menu next to the search bar, let visitors retrieve content and photos within all Web logs, or just within most recent blog postings or favorite-tagged pages.
Yahoo is planning to begin testing the same capabilities for its U.S. blog-publishing service in the coming weeks, according to a source familiar with the plan. Yahoo search engineer Jeremy Zawodny also hinted at work the company is doing in the area at a recent conference in London, according to an attendee who runs the Cubicgarde.com blog.
Yahoo declined to comment on the Korean site or upcoming technology.
Web portals often try out new technologies in foreign markets. For example, Microsoft’s MSN began experimenting with personalized news search in Europe before it launched in the United States in the last year.
Blogs are of particular interest to industry players like Yahoo because they are a powerful and multiplying form of content online, yet there are few tools to sift through all the material in real time. Chief Yahoo rivals Google and MSN have yet to introduce blog-specific search tools. Google, however, includes some blogs in general Web results.
The leading blog-search site, Technorati, reported this week that the number of blogs online is doubling every five and a half months. By the end of July, it was tracking 14.2 million blogs, with an addition of 80,000 new sites a day. (About 55 percent of the total number of blogs are considered active.)
Yahoo’s coming blog-search will complement the company’s social-networking and blog-publishing service, Yahoo 360, which was introduced earlier this year and is still in test mode.
Blog search will also tie into Yahoo’s newly introduced advertising service for small publishers. The company said Wednesday that it started testing an ad network that lets bloggers and other small publishers place text ads on their sites to make extra money. Search tools can only help people find the blogs--and ads.
Writen : Stefanie Olsen
The Earth as an ecosystem is changing, attributable in great part to the effects of globalization and man. More carbon dioxide is now in the atmosphere than has been in the past 650,000 years. This carbon stays in the atmosphere, acts like a warm blanket, and holds in the heat — hence the name ‘global warming.’
The reason we exist on this planet is because the earth naturally traps just enough heat in the atmosphere to keep the temperature within a very narrow range - this creates the conditions that give us breathable air, clean water, and the weather we depend on to survive. Human beings have begun to tip that balance. We’ve overloaded the atmosphere with heat-trapping gasses from our cars and factories and power plants. If we don’t start fixing the problem now, we’re in for devastating changes to our environment. We will experience extreme temperatures, rises in sea levels, and storms of unimaginable destructive fury. Recently, alarming events that are consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of climate change have become more and more commonplace.
Common Features
Although web server programs differ in detail, they all share some basic common features.
In practice many web servers implement the following features also:
Origin Of Returned Content
The origin of the content sent by server is called:
Serving static content is usually much faster (from 2 to 100 times) than serving dynamic content, especially if the latter involves data pulled from a database.
Path Translation
Web servers are able to map the path component of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) into:
For a static request the URL path specified by the client is relative to the Web server’s root directory.
Consider the following URL as it would be requested by a client:
http://www.example.com/path/file.html
The client’s web browser will translate it into a connection to www.example.com with the following HTTP 1.1 request:
GET /path/file.html HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
The web server on www.example.com will append the given path to the path of its root directory. On Unix machines, this is commonly /var/www/htdocs. The result is the local file system resource:
/var/www/htdocs/path/file.html
The web server will then read the file, if it exists, and send a response to the client’s web browser. The response will describe the content of the file and contain the file itself.
Performances
Web servers (programs) are supposed to serve requests quickly from more than one TCP/IP connection at a time.
Main key performance parameters (measured under a varying load of clients and requests per client), are:
Above three parameters vary noticeably depending on the number of active connections, so a fourth parameter is the concurrency level supported by a web server under a specific configuration.
Last but not least, the specific server model used to implement a web server program can bias the performance and scalability level that can be reached under heavy load or when using high end hardware (many CPUs, disks, etc.).
Performance of a web server is typically measured using one of automated load testing tools.
Load Limits
A web server (program) has defined load limits, because it can handle only a limited number of concurrent client connections (usually between 2 and 60,000, by default between 500 and 1,000) per IP address (and IP port) and it can serve only a certain maximum number of requests per second depending on:
When a web server is near to or over its limits, it becomes overloaded and thus unresponsive.
Overload Causes
At any time web servers can be overloaded because of:
Overload symptoms
The symptoms of an overloaded web server are:
Anti-overload Techniques
To partially overcome above load limits and to prevent overload, most popular web sites use common techniques like:
http://images.example.com
http://www.example.com
Historical Notes
In 1989 Tim Berner-Lee proposed to his employer CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) a new project, which had the goal of easing the exchange of information between scientists by using a hypertext system. As a result of the implementation of this project, in 1990 Berners-Lee wrote two programs:
Between 1991 and 1994 the simplicity and effectiveness of early technologies used to surf and exchange data through the World Wide Web helped to port them to many different operating systems and spread their use among lots of different social groups of people, first in scientific organizations, then in universities and finally in industry.
In 1994 Tim Berners-Lee decided to constitute the World Wide Web Consortium to regulate the further development of the many technologies involved (HTTP, HTML, etc.) through a standardization process.
The following years are recent history which has seen an exponential growth of the number of web sites and servers.
MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) - A possible U.S. launch of an interceptor missile from Central Europe may provoke a counterattack by intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russia’s top military commander said.
"If we suppose that Iran wants to strike the United States, than interceptor missiles, which would be launched from Poland, will fly towards Russia," the Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Yury Baluyevsky said, adding that the shape of interceptor missiles and their flight trajectory are very similar with IBMs.
Washington wants to place a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 missile interceptors in Poland, purportedly to counter a missile threat from Iran and other "rogue" states. Moscow has responded angrily to the plans, saying the European shield would destroy the strategic balance of forces and threaten Russia’s national interests.
The top Russian military official said Russia operates automated missile warning systems, which could respond automatically in case the U.S. fires an antimissile across Russia against a possible ballistic missile form Iran.
He added that the U.S. also still keeps high on the agenda an issue of a possible global confrontation with Russia.
"The issue of, to put it mildly, a confrontation with Russia, including a direct confrontation, is unfortunately still regarded by my counterparts from the Pentagon as relevant," he said adding that the U.S. missile shield plans in Central Europe are aimed to change the current security system in Europe and not against possible strikes from "rogue states."
He said the formation of the Third Site in Poland and the Czech Republic is a destabilizing factor in Europe and Russia will do everything possible to prevent a decrease in its national defense capability.
"Depending on the situation we [Russia] plan to take adequate and asymmetrical measures aimed to prevent a drop in national defense capabilities," Baluyevsky said adding that the U.S. proposals on the missile shield are unacceptable for Russia.
"We believe that Russia’s opinion should be heard and taken into account concerning such important issue as the missile shield in Europe," he said. "We speak for the dialogue, but under the condition that the problem will not be complicated by unilateral steps in this sphere."
Russia has offered the U.S. use of radar stations at Gabala in Azerbaijan, and Armavir in south Russia, as alternatives to missile shield deployment in Central Europe. Washington said, though, it could use these radars only as additional components of the European shield.
Speaking about the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, Baluyevsky said that European states have turned the treaty into a tool of political pressure.
"Western countries have deliberately turned a regime of arms control into a tool for achieving political aims," he said.
The law to freeze Russia’s participation in the CFE treaty was unanimously approved by parliament and signed on November 30 by President Vladimir Putin. Russia’s unilateral moratorium came into force immediately after midnight on Wednesday.
Moscow considers the original CFE treaty, signed in December 1990 by 16 NATO countries and six Warsaw Pact members, to be discriminatory and outdated since it does not reflect the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or recent NATO expansion.
Baluyevsky said that after the moratorium came into force Russia has the full right to move its military units across the country the way it prefers, but the country does not plan to increase weapons stock.
NATO said in a statement Wednesday that it regretted Russia’s decision to impose a moratorium on the arms reductions treaty, which the West regards as a cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security, and urged Moscow to reverse its decision.
Russia has urged NATO countries to ratify the adapted version of the treaty, signed on November 19, 1999 and so far ratified only by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Russia’s top general has accused the West of turning the arms control system into a political tool, warning that a launch of a U.S. interceptor missile in Europe could trigger a Russian ballistic missile strike.
Army Chief of Staff Yuri Baluyevsky Saturday sharply criticized U.S. plans to build an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe. He also accused NATO of boosting its military potential in the Baltic countries.
Baluyevsky told a news conference in Moscow that Russia’s moratorium on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty enables him to move Russian military forces as necessary within the country. But he added that Russia has no plans of massing troops along its borders.
The U.S. says the proposed missile shield in Europe is designed to protect NATO countries from possible attacks by Iran.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday expressed his support for Moscow. He held two days of talks with President Vladimir Putin in Minsk.
Mr. Putin earlier said Russia could counter U.S. plans to deploy its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic by deploying missiles in Belarus. The former Soviet Republic is located between Russia and Poland.
The Soviet Union and NATO signed the treaty limiting conventional weapons deployment in 1990. It was updated in 1999 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia ratified the renewed document in 2004, but NATO has refused to ratify it until Russia fulfills its commitment to withdraw forces from former Soviet bases in Georgia and Moldova.
Moscow calls those deployments peacekeeping missions and refuses to withdraw its troops.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
VOA News
Hacker dengan keahliannya dapat melihat & memperbaiki kelemahan perangkat lunak di komputer; biasanya kemudian di publikasikan secara terbuka di Internet agar sistem menjadi lebih baik. Sialnya, segelintir manusia berhati jahat menggunakan informasi tersebut untuk kejahatan - mereka biasanya disebut cracker. Pada dasarnya dunia hacker & cracker tidak berbeda dengan dunia seni, disini kita berbicara seni keamanan jaringan Internet.
Saya berharap ilmu keamanan jaringan di tulisan ini digunakan untuk hal-hal yang baik - jadilah Hacker bukan Cracker. Jangan sampai anda terkena karma karena menggunakan ilmu untuk merusak milik orang lain. Apalagi, pada saat ini kebutuhan akan hacker semakin bertambah di Indonesia dengan semakin banyak dotcommers yang ingin IPO di berbagai bursa saham. Nama baik & nilai sebuah dotcom bisa jatuh bahkan menjadi tidak berharga jika dotcom di bobol. Dalam kondisi ini, para hacker di harapkan bisa menjadi konsultan keamanan bagi para dotcommers tersebut - karena SDM pihak kepolisian & aparat keamanan Indonesia amat sangat lemah & menyedihkan di bidang Teknologi Informasi & Internet. Apa boleh buat cybersquad, cyberpatrol swasta barangkali perlu di budayakan untuk survival dotcommers Indonesia di Internet.
Berbagai teknik keamanan jaringan Internet dapat di peroleh secara mudah di Internet antara lain di http://www.sans.org, http://www.rootshell.com, http://www.linuxfirewall.org/, http://www.linuxdoc.org,http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/coast/firewalls/, http://www.redhat.com/mirrors/LDP/HOWTO/. Sebagian dari teknik ini berupa buku-buku yang jumlah-nya beberapa ratus halaman yang dapat di ambil secara cuma-cuma (gratis). Beberapa Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) tentang keamanan jaringan bisa diperoleh di http://www.iss.net/vd/mail.html,http://www.v-one.com/documents/fw-faq.htm. Dan bagi para experimenter beberapa script / program yang sudah jadi dapat diperoleh antara lain di http://bastille-linux.sourceforge.net/, http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/tips/firewall/firewallservice.html.
Bagi pembaca yang ingin memperoleh ilmu tentang jaringan dapat di download secara cuma-cuma dari http://pandu.dhs.org, http://www.bogor.net/idkf/, http://louis.idaman.com/idkf. Beberapa buku berbentuk softcopy yang dapat di ambil gratis dapat di ambil dari http://pandu.dhs.org/Buku-Online/. Kita harus berterima kasih terutama kepada team Pandu yang dimotori oleh I Made Wiryana untuk ini. Pada saat ini, saya tidak terlalu tahu adanya tempat diskusi Indonesia yang aktif membahas teknik-teknik hacking ini - tetapi mungkin bisa sebagian di diskusikan di mailing list lanjut seperti kursus-linux@yahoogroups.com & linux-admin@linux.or.id yang di operasikan oleh Kelompok Pengguna Linux Indonesia (KPLI) http://www.kpli.or.id.
Cara paling sederhana untuk melihat kelemahan sistem adalah dengan cara mencari informasi dari berbagai vendor misalnya di http://www.sans.org/newlook/publications/roadmap.htm#3b tentang kelemahan dari sistem yang mereka buat sendiri. Di samping, memonitoring berbagai mailing list di Internet yang berkaitan dengan keamanan jaringan seperti dalam daftar http://www.sans.org/newlook/publications/roadmap.htm#3e.
Dijelaskan oleh Front-line Information Security Team, “Techniques Adopted By ‘System Crackers’ When Attempting To Break Into Corporate or Sensitive Private Networks,” fist@ns2.co.uk http://www.ns2.co.uk. Seorang Cracker umumnya pria usia 16-25 tahun. Berdasarkan statistik pengguna Internet di Indonesia maka sebetulnya mayoritas pengguna Internet di Indonesia adalah anak-anak muda pada usia ini juga. Memang usia ini adalah usia yang sangat ideal dalam menimba ilmu baru termasuk ilmu Internet, sangat disayangkan jika kita tidak berhasil menginternetkan ke 25000 sekolah Indonesia s/d tahun 2002 - karena tumpuan hari depan bangsa Indonesia berada di tangan anak-anak muda kita ini.
Nah, para cracker muda ini umumnya melakukan cracking untuk meningkatkan kemampuan / menggunakan sumber daya di jaringan untuk kepentingan sendiri. Umumnya para cracker adalah opportunis. Melihat kelemahan sistem dengan mejalankan program scanner. Setelah memperoleh akses root, cracker akan menginstall pintu belakang (backdoor) dan menutup semua kelemahan umum yang ada.
Seperti kita tahu, umumnya berbagai perusahaan / dotcommers akan menggunakan Internet untuk (1) hosting web server mereka, (2) komunikasi e-mail dan (3) memberikan akses web / internet kepada karyawan-nya. Pemisahan jaringan Internet dan IntraNet umumnya dilakukan dengan menggunakan teknik / software Firewall dan Proxy server. Melihat kondisi penggunaan di atas, kelemahan sistem umumnya dapat di tembus misalnya dengan menembus mailserver external / luar yang digunakan untuk memudahkan akses ke mail keluar dari perusahaan. Selain itu, dengan menggunakan agressive-SNMP scanner & program yang memaksa SNMP community string dapat mengubah sebuah router menjadi bridge (jembatan) yang kemudian dapat digunakan untuk batu loncatan untuk masuk ke dalam jaringan internal perusahaan (IntraNet).
Agar cracker terlindungi pada saat melakukan serangan, teknik cloacking (penyamaran) dilakukan dengan cara melompat dari mesin yang sebelumnya telah di compromised (ditaklukan) melalui program telnet atau rsh. Pada mesin perantara yang menggunakan Windows serangan dapat dilakukan dengan melompat dari program Wingate. Selain itu, melompat dapat dilakukan melalui perangkat proxy yang konfigurasinya kurang baik.
Setelah berhasil melompat dan memasuki sistem lain, cracker biasanya melakukan probing terhadap jaringan dan mengumpulkan informasi yang dibutuhkan. Hal ini dilakukan dengan beberapa cara, misalnya (1) menggunakan nslookup untuk menjalankan perintah ‘ls <domain or network>’ , (2) melihat file HTML di webserver anda untuk mengidentifikasi mesin lainnya, (3) melihat berbagai dokumen di FTP server, (4) menghubungkan diri ke mail server dan menggunakan perintah ‘expn <user>’, dan (5) mem-finger user di mesin-mesin eksternal lainnya.
Langkah selanjutnya, cracker akan mengidentifikasi komponen jaringan yang dipercaya oleh system apa saja. Komponen jaringan tersebut biasanya mesin administrator dan server yang biasanya di anggap paling aman di jaringan. Start dengan check akses & eksport NFS ke berbagai direktori yang kritis seperti /usr/bin, /etc dan /home. Eksploitasi mesin melalui kelemahan Common Gateway Interface (CGI), dengan akses ke file /etc/hosts.allow.
Selanjutnya cracker harus mengidentifikasi komponen jaringan yang lemah dan bisa di taklukan. Cracker bisa mengunakan program di Linux seperti ADMhack, mscan, nmap dan banyak scanner kecil lainnya. Program seperti ‘ps’ & ‘netstat’ di buat trojan (ingat cerita kuda troya? dalam cerita klasik yunani kuno) untuk menyembunyikan proses scanning. Bagi cracker yang cukup advanced dapat mengunakan aggressive-SNMP scanning untuk men-scan peralatan dengan SNMP.
Setelah cracker berhasil mengidentifikasi komponen jaringan yang lemah dan bisa di taklukan, maka cracker akan menjalan program untuk menaklukan program daemon yang lemah di server. Program daemon adalah program di server yang biasanya berjalan di belakang layar (sebagai daemon / setan). Keberhasilan menaklukan program daemon ini akan memungkinkan seorang Cracker untuk memperoleh akses sebagai ‘root’ (administrator tertinggi di server).
Untuk menghilangkan jejak, seorang cracker biasanya melakukan operasi pembersihan ‘clean-up’ operation dengan cara membersihkan berbagai log file. Dan menambahkan program untuk masuk dari pintu belakang ‘backdooring’. Mengganti file .rhosts di /usr/bin untuk memudahkan akses ke mesin yang di taklukan melalui rsh & csh.
Selanjutnya seorang cracker dapat menggunakan mesin yang sudah ditaklukan untuk kepentingannya sendiri, misalnya mengambil informasi sensitif yang seharusnya tidak dibacanya; mengcracking mesin lain dengan melompat dari mesin yang di taklukan; memasang sniffer untuk melihat / mencatat berbagai trafik / komunikasi yang lewat; bahkan bisa mematikan sistem / jaringan dengan cara menjalankan perintah ‘rm -rf / &’. Yang terakhir akan sangat fatal akibatnya karena sistem akan hancur sama sekali, terutama jika semua software di letakan di harddisk. Proses re-install seluruh sistem harus di lakukan, akan memusingkan jika hal ini dilakukan di mesin-mesin yang menjalankan misi kritis.
Oleh karena itu semua mesin & router yang menjalankan misi kritis sebaiknya selalu di periksa keamanannya & di patch oleh software yang lebih baru. Backup menjadi penting sekali terutama pada mesin-mesin yang menjalankan misi kritis supaya terselamatkan dari ulah cracker yang men-disable sistem dengan ‘rm -rf / &’.
Bagi kita yang sehari-hari bergelut di Internet biasanya justru akan sangat menghargai keberadaan para hacker (bukan Cracker). Karena berkat para hacker-lah Internet ada dan dapat kita nikmati seperti sekarang ini, bahkan terus di perbaiki untuk menjadi sistem yang lebih baik lagi. Berbagai kelemahan sistem di perbaiki karena kepandaian rekan-rekan hacker yang sering kali mengerjakan perbaikan tsb. secara sukarela karena hobby-nya. Apalagi seringkali hasil hacking-nya di sebarkan secara cuma-cuma di Internet untuk keperluan masyarakat Internet. Sebuah nilai & budaya gotong royong yang mulia justru tumbuh di dunia maya Internet yang biasanya terkesan futuristik dan jauh dari rasa sosial.
Pengembangan para hobbiest hacker ini menjadi penting sekali untuk keberlangsungan / survival dotcommers di wahana Internet Indonesia. Sebagai salah satu bentuk nyatanya, dalam waktu dekat Insya Allah sekitar pertengahan April 2001 akan di adakan hacking competition di Internet untuk membobol sebuah server yang telah di tentukan terlebih dahulu. Hacking competition tersebut di motori oleh anak-anak muda di Kelompok Pengguna Linux Indonesia (KPLI) Semarang yang digerakan oleh anak muda seperti Kresno Aji (masaji@telkom.net), Agus Hartanto (hartx@writeme.com) & Lekso Budi Handoko (handoko@riset.dinus.ac.id). Seperti umumnya anak-anak muda lainnya, mereka umumnya bermodal cekak - bantuan & sponsor tentunya akan sangat bermanfaat dan dinantikan oleh rekan-rekan muda ini.
Mudah-mudahan semua ini akan menambah semangat pembaca, khususnya pembaca muda, untuk bergerak di dunia hacker yang mengasyikan dan menantang. Kalau kata Captain Jean Luc Picard di Film Startrek Next Generation, “To boldly go where no one has gone before”.
Technology
A hard disk drive (HDD), commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk or fixed disk drive, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Strictly speaking, "drive" refers to a device distinct from its medium, such as a tape drive and its tape, or a floppy disk drive and its floppy disk. Early HDDs had removable media; however, an HDD today is typically a sealed unit with fixed media.HDDs were originally developed for use with computers. In the 21st century, applications for HDDs have expanded beyond computers to include digital vid recorders, digital audio players, personal digital assistants, digital cameras and video game consoles. In 2005 the first mobile phones to include HDDs were introduced by Samsung and Nokia. The need for large-scale, reliable storage, independent of a particular device, led to the introduction of configurations such as RAID arrays, network attached storage (NAS) systems and storage area network (SAN) systems that provide efficient and reliable access to large volumes of data.
HDDs record data by magnetizing a ferromagnetic material directionally, to represent either a 0 or a 1 binary digit. They read the data back by detecting the magnetization of the material. A typical HDD design consists of a spindle which holds one or more flat circular disks called platters, onto which the data is recorded. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually glass or aluminum, and are coated with a thin layer of magnetic material. Older disks used iron(III) oxide as the magnetic material, but current disks use a cobalt-based alloy.
The platters are spun at very high speeds. Information is written to a platter as it rotates past mechanisms called read-and-write heads that operate very close over the magnetic surface. The read-and-write head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material immediately under it. There is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle, mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a voice coil actuator or (in older designs) a stepper motor.
The magnetic surface of each platter is divided into many small sub-micrometre-sized magnetic regions, each of which is used to encode a single binary unit of information. In today’s HDDs each of these magnetic regions is composed of a few hundred magnetic grains. Each magnetic region forms a magnetic dipole which generates a highly localized magnetic field nearby. The write head magnetizes a magnetic region by generating a strong local magnetic field nearby. Early HDDs used an electromagnet both to generate this field and to read the data by using electromagnetic induction. Later versions of inductive heads included metal in Gap (MIG) heads and thin film heads. In today’s heads, the read and write elements are separate but in close proximity on the head portion of an actuator arm. The read element is typically magneto-resistive while the write element is typically thin-film inductive.
In modern drives, the small size of the magnetic regions creates the danger that their magnetic state be lost because of thermal effects. To counter this, the platters are coated with two parallel magnetic layers, separated by a 3-atom-thick layer of the non-magnetic element ruthenium, and the two layers are magnetized in opposite orientation, thus reinforcing each other. Another technology used to overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is perpendicular recording, which has been used in some hard drives as of 2006.
Hard disk drives are sealed to prevent dust and other sources of contamination from interfering with the operation of the hard disks heads. The hard drives are not air tight, but rather utilize an extremely fine air filter, to allow for air inside the hard drive enclosure. The spinning of the disks causes the air to circulate forcing any particulates to become trapped on the filter. The same air currents also act as a gas bearing which enables the heads to float on a cushion of air above the surfaces of the disks.
Hard drives are precise devices, moving at very high speed, and a number of analogies have been made to try to describe this. One states:
" As an analogy, a magnetic head slider flying over a disk surface with a flying height of 25 nm with a relative speed of 20 meters/second is equivalent to an
aircraft flying at a physical spacing of 0.2 µm at 900 kilometers/hour. This is what a disk drive experiences during its operation. "
Magnetic Storage Systems Beyond 2000, George C. Hadjipanayis, p. 487
Capacity and Access Speed
Using rigid disks and sealing the unit allows much tighter tolerances than in a floppy disk drive. Consequently, hard disk drives can store much more data than floppy disk drives and can access and transmit it faster. In 2007, a typical enterprise, i.e. workstation HDD, might store between 160 GB and 1 TB of data (as of local US market by July 2007), rotate at 7,200 or 10,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) and have a sequential media transfer rate of over 80 MB/s. The fastest enterprise HDDs spin at 15,000 rpm, and can achieve sequential media transfer speeds above 110 MB/s. Mobile, i.e., Laptop HDDs, which are physically smaller than their desktop and enterprise counterparts, tend to be slower and have less capacity. In the 1990s, most spun at 4,200 rpm. In 2007, a typical mobile HDD spins at 5,400 rpm, with 7,200 rpm models available for a slight price premium.
The exponential increases in disk space and data access speeds of HDDs have enabled the commercial viability of consumer products that require large storage capacities, such as the TiVo personal video recorder and digital music players. In addition, the availability of vast amounts of cheap storage has made viable a variety of web-based systems with extraordinary capacity requirements, such as the search and email systems offered by companies like Google.
The main way to decrease access time is to increase rotational speed, while the main way to increase throughput and storage capacity is to increase areal density. A vice president of Seagate Technology projects a future growth in disk density of 40% per year. Access times have not kept up with throughput increases, which themselves have not kept up with growth in storage capacity.
As of 2006, disk drives include perpendicular recording technology, in an attempt to increase recording density and throughput.
The first 3.5" HDD marketed as able to store 1 TB is the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000. It contains five platters at approximately 200 GB each, providing 935.5 GiB of usable space. Hitachi has since been joined by Samsung (Samsung SpinPoint F1, which has 3x334GB platters) , Seagate and Western Digital in the 1 TB drive market.
Capacity Measurements
The capacity of an HDD can be calculated by multiplying the number of cylinders by the number of heads by the number of sectors by the number of bytes/sector (most commonly 512). On ATA drives bigger than eight gigabytes, the values are set to 16383 cylinder, 16 heads, 63 sectors for compatibility with older operating systems. It should be noted that the values for cylinder, head & sector reported by a modern drive are not the actual physical parameters since, amongst other things, with zone bit recording the number of sectors varies by zone.
Hard disk drive manufacturers specify disk capacity using the SI prefixes mega, giga and tera, and their abbreviations M, G and T. Byte is typically abbreviated B.
Operating systems frequently report capacity using the same abbreviations but in reference to binary-based units. For instance, the prefix mega in the context of data storage can mean 220 (1,048,576), which is approximately equal to the actual value of the SI prefix mega, 106 (1,000,000). Similar usage has been applied to prefixes of greater magnitude. This results in a discrepancy between the disk manufacturer’s stated capacity and the apparent capacity of the drive when examined through the operating system. The difference becomes much more noticeable in the multi-gigabyte range. For example, Microsoft Windows reports disk capacity both in decimal-based units to 12 or more significant digits and with binary-based units to three significant digits. Thus a disk specified by a disk manufacturer as a 30 GB disk might have its capacity reported by Windows 2000 both as "30,065,098,568 bytes" and "28.0 GB". The disk manufacturer used the SI definition of "giga", 109 to arrive at 30 GB; however, because the utilities provided by Windows define a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes (230 bytes, often referred to as a gibibyte, or GiB), the operating system reports capacity of the disk drive as (only) 28.0 GB.
Hard Disk Drive Characteristics
Capacity of a hard disk drive is usually quoted in gigabytes. Older HDDs quoted their smaller capacities in megabytes.
The data transfer rate at the inner zone ranges from 44.2 MB/s to 74.5 MB/s, while the transfer rate at the outer zone ranges from 74.0 MB/s to 111.4 MB/s. An HDD’s random access time ranges from 5 ms to 15 ms.
The physical size of a hard disk drive is quoted in inches. The majority of HDDs used in desktops today are 3.5 inches (9 cm) wide, while the majority of those used in laptops are 2.5 inches (6 cm) wide. As of early 2007, manufacturers have started selling SATA and SAS 2.5 inch drives for use in servers and desktops.
An increasingly common form factor is the 1.8 inches (5 cm) ATA-7 LIF form factor used inside digital audio players and subnotebooks, which provide up to 160GB storage capacity at low power consumption and are highly shock-resistant. A previous 1.8 inches (5 cm) HDD standard exists, for 2–5 GB sized disks that fit directly into a PC card expansion slot. From these, the smaller 1 inch (3 cm) form factor was evolved, which is designed to fit the dimensions of CF Type II, which is also usually used as storage for portable devices including digital cameras. 1 inch was a de facto form factor led by IBM’s Microdrive, but is now generically called 1 inch due to other manufacturers producing similar products. There is also a 0.85 inch form factor produced by Toshiba for use in mobile phones and similar applications, including SD/MMC slot compatible HDDs optimized for video storage on 4G handsets.
The size designations are more nomenclature than descriptive. The names refer to the width of the disk inserted into the drive rather than the actual width of the entire drive. A 5.25 inches (13 cm) drive has an actual width of 5.75 inches (15 cm), a 3.5 inches (9 cm) drive 4 inches (10 cm), a 2.5 inches (6 cm) drive 2.75 inches (7 cm). A 1.8 inches (5 cm) drive can have different widths, depending on its form factor. A PCMCIA drive has a width of 54 mm, while an ATA-7 LIF form factor drive has a width of 53.85 mm.
A hard disk is defined to be at "full height" if its height is 3.25 inches (8 cm). It is "half height" at a height of 1.625 inches (4 cm). A "slim height" or "low profile" HDD has a height of 1 inch (3 cm). "Ultra low profile" drives can have heights of 0.75 inches (19 mm), 0.67 inches (17 mm), 0.49 inches (12 mm) or 0.37 inches (9 mm).
Access and Interfaces
Hard disk drives are accessed over one of a number of bus types, including parallel ATA (also called IDE or EIDE), Serial ATA (SATA), SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and Fibre Channel. Bridge circuitry is sometimes used to connect hard disk drives to buses that they cannot communicate with natively, such as IEEE 1394 and USB.
Back in the days of the ST-506 interface, the data encoding scheme was also important. The first ST-506 disks used Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) encoding, and transferred data at a rate of 5 megabits per second. Later on, controllers using 2,7 RLL (or just "RLL") encoding increased the transfer rate by 50%, to 7.5 megabits per second; this also increased disk capacity by fifty percent.
Many ST-506 interface disk drives were only specified by the manufacturer to run at the lower MFM data rate, while other models (usually more expensive versions of the same basic disk drive) were specified to run at the higher RLL data rate. In some cases, a disk drive had sufficient margin to allow the MFM specified model to run at the faster RLL data rate; however, this was often unreliable and was not recommended. (An RLL-certified disk drive could run on a MFM controller, but with 1/3 less data capacity and speed.)
Enhanced Small Disk Interface (ESDI) also supported multiple data rates (ESDI disks always used 2,7 RLL, but at 10, 15 or 20 megabits per second), but this was usually negotiated automatically by the disk drive and controller; most of the time, however, 15 or 20 megabit ESDI disk drives weren’t downward compatible (i.e. a 15 or 20 megabit disk drive wouldn’t run on a 10 megabit controller). ESDI disk drives typically also had jumpers to set the number of sectors per track and (in some cases) sector size.
SCSI originally had just one speed, 5 MHz (for a maximum data rate of five megabytes per second), but later this was increased dramatically. The SCSI bus speed had no bearing on the disk’s internal speed because of buffering between the SCSI bus and the disk drive’s internal data bus; however, many early disk drives had very small buffers, and thus had to be reformatted to a different interleave (just like ST-506 disks) when used on slow computers, such as early IBM PC compatibles and early Apple Macintoshes.
ATA disks have typically had no problems with interleave or data rate, due to their controller design, but many early models were incompatible with each other and couldn’t run in a master/slave setup (two disks on the same cable). This was mostly remedied by the mid-1990s, when ATA’s specification was standardised and the details began to be cleaned up, but still causes problems occasionally (especially with CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks, and when mixing Ultra DMA and non-UDMA devices).
Serial ATA does away with master/slave setups entirely, placing each disk on its own channel (with its own set of I/O ports) instead.
FireWire/IEEE 1394 and USB(1.0/2.0) HDDs are external units containing generally ATA or SCSI disks with ports on the back allowing very simple and effective expansion and mobility. Most FireWire/IEEE 1394 models are able to daisy-chain in order to continue adding peripherals without requiring additional ports on the computer itself.
Disk Interface Families Used in Personal Computers
Notable families of disk interfaces include:
Integrity
Due to the extremely close spacing between the heads and the disk surface, any contamination of the read-write heads or platters can lead to a head crash — a failure of the disk in which the head scrapes across the platter surface, often grinding away the thin magnetic film and causing data loss. Head crashes can be caused by electronic failure, a sudden power failure, physical shock, wear and tear, corrosion, or poorly manufactured platters and heads.
The HDD’s spindle system relies on air pressure inside the enclosure to support the heads at their proper flying height while the disk rotates. An HDD requires a certain range of air pressures in order to operate properly. The connection to the external environment and pressure occurs through a small hole in the enclosure (about 0.5 mm in diameter), usually with a carbon filter on the inside (the breather filter, see below). If the air pressure is too low, then there is not enough lift for the flying head, so the head gets too close to the disk, and there is a risk of head crashes and data loss. Specially manufactured sealed and pressurized disks are needed for reliable high-altitude operation, above about 10,000 feet (3,000 m). This does not apply to pressurized enclosures, like an airplane pressurized cabin. Modern disks include temperature sensors and adjust their operation to the operating environment. Breather holes can be seen on all disks — they usually have a sticker next to them, warning the user not to cover the holes. The air inside the operating disk is constantly moving too, being swept in motion by friction with the spinning platters. This air passes through an internal recirculation (or "recirc") filter to remove any leftover contaminants from manufacture, any particles or chemicals that may have somehow entered the enclosure, and any particles or outgassing generated internally in normal operation. Very high humidity for extended periods can corrode the heads and platters.
For giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads in particular, a minor head crash from contamination (that does not remove the magnetic surface of the disk) still results in the head temporarily overheating, due to friction with the disk surface, and can render the data unreadable for a short period until the head temperature stabilizes (so called "thermal asperity," a problem which can partially be dealt with by proper electronic filtering of the read signal).
The hard disk’s electronics control the movement of the actuator and the rotation of the disk, and perform reads and writes on demand from the disk controller. Modern disk firmware is capable of scheduling reads and writes efficiently on the platter surfaces and remapping sectors of the media which have failed.
Landing Zones and Load / Unload Technology
In old disk models, power interruptions could result in the device shutting down with the heads in the data zone, which greatly increased the risk of data loss. To minimise this risk, a manual procedure existed for parking the hard disk heads before shutting down the computer.
To prevent such situation, most modern HDDs move the heads to a landing zone when powering down: this is an area of the platter usually near its inner diameter (ID), where no data is stored. This area is called the Contact Start/Stop (CSS) zone. Disks are designed such that either a spring or, more recently, rotational inertia in the platters is used to park the heads in the case of unexpected power loss.
Spring tension from the head mounting constantly pushes the heads towards the platter. While the disk is spinning, the heads are supported by an air bearing and experience no physical contact or wear. In CSS drives the sliders carrying the head sensors (often also just called heads) are designed to survive a number of landings and takeoffs from the media surface, though wear and tear on these microscopic components eventually takes its toll. Most manufacturers design the sliders to survive 50,000 contact cycles before the chance of damage on startup rises above 50%. However, the decay rate is not linear: when a disk is younger and has had fewer start-stop cycles, it has a better chance of surviving the next startup than an older, higher-mileage disk (as the head literally drags along the disk’s surface until the air bearing is established). For example, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 series of desktop hard disks are rated to 50,000 start-stop cycles. This means that no failures attributed to the head-platter interface were seen before at least 50,000 start-stop cycles during testing.
Around 1995 IBM pioneered a technology where a landing zone on the disk is made by a precision laser process (Laser Zone Texture = LZT) producing an array of smooth nanometer-scale "bumps" in a landing zone, thus vastly improving stiction and wear performance. This technology is still largely in use today (2007), predominantly in desktop and enterprise (3.5 inch) drives. In general, CSS technology can be prone to increased stiction (the tendency for the heads to stick to the platter surface), e.g. as a consequence of increased humidity. Excessive stiction can cause physical damage to the platter and slider or spindle motor. This drawback, combined with the need of higher non-operating shock robustness in mobile applications has led to the introduction of load/unload technology for drives used in laptops, MP3 players, and other portable devices. Load/unload technology, also introduced by IBM around the same time frame as LZT, relies on the heads being lifted off the platters onto plastic "ramps" near the outer disk edge, thus eliminating the risks of wear and stiction altogether. All HDDs today still use one of these two technologies. Each has a list of advantages and drawbacks in terms of loss of storage area on the disk, relative difficulty of mechanical tolerance control, cost of implementation, etc.
Addressing shock robustness, IBM also created a technology for their ThinkPad line of laptop computers called the Active Protection System. When a sudden, sharp movement is detected by the built-in accelerometer in the Thinkpad, internal hard disk heads automatically unload themselves to reduce the risk of any potential data loss or scratch defects. Apple later also utilized this technology in their PowerBook, iBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook line, known as the Sudden Motion Sensor. Toshiba has released similar technology in their laptops.
Disk Failures and Their Metrics
Most major hard disk and motherboard vendors now support self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology (S.M.A.R.T.), which attempts to alert users to impending failures.
However, not all failures are predictable. Normal use eventually can lead to a breakdown in the inherently fragile device, which makes it essential for the user to periodically back up the data onto a separate storage device. Failure to do so can lead to the loss of data. While it may be possible to recover lost information, it is normally an extremely costly procedure, and it is not possible to guarantee success. A 2007 study published by Google suggested very little correlation between failure rates and either high temperature or activity level. While several S.M.A.R.T. parameters have an impact on failure probability, a large fraction of failed drives do not produce predictive S.M.A.R.T. parameters. S.M.A.R.T. parameters alone may not be useful for predicting individual drive failures.
SCSI, SAS and FC drives are typically more expensive and are traditionally used in servers and disk arrays, whereas inexpensive ATA and SATA drives evolved in the home computer market and were perceived to be less reliable. This distinction is now becoming blurred.
The mean time between failures (MTBF) of SATA drives is usually about 600,000 hours (some drives such as Western Digital Raptor have rated 1.2 million hours MTBF), while SCSI drives are rated for upwards of 1.5 million hours. However, independent research indicates that MTBF is not a reliable estimate of a drive’s longevity. MTBF is conducted in laboratory environments in test chambers and is an important metric to determine the quality of a disk drive before it enters high volume production. Once the drive product is in production, the more valid metric is annualized failure rate (AFR). AFR is the percentage of real-world drive failures after shipping.
SAS drives are comparable to SCSI drives, with high MTBF and high reliability.
Enterprise SATA drives designed and produced for enterprise markets, unlike standard SATA drives, have reliability comparable other enterprise class drives.
Typically enterprise drives (all enterprise drives, including SCSI, SAS, enterprise SATA and FC) experience between .70%-.78% annual failure rates from the total installed drives.
Manufacturers
The technological resources and know-how required for modern drive development and production mean that as of 2007, over 98% of the world’s HDDs are manufactured by just a handful of large firms: Seagate (which now owns Maxtor), Western Digital, Samsung, and Hitachi (which owns the former disk manufacturing division of IBM). Fujitsu continues to make mobile- and server-class disks but exited the desktop-class market in 2001. Toshiba is a major manufacturer of 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch notebook disks. ExcelStor is a small HDD manufacturer.
Dozens of former HDD manufacturers have gone out of business, merged, or closed their HDD divisions; as capacities and demand for products increased, profits became hard to find, and the market underwent significant consolidation in the late 1980s and late 1990s. The first notable casualty of the business in the PC era was Computer Memories Inc or CMI; after an incident with faulty 20 MB AT disks in 1985, CMI’s reputation never recovered, and they exited the HDD business in 1987. Another notable failure was MiniScribe, who went bankrupt in 1990 after it was found that they had engaged in accounting fraud and inflated sales numbers for several years. Many other smaller companies (like Kalok, Microscience, LaPine, Areal, Priam and PrairieTek) also did not survive the shakeout, and had disappeared by 1993; Micropolis was able to hold on until 1997, and JTS, a relative latecomer to the scene, lasted only a few years and was gone by 1999, after attempting to manufacture HDDs in India. Their claim to fame was creating a new 3" form factor drive for use in laptops. Quantum and Integral also invested in the 3" form factor; but eventually gave up as this form factor failed to catch on. Rodime was also an important manufacturer during the 1980s, but stopped making disks in the early 1990s amid the shakeout and now concentrates on technology licensing; they hold a number of patents related to 3.5-inch form factor HDDs.
History
For many years, HDDs were large, cumbersome devices, more suited to use in the protected environment of a data center or large office than in a harsh industrial environment (due to their delicacy), or small office or home (due to their size and power consumption). Before the early 1980s, most HDDs had 8-inch (20 cm) or 14-inch (35 cm) platters, required an equipment rack or a large amount of floor space (especially the large removable-media disks, which were often referred to as "washing machines"), and in many cases needed high-current or even three-phase power hookups due to the large motors they used. Because of this, HDDs were not commonly used with microcomputers until after 1980, when Seagate Technology introduced the ST-506, the first 5.25-inch HDD, with a capacity of 5 megabytes. In fact, in its factory configuration, the original IBM PC (IBM 5150) was not equipped with a hard disk drive.
Most microcomputer HDDs in the early 1980s were not sold under their manufacturer’s names, but by OEMs as part of larger peripherals (such as the Corvus Disk System and the Apple ProFile). The IBM PC/XT had an internal HDD, however, and this started a trend toward buying "bare" disks (often by mail order) and installing them directly into a system. Hard disk drive makers started marketing to end users as well as OEMs, and by the mid-1990s, HDDs had become available on retail store shelves.
While internal disks became the system of choice on PCs, external HDDs remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh and other platforms. The first Apple Macintosh built between 1984 and 1986 had a closed architecture that did not support an external or internal hard drive. In 1986, Apple added a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion easy. External SCSI drives were also popular with older microcomputers such as the Apple II series, and were also used extensively in servers, a usage which is still popular today. The appearance in the late 1990s of high-speed external interfaces such as USB and FireWire has made external disk systems popular among PC users once again, especially for laptop users, users that install Linux in the additional external unit and users who move large amounts of data between two or more areas. Most HDD makers now make their disks available in external cases.
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