Tech Broiler

To the Moon: Boeing, the Rocket Foundry

Jason Perlow — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:12:53 +0000

The historic Apollo 11 mission in July of 1969 culminated in the first manned moon landing. While many of the proud Americans who were involved in that project are no longer with us 40 years later, the technologies they built still live on, will be further refined, and will return us to that lonely world [...]

Frugal Friday: "Jackdotting", Chrome OS, Amazon Kindle, Wildpackets

Jason Perlow — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:56:02 +0000

Frugal Networker Ken Hess and I discuss this week’s “Jackdotting” effect on content distribution networks, Google’s Chrome OS, The price reduction on the Amazon Kindle 2 and talk with Jay Botelho of WildPackets, the network analysis and forensics software company. Click Here to Listen to the July 10, 2009 Frugal Friday Podcast.

$299 Kindle: Great, now make it read PDF!

Jason Perlow — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:16:12 +0000

The large format version of the Kindle, the $489.00 DX, pictured above, is capable of displaying native PDF files. So what’s preventing the cheaper and smaller model from doing this? Oh Amazon. You taunt me. Like Lucy Van Pelt, just as about I’m about to kick that darned football, you yank it away and I fall [...]

Trafficking in Michael Jackson

Jason Perlow — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:10:59 +0000

The news of Michael Jackson’s death and subsequent coverage of his memorial service brought the Internet to a crawl and saturated even the most robust of content delivery networks. When the King of Pop died last week, I swore that I was going to be tasteful and not cover it. I was going to take the [...]

Optimum Ultra: So how fast is it?

Jason Perlow — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:37:16 +0000

Optimum Online’s $99 per month Ultra DOCSIS 3.0 service is one of fastest residential broadband offerings available today. But is it really “Up to” 101Mbps as advertised? As I mentioned in a post last week about broadband service outages, Last Friday, I was upgraded to Optimum Online’s Ultra service. Ultra is a new service offering from [...]

To the Moon: How we built the technologies

Jason Perlow — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:05:27 +0000

Frugal Friday: Optimum Ultra and DOCSIS 3.0, Crapware, When to replace a PC, Engine Yard and Ruby on Rails

Jason Perlow — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:45:14 +0000

Frugal Networker Ken Hess and I discuss my adventures in Optimum Ultra 100Mbps cable broadband service (and experience the hilarity of early adoption when my VOIP cuts out 3 times during the broadcast) the bane of crapware, the decision of when to replace a small business computer, and talk to Michael Mullany, Vice President [...]

PC OEMs: Please Cut the Crap!

Jason Perlow — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:09:23 +0000

Buying a new PC from one of the Tier 1 OEMs can often be a frustrating exercise in crapware removal. My Tuesday morning started like this. Phone rings. 9AM. Hey Jason, uh, it’s Christine. Javi just booted up the laptop at the store this morning and nothing is working. Can you stop on by? Me: Sure! I knew, of [...]

Sun xVM VirtualBox 3.0: Virtual Developer's Delight

Jason Perlow — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:44:36 +0000

Windows 7 Ultimate RC 64-Bit Edition virtualized on Fedora 11, 64-Bit using Sun xVM VirtualBox 3.0 With little fanfare, Sun Microsystems released version 3.0 of xVM VirtualBox, the Open Source and multi-platform desktop virtualization tool for Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac. The new release represents a culmination of hundreds of bugfixes and significant performance enhancements, including [...]

Frugal Friday: Residential Broadband Woes, Jacko, Windows 7 vs Snow Leopard pricing, Red Hat, Virtualization, Cleversafe

Jason Perlow — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:19:13 +0000

Frugal Networker Ken Hess and I discuss my 22-hour cable modem downtime ordeal, Micheal Jackson, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard upgrades, Red Hat’s stellar business performance and RHEL clones, Virtualization, and talk with Chris Gladwin, CEO of Cleversafe about their Dispersed Storage technology. Click Here to Listen to the June 26, 2009 Frugal Friday Podcast.