Significant speedup for Firefox

I noticed a tweak for Firefox that enables, what they call, HTTP Pipelining. Basically what this means is that instead of sending HTTP request sequentially, send them in parallel. This feature is disabled by default in Firefox (even in the most recent version, 2.0) probably because it is still (at least since 2004...) an experimental feature but it seems to work very well. I noticed a significant improvement in page loading times. I hope that the Firefox team would enable this feature by default since it shouldn't do any harm even for slower Internet connections and it would be yet another improvement over IE.

It feels like Opera has done this kind of page request from day one and that's why it "feels" different to browse the web with Opera, but in this case, the difference is a positive one.

Here are the instructions for enabling HTTP pipelining: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299854/posts

A nostalgy trip - my BBS!

I noticed I had some old screenshots lying around of my old Bulletin Board System, BBS, RedZone! The system was operational from 1996 until 1999m which means I jumped on the BBS wave a bit too late since the big time for BBS' was in the early 90s. But I, as so many other, had a wonderful time running my own BBS and calling other's systems. It was a great way to learn to know other people and several of my good friends are ones I met online - in BBSs that is.

I believe I had about 800 users of which a few tens called regularly. My system attracted users mainly of the discussion forums. No, I wasn't one of the WaReZ boards ;) First I used my main computer as the board and tested it under DOS, but quite soon I got a dedicated PC running OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 with a SCSI disc :) Then later when OS/2 became a bit too old for doing anything else with, I moved over to Linux in 1998. I still have the bought version of RedHat Linux 5.2 lying around here somewhere!

The software I used is called BBBS (greets go to B!) of which I first used the OS/2 version and moved over to the Linux version. BBBS is still available as a shareware version with tons of features, including features supporting the Internet era and the author, B, still offers support for it.

Below are the four remaining screenshots of my board. I wish I took and saved more screenshots... :-/ Please, post your screenshots of your board if you have some!



Login screen
Note: My board offered free email to all users, which was a big thing in 1998.


My file section. About 1GB of files, carefully sorted by hand to include only quality (pictures, tracker music, demos and some shareware/freeware applications)


Bulletins - stats, my own scripts and other's and some door games.
(Greets go to Fopa for the color editor and login scroll!)


My last message to the board.

Special treatment because of a religion?

I dont think so.

The Guardian web site has an interesting point of view to religions: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ac_grayling/2006/10/acgrayling.html. I totally agree with the article. Why should anyone consider themselves somehow special compared to others just because they say they chosen to belive in something? I could also say I belive in the Santa Claus or the Allmighty Spaghetti Monster behind my refridgerator but would I get special treatment because of that? No.

A great quote from the article I noticed:
"They [the belivers]claim, on no justifiable ground, a right to special status and special treatment on the sole ground that they have chosen to believe a set of propositions; and they demand that people who do not accept their beliefs and practices should treat these latter in ways that implicitly accept their holder's evaluation of them."

An example of this is the scandal over the Muhammed cartoons a Danish newspaper published in Denmark.

An other example are immigrants in a countries. I don't consider myself a racist person, but I do feel that people coming to live in a country must live according to the rules of the sociaty in that country. They just can't take a day off from work because their religion says so or take a break at work because they have to pray. I don't say they can't take a break at all - just that they have to take the break according to the same rules as everyone else does!

We have to respect each other, but that goes both ways. No-one can expect special treatment because of their faith.

"No one could dream of demanding that political parties be respected merely because they are political parties, or of protecting them from the pens of cartoonists; nor that their members should be. On the contrary. And so it should be for all interest groups and their members, without exception."