Avoiding Negative Alpha

This is from MyDigitalLife:

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Mozilla Firefox is quite a useful, powerful and full-featured web browser for net users who don’t really like the Internet Explorer series. Developed by Mozilla Corporation, Firefox is quite commonly used by net users nowadays. It features all the useful tools to facilitate you on net browsing such as tabbed browsing, incremental find, Live Bookmarking, Pop-up blocking, spell checker, integrated Google search function, etc. Besides installing the necessary plug-in, net users can actually enhance and increase their Firefox browsing speed by changing the HTTP Pipeline.

HTTP Pipelining

Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP is a request/response protocol used to transfer or convey information between clients and servers. In simple words, the client makes an HTTP request and the responding server (Origin Server) which stores the resources or information will respond to it. HTTP Pipelining is a technique in which multiple requests will be send out without waiting for the corresponding responses. By customizing the HTTP Pipelining in Firefox, it helps to speed up the browsing capability. The customizing process can be done step by step as follows: -

Run your Firefox. Type in “about:config” into the address bar and press Enter. Scroll down the page and look for “network.http.pipelining“, “network.http.proxy.pipelining” and “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests“. You can also use the filter bar to search for these three entries.

Double click “network.http.pipelining” and “network.http.proxy.pipelining”. The “False” value will automatically change to “True” Value.

Double click “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests”, change the integer value in the pop-up window to 30. By entering 30, this means it will make 30 requests at once to the responding server.

Finally, just select any of the browsers and do a right-click. Select “New” followed by “Integer”. There is a small pop-up box which requires you to enter the preference name. Just type in “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0? in a subsequent pop-up box. This signifies to the browser to act immediately on the information it receives without waiting for any lapse of time.

Your Firefox browser will be much faster after you have made the aforesaid.

I used DVDFab to convert a DVD to mp4 format to load up onto my iPhone. After the conversion, iTunes would not let me add it to the Videos library. Double clicking the file opened Quicktime with the following error: “Error - 2002: a bad public movie atom”. Some creative googling came up with this guy’s solution. In short, it’s Vista problem - the Vista version of iTunes / Quicktime doesn’t like the file tags created by DVDFab. The solution is to edit it using Tagger and save another version.

1) Download Tagger (make sure you have the latest version of the JRE).

2) UnZip the file and run tagger.jar (make sure you don’t run any of the other files).

3) Open up the .mp4 file inside Tagger (File->Open) and change any one of the tags.

4) Then hit SAVE. Keep an eye on the bottom status bar and do not close the program before a dialog box informs you that it is done.

5) Drag and drop the file into the iTunes window (video library).

I just got the 8GB iPhone. It’s a beautifully deigned device and well worth the $599. I also picked up the Griffin slip-in case and
an ExtremeMAC car charger.

Been busy playing with my new toys:

Sharp Aquos LC-42D72U

Sony PS3 (Resistance - Fall of Man)

Sony has really impressed me with the PS3. The DVD upscaling to 1080p is awesome - that alone is worth the price. I’m not easily impressed with image quality, but they do a good job. Actually, Blu-ray movies don’t look much better than the DVD version on the PS3. It’s a shame I can’t use it to watch my DVDs purchased in Asia (my whole LOTR trilogy is region 3, sigh). The DNLA support is awesome - I got it working with Nero MediaHome. It’s a little slow finding the movies, but I’m hoping that will improve in future version of MediaHome and PS3 firmware.

Th Sharp 42″ 1080p LCD is impressive.  About the same price as the equivalent Sony and Samsung 40″.  Make sure you get the 42D 72U version (NOT the 42D62U) because it has much better contrast.  The 1080p image quality is excellent, but 1080i broadcast images are not as good as my old Panasonic HDTV 34″ CRT.  Maybe it’s because it’s a large screen.  Also, the annoying thing is that you have to set it to “Stretch” mode to eliminate the noise around the edge while using “dot to dot” mode.  I would’ve thought that 1080 would be the perfect resolution for 1080i signals.  Panasonic does mention this problem in the manual and blames the broadcaster.  There is more pixelation than I would’ve liked, but it’s unclear if it’s my Cable company overcompressing the HDTV signals (Time Warner Cable) or the TV - I guess the former.  I might try DirecTV or Dish Network for HDTV programming.

Resistance: Fall of Man is an excellent game.  Exciting and realistic.  Graphics are pretty good - I just hope they the sequel will be in 1080p.  All I can say this is the best FPS that I’ve played (however, I haven’t tried Gears of War.  Not a big XBOX fan with having to pay for online gaming).

Bought 100 HANS @ $39.13

No, I don’t drink Monster Drinks.  Looks like some good momentum in the stock and The Fly likes it.

Sold 200 DIVX @ $15.78

Had enough of this stock.  Great product, good growth in the market, but stupid/crooked management.  Increase earnings expectations a month before real earnings that will have disappointed forecasts?  Stupid.  No wonder the CFO quit/got fired.  Of course, the CFO and President of the company managed to sell a bunch of stock before the earnings announcement.  I’ll buy this company again after top management changes.

Sucks.  Covered AMZN Calls @ $13.20 (at the highest point may I add, sigh).  There’s definitely some trading on insider information going on.  AMZN up nearly $10 over the last few days on a rise in price target (NOT an upgrade) and the purchase of Brilliance Audio for an undisclosed price.  Something fishy is up.  I bet Walmart is going to purchase Amazon for a healthy premium soon.