When you connect to an internet site, many things happen. First, your request is sent to a domain name system service, which translate the friendly-looking http://www.sex.com into the much more computer-friendly 76.74.255.123, which is the address of the server you’re looking for. The server gets your request and sends a bunch of information back. All of this data is broken up into tiny packets which all take different routes through the mystical tubes, and are reassembled at the other end–your end. And, after just a couple of seconds of waiting, you’re looking at porn. Magic, huh? The thing is, though, we are running out of addresses. We can get about four billion addresses out of the current system, known as IPv4. The system intended to replace it, known as IPv6, however, puts paid to all that. It has, give or take, 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 possible addresses. How to visualise a number that large? Well, I gave it a go, using a trick first used in John Gribbin’s In Search Of Schrödinger’s Cat.
Hide and seek
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Stuff goes here
- Album reviews (1)
- Flamebait (6)
- Gig reviews (2)
- Howto (4)
- Internet (4)
- linux (10)
- Meta (6)
- Girlfriend (2)
- Interview (1)
- Site news (2)
- Open (4)
- Photography (2)
- Random (2)
- Troll of the week (4)
- Wonderful Things (2)
Hall of infamy
Hot off the press
- Troll of the week #4: the registry is good fun.
- A Mono proposal
- Troll of the week #3: something lacking
- George Orwell is spinning in his grave at 3,000 rpm
- Linux malware, sure it’s possible
- Feynman lectures for the rest of us
- The sublime and the enormous
- Trending trends week two
- I’m not a feminist, honest!
- Send your name to Mars
- Licensing of the tubes
- Troll of the week #2: you guys need some new arguments
- 20,000 Windows computers to be destoyed.
- Trending trends so far.
- Asus and Microsoft. Where’s the beef?
Look at this! Just look at it!
- Apebox. in the blue corner
- Boycott Novell. in the red corner
- Charlie Brooker. Happy fun time.
- Light Linux. You’re using too much RAM.
- Me and Ubuntu. Free Ubuntu!
- Mesanna A female geek. omg
- My girlfriend's blag. She’s a dollface.
- Open… Serious business.
- Psychocats. Learning to Linux
- Speak You're Branes. FORRUNERS!
- Swan Fungus. He does good reviews.
Hijack this blog
You want to use something from this blag? What the hell is wrong with you? Do you want to fail at life? If you reuse the crap I post here, people will say, "Wow, I never knew anybody could be so ignorant!" Then they will go and find a weapon to beat you with. That's right. There's your god-damned copyright notice. You really care about that shit? Fine. Take it, copy it, pretend it's your own work. Do whatever the hell you want with it, I don't care.
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