Why we can change calendar systems alright  Tags: datetime, networking.
IPv6 is probably one of the biggest changes we have ever tried to undertake. It affects billions of people, and hundreds of thousands of engineers need to learn how to work with it. It'll succeed of course with the hot breath of a lingering shortage of addresses in our neck, but it's a really big operation.

IPv6 is better in many ways, not just number of addresses though. But it would have taken forever, perhaps literally, to switch without the address shortage. I feel it's the same for our calendar system.

What'sUpp with your malware policy?  Tags: networking, apps, privacy.
WhatsApp for Symbian is badly written malicious software as far as I can see. Moreover, their TOS and Privacy Policy looks good on first sight, until you read it carefully. Also I noticed most users still manage to miss the text saying that it's not actually free after a year.

In short: It remains active 24/7 (including a network connection, preferably by 3G) even after closing it in every possible way; it alters your phone software; and they can sell your user data if they want to. The TOS I agree with on install cannot be viewed, but if I want to sue them over using my phonebook without permission (or even telling me) I'd apparently have to pay the lawyers for them as well as my own.

32.6 bits  Tags: randomthought, networking.
33bits.org/about
"The title refers to the fact that there are only 6.6 billion people in the world, so you only need 33 bits (more precisely, 32.6 bits) of information about a person to determine who they are."

32.6 bits, that's not a lot. My unique identifier could be N&1A+ and it would more than enough to uniquely identify me if you gave every person on the planet a code of the same length.

Did you know that IPv4, the protocol

Define: The cloud  Tags: webdevelopment, computers, networking.
According to Wikipedia, this is the definition of "Cloud Computing". The new kid on the block, something overhyped that nobody understands.
"Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a metered service over a network (typically the Internet)."

(Note that SaaS is a known term among both IT people

FTP PORT command  Tags: networking.
A while ago I searched for it quite a bit but couldn't really figure out how to understand the PORT command, visible in Filezilla FTP:
PORT 83, 161, 210, 237, 5, 7

The first four parameters are obvious to me, it is my external IP address. But then the last two... They turn out to be the port which is used (Commandname, anyone? :P), but how does it know what port to use now?

After Googling a lot I found out that both numbers are 8-bit integers and together they can make up the 16 bit port value.