What would you think of a datacenter that is sealed off from the world by entrance doors 40 cm thick (almost 16 inches). Located in central Stockholm below 30 meters (almost 100 ft) of bedrock:

This underground data center has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. It looks like the secret HQ of a James Bond villain.

And it is real. It is a newly opened high-security data center run by one of Sweden’s largest ISPs, located in an old nuclear bunker deep below the bedrock of Stockholm city, sealed off from the world by entrance doors 40 cm thick (almost 16 inches).

Above: The NOC is set in a cozy jungle setting. That light fog almost makes us think of cloud computing. Fog computing?

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This was, until just recently, unexplored territory. I knew that it could be done, that other people had done it before, and that it was darn easy to do in ColdFusion.

I have spent the last two weeks on a very intensive integration project where there was a custom UI built in JSP that needed to have a single sign-on from an existing ColdFusion application. We decided to take advantage of some of the session variables available, the catch being that the information in the session variables were encrypted (using the ColdFusion en/decrypt functions... naturally). I figured that "it couldn't be that hard" to replicate the same functionality in JSP, get the session variable... decrypt it... look the info up in the database... and set some application variables on the JSP application side. That was two weeks ago. Yesterday I figured it all out in a blinding burst of code.

What I ended up doing was writing an entire custom Java class that does all the encryption / decryption of string information passed to it. We had to instantiate the class on the ColdFusion side and not use the built in CF functions.

And this is how I did it...

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A recent expansion of authority claimed by the Border Patrol to stop and search individuals up to 100 miles from any US border. They have created a map of what they call the US Constitution-Free Zone.

Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.

Instead of intelligent, competent, targeted efforts to stop terrorism, illegal immigration, and other crimes, what we have been seeing in area after area is an approach that turns us all into suspects. This approach seeks to sift through the entire U.S. population in the hopes of encountering the rare individual whom the authorities have a legitimate interest in.

If the current generation of Americans does not challenge this creeping (and sometimes galloping) expansion of federal powers over the individual through the rationale of “border protection,” we are not doing our part to keep alive the rights and freedoms that we inherited, and will soon find that we have lost some or all of their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities.

I found a neat trick with google today. Entering a search like

time+<placename>

will yield the current local time at that place.

So, by entering in my search of time San Jose, CA Google returns

(At least it did when I did my search at 19:21 EDT)

Microsoft announced Friday their new 'M' language, designed especially for building textual domain-specific languages and software models with XAML.

The new language is to be a part of Microsoft’s new Oslo development and service-oriented strategy, incorporating features from XAML while being textual and domain-specific. M is to be used directly with 2 other components to be released with M along with Visual Studio 2010: Quadrant, a tool for building models visually, and a repository for storing and viewing models in an SQL database.

They say it's also supposed to be cross platform, Let me clarify that statement. By cross platform we mean that this is portable to both Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Vista.

And that is just exactly what I need, another sub par language to learn... Like "D" also from Microsoft.

This just in: The bowtie-wearing, tuba-playing, onetime vice presidential candidate on the National Radical Meadow Party ticket is headed for that great comic strip in the sky; cartoonist Berkeley Breathed announced today that he is giving up his Sunday comic strip Opus to focus on children's books instead.

For those of you in your mid-30's and older, you remember Bloom County as a staple of the comic pages in a similar time frame as Calvin & Hobbes, and that time was probably the greatest the daily/Sunday comics have ever known. From running for the vice presidency to impersonating Michael Jackson, from gracing a ton of t-shirts to being one of the weirdest stuffed animals ever, from rocking in a heavy metal band "Billy and the Boingers" to cleaning up Bill's hair balls, Opus was perfect for that time.

That announcement signals the end of Opus, the charming penguin who has entertained comics readers for nearly 30 years, starting with Bloom County. Though Breathed has retired the character before, this time, he says, he means it.

Being unable to find any decent templates for Adobe Illustrator CS3 CS4 I had to make my own. So I (or anyone else) won't have to go looking I have posted it here.

NOTE:
I don’t design in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF. On most days I don't design at all, if I don't have to so, YMMV!

Calculating the Gigabytes
First of all, you have to find out the total GB of data a single T1 connection can transfer, assuming that there’s no overhead or packet loss. (If you have stats for your packet loss or overhead, just subtract the overhead from the amount of data that can be transferred and continue with the equation.)

Assuming the optimal, a T1 connection can transmit data at 1.536 Mbps. To translate that to Bytes per second you divide by 8 (since there are 8 bits in every byte), and you find that a T1 can transfer data at 192 KBps. Multiply that by 60 seconds in a minute, times 60 minutes in an hour, and you will find that a T1 can transfer 691.2 MB (or 691,200 KB) of data per hour. Multiply that number by 24 to get to 16.589 GB per day.You need to multiply it by 30 days to get 497.664 GB monthly transfer.

Here’s the Math:

• 1.536 Mbps / 8 = 192 KBps (or 0.192 MBps)
• 0.192 MB * (60sec * 60min) = 691.2 MB/hour
• 691.2 MB * (24hours * 30days) = 497,664 MB (or 497.664 GB)/month

I had to do this myself just recently and figured that I would just post it here for future reference.

Josh is having a contest over at UsefullConcept.com

Its time to hold a contest!  One winner, and anyone can participate.  All to promote my RIAdventure cruise this February.  (social cruise for CF/Flex/AIR geeks and family from Miami to Bahamas)

The questions you have to answer are:

1) List your top reason someone should go to RIAdventure.
2) List your top reason you want to try out WOW (world of warcraft).

and my answers were:

I got this one...

Why should some one go to RIAdventure... cuz I'm gonna be there! (along with other top developers in the industry)

My top reason to try out WOW... All the "cool kids" are doing it... and I'm just a lemming.

I saw a plea for help on slashdot today.

"I am currently leading a small game development project with artists and developers scattered all over the country. Getting together is somewhat difficult, but we try to do this every couple of months. We often share all kinds of documents with each other, and even do so while using IM clients (GTalk and MSN), but this winds up being a tedious process of: send document; read and edit; send back; rinse and repeat. What I wanted to ask fellow slashdotters is, if anyone knows of any FOSS software that can handle IM (or even voice chat), Whiteboard and document sharing — where we can all see the document, pass around 'editing rights' and edit live. Even several small apps that handle the individual components would help out!"

That got me thinking, what solutions are really out there?

Google Docs, Abiword, Zoho Writer?

Then it hit me... Acrobat.com!

Acrobat.com is a set of online services — file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and web conferencing — you can use to create and share documents, communicate in real time, and simplify working with others.

You can now access your ConnectNow meeting room directly from within CS4 applications. To share your screen from within most Creative Suite 4 products, choose File > Share My Screen. You can even temporarily hand over control of the screen to a guest to collaborate on a file.

As an added convenience, Acrobat.com on Adobe AIR will be included with most of the Creative Suites, so you can launch ConnectNow from your desktop and use other Acrobat.com services including convenient file upload, storage and sharing of large files.

It's free, so sign up now.