Netgear vs TP-Link

Netgear vs TP-Link

If you’re looking for the pros and cons of Netgear vs TP-Link, I have experience with both and I’m glad to share it.

Netgear is a well established brand, having been on the market since 1996.

I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of TP-Link. They were founded in 1996 but if you were buying their stuff before 2005, you’re well ahead of me. But I like them a lot.
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Linksys vs TP-Link

Linksys vs TP-Link

If you’re looking for the pros and cons of Linksys vs TP-Link, I have experience with both and I’m glad to share it.

Linksys is a well established brand. From 2003 to 2013, they were Cisco’s consumer products division. Since 2013, they’ve been part of Belkin. Prior to Cisco buying them, they were an independent company, founded in 1988. Linksys was the first company to sell 100 million routers.

I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of TP-Link. They were founded in 1996 but if you were buying their stuff before 2005, you’re well ahead of me.

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D-Link vs TP-Link

D-Link vs TP-Link

If you’re looking for the pros and cons of D-Link vs TP-Link, I have experience with both and I’m glad to share it.

D-Link is a well established brand. Founded in 1986, it started doing business as D-Link in 1994. It’s been around a long time. If you’ve been involved with computers for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of it.

I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of TP-Link. They were founded in 1996 but if you were buying their stuff before 2005, you’re well ahead of me.

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Asuswrt-Merlin vs DD-WRT

Asuswrt-Merlin vs DD-WRT

I’ve been using DD-WRT for years, but a friend convinced me to try Asuswrt-Merlin and now I’m a convert. DD-WRT is still my second favorite solution, but here’s why I favor Asuswrt-Merlin vs DD-WRT.

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Commodore 1540 vs 1541 disk drive

Commodore 1540 vs 1541 disk drive

The dark tan 1541 is the most common C-64 peripheral in existence. Its counterpart for the VIC-20, which looks exactly like it at first glance, is pretty rare. The 1540 vs 1541 is a fairly common topic among Commodore enthusiasts.

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DD-WRT needs to be saved, but I won’t bet on it happening

A college classmate asked me if there’s anything to the stories that DD-WRT might potentially get locked out due to new FCC regulations.

Unfortunately the answer is yes, there may be something to it.

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Mariott doesn’t have the right to jam wi-fi

Mariott wants to jam wi-fi signals. They claim it’s for security reasons, but really it’s so they can gouge guests by charging them for wi-fi instead of using wi-fi hotspots. The security claims are pure bunk.

The truth is that hotel wi-fi networks are generally horrendously insecure, so it’s really better to avoid using them if you can.

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Here we go again. Net neutrality is not Obamacare either.

To nobody’s particular surpise, yesterday president Barack Obama endorsed a form of net neutrality. And immediately, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) came out swinging against it, calling it, “Obamacare for the Internet.”

Sen. Cruz appears to have either failed to read, or refused to read, the four-point proposal, which is short and simple enough to fit on an index card, if not a business card. He also failed to discuss the alternative–and there is a perfectly fair alternative to net neutrality.

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How to write reviews without getting sued

In a well publicized incident that happened earlier this month, someone who wrote a bad review on Amazon about a cheap router got threatened with a lawsuit by the router’s distributor, Mediabridge. Amazon retaliated by banning the distributor from selling on Amazon. But unfortunately, this means we have to think about how to write reviews without getting sued.

By the time this happened, the review was no longer on Amazon, so all I’ve heard about the review is secondhand. Ars Technica published this guide to writing reviews without getting sued and I think it’s good advice, but of course, having written dozens, if not hundreds of reviews myself, I feel inclined to elaborate. I actually value online reviews by people who bought the product and tried to use it. I value them a lot, so I want people to write reviews, and not be afraid to do it. And since I went to school for this stuff, hopefully I can say something helpful. Read more

Stand up for net neutrality

Neocities has decided to do something about Net Neutrality–shunt the FCC into the slow lane, and post the code for doing it so the rest of us who run web sites can do it too. The original was written for Nginx; I need to give serious thought to implementing the Apache version.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with the political bent of the content–the people you may hear talking about it on the radio are wrong, which is why they’re yakking on the radio and aren’t working at ISPs or IT departments–and everything to do about raising prices. What we’re seeing now is telecommunications companies, who are already ultra-profitable, gouging companies like Netflix. And Netflix is doing exactly what a company that suddenly has to pay new taxes would do–raising prices.

The difference is that it’s old-line companies doing the taxing in this case rather than a government. That’s all.

The other objection I hear is that lots of innovation happened on the Internet without regulation, so why regulate now? The difference is that the environment in the late 1990s, when the seeds of all of this were planted and started to sprout, was very different. Back then we had hundreds of ISPs, all of whom participated in building out what we have now. None of them wanted to charge both subscribers and content providers, and none of them could have anyway. If Earthlink had tried to shake down Ebay and Amazon and make them slow, people would have switched to someone else–one of any number of regional providers, or equivalent services run by companies like IBM and the old AT&T (prior to its re-merger with Southwestern Bell). Today, many people live in areas only serviced by one broadband provider. Most people have two, but that’s not like the old days.

If I could have anything, I’d like more competition. I’d love it if the average U.S. citizen had a choice of a dozen or so broadband providers. Then we could have a truly free market. Instead, we have duopolies, a situation much like the situation with electricity and natural gas in most municipalities, and broadband providers face far less regulation than power companies do, even though as they grow in importance.