Tough Times Quotes

Tough Times Quotes

“Pain is your friend; it is your alie. Pain reminds you to finish the job and get the hell home. Pain tells you when you have been seriously wounded. And you know what the best thing about pain is? It tells you you’re not dead yet!” – G.I Jane

Tough times never last, but tough people do.  - Robert H Schuller

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them. – Unknown

A problem is a chance for you to do your best. – Duke Ellington

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.  -Leroy Satchel Paige

I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. – Jewish Proverb

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.  – William Hazlitt

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better. – Malcolm S Forbes

If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. – Mary Engelbreit

“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?” – Unknown

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.  - Thomas Paine

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. - Ulysses S. Grant

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.  –Seneca

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity. – Albert Schweitzer

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them. – Publilius Syrus

Adversity is a fact of life. It can’t be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.  – Unknown

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford

The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is. – Charles M Schwab

The true test of a person character is how they stand during test of adversity - Unknown

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” – Michael Jordan

He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity. – William Samuel Johnson

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them. – Publilius Syrus

I learned there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead, others come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see. Now my troubles are going to have trouble with me. – Dr. Seuss

In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive. – Lee Iacocca

Top 10 Pirated Movies of 2013

rank	movie	est. downloads	worldwide grosses
1	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey	8,400,000	$1,017,003,568
2	Django Unchained	8,100,000	$425,368,238
3	Fast And Furious 6	7,900,000	$788,679,850
4	Iron Man 3	7,600,000	$1,215,439,994
5	Silver Linings Playbook	7,500,000	$236,412,453
6	Star Trek Into Darkness	7,400,000	$467,365,246
7	Gangster Squad	7,200,000	$105,200,903
8	Now You See Me	7,000,000	$351,723,989
9	The Hangover Part 3	6,900,000	$351,000,072
10	World War Z	6,700,000	$540,007,876

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) vs Solid State Drive (SSD)

SSD vs HDD

Most people now buy laptops for their computing needs and have to make the decision between getting either a Solid State Drive (SSD) or Hard Disk Drive (HDD) as the storage component. So which is best to get, an SSD or HDD? There’s no straight-forward answer to this question; each buyer has different needs and you have to evaluate the decision based on those needs, your preferences, and of course budget. Even though the price of SSDs has been falling, the price per gigabyte advantage is still strongly with HDDs. Yet, if performance and fast bootup is your primary consideration and money is secondary, then SSD is the way to go. We’ll make a comparison of SSD and HDD storage and go over the good, the bad, and the ugly of both.

What is an SSD?

We’ll make no assumptions here and keep this article on a level that anyone can understand. You might be shopping for a computer and simply wondering what the heck SSD actually means? To begin, SSD stands for Solid State Drive. You’re probably familiar with USB memory sticks - SSD can be thought of as an oversized and more sophisticated version of the humble USB memory stick. Like a memory stick, there are no moving parts to an SSD. Rather, information is stored in microchips.  Meanwhile, a hard drive uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter. This difference is what makes SSD so much faster. As an analogy, what’s quicker? Having to walk across the room to retrieve a book to get information or simply magically having that book open in front of you when you need it? That’s how an HDD compares to an SSD; it simply requires more physical labor (mechanical movement) to get information.

A typical SSD uses what is called NAND-based flash memory. This is a non-volatile type of memory. What does non-volatile mean you ask? The simple answer is that you can turn off the disk and it won’t “forget” what was stored on it. This is of course an essential characteristic of any type of permanent memory. During the early days of SSD, rumors floated around saying stored data would wear off and be lost after only a few years.  Today this is not true; you can read and write to an SSD all day long and the data storage integrity will be maintained for well over 200 years. In other words, the data storage life of an SSD can outlive you!

An SSD does not have a mechanical arm to read and write data, it instead relies on an embedded processor (or “brain”) called a controller to perform a bunch of operations related to reading and writing data. The controller is a very important factor in determining the speed of the SSD. Decisions it makes related to how to store, retrieve, cache and clean up data can determine the overall speed of the drive. We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details for the various tasks it performs such as error correction, read and write caching, encryption, and garbage collection to name a few. Yet, suffice to say, good controller technology is often what separates an excellent SSD from a simply good one. An example of a fast controller today is the SandForce SATA 3.0 (6GB/s) SSD controller that supports burst speeds up to 550MB/s read and write speeds.

Finally, you may be wondering what an SSD looks like and how easy it is to replace a hard drive with an after-market device. If you look at the images below you’ll see the top and undersides of a typically-sized 2.5” SSD. The technology is encased inside either a plastic or metal case and looks like nothing more than a battery might:

SSD Top Side

SSD Bottom Side

The form factor of the SSD is actually the same as a regular hard drive. It comes in a standard 1.8”, 2.5”, or 3.5” size that can fit into the housing and connectors for the same-sized hard drives. The connector used for these standard sizes is SATA. There are smaller SSDs available that use what’s called mini-SATA (mSATA) and fit into the mini-PCI Express slot of a laptop.

What is an HDD?

Hard Disk Drives, or HDD in techno-parlance, have been around for donkey's years relative to the technology world. HDDs were first introduced by IBM in 1956 - yes folks this is nearly 60-year old technology, thank goodness vacuum tubes for TVs didn’t last so long! An HDD uses magnetism to store data on a rotating platter. A read/write head floats above the spinning platter reading and writing data. The faster the platter spins, the faster an HDD can perform. Typical laptop drives today spin at either 5400 RPM (Revolutions per Minute) or 7200RPM, though some server-based platters spin at up to 15,000 RPM!

The major advantage of an HDD is that it is capable of storing lots of data cheaply. These days 1 TeraByte (1,024 gigabytes) of storage is not unusual for a laptop hard drive, and the density continues to grow. Cost per gigabyte is only around $0.075/GB these days for an HDD (based on buying a 4TB model), amazing when you compare it to the $1.00/GB cost for an SSD (240GB model) . If you want cheap storage and lots of it, using a standard hard drive is definitely the more appealing way to go.

When it comes to appearance, HDDs essentially look the same from the outside as SSDs. HDDs predominantly use SATA interface. The most common size for laptop hard drives is the 2.5” form factor while a larger 3.5” form factor is used in desktop computers. The larger size allows for more platters inside and thus more storage capacity. Some desktop hard drives can store up to 4TB of data! Below is an example of what an HDD looks like using the Seagate Barracuda 3TB hard drive:

HDD Top Side

HDD Bottom Side

SSD Vs HDD Comparison

Now it’s time to do some comparisons and determine which might be best for your individual needs - SSD or HDD?  The best way to compare items is a table with a side by side comparison of items in which a green box indicates an advantage:

Attribute	SSD (Solid State Drive)	HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Power Draw / Battery Life	Less power draw, averages 2 – 3 watts, resulting in 30+ minute battery boost	More power draw, averages 6 – 7 watts and therefore uses more battery
Cost	Expensive, $1.00 per gigabyte (based on buying a 240GB drive)	Only around $0.075 per gigabyte, very cheap (buying a 4TB model)
Capacity	Typically not larger than 512GB for notebook size drives	Typically 500GB – 2TB for notebook size drives
Operating System Boot Time	Around 22 seconds average bootup time	Around 40 seconds average bootup time
Noise	There are no moving parts and as such no sound	Audible clicks and spinning can be heard
Vibration	No vibration as there are no moving parts	The spinning of the platters can sometimes result in vibration
Heat Produced	Lower power draw and no moving parts so little heat is produced	HDD doesn’t produce much heat, but it will have a measurable amount more heat than an SSD due to moving parts and higher power draw
Failure Rate	Mean time between failure rate of 2.0 million hours	Mean time between failure rate of 1.5 million hours
File Copy / Write Speed	Generally above 200 MB/s and up to 500 MB/s for cutting edge drives	The range can be anywhere from 50 – 120MB / s
Encryption	Full Disk Encryption (FDE)Supported on some models	Full Disk Encryption (FDE) Supported on some models
File Opening Speed	Up to 30% faster than HDD	Slower than SSD
Magnetism Affected?	An SSD is safe from any effects of magnetism	Magnets can erase data

If we tally up the checkmarks, the SSD gets 9 and HDD gets 3. Does that mean the that an SSD is three times better than an HDD? Not at all. As we mentioned earlier, it all depends on individual needs. The comparison here is just to lay out the pros and cons for both options. To aid you even more, here are some rules to follow when you decide which drive is best for you:

If:

• You need lots of storage capacity, up to 4TB
• Don’t want to spend much money
• Don’t care too much about how fast a computer boots up or opens programs - then get a hard drive (HDD).

If:

• You are willing to pay for faster performance
• Don’t mind limited storage capacity or can work around that - then get a solid state drive (SSD).

Today it still makes sense for a majority of typical buyers just to get an HDD inside a new computer simply due to the much cheaper cost. However, if you are an enthusiast for new technology and having top computing performance is important for you, then of course SSD is the way to go.  Eventually SSD will replace HDD as the standard storage mechanism, certainly in laptops given the advantages they present for a mobile device. We are already seeing this happen with SSD showing up as the default storage device in the new Ultrabook category.  There will always be a market for both HDD and SSD, and the perfect solution may actually be a hybrid blend of both storage solutions. The advent of mSATA SSD devices and hybrid drives that include both SSD and HDD may be the best hope for reaching storage zen and giving you the best of both worlds, but that’s a topic for another day!

Curious about which SSD or hard drive to buy? Be sure to check out our constantly updated leaderboard that has a breakdown of the best SSD in categories like value, mainstream and enthusiast.

Hosting locations of the world’s top one million websites

Hosting locations of your favorite websites

After going through the list of websites, we compiled the numbers and came up with some interesting facts. In total, we found 7,936 cities that between them host the top one million sites in the world.

We plotted all these hosting locations on an interactive map of the world, with the cities with one or more sites in the top million list marked with blue dots. The size of the dots signifies how many sites are hosted in each city.

Be aware that the map might take a while to load. You can also download the map as a picture.

The top 100 web hosting cities

Clicking around on the world map to see if there’s a top website where you live is great fun, but we also wanted to present a list of the cities in the world that host the most top websites.

Remember that the million websites are hosted in almost 8,000 cities. However, it should be noted that the top 10 cities combined account for 223,206 sites or just over 22% of the top million.

The top three cities combined account for about 10% of the top million websites.

What city hosts the biggest number of these top websites? Houston, Texas, in the United States, singlehandedly harbors over 50,000 of these sites, making it the number one city. Mountain View, California, is in the number two slot with almost 30,000 sites.

Then, here are the 100 cities that host the most of the sites in the top million:

The top 100 web hosting cities

	Number of websites	City	Country
1	50,598	Houston	United States
2	29,594	Mountain View	United States
3	24,822	Dallas	United States
4	23,210	Scottsdale	United States
5	21,808	San Antonio	United States
6	20,691	Provo	United States
7	14,871	Ashburn	United States
8	13,214	San Francisco	United States
9	13,125	Chicago	United States
10	11,273	Beijing	China
11	10,006	New York	United States
12	9,412	Los Angeles	United States
13	8,170	Lansing	United States
14	7,588	Tokyo	Japan
15	7,538	Montreal	Canada
16	7,380	Culver City	United States
17	7,349	Brea	United States
18	6,605	Osaka	Japan
19	6,296	Atlanta	United States
20	6,063	Amsterdam	The Netherlands
21	4,546	Moscow	Russia
22	4,250	Burlington	United States
23	3,823	Wayne	United States
24	3,627	Absecon	United States
25	3,491	Austin	United States
26	3,451	Seattle	United States
27	3,449	Orlando	United States
28	3,361	Berlin	Germany
29	3,176	Columbus	United States
30	3,146	Saint Louis	United States
31	3,088	Shanghai	China
32	2,907	Paris	France
33	2,819	Denver	United States
34	2,804	Sunnyvale	United States
35	2,659	Bangkok	Thailand
36	2,619	Englewood	United States
37	2,607	Providence	United States
38	2,601	Toronto	Canada
39	2,579	San Jose	United States
40	2,525	Guangzhou	China
41	2,366	Tampa	United States
42	2,293	London	United Kingdom
43	2,283	Phoenix	United States
44	2,248	Hangzhou	China
45	2,196	Tempe	United States
46	2,189	San Diego	United States
47	2,181	Fremont	United States
48	2,176	Mclean	United States
49	2,097	Pittsburgh	United States
50	1,957	Nanjing	China
51	1,937	Fort Lauderdale	United States
52	1,920	Newark	United States
53	1,795	Scranton	United States
54	1,787	Taipei	Taiwan
55	1,775	Media	United States
56	1,735	Nassau	Bahamas
57	1,703	Seoul	South Korea
58	1,693	Anaheim	United States
59	1,692	Plano	United States
60	1,632	Herndon	United States
61	1,520	Gloucester	United States
62	1,484	Las Vegas	United States
63	1,457	Santa Rosa	United States
64	1,448	Fulshear	United States
65	1,441	Waltham	United States
66	1,428	Kansas City	United States
67	1,417	Arlington Heights	United States
68	1,395	Miami	United States
69	1,361	Sanayi	Turkey
70	1,352	Jacksonville	United States
71	1,282	Missoula	United States
72	1,262	Hanoi	Vietnam
73	1,240	Chengdu	China
74	1,217	Santa Monica	United States
75	1,186	Mumbai	India
76	1,181	Wilmington	United States
77	1,179	Reston	United States
78	1,173	Henan	China
79	1,160	Weehawken	United States
80	1,158	Chesterfield	United States
81	1,150	Buenos Aires	Argentina
82	1,136	Charlotte	United States
83	1,107	Farmington	United States
84	1,102	Orange	United States
85	1,102	Matawan	United States
86	1,087	Lenexa	United States
87	1,066	Simi Valley	United States
88	1,046	Hong Kong	Hong Kong
89	1,021	Palo Alto	United States
90	989	Saint Petersburg	Russia
91	973	Sydney	Australia
92	968	Kiev	Ukraine
93	967	Washington	United States
94	965	Ann Arbor	United States
95	948	Ho Chi Minh City	Vietnam
96	934	Secaucus	United States
97	920	Garden City	United States
98	913	Porto Alegre	Brazil
99	908	Clifton	United States
100	898	Mars	Turkey

USA and Top 20 web hosting countries

The US hosts 43% of the world’s top 1 million websites

It should come as no surprise that the United States is the world leader in hosting websites. But just how many of the world’s top sites are hosted in the US? Following ourstudy of web hosting in Africa, we now broaden the perspective and can announce that 43% of the world’s top 1 million websites are hosted in the United States

Top 20 web hosting countries

After checking the IP addresses of the top 1 million websites as ranked by Alexa, we put them in order of how many websites are hosted in each country. You can read a bit more about our methodology at the end of the article.

In total, we identified 191 countries as hosting one or more sites in the top 1 million, with the following 20 in the top:

As you can see, the US is in a clear lead with 431,214 sites, followed by Germany with 82,152, China with 49,730, UK with 37,829, and France with 35,777. In 20^th place we find South Korea with 5,659 websites hosted out of the top 1 million.

This is certainly a long tail if there ever was one 

Europe vs US

With the US in such a commanding lead, it would, of course, be interesting to see how it compares to other parts of the world. One of the obvious comparisons would be with Europe. Here’s what that comparison looks like:

Even compared to the countries in Europe combined, the US is still considerably larger, with 431,214 sites compared to the 313,252 in Europe.

You may have noted that Europe and the US together claim around 75% of the top 1 million sites.

Top 100 countries

Here are the top 100 countries, which host the most sites in the top 1 million:

Top 100 web hosting countries

	Country	Number of sites hosted
1	United States	431,214
2	Germany	82,152
3	China	49,730
4	United Kingdom	37,829
5	France	35,777
6	Japan	35,138
7	Russia	31,134
8	Netherlands	24,214
9	Canada	18,218
10	Italy	13,293
11	Spain	13,047
12	Brazil	10,481
13	Poland	9,989
14	Turkey	7,721
15	Australia	6,669
16	Ukraine	6,537
17	Czech Republic	6,257
18	India	6,255
19	Hong Kong	5,730
20	Korea (South)	5,659
21	Sweden	5,243
22	Singapore	4,276
23	Thailand	4,190
24	Ireland	4,122
25	Denmark	4,037
26	Switzerland	4,022
27	Romania	3,746
28	Viet Nam	3,434
29	Hungary	3,135
30	Indonesia	3,002
31	Taiwan	2,741
32	Iran	2,704
33	Austria	2,442
34	Argentina	2,312
35	Malaysia	2,289
36	British Virgin Islands	2,245
37	Belgium	2,064
38	Norway	1,887
39	South Africa	1,852
40	Israel	1,729
41	Portugal	1,724
42	Bulgaria	1,713
43	Finland	1,707
44	Pakistan	1,421
45	Bahamas	1,385
46	Lithuania	1,214
47	Slovakia	1,208
48	New Zealand	1,046
49	Mexico	1,038
50	Chile	867
51	Latvia	857
52	Slovenia	790
53	Belarus	754
54	Greece	712
55	Kazakhstan	688
56	Estonia	635
57	Luxembourg	591
58	Croatia	491
59	Columbia	412
60	Panama	379
61	Serbia	365
62	Philippines	325
63	Saudi Arabia	322
64	Venezuela	316
65	Cyprus	313
66	Peru	311
67	United Arab Emirates	279
68	Azerbaijan	277
69	Egypt	276
70	Moldova	235
71	Georgia	223
72	Uzbekistan	213
73	Costa Rica	196
74	Mongolia	191
75	Iceland	188
76	Mauritius	180
77	Ecuador	129
78	Sri Lanka	119
79	Cayman Island	107
80	Bangladesh	105
81	Macedonia	103
82	Morocco	97
83	Curacao	96
84	Uruguay	95
85	Bosnia and Herzegovina	92
86	Kuwait	92
87	Armenia	88
88	Dominican Republic	88
89	Kyrgyzstan	79
90	Seychelles	56
91	Kenya	54
92	Qatar	54
93	Jordan	52
94	Liechtenstein	52
95	Bolivia	51
96	San Marino	51
97	Puerto Rico	50
98	Nigeria	49
99	Syria	49
100	Belize	48

Will the rest catch up to the US?

Alexa may not be the definitive list to go by, but, at the very least, it should give a good indication of what the real numbers are. We doubt anyone is surprised that the US is in the lead, but it’s interesting to see how the countries seem to jockey for positions. Also, we just looked at the top 1 million sites, which is just a small fraction of all websites that exist.

We will keep an eye on this issue and see how it develops over the coming months and years.