Practical Technology

Oracle is suing Google over the use of Java in Android and that may change everything about Java and open-source development. That’s one heck of a claim. Unfortunately, the experts agree. Java, while never a key language in Linux, is the core language for literally hundreds of software development companies and organizations. They range in [...]

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I don’t think Oracle suing Google over the use of Java in Android has much to do with Android at all. I think it has everything to do with Oracle monetizing Java anyway it can. That spells big trouble for any company or developer who uses Java but hasn’t obeyed the letter of Java’s intellectual [...]

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BOSTON, Mass. — The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Linux, announced on Aug. 10 at LinuxCon the launch of the Open Compliance Program, a comprehensive initiative to help companies and developers comply with open-source licenses. You may not know it, but getting businesses and developers to obey open-source licenses has become a [...]

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The government has assured us that the images made from “Digital Strip Search”” imaging technologies like millimeter wave and backscatter imaging wouldn’t be saved. They lied. It turns out the U.S. Marshals Service saved more than 35,000 “whole body” images of people who entered a U.S. courthouse in Orlando, Fla. And, if the U.S. Marshals [...]

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Everyone knows the big virtues of using cloud computing services: They’re cheap, you can scale them on demand, and they’re fault-tolerant. Everyone also thinks they know cloud computing’s vices: a variety of security and management concerns. What a lot of people have been missing, though, is that there’s another real problem with cloud computing: legal [...]

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