Practical Technology

Back when I was a younger man, I was a Beltway Bandit. What that means is that I worked as a technical contractor for the federal government. In my case, I worked for several years for NASA and NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command). Then, I worked with numerous bright developers, network engineers and system administrators. [...]

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Recently Dell did something amazing. The Austin, TX computer giant admitted on one of their Web pages that “Ubuntu [Linux] is safer than Microsoft Windows.” (PDF Link) But, now Dell has backed off to the far more generic “Ubuntu is secure”. Boo! The explanation for both statements has also changed a bit. When the statement [...]

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There’s nothing like starting a technical conference, like Novell’s BrainShare, off with a bang. Or, in this case telling Elliot Associates’ unwelcome offer of not quite $2-billion for the company that Novell has no interest in selling out, not for that little anyway. I think this was a smart move by Novell’s management. I think [...]

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I know a lot of people thought that Google was just talking tough when it said it was considering getting out of the China market and that they’d never actually do it. Wrong. While Google’s words don’t say that they’re pulling out of China, for all intents and purposes they’ve made a move that squares [...]

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When Canonical’s, the company behind Ubuntu, CEO Mark Shuttleworth stepped down and former COO (chief operating officer) Jane Silber moved up, there was concern that the popular Linux company might suffer from a lack of corporate leadership. Worry no more. Open source industry veteran and leader Matt Asay has joined Canonical as its new COO. [...]

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