Practical Technology

This just came in over the press-wire, and I’m already interested. Cisco has announced on June 23 that a new Linux powered router, the Linksys by Cisco Wireless-N Broadband Router with Storage Link, the WRT160NL is out. At first glance that may not seem that interesting. But, this isn’t just a new Wi-Fi router with [...]

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When I first looked at Moonlight, Novell’s open-source version of Microsoft’s Sliverlight, I liked it, but I didn’t really see much of a point to it. Silverlight, Microsoft’s latest answer to Adobe Flash, isn’t used in many sites. What I liked the most about Silverlight was that it provided a fully legal way to access [...]

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f you’re like me, you don’t like proprietary video and audio codecs. Be that as it may, some sites, like NBC’s Olympics site, use Microsoft’s proprietary Silverlight streaming technology. Until recently, if you were using Linux that meant you couldn’t watch videos from these sites at all. Until now The Mono Project, a Novell sponsored [...]

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DRM (Digital Right Management) has been a thorn in the side of music and video lovers for years. Now, Apple, after wheeling and dealing with the major music companies, is killing DRM off for good in iTunes. You should now be able to buy DRM-free songs in one of three price ranges: 69-cents, 99-cents or [...]

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Some people say I like to beat Microsoft up. Not really. I just dislike bad technology, and Microsoft makes a lot of poor-quality hardware and software. Anyone unfortunate enough to own a 30GB Zune knows exactly what I mean. Today, December 31st, many, if not all, 30GB Zunes, Microsoft’s first generation of music players, stopped [...]

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