Practical Technology

for practical people.

March 11, 2013
by sjvn01
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Five ways to save Windows 8

Can the Windows 8 operating system be saved? In all seriousness, Microsoft should be asking itself this question.

The numbers don’t lie. Windows 8’s market acceptance is continuing to fall behind Microsoft’s last desktop operating system failure, Vista. Asus, which had been a big Windows 8 booster, is now reporting poor sales and Samsung has decided not to bother with launching a Windows 8 tablet in the lucrative German market.

Simply chopping prices drastically for Windows 8 and Office 2013 for mini-tablets isn’t going to cut it. Neither Windows 8 nor its close relatives, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8, even appear on NetApplication’s mobile and tablet usage reports for February 2013. Nor, do I think discount prices on Windows 8 for PCs would help much. There are also lots of cheap Windows 8 PCs and they’re not selling well.

So what can Microsoft do to give Windows 8 a shot? Here are my proposals.

Five ways to save Windows 8. More >

March 11, 2013
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu Linux developer squabbles go public

Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution, like all Linux and open-source projects, has had its share of internal battles over the project’s directions over the years. Recently, though, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of both the operating system and its sponsoring company, Canonical, has taken the latest squabbles public in his blog.

It all began when Rick Spencer, Canonical’s Ubuntu engineering director, proposed on the Ubuntu developer mailing list that, since Canonical is porting Ubuntu to smartphones in the coming months, “Ubuntu should drop non-LTS [long-term support] releases and move to a rolling release plus LTS releases right now”.

In a rolling release, major changes and improvements are released to users as soon as possible. As Spencer proposed it, new releases would come out monthly. The advantage is that users get best-of-breed modifications very quickly. Spencer then proceeded to make the case for this change. This wasn’t the first time that rolling releases had been proposed for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Linux developer squabbles go public. More >

March 8, 2013
by sjvn01
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Linux triumphant: Chrome OS resists cracking attempts

The Chrome web browser on Windows is breakable, but its little brother, the Linux-based Chrome OS, proved to be essentially uncrackable at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada,

Linux triumphant: Chrome OS resists cracking attempts. More >

March 7, 2013
by sjvn01
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Pwn2Own: Down go all the browsers

In the eternal war between crackers and security professionals, the hackers have won the latest battle.

At the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada, the HP Zero Day Initiative’s (ZDI) annual Pwn2Own competition has ended its first day of competition and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 10, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox Web browsers have all been cracked. In addition, Java—can anyone be surprised at this?–was also cracked multiple times.

Pwn2Own: Down go all the browsers. More >

March 7, 2013
by sjvn01
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Cloud storage: Price wars ahead?

Who doesn’t like free cloud storage? Many of us use Dropbox every day. Others build their businesses around Box’s OneCloud services. And still others hunt eternally for the most storage for free, which, for the moment, would be Mega’s 50 gigabytes.

But now, Google with its new Chromebook Pixel, has upped the ante. This new cloud-based laptop comes with a terabyte of free storage for three years.

Cloud storage: Price wars ahead? More >

March 6, 2013
by sjvn01
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The secret origins of Google’s Chrome OS

Google’s Chrome OS, thanks to the growing popularity of Chromebooks, is being used by more and more people. Many people know that Chrome OS has a Linux foundation. But how Chrome OS developed from Linux, and exactly what is in Chrome OS today, has been something of a mystery — until now.

The secret origins of Google’s Chrome OS. More >