Practical Technology

for practical people.

February 14, 2013
by sjvn01
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HP bids adieu to WebOS, Windows RT, and says hello to Android

While HP still hasn’t made it official, sources are reporting that HP has decided that at least part of its tablet and smartphone future lies not with Windows or WebOS but with Google’s Android. Who’d thought it!?

Well, I for one did. Look at the facts. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that in the last quarter Apple sold 23-million iPads, while HP—the world’s largest PC maker—sold 15-million PCs. And, who’s catching up with the iPad in a great hurry? According to IDC that would be Android tablets. Since there’s no way in heaven and earth, HP will ever be selling iPads, HP CEO Meg Whitman is hitching HP’s wagon to Android’s ascending star.

HP bids adieu to WebOS, Windows RT, and says hello to Android. More >

February 13, 2013
by sjvn01
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Opera joins Chrome & Safari in using Webkit for Web-browsing

Opera, a Web browser with a small, but loyal, core group of 300-million users, surprised everyone when they moved from its Presto Web rendering engine to the popular open-source Webkit engine. Webkit is best known for being Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari Web engine.

Web engines are what take Web page content such as HTML files, and formatting instructions, for example Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and transform these into the page you see on your screen. They are a Web browser’s heart. For Opera, this is no less than a heart transplant.

Opera joins Chrome & Safari in using Webkit for Web-browsing. More >

February 12, 2013
by sjvn01
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Raytheon Riot: Defense spying is coming to social networks

According to the Guardian, multi-national security company Raytheon has developed Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot), a big data, social-networking spy program.

With Riot, a user — typically a government official — will be able to pull together your life-history; your relationships with other people; and the places where you’re most likely to be found. These tracking profiles are based not just on obvious information, such as your listing of a hometown on Facebook or FourSquare GPS location data, but also from “invisible” location metadata from digital photographs.

Raytheon Riot: Defense spying is coming to social networks. More >

February 10, 2013
by sjvn01
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Linux developers working on uniting Windows 8 Secure Boot fixes

Thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 8 UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) Secure Boot there was no easy way to boot Linux, or any other operating system, on Windows 8 PCs. Now, there are two ways, the recently released Linux Foundation (LF) UEFI secure boot system and Matthew Garrett’s shim system to boot Linux on these PCs. Soon, there will be only one unified way.

Linux developers working on uniting Windows 8 Secure Boot fixes. More >

February 10, 2013
by sjvn01
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Apple iPhone and iPad iOS 6 network problems linger on

It’s been more than four months since Apple introduced iOS 6, but for many iPhone and iPad users Wi-Fi problems are still lingering on and new network problems have appeared with the 6.1 upgrade.

After iOS 6 first arrived, an immediate Wi-Fi problem appeared and was quickly fixed. We’d hoped that would be the end of iDevices not being able to connect with Wi-Fi access points (AP)s. Our hopes were in vain.

Apple iPhone and iPad iOS 6 network problems linger on. More >