Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 28, 2012
by sjvn01
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2012’s 5 Most popular Linux stories

Taken as a whole, 2012 was a great year for Linux. The most popular stories, however, were more about the day-to-day happenings of Linux then the big picture.

2012’s top Linux story was The truth about Goobuntu: Google’s in-house desktop Ubuntu Linux. The title said it all. We’d long known that Google uses its own house-blend of Ubuntu on its PCs, but it wasn’t until this summer that Google finally revealed exactly how its workers use Ubuntu,

The next most popular tale was about the popular Linux Mint distribution. I declared that 2012’s Best Linux desktop was Linux Mint 13. I’ve changed my mind since then. Now, I think the best desktop Linux is Linux Mint 14.1. I’ll be telling you more about it in the next few days.

2012’s 5 Most popular Linux stories. More >

December 27, 2012
by sjvn01
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Good-bye books, hello e-books

Readers. it’s time to turn a page. In a December 27, 2012 report entitled, “E-book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines,” the Pew Research Center found that “the number of those who read e-books increased from 16% of all Americans ages 16 and older to 23%.” At the same time, the report says, the number of people who read printed books in the previous 12 months “fell from 72% of the population ages 16 and older to 67%.”

It’s not a sharp decline. The survey of 2,252 Americans (ages 16 and older), found that 89% of the book readers had read a printed book (or 67% of all those ages 16 and older). At the same time, 30% of the book readers said they had read an e-book, which translates into 23% of all those ages 16 and older. An April Pew research project  showed that “in mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an e-book in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

Good-bye books, hello e-books. More >

December 27, 2012
by sjvn01
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Netflix staggers

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, people were screaming and it wasn’t at a mouse. The in-laws were staring at the TV with care, in hopes that Netflix soon would be returned there. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Netflix wouldn’t be playing again until December 25th.

So what happened? It turns out it was still another Amazon Web Services outage. This one was centered at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Load Balancers (ELB), in the US-East-Region1 data-center in Northern Virginia. Other cloud services went down as well, but let’s face it, on Christmas eve no one noticed much of the others. Curiously though, Amazon Instant Video kept going. 

To be exact, trouble developed with the Elastic Load Balancers’ application programming interfaces (API)s. New load balancers would go up but they wouldn’t properly report their status to the overall ELB service. This, as Netflix users quickly found out, lead to “significant levels of traffic loss.”

Netflix staggers. More >

December 26, 2012
by sjvn01
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2012’s Top five Linux stories with one big conclusion

2012 didn’t see any single large Linux news story. Instead, we saw many small Linux stories that, when added together, led to Linux becoming the single most important operating system of all. Here’s the count-down to the top of the operating system stack.

5) Raspberry Pi is as popular as apple pie

People love their polished hardware devices such as the Apple iPad, but some still love do-it-yourself *DIY) gear and nothing says DIY quite so much as the Raspberry Pi. This Linux-powered credit-card sized computer is as bare-bones as it comes, but it still had over 250,000 people on its buyers waiting list before its launch. Months later it’s still insanely popular. 

2012’s Top five Linux stories with one big conclusion. More >

December 21, 2012
by sjvn01
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The five things you always forget to buy for the holidays [Gift Guide 2012]

T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house; not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. … except for you desperately searching for that all-important part you must have to make little Joey’s gadget work properly.

Every year it’s the same old story. You remember to get the big-ticket item for your loved ones, say an iPad for Matthew or a Blu-Ray DVD player for Mary, but you forget those little things they need to work properly. So, for this holiday season let’s make sure we stock up with those tiny essentials before the day arrives.

I’ve talked with my friends and here’s our list of tech odds and ends you’re most likely to need to make this holiday season a jolly one.

The five things you always forget to buy for the holidays [Gift Guide 2012] More >

December 21, 2012
by sjvn01
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Five good Instagram replacements

Some people believe that Facebook’s Instagram recently changed terms of service policy change is nothing-less than an attempt to steal the rights to their photos.. Facebook claims they’re just clarifying their rights and that “It is not our intention to sell your photos.” Oh yeah, I believe that.

I think anything you put up on the Internet, especially a social network, can be swiped and that Facebook, in particular, has always played fast and loose with its users’ rights and privacy. After all to Facebook, you’re the product. They have to turn the information you trust them with into money some how and if they can do that by licensing your photos to third parties so be it.

Seriously, Facebook buying Instagram was one of the all-time bad tech company acquisitions. Think about it. Facebook paid a cool billion for Instagram for some filters and a small social network. If you do the math Facebook paid about $28 for each of Instagram’s 35 million users. I don’t care what Facebook says about its intentions, one way or the other Facebook must end up monetizing your images to make back its billion bucks.

So, if you’d rather not see your images bought and sold by Facebook, or legally speaking Facebook licensing your images to others without your permission, I suggest it’s time to abandon Instagram and look for a replacement.

Five good Instagram replacements. More >