Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 13, 2012
by sjvn01
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Was Sinofsky fired for Microsoft’s sins?

When Microsoft fired… excuse me, announced that Windows and Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky is leaving the company, many Microsoft experts opined that he left because of internal politics. Sorry. I don’t buy that argument for a New York minute. If Windows 8 took off at the same rate Windows 7 did–with developers anxiously looking forward to publishing software for it–and had Sinfosky’s strategic moves worked, such as Microsoft deciding to make its own Windows 8 hardware, we’d be talking about Sinofsky as Steve Ballmer’s successor, not left wondering what the heck just happened.

Yes, I’m sure internal politics had something do with it. Sinofsky wasn’t the easiest guy to work with. You know whom else I’ve met in the technology business who wasn’t that easy to work with? Guys like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison. While being self-centered and cocksure of yourself causes friction, when you make successful technology and business decisions, it doesn’t kill your career.

Nice guys usually finish last at top tech companies. What counts, what always really counts in tech, is delivering the hot technology on which people spend serious money. It you blow that, and you’re not the CEO, you’re history. Just ask Scott Forstall, former head of Apple’s iOS.

Was Sinofsky fired for Microsoft’s sins? More >

November 13, 2012
by sjvn01
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Nokia Siemens Networks makes 4G LTE infrastructure market gains

Most of the news about Nokia, the smartphone company, is bad. Nokia Siemens Network  (NSN), the mobile broadband company, however, has some relatively good news

According to a report from the telecom analyst company, the  Dell’Oro Group, NSN’s third quarter of 2012 saw NSN claiming the second largest share of the LTE mobile radio access network (RAN) market by revenue. For NSN, that represents a gain of over 21% marketshare over the last 12 months.

Nokia Siemens Networks makes 4G LTE infrastructure market gains. More >

November 12, 2012
by sjvn01
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HP clarifies Windows 8 consumer PC downgrade and warranties

HP isn’t supporting consumer PCs  downgrades from Windows 8 to Windows 7. However, the company has clarified that, if you do change operating systems anyway, your consumer Windows 8 PCs will still be under warranty .

It’s been a confusing few days in HP laptop and desktop land. For a brief time, it appeared that HP would support Windows 8 consumer PCs downgrading to Windows 7. Microsoft would not have been amused! Microsoft’s official licensing policy restricts Windows 8 downgrades to Windows 8 Pro users.

HP clarifies Windows 8 consumer PC downgrade and warranties. More >

November 12, 2012
by sjvn01
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Verizon gets out of the Android and Blackberry app business

I use a Verizon Android smartphone, the Droid 4, but I’ve never used any of Verizon‘s built-in Android applications or gone to its app. store. It turns out I wasn’t the only one. By January 2013. Verizon won’t just be removing its apps from the market, it will start deleting its Verizon specific apps from your Android or Blackberry smartphone.

Why? Verizon isn’t saying in detail. but there’s no secret here. People dislike carrier-specific software. Android users in particular have never had much love for the bloatware that carriers routinely load on smartphones. Worse still, a lot of the bloatware came with security holes.

Despite this, for years, the carriers, including Verizon, resisted selling smartphones with stock Android. Verizon may not be ready to load pure Android with no Verizon specific changes on their smarpthones, but  the company that they’re not making any friends, nor profits, with their pre-loaded apps.

Verizon gets out of the Android and Blackberry app business. More >

November 12, 2012
by sjvn01
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Beyond RAID: IBM adds big data friendly, affordable servers to line up

n an IBM blog labeled “Keep Your Friends Close and Your Data Closer” by Matthew Drahzal, a leader in IBM’s Systems & Technology Group (STG), has announced a new storage server for bring super-computer data storage speed to a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS), General Parallel File System (GPFS) storage servers.

The trouble these new servers is meant to address is simple. As Drahzal wrote, “The technology industry has a problem. Disk drives–devices used for over 50 years to store and retrieve digital information -move data too slowly. Companies regularly use 3 terabyte disk drives–roughly equal to the capacity of about 100 iPads–but the drives can only move data at 50 to 100 megabytes per second. Many organizations need to analyze data at 100 gigabytes per second–a difference of a few of orders of magnitude.”

To address that problem, we’ve long been spread our data across multiple drives to speed up access with redundant array of independent disks (RAID). RAID, however, and the drives that use it hasn’t kept up with our need for reliable speed. Yes, our drives are growing ever larger, but they’ve not become more reliable and even the highest level of data redundancy available, RAID 6, or the pairing of RAID 1, mirrored disk, with RAID 5, aka RAID 51, isn’t sufficient for data protection. Worse still, when a drive does fail, and they always do, rebuilding big data with RAID can take days.

Beyond RAID: IBM adds big data friendly, affordable servers to line up. More >

November 11, 2012
by sjvn01
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85th level Orc Rogue wins election

The U.S.’ 2012 election saw many firsts. It saw the first Buddhist elected to the Senate, the first Hindu elected to Congress, and the first Orc Rogue elected to the Maine state Senate. No, that’s not a weird typo, Colleen Lachowicz, who plays an 85th level Orc Rogue in World of Warcraft defeated her rival  Republican Sen. Thomas Martin of Benton, to capture a seat in the Maine state Senate.

I doubt very much that Lachowicz is the first serious online gamer to have won an election. World of Warcraft (WoW) alone, while not as popular as it once was, is still the top subscription-based MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing games) with about 9.1-million players. Other MMORPGs, such as Guild Wars II also have millions of fans. Surely, there are a few politicians among their numbers. Lachowicz may well have been the first office-seeker though to face a campaign targeting her for being a gamer.

85th level Orc Rogue wins election. More >