October 18, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments
“Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care?” Well, even if you don’t remember this popular Chicago song, if you’re on the Internet you do care. Many network services, such as authentication, depend on everyone agreeing on the exact time. So when a lawsuit threatened the Internet’s authoritative source for time-zone data this had the potential to really foul up everyone’s network time.
October 13, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments
When Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company first announced that it was going to drop the GNOME 3.x desktop for its own GNOME-based desktop take, Unity, a lot of people were unhappy. They also weren’t thrilled with Unity’s first mainstream deployment in Ubuntu 11.04. Now, if these same people, if they give the brand new Ubuntu 11.10 desktop a try, I think they’ll really like this new Ubuntu.
Don’t get me wrong. Unity still isn’t for everyone. Hard core Linux desktop users-and I’m one of them-will still find it keeps them too far away from Linux’s fine-tuning controls for comfort. But, for everyone else, I think Unity may be the best pure desktop Linux desktop interface I’ve ever used. And friends, as the former editor-in-chief of DesktopLinux and a Linux user since its early days, I’ve seen all of them.
What am I talking about, well let’s take a look at the new Ubuntu and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.
October 13, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments
October 13 is a big day for Ubuntu fans. It’s the day that the next version of Ubuntu arrives. If you want to give it a try, download a copy of Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, burn an ISO copy to a CD or USB stick, pop that into your PC, and follow along.
Before doing anything drastic, like actually installing Ubuntu on your PC, make sure it works first. Only after testing it out for a while, should you reboot your computer and chose the Install Ubuntu option.
October 12, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments
Every organization has one: Someone who may be brilliant in some ways, but can really stick his foot in his mouth. Sometimes, as with Richard M. Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, it can be the head of the organization. With Google, the latest case of foot in mouth disease goes to Steve Yegge, a Google engineer who declared that “Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership.”
Yegge published his rant on Google+ for all to see. Later, Yegge claimed that he was so new to Google+ that he didn’t realize he had sent it to the world. Right there, is a red flag. He’s declaring Google+ to be a complete failure but he doesn’t even know how to use a Google+ circle? Clearly, he hasn’t a clue about the very system he’s declaring to be a failure.
That didn’t stop him from declaring that “The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought” and that “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.” He goes on and on like that for quite a while.
October 12, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments
Microsoft has always been fond of paying analysts to say that its products are best, or having partners release reports showing how their rivals’ products are second-rate, and, now, Web sites that “show” how Internet Explorer (IE) is better than Chrome and Firefox when it comes to security. Really? Didn’t Microsoft just release yet another major Internet Explorer patch?
I quote from the IE patch update (MS11-081), which apples to all currently supported versions of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer and IE 6 as well: “The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.”
Yes, that includes IE 9, the best and most up-to-date IE which is only available on Windows 7. Isn’t it funny how Microsoft claims that IE 9 is the most secure of its browser family, but somehow it has to have the same problems fixed that exist in IE 6, 7, and 8? Could it be that it’s really not that different after all from the rest of its historically insecure family?
October 11, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments
You know me. I’m a Linux guy. Still, I think Windows has gone from being a bad joke of a desktop operating system (Windows ME) to being a reasonable choice (Windows 7). Its course hasn’t been steady, though: After the still popular XP SP3, we got Vista. And now we have Windows 8. What the heck is Steve Ballmer thinking?
Microsoft has made it clear that it considers Windows 8’s Metro interface and applications to be the future. When I look at Metro, however, I see gaudy colors, boxy designs, applications that can either run as a small tile or as full screen with no way to resize or move windows. Where have I seen this before? Wait, I know! Windows 1.0.
Twenty-five years of user-interface development and this is what we get? Scary.
More >