Practical Technology

for practical people.

October 11, 2011
by sjvn01
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Apache and IIS’ Web server rival NGINX is growing fast

It used to be easy for Web server administrators. If you ran a Windows shop, you used Internet Information Server (IIS), if you didn’t, you used Apache. Now, though, you have more Web server choices and one of the leading alternatives, the open-source NGINX Web server, is gaining fast.

According to Netcraft, the leading Web server analytics company, NGINX, with its over 40-million Web domains and 8.5% of all Web domains, is catching up with the big two. Indeed Netcraft analysts believe that “If current trends continue NGINX will soon overtake Microsoft to have the second largest number of active sites.”

NGINX has moved into this position because it’s very, very fast. The company claims that NGINX can deliver 10 times the performance on the same hardware. I don’t know about that, but I do know on my own servers that NGINX is very fast and uses far less resources than Apache or IIS. It does this by being event-based. That means it doesn’t spawn new processes or threads for each Web page request. The end result is that even as the load increases, memory use remains predictable.


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October 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu Linux heads to the clouds

Last week, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company Canonical CEO Jane Silber announced at the OpenStack cloud software conference that HP has chosen Ubuntu as the lead host and guest operating system for its Public Cloud. That’s impressive. It’s Canonical’s biggest enterprise win to date, but that’s only a hint of what Canonical is up to with the cloud.

Canonical started its move to OpenStack from Eucalyptus in February. While Canonical has promised its not going to leave its Eucalyptus users without support, the company is clearly pinning all its cloud plans going forward around OpenStack.

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October 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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Everything You Wanted to Know About USB 3.0, But Were Afraid to Ask

If you’ve been in the computer business for a while, you can painfully remember when serial RS-232 ports could barely handle 28Kbps (kilobytes per second). The RS-232 serial port standard was loose enough that you could have “compatible” devices that you could never, ever physically connect with each other. How things have changed! Now, USB 3.0 can wheel and deal up to 625 Mbps. So, why is it so hard to find USB 3.0 ports and devices?

You already know that Universal Serial Bus (USB) is now the universal interface for computer peripherals, whether that’s a local printer or a USB-powered jellyfish mood lamp. Many devices only have USB ports.

The USB technology has come a long way since 1995, when USB 1.0 could only transfer 12 Megabits per second, and Windows NT lacked support for the new “standard.” It was only when USB 2.0 showed up in 2000, with its 480Mbps data transfer, that the days were numbered for other interfaces, including PS/2, serial, parallel, and even FireWire. Today, USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, with its 5 Gigabits per second (Gbps), is finally catching on.

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October 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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How to check on your Internet connection

If there’s someone on the planet who hasn’t had trouble with their Internet connection at one time or the other I don’t know who it is. So, if you’re having trouble with your network connection, here are some simple tricks to find out what’s what with your Internet and maybe even fix it.

First things first, if your Internet connection is as dead as a doornail, check your network cabling. It may seem dumb, but I can’t begin to count the number of times what appeared to be a major network problem just turned out to be an unplugged network connection.

This isn’t just for people who are using Cat-5 cable to hook your their networks. If your Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) or cable or DSL modem have had their power cords unplugged you’re not going to connect with anything. My all time favorite failure of this sort was when a friend called with a dead network connection and it turned out the problem was he’d unplugged the AP while vacuuming and he forget to plug it back in. You should always look for the simple answers first.

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October 9, 2011
by sjvn01
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KDE takes on Android, Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets

If another group was trying to take on Android and Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets, I’d dismiss them. RIM, BlackBerry’s parent company, is having a heck of a time getting anyone to buy into PlayBook and while HP TouchPad users loved it,HP killed the TouchPad after only a few weeks. So, why should anyone think that KDE, makers of one of the two most popular Linux desktops, should stand a chance with Plasma Active? Well, because KDE has a long history of delivering the goods with minimal resources.

So what is it? Plasma Active is not, like Android, iOS, or webOS, an operating system. It’s a KDE 4.x style interface and application programming interface (API) designed for touch devices. The Plasma Active Team states that “Plasma Active is innovative technology for an intelligent user experience (UX). It is intended for all types of tablets, smartphones and touch computing devices such as set-top boxes, smart TVs, home automation, in-vehicle infotainment.

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October 7, 2011
by sjvn01
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Free software founder, Richard M. Stallman is glad Jobs is gone

Some stuff you can’t make up. While many of us sorrow at Apple founder Steve Jobs’ death, and others acknowledge Jobs’ genius while also admitting that he had his flaws, Richard M. Stallman, aka rms, founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), stated on his blog that “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.”

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