Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 13, 2011
by sjvn01
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What’s coming in Ubuntu’s new Unity Linux desktop

As Microsoft shows Windows 8 off in its first dog and pony show, it seems to me to be a good time to note that Microsoft isn’t the only company bringing out a new look for the PC desktop. Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company is also transforming its Unity desktop.

Unity, for those of you who don’t know it, is based on the GNOME desktop, but it takes an entirely different approach with the desktop shell. Since I dislike the latest GNOME 3 desktop, that’s fine by me. Unity, with its tablet-style interface isn’t designed for hard-core Linux users, although we can use it too. It’s really designed more for casual users who are new to Linux or casual Windows users who want to try something better.

According to Canonical founder, Mark Shuttleworth the next version of Unity, which is due out in October, “Our goal with Unity is unprecedented ease of use, visual style and performance on the Linux desktop.”

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September 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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Lock Out the Security Idiots

After I wrote about the latest stupid user security trick, several of my friends reminded me that one-third of my audience already knows how to secure their computers and did so, another third sort-of-knew how to secure their PCs and did it sometimes, and the remainder had never, wouldn’t now, and never would learn how to protect their computers. This article is for the people who manage that last third.

You see, if it was just Joe and his never-patched Windows XP PC at home who was getting into trouble, I wouldn’t mind. But, it’s not. All of us are stuck with the mess: having to clean up the litter of spam, malware, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that junks up our Internet highway. And, if you have a Joe in your office every time who causes mayhem every time he hooks into the office network over the virtual private network (VPN) or brings in a USB drive, he’s bringing his crap right into your network.

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September 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google+, Real Names, and Groklaw’s Pamela Jones

Around and around we go with Google+’s real name policy. Sometimes, Google seems ready to reconsider its policy of requiring Google+ social network user to use their “real name,” but then Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, “justifies” the strict real name policy by saying, “Google+ is completely optional.” Sigh. That really misses the point. Rather than rehash the virtues of allowing people to use pseudonyms, I thought I’d ask someone who has both a noteworthy online identity and a long history of having trouble with keeping the public out of her private life: Groklaw’s founder Pamela Jones.

For those of you who missed it, Pamela “PJ” Jones started the intellectual property (IP) legal news and analysis Groklaw site to battle the FUD SCO was throwing out about Linux violating its Unix copyrights back in 2003. In the end, SCO was destroyed and it was proven-oh the irony-that Novell actually owned Unix’s IP.

In the meantime, though PJ, who’s a very private person, was subjected to death threats, invasion of her privacy by junkyard journalists, and even claims that she wasn’t a real person at all. There really is a PJ. I’ve met her, and as it happens her “real name” is Pamela Jones.

Just because she has a real name though and she’s a well-known online legal expert and journalist, doesn’t mean that she wants Google, or anyone else, drawing a direct line from “PJ” the paralegal and analyst/reporter and the Pamela Jones who lives at X address in Y City. So what does she think of Google’s instance of making those connections from online to real-world identities?

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September 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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Gallery: The 20 most significant events in Linux’s 20-year history

You can argue about which specific date is Linux’s official birthday. Heck, even Linus Torvalds thinks there are four different dates in 1991 that might deserve the honor of being the operating system’s birthday. Be that as it may, Linux is twenty years so let’s take a walk though time with Linux at some of its high, and low, points.

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September 11, 2011
by sjvn01
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Pain is flat: The Internet, social networks and 9/11

When the Twin Towers came down on 9/11, we talked with each other, one-to-one, over the Internet. Today, thanks to the rise of social networks, we share the news of disasters around the world with everyone in our circles. Our pain is becoming flat.

What do I mean by that? When Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, he described how global telecommunications and the Internet flattened international competition and turned globalization from an economic buzz word to a reality. In the 21st century’s flat world even the most local of businesses are connected with other businesses around the world and must co-operate and compete with them.

I see another side of that concept in the rise of social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Just as we now share information and compete with each other in milliseconds over the Internet, we now share our pain and our happiness around the world in mere moments.

On September 11th, on the Internet we came together as individually. We spoke to the people who were closest and dearest to us. We also talked to those strangers, our neighbors. The people we’d nod at as we left for work in the morning.

Today, thanks to social networks, those neighbors are co-workers from half-way around the world. They’re high-school friends we haven’t seen in decades and who’ve moved thousands of miles away from where we grew up together. Our neighborhood has become the world.

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September 9, 2011
by sjvn01
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The Least You Need to Know about Setting Up a SOHO VPN

If you run a business, even if it’s just out of your living room and the closest coffee shop, there are times you need Internet privacy. That’s where Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) come in.

You know the story. You’re on a business trip, and the report needs to be updated before you get back to the office. Or, you just went out to lunch when you get an urgent e-mail question from the CEO that needs to be answered Right Now. Yes, you could just send the accounts payable spreadsheet or the “Yes, we have to fire him” e-mail through an open Wi-Fi connection, but you’d be a fool to do so.

If what you’re sending over the Internet has business value, you need to send it over a secure connection. It’s that simple.

Fortunately, in a small office or home office (SOHO) you have many ways to set up a VPN. Among the options are VPN subscription services, built-in VPNs with your existing server software stack, open source software, and built-in VPN functionality in your business’ router.

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