Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 30, 2011
by sjvn01
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E-Books readers sales rise, but are tablets really lagging?

Recently one of my readers asked me how I felt about my prediction a year ago that dedicated e-readers were doomed to decline. This was before the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that “The percent of U.S. adults with an e-book reader doubled from 6% to 12% between November 2010 and May 2011,” while “roughly the same percentage” of people were using tablets in May 2011 as had been using them in November 2010. You know what? I still feel good about my prediction.

You see, if you take a closer look at the Pew report, E-reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months (PDF Link) you’ll see that tablets still gained 3% more owners. True, the growth rate for tablets has slowed down some and e-book readers appear to be growing faster, but has it really.

You see I’m also on record as saying that the Android Linux-powered e-readers were quickly evolving into tablets. Like what tablets you ask? Try the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color: they’re both powered by Android,

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June 29, 2011
by sjvn01
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Firefox tries, and fails, to make business amends

This was not one of Mozilla’s most shining moments. In response to business complaints about Firefox’s accelerating release schedule Firefox evangelist Asa Dotzler responded:

Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.

Whoops.

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June 29, 2011
by sjvn01
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Office 365’s potential fatal flaw: Not enough Internet bandwidth

I’ve played with Office 365. I’m not impressed. Office 365’s pricing and requirements schemes are a nightmare. I can”t see myself–or anyone else–moving to Office 365 if they’ve already tried Google Docs. But, that said, that’s not Office 365’s real problem. No, Office 365 shares with Google Docs, the Chromebook, and all other cloud-based applications and devices, the problem that there’s not enough bandwidth to go around.

If you’ve been around Internet technology circles for a while, you’ve heard this song before. As best I recall it dates back to 1995. Then, Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, predicted that consumer demand for Internet bandwidth would exceed the available network capacity. When these “exafloods” of data demands happened they would cause “giga-lapses.” These Internet “brownouts” or even complete service interruptions would leave users unable to use the Internet.

Well, as we all know, Bob was wrong. Since then though a year doesn’t goe by without someone proclaiming the End of the Internet. Short of the collapse of civilization, that’s not going to happen. But, I do think we might start seeing Internet brownouts. The rise of Internet video services, especially Netflix, means that video alone now takes up 40% of all available Internet bandwidth. That number is only going to keep going up.

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June 27, 2011
by sjvn01
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The Five Best Desktop Linux Distributions

While I wasn’t there from the very start of Linux. I was an early adopter. Even before Linux, though, I was a Unix desktop user ranging from the early character interfaces such as the Bourne shell to graphic Unix desktops such as SCO’s Open Desktop—better known back in the day as Open Deathtrap—and Solaris’s Looking Glass. In the last twenty years I’ve used almost every significant Linux desktop out there, and was the editor-in-chief for many years of Desktop Linux. In short, I know what I’m talking about.

Before giving you my list of favorites though, if you don’t know my work, you should know where I’m coming from. First, I’m a big believe in What Works. I use Linux on my desktop not because I find its free and open-source software foundations morally superior to the proprietary competition from Apple and Microsoft. I use it because it works better for me. When it comes to technology, I’m a pragmatist, not an idealist.

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June 27, 2011
by sjvn01
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LulzSec Disbands, Bad Security Remains

For almost two months, an anonymous band of hackers called LulzSec made a reputation for itself by revealing internal data from organizations ranging from the Arizona police to the US Senate to the CIA. Now, the group is closing its tents. With a final release of such “valuable” data as game accounts and some internal AT&T documents, LulzSec is done.

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June 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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Why the Linux netbook crashed and burned

A friend of mine, Tom Henderson, asked recently, Who killed the netbook? His well-thought out answer blames a combination of smartphones; expensive, but lightweight computers like the MacBook Air; and the rise of tablets. I think all those played a role, but I put more of the blame on Microsoft and Intel.

While I’d say netbook are dying rather than dead, I have to agree they certainly aren’t as popular as they once were. As Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, recently said in a statement. “Mini-notebook [Netbook] shipments have noticeably contracted over the last several quarters.” More to the point, the vendors are agreeing with the analysts. Lenovo president and COO Rory Read recently said “Netbooks are pretty much over.”

I think netbooks—small, inexpensive notebooks–are declining because Microsoft and Intel have finally succeed in weaning original equipment manufacturers (OEM)s away from Linux and low-end—with corresponding low profit margins –hardware.

This was always Microsoft’s plan since they first were cold-cocked by the sudden explosion of customer interest in netbooks. When netbooks first came along, they almost all ran Linux. Microsoft, which was then stuck with the resource pig known as Windows Vista, simply couldn’t compete. So, reluctantly, Microsoft gave Windows XP Home a new lease on life and sold it below cost to OEMs to kill the Linux desktop on netbooks.

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