May 11, 2011
by sjvn01
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When Google first started talking about Chrome OS, I thought it might be turn into a Windows killer. Well, now we know that the first commercial Chromebooks will be available in mid-June and there’s no question: Google is aiming right at the Windows business desktop market.
Can Google do what the Mac was never able to do? What the various desktop Linuxes, even the most popular ones like Ubuntu have never even come close to pulling off? I think it can. Here’s why.
May 11, 2011
by sjvn01
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Don’t ask me how “Leading sugar dating website, SugarSugar, managed to gets its SugarSugar Dating App through Apple’s Puritan application wall, but the company claims that it’s “an innovative mobile application for locating singles interested in the ’sugar’ lifestyle’” will be out on June 1st.
OK. And, what the heck is a “sugar” lifestyle. I’m glad you asked. According to the site, it’s “for generous men looking to spoil, and dynamic women looking for financial support with bills, or who just need some excitement in life!” Ah., OK, prostitution in other words. Or, I suppose you could look it as a try-out system for would-be mistresses.
There’s nothing new about the world’s oldest profession being online. Sure, over-zealous prosecutors managed to chase Craigslist out of the adult services business. So what? I see that another online classified ad site, Backpage, is now offering adult services ads. Anyone want to bet me that if Backpage is hammered in the same way Craigslist was there will be yet another online general purpose ad site with adult services ads up and running before the day is out?
May 11, 2011
by sjvn01
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OK, it’s not too surprising that Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, has switched to OpenStack for its Ubuntu cloud foundation technology. After all, Canonical started flirting with OpenStack back in February. What is surprising is that Neil Levine, who as Canonical’s VP of corporate services, which included the cloud, has jumped ship to start a new company, Soba Labs.
First, for Ubuntu, OpenStack, and not Eucalyptus will make up the core of the Ubuntu Cloud. The company claims that the current releases of the Eucalyptus-based Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), will not be impacted. Specifically, “Eucalyptus will continue to be a available for download and will be supported by Canonical. This means that customers who have deployed private clouds based on existing Ubuntu releases will continue to receive maintenance, and in the case of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long Term Support) this will continue through to April 2015. Eucalyptus will remain within Ubuntu and will be available for users who prefer this technology. For customers with existing private cloud deployments, Ubuntu will provide tools to automate the migration process to the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release when it is released in October 2011.”
May 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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I’m bemused to see that Microsoft’s Grand Poobah Steve Ballmer has blundered yet again. This time, instead of Vista, the operating system that never should have seem the light of day, or Windows Phone 7, the far too little, too late, attempt to play in mobile devices, he’s wasted a cool $8.5-billion (Billion!) on Skype.
Seriously? Ballmer just burned more money than Oracle did on buying Sun for a video-conferencing and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) company? Come on! The only thing that Skype has over any of the dozens of other video-conferencing and VoIP companies out there is brand recognition and Skype’s brand is not worth $850-million much less $8.5-billion.
I mean, come on, Microsoft already has this technology. They’ve been selling these services in products like Live Meeting and Microsoft Lync, formerly Office Communications Server, for over a decade now. Sure, hundreds of millions of people already know and use Skype, but how long will they now that Microsoft owns it? I think Harry McCracken, well-known writer and editor, hit the nail on the head when he remarked, “Skype to be rebranded as Microsoft Internet Phone Professional Premium 2012 (KIDDING!)” on Twitter. Boy, I wish I had come up with that line. That’s exactly how people will see this deal.
May 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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While Attachmate has talked a lot about its plans for Novell after it bought Novell, no one saw Attachmate closing down Novell’s Mono programming effort. Indeed, other than cutting Novell’s work-force by 25%, Attachmate has said little concrete about the company’s open-source plans. I have learned from sources though that LibreOffice, the open-source office suite, will continue to receive Novell’s support.
Novell developers were leaders in founding the LibreOffice’s parent organization, The Document Foundation and splitting LibreOffice away from the Oracle sponsored OpenOffice project. Their feeling was that Oracle, as Sun had before it, had been neglecting OpenOffice and letting bugs go unfixed and new features go un-added for far too long.
The LibreOffice project quickly picked up many supporters, but much of the “goodness” in LibreOffice came from work that Novell had already done on its own spin on OpenOffice. This included better support for Microsoft Office’s Open XML formats.
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May 9, 2011
by sjvn01
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As June 8, 2011, World IPv6 Day approaches, I’m not surprised to see major ISP and networking vendors getting ready to test out their IPv6 Internet connections. What I didn’t expect was to see Blizzard Entertainment, the publishers of the wildly popular Massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft (WoW), is now supporting IPv6.
With the 4.1 patch to WoW, IPv6 is now an option for WoW players. Of course, to use it, you must first have an IPv6 connection. If you don’t have an IPv6 Internet hook-up, according to a Blizzard employee, the IPv6 connection option will be grayed out.
To play WoW over an IPv6 network, you must use native IPv6. 6To4, a dynamic tunneling method that uses IPv4 unicast over the IPv4 Internet or Teredo, another tunneling technique that in which IPv6 packets are sent as IPv4-based User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets.
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