Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 28, 2015
by sjvn01
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HoloLens: Abracadabra! Microsoft unveils a great distraction

Oh my gosh! The world’s first holographic computing platform! Is this or is this not the best thing ever?

Crowd around, yells the Microsoft barker, and marvel at HoloLens. See worlds leap up in your mind’s eye and settle onto your kitchen counter. Never mind that dorky headset. This is just too cool for words!

OK, you grabbed me, Microsoft. 3D computing is pretty cool. But all I really wanted from Windows 10 was Windows 7’s Start Menu. I didn’t want to have to wear googles. Oh, I’m sorry — I mean goggles, of course. Whatever was I thinking?

HoloLens: Abracadabra! Microsoft unveils a great distraction. More>

January 28, 2015
by sjvn01
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Dell offers new Ubuntu Linux workstation laptop

In 2007, Dell became the first major computer OEM to sell pre-installed Linux on their computers. Today, Dell continues to support desktop Linux. In its latest move, Dell will be bringing Ubuntu 14.04 to its top-of-the-line Precision M3800 workstation laptop and the latest model of the Dell XPS 13.

Dell offers new Ubuntu Linux workstation laptop More>

January 27, 2015
by sjvn01
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GHOST, a critical Linux security hole, is revealed

Researchers at cloud security company Qualys have discovered a major security hole, GHOST (CVE-2015-0235), in the Linux GNU C Library (glibc). This vulnerability enables hackers to remotely take control of systems without even knowing any system IDs or passwords.

Qualys alerted the major Linux distributors about the security hole quickly and most have now released patches for it. Josh Bressers, manager of the Red Hat product security team said in an interview that, “Red Hat got word of this about a week ago. Updates to fix GHOST on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5, 6, and 7 are now available via the Red Hat Network.”

This hole exists in any Linux system that was built with glibc-2.2, which was released on November 10, 2000. Qualys found that the bug had actually been patched with a minor bug fix released on May 21, 2013 between the releases of glibc-2.17 and glibc-2.18.

GHOST, a critical Linux security hole, is revealed. More>

January 26, 2015
by sjvn01
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Microsoft: The open-source company

Microsoft has long used open-source software, like the BSD code behind its original TCP/IP network stack, they just didn’t admit it. That was in Bill Gates’ day. It’s a different story today. Recently , Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft loves Linux and Microsoft just acquired Revolution Analytics, which is the major open-source player for the R statistical analysis language.

What’s going on here?

Let me start by saying what’s not happening. First, there is zero, zilch, chance of Microsoft open-sourcing Windows or Microsoft Office. On the desktop, Microsoft will remain as proprietary as ever for the foreseeable future.

However, Microsoft continues to transform itself from a software sales company to a software service rental business with Windows as a Service. To power that, Office 365, and its other service offerings such as its Cosmos big-data service, Microsoft is relying on the cloud and it’s in that hidden engine behind its services that Microsoft is embracing open-source software.

Microsoft: The open-source company. More>

January 22, 2015
by sjvn01
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Librem 15, the first free software GNU/Linux laptop, makes funding goal

If you want a Linux on a laptop, it’s easy to install it yourself. You can also always buy one from a specialized Linux vendor such as System76 and ZaReason or even get a mainstream laptop, like the new Dell XPS 13 and 15 with Ubuntu installed. What you can’t do is get one with a minimum of proprietary firmware, until now.

Librem 15, the first free software GNU/Linux laptop, makes funding goal. More>

January 21, 2015
by sjvn01
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Verizon cloud’s back, but why was it down for almost two days?

You may recall that I recently wrote about Verizon taking its cloud down. Well, it’s back now, but we still don’t know why it was down for about 40 hours.

This really is weird with a capital W. To its credit, I guess, the Verizon Cloud was down for “only” 40 hours. This was for planned maintenance to provide “seamless upgrade functionality as well as other customer-facing updates.”

I’m not sure what that means.

Verizon cloud’s back, but why was it down for almost two days? More>