November 12, 2012
by sjvn01
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Verizon gets out of the Android and Blackberry app business

I use a Verizon Android smartphone, the Droid 4, but I’ve never used any of Verizon‘s built-in Android applications or gone to its app. store. It turns out I wasn’t the only one. By January 2013. Verizon won’t just be removing its apps from the market, it will start deleting its Verizon specific apps from your Android or Blackberry smartphone.

Why? Verizon isn’t saying in detail. but there’s no secret here. People dislike carrier-specific software. Android users in particular have never had much love for the bloatware that carriers routinely load on smartphones. Worse still, a lot of the bloatware came with security holes.

Despite this, for years, the carriers, including Verizon, resisted selling smartphones with stock Android. Verizon may not be ready to load pure Android with no Verizon specific changes on their smarpthones, but the company that they’re not making any friends, nor profits, with their pre-loaded apps.

Verizon gets out of the Android and Blackberry app business. More >

November 12, 2012
by sjvn01
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Beyond RAID: IBM adds big data friendly, affordable servers to line up

n an IBM blog labeled “Keep Your Friends Close and Your Data Closer” by Matthew Drahzal, a leader in IBM’s Systems & Technology Group (STG), has announced a new storage server for bring super-computer data storage speed to a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS), General Parallel File System (GPFS) storage servers.

The trouble these new servers is meant to address is simple. As Drahzal wrote, “The technology industry has a problem. Disk drives–devices used for over 50 years to store and retrieve digital information -move data too slowly. Companies regularly use 3 terabyte disk drives–roughly equal to the capacity of about 100 iPads–but the drives can only move data at 50 to 100 megabytes per second. Many organizations need to analyze data at 100 gigabytes per second–a difference of a few of orders of magnitude.”

To address that problem, we’ve long been spread our data across multiple drives to speed up access with redundant array of independent disks (RAID). RAID, however, and the drives that use it hasn’t kept up with our need for reliable speed. Yes, our drives are growing ever larger, but they’ve not become more reliable and even the highest level of data redundancy available, RAID 6, or the pairing of RAID 1, mirrored disk, with RAID 5, aka RAID 51, isn’t sufficient for data protection. Worse still, when a drive does fail, and they always do, rebuilding big data with RAID can take days.

Beyond RAID: IBM adds big data friendly, affordable servers to line up. More >

November 11, 2012
by sjvn01
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85th level Orc Rogue wins election

The U.S.’ 2012 election saw many firsts. It saw the first Buddhist elected to the Senate, the first Hindu elected to Congress, and the first Orc Rogue elected to the Maine state Senate. No, that’s not a weird typo, Colleen Lachowicz, who plays an 85th level Orc Rogue in World of Warcraft defeated her rival Republican Sen. Thomas Martin of Benton, to capture a seat in the Maine state Senate.

I doubt very much that Lachowicz is the first serious online gamer to have won an election. World of Warcraft (WoW) alone, while not as popular as it once was, is still the top subscription-based MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing games) with about 9.1-million players. Other MMORPGs, such as Guild Wars II also have millions of fans. Surely, there are a few politicians among their numbers. Lachowicz may well have been the first office-seeker though to face a campaign targeting her for being a gamer.

85th level Orc Rogue wins election. More >

November 8, 2012
by sjvn01
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Windows 8 is a one way street for consumer PC users

PC companies call it downgrading, but many users just call it being sensible. You buy a new computer, and instead of using the bleeding edge operating system it came with, you move to an operating system you trust. With ordinary Windows 8 on Hewlett-Packard (HP) consumer PC, or any other vendor’s retail PC, though, you’re stuck with Windows 8.

HP’s Windows 8 FAQ reads, “Downgrading is supported only for HP commercial desktop and notebook products.” That is to say systems that come with Windows 8 Pro. In any case, “HP does not recommend downgrading on any HP consumer desktop and notebook products. After October 26, 2012, HP consumer desktop and notebook products will ship only with Windows 8.”

Why? Because “Windows 7 will not be supported on these new platforms, and no drivers, apps, or Windows 7 content will be available through HP. If users choose to downgrade their HP consumer desktop or notebook system, HP will continue to support the hardware but if there is an issue where HP diagnostics are required OR it is determined that the loaded software or upgrade operating system is causing the issue, HP may suggest returning the system to the original Windows 8 OS that shipped with the computer.”

In short, if you downgrade anyway, HP is saying you’ll be your own. Good luck with that.

Windows 8 is a one way street for consumer PC users. More >

November 7, 2012
by sjvn01
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VoIP and instant messaging problem looming: Skype doesn’t support IPv6

Skype, despite built-in advertising and no privacy guarantees is still a very popular Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) client. Indeed, Microsoft is replacing Windows Live Messaging with Skype. Skype has another problem that’s becoming increasingly troublesome: It doesn’t support Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

This is rather odd. Windows 8, and earlier versions of Windows, support IPv6. With the last IPv4 addresses vanishing, more and more businesses and groups are moving to IPv6 and most MIcrosoft applications have long supported the next generation Internet protocol. By staying stuck in the IPv4 lane, Skype will not only become unusable for smoe users, it’s also becoming an obstacle to IPv6 adoption.

Cameron Byrne, Technical Staff Architect at T-Mobile, observed on the IPv6 Internet operators list that “Yet another year goes by, and Skype still remains one of the most popular apps, and thus its IPv4 dependence blocks meaningful IPv6-only adoption. Skype is the poster child of IPv4 dependence.“

VoIP and instant messaging problem looming: Skype doesn’t support IPv6. More >

November 6, 2012
by sjvn01
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Big-time gaming coming to Linux

As wonderful as it is to use Linux on a desktop PC, gaming on Linux has been one of its weakest points. Yes, there are many Linux games but nowhere near as many as on Windows. That’s changing. Valve, creator of the popular Steam game engine, has released its Steam for Linux Beta client.

Avid gamers have heard of Valve. It’s the publisher of such favorite games as Grand Thief Auto, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Today, the company said it had launched a limited access beta for its new Steam for Linux client. It also includes Big Picture, the beta mode of Steam, designed for use with a TV and controller

The Steam for Linux Beta client supports the free-to-play game Team Fortress 2. Over two dozen other Steam games are also now available for play on Linux.

“This is a huge milestone in the development of PC gaming,” said Gabe Newell, Valve president and co-founder in a statement. “Steam users have been asking us to support gaming on Linux. We’re happy to bring rich forms of entertainment and our community of users to this open, customer-friendly platform.”

Big-time gaming coming to Linux. More >

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