Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 6, 2012
by sjvn01
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CBS finally comes to Hulu

There are some CBS shows, such as The Good Wife, that I absolutely love. Unfortunately, I don’t have a local CBS station for over-the-air (OTA) reception and trying to push CBS Internet TV from a PC to my televison isn’t easy. In the end, I’ve just ended up subscribing to seasons via iTunes and watching them with my Apple TV. Now, CBS has finally made a deal with Hulu. Well, Hulu Plus really.

And, unlike ABC, Fox, and NBC, you won’t be able to watch some network prime-time shows the next day. Instead, Hulu Plus subscribers will have access to more than 2,600 episodes from library series such as “Medium,” “Numb3rs” and “CSI: Miami,” as well as classics such as “Star Trek,” “I Love Lucy” and “The Twilight Zone.” More recent shows will only be available the year after they’ve hit the airwaves. In short, I can forget about watching the current season of The Good Wife over Hulu or Hulu Plus.

CBS finally comes to Hulu. More >

November 5, 2012
by sjvn01
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Android tablets beat out Apple iPad mini’s graphics

Lots of people may have bought Apple’s new iPad mini, but that doesn’t mean that they bought the best 7″ tablet. When it comes to the display, graphics expert Raymond M. Soneira, president of DisplayMate, found that the two most popular 7″ Android tablets, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7, had better displays.

After running a comprehensive series of DisplayMate’s Mobile Display Technology Shoot-Out tests, Soneira found that while the “iPad mini is certainly a very capable small Tablet, but it does not follow in Apple’s tradition of providing the best display, or at least a great display – it has just a very capable display. What’s more, the displays on existing mini Tablets from Amazon and Google outperform the iPad mini in most of our Lab tests.”

Why didn’t the iPad mini measure up? According to Soneira’s analysis, “Some of this results from constraints within the iPad product line, and some to realistic constraints on display technology and costs, but much of it is due to a number of poor choices and compromises.”

Android tablets beat out Apple iPad mini’s graphics. More >

November 5, 2012
by sjvn01
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HP doubles down on Linux

At LinuxCon Europe in Barcelona, Spain, the Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating Linux’s growth, announced that HP “is making a strategic, long-term investment in Linux by upgrading to Platinum membership. Other Platinum members include Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm Innovation Center, and Samsung.”

HP doubles down on Linux

November 5, 2012
by sjvn01
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Grandpa the programmer

I’m 56. I’m not a grandfather — not yet anyway — but I’m old enough to be one. I first used the Internet in the ’70s. My first programming language was IBM 360 Assembler. My first operating system was the IBM mainframe’s OS/360. I was the first journalist to write about this new network service called the Web and say it just might matter. You know what? I think I may just know a wee bit about computing.

I’m far from the only one. Lately, though, I’ve been noticing that the old meme about how grandpa can’t understand iPhones, Linux or the cloud seems to be showing up more often even as it’s becoming increasingly irrelevant. I’ve been guilty of using it myself.

Think about it. The big names of our field? Dennis Ritchie, creator of C and Unix, was 70 when he died last year. Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix, is 67. James Gosling, founder of Java, is 57. Bill Gates is 56. So is Steve Ballmer. Steve Jobs was 56 when he left us. Tim Cook, his successor as head of Apple, is 51.

Grandpa the programmer. More >

November 4, 2012
by sjvn01
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Apple’s iOS 6.0.1 still has Wi-Fi bugs

The latest version of Apple’s new operating system for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch, iOS 6.0.1, is still giving some Apple device users Wi-Fi fits.

You’d think by now, seven weeks after Apple released iOS 6, the technology giant would have fixed all this major mobile operating system’s Wi-Fi networking problems. Wrong.

Customers are still reporting that Wi-Fi is completely inaccessible with a grayed out Wi-Fi option even after the recent 6.0.1 update. As before, this problem seems to strike Apple iPhone 4S users far more often than other users. Any Apple device running iOS 6.x may be vulnerable though.

Apple’s iOS 6.0.1 still has Wi-Fi bugs

November 4, 2012
by sjvn01
0 comments

NBC Web sites hacked

NBC, the major U.S. television network, suffered a Web site hack earlier today. The sites are now coming back up, but hours after the initial Sunday morning attacks, there are still dead pages and others that aren’t working properly.

According to Deadline Hollywood, the attack first appeared to hit such popular specific sites such as Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon, and Jay Leno pages. It quickly became apparent that the attack was much bigger and it also hit the main NBC site. At the time of writing, 3:15 p.m. EST, some NBC pages are still down, and many others are still broken.

NBC Web sites hacked. More >