Practical Technology

for practical people.

February 12, 2013
by sjvn01
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Raytheon Riot: Defense spying is coming to social networks

According to the Guardian, multi-national security company Raytheon has developed Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot), a big data, social-networking spy program.

With Riot, a user — typically a government official — will be able to pull together your life-history; your relationships with other people; and the places where you’re most likely to be found. These tracking profiles are based not just on obvious information, such as your listing of a hometown on Facebook or FourSquare GPS location data, but also from “invisible” location metadata from digital photographs.

Raytheon Riot: Defense spying is coming to social networks. More >

February 10, 2013
by sjvn01
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Linux developers working on uniting Windows 8 Secure Boot fixes

Thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 8 UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) Secure Boot there was no easy way to boot Linux, or any other operating system, on Windows 8 PCs. Now, there are two ways, the recently released Linux Foundation (LF) UEFI secure boot system and Matthew Garrett’s shim system to boot Linux on these PCs. Soon, there will be only one unified way.

Linux developers working on uniting Windows 8 Secure Boot fixes. More >

February 10, 2013
by sjvn01
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Apple iPhone and iPad iOS 6 network problems linger on

It’s been more than four months since Apple introduced iOS 6, but for many iPhone and iPad users Wi-Fi problems are still lingering on and new network problems have appeared with the 6.1 upgrade.

After iOS 6 first arrived, an immediate Wi-Fi problem appeared and was quickly fixed. We’d hoped that would be the end of iDevices not being able to connect with Wi-Fi access points (AP)s. Our hopes were in vain.

Apple iPhone and iPad iOS 6 network problems linger on. More >

February 6, 2013
by sjvn01
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We still need mail as well as e-mail

Mea culpa. I use e-mail for 90 percent of my communications, instant messaging (IM) for 9.0 percent, and voice for 0.9 percent. That only leaves 0.1 percent for old-fashioned paper mail. Still, I am, and I don’t think anyone else is, really ready for the US Postal Service (USPS) to halt Saturday delivery of first-class mail on August 1st..

he financial reasoning for this move is that by shrinking delivery from six days a week to five for first-class mail, this move would save the financially strapped U.S. Postal Service $2 billion a year. Packages, priority, and express mail would still get Saturday delivery. This money-saving approach is, of course, dead wrong.

We still need mail as well as e-mail. More >