Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 28, 2013
by sjvn01
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Chrome OS’ gains, Windows 8’s pains

The blame game for Windows 8’s market failure has already started. Microsoft blames OEMs. OEMs blame Microsoft. The bottom line is that Windows 8 has sunk below Vista levels of failure. The surprising winner in all this? Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS.

I thought Chrome OS had a shot at the big-time. I didn’t expect it a major PC OEM, Acer, to introduce a Chromebook in late 2012 and a few months later have it account for 5 to 10% of its US shipments. At the same time, as Acer CEO Jim Wong said “Windows 8 itself is still not successful.“

Chrome OS’ gains, Windows 8’s pains. More >

January 27, 2013
by sjvn01
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LibreOffice 4.0: The big changes will be under the hood

I use LibreOffice as my main office suite every day on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. So, when I saw that there a new major release due in early February LibreOffice 4.0, I was excited. It turns out though that while there will be some improvements for users like myself, the significant changes will be for developers.

LibreOffice 4.0: The big changes will be under the hood. More >

January 26, 2013
by sjvn01
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Google+ moves up to second place in social networks

Last year, many people dismissed Google’s Google+ social network as a “virtual ghost town.” That was then. This is now. According to GlobalWebIndex, Google+, with 343-million active users, has become the second largest social network globally. As Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior VP of engineering, observed, “That is a lot of ghosts”

Google+ moves up to second place in social networks. More >

January 25, 2013
by sjvn01
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High Efficiency Video Coding will help bring 4K video to Internet TV

4K TV sounds great, but it has this one big problem: 4K video content is honking huge. An answer may be at hand. The ITU has just given first-stage approval to a new, much more efficient video codec: High Efficiency Video Coding’ (HEVC).

How much better is HEVC? According to the ITU, HEVC video “need only half the bit rate of its predecessor: ITU-T H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 ‘Advanced Video Coding’ (AVC). That, in turn, means that 4K TV broadcasting becomes possible over bandwidth as slow as 20 to 30Mbps. It also means that HDTV over the Internet may be watchable at DSL speeds of 4 to 6 MBPS.

High Efficiency Video Coding will help bring 4K video to Internet TV. More>

January 24, 2013
by sjvn01
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Big bugs, big bucks: Pwn2Own awards reach half a million

Web-browser developers like to talk the talk about being more secure. But it’s at the CanSecWest security conference that they have to walk the walk as hackers compete for over half-a-million dollars in cash and prizes during the HP Zero Day Initiative’s (ZDI) annual Pwn2Own competition.

In previous years, Pwn2Own competitors fought to break into Web browsers. For the first time, hackers will also be tackling browser plug-in vulnerabilities as well.

According to Brian Gorenc, the manager of the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) at HP DVLabs, “Over the last several years, we have seen browser plug-in vulnerabilities become increasingly popular in exploit kits and malware. These vulnerabilities affect a large percentage of the Internet community and are quickly weaponized by attackers. That being said, we are not forgetting about the browser, as we will again be focusing on finding, demonstrating, and responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities in all the popular web browsers.”

Big bugs, big bucks: Pwn2Own awards reach half a million. More >

January 24, 2013
by sjvn01
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OpenSUSE also considers switching from MySQL to MariaDB

MySQL may still be the “most popular open-source database” for now, but its day may be ending. Just like Fedora, which is considering switching out MySQL for the MySQL fork MariaDB, openSUSE is also considering making MariaDB its default database management system (DBMS).

Fedora’s change to MariaDB looks to be more certain than openSUSE‘s (SUSE‘s community Linux) potential move. In Fedora’s case, the shift is being suggested by Jaroslav Reznik, Red Hat’s Fedora project manager, and there seems to be no opposition.

At openSUSE, though, the move is being proposed by Michal Hrušecký, an openSUSE developer, rather than a SUSE official. His arguments for MariaDB are similar to Reznik’s. Hrušecký wrote, “Originally I was sticking to Oracle’s MySQL as a default to keep it conservative and stable, but over the years MariaDB proved to be stable and lately they were even faster in fixing some security issues.”

OpenSUSE also considers switching from MySQL to MariaDB. More >