Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google and Intel Android pairing spells trouble for Microsoft

While all the attention was on Windows 8’s preview this week I wonder whether the real end-user operating news wasn’t happening elsewhere. To be exact, I think Google and Intel’s announcement that Android was coming to the Intel chip family will end up being the bigger news.

My fellow ZDNet writer James Kendrick touches on this when he says that, besides Intel and Google themselves, the winners of this deal include “OEMs already fluently speaking Intel yet not already on the Android team.” You know, those companies like Dell that have been speaking fluent Windows for the last couple of decades.

I’m not suggesting that Android will challenge Windows on the desktop. No, I think Google’s Chrome OS can spell trouble for desktop Windows, but not Android. Not yet anyway.

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September 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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Windows 8 distribution takes a page from Linux

You, yes you, can now download a copy of Windows 8. This marks the first time that Microsoft has released a pre-beta version of one of their flagship programs to the general public. I wonder where they got that idea. Could it be from Linux? After all Linux distributions has been making early versions available to the public since Linux started 20-years ago.

The Windows 8 Developer Preview alpha build, was released shortly after 8 PM Eastern on Tuesday, September 13th. The last time, debuted a similar developers preview of Windows 7 in October 2008, the company limited the early look to attendees at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC). The unwashed general public to wait until next year for a beta . That failed. Copies were leaked to BitTorrent sites within hours.

This time Microsoft elected to cut out the middle man and just release the preview to everyone… just like Linux distributors.

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September 13, 2011
by sjvn01
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Some Linux Foundation crack attack details emerge

A well-maintained secure operating system, like Linux, can be safe. But, that doesn’t mean that a Website built on top of it is necessarily safe. The Linux Foundation has found out the hard way. The Linux Foundation’s main site, and related sites such as Linux.com are still down after a break-in was discovered on September 8th.

This attack came on the heels of the main Linux development site, kernel.org, being compromised in late August. Kernel.org is still down. In the meantime, Linus Torvalds has uploaded the mainline Linux source code to GitHub. This is a site that uses Git, a distributed version control system, for distributed software development. Once kernel.org is back in working order though Torvalds will be returning the code to it.

But while work continues apace on this site and over the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), the Linux Foundation sites remain dark. If you visit these sites you’ll find the following message:

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September 13, 2011
by sjvn01
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What’s coming in Ubuntu’s new Unity Linux desktop

As Microsoft shows Windows 8 off in its first dog and pony show, it seems to me to be a good time to note that Microsoft isn’t the only company bringing out a new look for the PC desktop. Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company is also transforming its Unity desktop.

Unity, for those of you who don’t know it, is based on the GNOME desktop, but it takes an entirely different approach with the desktop shell. Since I dislike the latest GNOME 3 desktop, that’s fine by me. Unity, with its tablet-style interface isn’t designed for hard-core Linux users, although we can use it too. It’s really designed more for casual users who are new to Linux or casual Windows users who want to try something better.

According to Canonical founder, Mark Shuttleworth the next version of Unity, which is due out in October, “Our goal with Unity is unprecedented ease of use, visual style and performance on the Linux desktop.”

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September 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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Lock Out the Security Idiots

After I wrote about the latest stupid user security trick, several of my friends reminded me that one-third of my audience already knows how to secure their computers and did so, another third sort-of-knew how to secure their PCs and did it sometimes, and the remainder had never, wouldn’t now, and never would learn how to protect their computers. This article is for the people who manage that last third.

You see, if it was just Joe and his never-patched Windows XP PC at home who was getting into trouble, I wouldn’t mind. But, it’s not. All of us are stuck with the mess: having to clean up the litter of spam, malware, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that junks up our Internet highway. And, if you have a Joe in your office every time who causes mayhem every time he hooks into the office network over the virtual private network (VPN) or brings in a USB drive, he’s bringing his crap right into your network.

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September 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google+, Real Names, and Groklaw’s Pamela Jones

Around and around we go with Google+’s real name policy. Sometimes, Google seems ready to reconsider its policy of requiring Google+ social network user to use their “real name,” but then Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, “justifies” the strict real name policy by saying, “Google+ is completely optional.” Sigh. That really misses the point. Rather than rehash the virtues of allowing people to use pseudonyms, I thought I’d ask someone who has both a noteworthy online identity and a long history of having trouble with keeping the public out of her private life: Groklaw’s founder Pamela Jones.

For those of you who missed it, Pamela “PJ” Jones started the intellectual property (IP) legal news and analysis Groklaw site to battle the FUD SCO was throwing out about Linux violating its Unix copyrights back in 2003. In the end, SCO was destroyed and it was proven-oh the irony-that Novell actually owned Unix’s IP.

In the meantime, though PJ, who’s a very private person, was subjected to death threats, invasion of her privacy by junkyard journalists, and even claims that she wasn’t a real person at all. There really is a PJ. I’ve met her, and as it happens her “real name” is Pamela Jones.

Just because she has a real name though and she’s a well-known online legal expert and journalist, doesn’t mean that she wants Google, or anyone else, drawing a direct line from “PJ” the paralegal and analyst/reporter and the Pamela Jones who lives at X address in Y City. So what does she think of Google’s instance of making those connections from online to real-world identities?

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