Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 1, 2011
by sjvn01
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Coping with September 11 2001 on the Internet

On Sept. 11, the first thing I did after staring at a jetliner taking out the second tower of the World Trade Center on CNN was pray. The second thing I did was to try to reach my friends and family who live in lower Manhattan: Me and about a million other people.

The phone system could no more handle the load than I could run to New York City from my home in the Blue Ridge mountains. So what did I do? I turned to the Internet, of course. And that’s when I heard on CNN that the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C., had just been hit-the area in which I had lived for the last 15 years.

You want to hear a voice first; I tried to call into D.C., though I knew it was futile. Hope over knowledge and knowledge won-the lines were already jammed up. Once more, I kicked on my DirecPC satellite uplink to the Internet and I was on the Internet in a minute.

Five minutes later, I was sending e-mails off my address list as fast as I could type, and the AP news service wire was scrolling in one window while The Washington Post was getting updates every 15 minutes in another.

Information was coming in fast but not fast enough, and then it hit me: instant messaging. A minute later I had my Linux Java-based AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) client up. The first person I managed to reach was my long time friend Mary Jo Foley. Inside of five minutes I knew that most of my friends and family were OK. By day’s end, I knew all of them, including the one who lived six blocks from the World Trade Center, were safe and sound. If it weren’t for the Internet, I still wouldn’t have known more than 24 hours later.

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August 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Red Hat invites users to help create the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat, the world’s leading Linux company, is asking its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users to help set the features for its next release RHEL 7. Of course, Red Hat is based on open-source Linux, and, in particular it’s Fedora community Linux operating system. There, the developers call the shots. Now the company is seeking the active help of its RHEL users as well.

This is going to be done in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Ideas discussion group on the Red Hat Customer Portal. According to the company, the “RHEL 7 Ideas discussion group is an extension to the interactive processes already underway with partners, customers and contributors in the open source community. It provides a venue for sharing thoughts and use cases and is invaluable to Red Hat engineering development groups. Access to the Red Hat Customer Portal, which includes a wealth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux information and knowledge, is provided as an important component of every Red Hat subscription.”

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August 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Life on Jobs-less Earth

No sooner did Steve Jobs announce that he was stepping down as Apple’s CEO then a swarm of stories appeared singing his praises. Fair enough. Other stories pointed out that Jobs made mistakes. OK, I can see that too. What I don’t get is all the people who are saying that Jobs wasn’t that important. That is so wrong. If we could step into a parallel world without Jobs, I doubt you’d recognize it.

It’s true that Jobs was never a great developer or engineer. He hired great developers and engineers. He also wasn’t that original. Jobs’ gifts were fourfold: He could recognize great technology when he saw it; he had a great design aesthetic; once he had a vision, he stuck with it and made it work; and he could persuade others to back it.

Doesn’t sound like much? It was everything. Let’s visit Jobs-less Earth, shall we?

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August 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Chromebooks Live!

I’ll be the first to admit that while I like Chromebooks, I own a Samsung Series 5, Chromebooks also have serious problems. Still, the Chromebook is far from being dead.

My fellow ZDNet writer, Scott Raymond argues that the consolidation of WebKit, and Chromium open-source Web browsers source code trees means the end of a need for Chromebooks–and by extensions other lightweight laptops. Specifically, Raymond argues, “If we had the Chrome browser on an Android tablet, why would we want a Chromebook? For the price of a Chromebook you could pick up an Android tablet with a keyboard that connects via dock or Bluetooth. You would have the same functionality, plus the added capabilities of Android.”

Why would I want a Chromebook? Because, while I like tablets a lot-I currently own and use a first generation iPad and a Nook Color–I also like having a single-unit, lightweight laptop.

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August 30, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google and OpenDNS join forces to speed up DNS

What do you think the number one source of traffic is on the Internet today? E-Mail? Not even close. Conventional Web sites? Not way! Porn!? No, believe it or not, it’s not that either. The single biggest source of traffic on today’s Internet is Netflix. Its videos, and those of other video sites, require their users to have not only very fast Internet connections, but fast and accurate pointers to the closest and fastest Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) sites. That’s where Google, OpenDNS, and some of CDNs hope to improve things with the Global Internet Speedup initiative, a worldwide effort to improve Internet speeds and enable faster access to information.

According to this new Internet consortium, “The Global Internet Speedup enhances the way communication within the Domain Name System (DNS) is handled. The Internet has evolved from simple text-based pages to bandwidth intensive services such as video streaming, real-time communications and rich social networking that have become indispensable parts of our everyday lives. The DNS plays a critical role in delivering content fast, acting as one of the first pieces of the routing infrastructure that helps users get to content quickly and is the cornerstone for every major CDN. CDNs and other large Internet services typically direct the user to the nearest content server based on the location of the user’s DNS server rather than the location of the user themselves. This routing may result in slower Web page load times and decreased Internet performance if a user is not located near their DNS server.”

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August 29, 2011
by sjvn01
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Firefox 6: A Firefox too far? (Review)

I used to love Firefox. For many years, it was the best Web browser around. Then, it got old and cranky. The good news is that Mozilla got serious about improving it. The bad news is that everyone else, even Microsoft with Internet Explorer 8 in 2009, did too. The other Web browser developers have caught up and surpassed Firefox. Worse still, the last few versions of Firefox haven’t been that good. Firefox 6, the newest version, is better than Firefox 5, but it’s not that great either.

Like most modern Web browsers, Firefox 6 has a “less is more” style interface. If that’s not to your taste, and I confess I like having real menus, Firefox does make it easy to bring back a more traditional Web browser interface.

Firefox also now supports, ala Google Chrome Web browser, pinned tabs. With these I can always have my favorite Web sites ready to go in tabs kept pinned to the left side of the tab bar.

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