Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 13, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments

Strangeloop offers the first Google SPDY Web-site acceleration product

Do you want a really fast Web site? I mean really fast? Then there’s a variety of proxies, Web caching and secure-socket layer (SSL) accelerators you can try. If that’s still not enough, it’s time for you to look into Strangeloop’s implementation of Google’s SPDY into its Site Optimizer product line.

SPDY, pronounced “speedy,”is an experimental replacement protocol for HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). SPDY works by compressing both the data and HTTP header information n the stream between a Web browsers and Web servers that support it. It also speeds Web sites up by prioritizing data requests. That way the important data, say a video stream, gets priority over JavaScript. In practice, I’ve seen performance boosts of up to 15%.

To do this you need a browser that supports SPDY, like Chrome or a computer that comes with SPDY built in, such as the Samsung Chromebook.

That’s the easy part. The hard part was getting SPDY supported on the Web server side. There’s been some experimental code you could use, but nothing you could really put with confidence on a production site. That’s where Strangeloop comes in.

More >

June 13, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments

The first Chromebook Review: Samsung Series 5

If you want a Windows laptop, get a Windows laptop. But, if you want an easy-to-use, Web-based laptop, consider getting a Chromebook. So long as you realize that the Samsung Series 5 and its brother from another company, the Acer Chromebook, is not a full-featured Windows or Linux notebook computer you’ll be fine.

So it is that I’m pretty happy with my brand new Samsung Series 5 3G. While neither Chromebook will be generally available until June 15th, I was able to get my hands on one a week early. I’ve been working with mine for several days now and this is what I’ve found.

More >

June 10, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments

Free Software Foundation favors LibreOffice over OpenOffice

When Oracle, IBM, and the Apache Software Foundation jointly announced last week that OpenOffice.org would become an official Apache project, some open-source developers were not happy. The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice programmers were really not pleased. Now, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is coming out against the deal.

In a statement that will be released later today, June 10th, 2011, the FSF states that the “OpenOffice.org is an important piece of free software, and many of its supporters suggest that this change will give them more control over the project’s future direction. However, users and contributors should be aware that, as part of this transition, it will become easier for proprietary software developers to distribute OpenOffice.org as non-free software.”

More >

June 9, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments

Software Patent Blockbuster: Microsoft loses to i4i

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today against Microsoft in its appeal of a $290 million jury verdict for infringing Canadian software company i4i’s patent. It wasn’t close. SCOTUS unanimously upheld a U.S. appeals court’s ruling against Microsoft.

Microsoft had argued that the courts should adopt a lower burden-of-proof bar for patent violations. Previously, if you’ve been accused of violating a patent you must show “clear and convincing evidence” that the patent is invalid. Microsoft wants the burden of proof to be lowered to “a preponderance of the evidence.” The SCOTUS didn’t buy this argument for one minute.

In the Court’s unanimous decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote (PDF Link), “We consider whether [a section of the Patent Act of 1952] requires an invalidity defense to be proved by clear and convincing evidence. We hold that it does.”

More >

June 8, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments

Linux Foundation’s t-shirt competition

Normally, I look at serious subjects, but what the heck, Linux is turning 20 this year–although as its creator Linus Torvalds is the first to say deciding exactly when Linux turns 20 is a matter of debate–so why not tell you about the Linux Foundation’s “20th anniversary of Linux” t-shirt contest.

More >

June 8, 2011
by sjvn01
0 comments

The World IPv6 Day report card

Internet administrators were 99.9999% sure that World IPv6 Day would go by without any real problems. Of course, when you’re dealing with something as big as the Internet, even six nines of up-time could mean hundreds of thousands of users with trouble. So far, though, all is well.

At noon Eastern time, all the dual-stacked IPv4/IPv6 sites on the Réseaux IP Européens’ (RIPE, French for “European IP Networks”) IPv6 Eye Chart are checking in green. This means that these major Web sites are working correctly both for people using the traditional Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) Internet and users working with IPv6. This was one of the project’s major goals. The last thing Internet network system operators wanted was to find that their IPv6 support was breaking the Internet for the vast majority of users.

Breaking the Internet would have been “Bad.” There’s a lot of network administrators out there now who are no longer holding their breath.

More >