Practical Technology

for practical people.

July 27, 2011
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu Linux gets serious about business partners

Most people, who like Linux, love Ubuntu. Oh they may object to Ubuntu’s new Unity desktop, but at day’s end, they still use Ubuntu. Technology businesses though have a more jaundiced view of Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company. Canonical, though, is now taking steps now to make its potential hardware and software partners happier.

First, Canonical is trying to become better friends with its reseller partners. Their new channel partner program, Ubuntu Advantage (UA) is “designed to help resellers bring a new set of support services for Ubuntu server, desktop and cloud installations direct to businesses. The program is launching with global partners, including CSS in the US, Asia and Europe, Middle-East and Africa (EMEA).”

The name of the game, according to Canonical, is to “provide enterprise customers with access to the tools and support they need to get maximum return from their Ubuntu infrastructure including round the clock support, Ubuntu Landscape management and monitoring tool, knowledge base and legal cover. Ubuntu Advantage helps to minimize any impact on mission-critical services and reduce the cost of system downtime. The Ubuntu Advantage partner program extends the availability of these services beyond Canonical and, for customers, adds local resources and responsiveness to the expertise that Canonical continues to provide.”

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July 26, 2011
by sjvn01
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Paradise Lost: Paris Hilton arrives on Google+

Those of us lucky enough to be on Google+ love it. Oh, we may get really upset about Google’s real name policies, and how Google’s attempts to improve it haven’t gone far enough. But, we only get so passionate about it because we love it so. We love how it allows us to have intelligent, private conversations in our select circles, how we can have multiple-person video-conferences at will, and how…. who the heck let Paris Hilton in here!

Ack!

Yes. It’s true. Google+ has gone from being the hangout of the technical elite and buddies to being the latest online hangout of that star of amateur porn and really, really bad reality TV, Paris Hilton.

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July 26, 2011
by sjvn01
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Internet IPv6 adoption is going no-where fast

I’m not the least bit surprised that more people and companies haven’t moved to IPv6. Yes, they know that we’re running out of IPv4 Internet addresses. Indeed, some may know that Asia’s already run out of IPv4 addresses. But does that mean that they’re switching over to the IPv6 Internet? According to Akamai’s State of the Internet 2011 1st Quarter, the answer is a big fat no.

It’s not like the Internet has stopped growing. Far from it. Akamai, a major content delivery network (CDN), reports, “In the first quarter of 2011, over 584 million unique IP addresses, from 237 countries/regions, connected to the Akamai network – 5.2% more IP addresses than in the fourth quarter of 2010, and 20% more than in the first quarter of 2009. Although we see more than half a billion unique IP addresses, Akamai believes that we see well over one billion Web users. This is because, in some cases, multiple individuals may be represented by a single IP address (or small number of IP addresses), because they access the Web through a firewall or proxy server. Conversely, individual users can have multiple IP addresses associated with them, due to their use of multiple connected devices.”

And, let me remind you that that estimated billion is just for those who’ve connected through Akamai to make a Mac OS X Lion download or watch a video. We’re closing quickly in on IPv4’s hard limit of 4.3-billion. Indeed, according to ABI Research our smartphones and tablets alone will hit the one billion IPv4 mark in 2011.

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July 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google revises Google+ real name management policy

Over the weekend, Google annoyed numerous one-time Google+ users by blowing away their accounts because they’d broken Google’s name restrictions. That went over well. As I asked at the time, “What was Google thinking!?” Google’s senior VP of social, Vic Gundotra, explained Google’s logic for insisting on real names, as an attempt to set a positive tone, “like when a restaurant doesn’t allow people who aren’t wearing shirts to enter.” Now, Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of Google+, stated on a Google+ post that Google will be changing its naming policies “as soon as possible. We’ve already improved our process, and the changes below should arrive in a matter of weeks.”

First, Horowitz apologized for how Google had been handling many of its Google+ users’ choice of names. “We’ve noticed that many violations of the Google+ common name policy were in fact well-intentioned and inadvertent and for these users our process can be frustrating and disappointing. So we’re currently making a number of improvements to this process– specifically regarding how we notify these users that they’re not in compliance with Google+ policies and how we communicate the remedies available to them.“

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July 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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Death, Facebook, and Spamware

Did you ever notice that we’re a morbid bunch. No sooner had the brilliant singer Amy Winehouse lose her battle with addiction and died, then a new Facebook spam leak appeared. It purported to advertise, of course, a video of her strung on crack hours before her tragic death.

Excuse me as I throw up.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, the anti-virus and security company, reported that the Winehouse Facebook spamware appeared four hours after her death.

The Facebook spamware appeared with at least five different images and messages. If you clicked on it, you’d end up sending the spam link to all your Facebook friends—and we appreciate it, really we do—and ending up, at this time, at a survey page. After that, there’s no telling what you might get. Some malware on your Windows PC; attempts to trick your mobile phone number out of you so you can be sent $2.00 news calls that you “asked” for; etc. etc.

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July 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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Sun CEO explicitly endorsed Java’s use in Android: What do you say now Oracle?

If you believe Oracle’s patent lawsuits against Google for its use of Java in Android, Google has stolen not just patented ideas but directly copied Java code. In short, Google is a red-handed thief and should pay Oracle over a billion in damages. There’s just one little problem with this portrayal of Google as an intellectual property (IP) bandit. When Android first came out, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, then Java’s owner, greeted the news with “heartfelt congratulations.” Whoops.

While Schwartz’s blog post has since been erased by Oracle, Groklaw found the page and has republished it In his note, Schwartz not only congratulates Google “on the announcement of their new Java/Linux phone platform, Android.,” he goes on to announce that “Sun is the first platform software company to commit to a complete developer environment around the platform, as we throw Sun’s NetBeans developers platform for mobile devices behind the effort. We’ve obviously done a ton of work to support developers on all Java based platforms, and we’re pleased to add Google’s Android to the list.”

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