Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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Canonical and Shuttleworth add Qt to Ubuntu Linux

Want to start a fight in Linux desktop circles? Say, loudly and obnoxiously that Qt, the programming libraries behind the KDE desktop, are better than GTK+, the libraries backing GNOME. Or, vice-versa. Either will work. Now, though, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, Ubuntu’s corporate big brother, is bringing Qt software to Ubuntu, long a GNOME stronghold.

So far I haven’t heard any shouting from the programmers’ corner, but give it a minute.

Shuttleworth made the announcement writing, “As part of our planning for Natty+1 [Ubuntu 11.10], we’ll need to find some space on the CD for Qt libraries, and we will evaluate applications developed with Qt for inclusion on the CD and default install of Ubuntu.”

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January 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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Facebook wants to be your Internet ID Card

God knows I understand that going from one Web site to another with one login and password scheme after the other is a real pain-in-the-rump. After the Gawker password fiasco it’s become clearer than ever that using the same brain-dead simple login and password from one system to another is clearly dumb. But, the idea of using Facebook (Facebook!?) Connect as a universal Internet login and password system makes me want to gag.

You see Facebook is insecure by design and privacy is given only a minimal amount of programming and lip-service. Sure, you can make your Facebook information safe, well safer, anyway, but who has the time to be constantly plugging in Facebook’s privacy holes? Especially since Facebook keeps opening up more and more or your personal information to vendors.

For example, Facebook quietly announced just before the recent three-day weekend that they were opening up a way for third-party Facebook apps developers to get to your snail-mail addresses and phone numbers. Isn’t that nice of them? I know I want the likes of Zynga, makers of FarmVille, and all their partners, to have my home address and phone number.

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January 17, 2011
by sjvn01
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WebOS: The Other Smartphone/Tablet Linux

I think that you can have too much of a good thing. I mean, I like that there are so many significant Linux distributions to choose from for servers and desktops. And, OK, I can see there being room for both Android and MeeGo on smartphones and tablets, but, really HP, do we need yet another Linux-based operating system, webOS, for tablets, phones, and netbooks? I don’t think so!

Regardless of what I think, the rumor-mill is going full-speed ahead that, on February 9th, HP will be showing off new smartphones, tablets and maybe even netbooks running webOS. Some folks, like James Kendrick, think that this news would be the cat’s meow. “Of all the product categories HP is considering for webOS, the tablet has me excited as I believe the OS is so fitting for the tablet form that it can take the competition by storm.” Really? Much as I like the idea of Android on tablets, once Google clears up exactly what it’s doing for programmers with Android for different platforms, I can’t see anyone storming Apple’s iPad anytime soon.

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January 16, 2011
by sjvn01
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Dropbox and Google Docs Integration may be on its way

Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud services that lets you store, sync, and share files over the Internet. Google Docs is one of the most popular cloud services that lets you create and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the Internet. For years, people have thought that these are two good services that would work great together. Now, it looks like Dropbox may be giving us this functionality.

During the first annual Dropbox Hack Week, a happy developer was able to set up a way to “sync files between your Google Docs and your Dropbox.” There’s no word on when this feature will show up in Dropbox, but “many of the breakthroughs made during the past week will probably be making their way to a Dropbox near you.”

Since this is a feature that users have been asking for, I suspect we’ll see it sooner than later.

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January 15, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google Defines the Sides in the HTML5 Video Fight

A few hundred words from Google Product Manager Mike Jazayeri announcing that Google would be supporting WebM and Ogg Theroa instead of the H.264 video codec in Google Chrome for the HTML5 video tag has lead to enormous controversy in browser and video circles. Now, Google has explained in more detail what’s its trying to do, and ends up defining the sides in the HTML5 video fight.

In his latest post, Jazayeri said that the prior “announcement was solely related to the HTML “Video” tag, which is part of the emerging set of standards commonly referred to as “HTML5.” We believe there is great promise in the tag and want to see it succeed. As it stands, the organizations involved in defining the HTML video standard are at an impasse. There is no agreement on which video codec should be the baseline standard. Firefox and Opera support the open WebM and Ogg Theora codecs and will not support H.264 due to its licensing requirements; Safari and IE9 support H.264. With this status quo, all publishers and developers using the tag will be forced to support multiple formats.”

This last point has been ignored by some critics who say that “H.264 is what we need.” While Jazayeri acknowledges “that H.264 has broader support in the publisher, developer, and hardware community today (though support across the ecosystem for WebM is growing rapidly). However, as stated above, there will not be agreement to make it the baseline in the HTML video standard due to its licensing requirements.”


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January 13, 2011
by sjvn01
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I, for one, welcome our Linux Penguin, Jeopardy Overlords

“I’ll take evil, science-fiction computers for $2,000,” Alex. OK, we’re not quite there yet, but in the early going, IBM’s Watson supercomputer beat Jeopardy super-champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a practice round. And, what is Watson running? Linux, of course.

There’s nothing surprising about that. The fastest of fast computers have long used Linux In the latest TOP 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, 459 of the Top 500 supercomputers were running Linux.

Watson is made up of ten racks of IBM POWER 750 servers running Linux, and has 15Terabytes of RAM; 2,880 3.55GHz POWER7 processor cores and operates at 80 Teraflops. You’re not going to find one of these at your local Best Buy.

Watson isn’t just an ordinary supercomputer though crunching linear equations, the Linpack Benchmark, at ever faster speeds. By comparison, that’s easy. No, IBM has been working on Watson for almost four years on solving the problem of ‘understanding’ natural language questions.

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