Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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Real Help for your Network’s IPv6 Transition

The Internet’s IPv4 clock keeps ticking down. As Robert Cannon, the FCC’s senior counsel for Internet law, observed recently, “The original [Internet] address space, IPv4, is nearly exhausted.” He’s so right.

Still, I’ll bet most of you are still scared to death of having to learn IPv6, never mind actually deploying it. I know I would be if I were an overworked network administrator. Fortunately, there is help.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just released Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6 (PDF Link). This is an excellent and free 188 page guide to IPv6.

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January 10, 2011
by sjvn01
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Black Duck gets Bigger

When Black Duck Software started in the early 2000s, its mission was to reassure companies that there was no real legal risk in using open-source software, despite SCO crying wolf. That was then. This is now. Today, Black Duck is becoming a one-stop, open-source business advisor for organizations, government bodies, and businesses. The company took a big step forward in doing this by acquiring The Olliance Group, a privately-held, open-source business and strategy consulting firm.

This acquisition, Black Duck’s third in a matter of months, expands the company’s offerings to include open-source business and strategy consulting services to help its enterprise IT clients capitalize on the significant strategic, technological, and financial benefits of open-source software. Black Duck acquisitions include Koders.com, an open-source code search engine, best known for its Ruby resources; Ohloh.net, a popular directory of open-source software and a vibrant Web community; and SpikeSource, a software tools and services provider.

Olliance Group, while it will be wholly owned by Black Duck, will remain an independent business within the company. Andrew Aitken, Founder of the Olliance Group, and Greg Olsen, Senior Partner, will join Black Duck. Aitken will serve as General Manager of the Olliance Group business unit, and also will continue to independently organize and manage the Open Source Think Tank, a commercial open-source industry conference.

Black Duck plans to take a hands off approach to Olliance.

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January 9, 2011
by sjvn01
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Android runs down iPhone in the Smartphone Races

Yes, Apple’s iPhone is popular, and yes it looks like Verizon is finally going to release an iPhone, but Android phones have turned out to be even more popular.

In its latest survey of U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending November 2010, comScore reported that while RIM continued to lead among smartphone platforms with 33.5 percent market share, Android charged past the iPhone to take second place. To be exact, Google Android captured the number two spot in November with 26.0 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers. Apple took third with 25.0 percent; followed by Microsoft with 9.0 percent and Palm in the back with 3.9 percent.

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January 8, 2011
by sjvn01
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No GPL Apps for Apple’s App Store

Some people swore to me that just because the free-software General Public License (GPL) clashes with the Apple App Store’s Terms of Service (ToS), didn’t mean that Apple would actually pull down GPLed apps. Well, Apple just did. Rémi Denis-Courmont, a Linux developer and the popular VLC media player, has just announced that Apple had pulled the popular GPLed VLC media player from its App Store.

Denis-Courmont wrote, “On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved–the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.”

It certainly didn’t come as a surprise to Denis-Courmont who pointed out that Apple’s ToS conflicted with VLC’s GPLv2 licensing on October 25th when he sent a formal notification of “copyright infringement … to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. VLC media player is free software licensed solely under the terms of the open source GNU General Public License (a.k.a. GPL). Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices.”

His action did not go over well with some other VideoLAN, the non-profit organization behind VLC, developers. As Denis-Courmont wrote at this time, “Some people have commented that this will damage the project’s reputation. Maybe so. Blame those who published and/or advertised VLC for iPad. The fact of the GPL incompatibility was already well known.”

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January 7, 2011
by sjvn01
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Broadcom (Yes, Broadcom) joins the Linux Foundation

A major pain point for Linux desktop users over the years has been a lack of Wi-Fi chipset support. That’s been changing for the better over the last few years, but I still find it a little amazing that on Monday, January 10th, the Linux Foundation will announce that Broadcom, yes Broadcom, will be joining the Foundation.

You see, for years, Linux notebook users have had a hate-hate relationship with Broadcom. While Atheros and Intel provided Linux Wi-FI drivers and code, Broadcom did little to nothing for Linux users. Broadcom started changing its ways in 2007 and started offering more and more support for Linux. Then, in September 2010, Broadcom released the source code for the “initial release of a fully-open Linux driver for its latest generation of 11n chipsets.”

Since then, that driver has been integrated into the latest Linux kernel release 2.6.37 and, as a result, is actively being improved upon by the entire Linux community. Even so, for Broadcom, with its vast portfolio of semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, to join the Linux Foundation is a surprise. It’s also a very pleasant one.

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January 6, 2011
by sjvn01
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Qualcomm & Atheros: The Marriage of 4G and Wi-Fi

The biggest technology news this week didn’t come from CES in Las Vegas. No, the biggest news story was that Qualcomm, a major mobile phone radio silicon player, is buying Atheros, one of the leading lights of Wi-Fi silicon. Put them together and what do you get? I’ll tell you what you get; you eventually get PCs, notebooks, tablets, smartphones, whatever, that can cheaply connect with both 4G and Wi-Fi networks.

Universal connectivity is one of the big CES themes. As NPR’s Laura Sydell said she’d seen “more Internet-connected devices than I’ve ever seen [before] at CES and some of them are talking to one another.” Of course, people at CES are also seeing how all this connectivity can fail, and I mean really fail as Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will be “happy” to tell you all about that.

Besides there just not being enough bandwidth to go around at CES, one of the things they’re not telling you at CES is how hard it is to put all that 3G, 4G and wireless technology into a single device. That’s why I thought the news that Sierra Wireless bringing ready to go 4G for device OEMs was noteworthy news. This isn’t easy to do.

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