Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Want to learn how to program on Android?

Tomorrow, February 1st, the Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, will be announcing six new training courses dedicated to the development of Linux-based mobile operating systems Android and MeeGo.

What with Android seeing 2,000 percent growth in tabletsaccording to Strategy Analytics, there’s a lot of Android programming work coming. This growth, I might add, came before most Android tablets were even out. The real rush of Android tablets to the market won’t happen until later this year.

On top of that, IDC estimates that 17 million tablets were shipped worldwide in 2010, and that in 2011 there will be 44.6 million tablets shipped. Sure a lot of those will be iPads but many of them are also going to be powered by Android.

Let me also point out that Strategy Analytics wasn’t even looking at the smartphone market. Both in homes and in businesses, Android phones is making a real war of it with Apple’s iPhone.

If you want to be a programmer-solider on the in that war on the Android side, you need to know Android. That’s why the Linux Foundation will be offering three new Android classes:

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January 31, 2011
by sjvn01
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Without broadband, the Internet in Egypt

When Egypt cut the Internet off for the vast majority of its citizens, the Egyptian government did a frighteningly good job of turning off the Internet. But, despite their efforts, in the days that have followed, Egyptians are reaching out to each other and the world with a mix of old-fashioned dial-up modems and satellite Internet.

Make no mistake about it, the Egyptian government did what they intended to do: They’ve cut their people from using the modern broadband Internet. Using cobbled together technology, however, Egyptian Internet users has continued on.

Thanks to dial-up modems, some Egyptians are able to login to international modem pools outside the government’s control. Internet activist groups like Werebuild and Telecomix are publishing lists of international modem-dial up numbers. While, there are several Egyptian ISPs that offer dial-up, but these, at best, still keep their users locked in Egypt, and I’m told by sources in Egypt that they often don’t work even for connecting with other Egyptian sites.

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January 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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How the Internet went out in Egypt

We think of the Internet as universal. We think of it in terms of a utility like electricity or water. It’s none of those things. In some countries, like the U.S., it would be very hard to ‘turn off’ the Internet. In places like Egypt, though, with a limited number of Internet backbones and a handful of Domain Name Service (DNS) servers, it’s easy. Here’s how it appears the Egyptian government turned their country’s Internet off.

First, here are some bare basics on how the Internet works. Every time you go to a Web site, you use its domain name such as Yahoo, ZDNet, etc. to find it. That’s not what the Internet’s software uses though to hook you up to a Web site. Instead, your network connection uses address resolver software to look up the site’s IP (Internet Protocol) address at a DNS server from the natural language address you’ve given it work work with. DNS is the Internet master address list. With it, instead of writing out an Internet IPv4 address like “http://209.85.135.99/,” one of Google’s many addresses, you can simply type in “http://www.google.com” and you’ll be you on your way. But, DNS can only work if it has the right address information in it.

One of the things that Egypt has done to block out the Internet is remove access to its DNS servers. As Mark Hoffman of the Internet Storm Center, which monitors malicious activity on the Internet, explained, “From an IT security perspective how do you shut down a country? From what I can see for us external to the country access to the DNS servers is removed.”

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January 28, 2011
by sjvn01
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The Internet goes dark in Egypt

First, Egypt blocked social networks like Facebook and Twitter. I had no trouble believing the Egyptian government would do that. But, when I first heard that Egypt had blocked the Internet, I was inclined to doubt the stories. Since then though I’ve heard from a technically savvy source, Renesys, an Internet analytics firm, that Egypt really has blocked the vast majority of its Internet connections. In short, the Egyptian government has cut its people off from the Internet.

According to James Cowie, Renesys’ CTO, “In an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.”

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January 26, 2011
by sjvn01
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Google has forked Android

The last thing I wanted to see was Android to split into two “official” versions. Well, guess what, for all intents and purposes that’s what’s happened. Ack!

It’s bad enough that Android has multiple current versions. Then, Xavier Ducrohet, Android SDK (Software Developer Kit) Tech Lead, announced “Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is a new version of the Android platform that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.”

I asked multiple people at Google if they could expand on this news. None of this could.

So, I’ll spell out what I think is happening here. We’re seeing an Android fork. There will be one line for smartphones, the current Android 2.3, Gingerbread, line, and the forthcoming Android 3, Honeycomb, line.

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January 26, 2011
by sjvn01
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Facebook secures your Internet Connection

Far too many people still aren’t taking the Web security holes that Firefox exposed seriously. I can still sit in any coffee house and look over most users’ shoulders to see what they’re doing on the Web. Facebook to its credit though has taken the threat seriously and is now offering secure Internet connections using HTTPS to its users.

According to Alex Rice, a Facebook security engineer, “Starting today we’ll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS. You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools. The option will exist as part of our advanced security features, which you can find in the ‘Account Security’ section of the Account Settings page.”

Rice adds, “There are a few things you should keep in mind before deciding to enable HTTPS. Encrypted pages take longer to load, so you may notice that Facebook is slower using HTTPS. In addition, some Facebook features, including many third-party applications, are not currently supported in HTTPS. We’ll be working hard to resolve these remaining issues. We are rolling this out slowly over the next few weeks, but you will be able to turn this feature on in your Account Settings soon. We hope to offer HTTPS as a default whenever you are using Facebook sometime in the future.”

That’s not quite true. Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or TLS/SSL over HTTP (HTTPS) used to be cost a lot in terms of computer performance. Today, though, if you have a newer PC and you’re not running multiple applications running at once, you shouldn’t notice any significant performance penalty.

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