Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 25, 2011
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Are you in danger of Phone call hacking?

Unlike the UK’s Royal family, I doubt anyone is listening in on my phone calls. But, if someone wanted to, they could.

Many mobile phone calls in the U.S. and Europe are encrypted with a stream cipher called A5/1, which is commonly used, in GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) voice communications. A5/1 is not secure. It’s been broken for years.

More recently, in 2009, A5/1 was busted by a German hacker in a way that demonstrated that if you can capture the voice stream anyone with generic computer equipment could break it. Since then, A5/1 has only gotten easier to crack.

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January 25, 2011
by sjvn01
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First LibreOffice Release arrives

The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice, the OpenOffice office suite fork, is on a winning streak. No sooner than Ubuntu lets the world know that LibreOffice is its office suite of choice, than the next day the first full, shipping version of the program, LibreOffice 3.3, is released.

LibreOffice 3.3 includes numerous new features when compared to its OpenOffice parent. To my mind, the most important of these for modern office workers is that it has much better import and export tools for Microsoft Office 2007 and above OpenXML formats. Love them or hate them–I hate them myself–more and more businesses are using these formats and being able to work with them is becoming a business-critical feature. In addition, LibreOffice can also now import Adobe PDF, Microsoft Works, and Lotus Word Pro documents and has better WordPerfect document import facilities.

According to The Document Foundation, “LibreOffice 3.3 also incorporates all the new features of OpenOffice.org 3.3, such as new custom properties handling; embedding of standard PDF fonts in PDF documents; new Liberation Narrow font; increased document protection in Writer and Calc; auto decimals digits for ‘General’ format in Calc; 1 million rows in a spreadsheet; new options for CSV import in Calc; insert drawing objects in Charts; hierarchical axis labels for Charts; improved slide layout handling in Impress; new easier to use print interface; more options for Changing case; and colored sheet Tabs in Calc.”

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January 24, 2011
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Google offers Chrome extension to opt out of targeted Ads.

It’s always been possible to avoid targeted ads or to hide your Web browsing history. It’s just never been easy. You had to clear out your Web browser cookies on a regular basis, learn how to get rid of the more persistent Adobe Flash cookies; and use applications like Tor to make sure you left no tracks behind you on the beach of the Internet. Now, Google—yes, Google—is offering a new Chrome extension, Keep My Opt-Outs, that will keep many major online advertising networks from following you.

In doing this, Google is following the lead of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which recently declared that “For every business, privacy should be a basic consideration (PDF Link)–-similar to keeping track of costs and revenues, or strategic planning.” To make that happen most of the major Web browsers, including Firefox and Internet Explorer are getting ready to release similar “Do not track” features.

Cynic that I am, my worry about all these schemes is that they require the Web sites and advertising networks to go along with them to work. The FTC can talk all it wants about the importance of privacy, but the Web financial wheels go around and around thanks to the engine of personal information.

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January 24, 2011
by sjvn01
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Upgrade Your Business Network With Windows 7 Pro’s Advanced Features

Though Microsoft doesn’t make a big deal of Windows 7’s many networking improvements and new features, they offer a fine reason to upgrade from XP. There used to be many reasons to skip migrating to Windows 7; but as the operating system matures and XP ages, Windows 7 is becoming a worthwhile update.

For starters, Internet Explorer 9–arguably Microsoft’s best Web browser ever–will work only on Windows 7. On the other hand, we currently have lots of excellent Web browser choices, so the promise of IE 9 alone may not be enough to tempt you.

Fortunately, Windows 7 has lots of other excellent networking features that you shouldn’t overlook. Here’s a closer look at what these capabilities mean for consumers and businesses.

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January 23, 2011
by sjvn01
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Ubuntu opts for LibreOffice over Oracle’s OpenOffice

The Ubuntu developers met last week in Dallas to make final design decisions about the popular Linux distribution’s features and decided to use LibreOffice for its office suite.

This comes as no surprise to Ubuntu watchers. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told me back when LibreOffice developers were forking away from Oracle’s OpenOffice had told me that, “The Ubuntu Project will be pleased to ship LibreOffice from The Document Foundation in future releases of Ubuntu.” It wasn’t a sure thing though that Ubuntu 11.04, aka Natty Narwhal due out on April 28th, would have LibreOffice. It is now.

First, Canonical started packing LibreOffice in the daily alpha releases of Ubuntu 11.04, but I decided to check further. So, I gave Canonical a call and Neil Levine, Canonical’s VP of corporate services told me that the Ubuntu developer team had indeed decided to make LibreOffice its default office suite over OpenOffice.

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January 20, 2011
by sjvn01
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With Page as CEO, Open Source is stronger than ever at Google

When Google announced that Eric Schmidt was stepping down as CEO and Google co-founder Larry Page was moving up to the CEO chair, you could have knocked Wall St. analysts over with a feather. They didn’t see this coming. They’re already debating about what it will mean.

I’m no business expert, but I do a few things and I don’t see much change happening here. After all, as Eric Schmidt wrote, “As Executive Chairman, I will focus wherever I can add the greatest value: externally, on the deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership that are increasingly important given Google’s global reach.”

Isn’t that where Schmidt has always shone? I think so. And, where has Page shown? Well, of course, as the search maven. Many of you know that Google’s PageRank isn’t named because of the connection between Web pages and how they rank in Google; no PageRank’s name comes from Larry Page. In addition though, Page, along with his friend and fellow Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, have always been ardent open-source users, developers, and, dare I say it, fans.

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