Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 27, 2010
by sjvn01
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The Top 5 Networking Stories of 2010

I’d much rather write about what was new and neat about networking in 2010, but the sad truth is I think the many of the most important networking stories in 2010 were about regulations rather than innovations.

That said, there was some “good news” about networking in 2010 as well. Number one with a bullet in my book was:

1. The Browser Wars Revived

Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, take your pick, all the Web browsers got better in 2010. You can argue until you’re blue in the face about which one is better. It’s Chrome by the way.

Agree with me or not, though, the important point is that because of this competition all the Web browsers significantly improved during 2010. While Chrome and Firefox, the two big open-source browsers, made the most gains I have to say that Internet Explorer 9 looks pretty darn good. Now, if only IE 9 were available for XP and IE 6 would finally die. Die! Die! Die!

Ahem. Excuse me.

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December 27, 2010
by sjvn01
5 Comments

2010’s Top Five Linux and Open-Source Stories

Sure, unlike me, you’re probably not reading this on a Linux desktop–Mint 10 for those who care about such things–but do you use Google, Facebook or Twitter? If so, you’re using Linux. That Android phone in your pocket? Linux. DVRs, network attached storage (NAS), trade stocks? Linux, Linux, Linux.

I think one of the most telling stories about Linux this year came from a friend of mine, Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, who told me of a friend who said “Linux was too hard.” When Zonker asked him about his Android phone, he replied something like, “Oh, but Android is easy. It’s not Linux!”

Oh my. Android is indeed Linux, as is so many other devices and Web services and sites. Open-source developers have just gotten very good at hiding the dirty technical details from you. It just took them a lot longer than it did for the Mac OS X designers to hide its Mach, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD Unix roots from users. In the last few years though, they finally got the hang of it.

We’re going to see this trend grow only stronger in 2011 with the rise of Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS. That’s why Chrome OS is my first big story of 2010.

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December 22, 2010
by sjvn01
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Windows 7? On ARM Tablets? I don’t think so!

You’ve got to be kidding me. First, Bloomberg and then the Wall Street Journal reported that at CES next month, Microsoft will unveil a full-featured version of Windows that runs on ARM processors. The expectation is that it will be used in tablets… in 2013.

2013!? Come on, would someone please fire Ballmer already. I have no love for Microsoft, but if this is true, this has got to be the dumbest plan I’ve heard from Microsoft since 1995’s Microsoft Bob.

As Eric Lai explains, there are several ways that Windows on ARM could play out. I don’t think any of them can work though.

The only reason for Microsoft to bring Windows 7, Windows 8, or whatever to ARM is to put it on a tablet. The best existing fit would be Windows Phone 7, but the story being spun by Microsoft rumor spiders seems to be that this will be bigger and better than Windows Phone 7.

Excuse me as I roll my eyes. Microsoft has always promised that their next big operating system will be the greatest thing ever. The business reason for this is to try to freeze the market. Ideally, a customer goes: “Oh, I can’t buy WordPerfect today; Word 6.0 next year will be sooo much better.” This tactic worked for decades, which is why the younger among you will never have even heard of WordPerfect, much less used it.

That was then. This is now.

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December 22, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Changing DNS probably won’t help your Video Streaming

When I first read that some Apple TV users were seeing significant speed-ups when they start using a local ISP Domain Name System (DNS) server instead of continuing to use one of the universal DNS services, such as OpenDNS, DNS Advantage,or Google Public DNS, my first thought was, “That’s wrong.”

I understand their logic that “When millions of users all tap into the same DNS server addresses to resolve domain names, as Google DNS does by design, Akamai and other CDNs [Content Delivery Networks] route content to those users along the same path, preventing the network from working optimally.” The problem is that this isn’t really how the big DNS networks and CDNs work these days.

For starters, this proposed fix starts with the notion that your ISP has a local DNS, hence you’ll get a better, less-crowded route for your video. You probably don’t have a truly local DNS though. The national ISPs like Comcast. Verizon, or ATT, just like the universal DNS services, spread their DNS servers around. In this case, their DNS server isn’t going to be much ‘closer,’ in terms of network distance than Google’s.

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December 21, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Free Fonts Forever

When you think open source, chances are you think software. You may not know that there are open-source fonts as well. Today, Google and Ubuntu have released a new free, open font to the Web: the Ubuntu Font Family.

Web developers will be able to use Google Font API to select the Ubuntu fonts from the Google Font Directory. With these fonts embedded on the page, Web visitors will always see the text and fonts as intended. It doesn’t matter what Web browser or operating system visitors are using, or even if the font is not installed on their PC, smartphone, or tablet, they’ll see the fonts you’ve selected for them. The new Ubuntu Font Family debuted in Ubuntu 10.10 release and is also available for download from the Ubuntu Font Family site.

These fonts really are open. They were developed by Dalton Maag font foundry and are free to be shared, sold, bundled and built upon. This release includes Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek support, and future versions will include support for Hebrew and Arabic.

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December 20, 2010
by sjvn01
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Linux rules the Clouds

Color me surprised. I knew that Linux, while still only a niche player on the desktop, was continuing to do well on the server and was doing even better than ever on the cloud. What I hadn’t realized was just how much better Linux, and in particular, Canonical’s Ubuntu, was doing on in the market place.

Before I’d seen The Cloud Market’s analysis of operating systems on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), off the cuff I would have guessed the leading operating system on the top cloud platform would have been Red Hat and its close relatives, CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Fedora. Boy was I wrong.

Today, December 20th, Ubuntu is running 4,840 instances on EC2, followed by CentOS, with 1,250, Fedora with 313; Oracle with 80; and Red Hat with a mere 73 instances. That’s a grand total of 1,716 for the Red Hat family, which means that Ubuntu is doing more than twice as well as all the Red Hat variants put together.

Windows and Azure? They’re back in the back with a mere 1,120 instances.

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