Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 5, 2011
by sjvn01
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LibreOffice: Ready for Liftoff

LibreOffice, the Oracle-free fork of the OpenOffice office suite, may, or may not, end up being the default office suite in Ubuntu, but its first release is almost here.

Before getting into that though, there have been rumors running around that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, had already committed to using LibreOffice in its next release, Ubuntu 11.04. True, Ubuntu has always been interested in replacing OpenOffice with LibreOffice Indeed, Mark Shuttleworth told me back when LibreOffice was starting to break away from OpenOffice that, “The Ubuntu Project will be pleased to ship LibreOffice from The Document Foundation in future releases of Ubuntu. That’s not the same thing though as saying it’s going to ship in Ubuntu 11.04.

Earlier today, Rick Spencer, Ubuntu’s Engineering Director, told me that “The Ubuntu desktop team and the community are making a final call on whether to go with Libre or OO.org at the Ubuntu/Linaro Rally scheduled for Dallas next week and assuming a decision is reached there we will confirm it at that point. The informal mail post sent by Matthias, one of our developers was simply pointing out the options available, not confirming a decision.”

No matter what Ubuntu may, or may not, do though LibreOffice is on its way to its first release.

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January 5, 2011
by sjvn01
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CES: Here comes 4G for your Laptop

4G broadband technology has taken its own sweet time to reach users, and while a few would argue that we still don’t have 4G, the ITU has finally admitted that WiMAX, LTE, and HSPA+ do indeed deliver 4G speeds.

Call it what you will, T-Mobile’s Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) network supports simultaneous voice and data with download speeds in the 5-10Megabits per second (Mbps) range and upload speeds in the 5-7Mbps range. Verizon’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) answers this with 5 to 12Mbps downloads and 5Mpbs uploads. And, even Sprint’s troubled WiMAX network has download speeds in the 6-8Mbps range with 2-4Mbps upload speeds.

Of course, what you’ll see with your 4G smartphone depends on what the 4G infrastructure is like in your area. In some places at least, WiMAX is already fast enough to be considered a last-mile replacement for cable or DSL.

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January 4, 2011
by sjvn01
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Two Android Operating Systems!?

I already think there are too many different versions of Android and associated software stacks for Android’s long-term good, then I read that Google may be supporting be supporting “two parallel [Android] software paths for tablets.” Ack! No! Just no!

It seems that the forthcoming Android Honeycomb will require a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, such as the NVIDIA Tegra 2 chip, to work. I can buy that. It’s tough luck for anyone using a Samsung Galaxy Tab or a Dell Streak, but that’s life on the bleeding edge of technology.

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January 4, 2011
by sjvn01
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Browser Wars: Internet Explorer loses and Firefox wins in Europe

It wasn’t that long ago that your choice of Web browsers were Internet Explorer (IE) and, ah, uh, a sadly out of date Netscape Navigator or the then obscure Opera. IE was the Web browser, but then along came Firefox in 2004, and everything changed. Today, IE may finally be on its way to losing its market-share leadership position to Firefox.

According to a pair of research firms, StatCounter and Net Application, IE is sinking fast, while Google’s Chrome is gaining rapidly at IE’s expense.

By Net Application’s Web browser reckoning, IE’s market-share has dropped to 57.1%, an all-time low. Chrome’s market-share, in the meantime, has climbed above 10% for the first time. Apple’s Safari is also showing strong gains by reaching the 5.9% mark.

“Safari!?” you ask? Based on my analysis of the numbers, Safari is gaining not because it’s suddenly appearing on more PCs, but because of the incredible growth of the iOS-powered devices, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, and the iPad. The Web, you see, really is going mobile, and it’s not just in the U.S. with all the rich kids trying out their new iPads. China, India, the most popular Web platform in the twenty-teens may well turn out to be mobile devices, not PCs.

Firefox and Opera also gained some as well on IE, but overall Net Application’s numbers showed Firefox losing 1.8 % during 2010, with Opera also losing a tiny amount. IE, however, was the big loser.

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January 4, 2011
by sjvn01
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The day of the password is done

When the popular Web site Gawker was hacked into recently, more than a million user IDs and passwords were released. If you were one of the people compromised that’s annoying — very annoying. Not that it’s a big deal that someone could log into a gossip site under your name. But many of those people used those same IDs and passwords on other sites that are a wee bit more important, such as LinkedIn. Now, that’s a problem.

What should you do about it? Well, I could tell you that you need to use different passwords for different sites; that you need to pick passwords other than that all-time favorite, 123456; and that you should change your passwords every month for every site. I’m not going to, though. It’s all good advice, mind you, but it’s also all pretty darn useless.

People never have, and never will, use good security practices. After more than 30 years of working with networks and security, I’m ready to give up on trying to get the general public to do the right things to keep themselves safe. In a company, it’s a different matter. It’s a pain, but if you keep at it and enforce the rules, eventually you’ll get most of the people to do the right things most of the time. But people at home? It’s not going to happen.

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January 3, 2011
by sjvn01
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Android’s Biggest Worry: Fragmentation

I like Android a lot. It’s Linux’s biggest end-user success story. Android has great applications. It works well for me in my Motorola Droid 2. And, Android’s smartphone market-share is growing fast. Indeed, analysts such as Piper Jaffray predict that eventually Android will become the number one smartphone operating system in the world. If, that is, everything goes right.

So what could go wrong? The iPhone wipes it off the map? I don’t think so. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is a great phone. But, you’ll never see new, inexpensive iPhones. Apple’s preferred place in the market is to be the Porsche of computers: they don’t sell cheap anything. Windows Phone 7? It’s better than ever, but that’s not saying much. Blackberry? Symbian? MeeGo? Too little, dead in the water, and not fast enough off the mark. No, what Android has to worry about isn’t the competition, it’s concerns are its friends.

You see, all the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), like Motorola and HTC put their own software, Sense UI and Motoblur respectively, on top of Android. Then, all the carriers add their own special-sauce of applications.

It can get messy. On top of this, there’s multiple current versions of Android out and supported at any given moment on the same hardware. While Dan Morrill, Google’s Open Source & Compatibility Program Manager, can say Android “Fragmentation is a bogeyman, a red herring, a story you tell to frighten junior developers,” it’s not. It’s a real problem.

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