March 30, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Google and Adobe partner Chrome and Flash up

I didn’t see this coming, but now that Google has announced that it’s working with Adobe to integrate Adobe Flash into its Chrome browser it makes perfect sense to me.

To quote Google’s Linus Upson, VP of Engineering:

* When users download Chrome, they will also receive the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. There will be no need to install Flash Player separately.

* Users will automatically receive updates related to Flash Player using Google Chrome’s auto-update mechanism. This eliminates the need to manually download separate updates and reduces the security risk of using outdated versions.

* With Adobe’s help, we plan to further protect users by extending Chrome’s “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content.

I like this plan. I already like Chrome a lot anyway, and I see this as a real win for Chrome users.

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March 30, 2010
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Mac OS X’s Five Biggest Security Fixes

The latest Mac OS X upgrade is both enormous, 784MB and necessary. It fixes no fewer than 88 security holes.

You may think you can wait on this patch. After all, even with my 20Mbps cable Internet connection it took me an average of an hour to patch a pair of Mac Minis and a Mac Book Pro. And, some of the fixes will matter to only a handful of users. I mean how many of us really need updated Daylight Savings Time rules for Antarctica?

But, you shouldn’t wait. This massive Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard upgrade fixes some truly nasty security problems. And, when I say ‘nasty,’ I mean Windows-sized security holes that can stop your Mac dead in its tracks or let someone else take it over.

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March 29, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Is this the end for SCO?

I’ve given up on predicting when the zombie movie series staring the undead SCO monster is finally going to stay quietly in its grave Still, this week a jury is deciding whether SCO or Novell owns Unix’s intellectual property rights.

You may have thought that this was settled. Most of us who followed SCO certainly thought that was a done deal. After all, the matter of who owns Unix comes down to a fairly simple issue of contract law and not some esoteric IP (intellectual property) legal gymkhana. And, no matter how SCO sliced it, Judge Dale Kimball decided that Novell owned Unix’s copyrights. Alas, another judge decided last August that Kimball had had no right to make that call and that a jury should decide who Unix’s copyrights instead.

So, here we are again: SCO vs. Novell, and the known Linux-using universe round 743.

I don’t think for a minute in a rational universe that SCO can win this case. But, it is in front of a jury and, after-all, a jury is made up of twelve-people who weren’t bright enough to get out of jury duty.

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March 29, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

HTML 5: Less than it’s cracked up to be

The core idea behind HTML 5, the latest proposed version of the Web’s foundation markup language, is to make all resources, not just text and links, widely and uniformly usable across all platforms. Well, that was the theory. In practice, things aren’t going to change that much from today’s Web, with its reliance on proprietary media formats and methods.

In the 20 years since HTML appeared, companies — including Adobe with Flash, Microsoft with Silverlight and Apple with QuickTime — have added their own proprietary media formats to the Web. In addition, other businesses — such as Google with Gears and Oracle/Sun with JavaFX — have created technologies for the Web that make it possible to create offline and user-side-based Web applications. This is all fine, but these proprietary formats and application platforms get in the way of the universal use vision for the Web.

The W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) plan was to answer these proprietary approaches with HTML 5. This open standard, yet to be fully approved, takes HTML from simply describing the basics of a text-based Web to one that includes specifications for presenting animations, audio, mathematical equations, offline storage and applications, typefaces and video. In short, HTML 5 is meant to incorporate all the functionality that Web users now expect from proprietary add-ons.

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March 25, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

And the browser losers are …

As usual at Pwn2Own, the contest to see who can hack ‘secure’ programs and systems the fastest at the CanSecWest security conference, the big loser was Microsoft, which saw IE 8 on a fully-patched Windows 7 system get cracked in less than two minutes. That said, everyone’s Web browsers were being cracked open left and right at the show … except for Google Chrome.

While Firefox and Safari may be better than IE, these Web browsers didn’t last very long either. As for Google’s own Web browser, at this point, it’s seemed no one’s even tried to bust Chrome according to the group sponsoring the contest, the TippingPoint’s ZDI (Zero Day Initiative).

Why not? After all, everyone who hacks a browser gets a cool $10,000 for their efforts. The reason was predicted by Aaron Portnoy, TippingPoint’s Security Research Team Lead, to be that while Chrome is often affected by vulnerabilities due to its inclusion of the WebKit library, I predict the browser will remain untouched throughout Pwn2Own. This is due to the difficulty in producing an impactful exploit that can break out of the security sandbox.”

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March 25, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Ask not what Google can do for Asheville…

but what Asheville can do for the world.

Of course, people in Asheville, NC want ultra-high-speed Internet. Who doesn’t?

But, one thing that Asheville has that many other towns and small cities don’t are resources for a better, technically adept, society. Whether it’s Green Technology or terabytes of data at the National Climate Data Center proving that climate change isn’t just a liberal myth, Asheville has resources that the rest of the world, at a gigabit per second, can use.

It’s more, though, than simply resources. Asheville also has a proven, major ‘can do’ attitude. Like too much of America today, the community is suffering from bad times. Despite that,, many of the people who live and continue to come to Asheville are ambitious and creative technological entrepreneurs. They include businesses such as the Elumenati, with its virtual reality designs and Open Health Tools, an open-source community devoted to creating interoperable systems for patients and their care providers. Asheville is not Mayberry. It is a modern city where creative professionals are working on building both new businesses and new, sustainable, ways of improving society.

So, Google,consider Asheville not just for all that high-speed networking can bring to the region, but for what Asheville can offer to those everywhere else.. By bringing the world to within a few milliseconds of Asheville, both will prosper.

Want to know more about Asheville’s efforts to become the home to the Google Fiber Initiative? Visit Asheville’s Google Fiber site.

Practical Technology

for practical people.