Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 16, 2010
by sjvn01
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There will never be an IE 9 for XP

When it comes to Web browsers, I’m a Google Chrome fan. Before that I was a Firefox aficionado. I also thought though that Internet Explorer 8 was a real step forward. I’m also willing to believe that IE 9 will turn out pretty darn good too.

Based on my early play with it, I won’t go as far as Ed Bott does with his praise for IE 9, but I do think Windows 7 users will get a lot out of it. Mind you, I think they should also look at Chrome as well, and Firefox 4 as well. And, if you’re not running Windows 7–say you’re running XP, Vista 64-bit, Mac OS X, or any Linux–you’re not going to have any choice in the matter. IE 9 isn’t available on any of them. No, there won’t even be an IE 9 for Android.

In particular, it’s not now, never has been, and never will be available on XP. For some reason though I keep hearing from XP fans who are up in arms that Microsoft isn’t going to give them IE 9. Get over it already. Or, as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes put it so succinctly, “XP is dead people, time to get used to that.”

Yes, yes, we all know that most people are still running XP. Microsoft knows that too. Why do you think they’re using the IE 9 carrot to try to get people to upgrade to Windows 7?

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September 16, 2010
by sjvn01
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Diaspora: It’s no Facebook… yet

Hundreds of millions of us use Facebook every day, but that doesn’t mean we like it. We like being able to connect with our friends. It’s the hoops we have to jump through to keep our privacy on Facebook that’s a pain in the neck. Diaspora, a home-grown, open-source project, is trying to answer that need with a social network that combines Facebook’s features with the users, instead of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in charge.

Diaspora got lots of fans when its student developers announced their plans this spring, but until now Diaspora has little to show. Today, September 16th, that’s changed. Diaspora is now available as a developers’ source code release.

This is not, let me repeat, not a release for every-day people. It’s for developers who know their way around social networking technology in general and can program in Ruby and Ruby on Rails. If that’s not you, then stick with Facebook for now.

If you are a developer with the right chops though, the core Diaspora programmers has now opened their project to others. The code is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). This is the GPL for server programs that are usually accessed with a desktop interface.

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September 15, 2010
by sjvn01
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Are we really ready for IPv6?

I would love to believe the Number Resource Organization (NRO), the group that oversees the allocation of all Internet numeric resources, that 84% of ISPs and other major Internet groups are now using, or are about to use IPv6. But, I don’t.

Mind you, 84% of serious corporate Internet users should be at that point. We’re quickly running out of IPv4 addresses. Let me check right now. Yep, according to the IPv4 Address Report, we’re still on schedule to run out of all IPv4 Internet addresses on January 14, 2012.

I actually expect us to run out faster than that though. I strongly suspect speculators are already snatching IP addresses up the same way they did potentially popular domain names and for the same reason: to make money from selling them off in a seller’s market. In fact, I just noticed that in the week since I last checked the Internet IPv4’s drop-dead date, it’s already moved up from January 25th 2012. The buy-outs are already happening.

I don’t buy the most optimistic view of the IPv6 Deployment Survey (PDF Link) for several reasons. First, it’s a global, self-selected survey of the people and groups who work closely with regional Internet registries (RIRs) the group that issues Internet addresses to ISPs. In short, they’re the people who are closest to the coming Internet address famine. If they don’t get it, no one does.

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September 15, 2010
by sjvn01
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Novell may be sold soon, but to whom?

The New York Post is not exactly where I look for business or Linux news, but it seems they’re on to something. In a September 15th story, the Post reported that “Novell Inc. has reached a deal in principle to sell itself in two parts, and is three to four weeks away from signing a deal.” My sources are saying the same thing.

I wish I had more to report, but I don’t. The deal seems to be that a technology company will pick up SUSE Linux; its open-source community and its distribution, openSUSE; and their associated technologies like Mono, the open-source adaptation of Microsoft’s .NET. The rest will go to a private-equity company.

Officially, Novell has told me “No comment.” Off-the-record, all I’ve got is that there are deals in the works, but that’s not much. Novell has been working on finding a buyer since at least May.

Whatever the merger and acquisition agreements end up being, I’m sure it will be for more than the $2-billion bargain-basement price offered by Elliott Associates in March of this year for Novell. That said it’s still possible that Elliott Associates may be the private equity firm in on the deal.

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September 15, 2010
by sjvn01
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Dying online

Yesterday, I got a LinkedIn connection suggestion about a former co-worker. Happens all the time. The only thing that was different about this one was that he had died about five years ago. Ow. It was a strange moment.

It’s a sort of moment I may have to get used to. While we continue to shuffle off this mortal coil as often as ever — no gets out of life alive — our online footprints remain behind us. Sometimes, though, as with LinkedIn, these reminders of mortality catch me by surprise. It’s a surprise I could do without.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the social networks have any mechanisms in place to deal with the death of their members. There is no way for Facebook to set my status to Dead. And, given the recent eruption of fake death reports on Twitter, that’s a good thing.

So, what can you do about this? Well, I recommend acceptance. If you see death coming sooner rather than later, you can do what intellectual and writer Christopher Hitchens has done and tell the world. But you don’t need to be famous author to do this. A fellow technology writer friend of mine, Chris Gulker, has told the world of what he calls “the final upgrade” in his own blog. I admire their courage.

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September 14, 2010
by sjvn01
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Shuttleworth answers Ubuntu Linux’s critics

In recent weeks, Ubuntu has been criticized for not giving Linux enough support. Specifically, the complains have been that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, doesn’t do enough for producing Linux source code. At first, Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu and Canonical’s founder, was content to take the high-ground of broad issues, but now Shuttleworth has gotten more into the details of what he believes both he personally and Ubuntu has brought to Linux.

In Shuttleworth’s latest blog post, he wrote about how Ubuntu and Canonical has brought “the extraordinary generosity of the free software community to the world at large, as a gift, free of charge, unencumbered and uncrippled, and to do so sustainably.”

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