Practical Technology

for practical people.

June 1, 2010
by sjvn01
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RIP PC

On May 26, Apple’s market capitalization stood at $223 billion. That took it, for the first time, higher than Microsoft, which had a market cap of $219.3 billion. Apple, not Microsoft, not Google, was at the top of the technology business mountain. And that marked the end of an era: The PC is no longer the center of the computing universe.

The PC: August 12, 1981 — May 26, 2010. RIP.

The powerhouse of the computing revolution was born when IBM released the first IBM PC in August 1981. It died when Apple took the market lead from Microsoft.

Yes, of course, there were PCs before the IBM PC. I used Zilog Z-80-based microcomputers running CP/M back in the late ’70s. But it was the IBM PC that moved PCs from things that only computer fans would use to essential parts of most business offices.

And there will still be PCs years from now. You might scoff at my proclamation about the PC’s demise, but the fact that Windows-based PCs still outsell Macs by a ratio of about 24 to 1 — PC sales of 65 million vs. 3.1 million Macs in the latest quarter — is really quite irrelevant. This isn’t a matter of Macs finally outselling Windows or Linux-based PCs. That’s never going to happen.

What has happened, though, is that Apple has earned its billions and the respect of stock-buyers by switching its focus from desktop and laptops to tablets and mobile devices.

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June 1, 2010
by sjvn01
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Big botnets and how to stop them

There are hundreds of botnets, ad hoc networks of Windows PCs that are infected with one or more programs to let them do the bidding of their controllers, some are far more trouble than others. While you can’t afford to ignore any botnet threat, here are some of the worst of the worst.

“When it comes to Botnets, size does matter,” said Scott Emo, head of endpoint solutions at Check Point, a network security company. That’s because “the larger the botnet network, the more “robot soldiers” the botnet operator has to do damage.”

You shouldn’t get too wrapped up though in who’s the baddest of the bad. Richard Wang, the manager for anti-virus company SophosLabs US commented that, Sophos “tracks botnet activity based on spam that we see, sites that malware calls back to for updates and instructions, and known malware repositories. However, we do not track individual botnets as such.”

Wang continued, “Take for example the Zeus (aka Zbot) botnets. While many report that Zeus is a significant threat, they fail to explain that it is not a single botnet. Instead it is a toolkit allowing individual criminals to set up similar but separate botnets of their own. Concern about the top 5 botnets is like worrying only about crime caused by the FBI’s most wanted. While they are undoubtedly serious, the chances are that if you are attacked it will be by some much smaller fry.”

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June 1, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

The botnet business

Look around you. If you’re in an office or coffee shop where people are using Windows, chances are someone’s PC is now, or recently has been, part of a botnet.

How does it feel to be part of organized crime? What? You think organized crime is something that happens on the U.S./Mexican border or in television series like The Sopranos? Nonsense. It could be happening right now on your computer with a botnet and you might never be the wiser.

Think you’ve got good security? Well, maybe you do. But can you say the same for your colleagues and friends? Probably not. According to RSA, EMC’s Security Division, even at Fortune 500 companies 88% of them had systems that had been accessed by infected machines and 60 percent of them had experienced stolen email account information.

And who runs those botnets, these collection of Windows PCs linked together for nefarious purposes? Some teen-aged geek with no social life and a high-speed Internet connection? That is such a 1990s view. No, today, as Matt Watchinski, the senior director of the Vulnerability Research Team for network security provider Sourcefire, said, “Cybercrime is a big business and anyone interested in making money illegally can run them, no matter what your skill level is.”

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May 28, 2010
by sjvn01
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Is there a replacement for Facebook?

Facebook claims to have more than 400 million active users. In fact, according to Web analytics firm Alexa, only Google is a more popular site. So, with all that going for it, why are so many users unhappy, with one poll showing that more than half of Facebook users are thinking about leaving?

The one-word answer: privacy. By default, Facebook has made almost everything on your account open to the world. You can lock down your Facebook account, but it’s a tedious process.

New tools unveiled this week are designed to make this easier, but the next time Facebook changes its policies and system, you may need to do it all over again. There are also external tools that can check out just how secure your account is, but again, when Facebook changes its software, they may not work.

Last Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally admitted that Facebook has made some mistakes. Some users are staying put despite their distrust of the company. But others think it’s too little too late and are talking loudly about leaving. There’s even a group that has announced that May 31 is Quit Facebook Day.

Will a significant percentage of Facebook users actually leave? No matter its faults, Facebook has a huge user base, and those users, in turn, have all their friends on the service, all their photos and, yes, even all their Farmville farms. Will that many people really want to abandon Facebook and start all over with a new platform?

They have before.

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May 26, 2010
by sjvn01
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MeeGo, the new netbook Linux, arrives

Take one part Intel’s Moblin, mix with Nokia’s Maemo, bake for three months in the Linux Foundation oven, and you get MeeGo. Linux Foundation executive director, Jim Zemlin has called this new embedded Linux, the open-source uber-platform for the next generation of computing devices: tablets, pocketable computers, netbooks, automotive IVI (In-Vehicle Infotainment) and more."

Zemlin went on to say that "With MeeGo, you have the world’s largest chip manufacturer and the world’s largest mobile handset manufacturer joining forces to create an incredible opportunity for developers who want to reach millions of users with innovative technology." That sounds great, except the world’s largest search engine company, a little business I like to call Google, already has an embedded Linux named Android that’s already out in the market and doing quite well.

Still interested? Well, don’t start downloading a copy of MeeGo right now though unless you’re a developer. Version 1.0 of MeeGo, as Imad Sousou, director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, blogged, "This release provides developers with a stable core foundation for application development and a rich user experience for Netbooks. The MeeGo Netbook user experience is the first to appear, with the development of the MeeGo Handset user experience moving to the open in June."

In other words, this 1.0 release is one for programmers, not ordinary mortals. I’d agree with that. I downloaded it and, after converting the MeeGo image file into a VirtualBox VDI (Virtual Disk Image) I was able to install it and run it in VirtualBox 3.20 to know that it’s not ready for mainstream user prime time… yet.

Still, in just playing with for a few minutes, I could see that I’d like it. Instead of Android’s View interface, MeeGo uses a more traditional Unix/Linux X 11-based and Qt 4.6 structure for its front-end. Combine this with other more common Linux desktop APIs (application programming interfaces) and you have a system that Linux desktop developers will be able to pick up more quickly than they can Android.

MeeGo is also built on the Linux 2.6.33 kernel and uses DeviceKit and udev for working with hardware devices. Thus supports gUPnP a universal plug and play framework. For voice and data connectivity, MeeGo uses the Connman connection manager, Ofono telephony stack, and BlueZ Bluetooth.

Since I was running this in a virtual machine, and not on a netbook, I wasn’t able to even kick the tires of the last three elements. But, since they’re all mainstream Linux projects, I’m sure they work just fine.

The operating system also comes with Google’s Chrome, complete with such goodies as its newly integrated Adobe Flash Player for is main Web browser. If you’d rather use the purely open-source Google Chromium, you can download and install it as a Chrome replacement.

All-in-all, I rather like MeeGo, silly name and all. But, heck, Google and Yahoo are both funny names too, so I won’t let that bother me.

That said, I do wonder if MeeGo is too little, too late. Yes, it will be much easier for Linux desktop developers, but Android is already out and quite popular. I suspect that the Linux developers who wanted to work in the mobile space have already put in quite a few hours with the Android SDK (software development kit) and aren’t looking to start work on another platform with a much smaller market. We’ll have to see just how much effort Intel and Nokia put behind MeeGo. If they put a lot of time and money into it, MeeGo may yet become a major embedded Linux player.

A version of this story was first published in ComputerWorld.

May 26, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Revenge of the Facebook Users?

Sure, Google may know about you, but its Facebook opening up your private information to the world’s gaze, and their advertiser’s profits, that has people ticked off. So, it should come as no surprise that someone has finally done it: They’ve sued Facebook for violating their privacy.

As reported by MediaPost, Rhode Island Derrick Rose has sued Facebook for allegedly violating his privacy with the four-week-old “instant personalization” feature. Specifically he claims that the launch of instant personalization “violated users’ reasonable expectations of privacy. Users’ private lists of all the persons they want to share information with may be very different from what they may want to share for purposes of social networking through Facebook. Nevertheless, Facebook, without user authorization, accessed and made public the users’ profile information.”

Why, yes, yes they did. While you can lock your Facebook account from snoopers and Facebook claims they’re going to be making it easier to bar unwelcome visitors from your information, the company isn’t backing off from letting any Tom, Dick, or Harry into your information by default.

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