Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 13, 2010
by sjvn01
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British Telecomm and Cisco’s Network Neutrality Fix

British Telecomm and Cisco are quietly putting their own answer to Network Neutrality in place: Set up an entirely separate national wide network, Content Connect This will be used to deliver the BBC’s forthcoming Internet video and Video on Demand (VoD) service Project Canvas to users.

Project Canvas will be a set of video and radio services provided by partnership of Arqiva, the BBC, BT, C4, Channel Five, ITV, and TalkTalk to build an open Internet-connected TV platform. It will offer streaming TV and radio through a set-top box hooked up to UK users’ broadband connection. It will also offer DVR-style pause, rewind and record options. Think of it as a UK combination of Hulu, and the Roku Internet video player and you won’t be far off.

For the most part, United Kingdom video watchers will also get it the same way Americans get Hulu: via their ISP. British Telecomm and Cisco, though, plan to side-step the Internet though with Content Connect. This will use Cisco’s Content Delivery System to transmit video, other content directly to your computer, TV or mobile device, and bypass both the public Internet and ISPs.

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September 12, 2010
by sjvn01
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Microsoft’s newest partner: Russia’s Vladimir Putin

If you stand against Russia’s de facto dictatorship you have another enemy besides Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: Microsoft. According to a New York Times report, the Russian government is using a new tactic “for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software.” Furthermore, the Russian state is doing this with the help of Microsoft’s Russian attorneys.

Microsoft, reports the New York Times, doesn’t start these inquiries and only does what they’re required to do by Russian law. The dissentients, ranging from environmentalists to journalists, tell a different story. “Without the participation of Microsoft, these criminal cases against human rights defenders and journalists would simply not be able to occur,” said Russian newspaper editor Sergey Kurt-Adzhiyev.

Microsoft doesn’t merely quietly allow the Russian government to seize computers in the name of software thief. Instead, Microsoft ignores requests from help from the targeted companies and instead provides “testimony to the police about the value of the software that Baikal Wave [an environmentalist group] was accused of illegally obtaining.”

Faced with these accusations, Microsoft public relations said that it would make sure its Russian lawyers would have “more clearly defined responsibilities and accountabilities.” Microsoft also stated that “We have to protect our products from piracy, but we also have a commitment to respect fundamental human rights.” Tell that to the groups in Russia that have their records ripped open and destroyed.

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September 9, 2010
by sjvn01
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Broadcom makes its Wi-Fi chipsets more Linux friendly

Slowly, too darn slowly for the taste of Linux notebook users, Broadcom has been providing drivers for its Wi-Fi chipsets on netbooks and laptops. Now, Broadcom has released an open-source driver for its latest 802.11n chip sets.

See? Miracles do happen!

According to Henry Ptasinski, a principal scientist in the wireless connectivity group at Broadcom, Broadcom has released the source code for the “initial release of a fully-open Linux driver for it’s latest generation of 11n chipsets. The driver, while still a work in progress, is released as full source and uses the native mac80211 stack. It supports multiple current chips (BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225) as well as providing a framework for supporting additional chips in the future, including mac80211-aware embedded chips.”

For Linux users who aren’t Wi-Fi engineers that means you can look forward to your laptops with Broadcom chipsets working properly with Linux.

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September 9, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Google Chrome OS is for Netbooks, Android for Smartphones & Tablets

We all know that Google is in the operating system business these days. What hasn’t been clear is exactly what Google has planned for its Chrome operating system. We all know that Android is Google’s Android Linux smartphone and tablet answer. But where does Chrome, a Linux and Web browser-based operating system fit in?

It hasn’t been an easy question to answer. After all, you can use Android as a desktop operating system and you can use Chrome as a tablet operating system. So, what’s what here? Now, we’re beginning to get come clear answers.

In a TechRadar interview with Google Chrome senior product manager Anders Sandholm, Sandholm said, “What we are focusing on [in Chrome] is netbooks in terms of form-factor and providing a really good experience for that.”

Sandholm also said that while his team is experimenting with touch, the real focus of the Chrome OS design team is on the netbook/laptop. Netbooks have not been doing that well in the market lately, but I think Chrome netbooks may just change that.

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September 9, 2010
by sjvn01
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Last chance to get XP

Windows 7 has been around for almost a year now, but lots of people are still sticking with Windows XP. Now, Microsoft is getting ready to pull the plug on Windows XP sales. No! Really! They mean it this time. Would they lie to you?

I mean just because Microsoft has extended XP sales over and over again doesn’t mean that they’ll keep selling XP forever. Well, yes, they are supporting XP for years more to come, but this time, cross their hearts and hope to die, Microsoft really is killing XP sales on October 22nd, 2010. Some companies, noticeably Dell, are pulling the plug on XP even sooner.

Microsoft spokesperson Brandon LeBlanc has written that most Windows users may “not notice much change.” I beg to disagree.

I know lots of Windows users and even now they really don’t want any part of Windows 7. For some of them, it’s a matter of finance. They look at the cost of moving their business PCs from XP to Windows 7 and they get the shakes. In this economy, who can blame them?

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September 8, 2010
by sjvn01
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The Internet is running out of IPv4 gas

If you listen to some people, businesses don’t need to worry about the growing shortage of Internet IPv4 addresses. Instead, most “network owners find it more affordable to just make do with the [Internet] addressing scheme they’re already using. This is so, so wrong.

When the Internet began, IPv4’s possible 32-bit 4.3 billion addresses looked like more than enough. Things have changed.

We’re running out of IPv4 addresses, the 32-bit numeric addresses that network devices need to connect to the Internet. All those mobile devices that we love so much like iPhones, tablets, and iPods are gobbling down IPv4 addresses like an elephant does peanuts. For the longest time, we managed to avoid running out of IPv4 addresses with the use of technologies like Network Address Translation (NAT) and Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), but those haven’t been enough.

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