Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 30, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Waiting for Chrome

I keep expecting Google to release an alpha version of their Chrome operating system, but it hasn’t happened yet. I know they’re working on it, but that’s about all I can say. However, over in China, there’s a story of early devices running alpha Chrome and some Linux fans have made their own version of Chrome.

First, there’s a report from Shanzai, a news site that covers China’s technology business, that “devices sporting Google’s much trumpeted Chrome OS will start to appear in mid October.” Specifically, Chrome will show up in devices using the Chinese-designed Loongson CPU.

The Loongson CPU, like the better known ARM processor family, are MIPS-based CPUs. Like the ARM Cortex chip family, Loongson chips are used in mobile devices, netbooks, and — at its fastest speed — these CPUs are beginning to be experimented with in full-powered laptops and desktops. Since Google is working on Chrome with Freescale, the primary ARM vendor, and several Chinese vendors, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if some vendors have gotten their hands on pre-alpha Chrome code.

More >

September 29, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Testing out Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft released its new free antivirus utility, Microsoft Security Essentials, today, September 29th, and it does the job adequately, but it snoops into your business and it’s s_l_o_w.

Microsoft Security Essentials is the replacement for Microsoft’s OneCare suite. It’s meant to be an improvement on that older free program, but I don’t any significant difference between the two. Since OneCare is history now, though, that doesn’t matter.

Security Essentials runs on Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7 (beta or release candidate) on both the 32 and 64-bit versions. The install program doesn’t automatically pick out the right version of Windows; you’ll have to do that. It’s a small point, but I found it a little annoying, especially since Microsoft makes a big deal of telling you, in the license, that they’ll be checking up on your PC and its programs from time to time without telling you.

More >

September 29, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

40 Years of Unix

Unix is 40-years old. 1969, the summer of love, was the summer of not having enough computer resources for AT&T Bell Lab employees Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. After the failure of Multics, a timesharing operating system, the two needed a computer and an operating system to run Space Travel, an early computer game. Since there was a now famous “little-used DEC PDP-7” mini-computer at Bell Labs, they took it over and start programming the game into the computer using paper tape. Of course, to run a game, they also needed a file-system, some way of handling computer processes, and, to make a long story short, they used the lessons of Multics to create an operating system that, in time, became Unix.

Today, we often see Unix as an operating system on the way out. I don’t see that at all. Yes, specific versions of Unix, such as Sun Solaris aren’t doing well, and no one believes that HP’s HP-UX or IBM’s AIX are going to reclaim the server operating system market from Linux or Windows Server. As for SCO’s OpenServer and UnixWare, they’re both all but dead thanks to SCO’s focus on fighting with the Linux companies. A pity that since both of SCO’s Unix operating systems are actually good systems.

So why do I think that Unix is actually alive and well if its best known operating systems are either on the way out or slowly losing ground? Because, over the decades Unix has transformed from one form to several others that are doing quite well.

More >

September 28, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Don’t need it? Don’t install it.

If you use any Apple program on Windows you may have noticed recently a rather odd Apple Software Update dialog box telling you under the Updates heading that you need the iPhone Configuration Utility 2.1. I did, and my reaction was: “I do?” After all, I use an iPod Touch, not an iPhone, and iTunes does just fine with managing it. Then, I found I was also getting the notice on Windows PCs that I’ve never used with my Touch. What is this?

A little investigation revealed that the iPhone Configuration Utility is actually a tool for business system administrators to set up and administer corporate iPhones . Even if I were using an iPhone, I’d need that program like I’d need season tickets to the Detroit Lions. So, I haven’t installed it-and I really wish Apple would stop bugging about it.

I didn’t think anything more about it. I don’t install programs I don’t need or plan on testing. Others though did and they discovered that this completely unneeded Apple shovelware for 99.9999% of all users installs not just a configuration program, but the Apache Web server as well. For the tiny number of people who do need it, this lets corporate iPhone users ‘phone’ in to the business Web server for updates.

For the millions of everyone else having a Web server on your PC is horrible security risk. It’s hard enough keeping Windows secure, but adding a totally unregulated Web server to the mix is like throwing matches at a pool of gasoline.

More >

September 28, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Sharing Linux

Microsoft really wants people to get excited about Windows 7 so they’re showing people how to put on Windows 7 parties with a video, that already become famous for being incredibly lame. It’s so out-of-touch that it’s funny. For an even funnier take, see Mac fan Cabel Sasser’s take.

While, in all fairness, Linux users aren’t known for being party-animals either, Linux users do enjoy sharing information at a social gathering, and they don’t need Microsoft to tell them tell how to throw a party. Instead, they get together around the world at LUG (Linux User Group) meetings.

Once upon a time user-groups, people who just got together because of their shared passion for computers, were everywhere. As PCs became as common as refrigerators most of these groups died out. In the case of Linux, though, they live on.

More >

September 25, 2009
by sjvn01
2 Comments

HP’s new–kind of, sort of–Linux support

HP has a love/hate relationship with Linux. The company supports several Linux distributions-Red Hat; Novell/SUSE; and community Linux Debian–on its servers, but finding it takes some digging. Still, that’s nothing compared to finding HP’s desktop Linux support. For example, several new HP laptops and netbooks come with Splashtop instant-on Linux, but you have to dig around the fine-print to find that out. HP has also offered SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) on some low-end business PCs like the HP Compaq dc5850 from time to time, but that appears to no longer be the case. Now, HP is-kind of, sort of-offering support for several of the more important community Linux distributions.

At the Linux Foundation’s LinuxCon, Bdale Garbee, HP’s Linux CTO, announced, almost in passing, that it was opening a new Linux support site, Community Linux. Well, except it’s not really a HP site. Instead, while it has HP’s support, the Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab, is actually the organization hosting it. Why? According to a report by Sean Michael Kerner. Garbee explained, “We intentionally set this up as a site outside the HP domain and hierarchy so it can be a focal point for whatever the community would like to do in terms of capturing best practices for making non-commercial Linux distributions work well on everybody’s hardware over time.”

More >