Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 21, 2008
by sjvn01
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XP just won’t die

Microsoft will never admit that Vista was a major mistake, but it was. People who tried it, hated it. Businesses have stuck with XP, or are moving to Macs or desktop Linux. Microsoft knows it too. That’s why Microsoft is, out of the public limelight, enabling white-box computer manufacturers to keep selling XP well into 2009.

What Microsoft is doing this time is its letting the smaller distributors and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) — not the major PC vendors like HP and Dell — place their final orders for Windows XP OEM licenses by Jan. 31, 2009, and take delivery of those orders through May 30.

For you, that means you’ll be able to keep buying XP Pro on your PCs well into the fall of 2009. You may need to ask for it, you may have to pay more, but it will be available.

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December 18, 2008
by sjvn01
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Bye-Bye Macworld, Brainshare, CES

Back in pre-history when I started writing about technology, that is to say the 1980s, trade shows were the place to find out what going on. My how things have changed. Brainshare, Novell’s big show, has been canned. Steve Jobs isn’t showing up for Macworld, and Apple is pulling out of the show next year.

Well, they say they won’t be there, but without Apple I’d be amazed if there was a Macworld for Apple not to attend.

I’ve seen this coming from years down the road. In 1999 and 2000, Comdex, which was the techie trade show had more than 200,000 attendees. It was a city within the city of Las Vegas. The Comdex shows were where Bill Gates introduced Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP. It was the show where Microsoft Windows became Windows the force. And, in spring 1999, when Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates virtually faced off with each other at Comdex, it was, in many ways, Linux’s coming of age. By 2004, Comdex was dead.

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December 17, 2008
by sjvn01
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Steve Jobs’ health doesn’t matter

I like Steve Jobs. I like, despite my open-source leanings, many of Apple’s products such as Macs, iPods, and the Apple TV. I hate to think that Jobs’ health has taken a turn for the worse. But, whether his health has gone downhill or not isn’t really what important to the worlds of technology and business. What’s important is that, by not showing up to make the keynote speech at Macworld, Jobs appears to no longer be at Apple’s helm.

With Jobs at the wheel, Apple became the master of design. It’s not that Apple (http://www.apple.com) always brought something new to the table. Portable music players, for instance, had been around for ages long before the iPod took the world by storm. What Jobs did always bring was an eye for quiet, graceful looks that combined function and appearance into a single harmonious whole. No one, but no one, else has been so successful at that in either computing hardware or software.

Gimlet-eyed stock holders might not see the beauty in Apple’s designs, but they have seen how Jobs turned a company around from near irrelevance to a technology stock gold-mine. Is there anyone besides Jobs who could step into his shoes and convince an already frightened market that Apple will be as great as ever? I doubt it.

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December 16, 2008
by sjvn01
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Likewise seeks AD Middle Ground

Likewise Software, which specializes in getting Linux and other Unix systems to work with AD (Active Directory) authentication, management, and auditing is offering a middle ground program between its open-source version, Likewise Open, and its enterprise edition, Likewise Enterprise: Likewise Open with Cell Module.

Any version of Likewise comes with WIS (Likewise Identity Services), which enables you to use AD authentication for your Linux, Unix and Mac PCs. This includes a full implementation of the DCE/RPC framework with support for Kerberos, NTLM and SPNEGO security protocols. Likewise also comes with LAC (Likewise Administrative Console). With this administrators can manage AD users, computers and access rights from Linux.

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December 16, 2008
by sjvn01
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Open source isn’t free software

There’s a long standing argument over the differences between “open-source” software and “free software. But, a more common error outside of software ideology circles is that you can use open-source software anyway you please. Nope. Wrong. It’s never been that way.

Cisco, the networking giant, should know better than this, but they’ve worn out the FSF’s (Free Software Foundation) patience. So, Cisco is now being sued by the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) on behalf of the FSF for Linux and other GPL copyright violations.

You see, Cisco, like many other networking companies use Linux, and other free software programs like GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library in their products. Specifically, Cisco uses these programs in its Linksys line. In fact, the FSF first brought Cisco’s improper use of open-source code to the company’s attention back in 2004 with its use in the Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

The FSF wasn’t looking for money. The cost that comes with using free software code is that, if you sell or distribute programs or products that use the GPLed code, you have to share your modified code with its users.

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December 15, 2008
by sjvn01
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How is Microsoft with Vista like the Big Three automakers?

For more than a decade, if you owned a PC, you ran Windows and, far more often than not, Internet Explorer was your Web browser. In fact, for a while, the only three things you could be sure of were death, taxes and Microsoft.

Things have changed.

For the first time since Bill Gates strong-armed PC vendors into installing Windows, the operating system has dropped below a 90% market share, according to a Net Applications’ survey of Internet users’ operating systems.

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Well, maybe you felt the same way back in the early ’90s when Toyota and Honda started really ripping into the market shares of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. And we all know how well American car makers are doing these days, don’t we? Whether the Big Three get a bailout or not, most automobile industry analysts expect at least one of them, if not all three, to go bankrupt in the next two years.

The Toyota of the PC market muscling in on Microsoft’s dominance is Apple. Mac OS X now has 8.8% of the market. Linux is far behind at not quite 1%. But with the growing popularity of Linux-powered laptops and netbooks from vendors like Dell, Lenovo and Asus, the open-source operating system is gaining ground at Windows’ expense as well.

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