Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 22, 2008
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Can you safely avoid Microsoft patents in open-source development?

Thanks to the European Union’s courts, Microsoft was forced to open up its APIs and protocols for its MCPP (Microsoft Communications Protocol Program) and WSPP (Workgroup Server Protocol Program). According to Keith Hageman, an MSDN moderator, “The MCPP package content details Windows Clients to Windows Server protocols for all features. The WSPP package content details Windows Client to Windows Server and Windows Server to Windows Server protocols for ‘File and Print.’ ‘User and Group Administration,’ and ‘Networking Transport’ features only.” In English, these are the keys to getting non-Microsoft programs, such as the open-source file/print server Samba, to work with Microsoft clients and servers.

Sounds great doesn’t it? The poison pill in all this is that while Microsoft has to let you develop programs that use these protocols and APIs, it can, according to Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, charge you a patent license per copy if you create commercial software with this information. It would be helpful, of course, if you could tell when you might be in danger of violating a Microsoft patent. Aye, there’s the rub.

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April 22, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Deciding When to Upgrade to 802.11n

You can never have enough money or a fast-enough wireless connection. We can’t help with the money part, but for Wi-Fi users, IEEE 802.11n—with its up to 300Mbps (megabits per second) burst speeds—is the answer.

Well, it should be the answer. Deploying 802.11 is really not as simple as picking a networking vendor and pushing through a purchase order.

That’s because 802.11n has been stuck in standards mud-wrestling for years. As is so often the case in standards, two major vendor sides squared off over which group’s approach would become the one true—and thus money making—standard.

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April 21, 2008
by sjvn01
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XP SP3 Finally Released

Well, it took Microsoft long enough, but Windows XP SP3 has finally been RTMed (released to manufacturing).

Users, however, can’t update yet. According to a Microsoft TechNet forum posting by Chris Keroack, the release manager, for Windows XP Service Pack 3, XP SP3 for XP Pro users will be made available “on April 29th, via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center.” XP Home users will need to wait even longer. “Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer,” wrote Keroack.

In a note to his original message, Keroack also wrote that XP SP3 isn’t available yet to MSDN or TechNet members. While many had hoped that it would be available today, they’ll need to wait, it seems, until it becomes publicly available. Keroack wrote, “This will be available within the next month.”

April 21, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

You can build your own Mac, but do you really want to?

Psystar claims it can make Mac clones for cheap. There’s reason to doubt however that anyone will ever actually own a Psystar $399 Open Computer running Mac OS X. Funny, though, as Jason Perlow points out in his ZDNet blog, it’s really not that much trouble to build a Hackintosh.

Perlow explains that “Well, along with legal copies of Mac OS X and a special EFI firmware emulator for PC BIOS-based equipment and instructions how to put it all together it doesn’t really require any more effort than what it would have typically taken a PC homebrewer to assemble their own DOS or Windows-based white box 10 or 15 years ago.”

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April 20, 2008
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Microsoft is telling you Vista’s DOA

They really are. Are you listening?

First it was Bill Gates , now it’s Steve Ballmer. In the latest example, Todd Bishop of SeattlePI reported from last week’s Microsoft MVP Summit that at the meeting’s keynote address that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer called Vista “a work in progress.”

Vista? A work in progress? After more than five-years of development and over a year after its release? My goodness, Ballmer was actually being relatively honest about Windows. That was a red-letter day.
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April 18, 2008
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Jealousy? Novell, Red Hat, and the Linux Desktop

Recently, both Novell and Red Hat went on record as dismissing the idea that the consumer Linux desktop is going to be taking off anytime soon. It’s not? Has anyone told Asus and Xandros? Everex and gOS? How about Dell and Ubuntu? They’re all doing great with consumer Linux desktops.

Novell actually isn’t taking an extreme position on the consumer Linux desktop. Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian on April 15th in India, according to an InfoWorld report, simply said that the consumer market is taking longer to develop than the business market and that “The market for the desktop for the next three to five years is mainly enterprise-related.”

OK, fair enough. I think the consumer Linux desktop is growing faster than he does, but he’s certainly right when he says that the Linux desktop is going to grow faster still in business. I mean, there must be some enterprises moving to Microsoft Vista, I just don’t happen to know of any.

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