Hardware and Software Forum

OK, so it might not be quite as talked about as the mythical [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story245295.html"]Apple iTablet[/URL], but the [URL="http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/11/23/239414/Google-Chrome-OS-A-threat-to-Windows-7.htm"]Google Chrome[/URL] OS-based netbook is also creating quite a stir. According to the [URL="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/20091227/google-chrome-based-netbook-tech-specs-are-out.htm"]IB Times[/URL] the Chrome OS netbook will have the following tech specs: An Nvidia Tegra chipset (given the late 2010 …

If you weren't already familiar with the likes of GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment and others, what would you like to see in a Linux User Interface? Whether you call it a desktop manager, a window manager, an XGUI or user interface; what do you think it needs to be …

The UK has finally ratified the 802.11n standard for WiFi at last. Although we've had '802.11n-ready' kit on the market for a fair while, it hasn't been official as yet. I can only hope people in stores will be able to explain what people are buying. I say this because …

Augmented reality has been a bit of a Star Trek thing until now - you know, one of those things that seems a good idea but won't really work outside of a few sci-fi shows. Well, maybe it won't be for long. The [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8421684.stm"]BBC[/URL] is among the sources suggesting it's …

The [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220247.html"]hugely popular[/URL] act of text messaging is many different things to many different people, from a cool way to keep in touch at one end of the spectrum to something that is destroying the English language at the other. You can [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220712.html"]use SMS to hack an iPhone[/URL] or send …

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) took aim at 14 consumer electronics companies for violating GPL licensed products. This is the largest lawsuit of its kind ever filed. This lawsuit uses what Richard Stallman calls "tivoization" as its defense. Tivoization, if you recall from my post, "[URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story240080.html"]Does Linus Torvalds Hate …

Neither RedHat nor Novell feel the need to push for a Linux Desktop that competes with the ubiquitous Windows OS. So the two largest commercial Linux vendors are throwing in the towel in the Desktop arena. There it is. Now go by yourselves a copy of Windows Vista--and while you're …

The Obama Administration vows to cut costs in part by using open source software (Software whose source code is made available to the user), cloud computing, virtualization, Linux and other low cost technologies. But, does the use of open source software put the government, its records and our national security …

It was a cold November morning, leaves covered the now yellowed grass, the dog's water stood frozen, two little winter birds fluffed their feathers while sitting on a low tree branch outside my kitchen window and the smell of coffee began to fill my nostrils telling me that it's time …

If you are expecting a nice shiny iPhone or BlackBerry as a gift this Xmas, your joy may be short lived if network crashes this week are anything to go by. Earlier this week Twitter users in the UK were reporting data network access as being down for close on …

Yesterday, the [URL="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2009/tc20091222_416170.htm"]Federal Appeals Court ruled[/URL] in what appears at first blush to be a shocking decision, that Microsoft must stop selling Word 2007 by January 11, 2010. But a closer look at the decision suggests that this isn't as big a deal as it first seems. Sure, Microsoft has …

I write a lot of about the battle among large technology corporations in this space and the importance of competitive checks and balances. Yet Comcast seems to be growing into a super power with control over the very pipes that provide many of us with internet access, but without any …

Teens who take revealing pictures of themselves to send to other teens are getting more than embarrassment: They're getting a criminal record as a sex offender. The problem of revealing teen pictures has been getting a great deal of attention lately, with a [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3651.html"]recent survey[/URL] finding that 36 percent of …

Everyone has posted their predictions for 2010 but here's the real scoop on what's going to happen in 2010 with Linux and Linux-oriented hardware and software products. Get ready to see the biggest increase in Linux adoption in history. You can say you saw it here first. These are in …

British Telecom has announced that it is ahead of schedule for superfast broadband* and will deliver it in time for the [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8424401.stm"]Olympic Games in London[/URL]. It's less good that only 40 per cent of customers will be able to get at the service but then the Internet was ever thus. …

Well, well, how about that [URL="http://www.dell.com"]Dell[/URL]? In a landmark decision, Dell [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23052/1231/"]announced[/URL] that it has penned a deal to use [URL="http://www.novell.com"]Novell[/URL]'s SUSE Linux in its data centers to power its new OptiPlex FX 160 thin client systems. Wow. Dell is doing this to save money and simplify its IT infrastructure …

The Android has landed. 17 percent of people in the U.S. currently planning to buy a smartphone within the next three months are considering one that runs Google's mobile OS, while 20 percent indicated that iPhone would be their choice. That's according to [url=http://comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/12/Android_Crashing_the_Smartphone_Party]a report released yesterday[/url] by analyst firm …

The federal government today [URL="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/vice-president-biden-kicks-72-billion-recovery-act-broadband-program"]made[/URL] the first awards aimed toward improving broadband access in the U.S. In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities …

Thought that 2009 was [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/post975935.html"]the year that botnets died[/URL], well think again Batman, it was actually the year they bounced back. Compromised computers were responsible for distributing 83.4% of the 107 billion spam messages sent around the world, every single day, during 2009 according to a new Symantec report. Indeed, …

If you've ever remotely operated one computer from another, you've used desktop virtualization. It's been built into Linux, Mac OS X and Windows for years, but recent moves by Red Hat could signal that it's about to go mainstream. The Linux company late last week announced that it was opening …

Oh dear, now I do not believe that was meant to happen. It appears that users of Office 2003 who also protect their documents with the Microsoft Rights Management Service (RMS) have found them so well protected that nobody can open them - not even the person who created the …

Everyone has their predictions for the new year but do they often prognosticate using an animated video? The folks over at [URL="http://www.rpath.com"]rPath[/URL] created a clever [URL="http://www.rpath.com/corp/predictions"]video[/URL] animation depicting their reasonable and humorous predictions for 2010. rPath might be best known for its [URL="http://www.rpath.org/ui"]online virtual appliance builder[/URL]. You can also [URL="http://www.rpath.com/corp/free-rbuilder"]download …

Thanks to new firmware (v.1.3) released last Thursday, Dell's Lifecycle Controller now works with system management tools from BMC and Microsoft. Most reports that followed Dell's Thursday announcement focused on the speed and capacity of its EqualLogic storage arrays, not on the software used to manage them. While improvements to …

The news that Google is going to start making its own mobile phones to run the Android operating system might seem odd at first but it's actually quite logical. I should stress it's unsubstantiated as yet but it's appeared on a number of websites. The doubters have pointed out that …

Still using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader? Maybe it is time to switch to something that's not glowing red on the bad guy radar, or which is more securely coded depending upon how you look at these things. Yes, Adobe has admitted that there is yet another possible zero-day vulnerability …

My son needs a new phone, so yesterday at my suggestion, we took a trip to the local AT&T retail store to get a look at the options up close and personal. Instead of eager sales people trying hard to sell us phones, we found they preferred to send us …

The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers ([URL="http://www.ieee.org"]IEEE[/URL]) has started work on WiFi the next generation. While that news in itself might not exactly rock your socks off, the small matter of a big speed increase might. Word is that WiFi TNG could be fast, very fast indeed. Anyone fancy …

Writing at the official Windows Experience blog, Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc refers to the latest NPD Retail Tracking Service data which shows that as of the February 2009 the Windows share of the US netbook market is a staggering 96 percent. That's up from less than 10 percent of US unit …

Even Microsoft is sometimes faced with the decision of whether to "buy or build." This time it chose to buy. With the acquisition of Opalis Software announced yesterday, Redmond in one stroke takes a major leap in data center process automation. And it couldn't have come at a better time. …

IBM today announced that it has opened a Cloud Computing Laboratory in Hong Kong to support its LotusLive cloud services and the numbers are pretty impressive whichever way you look at them. From the 18 million seats in year one that LotusLive has amassed, to the $126 billion IBM expects …

We've been hearing about an Apple Tablet for such a long time now, it feels like it should exist, yet it doesn't. With each Apple event, the rumors are so vivid, we actually believe them. Then the announcement comes, the shiny new ipods and Mac Books and other equipment are …

Ever pine away for a car for months, or even years, then when you finally get it—you have buyer’s remorse? You should have taken a test drive. Sure, you say, testing a car with a chatty salesperson next to you isn’t ownership but it does give you an idea of …

You might not think that a 12,000 square foot data center would be anything for the environmental lobby to get excited about, but this is no ordinary IT facility. The Green Data Center ([URL="http://syr.edu/greendatacenter/"]GDC[/URL]) has been built by Syracuse University in partnership with New York State and IBM in order …

Do you need a reality check? Freedom isn't free. You have to work hard, and possibly even die, for it. Fortunately, free software doesn't require you to sacrifice anything but restrictions. Unfortunately, the powerful marketing machines constantly bombard and tempt you with semi-clever TV commercials, discount offers, inexpensive upgrades or …

Forget about tight budgets and economic woes impacting upon the IT business, there's a post-recession return to pre-recession spending happening and networking is likely to benefit the most. According to IDC, "transformation will impact every corner of the industry in 2010" but the most important transformational force of all is …

After a swirl of rumors that Apple was in talks to acquire music-streaming service [url=http://www.lala.com/]Lala[/url], the [url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342404574576544196064138.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection]Wall Street Journal reported[/url] yesterday that the companies had reached a deal. Exact terms were not disclosed. Lala, a four-year-old private company, offers a terrific Web-based [url=http://www.lala.com/#howitworks]music streaming and download service[/url] that lets you …

Smaller businesses and people who use Hotmail as n email system or backup email system need to change their passwords - Microsoft has confirmed it's investigating a security breach. It seems that in spite of the industrial strength security everybody of any size applies to these systems - and let's …

Mike Elgan, the veteran technology journalist, mused last week in a [URL="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9141437/Elgan_7_reasons_why_e_book_readers_make_lousy_gifts_this_year"]Computerworld article[/URL] that eBook readers would make lousy gifts. I don't necessarily agree with all of Elgan's points, but it got me thinking about how useful a one-trick device is for users. If you think about it, we began …

This is the third entry in the continuing "cave dwellers" [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story223037.html"]saga[/URL] and their new lives with Ubuntu. Someone posted a comment on the previous cave dwellers entry about [URL="http://www.apple.com"]iTunes[/URL] not working on Linux and I was absolutely sure that it did. It doesn't. Much to my surprise (and disappointment), iTunes …

It's been almost a year since I[URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story220028.html"] last interviewed [/URL] Joe 'Zonker' [URL="http://www.dissociatedpress.net/"]Brockmeier[/URL], who is the community manager at [URL="http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_11.2"]openSUSE[/URL]. I sent him several questions to answer by email. I was curious about the new version of openSUSE, 11.2, along with his increasing use of social media to promote it. …

According to a new survey of London taxi drivers, an average of 10,000 mobile phones are left behind by customers every single month. If that total is not staggeringly high enough, you can top it up with another 1000 iPods and memory sticks if you like. December is the worse …

There is no doubt that the current server market environment is the worse it has ever been, but a new report from IDC suggests that the worse may be over as the market posts sequential quarterly revenue growth for the first time since 2008. The [URL="http://www.idctracker.com"]IDC EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker[/URL] …

Depending upon the level of your paranoia, Google is either attempting to take over the online world or simply trying to make it a better place in which to work and play. This latest announcement does nothing to clarify these already muddy waters. "As part of our ongoing effort to …

I was talking with my friend, [URL="http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow"]Jason Perlow[/URL], yesterday and he told me that I should back off of the free software rants because he feels that I'm entering the gray edges of freakdom. We laughed about it but it made me think: When does a strong belief in something …

Apple has long been criticised for the way it handles iPhone App approval. [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4408.html"]Inconsistency[/URL] and [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4276.html"]mind-boggling logic[/URL] are the order of the day, or at least that's the way it appears to an increasing number of iPhone application developers. The application review process has been rigorously defended by Apple, although …

It's a fact of life that Linux distributions go extinct and it happens more often than our Linux fan base would like to admit. At last count, there are approximately [URL="http://lwn.net/Distributions/#historical"]50[/URL] individual distributions that are now extinct. What happens to the poor unfortunates who adopt and use these defunct distros? …

Smaller, bigger, faster. The more time that goes by, the bigger the number of bits they squeeze into smaller places for less money. And always faster than before. This time it's Samsung, with [url=http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221901550]news today[/url] that it has begun volume production of flash memory that's more than three times faster …

This is a bit off topic, but times are tough and money is money. There's an opportunity to earn between US$10 and $20 an hour working for the [U.S. Census Bureau](http://2010.census.gov/2010censusjobs/) for the 2010 population count. And after seeing number of hits that "[Craigslist: Developer's Jobs and Other Jobs](http://www.daniweb.com/news/story232973.html)" generated, …

Keeping the Internet safe for satire, the World Intellectual Property Organization [URL="http://didglennbeckrapeandmurderayounggirlin1990.com/legal.php"]ruled[/URL] that the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com was not a violation of the conservative political commentator's intellectual property. The WIPO [URL="http://reporter.blogs.com/files/decision-d2009-1182.pdf"]ruling[/URL] "dismissed Beck's argument that Internet users could be confused by the domain name and its accompanying Web site," noted …

Jumping the queue for BT Broadband is possible, it would seem. Possible, but not easy - unless you happen to be the Chairman of BT that is. Imagine you've been living without broadband for years because BT cannot supply it to your rural residence. Now imagine if the chairman of …