Archive for April, 2009

Microsoft Denies Phone, Verizon Confirms Talks with Apple

The rumor mill has been turning with rumors that Apple was in talks with Verizon to offer a phone much like the iPhone and that Microsoft was working on a phone of their own. Microsoft has formally denied that it is making hardware for a phone, but will continue work on its mobile OS for other hardware manufacturers.

On the other hand, Verizon has confirmed talks with Apple over new devices that could be offered by Apple on Verizon’s network. The devices won’t be the iPhone since Apple is under contract to remain exclusive with those devices to AT&T. The rumored devices are a much smaller phone as well as a mobile touchscreen tablet-like device. If the device is real, it will be slightly smaller than a netbook and appears to run a full-fledged version of OS X Leopard. The deal is expected to pass or fail by late this summer.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Apr 29th, 2009

Adobe Confirms 0-Day Vulnerability With No Patch

Yesterday SecurityFocus posted a piece of code that could exploit the current and a couple of older versions of Adobe Reader. Today, Adobe has acknowledged the 0-day vulnerability and advises users to disable JavaScript in the PDF viewer. The vulnerability exists in the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of the reader and allows code execution with the privileges of the user running the application. Since the problem lies in Adobe’s implementation of JavaScript, Adobe has recommended disabling JavaScript in the application until a patch has been released.

According to ComputerWorld, some security researchers have gone so far as to tell users to switch PDF viewers. Personally, I don’t have a need for Adobe Reader since OS X has Preview and Ubuntu comes with Document Viewer “out of the box”. If you must continue to use Adobe Reader, the option can be found here once in the Preferences (you access it from multiple places in the menu in each OS, but the window looks the same once in):
adobe-disable-javascript

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Apr 29th, 2009

SaaS: Providing a Different Kind of Free

For a couple of years now the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Richard Stallman have been speaking out against Software as a Service (SaaS) warning that one gives up some amount of freedom since the software is no longer on one’s machine. The FSF stands up for free as in freedom software, not free as in price, so if the source code is not freely available for reading, modification, and redistribution, then it’s not free by their definition. While that’s true, SaaS does offer another kind of freedom that can’t be as easily dismissed as Stallman says. That’s the freedom from traditional brick-and-mortar IT. Sure, somewhere along the line, there has to be a CPU, RAM, hard drives, and networking gear to run any software, you don’t have to do it yourself and be locked into the hardware you purchase. By using open source software products on SaaS providers’ platforms who offer direct access to the code, one can avoid this lack of freedom as Stallman suggests, but also maintain the freedom from having to maintain one’s own servers. Call me biased, but when deciding whether to run software on-site or choosing to host with a provider, one still has to consider this other form of freedom.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Apr 28th, 2009

System76’s Ubuntu Netbook Has Arrived

A few weeks ago I commented on System76’s report that their sales were up 61% in Q1 and also mentioned that they were working on a netbook. Well, their netbook has arrived and is one sweet lookin’ little machine. What sets this netbook apart from the others is that this system is available only with Ubuntu, with no Windows version available. They call it the Starling Netbook and it has a 10.1″ screen and weighs in at 2.6 pounds. The laptop is slightly less than twice the thickness of the MacBook Air, but with a smaller screen, it weighs in almost half a pound lighter. It sports a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive. It has all the common features of other netbooks as well with a built-in webcam and three USB ports.

system76-netbook

To complement the sleek-looking hardware, the netbook comes preinstalled with Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix. The Netbook Remix edition of Ubuntu has a redesigned GUI to work better with smaller screens and on machines a bit lighter on hardware specs. Part of the emphasis on the 9.04 release was a focus on netbooks and the OS wasn’t available for long before System76 jumped on the opportunity.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Apr 28th, 2009

A Little Taste of What It’s Like

Converts from Windows Vista to XP may be getting a bit of a taste of what it has been like to be a Linux user. I heard a story from an acquaintance the other day of how his laptop didn’t run Windows Vista very well, so he decided to downgrade to Windows XP. Unfortunately, the drivers for the disk controller weren’t included in Windows XP and were only included with Vista. That isn’t a huge problem, one can usually get drivers for machines directly from the manufacturer’s site (in this case HP). Unfortunately, to install the drivers at Windows installation time, one needs to throw the driver onto a floppy drive and this was a laptop. The only solutions that I could come up with were 1) buy or borrow a USB floppy (not sure if that would work or not), or 2) slipstream the driver into the Windows XP installation CD. I’ve done step 2 and know for a fact that it will work, but it’s also a lot of work to do. Plus, one needs a working Windows installation to do it. Thus, begins a long, complex process just to get a fresh installation of Windows XP working on a laptop. My, how the tables have turned..

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Apr 28th, 2009

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