Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Geekazine was on the Tech Buzz, a Technology Roundtable with Stephen Heywood and Brian Wolken of VonWolken.com. This was Episode 18 of Friday Free for all, a weekly rundown of tech.

Some of the topics we covered:

• Android 2.1 release did not happen.
• Apple 12 core Mac Pro and 27 inch LED Cinema Display
• HP Slate, Marvell Moby Tablet and Nvidia Tegra Tablet Jeff saw at CES
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 Specs
• Google out of China
• Nexus One Trademark
• FBI Spying in on Social Networks

Friday Free For All Episode 18 from The Tech Buzz on Vimeo.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (135.2MB)

This really should come as no surprise: the Guardian reports that FBI agents have been going undercover on Facebook and other social networking sites looking for criminals. And they’ve been finding them.

This doesn’t refer to persons promoting bogus FB apps designed to steal identities.

They are finding criminals who maintain profiles, sometimes public profiles, under their real names with photographs of their real faces:

Law enforcement agencies have long used internet chatrooms to lure child pornography traffickers and suspected sex predators and with a warrant, can seize suspects and defendants’ email records. But Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites provide a wealth of additional information, in photographs, status updates and friend lists. In many cases, the information is publicly accessible.

In a section entitled “utility in criminal cases”, the document says agents can scan suspects’ profiles to establish motives, determine a person’s location, and tap into personal communication, for instance through Facebook status updates.

This really shouldn’t surprise anyone. What’s notable is that the Electronic Freedom Foundation got hold of an internal Department of Justice slideshow (presumably a PowerPoint presentation) dealing with this topic. The excerpts in the news story are fascinating.

The article goes on to point out that social networking sites are often checked as part of employment background checks–again, not news, although not necessarily publicized. I happened to be with a personnel guy when he checked the social networking page (not Facebook) of a job applicant. The picture of the applicant smoking a joint did not further the applicant’s chances for employment (no confidence was violated–I didn’t know who the applicant was or what the applicant looked like).

Mentioned, but not resolved, in the Department of Justice slideshow was the question of whether an agent’s creating a Facebook account under an assumed name violates Facebook’s terms of service. Given that undercover police work has a long history, I suspect this practice would be considered equivalent to working under cover, but I am not a lawyer.

Folks need to remember that the internet is a public place.

Seattle from the Plane

So you may have heard the story from my Facebook page. On Friday, March 12, I missed a connection flight and had to stay in the Denver Airport for the night. I made the best of it and created a little video. Although it worked itself out, I still have to wonder if this could have been avoided?

Here is the story:

Flight itinerary was 3:50 PM take off from San Fransisco Airport to Denver. Arrive at 7:15, then board the next flight at 8:17 to Madison. Arrive in Madison, WI at 11:30 P.M.

The first plane was arriving from Reno. The weather in San Fransisco was rain, so there were slight delays – which pushed back the first flight to 4:17. United Airlines didn’t push back the new take off time until 4:15. We finally boarded the plane and took off around 4:40 P.M.

The switch was going to be close, but it was expected a 8:05 landing, which was true. However, we then sat on the Tarmac because United Airlines decided to give our assigned gate to another plane. 15 minutes later, we pulled into gate E35 (If I remember correctly).

Before landing, the flight attendants talked about other flights and their gates. They did not seem to know that I was connecting to the Madison flight and did not have that information. When I talked to the attendant, she was quick and said – well just consult the board.

I deplaned at 8:20. There was nobody at the end directing anyone. I went to a kiosk and found my flight was at 85 – a run to the other side of the terminal. However, the status was “Closed”. I found and asked an attendant what that meant. She looked it up and said “Oh. That flight left already.”

Therefore I proceeded to Customer Service to figure out how I was going to get home. As I got in line I heard over the speaker – “Madison Flight – You have one minute to board or the doors will close”. I was floored at that point, and still way too far away to make a run for it.

The customer service line was way too long. 50 people in front of me that missed a connection? A lot of angry people and a Manager that looked like he was ready to give the same answer – That scripted paragraph that comes from the United Airlines manual. I have to admit: He didn’t sway from that script at all.

Customer Service Line

As we were standing in line, another man apparently swore at a woman. 3 big words came from his mouth. She called a guard over and that is when it got interesting. He basically was belligerent as he talked to the officer. He walked out of the terminal in Handcuffs. So this is a lesson to all: An Airport is kinda like an Embassy building. It’s not really a place to practice freedom of speech. Freedoms are pretty limited; and I completely agree with it – That is why he was hauled away.

I finally got to the front of the line. I was told that the next few flights to Madison were booked and I wouldn’t get out of Denver until Sunday morning. Not liking that answer, we started to look for alternatives. She finally found a flight to Chicago that would leave at 6 AM the next morning, with a connecting flight at 3 PM, although I would be put on the list to get bumped up. There were no other flights out of Denver to the East coast, so I was basically staying at the Airport. Of course, they offered a hotel discount coupon, but otherwise I would have to stay in the Airport Terminal overnight.

At this point it was 9:30 P.M. I was hungry and getting a little frustrated. To top it off, all the establishments were closing or closed. By 10 P.M, all I could do in Terminal B was walk around or sleep.

Luckily, a passing employee suggested I go to Terminal A – for there was a McDonalds that was open until 2 AM. I also found the bar next door to McDonalds was also open, so I was able to get a more substantial meal.

The idea to do the video came shortly after that. I decided that if I was going to be stuck here (in which I also assumed there have been and will be others that had that same issue), I would make the best of it and take video of the experience.

After a couple hours of footage and first round of post-production, I sat in one of the chairs and got a couple hours of sleep. Woke up to get to the 6 AM Chicago flight.

So with all that said and done, here are my issues with this flight:

• Yes, inclement weather pushed our flight back, but that was known before we left San Fransisco. They could have made appropriate plans for connecting flights – especially since most of them were the last flights of the day. Holding a plane for 10 minutes is not the end of the world.
• When we landed, the flight attendants did not direct or ask passengers for help  in letting those who needed to run to a connecting flight get off first. It just became a regular push to get off, which added about 5 minutes to the wait.
• There was nobody at the terminal to give us direction to our flights. If someone would have said “85″ as I got off the plane, I would have been running to the gate without asking someone who really didn’t have the right answer. I might have been home by 11:30 P.M.
• The Customer Service line pretty much said it all. We waited over an hour to talk with someone. If you have 50 people waiting for Customer Service, it’s too long.

I would like to add a couple more for the Airport itself. I don’t have any qualms with the Denver Airport – I really appreciate the place that I could sleep and the wifi connection, but it would have been better if:

• Some of the stores stayed open just a bit longer. It would have really sucked if I would have waited for 10 hours without any food or drink.
• Maybe an after hours vending machine so I could get a soda or candy bar.

Even though United Airlines stuck with the “Inclement weather” excuse, I believe my issues and rebuttle are valid ones. Waiting 15 minutes for a gate and holding the connecting planes 10-15 minutes would have gotten us all home without issue. Not having someone do Quality Control when we walked off the plane is poor organization. Simple changes and there might not have been 50 people standing in a Customer Service line.

By the way – The flight to Chicago – The flight attendants did everything I mentioned above to get those off the plane who had connecting flights leaving shortly. There WAS someone at the door to guide us. I made it to my next plane with 2 minutes to spare.

So with that said, here is the video of my stay. Enjoy!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (115.2MB)

The FCC is offering a broadband speed test as part of its efforts to encourage better broadband service.

United States broadband users can participate in the test by going to Broadband dot gov.

From the website:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) was signed into law by President Obama on February 17th, 2009. The FCC is currently working in coordination with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to perform the FCC’s role under the Recovery Act. Specifically, in conjunction with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program established by the Act, the FCC has been tasked with creating a National Broadband Plan by February 17, 2010. The Recovery Act states that the National Broadband Plan shall seek to ensure all people of the United States have access to broadband capability and shall establish benchmarks for meeting that goal.

I think we should help them gather the data they need.

My ISP tested out at about 15,000 kbps down and about 4,000 kbps megs up at the FCC; in contrast, Speedtest dot net, a site that Jeffrey introduced to me, reported 7.91 mbps down and 3.35 mbps up (the FCC reports in kbps, Speedtest in mbp/s). The “down” speeds differ significantly and I cannot account for that. The two sites might be using different testing methods: The FCC says that

Users are randomly assigned the Ookla or M-Lab application.

Once you complete one of the tests, you are given the option of trying the other.

The disparity of results between the FCC tests and Speedtest was similar in Firefox and Opera, though the reported download speeds were faster in Firefox (I have Firefox v. 3.0.17 and Opera v. 10.10 on my Ubuntu v. 8.x netbook here).

I don’t know what my ISP advertises; it was them or Verizon; the very few times I’ve had to call Verizon’s 800-number regarding my landline, the convoluted menu system there has made me reluctant to avail myself of their services when an alternative is available to me. (The real live human beings, once I got to them, were wonderful, but getting to them was an unnecessarily difficult adventure, he said tactfully.)

I learned about this at Balloon Juice.

Ultimately, wires will be involved with your wireless devices. Bloomberg reports Time-Warner wants to provide some of them:

Time Warner Cable Inc., the biggest pay-television provider in New York City, is pitching phone companies including AT&T and Verizon Wireless on a service that uses its underground cables to carry mobile calls and Web downloads — easing the congestion spurred by data-hungry users of smartphones like the iPhone.

The service, known in the industry as wireless backhaul, has become Time Warner Cable’s fastest-growing business after revenue tripled last year, said Craig Collins, senior vice president of business services. Across the cable industry, sales from wireless carriers may reach about $3.6 billion in 2012, according to researcher GeoResults Inc.

The story goes on to say, without quoting any statistics, that iPhones use twice the capacity of other smartphone (I wonder how an iPhone compares to my Android) and that backhaul may ease congestion from one cell tower to another, but won’t help between a tower and the phones in our pockets.

This last couple days was a pretty eventful one. Andy McCaskey called me and said – Hey, your going to California. Funny, I wasn’t shootin at no food.

The event is the HP Converged Infrastructure Road Show. It was a 2 day event in multiple cities that ends in San Fransisco – More specifically, Palo Alto – At the heart of IT. Unfortunately, it also happens opening weekend of SXSW, but ya know, it happens.

I am actually not only honored to go, but very excited. As an IT professional in the former life, I still love to keep my hands in the infrastructure and administration. That, and it’s the first time I get to go to the sunshine state. Not the Dairy state – That is my home.

Andy and I will be heading down with one goal in mind – Video. We will be interviewing multiple people in the HP IT world, including Dave Peterson, Bill Allen, Grant Jacobsen and many others in the HP line.

HP Road Show Contest

Oh yeah, once we finish the video, we’ll be having a contest. The prizes are not finalized just yet, but the main prize we were bopping around is something you might want in your arsenal.

If you want to follow via Twitter, the hashtag combo will be #hprs and #hpci. Streaming will be available if we have the bandwidth.

Topics covered:

Learning how to reduce your IT operations and maintenance resource costs
Remove trapped budget silos that are costly and underutilized
Transform your Data Center to operate more efficiently
See how the HP converged infrastructure architecture is breaking down technology silos to simplify IT and accelerate business results.

Day 1 sessions will highlight the following:

- Bulletproofing your virtualization strategy
- Why Converged Infrastructure matters to your Data Center
- Control Aging Server Sprawl; New economics you can’t ignore
- Unleash Trapped Capacity with Virtual Storage Infrastructure
- Get out of the Sparc, IBM mainframe and legacy rut with Integrity optimized infrastructure
- Changing Networking to Unlock Business Value

Day 2 sessions will highlight the following:

- HP BladeSystem Matrix and Insight Software: Converged Infrastructure solution for delivering shared services
- Flex Fabric to dynamically connect resources
- Unified Storage for flexible, resilient scale-out storage
- BladeSystem with G6 processors for maximum performance and power efficiency
- Detailed technical teardown of competitive systems to see what’s really under the covers

A while ago, I posted here about Fluxbox on Debian Linux. Fluxbox is a window manager or graphical user interface for Linux and Unix environments running X.

Thursday night, I gave a presentation on Fluxbox at my local LUG. You can download a PDF of the handout here.

The handout is not a stand-alone document; it was written to accompany the presentation and the accompanying hands-on demonstration, but it can give you an idea of some of the things you can do with Fluxbox.

At the end of the document are links to sources of detailed information about Fluxbox.

I have just installed VirtualBox on one of my Slackware computers. I should have fun testing stuff on that and letting you all know what I find out.

600 tweets a second. That might just jump up a little in the next 18 hours as the Deccabillitweeter will be crowned.

What is a Deccabillitweeter? Well that is the person who will make the 10 Billionth Twitter. I know I will be trying for that. Therefore, you will see me tweet all day tomorrow.

1st tweet: Got out of bed. 2nd tweet: Jumped in shower 3rd tweet: showering. 4th Tweet: still showering…

Deccabillitweeter meter

I looked, but couldn’t find out who the 1 billionth tweet was. All I know is it happened around Nov. 10, 2008. The 5 Billionth Twitter was sent by Robin Slone with the post “Oh lord”. He hit enter before he could finish it with “…it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way…”

So what do you give a Deccabillitweeter? Well if it’s anything like an anniversary, it’s tin/aluminum or Diamond. So would that make it a Diamond-Deccabillitweeter?

We have 18 hours to go, according to Gigatweet.  Yep, it’s a site dedicated to watching how much time we waste online. Bless their souls.

Mobile Broadband

Despite the drool-inducing new tech from such phone-makers as LG, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson, mobile broadband was the star of the show at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, which was held in Barcelona from February 15^th to the 18^th. At a press conference, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg boldly declared that the era of mobile broadband is upon us.

“Mobile broadband has had its breakthrough,” said Vestberg, “and we believe that we will see three billion new mobile broadband subscriptions in the next five years.”

Vestberg’s estimates may seem a bit optimistic, but there is no doubt that the growth in mobile data is a significant reality. In the last ten years, the number of mobile subscriptions has grown six-fold, and now sits at roughly 4.6 billion. In 2008, marketing research firm comScore released a study that showed a 154% increase in mobile broadband use between 2006 and 2007. Vestberg asserts that, as the mobile phone industry continues to gain subscribers and develop content-rich applications, mobile traffic will increase by as much as 50 times in the next few years.

While the proliferation of smartphones in recent years continues to push mobile broadband use to new heights, there has also been a considerable increase in mobile-connected notebook computers, particularly among business users. There are currently 5 ways of achieving wireless mobile 3G and 4G broadband on a laptop. The simplest and most elegant solution is to buy a laptop (or netbook) with a built-in 3G or 4G modem. These are becoming increasingly common as wireless broadband makes the transition from a niche service to the mainstream. Of course, if your computer is any older than your current toothbrush, chances are you won’t have a built-in modem for mobile broadband. No worries, though, as there are four different technologies out there, ready to bring your aging laptop into the era of mobile broadband.

Just as PC Card Wi-Fi adapters jutted awkwardly out of laptops everywhere just a decade ago, 3G and 4G wireless modems are now available as PC Card and ExpressCard devices, as well as USB dongles. Portable 3G/Wi-Fi hotspots let you and your co-workers share a single mobile connection, and some cell phones even allow wireless “tethering,” so your computer can get in on the 3G action just by piggybacking on your cell phone’s signal.

While any of these options can get the job done, finding and accessing the best available network can be tricky on some devices. Look for devices that come bundled with mobile connection management software such as QuickLink Mobile from Smith Micro. A good mobile connection manager will easily manage and quickly connect to the fastest, most cost-effective network available. QuickLink-branded software often comes pre-installed on laptops with built-in 3G modems, such as those by HP and Dell. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile also pre-load certain phones with QuickLink mobile connection manager and mobile multimedia manager to automate connectivity and enhance the multimedia user experience.

We’ll see over the next few years if Hans Vestberg’s utopian vision of mobile broadband comes to fruition. Maybe he’s right. Or maybe he’s been drinking the same love potion that made Steve Jobs think the iPad would be the next big thing. Whatever happens, it’s safe to say that mobile connectivity is happening, and it’s pretty cool.

In my last post about Slackware Linux, I mentioned how Slackware does not automatically resolve dependencies.

Tonight, I had to deal with a dependency issue in order to run Opera, my favorite browser ™. Here’s how I dealt with it.

I downloaded and installed Opera. It installed without errors, but, when I tried to start it, it didn’t.

So I opened a terminal window as root and started Opera from the command line, like this:

cd /usr/bin
./opera

It threw an error message that it needed the file libqt-mo.so.3.3.8.

The whereis command revealed that there was no file in a default Slackware Linux 13.0 installation whose name started with libqt-mo.so.

I teleported into my Slackware Linux 12.2 box and found the file. In fact, I found several files whose first name was libqt-mo.so. I scp’d them all over to my Slackware 13.0 box and copied them to the /usr/lib/qt/lib directory, which was the name of the directory in which I found them on the 12.2 computer.

Still no luck. Opera continued to complain that it could not find the file in /usr/lib/opera/10.10.

Never one to use a scalpel when a hammer would do, I muscled them right into /usr/lib/opera/10.10.

Bingo! Opera ran.

It’s busy synchronizing itself right now.

This is the last post in a series on installing Slackware Linux.

The earlier posts:

Part 1: Considered why some persons find Slackware difficult to install.

Part 2: Partitioned the hard drive for a clean install, as opposed to an upgrade or a dual boot installation.

Part 3: Formatted the swap drive and target drive and pointed the computer to the source media.

Part 4: Installed the operating system and included software and configured LiLo (the Linux Loader).

Part 5: Configured the network, time zone, mouse, and root password.

This post covers some in no particular order miscellaneous things I’ve learned that have made using Slackware more easier and enjoyable.

Read the rest of this entry »