Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:10 — 353.6MB) | Embed

Dr. Bill Netcast – 214 – (11/12/11)

Netcast Show Notes:

Oregon iPad voting, LibreOffice 3.4.4 is out! Quad-core Tegra CPU, new release of Fedora Linux, GSotW: GRC DNS Speed Benchmark, Logitech loses money on Google.TV, Happy 11/11/11, Linux Mint RC 9 is out! Dr. Bill Bailey.NET, GoToMeeting.com Code: PODCAST

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

LibreOffice.org

Citrix GoToMeeting

Hand Held Hack

GetJar

The GameMaster’s YouTube Channel

CentOS Linux

Gibson Reseach’s DNS Benckmark Tool

TWiT Security Now Netcast

Blubrry Network

Revision3 Network

Geekazine

Mashable Web Site

Linux Mint

DuckDuckGo Search Engine

Dr. Bill Bailey.NET Web Site

Download M4V

Download WebM

Download MP3

Download Ogg

Available on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/VTjNxFUrf_U

Available on Vimeo at: http://vimeo.com/32092325

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

Now what to do with it? Ideas?

Dr. Bill Bailey.NET on Google +

Join me there! We’ll figure it our together! Dr. Bill Bailey.NET is the “company” (really just me) behind all the shows I do. Our netcasts (podcasts for the non-Leo Laporte fans) are: Dr. Bill.TV (the main show), VirtZine (The On-Line Magazine of Virtualization and Cloud Computing), Hand Held Hack, The Traditional Naturopath Podcast (audio only), The Word of Faith Netcast, and the Word of Faith Broadcast! Whew! I stay busy!

So… I am somewhat less “sociable” than some… I am struggling with it a bit… so, it may take a while to suss it all out!

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

I like Mint… it is not the distro I run on my own system, that is Ubuntu, but I am VERY impressed with Mint. This new version looks very cool. Time to play!

New Features in Linux Mint 12

“Linux Mint 12 comes with a brand new desktop, built with Gnome 3 and MGSE.

‘MGSE’ (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions) is a desktop layer on top of Gnome 3 that makes it possible for you to use Gnome 3 in a traditional way. You can disable all components within MGSE to get a pure Gnome 3 experience, or you can enable all of them to get a Gnome 3 desktop that is similar to what you’ve been using before. Of course you can also pick and only enable the components you like to design your own desktop.

The main features in MGSE are:

• The bottom panel
• The application menu
• The window list
• A task-centric desktop (i.e. you switch between windows, not applications)
• Visible system tray icons

MGSE also includes additional extensions such as a media player indicator, and multiple enhancements to Gnome 3.

The Linux Mint 12 desktop is a mix of old and new. It’s a brand new desktop but with traditional components. The new technology in Gnome 3 is exciting but the components contributed by MGSE make users feel at home. Linux Mint 12, like previous releases, and despite the fact that it’s based on Gnome 3, looks and behaves like a Mint desktop. You can launch applications from the bottom left, easily switch between applications and workspaces using the window list or keyboard shortcuts, keep an eye on your notifications at the top and access Gnome 3 features like “activities” from the top-left corner.

MATE

MATE is a fork of Gnome 2 which is compatible with Gnome 3. Thanks to MATE, you can run both versions of Gnome on the same system.

MATE is present on the DVD edition of Linux Mint 12. Users of the CD edition can install it via the mint-meta-mate package.

MATE is brand new, it’s not completely stable yet, and it’s missing a few parts. It’s being actively maintained and with close collaboration between the MATE developers and Linux Mint. With time the project will gain maturity and provide users with a traditional and solid desktop experience.

Eventually, MATE will be in every way identical to Gnome 2 and represent the future of traditional desktops within Linux.

In Linux Mint 12, both mintDesktop (in the RC) and mintMenu (in the stable release) are adapted and receive full support to work with MATE.

Artwork Improvements

Linux Mint 12 uses a new theme called Mint-Z which is based on Mint-X and Zukitwo.

Backgrounds: Like in the previous release, the default background shows a 3D scene featuring the Linux Mint logo. The original artwork comes from an artist called Gelsan. Additional quality backgrounds are also available, including fantastic photographs from India and the Yellowstone National Park.

Search Engines

Duck Duck Go: The new default search engine is Duck Duck Go. It doesn’t show different results depending on who’s making the search, it doesn’t track or record user information, it provides you with optmized results and it’s built on and contributes to Open Source.

Development of a new business model: Search engines will share with Linux Mint the revenue generated for them by Linux Mint users. Some search engines partnered with Linux Mint already and are present in Linux Mint 12.

Easy installation of other engines: The way you install search engines in Linux Mint 12 is radically different than in previous releases. Clear explanations and easy instructions are there for the user to understand how search engines help Linux Mint and to decide what to do. The installation of additional search engines is also now much easier than before.

Upstream Components

Linux Mint 12 features the following upstream components: Ubuntu 11.10, Linux 3.0, Gnome 3.2.”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

Jeffery Powers had this on Google +

“For some, you have already celebrated. But I wish you all a Happy 00110001001100010010110100110001001100010010110100110001001100010010
00000011000100110001001110100011000100110001″

Binary. Very geeky!

Mashable says that, “One group of hackers has dubbed it ‘Nerd New Year.’ They’ll be lining the streets of Redwood City, in the heart of Silicon Valley, for an outdoor hackathon and party, including the countdown to Nerd New Year itself at 11:11 p.m. ‘It is ON,’ organizer Adam Rifkin told Patch. (That’s a binary joke, by the way.)”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

I love my Roku, as you know, so set-top boxes for Internet-based TV is awesome! But, GoogleTV apparrently just didn’t “catch on!”

Logitech confesses to ‘gigantic’ mistake with Google TV

“Logitech is halting production of its Google TV Revue set-top boxes, acknowledging that the whole affair was a financial disaster for the company.

At an Analyst and Investor Day hosted by Logitech on Wednesday, CEO Guerrino De Luca confessed that the Revue was a ‘mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature.’ In his presentation, DeLuca in part pointed the finger at Google TV, referring to it as a ‘beta’ product, according to The Verge.

De Luca told investors that Logitech lost more than $100 million in operating profits on the Revue after bringing it to the market almost a year ago. As a result, the company will simply let existing inventory of the Revue run out this quarter and will not make another set-top box to replace it.

The CEO intimated that Google TV simply wasn’t ready to launch when it did and that Logitech mistakenly thought the search giant’s product was revolutionary, The Verge reported. DeLuca also blamed his company’s own ‘operational miscues in EMEA [Europe, Middle East, and Africa]‘ for the Revue’s failure to ignite the market.

‘To make the long story short, we thought we had invented [sliced] bread and we just made them,’ DeLuca said. The company made a commitment to ‘just build a lot because we expected everybody to line up for Christmas and buy these boxes [at] $300…that was a big mistake.’”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

Have you ever wondered how your DNS system (usually provided by your ISP) is doing, speed-wise? When your PC queries the DNS for a domain name, if your DNS responds slowly, your perception is that “the Internet is slow” when, in fact, it may just be your DNS. You can always switch to another DNS provider by setting that option in your router (for instance)… I use OpenDNS myself. Anyway, this weeks GSotW is a way to test your DNS speed, for free! And, it is by Steve Gibson… so it is very compact, and tightly coded!

GRC Domain Name Speed Benchmark

“GRC’s DNS Benchmark performs a detailed analysis and comparison of the operational performance and reliability of any set of up to 200 DNS nameservers (sometimes also called resolvers) at once. When the Benchmark is started in its default configuration, it identifies all DNS nameservers the user’s system is currently configured to use and adds them to its built-in list of publicly available ‘alternative’ nameservers. Each DNS nameserver in the benchmark list is carefully ‘characterized’ to determine its suitability — to you — for your use as a DNS resolver. This characterization includes testing each nameserver for its ‘redirection’ behavior: whether it returns an error for a bad domain request, or redirects a user’s web browser to a commercial marketing-oriented page. While such behavior may be acceptable to some users, others may find this objectionable.

When the benchmark is run, the performance and apparent reliability of the DNS nameservers the system is currently using, plus all of the working nameservers on the Benchmark’s built-in list of alternative nameservers are compared with each other….

Results are continuously displayed and updated while the benchmark is underway, with a dynamically sorted and scaled bar chart, and a tabular chart display showing the cached, uncached and ‘dotcom’ DNS lookup performance of each nameserver. These values are determined by carefully querying each nameserver for the IP addresses of the top 50 most popular domain names on the Internet and also by querying for nonexistent domains.

Once the benchmark finishes, the results are heuristically and statistically analyzed to present a comprehensive yet simplified and understandable English-language summary of all important findings and conclusions. Based upon these results, users may choose to change the usage order of their system’s own resolvers, or, if alternative public nameservers offer superior performance or features compared with the nameservers currently being used, to switch to one or more alternative nameservers.”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

I am an Ubuntu desktop guy myself, but one of my friends at work uses Fedora as his standard desktop (notebook) OS… it looks pretty cool. I may have to “play” with it!

Fedora 16 released with GNOME 3.2, virtualization enhancements

“The Red Hat-sponsored Fedora Project released Fedora 16 (‘Verne’), featuring the GNOME 3.2 desktop environment and virtualization and cloud enhancements — including support for the Aeolus and OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms. Version 16 upgrades the techie-focused Linux distribution to Linux 3.1, and moves up to the GRUB2 bootloader and Firefox 7.0.1, while offering enhanced contact and document management apps.

As we noted when the Fedora Project released its first beta of Fedora 16 in early October, the release is notable to desktop end users primarily for its upgrade to the GNOME 3.2 desktop. Fedora first tried out GNOME 3.0 in Fedora 15, a more significant release that also added a dynamic firewall, the SystemD configuration utility, and major new applications.

Like Fedora, which acts as the cutting-edge, Red Hat-backed upstream contributor to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE’s OpenSUSE also moved to GNOME 3.2 in its 12.1 beta. And on Nov. 4, the Linux Mint team succumbed to the wheels of ‘progress,’ announcing that the upcoming Linux Mint 12 will offer GNOME 3.
Mint, however, will also keep a full-fledged GNOME 2.32 alternative to the controversial GNOME 3. By comparison, Fedora 16 and OpenSUSE 12.1 will block users from booting into GNOME 2.x except for a simplified fallback mode for low-end systems.

GNOME 3.2 is said to have squashed many of the bugs of the original, while fixing a few of the most unpopular changes. Yet, GNOME has not backtracked much from its radical UI makeover. Fortunately, Fedora 16 also offers KDE Plasma Workspace 4.7 as an alternative.”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

(Cross Posted from the Hand Held Hack) A quad core CPU for hand helds! Sweet! “Project Kal-El” – gotta love the Superman reference!

Nvidia ships Tegra 3, claims it’s up to five times faster than Tegra 2

“Nvidia says its Tegra 3 processor, previously code-named ‘Kal-El,’ is now in production, making its first appearance in the Android-powered Asus Transformer Prime before the end of the year. The chip includes five ARM Cortex A9 cores, but the fifth ‘Companion core’ runs only up to 500MHz, and is optimized for saving power when running background tasks, the company says.

Nvidia introduced and demonstrated its ‘Project Kal-El’ last February. At the time, the chip was touted as the world’s first quad-core mobile processor, including four ARM-based CPU cores plus a twelve-core GeForce GPU (graphics processing unit).

But on Sept. 20, Nvidia disclosed that the Tegra 3 would actually sport five ARM Cortex-A9 cores, not four. The fifth ‘Companion Core’ is identical to the other four, except that it has been built using low power process technology and runs only from 0 to 500MHz, as opposed to the ’0 to max GHz’ delivered by the others, according to the company.”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

LibreOffice V3.4.4 (Final) is out, and it is a production (safe for business use) version. Time to upgrade!

LibreOffice Download Page

“LibreOffice is a comprehensive, professional-quality productivity suite that you can download and install for free. There is a large base of satisfied LibreOffice users worldwide, and it is available in more than 30 languages and for all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Suse, …).

You can download, install and distribute LibreOffice freely, with no fear of copyright infringement.

What’s outstanding about LibreOffice?

LibreOffice is a feature-packed and mature desktop productivity package with some really great advantages:

It’s free – no worry about license costs or annual fees.

No language barriers – it’s available in a large number of languages, with more being added continually.

LGPL public license – you can use it, customize it, hack it and copy it with free user support and developer support from our active worldwide community and our large and experienced developer team.

LibreOffice is a free software community-driven project: development is open to new talent and new ideas, and our software is tested and used daily by a large and devoted user community; you, too, can get involved and influence its future development.

LibreOffice gives you high quality:

The roots of LibreOffice go back 20 years. This long history means it’s a stable and functional product.

Thousands of users worldwide regularly take part in beta testing of new LibreOffice versions.

Because the development process is completely open, LibreOffice has been extensively tested by security experts, giving you security and peace of mind.

LibreOffice is user-friendly:

You get a simple-to-use yet powerful interface that is easy to personalize – Microsoft Office users will find the switch easy and painless, with a familiar look and feel.

Compatible with all major competitors’ file formats. You can easily import files from Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint and many other formats, and can easily save to Microsoft Office and other formats when needed.

LibreOffice is supported by a big worldwide community: volunteers help newcomers, and advanced users and developers can collaborate with you to find solutions to complex issues.”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »

The future is here for sure! Voting on a hand held device!

Oregon Tests Using iPad as a Voting Machine

“While most Oregon residents are still voting with paper ballots this election, a select few will be voting by iPad.

The state is testing Apple’s tablet to help those with disabilities more easily cast their ballots.
Although the iPad is being used to assist with the election, those using it aren’t casting their votes electronically. Rather, the iPad allows those with visual and other challenges to better see the ballot and make their selections. Their choices are then printed out on a paper ballot, according to an Associated Press report.

Apple has donated five iPads to help with the pilot project, according to the report.
The state decided to try out the iPad because its current crop of adaptive technology is aging. According to the AP report, the iPad-based approach has the potential to lower election costs, even if the state has to purchase significant numbers of Apple tablets.”

Posted by DrBill | No Comments »