M C Computers

Google Chrome: Meet the New Boss

Google Chrome may not be the perfect Web browser, if there is such a beast, but it’s definitely going to give Firefox and Internet Explorer a run for their money. Even though Chrome is still in developer preview for Linux, it’s already making great strides.

For the past week or so, I’ve been running Google Chrome as my primary browser. Ben Kevan has been making packages for openSUSE for a while, and I finally decided to take the plunge. Initially, I thought I’d take it for a spin and go back to Firefox — which is what usually happens when I try a different browser. This time around, I may be sticking with Chrome for most of my browsing.

Speed, Stability, Extensions: Pick Two

Installing Chrome on openSUSE was a snap — just install an RPM and Chrome is ready to go. At first launch, Chrome will offer to import your settings from other browsers. It sucked in my Firefox options flawlessly, including bookmarks and passwords.

The first thing that I noticed with Chrome is that it’s speedy. Really speedy. Sites seem to load a little faster and the browser user interface (UI) itself seems a little snappier. This seems particularly true when using Google services like GMail and Google Reader, but for the most part holds true across other sites as well. On occasion, though, some Web elements don’t seem to want to work with Chrome at all. For instance, posting into an older version of WordPress, some of the menus when rendered in Chrome do not work, period. This is rare, but crops up for me at least once or twice per day.

In addition to being speedy, though, Chrome is also rock-solid stable. Since Chrome on Linux is still in development and not considered a “stable” release, I wasn’t expecting great things in the stability department. After a day of browsing with no crashes, I was impressed. After a week with almost no problems with Chrome, I’m deeply impressed.

The build I used is almost feature complete, although there seems to be no support for printing — which is probably good for the environment, but not so hot when you need to actually print things. There is a context menu item for printing, but nothing happens when I select the option. I assume that the Chrome folks will get around to this one eventually.

Chrome’s UI is a bit non-standard. Instead of the usual set of menus, Chrome just has a couple of icons to the right-hand side of the interface next to the location bar. This works pretty well, though it was a bit odd at first. By default, Chrome shows no “home” button, though this can be enabled in the Options.

The location bar doubles as the search bar, and the standard Ctrl-K shortcut will bring you to the location bar to perform your search. Since I’m used to this shortcut from Firefox, I fell into using it immediately. For users who aren’t, though, I wonder how they would discover the shortcut. There’s no clue in the UI that I could find that would help the user out here. You can find a list online but it’d be nice to have a menu item as well.

In case you’re wondering, yes — you can switch the default search engine. If you prefer to use Yahoo, Bing (still listed as “Live Search” in the option), Wikipedia, or another site, you’re free to do so.

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Twitter Continues to Battle DDoS Attack

More than two days after experiencing a complete outage as a result of a distribute denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, Twitter and other social networking sites such as Facebook are still battling a surge in traffic related to the attack. Twitter has taken some steps to mitigate the spike in traffic and ensure that the site is not knocked offline again, but some of those steps are having an impact on third-party tools that link to Twitter through API's (application programming interface).

Evidence gathered thus far from Twitter and other sites targeted by the DDoS attacks seems to suggest that the attack is actually a politically motivated attack aimed at silencing a Georgian activist. The victim, known by the online handle Cyxymu, uses blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to express views related to the tensions between Russia and Georgia. In a blog post, Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer of Internet security firm F-Secure, said "Launching DDoS attacks against services like Facebook is the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don't like one of the newscasters.

To defend itself against the ongoing DDoS attack, Twitter has implemented various defensive actions, some of which are blocking third-party Twitter applications from being able to connect with Twitter API's. The mitigating steps are also affecting the ability of many users to post to their Twitter accounts via SMS (short message service) text messages.

Twitter is working diligently for a more permanent solution that doesn't impact third-party applications or SMS messaging. In the meantime though, Twitter has stated that as long as the attacks continue they can't guarantee that things will get better or provide any assurances that they won't get worse. The best they can do is to promise to do everything they can as fast as they can to ensure the site remains available.

Other steps that can be taken involve identifying and isolating sources of attack traffic and simply dropping all incoming packets from those sources. That can have some affect, but when an attack leverages a botnet and the attack traffic is literally coming from hundreds of thousands of sources simultaneously it quickly becomes cumbersome and impractical to try and filter the traffic in this way. Another temporary solution could be to filter all traffic intended for the suspected victim, Cyxymu, and block that so that it does not hog the network bandwidth or server processing horsepower.

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Google Voice Can Sneak onto iPhone

Despite recent drama, Google Voice will soon be available for iPhone -- as a Web-based app, says The New York Times.
The all-things-phone-management application (which was widelyspeculated to have been rejected for threatening AT&T profits on calling plans) will be remade as a stylized Web site that offers everything the rejected app would have. It is unclear if Apple would reject a repurposed Google Voice app. But earlier in the year Apple did allow Google to promote Latitude as a Web app after it was rejected from the App Store.

Considering their recent decision has managed to draw attention from a wide range of people, including some at the FCC, it probably wouldn't be the best choice to block a rethought Google Voice app.

Web apps can be bookmarked on the iPhone interface and appear like an app purchased from the App Store. You can browse available Web apps, ranging from Facebook to BPlayer (which "allows you to listen to your favorite Belgian radio stations") here.

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Twitter Outage Moves Into Day 2

Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal spent yesterday battling a DDOS attack that started around 6 am California time. Twitter and LiveJournal went down hard, Facebook stayed mostly online but was clearly under strain. CNET reports that a single individual's accounts on the services may have been the primary target.

Now, nearly 24 hours later, Facebook and LiveJournal appear to be performing normally. But Twitter is down completely and has been for the last few hours.

As of 4 pm Twitter was saying things were looking better: "Site latency has continued to improve." But for most users, all third party services have been completely unusable for the last 20 hours or so (Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Power Twitter, etc..), bringing down the entire Twitter ecosystem. The Twitter.com site itself hasn't been reliable either.

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Facebook ain�t cool with the kids no more

Sorry, but social networks simply aren't cool anymore among the 15-to-24-year-old crowd. (I'm 23, and have all but quit Facebook (I stopped tweeting a few months ago), but that's more of a function of me being an anti-social cad than anything else.) Why? It seems the older crowd-people 25 and older-has given social networks the unmistakable stench of being not cool. Why would an 18-year-old kid want to mimic the lifestyle of a 30-year-old?

Now, while I'm thrilled to read this news, there are a few caveats. It's not like 15-to-24-year-olds are not using the Internet anymore. (No, they're using YouTube to listen to music, and using Rapidshare to download TV shows.) And a lot of those older users (25+) are responsible for the growth of Twitter of late.

Breaking down the numbers-all these numbers come from a recent Ofcom study, which I should have mentioned far earlier in this post-some 46 percent of people aged 25-to-34 regularly check Facebook compared to 40 percent one year ago. Meanwhile, 50 percent of kids aged 15-to-24 regularly check Facebook, down from 55 percent one year ago. Our own DBru notes kids don't like this stuff because it doesn't feel safe.

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Denial of Service Attack Knocks Twitter Offline (Updated) - Wired News

Twitter was shut down for hours Thursday morning by what it described as an ongoing denial of service attack. In a one sentence statement on its status blog, Twitter said, "We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly." The outage appeared to begin mid-morning, EST, and affected users around the world.

In the early minutes of the outage, we confirmed it in two New York boroughs and received word that it was down in Brazil as well. At that point, Twitter apparently didn't know what had hit it. (The status blog read, at that point, "Site is down - We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.")

Readers saying they were in Russia, Denmark, Chile, the UK, Hong Kong, France and the Netherlands all weighed in below. Some were taking it in stride - "Too many toilets flushing tweets!" wrote one, in reference to a Wired.com story. Others urged the rest of us to "get a life."

The world won't come to a complete standstill as a result of the Twitter outage, of course, but its impact will be felt far and wide. The popular short messaging service has become an integral part of the communications ecosystem - our first question was, how do you confirm Twitter is down without Twitter? - and from its millions of inveterate users, we expect an outpouring of pent-up Tweeting when this gets sorted out. An extended outage could have an impact on the spread of information - videos, music, and articles like this one - to say nothing of a growing number of businesses which depend on the service.

We experienced a seemingly unrelated problem when accessing the Twitter blog through Google. The page greeted one Wired.com employee with an error message beginning "We're sorry... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now." Another Wired.com employee was able to access the page as usual, with no virus warning. But with other users encountering the same error message, we wondered whether today's Twitter outage was somehow related to Google's virus warning. Judging from Twitter's admission that it is under a denial-of-service attack, that appears to have been the case.

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Linux - The New 'Hot' Job Skill

Nationwide unemployment may be heading toward double-digits in the U.S., but among the skills that are in highest demand are those of a Linux sysadmin. That's partly due to the effects of the recession -- more companies are willing to experiment with lower-cost open source alternatives to proprietary software. Still, the good news is qualified: Many of those jobs can be done anywhere on the planet.

There are many reasons to love Linux, as geeks around the world already know, but recent news adds yet another to the already long list of glorious virtues: It has now been named the No. 2 hottest IT job skill.

Yes, Linux has claimed the second spot on research firm Foote Partners' list of hottest noncertified IT skills, behind only Java More about Java EE/SE/ME. Rounding out the top five are virtualization, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Apple Store Discount on Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition . Click here. More about Microsoft .Net and NetWeaver.

The Hot List rankings are based on the growth in value of the various skills over time, along with premium pay levels and IT spending trends, among other factors. For Linux, the lofty ranking stems at least in part from a 50 percent increase in the value of Linux skills over the past year -- in the past six months alone, that value increased by almost 30 percent, according to Foote.

The job market, in general, may be under a dark cloud these days, but how's that for a silver lining?!

'I Can't Buy a Linux Job'

The good news, proudly proclaimed in a Datamation article, was picked up on Linux Today -- where it had garnered some 3,300 reads within a week of its posting -- as well as on TuxWire and Free Software Daily, among others.

Not everyone, however, felt it rang true.

"I often wonder where these statistics come from," wrote cww in the comments on Datamation, for example. "In my part of the world, I can't buy a Linux job. I've been a Linux 'Consultant in waiting' for a decade.

"I have begun to suspect this is like the ever popular 'Shortage of Qualified people' myth that is perpetuated by so many companies, where qualified actually means willing to work 60 hrs a week for $14k/yr," cww added.

Ever alert to even the faintest hints of controversy, Linux Girl's debate-o-meter began to go off as soon as she read that comment. Next stop: the streets of the blogosphere for some down-to-earth insight.

'Always Has Been'

"Linux has always been a 'hot' skill anywhere other than a Microsoft shop," Slashdot blogger drinkypoo told LinuxInsider.

"When I went to work for Silicon Engineering (now a division of Creative), I built Linux-based systems to serve as X terminals replacing *SPARCstation 1s and 2s* -- no joke," drinkypoo said. "The hilarious part is that even then -- 12 years ago -- it was cheaper to build a fairly fast system along those lines with a 19-inch monitor than to buy a used SS1+ pizza box with guts, and maybe no disk."

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Latest Google Chrome Beta Is �30 Percent Faster,� Supports HTML5, And Is Prettie

Google just released a new beta version of its Chrome browser for Windows PCs. The company claims that it is 30 percent faster than the current stable version of the browser (based on V8 and SunSpider benchmarks).

What may be more significant, though, is that this is the first version of Chrome that adds some support for HTML5, including video-tagging capabilities. The latest Firefox 3.5 beta also adopts HTML5, which allows for all sorts of cool things inside Web video like links and other interactive elements. It lets you treat video more like a Webpage. Along with Google’s acquisition of On2 today for its video codec, it looks like Google is getting behind open video in a big way. (Read this post from last year for more on the evolution of HTML).

The new Google Chrome beta is also prettier. Those themes we’ve been telling you about are now fully incorporated. And the new beta also improves the New Tab and Omnibox features.

When you create a new tab, Chrome shows you thumbnails of the sites you visits the most often (just like in Safari). These act as automatic bookmarks. Now, you can rearrange the thumbnails in any order you like by dragging and dropping them, or you can pin one down so that it doesn’t move even if you don’t visist it as much as other sites.

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Microsoft Acknowledges Linux Threat to Windows Client

Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The move is an acknowledgement of the first viable competition from Linux to Microsoft's Windows client business, due mainly to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as alternatives to full-sized notebooks.

"Netbooks opened Microsoft to the possibility that some other OS could get its grip on the desktop, however briefly," said Rob Helm, director of research for Directions on Microsoft. "Now it's alert to that possibility going forward."

In its annual Form 10-K report for the fiscal year ended June 30, Microsoft cited Red Hat and Canonical -- the latter of which maintains the Ubuntu Linux distribution -- as competitors to its client business, which includes the desktop version of its Windows OS.

Previously, Microsoft had only noted competition from Red Hat to its Server and Tools business, which includes the Windows Server version of the OS for server hardware, in its 10-K reports.

"Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market," Microsoft said in the filing. "Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat."

The filing goes on to note, in a thinly veiled reference to netbooks, that Linux has gained what Microsoft characterizes as "some acceptance" as an alternative client OS to Windows, in particular in "emerging markets" where "competitive pressures lead OEMs to reduce costs and new, lower-price PC form-factors gain adoption."
It also mentions the work of Microsoft's own OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners Hewlett-Packard and Intel to support Linux on PCs.

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Microsoft details how to port programs from Apple's App Store

In an attempt to encourage developers to bring their software to Windows Mobile, Microsoft has published a technical document describing how to port applications from the iPhone to the platform one company official said has a superior Web browser.

peaking at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting last week, Robbie Bach, the company's president of Entertainment & Devices Division, told investors that the browser in Windows Mobile 6.5 will offer users more Web sites than the iPhone's Safari.

"So, in 6.5, let's just pick an example, you'll see our browsing experience get dramatically better," Bach said. "So, you will have a very rich browsing experience on 6.5 devices that will give you access to more Web sites than you will be able to get to on an iPhone, that will work actively and work well. It really is a much better experience. We will have to continue to enhance that because the browser world is advancing very quickly. But, that's an experience people expect to work and that's just one example of many experiences that we're building to expand in that area, so choice in selection, great end-to-end experiences."

Microsoft is pushing Windows Mobile 6.5 hard as the company attempts to regain market share in the smartphone market. Since the introduction of the iPhone, the Windows Mobile platform has lost a considerable amount of steam.

In an effort to siphon off some of the success of Apple's App Store, Microsoft is attempting to help developers port their applications from the iPhone to Windows Mobile. Microsoft intends to have an App Store-like offering in Windows Mobile 6.5.

The new document provides a case study on the iPhone application Amplitude, and how it was ported to Windows Mobile 6.5. The App Store offering from Gripwire.com aims to turn an iPhone or iPod touch into a sound amplifier. It was developed by Luke Thompson, a member of the company's development team.

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