Image via CrunchBase
Hmm. First I read that Andy Rubin, the creator and lead of the Android project, is leaving the Android team at Google. Then I read that Google Reader will be shuttered July 1st – leaving a ton of apps and podcasters stranded. Then I read that Google is puling nearly all the ad-blocking apps from the play store so you wont be able to run an ad blocker in Chrome. Something foul is going on over at Google and it’s stinking up the web.
Image by Freedom To Marry via Flickr
Apparently I was a bit premature in posting my 2011…A Year of Tech Mayhem article yesterday as we’ve got a bit of somber news to report. Legendary tech visionary Steve Jobs announced his resignation as the CEO of Apple effective immediately. While he has struggled with cancer for the last several years he, and scores of Jobs followers, remained hopeful that he would pull through and come back healthy, renewed, and of course ever more focused than before.
We thought that day had come, but in 2009 Steve took a leave of absence for an undisclosed issue with his health. It was clear something was wrong as each appearance showed his body getting thinner and frailer as the months went on. It was revealed later that Jobs had to receive a liver transplant–a typical side effect of the type of pancreatic cancer he was diagnosed with before. Within six months however, Steve was back in the saddle, but many wondered for how long he would remain there.
In January of 2011 we got an answer to that question creeping in the dark corner of our collective minds when Steve announced he would be taking yet another leave of absence for an undisclosed health issue for an undetermined amount of time. Even those that had never doubted Steve’s return began to wonder if this was it. Wonder no more as Steve sent the following to the community and board of Apple Wednesday evening:
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve
So now another chapter begins. As Steve co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, and returned in 1997 to save his ailing company, we now see him step down as CEO, and leader, of Apple Inc for the last time. Tim Cook, long time COO of Apple, will assume the full-time roll of CEO–a position he has been temporarily assuming in Steve’s absence. Steve has asked the board if he can be the chairman of the board to oversee certain aspects of the company still, so he is not completely gone. This will hopefully quell fears of a stock dump by jittery stock holders.
While many have lauded Steve Jobs for is uncanny vision and influence in the tech world, and still others jeered him for the same reasons, one thing is for sure among all the Technorati, we all owe a bit of gratitude to him and the work his has done over the last 35 years. Though Jobs is not completely gone, he will be missed as the face of Apple Inc.
Image by iCrossing via Flickr
2011 has turned out to be a very interesting year in the tech industry. Major releases, lawsuits, and huge shake ups. It will definitely be a year to look back on and be thankful we made it through to 2012. Let’s look at some of the highlights we’ve seen so far.
Carrying over from 2010 we have volleys of lawsuits between Apple and HTC, Apple and Motorola, and Apple and Samsung. In July, the International Trade Commission determined that HTC, a major player in the Android handset business, violated two patents held by Apple. One of these patents, 5,946,647, deals with the underlying Android OS itself which could have implications within Google’s entire mobile OS business. HTC still remains confident that they can have the ruling overturned, but there is a possibility that the ITC could ban the sale of HTC Android phones in the US if they are not successful in overturning it or removing the offending code. A similar suits are underway with Motorola and Samsung over Android as well, but they aren’t the only ones that want a piece of the Android pie. Still trying to establish a foothold, Microsoft has already rattled their saber about Android and persuaded HTC to license technology that they supposedly own within the Android OS as well. Microsoft pursued the same licensing agreement with Motorola, but they declined. So it wasn’t that big of a surprise to hear the Redmond company file a suit against Motorola over patent violations within Android as well.
It seems that there was a concerted effort by many of the major players in IT to litigate Android into a niche mobile platform by encumbering it with costly licensing fees. Even Oracle got in on the action when they sued Google over Java patents they gained from the Sun Microsystems acquisition – a suit Google settled by agreeing to pay Oracle damages and licensing fees. A consortium of IT companies, lead by Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony joined together to buy up 6,000 patents held by the now bankrupt Nortel Networks. Google, it was later revealed, was offered to join the same group but declined when Microsoft required Google to agree to items regarding Android that would have left it at a disadvantage to their competition. That didn’t stop Google from placing bids for the same patents, but they knew they stood little chance against so many other companies. This is perhaps the reason why they didn’t fight hard to place a winning bid though they really could have used those patents to help defend Android suits against themselves and their partners.
Meanwhile the first major shocker of the year was about to unfold. While Google was doing their best to fend against lawsuits, they were already working on a backup plan using their hidden ace up the sleeve. A month after loosing their bid for Nortel patents, Google announced that they would be buying Motorola’s mobile division for 12.5 billion – a purchase that gives them access to over 14,000 patents with several thousand patents pending. No longer would competitors to Android be able to skirt Google and sue their partners and now Google has sizable war chest of patents to counter any suits by the competition. The announcement of the purchase sent ripples throughout the entire tech industry. The question was how will this effect Google’s other Android partners? HTC and Samsung both expressed their support, but it will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the Android universe over time. In the meantime, there were other fronts still actively under contention.
Around the same time that Google announced the acquisition of Motorola, a German court ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy line of tablets violated the look and feel, as well as other patents, held by Apple with their hugely popular iPad. As a result of the ruling, Samsung was barred from selling their tablet in the EU. Fanbois everywhere rejoiced while Samsung themselves stated that they were never served with notice of a violation until the ban was ordered – a fact that remains to be verified. Another unverified claim was the recent surfacing of court documents that may indicate that Apple altered documents used to persuade the German court to ban Galaxy tablets. We’ll have to wait until the smoke clears to see how this pans out. In the meantime Samsung isl appealing the ruling have been successful in having the ban partially lifted in many of the participating EU countries effected by the ban. The eventual result of the suit and banishment could be used to influence the status of both tablets here in the US as well.
While Android was circling the wagons to defend against the multiple fronts of attack, another Linux-based OS was attempting to raise from the ashes of the once great Palm. Agreed by many in the tech industry to have the best mobile operating system to compete with the polish of Apples iOS, WebOS was due to make a major comeback, thanks to their acquisition by HP. While it was disappointing for HP to make a paper launch of new WebOS phones and tablets, those that followed the little OS that could were excited and waited anxiously for new products to arrive. First out of the chute was the Veer, HP’s miniature Pre. While the industry was going to bigger handsets, HP went the opposite direction. While many cheered for the smaller form-factor, others balked at it. Those waiting for a larger handset waited to see what the Pre3 was going to offer. Others waited for the highly anticipated Touchpad-HP’s WebOS tablet. While lacking some features that the iPad2 and many Android tablets offered, the Touchpad was still a great product. The lack of a rear facing camera and little in the way of apps made the price tag hard to swallow. In response, HP lowered the price and saw a modest increase in the Touchpad’s sales. To everyone’s surprise, HP declared that the price cut would be permanent. In the meantime, Germans were first in line to start pre-ordering the Pre3. Other countries were waiting for their turn. All of the excitement generated by these new WebOS devices came crashing down when HP pulled the plug on the entire line of devices during their quarterly stock announcement. It was a huge blow to WebOS fans everywhere. Even those not firmly in the WebOS camp felt like they were betrayed by HP and their sudden departure from the old Palm product. On top of that HP indicated that Apple’s iPad was eating their lunch and they may be looking to bail out of the PC business as well. Both announcements lead many to question whether HP had lost it’s way. How could the worlds largest PC maker just simply walk away from their PC business and walk away from a 1 2 billion dollar purchase of Palm in less than two years? Meanwhile Samsung has expressed some interest in buying HP’s PC business if it goes up for sale. Could this be similar to Google/Motorola patent pool purchase? Perhaps Samsung could use some of the patents from HP to defend against claims made by Apple that Samsung copies its products and violates their patents, etc.
While all the major activity was surrounding the mobile industry, three major changes happened in the traditional desktop computing industry. While Microsoft was still riding the Windows 7 wave and hoping to supplant their aging XP platform as the most used OS in the world, both Apple and several GNU/Linux vendors were hard at work on their own improvements. First came the release of two new desktop environments to replace the aging Gnome 2.x desktop on many Linux distros – Canonical’s Unity Desktop and the Gnome Projects own Gnome 3 Desktop.
Canonical tried to get Unity included in upstream Gnome, but were rejected. Now that we see both products in full production, it was apparent the reasons why Unity was rejected. Not that Gnome3 was that much better, but they are very similar to each other and the developers from both groups viewed their product as being better than the other. Developers and end users from both sides lauded their new desktop environments as fresh, clean, modern, and much needed. Not everyone was happy with the changes however. Many users, including the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, were dismayed that both desktop environments, as well as the more established KDE4 desktop, were a hot mess of eye candy and lacked flexibility. They lamented the days they could customize their desktops to their liking and without the performance hits they were seeing with all of the major desktop environments now available. A similar situation was developing at Apple as well with their newly released OS – OS X 10.7 Lion.
OS X Snow Leopard was really just an over-glorified point release as it fixed mostly under the hood items in Leopard. Lion proved to be more ambitious as Apple sought to include more of the touch functionality they implemented in iOS into OS X. Launchpad was implemented as a new way of seeing all your apps similar to iOS does on the iPhone and iPad. Those familiar with Ubuntu wondered if Canonical would seek to block the use of the name Launchpad since they already had a service called Launchpad used to host new OSS projects. Being a bit more civilized that most, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu decided that they were not similar products and they would not seek to block Apple’s use of the name. It is presumed that Apple made a similar deal with Canonical as they did with Cisco with the use of the iOS name. Though there were no fireworks among companies in regards to Lion, end users were not as thrilled by the changes.
While any company is subject to technical issues with new products and updates, Apple has generally pretty good in pushing out a nearly flawless product. This time around reports of performance hits, crashes, and counter-intuitive changes have some Lion users wishing they stayed with Snow Leopard. Others just wished that they could have gotten backup media in the event they had to re-image their machine to Lion again without having to load Snow Leopard first. While there is some small evidence of undocumented features in Lion, I personally am very satisfied with it. As one test developer indicated, to get the most out of Lion you really need a touch interface. Heeding that advice, I picked up a Magic Trackpad. While Lion seemed cool without a multi-touch interface on an aging Macbook, it didn’t really impress that much until I paired my Trackpad. Wow, what a difference it makes! While I’m confident that Apple will address stability issues, the decision to move dashboard to its own space has many people irked–including myself. Perhaps Apple will move that back to an overlay on a future release. We’ll have to see. Without turning the remainder of this post into a review of Lion, let me say that it is a big improvement over Leopard and Snow Leopard in my opinion. I just wonder how many more upgrades will be available for my trusty Macbook before it is left behind. Perhaps the rumor of Apple’s completely new line of devices or their eventual merger of iOS and OS X will prolong my machine’s demise.
The future promises some exciting times and some interesting news to come. How will the mobile world shape up in the coming year? Will we see any more shake ups? Will any forks of Gnome 2.x gain traction to attract enough users and become another option for desktop environments? Will HP completely loose it’s collective mind? Who will be left standing after the dust has settled between Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Android partners? One thing is for sure, it’s been a wild ride this year and there’s lots of time left in 2011. Stay tuned.
Image via Wikipedia
With iPhone, and later Android, the world began to see a new direction for personal computing, the mobile device. First it was the enhanced phone, then the smartphone, now the tablet. The future of desktop, laptop, and netbook computers looked bleak. Certainly the young netbook market has suffered more than any other market with the arrival of the iPad and the mountain of Android tablets being produced overseas. Perhaps as the novelty of tablets wears off, netbooks will find a way to survive, but its doubtful.
Desktop, and later laptops, were facing similar losses to the mobile onslaught. But just when you thought it was all over for traditional computing, an unlikely savior appears (well actually about four of them). I’m referring to the major mobile carriers in the U.S.–Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Just as the world is ready to fully adopt mobile computing, we are hit with the sobering reality that these carriers have over promoted and under produced a network capable of sustaining the same level of computing we have gotten use to with our traditional computers.
To make up for this over saturated wireless infrastructure, the carriers in their typical colluding fashion, are one by one dropping their unlimited data access and opting for tiered data plans. The idea of using your phone, or your tablet, for all the same things you used your traditional computer for are slipping away. We are left with an over-priced, crippled experience because the carriers sold us the moon and are now running out of fuel to get us there.
Enter that long forgotten friend, the PC.
Unlike wireless networks, traditional network infrastructure doesn’t have the limitations of available spectrum. What ever can be pushed from router to router across the pipe is what you get, and believe me that can be an enormous amount of data. It’s all part of the global network we call the Internet, and your PC is part of it.
Thanks to the wireless carriers, you’re limited to just how much you can send and receive on your mobile device. Thanks to your PC, you can sync your phone to your computer, or join a wireless network, and enjoy the benefits of unfettered data again on your phone or tablet. With that in mind, providing a way to sync your device via wifi or sync cable will be critical to being able to push and pull data to your device and conserve precious wireless bandwidth. Apple is in the best position with iTunes. DVD John created doubletwist, and is sitting in a good position as well with platforms left with no other options. Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, HP, and various open source companies like Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical, specializing in desktop distros, should really think hard about something similar and soon. This brings me to my point.
If we were to truly go mobile, the technology, and infrastructure behind it, needs to be robust enough to allow us to do everything we do with our traditional computing now. It just isn’t there, and most likely will never be. Though the carriers still promise the moon, and the world really wants a standalone mobile platform they can rely on at all times, the fact remains that smartphones, tablets, and any other mobile data device are merely extensions of our old trusty desktop or laptop computers. Without them, our mobile experience will soon be an expensive trip to nowhere.
Just a quick post. Came across this via twitter. Big thanks to Rob at podcast411. Though I am a huge fan of the Android platform, I think they’ve still got some work to do after watching this video of Atomic Tom perform live on a NY City subway.
Image by Bikoy via Flickr
Just read a great article over at arstechnica.com today regarding a decision made by the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals that has systematically handed all power, once held the purchaser of a product, over to the manufacturing companies. It involved the case of Vernor vs Autodesk where Vernor sued Autodesk because of their repeated request to have their products removed from Vernor’s eBay listings which jeopardized his account and nearly got him de-listed as a seller on the online store. Vernor won the suit, but Autodesk has now successfully appealed the ruling. The word is, now that Autodesk has won their appeal, the ruling has opened the floodgates for companies to rework their end user license agreements (EULA) to include similar wording that prohibits the copy, rental, leasing, resale, transfer, etc of software made by said company and prevent consumers for exercising any first sale rights.
Were there any concessions made that give something, anything, to consumers to hold on to that shows just what the hell their hard earned money went to? Nope. Nothing. This now allows software makers, music producers, movie studios, etc to force an over-priced lease program down consumers throats. The rare option of being able to outright buy a copy for even more disgusting rates will be available by some, but you better crack open the kids piggy banks to pay for it.
Does that mean that consumers can get a lower priced product, pro-rated pricing for returning it to the manufacturer prior to the products EOL, trade-in value for the goods they once had the option of selling as used, or give to others that need it more than they do? Don’t count on it. That way of life has been staked in the heart and it’s in the throes of exsanguination as we speak. There is some light at the end of the tunnel however.
The more manufacturers squeeze consumers, the more customers will question just what they have invested in, and will seek alternatives. In the case of software, music, and movies, you will certainly see more independent offerings. You see some of that now with open source software and creative commons music. As recently as fifteen years ago, you would have hardly ever heard of creative commons music, Linux, BSD, and the like. Now, they are more common than ever before. That’s not because people are cheap.
Customers still show a willingness to pay thousands for mass-produced software despite the relatively low cost it was to develop the software, pay for staff and talent, and cover marketing and distribution expenses. They still buy products that are grossly over-priced because the manufacturer says they are only getting their cut of your profits up front since you’re using their product to make money. That seemed fair enough. Now, however, you don’t own the software you’re paying overly inflated prices for. The quid pro quo isn’t sounding as good as it once did, does it?
No, the reason why more open source products are being made, and distributed, is because people are fed up with the ever eroding rights they use to have as paying consumers, that funded these greedy, profiteering companies and line the pockets of these corporate fat cats with our hard earned cash. It’s just a matter of time before the general public feel like they are at the low end of the uneven playing field and leave the manufacturers to play with their ball by themselves.
Image via Wikipedia
I thought about this long and hard. Should I post about this or not? With nearly 90% of the planet using Windows (and an even greater percentage of my friends and family), I feel like I would be neglecting my duties if I didn’t mention it. No doubt some of you have noticed, and perhaps have fallen victim to, the fake anti-virus scams on some nefarious websites floating around. I’ve personally dealt with at least two machines that had been compromised by such dubious programs. They use common social engineering tactics to trick users into thinking they have a virus (or series of them) with a legitimate looking program that generally says something to the effect of OMG! You’re infested! (OK. Not really, but you get the drift). Not one to ever leave things be, virus writers are always trying to find new more effective ways to infect a victims computer. The scammers behind these nasty programs are not much different. The devil has been busy as noted by Microsoft‘s own tech blog entry on the very subject. If you’re a Windows users, it would behoove you to be familiar with the warning signs of these fake programs.
It use to be somewhat easy to identify a fake because the window that would appear would be in another browsers, or operating systems, graphical user interface (GUI). Now, however, vx (virus) writers are getting smarter and using common user agent detection to ascertain which browser you’re using and quickly render an on-the-fly window with your current browsers interface making detection more difficult. Perhaps a user agent switcher, available on most browsers, would help by fooling the program into thinking you’re using one browser over another and thus tricking the fake program into rendering the wrong interface. This idea has it’s limits. Unfortunately, there are ways to detect your true browser by the way it talks to a server and thus reducing the effectiveness of an agent switcher.
Though we are beginning to see fake anti-virus programs that mimic your current OS and browser, most of this is possible by means of javascript. Fortunately there is a program that can help, if you use FireFox as your browser of choice. That program is NoScript. NoScript will disable javascript that you have not given explicit permission to run on your browser from a website. Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc may have similar programs available as an add-on. Without the use of a javascript blocker, like no script, it becomes very difficult to exit out of the pop up that appears without giving your browser, or your computer, the three-fingered salute. In some occasions, force closing your browser or shutting down is too little too late and you are already owned.
Thanks to arstechnica for the original article that spurred me into action.
UPDATE: Big thanks to Mister Reiner for providing the following additional Microsoft site with more information about fake anti-virus programs.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Linux game that piqued my interest. Most good Linux games are already available on Windows and often don’t include the bells and whistles that the Windows flavor comes packed with. Unigine is about to change all that with their upcoming Oilrush game for Windows, Linux, and Playstation 3. Check out the article over at Phoronix for some great looking shots of the game and check out the short teaser on youtube.
Check out the official website for the game at OilRush and more about the developer at Unigine.
Cover of The Lorax (Classic Seuss)
Oh Steve Jobs, that old Once-ler, is at it again with several new thneeds surrounding multimedia entertainment. New for 2010 is an all new version of iOS (dont get me started on that one Cisco fans), an all new revamped lineup of iPods (sans the classic), an all new iTunes 10, and a revamped Apple TV. It seems that even the lowly Lorax wants one of these thneeds. Let’s have a look.
First up is iOS 4.1 featuring Game Center, Ping, and HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos.
Game Center allows iphone, ipod, and ipad users to play online games even with friends and not just farmville games. We’re talking Unreal and other first person shooter style games.
Next there’s the new iTunes add on called Ping. Think of it as a music focused version of Facebook and you’ll be on the right track. You can share what kind of music you’re listening to with your friends, keep up with their music tastes as well, and even follow your favorite artists feeds. Ping will be available in the all new iTunes 10 for Mac and PC as well as any new iOS devices running 4.1
With the introduction of front and rear facing cameras on the iPhone 4, and the new retinal display, Apple wanted to make sure that pictures taken on an iOS device looked their best as well and introduced a new way of taking photos called HDR photos. HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. This is fancy talk for taking three photos simultaneously–one under exposed, one normal, and one over exposed–and combining them into one richly colored image. This reduces the effects of bad lighting when you take photos with your Apple mobile devices.
To rev up the excitement a bit for those iPad owners that are feeling a bit left out, the Once-ler gave everyone a sneak peek at the upcoming iOS 4.2–due in November. It will add wireless printing to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
Speaking of iPod Touch, Apple has also announced a complete overhaul of the iPod lineup starting with the shuffle.
That Once-ler, that clever old Once-ler, is well known for his distaste of buttons. This is perhaps the biggest reason for the minimal set of buttons on all the designs of iPhones made to date. This may also be the biggest reason why there were no buttons on the iPod shuffle. It literally looked like a Bic lighter without a striker wheel. Well, apparently people like buttons, and the Once-ler even conceded that people wanted buttons. So the new iPod shuffle brings back the click wheel that was present on the original iPod shuffle, but it also keeps voice over function of the buttonless model. This all mushed into the form factor that we saw the 2nd gen Shuffle in previously. Available in 4 colors and in one capacity of 2GB for $49.
Next we have the Nano. Next to the Touch, it was the most popular model of iPod, and in my opinion, the most feature rich music player of the bunch. (Hey, let’s face it the Touch does more than just play music). The Nano too has received a mushing and has been squished down to nearly the same size as the shuffle, only with a full color, multi-touch screen. It will be available in 5 colors and in 8GB or 16GB capacities for $149 and $179 respectively.
Last, but not least, is the Touch. It looses a bit of weight, though not as much as the Nano or Shuffle. It gets the retinal display, front facing and rear facing cameras, and all the gooness that made the iPhone 4 so popular without the cellular service or a contract, as the Once-ler points out.
But what good are these new iPods with out some great software to allow you to sync them to your computer right? That’s where iTunes 10 comes in.
That boastful old Once-ler proudly announced that iTunes is on the verge of selling more music from their store than has been sold on CD, so Apple is dropping the current logo with the music note over the CD in favor of a blue circle with the same note inside. Earth shattering I know. But iTunes does come with Ping, as stated before. It also does away with one annoyance of mine with most music players. When you have an album of songs from the same artist and it lists the album again and again down the list of songs, it’s annoying and a waste. Apple has fixed that by removing the multiple entries and adding in the album cover art. It only does this with 5 or more of the same album name entries however, so if you have a stockpile of singles, you’re out of luck. The most bizarre thing of note for iTunes is the close, minimize, and maximize buttons. Rather than a horizontal configuration that we see with all Mac OS X interfaces, they are positioned vertical. Don’t ask me why. I have no clue.
Then there’s one more thing: Apple TV
Yes, that largely unsuccessful, over priced boat anchor that only the die hard fanbois purchased and continue to use. It seems that Apple has not given up on their flop. (Hey, if Microsoft gets multiple do overs, so can Apple. Right?). It appears that this time, they may have gotten it right however. First off, it’s tiny. It’s less than a forth the size of the original. The power supply is built into the unit (think the new mac mini as an example), has a HDMI port that can push 1080p and 5.1 surround, a 1 gigabit Ethernet port, and 802.11 N wireless.
With the smaller package, you would expect a smaller price. Am I right? The Once-ler, never one to shy away from a sale has heard your request and has lowered the price from $229 to the low price of $99. Content is cheap too. First run HD movies are $4.99 to rent, HD TV programing from ABC and Fox is $.99 to rent, and it can stream Netflix content as well. In addition to this, you can stream Youtube, Flickr, and mobile me content. With the newly renamed Airplay (formally Airtunes) you can even play a movie from your iPad/iPhone/iPod device and pick up where you left off on your TV with the Apple TV box.
Enough of this typing though. I’m off to the Apple store to pick up my thneeds before that pesky Lorax beats me to it.
Chris
UPDATED: Corrected Oncler to Once-ler
Yesterday started my biannual sequestering in which I put myself on lock down so I can concentrate on school work. Unlike most semesters, this round of classes should be straight forward and I’ll still be able to put in some time to my blog, twitter, facebook, and google buzz. With any luck, I may even make some headway on the reconfig of my studio/office to get some work done on a revamped podcast. So for the one or two of you that read my blog, I’ll make an honest attempt to keep posting, it just may be a bit slower than I’d like for the next three months.
Chris
UPDATE: As luck would have it, one of my instructors is also teaching an advanced operating systems class, all based on RedHat Linux (what’s an Ubuntu user to do right?), and there were still seats available. So it looks like I’m booking another class. I’m a little jazzed about taking my first Linux course ever! Now I’ve got to figure out how to pay off the bill for the additional tuition.
