Join Dr. Bill as he examines the wild and wacky world of the web, computers, and all things geeky! Hot Tech Tips, Tech News, and Geek Culture are examined… with plenty of good humor as well!
“Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.
Unison shares a number of features with tools such as configuration management packages (CVS, PRCS, Subversion, BitKeeper, etc.), distributed filesystems (Coda, etc.), uni-directional mirroring utilities (rsync, etc.), and other synchronizers (Intellisync, Reconcile, etc). However, there are several points where it differs:
Unison runs on both Windows and many flavors of Unix (Solaris, Linux, OS X, etc.) systems. Moreover, Unison works across platforms, allowing you to synchronize a Windows laptop with a Unix server, for example.
Unlike simple mirroring or backup utilities, Unison can deal with updates to both replicas of a distributed directory structure. Updates that do not conflict are propagated automatically. Conflicting updates are detected and displayed.
Unlike a distributed filesystem, Unison is a user-level program: there is no need to modify the kernel or to have superuser privileges on either host.
Unison works between any pair of machines connected to the internet, communicating over either a direct socket link or tunneling over an encrypted ssh connection. It is careful with network bandwidth, and runs well over slow links such as PPP connections. Transfers of small updates to large files are optimized using a compression protocol similar to rsync.
Unison is resilient to failure. It is careful to leave the replicas and its own private structures in a sensible state at all times, even in case of abnormal termination or communication failures.
Unison has a clear and precise specification.
Unison is free; full source code is available under the GNU Public License.”
re/code – By: Arik Hesseldahl “When the computing and printing giant Hewlett-Packard announced its plans to enter the nascent market for 3-D printing earlier this week, it set the stakes by saying its technology could trigger a ‘new era of manufacturing.’
Most of the world’s attention on 3-D printing has focused so far on hobbyists who want to make their own do-it-yourself items, or on startups seeking to make mass-customized products aimed at everyday consumers. Normal, for example, makes custom headphones; Shapeways sells items as varied as jewelry and My Little Pony figurines.
HP is instead aiming at bringing 3-D printing to big industry. The concept device it showed off at an event in New York this week, called Multi Jet Fusion, fits not on a desk, but is about the size of a pair of household laundry machines.
And its technology is different too. First, it can print multiple different kinds of materials at once. Current 3-D printers can only use one material at a time, great for printing something simple and solid, say, a toothbrush. (The model pictured above was printed using HP’s technology.)
But if you wanted to print something a little more complex with moving parts, say an electric toothbrush, you’d have to first print all the individual parts — the handle, parts for the motor, the bristles — and then assemble them into the finished product. Printing with multiple materials creates the potential for producing a finished product — moving parts and all — at once.
HP can print not only multiple materials at once, but vary the physical properties of each of those materials as it prints. Our toothbrush handle can now have blue and red stripes. It could be textured in parts to allow a good grip. Some parts might be flexible, some more rigid. Inside, some of the material could conduct electricity, essentially becoming the internal wiring to power the motor. Suddenly, the notion of printing a finished electric toothbrush — and disrupting an industry — seems plausible.
And yet that’s not the point. The material costs to mass produce 3-D printed consumer products still can’t beat the conventional methods. It’s more appropriate for small runs of products — dozens or hundreds.
Maybe you want to build a small business selling customized electric toothbrushes to the hipster set. You might not be able to justify buying one of HP’s printers for that purpose, but you could take your designs to someone who has one you can use. One target of HP’s business plan is to sell these printers to what it calls the ‘central market.’ Think a FedEx Kinko’s of 3-D printing, but with a more industrial bent.
Who else might buy them? Let’s say you already have a company that makes electric toothbrushes. You’ve invested in factories and the equipment, and you’re not going to throw it all away for a fleet of new 3-D printers.
Instead, the 3-D printer could help you keep those factories running by printing a steady stream of replacement parts for when that machinery breaks down. Ordering replacement parts might take days or weeks, which translates into lost sales, and keeping replacement parts on hand in inventory adds costs, too.
If you walk away from all this with a shrug, wondering why any of this matters, the following numbers should get your attention: Last year, manufacturing in the U.S. accounted for about $2 trillion worth of economic activity, or about 12 percent of the gross domestic product, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. In China, the world’s largest economy, manufacturing output was worth north of $3 trillion in 2011, according to the United Nations.
For HP, the strategy is simple: Capturing business that accounts for even the tiniest fraction of the world’s manufacturing activity could in time be worth billions, and billions at HP is real money.
When? That’s harder to say. HP has said that its Multi Jet Fusion technology won’t be ready for sale until 2016. As analyst Steve Milunovich of UBS wrote in a research note Thursday, ‘3-D printing won’t be material to HP for some time to come.’
VentureBeat – By: Tom Cheredar “The latest app making its debut in the Roku Channel store today is Google Play Movies & TV, which is the search giant’s digital media store for buying and renting videos.
The move is a tad interesting because Google is currently in the middle of a big promotional push for its own Android TV operating system, which powers several set-top boxes made by a variety of hardware manufacturers.
You’d expect that Google wouldn’t want to take attention away from its new Nexus Player by allowing people to gain access to its video services on rival devices. However, this actually makes sense when you consider that most people probably aren’t using Google Play to buy movies and TV shows – and it’s unlikely that this will change if consumers can’t gain access to the Google Play Movies & TV show service on the most popular devices.
The app itself is pretty standard among video-focused applications. The one unique feature worth mentioning is that Google will provide ‘info cards’ related to the content you’re watching. For example, pressing pause lets you identify the actors within a specific movie. Google is also offering the first X-Men movie (2003) for free to those that sign up for the service or download the app on Roku.”
Microsoft serves takedown notices to videos not infringing on anything, and is hash-tagged as #Microstopped. Announcing Codeweavers CrossOver 14.0.0 with support for OS/X Yosemite. Geek Software of the Week: Proxmox VE 3.3.
Microsoft serves takedown notices to videos not infringing on anything, and is hash-tagged as #Microstopped. Announcing Codeweavers CrossOver 14.0.0 with support for OS/X Yosemite. Geek Software of the Week: Proxmox VE 3.3.
“Proxmox VE is a complete open source virtualization management solution for servers. It is based on KVM virtualization and container-based virtualization and manages virtual machines, storage, virtualized networks, and HA Clustering.
The enterprise-class features and the intuitive web interface are designed to help you increase the use of your existing resources and reduce hardware cost and administrating time – in business as well as home use. You can easily virtualize even the most demanding Linux and Windows application workloads.
Powerful and Lightweight
Proxmox VE is open source software, optimized for performance and usability. For maximum flexibility, we implemented two virtualization technologies – Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and container-virtualization.
Open Source
VE uses a Linux kernel and is based on the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution. The source code of Proxmox VE is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (GNU AGPL, v3). This means that you are free to inspect the source code at any time or contribute to the project yourself.
Using open source software guarantees full access to all functionalities – as well as high security and reliability. Everybody is encouraged to contribute while Proxmox ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
Open source hypervisor KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It is a kernel module added to mainline Linux.
With KVM you can run multiple virtual machines by running unmodified Linux or Windows images. It enables users to be agile by providing robust flexibility and scalability that fit their specific demands. Proxmox Virtual Environment uses KVM virtualization since the beginning at 2008, since 0.9beta2.
Container-based virtualization
OpenVZ is container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated Linux containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Proxmox VE uses OpenVZ virtualization since the beginning of the project in 2008.”
I am delighted to announce that CodeWeavers has just released CrossOver 14.0.0 for both Mac OS X and Linux. CrossOver 14.0.0 has major improvements for both OS X and Linux users.
For OS X users, CrossOver 14 introduces compatibility with Apple’s latest version of OS X, Yosemite, and also introduces a new and easy-to-use user interface. Windows applications now can be launched directly from CrossOver itself, and CrossOver presents simple icons you can drag to your OS X dock as shortcuts to your favorite Windows applications. Managing Windows applications on your Mac is easier than ever with CrossOver 14.
For Linux users, CrossOver has a powerful new automatic configuration feature which will detect, download, and install system components necessary to run Windows applications. CrossOver includes a database of what packages are needed by which Windows applications on which Linux distributions. When you use the CrossOver Software Installer to install a Windows application that depends on a particular Linux package, CrossOver will ask whether you want to install the required dependencies. If you agree, CrossOver will automatically install the required Linux packages before moving on to the Windows software install. This makes installing Windows software on Linux easier than it has ever been.
CrossOver 14 includes support for Quicken 2015 and a number of new games. CrossOver 14 is based on Wine 1.7.25, bringing thousands of improvements to application stability and support.
Mac customers with active support entitlements will be upgraded to CrossOver 14 the next time they launch CrossOver. Linux users can download the latest version from https://www.codeweavers.com/.
If CrossOver asks for registration use your codeweavers.com email address & password to register and unlock CrossOver. Email info@codeweavers.com if you need more help.
Thank you all for your support, and we hope you enjoy CrossOver 14.0.0!”
Wired – By: Klint Finley – Microsoft’s never-ending war on software piracy caused some collateral damage this week. The victims? A handful of prominent YouTube video bloggers.
The bloggers—including LockerGnome founder Chris Pirillo and FrugalTech host Bruce Naylor—took to Twitter on Tuesday, with the hashtag #Microstopped, to complain that they had received erroneous copyright infringement notices for videos that were often several years old. The notices were filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the U.S. law that seeks to control access to copyrighted material on the net.
Microsoft apologized for the notices, blaming the issue on wayward comments. ‘[S]ome of these videos were inadvertently targeted for removal because there were stolen product keys embedded in the comments section of the videos,’ a Microsoft spokesperson said in statement sent to WIRED, referring to keys that would allow access to Microsoft commercial software. ‘We have already taken steps to reinstate legitimate video content and are working towards a better solution to targeting stolen IP while respecting legitimate content.’
The situation shows that, 16 years after it went into effect, the DMCA is far from the ideal way to police copyrighted material—mainly because it makes it too easy for big companies like Microsoft to silence the little guys, sometimes for no good reason.
Pirillo says he learned—after sending a counter notice to YouTube—that a company called Marketly sent DMCA notice on behalf of Microsoft. Marketly, which was founded by former Microsoft engineer Pulin Thakkar, uses algorithms to spot piracy and counterfeiting on the net. The company’s website boasts that it can ‘generate actionable intelligence from Big Data analysis and machine learning technologies.’
According to Google’s Transparency Report site, Marketly has requested that Google remove nearly 11 million different URLs from its search engine on behalf of Microsoft since 2011.
This round of complaints over the company’s practices began with Naylor and FrugalTech. On Tuesday, Naylor posted a video explaining that YouTube had removed one of his videos after someone filed—on behalf of Microsoft—a DMCA takedown notice. Under the DMCA, web hosts and internet service providers must immediately remove allegedly infringing content when notified by the copyright holder. But Naylor’s video, which you can now find on the video sharing site Vimeo, didn’t include so much as a screenshot of Microsoft Windows. It was merely a video of Naylor speaking into the camera and explaining why he thought Windows 8 wasn’t selling well.
Pirillo says he received his own takedown notice while watching Naylor’s video, and soon discovered that other bloggers had received similar notices. That spurred him to create the #Microstopped to find bring attention to Marketly’s behavior. We’ve counted at least eight different bloggers who received notices on Tuesday.
At first, Naylor blamed the removal of his video on the fact that his video was critical of Microsoft. ‘It really pissed off somebody and they’re looking for any excuse to take it down,’ he said in his video. But many of the videos that have been taken down weren’t critical of Microsoft at all. Mark Watson, the host of a tech-focused YouTube channel called SoldierKnowsBest, received a takedown notice for a simple instructional video. ‘It was a video telling people how to download the Windows 7 Beta from your website in 2009,’ he tweeted.
Likewise, Pirillo’s video was about how to upgrade Windows 7. As he put it: ‘This isn’t about censoring negative reviews so much as it is the gross abuse of YouTube’s copyright flagging system and is not without precedent.’