Archive for January 22, 2015

BackBlaze Posts Hard Drive Failure Rate Study For 2014

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 22, 2015 by itnerd

If you’re wondering what the most reliable brand of hard drive to buy for your computer is, you don’t have a lot of places to look for that info. In the end, most of us rely on what the guy at the computer store says or what the search engine of your choice manages to find. BlackBlaze however has taken the liberty of posting the data on hard drive failures in their environment. They did this last year and it turned heads. So they’ve done it again. Here’s a link to the study and it does note the following:

  • 4TB are the drive to buy from a reliability standpoint. 3TB, not so much.
  • HGST and Seagate are the brands to buy at the moment. Western Digital, not so much… Though BackBlaze doesn’t have a lot of 4TB drives from Western Digital to form a real opinion.
  • The jury is still out on 6TB drives.

The methodology of this study is sound, thus I would take the results as being valid. That’s going to really help me when I buy drives for the Network Attached Storage unit that I’m building. I’m sure it will help you as well.

 

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Samsung Still After BlackBerry?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 22, 2015 by itnerd

The Financial Post is reporting that last weeks report that Samsung was looking to buy BlackBerry might actually be true. Here’s a quote:

A document obtained by the Financial Post, prepared for Samsung by New York-based independent investment bank Evercore Partners, outlines the case for, and the potential structure of a possible purchase of BlackBerry.

The document was prepared in the last quarter of 2014, but a source familiar with the matter said that Samsung still remains very interested in acquiring all or part of BlackBerry for the right price.

“I can tell you Samsung is contemplating a purchase,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the talks. “It’s still being pursued right now. Samsung is still evaluating their options. So it’s still very much an open deal.”

As I type this BlackBerry stock is up almost 9%. Neither side is saying anything at the moment. That could mean something or nothing. We’ll have to wait and see.

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John Chen Gets A Lot Of Attention From His Most Recent Blog Post

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 22, 2015 by itnerd

If BlackBerry CEO John Chen wanted to get some attention and make news, he’s succeeded. In a blog post that went up yesterday, he has some interesting things to say. Starting with his view on Net Neutrality. Chen calls on U.S. government officials to support not only net neutrality but also “application/content neutrality” :

BlackBerry believes policymakers should focus on more than just the carriers, who play only one role in the overall broadband internet ecosystem. The carriers are like the railways of the last century, building the tracks to carry traffic to all points throughout the country. But the railway cars travelling on those tracks are, in today’s internet world, controlled not by the carriers but by content and applications providers. Therefore, if we are truly to have an open internet, policymakers should demand openness not just at the traffic/transport layer, but also at the content/applications layer of the ecosystem. Banning carriers from discriminating but allowing content and applications providers to continue doing so will solve nothing.

Therefore, any net neutrality legislation must take a holistic view of the entire playing field, addressing both carrier neutrality and content/application neutrality.

But Chen doesn’t stop there. He serves this up:

Unfortunately, not all content and applications providers have embraced openness and neutrality. Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.

You can bet that people at Netflix and Apple did a double take upon reading that.

I wonder if this is an attempt to say that BlackBerry is more open than their competition rather than an attempt to force companies like Apple and Netflix to open up their platforms either on their own or via legislation. Whatever the purpose of this blog entry, people are sure talking about it. And any press is good press for BlackBerry.

 

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Google To Become Wireless Carrier – Reports

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 22, 2015 by itnerd

Reports in The Wall Street Journal and The Information seem to indicate that Google has signed deals with Sprint and T-Mobile that will allow it to sell wireless service directly to consumers. This would fit in with their plans to rule the world provide better Internet coverage across the United States. There doesn’t seem to be any details about what the service will cost or when it will launch, but this is going to get a lot of attention. Especially from Apple who has long been rumored to be wanting to do something similar for some time.

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Google Discloses Apple Security Issue

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on January 22, 2015 by itnerd

You can bet that some people at 1 Infinite Loop are not happy with Google at the moment as the company has disclosed a rather severe security vulnerability in OS X:

networkd is the system daemon which implements the com.apple.networkd XPC service. It’s unsandboxed but runs as its own user. com.apple.networkd is reachable from many sandboxes including the Safari WebProcess and ntpd (plus all those which allow system-network.)

Here’s the translation: networkd can be exploited by some evil doer so that they can escape the protections that OS X has (known as sandboxing) to cause havoc on your system. So far this has only been tested on OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks), but other versions of OS X could have this issue. The reason for the publication of this threat is that Apple has failed to produce a fix within the 90 day period for disclosure set by Google. I’m not sure who died and made Google the ruler of the universe as you’d think that they would work with Apple a bit better and not make this public. But having said that you can bet Apple is working on a fix for this as we speak. Or at least one would hope so.

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Review: Samsung Galaxy Tab S

Posted in Products with tags , on January 22, 2015 by itnerd

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of choice when it comes to tablets that don’t involve a company at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino CA. Samsung is a perfect example of this as they have a wide variety of tablets to choose from. The one that I’m going to review today is the Galaxy Tab S supplied by Telus. It’s an 8.4″ tablet that is one that merits a serious look if you’re in the market for a tablet. Now the Galaxy Tab S is an 8.4″ tablet that is easy to hold unless you really have small hands. The back (non removable by the way) has a look and feel of the Galaxy S5. It’s not going to slip out of your hands and it looks very classy. It’s also very light. I compared it to an iPad Mini 3 and it was lighter than that. But the real star of the show is the screen.  It’s a 2,560-by-1,600 panel using Samsung’s AMOLED technology and it is stunningly good. It’s bright and colors are perfect even in bright light. It does collect fingerprints, but not at a rate that would make the screen unusable after a while. Kudos to Samsung for that. All the buttons are on the right hand side of the tablet along with the IR for the IR blaster and the slots for the SIM card and MicroSD card. A MicroUSB port is on the bottom along with a headphone jack.

Here’s what the Galaxy Tab S has under the hood:

  • 8.4” Quad HD Super AMOLED Display 2560 x 1600
  • 8 MP rear camera (1920 x 1080) with auto focus and LED flash
  • 2.1 MP front camera
  • 1.3 Ghz Octa Core Processor
  • 16 GB storage with expandablity up to 128 GB via MicroSD
  • 4G LTE
  • Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
  • Bluetooth 4.0 LE
  • Android 4.4.2

 

As you can see, Android KitKat is on board and it has been tweaked with some useful extensions such as Samsung’s dual-paned multitasking mode. That I liked. I also liked the fact that Samsung’s software sits a little more lightly on this tablet than it previous ones I’ve tested. It felt speedy for the most part, though I did note that complex pages slowed Google Chrome down. In terms of speed via LTE, I got an average of 22.11 Mbps downstream and  5.93 Mbps upstream on the Telus network. The Galaxy Tab S  comes with 16GB of storage, of which 11.5GB is user-accessible. That makes an SD card a requirement the second you buy the tablet as media will fill it up quickly.

In terms of the camera, the 8MP camera is in the back is very very good when I tested it at my usual testing location out at Pearson Airport in Toronto. First, some video at 1080p. Now I should note that I shot this at 4:3 aspect ratio for reasons I will get to in a second. Set it to full screen and to 1080p:

Now some still pictures which were taken at the same time as the video which is a handy feature to have. Click the images to see them at full size:

20150121_163759 20150121_163804

Now the reason why I shot this in 4:3 aspect ratio is that it was the only way I could get 8MP still pictures as this resolution is only available in the 4:3 aspect ratio. Thus if you take stills and video, you either have to make do with lower resolution stills or 4:3 video. It’s not the biggest deal in the world though.

Battery life on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S is outstanding. I clocked in at over 10 hours of life. So if you want to use this tablet as much as possible without being tied to an AC outlet, you can. Pricing for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S is very aggressive. You can pay $580 outright for it which is a very reasonable price. Or if you opt for a 2 year term, it’s $100 up front plus $20 a month for two years via their Easy Tablet program. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S is great for those who want a tablet for media, reading, checking e-mail or almost anything else. It has a great screen and a price that is alluring. If you’re looking for a tablet, put this one on your list.

 

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