Topics

451

General Software Discussion / Ubuntu Users - Replacement for Automatix now Available

« on: August 02, 2008, 12:34 AM »

The ghost of the controversial Automatix tool has reborn anew as Ultamatix. Automatix touched of a lively debate from the day it was introduced. But controversy aside, it got used, and was sorely missed in some quarters when the authors announced they were discontinuing development earlier this year.

Automatix. You can love it, hate it, or just plain ignore it. But however you choose to approach it - "It's baaaack!!!"

This just in from linux.com:

Ultamatix may be a worthy successor to Automatix for new Ubuntu and Debian users
By Jeremy LaCroix on August 01, 2008 (4:00:00 PM)

Some Ubuntu fans out there may remember Automatix, a tool for Ubuntu that allowed easy access to many popular non-free applications and commonly-used audio and video codecs. It debuted a few years ago, and got negative reviews from Ubuntu developers and experienced users due to the risk of breaking dependencies, but it offered an easy solution for beginners who weren't familiar with the way deb packages worked. Automatix was discontinued in March, when its developers moved on to other projects. Now Ultamatix hopes to continue where Automatix left off.

Full article can be found here: http://www.linux.com/feature/143414

Official site for Ultamatix: http://ultamatix.com/
(Note: English usage on the site is a bit awkward.)

452

Found Deals and Discounts / If Bush gets it done, America gets FREE software!

« on: July 30, 2008, 09:05 AM »

CodeWeaver has a new wrinkle on giveaways. From the website:

If Bush gets it done, America gets FREE software!
A message from Jeremy White, President and CEO of CodeWeavers:

Dear Friends,

As the presidential election season approaches, we all understand that the nation's business has a tendency to languish. And yet, with our country at war, facing a faltering economy and a myriad of other ills, the next six months cannot be wasted. Therefore, we at CodeWeavers call upon President Bush to continue moving the nation's business ahead, regardless of the obstacles he may face.

To support of this effort, we at CodeWeavers are sucking it up for the good of the nation and offering the President, and the country, major incentives to ensure that his last six months are productive. And so, it is with great pride that I announce the launch of The CodeWeavers Lame Duck Presidential Challenge!

Details of the challenge are below. We encourage all to help out by engaging in dialogue related to the effort on our blog, voicing opinions, suggesting solutions and spreading the word. We're counting on you, America, to help this country hit the ground running in 2009!

Sincerely,

Jeremy White

http://lameduck.codeweavers.com/

Personally, I don't think we're going to cash in on this one since only one of the challenges even seems remotely doable. Nevertheless, the deal is on the table and you never know...

453

General Software Discussion / QuickPHP - PHP Tester and Debugger (Lightweight PHP Web Server)

« on: July 29, 2008, 12:31 PM »

Just downloaded and started using QuickPHP this week. AMazing what you can pack into something this small.

From the website: http://www.zachsaw.c..._php_tester_debugger

QuickPHP - PHP Tester and Debugger (Lightweight PHP Web Server)
The Problem - Testing PHP Scripts Without IIS / Apache

Recently, I was trying to very quickly hack up a website (this website actually) using PHP but was reluctant to install IIS or Apache. All I wanted to do was to quickly test and debug any scripting errors. Since I'm not hosting this site locally, I don't want to turn my PC into a web server.

Microsoft Visual Studio comes with a development web server for ASP.NET. While it is quite buggy, it's just the right tool for developing web pages. Looking around, I found a few miserable attempt at some thing similar, but most of them do not even parse the URI for GET params, let alone handling POST requests.

I quickly determined the following requirements:

    * Can be tested with any browsers (therefore, must be a web server)
    * Must not use .NET framework - PHP developers don't necessary care about .NET
    * Small size and no installation - so I could grab it here and use it on any computer (hence, no .NET again)
    * Must be able to handle GET, POST and HEAD requests
    * Must not rely on PHP to be installed
    * Supports PHP extensions and PHP.ini (most scripts require them)

This is the result.

Weighing in at just over 500KB in size and using around 9MB of memory with PHP DLL running, QuickPHP is one of the most lightweight fully functional standalone PHP web server in the world today!

The Solution - Meet QuickPHP
The Freeware PHP Development Web Server for Testing and Debugging your PHP Scripts.

Features:

    * Freeware
    * A PHP development web server
    * The PHP version of Microsoft Visual Studio's ASP.NET Development Server
    * Extremely lightweight in both disk space (file size) and memory footprint
    * An empty WinForms .NET application uses more memory than this web server!
    * Ideal for quickly testing your website locally
    * Without the hassle of converting your machine into a web server
    * Runs as a standalone application
    * Serves HTML and PHP files
    * Tested with PHPBB3 - from installation to a fully running forum
    * Purely Win32 application - does NOT require .NET framework
    * No installation required!
    * Simply unzip into a random folder and run!

Works very well for me. I like it better than XAMPP for some things

454

Found Deals and Discounts / Truspace 7.6 Available for free download

« on: July 25, 2008, 02:20 PM »

Truespace 3-D modelling application is now free for download.

Registration is required, but:

from ghacks website

Registering gives users not only access to the software but also to the forums, technical support and shared spaces which are valuable for beginners.

News at:

http://www.ghacks.ne...ce-76-free-download/

Direct link to publisher:

http://www.caligari.com/

Cody is already getting excited! 

455

General Software Discussion / Leveraging Aamzon's Servers for your own Website

« on: July 22, 2008, 10:20 AM »

If you generate a lot of traffic; host large files; or you're running into bandwidth caps, you need to know about Amazon S3 storage services.

Never heard of S3?  From Amazon's FAQ:

Q: What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It's a simple storage service that offers software developers a highly-scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs.

Q: What can I do with Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. Using this web service, developers can easily build applications that make use of Internet storage. Since Amazon S3 is highly scalable and you only pay for what you use, developers can start small and grow their application as they wish, with no compromise on performance or reliability. It is designed to be highly flexible: Store any type and amount of data that you want; read the same piece of data a million times or only for emergency disaster recovery; build a simple FTP application, or a sophisticated web application such as the Amazon.com retail web site. Amazon S3 frees developers to focus on innovation, not figuring out how to store their data.

Link: www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261


This article provides a decent how-to to get you started.

http://nerdbusiness....th-machine-amazon-s3

How to Create an Infinite Bandwidth Machine with Amazon S3

April 15, 2008 By Schwabe

3 comments

We have entered a new era of the internet. An era of infinite bandwidth! Now you can take advantage of Amazon's vast network of servers to allow your website to survive even the most extreme spikes in bandwidth. Here's a tutorial on how to to access S3 like an FTP server to host your bandwidth sucking media files (pictures, videos, mp3's, zips or any other type of file).

And in this article, I'll show you how you can integrate your existing website on any typical hosting platform to "tap in" to this infinite bandwidth supply and leverage the power of the Amazon S3 infrastructure.

I've been working with a few people that are using this technology. I was so impressed at how well S3 worked out that I have been meaning to do an article about it for some time. Then I ran into the above link purely by chance and figured it was quicker and easier to share that. 

456

General Software Discussion / Is Whole Disk Encryption Just Wishful Thinking?

« on: July 20, 2008, 04:32 PM »

A little while ago, there was quite a bit of discussion in the TrueCrypt 6.0 thread on the issue of encrypted drives. I've always been a big promoter of encrypted file systems. I never thought they were completely bulletproof (since nothing ever is) but I just read an article over at ghacks that has got me wondering if they're really worth the trouble at all:

Software to defeat Disk Encryption released
www.ghacks.net/2008/07/20/software-to-defeat-disk-encryption-released

Looks like some researchers over at Princeton U have a workable crack for several disk encryption techniques. They have published their study (available for download), along with the tools they used to pull it off.

Here's the abstract from the Princeton website: http://citp.princeton.edu/memory

Abstract

Contrary to popular assumption, DRAMs used in most modern computers retain their contents for seconds to minutes after power is lost, even at operating temperatures and even if removed from a motherboard. Although DRAMs become less reliable when they are not refreshed, they are not immediately erased, and their contents persist sufficiently for malicious (or forensic) acquisition of usable full-system memory images. We show that this phenomenon limits the ability of an operating system to protect cryptographic key material from an attacker with physical access. We use cold reboots to mount attacks on popular disk encryption systems — BitLocker, FileVault, dm-crypt, and TrueCrypt — using no special devices or materials. We experimentally characterize the extent and predictability of memory remanence and report that remanence times can be increased dramatically with simple techniques. We offer new algorithms for finding cryptographic keys in memory images and for correcting errors caused by bit decay. Though we discuss several strategies for partially mitigating these risks, we know of no simple remedy that would eliminate them.

Very interesting. And very sobering! Can't wait to try this one out at home...

457

Living Room / Latest Bit of Insanity in the World of Patent Law

« on: July 18, 2008, 11:19 PM »

Are you ready for this?

A Florida based company called Channel Intelligence is asserting that they hold a patent (US Patent 6,917,941 ) giving them exclusive rights to store "wish lists" in a database. They are also selectively targeting over a dozen small web startups for lawsuits - although they have conspicuously avoided any legal action (so far) against bigger players (such as Amazon) who have the resources to fight back.

See the posting Channel Intelligence files patent law suit against wishlist web startups
at the following link: http://www.heise-onl...eb-startups--/111129

When will it ever end?

458

Living Room / What happened to rootly.com?

« on: July 10, 2008, 09:22 AM »

Am I going mad? Since yesterday, one of my favorite news aggregators just vanished.



Using two different name servers (OpenDNS and ATT), I get redirected to http://markdaher.com/

SamSpade.org shows it as ROOTLY.COM = [ 64.202.189.170 ]

If you go directly via the IP you get a "server temporarily unavailable" message.

Nothing about it up on Google. Anybody know what's going on?

459

General Software Discussion / TrueCrypt 6.0 released

« on: July 06, 2008, 11:26 PM »

TrueCrypt 6.0 Released July 4, 2008


One of the best security applications just got better. And it's still free!

Notable changes include support for multicore processors, full system drive encryption and the ability to run a hidden operating system. The mind boggles...


From the website:

We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 6.0 has been released.

This version introduces parallelized encryption and decryption on multi-core processors (or multi-processor systems). Increase in encryption/decryption speed is directly proportional to the number of cores and/or processors. For example, on a quad-core processor, encryption and decryption is four times faster than on a single-core processor with equivalent specifications [view benchmark results].

This version also introduces the ability to create and run an encrypted hidden operating system whose existence is impossible to prove (provided that certain guidelines are followed), the ability to encrypt an entire system drive even if it contains extended partitions, a new volume format that increases reliability, performance and expandability, and more.
For more information, please see: http://www.truecrypt...s/?s=version-history

460

Living Room / Build Your Own UAV

« on: June 28, 2008, 03:13 PM »

I have a confession to make. I have a fascination with all things RC. Almost a jones so to speak. That's why people like me are always glad to find somebody that has it worse then they do.

These guys & gals have got it worse. Much worse.

If you're in the same boat, or just interested in some very cool tech stuff, check out DIY Drones at www.diydrones.com

From the website :

Because $10,000 $5,000 $1,000 $500 is too much to pay for an autopilot, especially one that doesn't do exactly what you want."

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV, colloquially known as a "drone") is basically an aerial robot. As we define it, it is capable of both remotely controlled flight (like a regular RC aircraft) and fully-autonomous flight, controlled by sensors, GPS, and onboard computers performing the functions of an autopilot. Our UAVs include airplanes, helicopters, quadcopters and blimps. Most of them are under five pounds, and some of them (especially the blimps) can be used indoors.

We are focused on non-commercial ("recreational") projects by amateurs, although pros are always welcome too. Reasons to make your own UAV range from a fun technical challenge, student contests, aerial photography and mapping (what we call "GeoCrawling"), and scientific sensing. We are primarily interested in civilian, not military, UAV uses here.

Great site. Everything you need to amaze your loved ones; humble your rivals; and start some UFO sightings around your neighborhood.

(Note: All kidding aside, be sure you read their FAQ about the legalities and regs that govern this hobby. It's post-911 out there. The authorities will not be gentle if you're caught misusing this technology or flaunting the law.)

461

General Software Discussion / FreePOPs - Free Programmer's POP3 Daemon/LUA Interpreter

« on: June 23, 2008, 11:30 AM »

I'm in the middle of a client project and  just recently found out about this courtesy of xtort.net. Looks like somebody did a lot of work. I've been playing with it a bit. From what I'm seeing so far, it looks like an answer to a prayer.

 

From the website www.freepops.org/en/

 FreePOPs is a POP3 daemon plus a LUA interpreter and some extra libraries for HTTP and HTML parsing. Its main purpose is translating local POP3 requests to remote HTTP actions on the supported web-mails, but it is really more flexible. For example there is a plugin to read news from a website as if they were mails in a mailbox. You can easily extend FreePOPs on the fly, without even restarting it. You can add a plugin or modify an existing one simply changing the script file since the plugins are written in LUA and are interpreted on the fly.
Usage

FreePOPs can be useful in some situations, here we give the most obvious ones:

    * You are behind a firewall that closes the 110 port but you need to read your mail and the web-mail of your mail provider sucks.
    * Your mail provider does not allow you to access your mailbox with POP3 protocol, but only through the web-mail service.
    * You prefer looking at your mailbox instead of browsing some websites news.
    * You have to develop a pop3 server in less than a week and you want it to be reasonably fast and not so memory consuming.
    * You are not a C hacker, but you want to benefit from a fast POP3 server frontend written in C and you want not to loose a month in writing the backend in C. LUA is a really simple and tiny language, one week is enough to learn it in a way that allows you to use it productively.

Features

FreePOPs is the only software we know with these features:

    * POP3 server RFC compliant (not full featured but compliant).
    * Portable (written in C and LUA that is written in C, so everything is written in the most portable language around the world).
    * Small (in the sense of resources usage) and reasonably fast.
    * Extremely extensible on the fly using a simple and power ful language.
    * Pretty documented.
    * Released under the GNU/GPL license (this means FreePOPs is Free Software).

Does this look like something anybody else could use?

462

Living Room / Hosting options for new website

« on: May 30, 2008, 12:31 PM »

I'm in the planning stages for a new tech website.

Searching for a host has been an eyeopener.

I was wondering if anybody had any (preferably experience-based  ) opinions about various webhost providers. The planned site will primarily be text oriented and use one of the more popular CMS solutions (i.e. Drupal or Joomla). I'm not expecting any need for huge transfer quotas for the first year or two. This puppy will be self-funded, so pricing is also a factor. I'd like to stay somewhere in the $500/yr range for out-of-pocket.

For every one recommendation there's at least one matching horror story. Anybody have any raves or caveats?

Thankee!