Fluendo, the folks whose mission is to make everything to run on Linux, recently announced Codec Pack Release 15. In addition to the existing Windows Media, MPEG, DivX and other decoders, the new version 15 now offers support for AMD GPUs through the XvBA using OpenGL for efficient video rendering. This new addition follows on the heels of recently added support for VDPAU (NVIDIA) and VAAPI (Intel). Fluendo says its products are utilized by most OEMs for devices like desktops, laptops, thin clients, tablets, digital signage, set-top boxes, connected TV and media centers. Also, Fluendo solutions have been used by companies who've adopted Linux internally, allowing them to provide their employees with complete multimedia capabilities while remaining in full compliance with laws and patents.
“Good fences make good neighbors” is the old adage behind Brian Anderson and John Mutch's new security book, Preventing Good People From Doing Bad Things: Implementing Least Privilege. Many corporations have had to learn the hard way that they can have the slickest security software money can buy, while the greatest threats lurk from within. The main focus of the book, published by Apress, is to show how firms can remove these internal weaknesses by applying the concept of least privilege. The authors point out the implications of allowing users to run with unlimited administrator rights and discuss the implications when using Microsoft's Group Policy, UNIX and Linux servers, databases and other apps. Other topics include virtual environments, compliance and a cost-benefit analysis of least privilege. Auditors, geeks and suits will all find useful information in this book.
Linux Journal's own complete migration from the Gutenberg realm to the digital one is a fine case study on the powerful trends in publishing that are explored in a novel new project titled Book: A Futurist's Manifesto by Hugh McGuire and Brian O'Leary. The core content of this O'Reilly project is a collection of essays from thought leaders and practitioners on the developments occurring in the wake of the digital publishing shake-up brought on by the Kindle, iPhone and their kindred devices. The essays explore the new tools that are rapidly transforming how content is created, managed and distributed; the critical role that metadata plays in making book content discoverable in an era of abundance; the publishing projects that are at the bleeding edge of this digital revolution and how some digital books can evolve moment to moment, based on reader feedback. This particular project will do just that, incorporating reader feedback as the book is produced in hybrid digital-print format and determining in what ways the project will develop.
Queplix recently announced the availability of the FREEMIUM version of QueCloud, a product which the company bills as “the first data management cloud [that] enables companies to securely integrate cloud applications such as Netsuite, Google and SAP with unprecedented speed and simplicity”. The benefits, says QueCloud, include an 80%+ TOC reduction vs. traditional ETL data management tools. QueCloud's core technology is Queplix's flagship Virtual Data Manager architecture, which enables the configuration of a series of intelligent application software blades that identify and extract key data and associated security information from many different target applications. The blades identify and extract key metadata and associated security information from the data stored within these applications, then bring it into the Queplix Engine to support data integration with other applications. The FREEMIUM version provides free access to users, developers and independent software vendors.
The new third generation of Arkeia Backup Appliances promises to “reduce costs with larger disk capacities, embedded SSD, and deduplication” says the well-known provider of backup and disaster recovery products. Deduplication delivers effective storage that is many times the capacity of internal drives. The company also touts new features, such as RAID-6, faster network connectivity, fully integrated and optimized Arkeia Network Backup v9 software, integrated bare-metal disaster recovery and support for VMware vSphere virtual environments. Target customers for the appliances are mid-sized companies or remote offices.
The new Diablo (4th) release of the OpenStack cloud-computing platform recently went live, containing enhancements across the three existing projects: OpenStack Compute, Object Storage and Image Service. Key new features include new networking capabilities, such as “networking as a service” and unified authentication across all projects. Diablo extends existing API support and accelerates networking and scalability features, allowing enterprises and service providers to deploy and manage OpenStack clouds with larger performance standards and with ease. Two new projects for the next OpenStack software release, “Essex”, have been initiated, currently code-named Quantum and Keystone.
eyeOS bills itself as “the most-advanced Web desktop in the world and the largest open-source software project in Spain”. The new eyeOS Professional Edition takes the original edition to a new level, enabling private clouds that are accessible via any browser or device. All employees' and customers' workspaces can be virtualized in the cloud. The company says that the solution is highly scalable, easy to manage, does not require a large investment and includes all types of applications, including virtualized ones. Because eyeOS is developed in PHP and JavaScript and compiled in Hip-Hop, the system is not only high-performance, but also no software needs to be installed on the computer in order to work with it. Furthermore, the company says that eyeOS can integrate existing SaaS, virtualized legacy applications and other in-house apps served up as Web services.
Kill programming bugs dead with CodeSonar, GrammaTech's static-analysis tool that performs a whole-program, interprocedural analysis on code and identifies complex programming bugs. The breakthrough feature in this release relates to the new program-analysis algorithms that identify data races and other serious concurrency defects. The process involves symbolic execution techniques to reason about many possible execution paths and interleavings simultaneously. The concurrency analysis can be applied to multithreaded software written for both single core and multicore architectures. Another new feature, code-level metrics, is built on CodeSonar's existing code-analysis and reporting framework, which enables project managers to track popular metrics, such as cyclomatic complexity, or even define new metrics. Warnings can be generated automatically when metrics are outside an expected range. CodeSonar runs on Linux, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS and supports most compilers.
