Search Results

Search found 1884 results on 76 pages for 'privacy protection'.

Page 64/76 | < Previous Page | 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71  | Next Page >

• FFmpeg Video Hosting for Linux and Windows Server

  - by Aditi

  FFmpeg hosting is a special type of web hosting where the host servers have video transcoding software loaded on them, which allows the automatic conversion of videos from one format to another. FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution for recording, converting, transcoding and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec – the leading audio/video codec library. FFmpeg hosting gets its name from a set of server side programs (modules) called FFmpeg. There are a number of applications or web scripts available, which allow webmasters to create their own video sharing websites. Video hosting typically requires: PHP 4.3 and above (including support of CLI) Mencoder and also Mplayer FFMpeg-PHP MySQL database server LAME MP3 Encoder Libogg + Libvorbis GD Library 2 or higher CGI-BIN There are number of web service providers who provide FFmpeg hosting service. Following is a list of some of the Best FFmpeg hosting providers for both Linux and Windows Server below. Dream Host Dreamhost provides for web based email access, mail filtering, spam filtering, unlimited email ids, vacation autoresponder, python support, full CGI access and many more services. Price: $7.95 View Details Micfo It offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Other services include free domain for life and free Website Transfer with many more services. All in all one of the best option to consider. Price: $5 View Details Host Upon HostUpon offers FFMpeg Hosting on all their hosting packages, with readily installed modules to start a Video website or Social Network with Video uploading. These scripts such as Boonex Dolphin / PHPMotion / Social Engine / ABKsoft Scripts / Joomla Video Plugin / Clipshare / ClipBucket / Social Media / Rayzz / Vidi Script work with their ffmpeg. Their FFMPEG hosting plan offers 24/7/365 support with typical response time of 15min or less. Price: $5.95 View Details DownTown Host DownTown Host provides full and exceptional support by live chat and telephone. It has high-power, modern servers and the finest web server technology. It offers free search engine Submission and continuous data backup protection with free email forwarding and site move. There are many more services too. Site5 This ffmpeg service provider offers uptime guarantee, a real time stats on each server and many more attractive services. Price: $4.95 View Details Cirtex Hosting Cirtex Hosting allows to host 7 websites & domains and provides for unlimited storage space and monthly bandwidth. It also offers FTP and email accounts and many more services. Price: $2.49 View Details FLV Hosting FLV hosting supplies RTMP SERVER STREAMING for large size video streaming and server side recording. It is flexible and costs less. They customize to the clients requirements. Price: $9.95 View Details AptHost This hosting service provides for 24x7x365 Premium Support and fully ffmpeg enabled services. Price: $4.95 View Details HostMDS Great Support, Priced Low. It provides for SSH access, CGI, Ruby on Rails, Perl, PHP, MySQL, front page extentions, 24/7 Support, FREE Domain transfer and spam filtering. It offers instant account setup, low latency fast bandwidth & much more! They were formerly known as Vistapages. Price: $4.95 View Details Related posts:Best WordPress Video Themes for a Video Blog Free Web Based Applications 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

  Read the article

• Common business drivers that lead to creating and sustaining a project

  Common business drivers that lead to creating and sustaining a project include and are not limited to: cost reduction, increased return on investment (ROI), reduced time to market, increased speed and efficiency, increased security, and increased interoperability. These drivers primarily focus on streamlining and reducing cost to make a company more profitable with less overhead. According to Answers.com cost reduction is defined as reducing costs to improve profitability, and may be implemented when a company is having financial problems or prevent problems. ROI is defined as the amount of value received relative to the amount of money invested according to PayperclickList.com.  With the ever increasing demands on businesses to compete in today’s market, companies are constantly striving to reduce the time it takes for a concept to become a product and be sold within the global marketplace. In business, some people say time is money, so if a project can reduce the time a business process takes it in fact saves the company which is always good for the bottom line. The Social Security Administration states that data security is the protection of data from accidental or intentional but unauthorized modification, destruction. Interoperability is the capability of a system or subsystem to interact with other systems or subsystems. In my personal opinion, these drivers would not really differ for a profit-based organization, compared to a non-profit organization. Both corporate entities strive to reduce cost, and strive to keep operation budgets low. However, the reasoning behind why they want to achieve this does contrast. Typically profit based organizations strive to increase revenue and market share so that the business can grow. Alternatively, not-for-profit businesses are more interested in increasing their reach within communities whether it is to increase annual donations or invest in the lives of others. Success or failure of a project can be determined by one or more of these drivers based on the scope of a project and the company’s priorities associated with each of the drivers. In addition, if a project attempts to incorporate multiple drivers and is only partially successful, then the project might still be considered to be a success due to how close the project was to meeting each of the priorities. Continuous evaluation of the project could lead to a decision to abort a project, because it is expected to fail before completion. Evaluations should be executed after the completion of every software development process stage. Pfleeger notes that software development process stages include: Requirements Analysis and Definition System Design Program Design Program Implementation Unit Testing Integration Testing System Delivery Maintenance Each evaluation at every state should consider all the business drivers included in the scope of a project for how close they are expected to meet expectations. In addition, minimum requirements of acceptance should also be included with the scope of the project and should be reevaluated as the project progresses to ensure that the project makes good economic sense to continue. If the project falls below these benchmarks then the project should be put on hold until it does make more sense or the project should be aborted because it does not meet the business driver requirements.   References Cost Reduction Program. (n.d.). Dictionary of Accounting Terms. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/cost-reduction-program Government Information Exchange. (n.d.). Government Information Exchange Glossary. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from SSA.gov Web site: http://www.ssa.gov/gix/definitions.html PayPerClickList.com. (n.d.). Glossary Term R - Pay Per Click List. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from PayPerClickList.com Web site: http://www.payperclicklist.com/glossary/termr.html Pfleeger, S & Atlee, J.(2009). Software Engineering: Theory and Practice. Boston:Prentice Hall Veluchamy, Thiyagarajan. (n.d.). Glossary « Thiyagarajan Veluchamy’s Blog. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from Thiyagarajan.WordPress.com Web site: http://thiyagarajan.wordpress.com/glossary/

  Read the article

• Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Performance on SPARC T4-2

  - by Brian

  The Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database is optimized to run on Oracle's SPARC T4 processor platforms running Oracle Solaris 11 providing unsurpassed scalability, performance, upgradability, protection of investment and return on investment. The following demonstrate the value of combining Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database with SPARC T4 servers and Oracle Solaris 11: On a Mobile Call Processing test, the 2-socket SPARC T4-2 server outperforms: Oracle's SPARC Enterprise M4000 server (4 x 2.66 GHz SPARC64 VII+) by 34%. Oracle's SPARC T3-4 (4 x 1.65 GHz SPARC T3) by 2.7x, or 5.4x per processor. Utilizing the TimesTen Performance Throughput Benchmark (TPTBM), the SPARC T4-2 server protects investments with: 2.1x the overall performance of a 4-socket SPARC Enterprise M4000 server in read-only mode and 1.5x the performance in update-only testing. This is 4.2x more performance per processor than the SPARC64 VII+ 2.66 GHz based system. 10x more performance per processor than the SPARC T2+ 1.4 GHz server. 1.6x better performance per processor than the SPARC T3 1.65 GHz based server. In replication testing, the two socket SPARC T4-2 server is over 3x faster than the performance of a four socket SPARC Enterprise T5440 server in both asynchronous replication environment and the highly available 2-Safe replication. This testing emphasizes parallel replication between systems. Performance Landscape Mobile Call Processing Test Performance System Processor Sockets/Cores/Threads Tps SPARC T4-2 SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz 2 16 128 218,400 M4000 SPARC64 VII+, 2.66 GHz 4 16 32 162,900 SPARC T3-4 SPARC T3, 1.65 GHz 4 64 512 80,400 TimesTen Performance Throughput Benchmark (TPTBM) Read-Only System Processor Sockets/Cores/Threads Tps SPARC T3-4 SPARC T3, 1.65 GHz 4 64 512 7.9M SPARC T4-2 SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz 2 16 128 6.5M M4000 SPARC64 VII+, 2.66 GHz 4 16 32 3.1M T5440 SPARC T2+, 1.4 GHz 4 32 256 3.1M TimesTen Performance Throughput Benchmark (TPTBM) Update-Only System Processor Sockets/Cores/Threads Tps SPARC T4-2 SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz 2 16 128 547,800 M4000 SPARC64 VII+, 2.66 GHz 4 16 32 363,800 SPARC T3-4 SPARC T3, 1.65 GHz 4 64 512 240,500 TimesTen Replication Tests System Processor Sockets/Cores/Threads Asynchronous 2-Safe SPARC T4-2 SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz 2 16 128 38,024 13,701 SPARC T5440 SPARC T2+, 1.4 GHz 4 32 256 11,621 4,615 Configuration Summary Hardware Configurations: SPARC T4-2 server 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory 1 x 8 Gbs FC Qlogic HBA 1 x 6 Gbs SAS HBA 4 x 300 GB internal disks Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (40 x 24 GB flash modules) 1 x Sun Fire X4275 server configured as COMSTAR head SPARC T3-4 server 4 x SPARC T3 processors, 1.6 GHz 512 GB memory 1 x 8 Gbs FC Qlogic HBA 8 x 146 GB internal disks 1 x Sun Fire X4275 server configured as COMSTAR head SPARC Enterprise M4000 server 4 x SPARC64 VII+ processors, 2.66 GHz 128 GB memory 1 x 8 Gbs FC Qlogic HBA 1 x 6 Gbs SAS HBA 2 x 146 GB internal disks Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (40 x 24 GB flash modules) 1 x Sun Fire X4275 server configured as COMSTAR head Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle TimesTen 11.2.2.4 Benchmark Descriptions TimesTen Performance Throughput BenchMark (TPTBM) is shipped with TimesTen and measures the total throughput of the system. The workload can test read-only, update-only, delete and insert operations as required. Mobile Call Processing is a customer-based workload for processing calls made by mobile phone subscribers. The workload has a mixture of read-only, update, and insert-only transactions. The peak throughput performance is measured from multiple concurrent processes executing the transactions until a peak performance is reached via saturation of the available resources. Parallel Replication tests using both asynchronous and 2-Safe replication methods. For asynchronous replication, transactions are processed in batches to maximize the throughput capabilities of the replication server and network. In 2-Safe replication, also known as no data-loss or high availability, transactions are replicated between servers immediately emphasizing low latency. For both environments, performance is measured in the number of parallel replication servers and the maximum transactions-per-second for all concurrent processes. See Also SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 1 October 2012.

  Read the article

• It was worth the wait… Welcome Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2

  - by Irem Radzik

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} It certainly was worth the wait to meet Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2, because it is full of new features on multiple fronts. In fact, this release has the longest and strongest list of new features in Oracle GoldenGate’s history. The new release brings GoldenGate closer to the Oracle Database while expanding the support for global implementations and heterogeneous systems. It is more secure, more flexible, and faster. We announced the availability of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 via a press release. If you haven’t seen it yet, please check it out. As covered in this announcement, there are a variety of improvements in the product: Integrated Capture for Oracle Database: brings Oracle GoldenGate’s Capture process closer to the Oracle Database engine and enables support for Advanced Compression among other benefits. Enhanced Conflict Detection & Resolution, speeds and simplifies the conflict detection and resolution process for Active-Active deployments. Globalization, meaning Oracle GoldenGate can be deployed for databases that use multi-byte/Unicode character sets. Security and Performance Improvements, includes support Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS). Increased Extensibility by kicking off actions based on an event record in the transaction log or in the Trail file. Integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c , in addition to the Oracle GoldenGate Monitor product. Expanded Heterogeneity, including capture from IBM DB2 for i on iSeries (AS/400) and delivery to Postgres We will explain these new features in more detail at our upcoming launch webcast: Harness the Power of the New Release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g- (Sept 12 8am/10am PT) In addition to learning more about these new features, the webcast will allow you to ask your questions to product management via live Q&A section. So, I hope you will not miss this opportunity to explore the new release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g and see how it can deliver enterprise-class real-time data integration solutions.. I look forward to a great webcast to unveil GoldenGate’s new capabilities.

  Read the article

• Beginner Geek: Scan Files for Viruses Before Using Them

  - by Mysticgeek

  To help avoid getting your computer infected by malicious software, it’s a good idea to scan files before executing them. Today we take a look at a couple of options that will let you scan files easily from your desktop. Scan File with Your Antivirus Software Most Antivirus software will put an option in the context menu so you can scan individual files. After downloading a file or email attachment, simply right-click the file and select the option to scan with your Antivirus software. If you want to scan more than one at a time, hold down the Ctrl key while you clicking each file you want to scan. Then right-click and select to scan with your Antivirus software. Here is our favorite Antivirus app, Microsoft Security Essentials scanning a couple of files. If a virus is found, your Antivirus app will delete it or put it in Quarantine so it cannot infect your system. Using VirusTotal Uploader To be very thorough and want a second opinion (actually 41), then you might want to check out the VirusTotal Uploader. This handy app will scan your files with 41 different Antivirus apps online. After installing VirusTotal Uploader, right-click the file, go to Send To, then VirusTotal. Alternately you can launch VirusTotal Uploader and Get and upload the file. It will send the file to VirusTotal.com and scan it with 41 different Antivirus apps and show you the results.   If you don’t want to install the Uploader, you can go to the VirusTotal site and upload a file from there to scan. We’ve noticed that occasionally there will be a false positive detected on files we know are clean. Sometimes the definition database of an Anti-malware app isn’t current, or an obscure Antivirus App will find something questionable. If that is the case, use your best judgment when viewing the results. Conclusion Most Antivirus apps today have real-time scanning and should be able to detect possible infections before you’re able to execute them. However, if they don’t or when in doubt, following these tips can save you a lot of headaches in the long run. If you use a lot of different flash drives throughout the day, check out our article on how to scan a thumb drive for viruses from the AutoPlay Dialog. Download Microsoft Security Essentials Download VirusTotal Uploader VirusTotal Website Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Scan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebMake Microsoft Security Essentials Scan Faster by Excluding Certain File TypesBeginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7Scan Your Thumb Drive for Viruses from the AutoPlay DialogSecure Computing: Free Anti-Virus Protection With AVG Free Edition TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Video preview of new Windows Live Essentials 21 Cursor Packs for XP, Vista & 7 Map the Stars with Stellarium Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox

  Read the article

• Surface V2.0

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  It’s been quiet around here. And the reason for that is that it’s been quiet around Surface for a while. Now, a lot of people assume that when a product team isn’t making too much noise that must mean they stopped working on their product. Remember the PDC keynote in 2010? Just because they didn’t mention WPF there a lot of people had the idea that WPF was dead and abandoned for Silverlight. Of course, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The same applies to Surface. While we didn’t hear much from the team in Redmond they were busy putting together the next version of the platform. And at the CES in January the world saw what they have been up to all along: Surface V2.0 as it’s commonly known. Of course, the product is still in development. It’s not here yet, we can’t buy one yet. However, more and more information comes available and I think this is a good time to share with you what it’s all about! The biggest change from an organizational point of view is that Microsoft decided to stop producing the hardware themselves. Instead, they have formed a partnership with Samsung who will manufacture the devices. This means that you as a buyer get the benefits of a large, worldwide supplier with all the services they can offer. Not that Microsoft didn’t do that before but since Surface wasn’t a ‘big’ product it was sometimes hard to get to the right people. The new device is officially called the “Samsung SUR 40 for Microsoft Surface” which is quite a mouthful. The software that runs the device is of course still coming from Microsoft. Let’s dive into the technical specs (note: all of this is preliminary, it’s still in the Alpha phase!): Audio out HDMI / StereoRCA / SPDIF / 2 times 3.5mm audio out jack Brightness 300 CD/m2 Communications 1GB Ethernet/802.11/Bluetooth Contrast Ratio 1:1000 CPU AMD Athlon X2 245e 2.9Ghz Dual Core Display Resolution Full HD 1080p 1920x1080 / 16:9 aspect ratio GPU AMD Radeon HD 6750 1GB GDDRS HDD 320 GB / 7200 RPM HDMI In / HDMI out Yes I/O Ports 4 USB, SD Card reader Operation System Embedded Windows 7 Professional 64 bits Panel Size 40” diagonal Protection Glass Gorilla Glass RAM 4 GB DD3 Weight / with standard legs 70.0 Kg / 154 lbs Weight / standalone 39.5 Kg / 87 lbs Height (without legs) 4 inch Contact points recognized > 50 Cool Factor Extremely   Ok, the last point is not official, but I do think it needs to be there. Let’s talk software. As noted, it runs Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, which means you can run Visual Studio 2010 on it. The software is going to be developed in WPF4.0 with the additional Surface SDK 2.0. It will contain all the things you’ve seen before plus some extra’s. They have taken some steps to align it more with the Surface Toolkit which you can download today, so if you do things right your software should be portable between a WPF4.0 Windows 7 Multi-touch app and the Surface v2 environment. It still uses infrared to detect contacts, so in that respect nothing much has changed conceptually. We still can differentiate between a finger, a tag or a blob. Of course, since the new platform has a much higher resolution (compared to the 1024x768 of the first version) you might need to look at your code again. I’ve seen a lot of applications on Surface that assume the old resolution and moving that to V2 is going to be some work. To be honest: as I am under NDA I cannot disclose much about the new software besides what I have told you here, but trust me: it’s going to blow people away. Now, the biggest question for me is: when can I get one? Until we can, have a look here: Tags van Technorati: surface,samsung,WPF

  Read the article

• Securing Flexfield Value Sets in EBS 12.2

  - by Sara Woodhull

  Release 12.2 includes a new feature: flexfield value set security. This new feature gives you additional options for ensuring that different administrators have non-overlapping responsibilities, which in turn provides checks and balances for sensitive activities.  Separation of Duties (SoD) is one of the key concepts of internal controls and is a requirement for many regulations including: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) European Union Data Protection Directive. Its primary intent is to put barriers in place to prevent fraud or theft by an individual acting alone. Implementing Separation of Duties requires minimizing the possibility that users could modify data across application functions where the users should not normally have access. For flexfields and report parameters in Oracle E-Business Suite, values in value sets can affect functionality such as the rollup of accounting data, job grades used at a company, and so on. Controlling access to the creation or modification of value set values can be an important piece of implementing Separation of Duties in an organization. New Flexfield Value Set Security feature Flexfield value set security allows system administrators to restrict users from viewing, adding or updating values in specific value sets. Value set security enables role-based separation of duties for key flexfields, descriptive flexfields, and report parameters. For example, you can set up value set security such that certain users can view or insert values for any value set used by the Accounting Flexfield but no other value sets, while other users can view and update values for value sets used for any flexfields in Oracle HRMS. You can also segregate access by Operating Unit as well as by role or responsibility.Value set security uses a combination of data security and role-based access control in Oracle User Management. Flexfield value set security provides a level of security that is different from the previously-existing and similarly-named features in Oracle E-Business Suite: Function security controls whether a user has access to a specific page or form, as well as what operations the user can do in that screen. Flexfield value security controls what values a user can enter into a flexfield segment or report parameter (by responsibility) during routine data entry in many transaction screens across Oracle E-Business Suite. Flexfield value set security (this feature, new in Release 12.2) controls who can view, insert, or update values for a particular value set (by flexfield, report, or value set) in the Segment Values form (FNDFFMSV). The effect of flexfield value set security is that a user of the Segment Values form will only be able to view those value sets for which the user has been granted access. Further, the user will be able to insert or update/disable values in that value set if the user has been granted privileges to do so.  Flexfield value set security affects independent, dependent, and certain table-validated value sets for flexfields and report parameters. Initial State of the Feature upon Upgrade Because this is a new security feature, it is turned on by default.  When you initially install or upgrade to Release 12.2.2, no users are allowed to view, insert or update any value set values (users may even think that their values are missing or invalid because they cannot see the values).  You must explicitly set up access for specific users by enabling appropriate grants and roles for those users.We recommend using flexfield value set security as part of a comprehensive Separation of Duties strategy. However, if you choose not to implement flexfield value set security upon upgrading to or installing Release 12.2, you can enable backwards compatibility--users can access any value sets if they have access to the Values form--after you upgrade. The feature does not affect day-to-day transactions that use flexfields.  However, you must either set up specific grants and roles or enable backwards compatibility before users can create new values or update or disable existing values. For more information, see: Release 12.2 Flexfield Value Set Security Documentation Update for Patch 17305947:R12.FND.C (Document 1589204.1) R12.2 TOI: Implement and Use Application Object Library (AOL) - Flexfields Security and Separation of Duties for Value Sets (recorded training)

  Read the article

• Dark Sun Dispatch 001

  - by Chris Williams

  If you aren't into tabletop (aka pen & paper) RPGs, you might as well click to the next post now... Still here? Awesome. I've recently started running a new D&D 4.0 Dark Sun campaign. If you don't know anything about Dark Sun, here's a quick intro: The campaign take place on the world of Athas, formerly a lush green world that is now a desert wasteland. Forests are rare in the extreme, as is water and metal. Coins are made of ceramic and weapons are often made of hardened wood, bone or obsidian. The green age of Athas was centuries ago and the current state was brought about through the reckless use of sorcerous magic. (In this world, you can augment spells by drawing on the life force of the world & people around you. This is called defiling. Preserving magic draws upon the casters life force and does not damage the surrounding world, but it isn't as powerful.) Humans are pretty much unchanged, but the traditional fantasy races have changed quite a bit. Elves don't live in the forest, they are shifty and untrustworthy desert traders known for their ability to run long distances through the wastes. Halflings are not short, fat, pleasant little riverside people. Instead they are bloodthirsty feral cannibals that roam the few remaining forests and ride reptilians beasts akin to raptors. Gnomes are extinct, as are orcs. Dwarves are mostly farmers and gladiators, and live out in the sun instead of staying under the mountains. Goliaths are half-giants, not known for their intellect. Muls are a Dwarf & Human crossbreed that displays the best traits of both races (human height and dwarven stoutness.) Thri-Kreen are sentient mantis people that are extremely fast. Most of the same character classes are available, with a few new twists. There are no divine characters (such as Priests, Paladins, etc) because the gods are gone. Nobody alive today can remember a time when they were still around. Instead, some folks worship the elemental forces (although they don't give out spells.) The cities are all ruled by Sorcerer King tyrants (except one city: Tyr) who are hundreds of years old and still practice defiling magic whenever they please. Serving the Sorcerer Kings are the Templars, who are also defilers and psionicists. Crossing them is as bad, in many cases, as crossing the Kings themselves. Between the cities you have small towns and trading outposts, and mostly barren desert with sometimes 4-5 days on foot between towns and the nearest oasis. Being caught out in the desert without adequate supplies and protection from the elements is pretty much a death sentence for even the toughest heroes. When you add in the natural (and unnatural) predators that roam the wastes, often in packs, most people don't last long alone. In this campaign, the adventure begins in the (small) trading fortress of Altaruk, a couple weeks walking distance from the newly freed city of Tyr. A caravan carrying trade goods from Altaruk has not made it to Tyr and the local merchant house has dispatched the heroes to find out what happened and to retrieve the goods (and drivers) if possible. The unlikely heroes consist of a human shaman, a thri-kreen monk, a human wizard, a kenku assassin and a (void aspect) genasi swordmage. Gathering up supplies and a little liquid courage, they set out into the desert and manage to find the northbound tracks of the wagon. Shortly after finding the tracks, they are ambushed by a pack of silt-runners (small lizard people with very large teeth and poisoned pointy spears.) The party makes short work of the creatures, taking a few minor wounds in the process. Proceeding onward without resting, they find the remains of the wagon and manage to sneak up on a pack of Kruthiks picking through the rubble and spilled goods. Unfortunately, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity and had a hard fight ahead of them. The party defeated the kruthiks, but took heavy damage (and almost lost a couple of their own) in the process. Once the kruthiks were dispatched, they followed a set of tracks further north to a ruined tower...

  Read the article

• My Dog, Cross-Channel Shopping, and Fusion SCM

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Mark Carson, Director, Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management I was walking my dog Max in an open space behind my house. As we tromped through the tall weeds I remembered it is tick season and that I should get Max some protection. While he sniffed merrily in the tick infested brush, I started shopping in the middle of an open field on my phone. I thought it would be convenient to pick up the tick medicine from a pet store on the way home. Searching the pet store website I saw that they had the medicine, but there was no information on whether the store had any in stock and there were no options for shipping it to the store for pickup. I could return it, but not pick it up which seamed kind of odd. I really didn't feel like making calls to the local stores to find out if they had it. Since the product is popular, I tried one of the large 'everything' stores. Browsing its website I could see that it could be shipped to me, shipped to the store for free, and that the store nearest to me had it in stock. Needless to say, this store became a better option. This experience is a small example of why retailers, distributors, and manufactures have placed a high priority on enabling 'cross-channel commerce.' Shoppers like you and me expect to be able to search, compare, buy and return products on-line and over the phone using a variety of devices including PDAs, tablets and in-store kiosks. The pet store lost my business because its web channel had limited information about its stores. I have spoken with many customers and prospects about cross-channel commerce. They all realize the business implications and urgency behind cross-channel commerce but recognize there are challenges to enable it. New and existing applications must be integrated together globally through a consistent cross-channel business process. Integration is required between applications that provide the initial shopping experience and delivery applications associated with warehouses, stores, and partners. The enablement must be accomplished in a flexible way to react to fast-changing product portfolios and new acquisitions, while at the same time minimizing costs through reuse of existing systems. Meanwhile, the business must continue to grow and decision makers need to balance new capability with peak seasons. The challenges above are not unique to retail. Any customer in any industry who has multiple points for capturing orders and multiple points for fulfilling orders will face these challenges. With this in mind, we had a unique opportunity in Fusion SCM to re-think how to build a set of modular and flexible applications in the order management space that would make these challenges easier to conquer. The results are Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Global Order Promising. These applications can help companies, such as the pet store, enable true cross-channel commerce. The apps provide highly adaptable and flexible business processes to automate order orchestration across multiple cross-channel systems. They also show a global view of supply across warehouses, stores, and partners for real-time availability and more accurate order promising. Additional capability includes a standards-based integration framework for seamless execution and the ability to reuse existing systems for faster and lower cost implementations. OK, that was a mouthful of features and benefits. As Max waited to cross the street (he can do basic math too), I wondered if he could relate. He does not care about leash laws, pick-up courtesy, where he can/can't walk, what time of day it is, or even ticks. He does not care about how all these things could make walking complicated. He just wants to walk. Similarly, customers just want to shop and companies just want to make it easier to sell and deliver. You can learn more about Distributed Order Orchestration and Global Order Promising in cross-channel here.

  Read the article

• Financial Management: Why Move to the Cloud?

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Terrance Wampler, Vice President, Financials Product Strategy, Oracle I’ve spent my career designing and developing financial management systems, most of it at Oracle. Every single day I either meet with our customers or talk to them on the phone. The time is usually spent discussing various business challenges facing CFOs and Controllers, who are running Oracle’s Financials. Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about cloud computing and whether it makes sense for finance to go to the cloud. Here are some pros and cons that might help you make that decision. Let’s start with the benefits of cloud solutions. The first is savings. With cloud services, you pay only for those commodities that you use. That makes you feel like you're getting better value for your money. Plus, you can preserve your cash for your core business and you can get a better matching of expenses and revenues. So, at the top of the list is lower total cost of ownership. The second point has to do with optimization. With cloud services, you’ll need less IT infrastructure so you can optimize your IT resources for better-value, higher-end projects. This also leads to greater financial visibility, where there's a clear cost for the set of services or features replaced by cloud services. And, the last benefit is what I call acceleration. You can save money by speeding up the initialization and deployment of the project. You don't have to deal with IT infrastructure and you can start implementing right away. We did a quick survey of about 70 CFOs at the CFO Summit last month in New York City. We asked them why they were looking at cloud services, and not necessarily just for financials. The No. 1 response was perceived lower cost of ownership. But of course there are risks to consider. The first thing most people think about in the cloud is security and ownership of data. So, will your data really be safe? Can you meet your own privacy policy requirements? Do you really want your private financial data exposed? Do you trust the provider? Is what you see really your data? Do you own it or is it managed by someone else? Security is a big concern that comes with an emotional component. The next thing in the risk category is reliability. Is the provider proven? You’re taking what you have control over – for example, standards and policies and internal service level agreements – away from your IT department and giving it to someone else. Will you still be able to adapt to shifts in your business? Will the provider be able to grow with your business effectively? Reliability means having a provider that can give you the service infrastructure that you need. And then there’s performance, which has two components in terms of risk. Going forward, will the provider be able to scale the infrastructure or service level if you have new employees or new businesses? And second, will the price you negotiate and the rate you lock in cover additional costs and rising service fees? Another piece is cost. What happens if you don't get the service level you want? What if you end the service? What happens, if after a few years, you send the service out for bid and change service? Can you move your data? Can you move the applications? Do the integrations work? These are cost components people don’t always take into account. And, the final piece is the business case. The perception is that you can get started really quickly with cloud. It has a perceived lower cost of total ownership and it feels cool because it's cloud. But do you have a good business case for moving to the cloud? Your total cost of ownership is over three years; then you’ll renew it, so your TCO is six years. Have you compared that to other internal services that you’re offering? You might already have product that you can run this new business or division on. In that same survey at the CFO Summit, the execs thought the biggest perceived risks were security of data, ability to move data back, and the ability to create a business case to actually justify the risks. So that’s the list of pros and cons. Not to leave you hanging, I will do another post on how to balance these pros and cons and make the right decision for your business.

  Read the article

• How does the Trash Can work, and where can I find official documentation, reference, or specification for it?

  - by MestreLion

  When trying to manage trash can from mounted NTFS volumes, I ended up reading FreeDesktop.org's reference on it. Poking around and doing some tests, I realized Ubuntu/Gnome does not follow the specs 100%. Here's why: For non-/ partitions, it always uses <driveroot>/.Trash-<uid>, It never used <driveroot>/.Trash/<uid>, even when i created it in advance. While this works, it's annoying: if I have 15 users, I end up with 15 /.Trash-xxx folders in my drive, while the other approach would still give a single folder (with 15 sub-folders). That "pollution" in my drives is very unpleasant. And specs say "If an $topdir/.Trash directory is absent, an $topdir/.Trash-$uid directory is to be used". Well, it IS present, so why does it never use it? root trash does not work, at least not out of the box. Open nautilus as root and click on trash; it gives an error. Try to delete any file, it says "it can't move to trash". Ok, I know this can be fixed by creating /root/.local/share. But specs says "A “home trash” directory SHOULD be automatically created for any new user. If this directory is needed for a trashing operation but does not exist, the implementation SHOULD automatically create it, without any warnings or delays.". Why the error then? Bug? Why must I change /etc/fstab entries for mounted volumes, adding options like uid and guid, if the volumes are already mounted as RW for everyone? These are just some examples of deviation from the standard. So, the question is: "If Ubuntu does not adhere 100% to the spec, HOW exactly does the trash work? WHERE can i find a technical reference for Ubuntu's implementation of the trash?" By the way: if Ubuntu does happen to follow specs, please tell me what I am doing wrong, especially regarding the /.Trash-<uid> vs /.Trash/<uid> issue. Thanks! EDIT: Some more info: If a given fs has no support for the sticky bit (VFAT, NTFS), it probably doesn't have for permissions either (at least VFAT surely doesn't). So what prevents one user from purging / restoring other users' ./Trash-xxx ? If one can read/write his own Trash, one can do the same for the whole drive, including other's trashes, correct? Or does Gnome have some kind of "extra" protection on ./Trash-xxx folders on VFAT/NTFS fs? If Linux can "emulate" file permissions on NTFS mounting by editing /fstab uid and gid options, can it also "emulate" the sticky bit? I would really prefer to use /.Trash/xxx format... For the root issue: for the / partition, I can use trash as root, and it goes to /root/.local/shate/Trash. But if I click on Nautilus "Trash" (as root), I get an error. Don't you? So files are correctly trashed, but I can't access it. All I can do is manually "purge" them (by deleting files on /root/.local/shate/Trash), but restoring would be very tricky (opening info files and manually moving, etc.). For non-/ partitions (or at least for VFAT/NTFS), I can not even use trash as root: it does not create a ./Trash-0 folder, it simply says "Cannot trash, want to permanently delete?" Why? About fstab: i use it for a permanent mount for my NTFS partitions. I have several, and if not "pre-mounted" they really clutter the desktop and/or Nautilus. I'd rather have it pre-mounted, integrated in my fs, in mounts like /data , /windows/xp , /windows/vista , and so on, and leave /media and its "mount/unmount" flexibility just for truly removable drives. So, if Ubuntu/Gnome truly follows the spec, is there any way to fix the root issues and to "emulate" the sticky bit for (at least) my fstab'ed NTFS fixed partitions?

  Read the article

• How does Trash Can works? Where can i find official specification / documentation / reference about it?

  - by MestreLion

  When trying to manage trash can from mounted NTFS volumes, I ended up reading FreeDesktop.org's reference on it. Poking around and doing some tests, I realized Ubuntu/Gnome does not follow the specs 100%. Here's why: For non-/ partitions, it always use <driveroot>/.Trash-<uid>, It never used <driveroot>/.Trash/<uid>, even when i created it in advance. While this works, its annoying: if i have 15 users, i end up with 15 /.Trash-xxx folders in my drive, while the other approach would still give a single folder (with 15 sub-folders). That "pollution" in my drives is very unpleasant. And specs say "If an $topdir/.Trash directory is absent, an $topdir/.Trash-$uid directory is to be used". Well, it IS present, so why it never uses it? root trash does not work, at least not out of the box. Open nautilus as root and click on trash, it gives error. Try to delete any file, it says "it cant move to trash". Ok, i know this can be fixed by creating /root/.local/share. But specs says "A “home trash” directory SHOULD be automatically created for any new user. If this directory is needed for a trashing operation but does not exist, the implementation SHOULD automatically create it, without any warnings or delays.". Why error then? Bug? Why do i must change /etc/fstab entries for mounted volumes, adding options like uid and guid, if the volumes are already mounted as RW for everyone? These are just some examples of deviation from standard. So, the question is: "If Ubuntu does not adhere 100% to the spec, HOW exactly does the trash work? WHERE can i find technical reference about Ubuntu's implementation of the trash?" By the way: if Ubuntu does happen to follow specs, please tell me what am i doing wrong, specially regarding the /.Trash-<uid> vs /.Trash/<uid> issue. Thanks! EDIT: Some more info: If a given fs has no support for sticky bit (VFAT, NTFS), it probably dont have for permitions either (at least VFAT surely doesnt). So what prevents one user for purging / restoring other users ./Trash-xxx ? If one can read/write his own Trash, he can also do the same for the whole drive, including other's trashes, isnt it? Or does Gnome has any "extra" protection on ./Trash-xxx folders on VFAT/NTFS fs? If Linux can "emulate" file permitions on NTFS mounting by editing /fstab uid and gid options, can it also "emulate" the sticky bit? I would really want to use /.Trash/xxx format... For the root issue: for the / partition, i can trash as root, and it goes to /root/.local/shate/Trash. But if i click on Nautilus "Trash" (as root), i get an error. Dont you? So files are correctly trashed, but i cant access it. All i can do is manually "purge" them (by deleting files on /root/.local/shate/Trash), but restoring would be very tricky (opening info files and manually moving, etc) For non-/ partitions (or at least for VFAT/NTFS), I can not even trash as root: it does not create a ./Trash-0 folder, it simply says "Cannot trash, want to permantly delete?" Why? About fstab: i use it for a permanent mount for my NTFS partitions. I have several, and if not "pre-mounted" they really cluttter desktop and/or Nautilus. Id rather have it pre mounted, integrated in my fs, in mounts like /data , /windows/xp , /windows/vista , and so on, and leave /media and its "mount/unmount" flexibility just for truly removable drives Si, if Ubuntu/Gnome truly follow the spec, is there any way to fix the root issues and to "emulate" the sticky bit for (at least) my fstab'ed NTFS fixed partitions?

  Read the article

• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

  Read the article

• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

  Read the article

• questions about dual-boot install Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 on same hard drive

  - by Tim

  I'd like to dual-boot install Ubuntu 10.04 on the same hard drive as Windows 7 which has already been installed. As to sources on the internet: I found a website iinet about dual-boot installation of Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7 on the same hard drive, which I think more specific than the one on Ubuntu Community without specific version of the OSes. Since I am installing Ubuntu 10.04 instead of 10.10, my question is whether their installers are same or almost same and if I can follow iinet for my dual-boot installation? Or are there better websites for information about dual-boot installtion of Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7? As to shrinking Windows partitions to make free space for Ubuntu partitions: iinet uses the partition software in Ubuntu's installer to shrink the Windows partition. But I saw in many website that the partition software in Ubuntu's installer cannot guarantee shrinking Windows 7 partitions successfully, so they recommended in general to shrink Windows partitions under Windows itself using its softwares. For example, in Ubuntu Community, it says: Some people think that the Windows partition must be resized only from within Windows Vista and Windows 7 using the shrink/resize option. ... If you use GParted Partition Editor in the Ubuntu Live CD be careful. So I was wondering which way to go in my situation? As to partition for bootloader files: In iinet, I don't see there is a partition created and dedicated to boot files (i.e. Grub files). However, I saw in many websites strongly suggesting using a boot partition for Grub files, especially for the purpose of separation and protection from installed OS files. I was wondering which way I should choose and why? As to installing bootloader Grub, in iinet, I see that to install Grub it only needs to specify the hard drive device for bootloader installation. However, in ubuntuguide(for more than 2 OSes and Ubuntu 9.04), some commands are needed to run in order to put Grub configuration files in MBR, and OS partition, for the chain-load process (where to find the files for the next stage). In Ubuntu Community, there are some related sentences which I don't quite understand how to do in practice: the only thing in your computer outside of Ubuntu that needs to be changed is a small code in the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the first hard disk. The MBR code is changed to point to the boot loader in Ubuntu. If you have a problem with changing the MBR code, you might prefer to just install the code for pointing to GRUB to the first sector of your Ubuntu partition instead. If you do that during the Ubuntu installation process, then Ubuntu won't boot until you configure some other boot manager to point to Ubuntu's boot sector. Windows Vista no longer utilizes boot.ini, ntdetect.com, and ntldr when booting. Instead, Vista stores all data for its new boot manager in a boot folder. Windows Vista ships with an command line utility called bcdedit.exe, which requires administrator credentials to use. You may want to read http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=112156 about it. Using a command line utility always has its learning curve, so a more productive and better job can be done with a free utility called EasyBCD, developed and mastered in during the times of Vista Beta already. EasyBCD is user friendly and many Vista users highly recommend EasyBCD. In what is quoted above, I was wondering how exactly I should change the MBR code to point to the bootloader in Ubuntu? if I fail to change MBR code, are the other suggested boot managers being bcdedit.exe and EasyBCD in Windows? With the three sources above, which one shall I follow? Thanks and regards

  Read the article

• #OOW 2012 @PARIS...talking Oracle and Clouds, and Optimized Datacenter

  - by Eric Bezille

  For those of you who want to get most out of Oracle technologies to evolve your IT to the Next Wave, I encourage you to register to the up coming Oracle Optimized Datacenter event that will take place in Paris on November 28th. You will get the opportunity to exchange with Oracle experts and customers having successfully evolve their IT by leveraging Oracle technologies. You will also get the latest news on some of the Oracle systems announcements made during OOW 2012. During this event we will make an update about Oracle and Clouds, from private to public and hybrid models. So in preparing this session, I thought it was a good start to make a status of Cloud Computing in France, and CIO requirements in particular. Starting in 2009 with the first Cloud Camp in Paris, the market has evolved, but the basics are still the same : think hybrid. From Traditional IT to Clouds One size doesn't fit all, and for big companies having already an IT in place, there will be parts eligible to external (public) cloud, and parts that would be required to stay inside the firewalls, so ability to integrate both side is key.  None the less, one of the major impact of Cloud Computing trend on IT, reported by Forrester, is the pressure it makes on CIO to evolve towards the same model that end-users are now used to in their day to day life, where self-service and flexibility are paramount. This is what is driving IT to transform itself toward "a Global Service Provider", or for some as "IT "is" the Business" (see : Gartner Identifies Four Futures for IT and CIO), and for both models toward a Private Cloud Service Provider. In this journey, there is still a big difference between most of existing external Cloud and a firm IT : the number of applications that a CIO has to manage. Most cloud providers today are overly specialized, but at the end of the day, there are really few business processes that rely on only one application. So CIOs has to combine everything together external and internal. And for the internal parts that they will have to make them evolve to a Private Cloud, the scope can be very large. This will often require CIOs to evolve from their traditional approach to more disruptive ones, the time has come to introduce new standards and processes, if they want to succeed. So let's have a look at the different Cloud models, what type of users they are addressing, what value they bring and most importantly what needs to be done by the  Cloud Provider, and what is left over to the user. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS : what's provided and what needs to be done First of all the Cloud Provider will have to provide all the infrastructure needed to deliver the service. And the more value IT will want to provide, the more IT will have to deliver and integrate : from disks to applications. As we can see in the above picture, providing pure IaaS, left a lot to cover for the end-user, that’s why the end-user targeted by this Cloud Service is IT people. If you want to bring more value to developers, you need to provide to them a development platform ready to use, which is what PaaS is standing for, by providing not only the processors power, storage and OS, but also the Database and Middleware platform. SaaS being the last mile of the Cloud, providing an application ready to use by business users, the remaining part for the end-users being configuring and specifying the application for their specific usage. In addition to that, there are common challenges encompassing all type of Cloud Services : Security : covering all aspect, not only of users management but also data flows and data privacy Charge back : measuring what is used and by whom Application management : providing capabilities not only to deploy, but also to upgrade, from OS for IaaS, Database, and Middleware for PaaS, to a full Business Application for SaaS. Scalability : ability to evolve ALL the components of the Cloud Provider stack as needed Availability : ability to cover “always on” requirements Efficiency : providing a infrastructure that leverage shared resources in an efficient way and still comply to SLA (performances, availability, scalability, and ability to evolve) Automation : providing the orchestration of ALL the components in all service life-cycle (deployment, growth & shrink (elasticity), upgrades,...) Management : providing monitoring, configuring and self-service up to the end-users Oracle Strategy and Clouds For CIOs to succeed in their Private Cloud implementation, means that they encompass all those aspects for each component life-cycle that they selected to build their Cloud. That’s where a multi-vendors layered approach comes short in terms of efficiency. That’s the reason why Oracle focus on taking care of all those aspects directly at Engineering level, to truly provide efficient Cloud Services solutions for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. We are going as far as embedding software functions in hardware (storage, processor level,...) to ensure the best SLA with the highest efficiency. The beauty of it, as we rely on standards, is that the Oracle components that you are running today in-house, are exactly the same that we are using to build Clouds, bringing you flexibility, reversibility and fast path to adoption. With Oracle Engineered Systems (Exadata, Exalogic & SPARC SuperCluster, more specifically, when talking about Cloud), we are delivering all those components hardware and software already engineered together at Oracle factory, with a single pane of glace for the management of ALL the components through Oracle Enterprise Manager, and with high-availability, scalability and ability to evolve by design. To give you a feeling of what does that bring in terms just of implementation project timeline, for example with Oracle SPARC SuperCluster, we have a consistent track of record to have the system plug into existing Datacenter and ready in a week. This includes Oracle Database, OS, virtualization, Database Storage (Exadata Storage Cells in this case), Application Storage, and all network configuration. This strategy enable CIOs to very quickly build Cloud Services, taking out not only the complexity of integrating everything together but also taking out the automation and evolution complexity and cost. I invite you to discuss all those aspect in regards of your particular context face2face on November 28th.

  Read the article

• Cannot Mount USB 3.0 Hard Disk ?!!

  - by Tenken

  Hi, I have a USB 3.0 external hard disk which I am unable to mount. The entry appears in the "lsusb" command, but I do not exactly understand how to mount it. This is the output for my lsusb command. "ASMedia Technology Inc." is the USB 3.0 device. I would appreciate some help in mounting and accessing the hard disk. This the relevant output of my "lsusb -v" : Bus 009 Device 002: ID 174c:5106 ASMedia Technology Inc. Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x174c ASMedia Technology Inc. idProduct 0x5106 bcdDevice 0.01 iManufacturer 2 ASMedia iProduct 3 AS2105 iSerial 1 00000000000000000000 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 32 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 2 bInterfaceClass 8 Mass Storage bInterfaceSubClass 6 SCSI bInterfaceProtocol 80 Bulk (Zip) iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Device Qualifier (for other device speed): bLength 10 bDescriptorType 6 bcdUSB 2.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 bNumConfigurations 1 Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 3.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 3 bMaxPacketSize0 9 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0003 3.0 root hub bcdDevice 2.06 iManufacturer 3 Linux 2.6.35-28-generic xhci_hcd iProduct 2 xHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:04:00.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 4 wHubCharacteristic 0x0009 Per-port power switching Per-port overcurrent protection TT think time 8 FS bits bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0503 highspeed power enable connect Port 4: 0000.0503 highspeed power enable connect Device Status: 0x0003 Self Powered Remote Wakeup Enabled This is the error given when I try to mount the hard drive: shinso@shinso-IdeaPad:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdb /mnt [sudo] password for shinso: mount: /dev/sdb: unknown device This the output of "dmesg|tail": [30062.774178] Either the lower file is not in a valid eCryptfs format, or the key could not be retrieved. Plaintext passthrough mode is not enabled; returning -EIO [30535.800977] usb 9-4: USB disconnect, address 3 [30659.237342] Valid eCryptfs headers not found in file header region or xattr region [30659.237351] Either the lower file is not in a valid eCryptfs format, or the key could not be retrieved. Plaintext passthrough mode is not enabled; returning -EIO [31259.268310] Valid eCryptfs headers not found in file header region or xattr region [31259.268313] Either the lower file is not in a valid eCryptfs format, or the key could not be retrieved. Plaintext passthrough mode is not enabled; returning -EIO [31860.059058] Valid eCryptfs headers not found in file header region or xattr region [31860.059062] Either the lower file is not in a valid eCryptfs format, or the key could not be retrieved. Plaintext passthrough mode is not enabled; returning -EIO [32465.220590] Valid eCryptfs headers not found in file header region or xattr region [32465.220593] Either the lower file is not in a valid eCryptfs format, or the key could not be retrieved. Plaintext passthrough mode is not enabled; returning -EIO I am using Ubuntu 10.10 (64 bit). Any help is appreciated.

  Read the article

• Data management in unexpected places

  - by Ashok_Ora

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Data management in unexpected places When you think of network switches, routers, firewall appliances, etc., it may not be obvious that at the heart of these kinds of solutions is an engine that can manage huge amounts of data at very high throughput with low latencies and high availability. Consider a network router that is processing tens (or hundreds) of thousands of network packets per second. So what really happens inside a router? Packets are streaming in at the rate of tens of thousands per second. Each packet has multiple attributes, for example, a destination, associated SLAs etc. For each packet, the router has to determine the address of the next “hop” to the destination; it has to determine how to prioritize this packet. If it’s a high priority packet, then it has to be sent on its way before lower priority packets. As a consequence of prioritizing high priority packets, lower priority data packets may need to be temporarily stored (held back), but addressed fairly. If there are security or privacy requirements associated with the data packet, those have to be enforced. You probably need to keep track of statistics related to the packets processed (someone’s sure to ask). You have to do all this (and more) while preserving high availability i.e. if one of the processors in the router goes down, you have to have a way to continue processing without interruption (the customer won’t be happy with a “choppy” VoIP conversation, right?). And all this has to be achieved without ANY intervention from a human operator – the router is most likely to be in a remote location – it must JUST CONTINUE TO WORK CORRECTLY, even when bad things happen. How is this implemented? As soon as a packet arrives, it is interpreted by the receiving software. The software decodes the packet headers in order to determine the destination, kind of packet (e.g. voice vs. data), SLAs associated with the “owner” of the packet etc. It looks up the internal database of “rules” of how to process this packet and handles the packet accordingly. The software might choose to hold on to the packet safely for some period of time, if it’s a low priority packet. Ah – this sounds very much like a database problem. For each packet, you have to minimally · Look up the most efficient next “hop” towards the destination. The “most efficient” next hop can change, depending on latency, availability etc. · Look up the SLA and determine the priority of this packet (e.g. voice calls get priority over data ftp) · Look up security information associated with this data packet. It may be necessary to retrieve the context for this network packet since a network packet is a small “slice” of a session. The context for the “header” packet needs to be stored in the router, in order to make this work. · If the priority of the packet is low, then “store” the packet temporarily in the router until it is time to forward the packet to the next hop. · Update various statistics about the packet. In most cases, you have to do all this in the context of a single transaction. For example, you want to look up the forwarding address and perform the “send” in a single transaction so that the forwarding address doesn’t change while you’re sending the packet. So, how do you do all this? Berkeley DB is a proven, reliable, high performance, highly available embeddable database, designed for exactly these kinds of usage scenarios. Berkeley DB is a robust, reliable, proven solution that is currently being used in these scenarios. First and foremost, Berkeley DB (or BDB for short) is very very fast. It can process tens or hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. It can be used as a pure in-memory database, or as a disk-persistent database. BDB provides high availability – if one board in the router fails, the system can automatically failover to another board – no manual intervention required. BDB is self-administering – there’s no need for manual intervention in order to maintain a BDB application. No need to send a technician to a remote site in the middle of nowhere on a freezing winter day to perform maintenance operations. BDB is used in over 200 million deployments worldwide for the past two decades for mission-critical applications such as the one described here. You have a choice of spending valuable resources to implement similar functionality, or, you could simply embed BDB in your application and off you go! I know what I’d do – choose BDB, so I can focus on my business problem. What will you do? /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

  Read the article

• Access Control Service v2: Registering Web Identities in your Applications [concepts]

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  ACS v2 support two fundamental types of client identities– I like to call them “enterprise identities” (WS-*) and “web identities” (Google, LiveID, OpenId in general…). I also see two different “mind sets” when it comes to application design using the above identity types: Enterprise identities – often the fact that a client can present a token from a trusted identity provider means he is a legitimate user of the application. Trust relationships and authorization details have been negotiated out of band (often on paper). Web identities – the fact that a user can authenticate with Google et al does not necessarily mean he is a legitimate (or registered) user of an application. Typically additional steps are necessary (like filling out a form, email confirmation etc). Sometimes also a mixture of both approaches exist, for the sake of this post, I will focus on the web identity case. I got a number of questions how to implement the web identity scenario and after some conversations it turns out it is the old authentication vs. authorization problem that gets in the way. Many people use the IsAuthenticated property on IIdentity to make security decisions in their applications (or deny user=”?” in ASP.NET terms). That’s a very natural thing to do, because authentication was done inside the application and we knew exactly when the IsAuthenticated condition is true. Been there, done that. Guilty ;) The fundamental difference between these “old style” apps and federation is, that authentication is not done by the application anymore. It is done by a third party service, and in the case of web identity providers, in services that are not under our control (nor do we have a formal business relationship with these providers). Now the issue is, when you switch to ACS, and someone with a Google account authenticates, indeed IsAuthenticated is true – because that’s what he is! This does not mean, that he is also authorized to use the application. It just proves he was able to authenticate with Google. Now this obviously leads to confusion. How can we solve that? Easy answer: We have to deal with authentication and authorization separately. Job done ;) For many application types I see this general approach: Application uses ACS for authentication (maybe both enterprise and web identities, we focus on web identities but you could easily have a dual approach here) Application offers to authenticate (or sign in) via web identity accounts like LiveID, Google, Facebook etc. Application also maintains a database of its “own” users. Typically you want to store additional information about the user In such an application type it is important to have a unique identifier for your users (think the primary key of your user database). What would that be? Most web identity provider (and all the standard ACS v2 supported ones) emit a NameIdentifier claim. This is a stable ID for the client (scoped to the relying party – more on that later). Furthermore ACS emits a claims identifying the identity provider (like the original issuer concept in WIF). When you combine these two values together, you can be sure to have a unique identifier for the user, e.g.: Facebook-134952459903700\799880347 You can now check on incoming calls, if the user is already registered and if yes, swap the ACS claims with claims coming from your user database. One claims would maybe be a role like “Registered User” which can then be easily used to do authorization checks in the application. The WIF claims authentication manager is a perfect place to do the claims transformation. If the user is not registered, show a register form. Maybe you can use some claims from the identity provider to pre-fill form fields. (see here where I show how to use the Facebook API to fetch additional user properties). After successful registration (which may include other mechanisms like a confirmation email), flip the bit in your database to make the web identity a registered user. This is all very theoretical. In the next post I will show some code and provide a download link for the complete sample. More on NameIdentifier Identity providers “guarantee” that the name identifier for a given user in your application will always be the same. But different applications (in the case of ACS – different ACS namespaces) will see different name identifiers. This is by design to protect the privacy of users because identical name identifiers could be used to create “profiles” of some sort for that user. In technical terms they create the name identifier approximately like this: name identifier = Hash((Provider Internal User ID) + (Relying Party Address)) Why is this important to know? Well – when you change the name of your ACS namespace, the name identifiers will change as well and you will will lose your “connection” to your existing users. Oh an btw – never use any other claims (like email address or name) to form a unique ID – these can often be changed by users.

  Read the article

• methods DSA_do_verify and SHA1 (OpenSSL library for Windows)

  - by Rei

  i am working on a program to authenticate an ENC signature file by using OpenSSL for windows, and specifically methods DSA_do_verify(...) and SHA1(...) hash algorithm, but is having problems as the result from DSA_do_verify is always 0 (invalid). I am using the signature file of test set 4B from the IHO S-63 Data Protection Scheme, and also the SA public key (downloadable from IHO) for verification. Below is my program, can anyone help to see where i have gone wrong as i have tried many ways but failed to get the verification to be valid, thanks.. The signature file from test set 4B // Signature part R: 3F14 52CD AEC5 05B6 241A 02C7 614A D149 E7D6 C408. // Signature part S: 44BB A3DB 8C46 8D11 B6DB 23BE 1A79 55E6 B083 7429. // Signature part R: 93F5 EF86 1FF6 BA6F 1C2B B9BB 7F36 0C80 2F9B 2414. // Signature part S: 4877 8130 12B4 50D8 3688 B52C 7A84 8E26 D442 8B6E. // BIG p C16C BAD3 4D47 5EC5 3966 95D6 94BC 8BC4 7E59 8E23 B5A9 D7C5 CEC8 2D65 B682 7D44 E953 7848 4730 C0BF F1F4 CB56 F47C 6E51 054B E892 00F3 0D43 DC4F EF96 24D4 665B. // BIG q B7B8 10B5 8C09 34F6 4287 8F36 0B96 D7CC 26B5 3E4D. // BIG g 4C53 C726 BDBF BBA6 549D 7E73 1939 C6C9 3A86 9A27 C5DB 17BA 3CAC 589D 7B3E 003F A735 F290 CFD0 7A3E F10F 3515 5F1A 2EF7 0335 AF7B 6A52 11A1 1035 18FB A44E 9718. // BIG y 15F8 A502 11C2 34BB DF19 B3CD 25D1 4413 F03D CF38 6FFC 7357 BCEE 59E4 EBFD B641 6726 5E5F 0682 47D4 B50B 3B86 7A85 FB4D 6E01 8329 A993 C36C FD9A BFB6 ED6D 29E0. dataServer_pkeyfile.txt (extracted from above) // BIG p C16C BAD3 4D47 5EC5 3966 95D6 94BC 8BC4 7E59 8E23 B5A9 D7C5 CEC8 2D65 B682 7D44 E953 7848 4730 C0BF F1F4 CB56 F47C 6E51 054B E892 00F3 0D43 DC4F EF96 24D4 665B. // BIG q B7B8 10B5 8C09 34F6 4287 8F36 0B96 D7CC 26B5 3E4D. // BIG g 4C53 C726 BDBF BBA6 549D 7E73 1939 C6C9 3A86 9A27 C5DB 17BA 3CAC 589D 7B3E 003F A735 F290 CFD0 7A3E F10F 3515 5F1A 2EF7 0335 AF7B 6A52 11A1 1035 18FB A44E 9718. // BIG y 15F8 A502 11C2 34BB DF19 B3CD 25D1 4413 F03D CF38 6FFC 7357 BCEE 59E4 EBFD B641 6726 5E5F 0682 47D4 B50B 3B86 7A85 FB4D 6E01 8329 A993 C36C FD9A BFB6 ED6D 29E0. Program abstract: QbyteArray pk_data; QFile pk_file("./dataServer_pkeyfile.txt"); if (pk_file.open(QIODevice::Text | QIODevice::ReadOnly)) { pk_data.append(pk_file.readAll()); } pk_file.close(); unsigned char ptr_sha_hashed[20]; unsigned char *ptr_pk_data = (unsigned char *)pk_data.data(); // openssl SHA1 hashing algorithm SHA1(ptr_pk_data, pk_data.length(), ptr_sha_hashed); DSA_SIG *dsasig = DSA_SIG_new(); char ptr_r[] = "93F5EF861FF6BA6F1C2BB9BB7F360C802F9B2414"; //from tset 4B char ptr_s[] = "4877813012B450D83688B52C7A848E26D4428B6E"; //from tset 4B if (BN_hex2bn(&dsasig->r, ptr_r) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsasig->s, ptr_s) == 0) return 0; DSA *dsakeys = DSA_new(); //the following values are from the SA public key char ptr_p[] = "FCA682CE8E12CABA26EFCCF7110E526DB078B05EDECBCD1EB4A208F3AE1617AE01F35B91A47E6DF63413C5E12ED0899BCD132ACD50D99151BDC43EE737592E17"; char ptr_q[] = "962EDDCC369CBA8EBB260EE6B6A126D9346E38C5"; char ptr_g[] = "678471B27A9CF44EE91A49C5147DB1A9AAF244F05A434D6486931D2D14271B9E35030B71FD73DA179069B32E2935630E1C2062354D0DA20A6C416E50BE794CA4"; char ptr_y[] = "963F14E32BA5372928F24F15B0730C49D31B28E5C7641002564DB95995B15CF8800ED54E354867B82BB9597B158269E079F0C4F4926B17761CC89EB77C9B7EF8"; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->p, ptr_p) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->q, ptr_q) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->g, ptr_g) == 0) return 0; if (BN_hex2bn(&dsakeys->pub_key, ptr_y) == 0) return 0; int result; //valid = 1, invalid = 0, error = -1 result = DSA_do_verify(ptr_sha_hashed, 20, dsasig, dsakeys); //result is 0 (invalid)

  Read the article

• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 2 - Password Lists

  - by Argenis

    Digital World, Digital Locks One of the biggest digital assets that any company has is its secrets. These include passwords, key rings, certificates, and any other digital asset used to protect another asset from tampering or unauthorized access. As a DBA, you are very likely to manage some of these assets for your company - and your employer trusts you with keeping them safe. Probably one of the most important of these assets are passwords. As you well know, the can be used anywhere: for service accounts, credentials, proxies, linked servers, DTS/SSIS packages, symmetrical keys, private keys, etc., etc. Have you given some thought to what you're doing to keep these passwords safe? Are you backing them up somewhere? Who else besides you can access them? Good-Ol’ Post-It Notes Under Your Keyboard If you have a password-protected Excel sheet for your passwords, I have bad news for you: Excel's level of encryption is good for your grandma's budget spreadsheet, not for a list of enterprise passwords. I will try to summarize the main point of this best practice in one sentence: You should keep your passwords on an encrypted, access and version-controlled, backed-up, well-known shared location that every DBA on your team is aware of, and maintain copies of this password "database" on your DBA's workstations. Now I have to break down that statement to you: - Encrypted: what’s the point of saving your passwords on a file that any Windows admin with enough privileges can read? - Access controlled: This one is pretty much self-explanatory. - Version controlled: Passwords change (and I’m really hoping you do change them) and version control would allow you to track what a previous password was if the utility you’ve chosen doesn’t handle that for you. - Backed-up: You want a safe copy of the password list to be kept offline, preferably in long term storage, with relative ease of restoring. - Well-known shared location: This is critical for teams: what good is a password list if only one person in the team knows where it is? I have seen multiple examples of this that work well. They all start with an encrypted database. Certainly you could leverage SQL Server's native encryption solutions like cell encryption for this. I have found such implementations to be impractical, for the most part. Enter The World Of Utilities There are a myriad of open source/free software solutions to help you here. One of my favorites is KeePass, which creates encrypted files that can be saved to a network share, Sharepoint, etc. KeePass has UIs for most operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Other solutions I've used before worth mentioning include PasswordSafe and 1Password, with the latter one being a paid solution – but wildly popular in mobile devices. There are, of course, even more "enterprise-level" solutions available from 3rd party vendors. The truth is that most of the customers that I work with don't need that level of protection of their digital assets, and something like a KeePass database on Sharepoint suits them very well. What are you doing to safeguard your passwords? Leave a comment below, and join the discussion! Cheers, -Argenis

  Read the article

• With a little effort you can &ldquo;SEMI&rdquo;-protect your C# assemblies with obfuscation.

  - by mbcrump

  This method will not protect your assemblies from a experienced hacker. Everyday we see new keygens, cracks, serials being released that contain ways around copy protection from small companies. This is a simple process that will make a lot of hackers quit because so many others use nothing. If you were a thief would you pick the house that has security signs and an alarm or one that has nothing? To so begin: Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret. Lets begin by looking at the cartoon below:     You are probably familiar with the term and probably ignored this like most programmers ignore user security. Today, I’m going to show you reflection and a way to obfuscate it. Please understand that I am aware of ways around this, but I believe some security is better than no security.  In this sample program below, the code appears exactly as it does in Visual Studio. When the program runs, you get either a true or false in a console window. Sample Program. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad")); //Returns a True or False depending if you have notepad running.             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any(clsProcess => clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name));         }     } }   Pretend, that this is a commercial application. The hacker will only have the executable and maybe a few config files, etc. After reviewing the executable, he can determine if it was produced in .NET by examing the file in ILDASM or Redgate’s Reflector. We are going to examine the file using RedGate’s Reflector. Upon launch, we simply drag/drop the exe over to the application. We have the following for the Main method:   and for the IsProcessOpen method:     Without any other knowledge as to how this works, the hacker could export the exe and get vs project build or copy this code in and our application would run. Using Reflector output. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad"));             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any<Process>(delegate(Process clsProcess)             {                 return clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name);             });         }       } } The code is not identical, but returns the same value. At this point, with a little bit of effort you could prevent the hacker from reverse engineering your code so quickly by using Eazfuscator.NET. Eazfuscator.NET is just one of many programs built for this. Visual Studio ships with a community version of Dotfoscutor. So download and load Eazfuscator.NET and drag/drop your exectuable/project into the window. It will work for a few minutes depending if you have a quad-core or not. After it finishes, open the executable in RedGate Reflector and you will get the following: Main After Obfuscation IsProcessOpen Method after obfuscation: As you can see with the jumbled characters, it is not as easy as the first example. I am aware of methods around this, but it takes more effort and unless the hacker is up for the challenge, they will just pick another program. This is also helpful if you are a consultant and make clients pay a yearly license fee. This would prevent the average software developer from jumping into your security routine after you have left. I hope this article helped someone. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments below.

  Read the article

• Obfuscation is not a panacea

  - by simonc

  So, you want to obfuscate your .NET application. My question to you is: Why? What are your aims when your obfuscate your application? To protect your IP & algorithms? Prevent crackers from breaking your licensing? Your boss says you need to? To give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside? Obfuscating code correctly can be tricky, it can break your app if applied incorrectly, it can cause problems down the line. Let me be clear - there are some very good reasons why you would want to obfuscate your .NET application. However, you shouldn't be obfuscating for the sake of obfuscating. Security through Obfuscation? Once your application has been installed on a user’s computer, you no longer control it. If they do not want to pay for your application, then nothing can stop them from cracking it, even if the time cost to them is much greater than the cost of actually paying for it. Some people will not pay for software, even if it takes them a month to crack a $30 app. And once it is cracked, there is nothing stopping them from putting the result up on the internet. There should be nothing suprising about this; there is no software protection available for general-purpose computers that cannot be cracked by a sufficiently determined attacker. Only by completely controlling the entire stack – software, hardware, and the internet connection, can you have even a chance to be uncrackable. And even then, someone somewhere will still have a go, and probably succeed. Even high-end cryptoprocessors have known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone with a scanning electron microscope and lots of free time. So, then, why use obfuscation? Well, the primary reason is to protect your IP. What obfuscation is very good at is hiding the overall structure of your program, so that it’s very hard to figure out what exactly the code is doing at any one time, what context it is running in, and how it fits in with the rest of the application; all of which you need to do to understand how the application operates. This is completely different to cracking an application, where you simply have to find a single toggle that determines whether the application is licensed or not, and flip it without the rest of the application noticing. However, again, there are limitations. An obfuscated application still has to run in the same way, and do the same thing, as the original unobfuscated application. This means that some of the protections applied to the obfuscated assembly have to be undone at runtime, else it would not run on the CLR and do the same thing. And, again, since we don’t control the environment the application is run on, there is nothing stopping a user from undoing those protections manually, and reversing some of the obfuscation. It’s a perpetual arms race, and it always will be. We have plenty of ideas lined about new protections, and the new protections added in SA 6.6 (method parent obfuscation and a new control flow obfuscation level) are specifically designed to be harder to reverse and reconstruct the original structure. So then, by all means, obfuscate your application if you want to protect the algorithms and what the application does. That’s what SmartAssembly is designed to do. But make sure you are clear what a .NET obfuscator can and cannot protect you against, and don’t expect your obfuscated application to be uncrackable. Someone, somewhere, will crack your application if they want to and they don’t have anything better to do with their time. The best we can do is dissuade the casual crackers and make it much more difficult for the serious ones. Cross posted from Simple Talk.

  Read the article

• Spotlight on Oracle Social Relationship Management. Social Enable Your Enterprise with Oracle SRM.

  - by Pat Ma

  Facebook is now the most popular site on the Internet. People are tweeting more than they send email. Because there are so many people on social media, companies and brands want to be there too. They want to be able to listen to social chatter, engage with customers on social, create great-looking Facebook pages, and roll out social-collaborative work environments within their organization. This is where Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) comes in. Oracle SRM is a product that allows companies to manage their presence with prospects and customers on social channels. Let's talk about two popular use cases with Oracle SRM. Easy Publishing - Companies now have an average of 178 social media accounts - with every product or geography or employee group creating their own social media channel. For example, if you work at an international hotel chain with every single hotel creating their own Facebook page for their location, that chain can have well over 1,000 social media accounts. Managing these channels is a mess - with logging in and out of every account, making sure that all accounts are on brand, and preventing rogue posts from destroying the brand. This is where Oracle SRM comes in. With Oracle Social Relationship Management, you can log into one window and post messages to all 1,000+ social channels at once. You can set up approval flows and have each account generate their own content but that content must be approved before publishing. The benefits of this are easy social media publishing, brand consistency across all channels, and protection of your brand from inappropriate posts. Monitoring and Listening - People are writing and talking about your company right now on social media. 75% of social media users have written a negative post about a brand after a poor customer service experience. Think about all the negative posts you see in your Facebook news feed about delayed flights or being on hold for 45 minutes. There is so much social chatter going on around your brand that it's almost impossible to keep up or comprehend what's going on. That's where Oracle SRM comes in. With Social Relationship Management, a company can monitor and listen to what people are saying about them on social channels. They can drill down into individual posts or get a high level view of trends and mentions. The benefits of this are comprehending what's being said about your brand and its competitors, understanding customers and their intent, and responding to negative posts before they become a PR crisis. Oracle SRM is part of Oracle Cloud. The benefits of cloud deployment for customers are faster deployments, less maintenance, and lower cost of ownership versus on-premise deployments. Oracle SRM also fits into Oracle's vision to social enable your enterprise. With Oracle SRM, social media is not just a marketing channel. Social media is also mechanism for sales, customer support, recruiting, and employee collaboration. For more information about how Oracle SRM can social enable your enterprise, please visit oracle.com/social. For more information about Oracle Cloud, please visit cloud.oracle.com.

  Read the article

• ZFS Storage Appliance ? ldap ??????

  - by user13138569

  ZFS Storage Appliance ? Openldap ????????? ???ldap ?????????????? Solaris 11 ? Openldap ????????????? ??? slapd.conf ??ldif ?????????? user01 ??????? ?????? slapd.conf # # See slapd.conf(5) for details on configuration options. # This file should NOT be world readable. # include /etc/openldap/schema/core.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/cosine.schema include /etc/openldap/schema/nis.schema # Define global ACLs to disable default read access. # Do not enable referrals until AFTER you have a working directory # service AND an understanding of referrals. #referral ldap://root.openldap.org pidfile /var/openldap/run/slapd.pid argsfile /var/openldap/run/slapd.args # Load dynamic backend modules: modulepath /usr/lib/openldap moduleload back_bdb.la # moduleload back_hdb.la # moduleload back_ldap.la # Sample security restrictions # Require integrity protection (prevent hijacking) # Require 112-bit (3DES or better) encryption for updates # Require 63-bit encryption for simple bind # security ssf=1 update_ssf=112 simple_bind=64 # Sample access control policy: # Root DSE: allow anyone to read it # Subschema (sub)entry DSE: allow anyone to read it # Other DSEs: # Allow self write access # Allow authenticated users read access # Allow anonymous users to authenticate # Directives needed to implement policy: # access to dn.base="" by * read # access to dn.base="cn=Subschema" by * read # access to * # by self write # by users read # by anonymous auth # # if no access controls are present, the default policy # allows anyone and everyone to read anything but restricts # updates to rootdn. (e.g., "access to * by * read") # # rootdn can always read and write EVERYTHING! ####################################################################### # BDB database definitions ####################################################################### database bdb suffix "dc=oracle,dc=com" rootdn "cn=Manager,dc=oracle,dc=com" # Cleartext passwords, especially for the rootdn, should # be avoid. See slappasswd(8) and slapd.conf(5) for details. # Use of strong authentication encouraged. rootpw secret # The database directory MUST exist prior to running slapd AND # should only be accessible by the slapd and slap tools. # Mode 700 recommended. directory /var/openldap/openldap-data # Indices to maintain index objectClass eq ?????????ldif???? dn: dc=oracle,dc=com objectClass: dcObject objectClass: organization dc: oracle o: oracle dn: cn=Manager,dc=oracle,dc=com objectClass: organizationalRole cn: Manager dn: ou=People,dc=oracle,dc=com objectClass: organizationalUnit ou: People dn: ou=Group,dc=oracle,dc=com objectClass: organizationalUnit ou: Group dn: uid=user01,ou=People,dc=oracle,dc=com uid: user01 objectClass: top objectClass: account objectClass: posixAccount objectClass: shadowAccount cn: user01 uidNumber: 10001 gidNumber: 10000 homeDirectory: /home/user01 userPassword: secret loginShell: /bin/bash shadowLastChange: 10000 shadowMin: 0 shadowMax: 99999 shadowWarning: 14 shadowInactive: 99999 shadowExpire: -1 ldap?????????????ZFS Storage Appliance??????? Configuration SERVICES LDAP ??Base search DN ?ldap??????????? ???? ldap ????????? user01 ???????????????? ???????????? user ????????? Unknown or invalid user ?????????????????? ????????????????Solaris 11 ???????????? ????????????? ldap ????????getent ??????????????? # svcadm enable svc:/network/nis/domain:default # svcadm enable ldap/client # ldapclient manual -a authenticationMethod=none -a defaultSearchBase=dc=oracle,dc=com -a defaultServerList=192.168.56.201 System successfully configured # getent passwd user01 user01:x:10001:10000::/home/user01:/bin/bash ????????? user01 ?????????????? # mount -F nfs -o vers=3 192.168.56.101:/export/user01 /mnt # su user01 bash-4.1$ cd /mnt bash-4.1$ touch aaa bash-4.1$ ls -l total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 user01 10000 0 May 31 04:32 aaa ?????? ldap ??????????????????????????!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71  | Next Page >