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  • CGImageCreateWithMask with an image as a mask

    - by Peyman
    Hi I am trying to use an image (painted as Core Graphics) to create a mask. What I am doing is this 1. creating a Core Graphics path CGContextSaveGState(context); CGContextBeginPath(context); CGContextMoveToPoint(context,circleCenter.x,circleCenter.y); //CGContextSetAllowsAntialiasing(myBitmapContext, YES); CGContextAddArc(context,circleCenter.x, circleCenter.y,circleRadius,startingAngle, endingAngle, 0); // 0 is counterclockwise CGContextClosePath(context); CGContextSetRGBStrokeColor(context,1.0,0.0,0.0,1.0); CGContextSetRGBFillColor(context,1.0,0.0,0.0,0.2); CGContextDrawPath(context, kCGPathFillStroke); 2. then I'm saving the context that has the path just painted CGImageRef pacmanImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage (context); 3. restoring the context CGContextRestoreGState(context); CGContextSaveGState(context); 4. creating a 1 bit mask (which will provide the black-white mask) bitsPerComponent = 1; bitsPerPixel = bitsPerComponent * 1 ; bytesPerRow = (CGImageGetWidth(imgToMaskRef) * bitsPerPixel); mask = CGImageCreate(CGImageGetWidth(imgToMaskRef), CGImageGetHeight(imgToMaskRef), bitsPerComponent, bitsPerPixel, bytesPerRow, greyColorSpace, kCGImageAlphaNone, CGImageGetDataProvider(pacmanImage), NULL, //decode YES, //shouldInterpolate kCGRenderingIntentDefault); 5. masking the imgToMaskRef (which is a CGImageRef imgToMaskRef =imgToMask.CGImage;) with the mask just created imageMaskedWithImage = CGImageCreateWithMask(imgToMaskRef, mask); CGContextDrawImage(context,imgRectBox, imageMaskedWithImage); CGImageRef maskedImageFinal = CGBitmapContextCreateImage (context); returning the maskedImageFinal to the caller of this method (as wheelChoiceMadeState, which is a CGImageRef) who then updates the CALayer contents property with the image theLayer.contents = (id) wheelChoiceMadeState; the problem I am seeing is that the mask does not work properly and looks very strange indeed. I get strange patterns across the path painted by the Core Graphics. My hunch is there is something with CGImageGetDataProvider() but I am not sure. Any help would be appreciated thank you

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  • Oracle T4CPreparedStatement memory leaks?

    - by Jay
    A little background on the application that I am gonna talk about in the next few lines: XYZ is a data masking workbench eclipse RCP application: You give it a source table column, and a target table column, it would apply a trasformation (encryption/shuffling/etc) and copy the row data from source table to target table. Now, when I mask n tables at a time, n threads are launched by this app. Here is the issue: I have run into a production issue on first roll out of the above said app. Unfortunately, I don't have any logs to get to the root. However, I tried to run this app in test region and do a stress test. When I collected .hprof files and ran 'em through an analyzer (yourKit), I noticed that objects of oracle.jdbc.driver.T4CPreparedStatement was retaining heap. The analysis also tells me that one of my classes is holding a reference to this preparedstatement object and thereby, n threads have n such objects. T4CPreparedStatement seemed to have character arrays: lastBoundChars and bindChars each of size char[300000]. So, I researched a bit (google!), obtained ojdbc6.jar and tried decompiling T4CPreparedStatement. I see that T4CPreparedStatement extends OraclePreparedStatement, which dynamically manages array size of lastBoundChars and bindChars. So, my questions here are: Have you ever run into an issue like this? Do you know the significance of lastBoundChars / bindChars? I am new to profiling, so do you think I am not doing it correct? (I also ran the hprofs through MAT - and this was the main identified issue - so, I don't really think I could be wrong?) I have found something similar on the web here: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2860681 Appreciate your suggestions / advice.

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  • In a digital photo, how can I detect if a mountain is obscured by clouds?

    - by Gavin Brock
    The problem I have a collection of digital photos of a mountain in Japan. However the mountain is often obscured by clouds or fog. What techniques can I use to detect that the mountain is visible in the image? I am currently using Perl with the Imager module, but open to alternatives. All the images are taken from the exact same position - these are some samples. My naïve solution I started by taking several horizontal pixel samples of the mountain cone and comparing the brightness values to other samples from the sky. This worked well for differentiating good image 1 and bad image 2. However in the autumn it snowed and the mountain became brighter than the sky, like image 3, and my simple brightness test started to fail. Image 4 is an example of an edge case. I would classify this as a good image since some of the mountain is clearly visible. UPDATE 1 Thank you for the suggestions - I am happy you all vastly over-estimated my competence. Based on the answers, I have started trying the ImageMagick edge-detect transform, which gives me a much simpler image to analyze. convert sample.jpg -edge 1 edge.jpg I assume I should use some kind of masking to get rid of the trees and most of the clouds. Once I have the masked image, what is the best way to compare the similarity to a 'good' image? I guess the "compare" command suited for this job? How do I get a numeric 'similarity' value from this?

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  • How CPU finds ISR and distinguishes between devices

    - by ripunjay-tripathi-gmail-com
    I should first share all what I know - and that is complete chaos. There are several different questions on the topic, so please don't get irritated :). 1) To find an ISR, CPU is provided with a interrupt number. In x86 machines (286/386 and above) there is a IVT with ISRs in it; each entry of 4 bytes in size. So we need to multiply interrupt number by 4 to find the ISR. So first bunch of questions is - I am completely confused in mechanism of CPU receiving the interrupt. To raise an interrupt, firstly device shall probe for IRQ - then what ? The interrupt number travels "on IRQ" towards CPU? I also read something like device putting ISR address on data bus ; whats that then ? What is the concept of devices overriding the ISR. Can somebody tell me few example devices where CPU polls for interrupts? And where does it finds ISR for them ? 2) If two devices share an IRQ (which is very much possible), how does CPU differs amongst them ? What if both devices raise an interrupt of same priority simultaneously. I got to know there will be masking of same type and low priority interrupts - but how this communication happens between CPU and device controller? I studied the role of PIC and APIC for this problem, but could not understand. Thanks for reading. Thank you very much for answering.

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  • .net Class "is not a member of" Class .. even though it is?

    - by Matt Thrower
    Hi, Looking over some older code, I've run into a strange namespace error. Let's say I have two projects, HelperProject and WebProject. The full namespace of each - as given in application properties - is myEmployer.HelperProject and myEmployer.Web.WebProject. The pages in the web project are full of statements that use classes from the helper project. There are no imports/using statements but there is a reference to the helper project added in the bin. A few example lines might be: myEmployer.HelperProject.StringHelper.GetFixedLengthText(Text, "", Me.Width, 11) myEmploter.HelperProject.Utils.StringHelper.EstimatePixelLength(Text, 11) However every line that is written in this manner is throwing the error 'HelperProject' is not a member of 'myEmployer'. If you declare the statements like this: HelperProject.StringHelper.GetFixedLengthText(Text, "", Me.Width, 11) HelperProject.Utils.StringHelper.EstimatePixelLength(Text, 11) Everything seems fine. In the solution object browser and the bin folder, HelperProject appears with its full namespace, myEmployer.HelperProject. I don't want to have to change all the statements, and besides I suspect this is masking a more fundamental problem here. But I have no idea what's going on. Can anyone offer any pointers please? Cheers, Matt

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  • Presenting an image cropping interface

    - by wkw
    I'm trying to engineer a UI for cropping images in iphone OS and suspect I'm going about things the hard way. My goal is pretty much what the Tapbots duo have done with Pastebot. In that app, they dim the source image but provide a movable and resizable cropping view and the image you're cropping is in a zoomable scrollview; when you resize or move the underlying image, the cropping view adjusts appropriately. I mocked up a composite image which will give a sense of the design I'm after, along with how I presently have my view hierarchy setup, viewable here The approach I've started with is the following: UIImageView with the image to crop is in a scrollview, a plain UIView with black fill and suitable transparency/alpha setting is added in front of the imageview. I then use a custom UIView which is a sibling to the scrollview at a higher level, which implements the drawRect: method and for the most part calls CGImageCreateWithImageInRect to get the portion of the image's bitmap that matches the position of the cropping view and draws that to the CGContext. in the viewcontroller I'm using the UIScrollViewDelegate methods to track scrolling and passing those changes to the custom cropping UIView so it stays in sync with the scroll contentOffset. That much is finally working. But trying to keep in sync as the scrollview zoomScale changes is when I figured I should ask for help. Looking for suggestions or guidance. My initial approach just seems like more work than is required. Could this be done with a masking layer in the ImageView? And if so, how would I setup the tracking for moving and resizing the cropping rect? My experience working with layers is non-nil, but very limited thus far.

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  • Inserting bits into byte

    - by JB_SO
    I was looking at an example of reading bits from a byte and the implementation looked simple and easy to understand. I was wondering if anyone has a similar example of how to insert bits into a byte or byte array, that is easier to understand and also implement like the example below. Here is the example I found of reading bits from a byte (http://bytes.com/topic/c-sharp/answers/505085-reading-bits-byte-file): static int GetBits3(byte b, int offset, int count) { return (b >> offset) & ((1 << count) - 1); } Here is what i'm trying to do....and this is my current implementation.....just a little confused with the bit-masking/shifting, etc, that's why I'm trying to find out if there is an easier way to do what i'm doing BYTE Msg[2]; Msg_Id = 3; Msg_Event = 1; Msg_Ready = 2; Msg[0] = ( ( Msg_Event << 4 ) & 0xF0 ) | ( Msg_Id & 0x0F ) ; Msg[1] = Msg_Ready & 0x0F; //MsgReady & Unused Thanks for your help!

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  • Adding XOR function to bigint library

    - by Jason Gooner
    Hi, I'm using this Big Integer library for Javascript: http://www.leemon.com/crypto/BigInt.js and I need to be able to XOR two bigInts together and sadly the library doesn't include such a function. The library is relatively simple so I don't think it's a huge task, just confusing. I've been trying to hack one together but not having much luck, would be very grateful if someone could lend me a hand. This is what I've attempted (might be wrong). But im guessing the structure is going to be quite similar to some of the other functions in there. function xor(x, y) { var c, k, i; var result = new Array(0); // big int for result k=x.length>y.length ? x.length : y.length; // array length of the larger num // Make sure result is the correct array size? maybe: result = expand(result, k); // ? for (c=0, i=0; i < k; i++) { // Do some xor here } // return the bigint xor result return result; } What confuses me is I don't really understand how it stores numbers in the array blocks for the bigInt. I don't think it's a case of simply bigintC[i] = bigintA[i] ^ bigintB[i], then most other functions have some masking operation at the end that I don't understand. I would really appreciate any help getting this working. Thanks

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  • How would you mask data returned in a Dynamic Data for Entities website?

    - by David Stratton
    I'm doing this in Visual Studio 2008, not 2010, in case there is a relevant difference between the two versions of the Dynamic Data websites. How would I mask data in the automatically generated tables in a Dynamic Data for Entities website? The scenario is we have one table where we want to allow users to ENTER sensitive data, but not VIEW sensitive data, so... (In the list below, I'm using "template" to mean "The web page generated automatically based on the schema and action. I'm sure that's the wrong terminology, but the meaning should be clear.) The "Insert" template should have the field's textbox available for the user to type a value in. The "Edit" template should have the field's textbox blanked out (empty string) regardless of what was in the field in the database in the first place, but the user should be able to type in new data and have it save The "View" template should either have the data for this field masked, or non-visible. The auto-generated table showing the list of records should also have this field masked or non-visible. I can do this easily with standard Web Forms, but I'm having a hard time figuring this out in the Dynamic Data site I'm working on. Masking data is such a common task, I have to believe Microsoft thought of this and provided a way to do it...

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  • Custom Button on top of another custom button?

    - by Jim
    I'm trying to make two custom buttons in code. One that fills the full screen with a small button on top. The problem I'm having is the larger button is triggered when the smaller button is tapped. I've tried doing exactly the same thing with IB and it works. Is there some sort of trapping/masking method that I need to use with code? I've checked the documentation and not come across anything that would suggest why this is happening. CGRect bFrame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 320, 480); UIButton *cancelButton = [[UIButton alloc] init]; cancelButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom]; cancelButton.frame = bFrame; [cancelButton setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]]; [cancelButton addTarget:self action:@selector(animate:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside]; UIButton *priceButton = [[UIButton alloc] init]; priceButton.center = CGPointMake(228, 98); [priceButton addTarget:self action:@selector(callNumber:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside]; [priceButton setTitle:@"BUY" forState:UIControlStateNormal]; //[cancelButton addSubview:priceButton]; [self.view addSubview:cancelButton]; [self.view bringSubviewToFront:priceButton];

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  • What are the common compliance standards for software products?

    - by Jay
    This is a very generic question about software products. I would like to know what compliance standards are applicable to any software product. I know that question gives away nothing. So, here is an example to what I am referring to. CiSecurity Security Certification/Compliance lists out products ceritified by them to be compliant to the standards published at their website, i.e, cisecurity.org. Compliance could be as simple as answering a questionnaire for your product and approved by a thirdparty like cisecurity or it could apply to your whole organization, for instance, PCI-DSS compliance. I would be very interested in knowing the standards that products you know/designed/created, comply to. To give you the context behind this question: I am the developer of a data-masking tool. The said tool helps mask onscreen html text in a banking web application using filters. So, for instance, if the bank application lists out user information with ssn, my product when integrated with the banking product, automatically identifies ssn pattern and masks it into a pre-defined format.So, I have my product marketing team wanting more buzz words like compliance to be able to sell it to more banking clients. Hence, understanding "compliances that apply to products" is a key research item for me at this point. By which I meant, security compliances. Appreciate all your help and suggestions.

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  • Need help with PHP URL encoding/decoding

    - by Kenan
    On one page I'm "masking"/encoding URL which is passed to another page, there I decode URL and start file delivering to user. I found some function for encoding/decoding URL's, but sometime encoded URL contains "+" or "/" and decoded link is broken. I must use "folder structure" for link, can not use QueryString! Here is encoding function: $urll = 'SomeUrl.zip'; $key = '123'; $result = ''; for($i=0; $i<strlen($urll); $i++) { $char = substr($urll, $i, 1); $keychar = substr($key, ($i % strlen($key))-1, 1); $char = chr(ord($char)+ord($keychar)); $result.=$char; } $result = urlencode(base64_encode($result)); echo '<a href="/user/download/'.$result.'/">PC</a>'; Here is decoding: $urll = 'segment_3'; //Don't worry for this one its CMS retrieving 3rd "folder" $key = '123'; $resultt = ''; $string = ''; $string = base64_decode(urldecode($urll)); for($i=0; $i<strlen($string); $i++) { $char = substr($string, $i, 1); $keychar = substr($key, ($i % strlen($key))-1, 1); $char = chr(ord($char)-ord($keychar)); $resultt.=$char; } echo '<br />DEC: '. $resultt; So how to encode and decode url. Thanks

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  • How to modify Keyboard interrupt (under Windows XP) from a C++ Program ?

    - by rockr90
    Hi everyone ! We have been given a little project (As part of my OS course) to make a Windows program that modifies keyboard input, so that it transforms any lowercase character entered into an uppercase one (without using caps-lock) ! so when you type on the keyboard you'll see what you're typing transformed into uppercase ! I have done this quite easily using Turbo C by calling geninterrupt() and using variables _AH, _AL, i had to read a character using: _AH = 0x07; // Reading a character without echo geninterrupt(0x21); // Dos interrupt Then to transform it into an Upercase letter i have to mask the 5th bit by using: _AL = _AL & 0xDF; // Masking the entered character with 11011111 and then i will display the character using any output routine. Now, this solution will only work under old C DOS compilers. But what we intend to do is to make a close or similar solution to this by using any modern C/C++ compiler under Windows XP ! What i have first thought of is modifying the Keyboard ISR so that it masks the fifth bit of any entered character to turn it uppercase ! But i do not know how exactly to do this. Second, I wanted to create a Win32 console program to either do the same solution (but to no avail) or make a windows-compatible solution, still i do not know which functions to use ! Third I thought to make a windows program that modifies the ISR directly to suit my needs ! and i'm still looking for how to do this ! So please, If you could help me out on this, I would greatly appreciate it ! Thank you in advance ! (I'm using Windows XP on intel X86 with mingw-GCC compiler.)

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  • ReWriteRule is redirecting rather rewriting

    - by James Doc
    At the moment I have two machines that I do web development on; an iMac for work at the office and a MacBook for when I have to work on the move. They both running OS X 10.6 have the same version of PHP, Apache, etc running on them. Both computers have the same files of the website, including the .htaccess file (see below). On the MacBook the URLs are rewritten nicely, masking the URL they are pointing to (eg site/page/page-name), however on the iMac they simply redirect to the page (eg site/index.php?method=page&value=page-name) which is making switching back and forth between machines a bit of a pain! I'm sure it must be a config setting somewhere, but I can't for the life of me find it. Has anyone got a remedy? Many thanks. I'm fairly convinced there is a much nice way of writing this htaccess file without loosing access several key folders as well! Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on RewriteBase /In%20Progress/Vila%20Maninga/ RewriteRule ^page/([a-z|0-9_&;=-]+) index.php?method=page&value=$1 [NC] RewriteRule ^tag/([a-z|0-9_]+) index.php?method=tag&value=$1 [NC] RewriteRule ^search/([a-z|0-9_"]+) index.php?method=search&value=$1 [NC] RewriteRule ^modpage/([con0-9-]+) index.php?method=modpage&value=$1 [NC] RewriteRule ^login index.php?method=login [NC] RewriteRule ^logout index.php?method=logout [NC] RewriteRule ^useraccounts index.php?method=useraccounts [NC]

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  • Constant isolate of hovered elements

    - by nailer
    I'm trying to make an element isolation tool, where: All elements are shaded Selected elements, while hovered, are not shaded Originally, looking at the image lightbox implementations, I thought of appending an overlay to the document, then raising the z-index of elements upon hover. However this technique does not work in this case, as the overlay blocks additional mouse hovers: $(function() { window.alert('started'); $('<div id="overlay" />').hide().appendTo('body').fadeIn('slow'); $("p").hover( function () { $(this).css( {"z-index":5} ); }, function () { $(this).css( {"z-index":0} ); } ); Alternatively, JQueryTools has an 'expose' and 'mask' tool, which I have tried with the code below: $(function() { $("a").click(function() { alert("Hello world!"); }); // Mask whole page $(document).mask("#222"); // Mask and expose on however / unhover $("p").hover( function () { $(this).expose(); }, function () { $(this).mask(); } ); }); Hovering does not work unless I disable the initial page masking. Any thoughts of how best to achieve this, with plain JQuery, JQuery tools expose, or some other technique? Thankyou!

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  • URL Rewriting Problem

    - by Eray
    I'm trying to rewrite my URL's subdomain. http://username.domain.com will show content of http://www.domain.com/user.php?u=username but URL stay as http://username.domain.com . (I mean url masking) (Username's can contain a-z 0-9 and hypens) Also if subdomain is www or api, don't redirect them I'm using this for my .htaccess RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index\.php$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+)\.domain\.com RewriteRule .* /user.php?u=%1 [L] (After @mfarver's advice) I'm trying this RewriteEngine on RewriteRule .* /user.php?u=%1 [L] but this time getting 500 Internal Server error: [Mon May 30 20:10:44 2011] [alert] [client 81.6.xx.xxx] /home/blablabla/public_html/.htaccess: AllowOverride not allowed here (from error log) My server's httpd.conf file's virtualhost settings <VirtualHost 109.73.70.169:80> <IfModule mod_userdir.c> UserDir disabled UserDir enabled USERNAME </IfModule> <IfModule concurrent_php.c> php4_admin_value open_basedir "/home/USERNAME/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/php4/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/php4/lib/php:/tmp" php5_admin_value open_basedir "/home/USERNAME/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp" </IfModule> <IfModule !concurrent_php.c> <IfModule mod_php4.c> php_admin_value open_basedir "/home/USERNAME/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/php4/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/php4/lib/php:/tmp" </IfModule> <IfModule mod_php5.c> php_admin_value open_basedir "/home/USERNAME/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp" </IfModule> <IfModule sapi_apache2.c> php_admin_value open_basedir "/home/USERNAME/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/php4/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/php4/lib/php:/tmp" </IfModule> </IfModule> ServerName DOMAIN.net ServerAlias *.DOMAIN.net <Directory "/home/USERNAME/public_html"> Options FollowSymLinks Allow from all AllowOverride All </Directory> DocumentRoot /home/USERNAME/public_html ServerAdmin [email protected] UseCanonicalName Off CustomLog /usr/local/apache/domlogs/DOMAIN.net combined CustomLog /usr/local/apache/domlogs/DOMAIN.net-bytes_log "%{%s}t %I .\n%{%s}t %O ." ## User USERNAME # Needed for Cpanel::ApacheConf <IfModule mod_suphp.c> suPHP_UserGroup USERNAME USERNAME </IfModule> <IfModule !mod_disable_suexec.c> SuexecUserGroup USERNAME USERNAME </IfModule> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/USERNAME/public_html/cgi-bin/ # To customize this VirtualHost use an include file at the following location # Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/USERNAME/DOMAIN.net/*.conf" </VirtualHost> Also *.DOMAIN.net added to my DNS ZONES as A record.

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  • Adobe Photoshop Vs Lightroom Vs Aperture

    - by Aditi
    Adobe Photoshop is the standard choice for photographers, graphic artists and Web designers. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom  & Apple’s Aperture are also in the same league but the usage is vastly different. Although Photoshop is most popular & widely used by photographers, but in many ways it’s less relevant to photographers than ever before. As Lightroom & Aperture is aimed squarely at photographers for photo-processing. With this write up we are going to help you choose what is right for you and why. Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is the most liked tool for the detailed photo editing & designing work. Photoshop provides great features for rollover and Image slicing. Adobe Photoshop includes comprehensive optimization features for producing the highest quality Web graphics with the smallest possible file sizes. You can also create startling animations with it. Designers & Editors know how important precise masking is, PhotoShop lets you do that with various detailing tools. Art history brush, contact sheets, and history palette are some of the smart features, which add to its viability. Download Whether you’re producing printed pages or moving images, you can work more efficiently and produce better results because of its smooth integration across other adobe applications. Buy supporting layer effects, it allows you to quickly add drop shadows, inner and outer glows, bevels, and embossing to layers. It also provides Seamless Web Graphics Workflow. Photoshop is hands-down the BEST for editing. Photoshop Cons: • Slower, less precise editing features in Bridge • Processing lots of images requires actions and can be slower than exporting images from Lightroom • Much slower with editing and processing a large number of images Aperture Apple Aperture is aimed at the professional photographer who shoots predominantly raw files. It helps them to manage their workflow and perform their initial Raw conversion in a better way. Aperture provides adjustment tools such as Histogram to modify color and white balance, but most of the editing of photos is left for Photoshop. It gives users the option of seeing their photographs laid out like slides or negatives on a light table. It boasts of – stars, color-coding and easy techniques for filtering and picking images. Aperture has moved forward few steps than Photoshop, but most of the editing work has been left for Photoshop as it features seamless Photoshop integration. Aperture Pros: Aperture is a step up from the iPhoto software that comes with every Mac, and fairly easy to learn. Adjustments are made in a logical order from top to bottom of the menu. You can store the images in a library or any folder you choose. Aperture also works really well with direct Canon files. It is just $79 if you buy it through Apple’s App Store Moving forward, it will run on the iPad, and possibly the iPhone – Adobe products like Lightroom and Photoshop may never offer these options It is much nicer and simpler user interface. Lightroom Lightroom does a smashing job of basic fixing and editing. It is more advanced tool for photographers. They can use it to have a startling photography effect. Light room has many advanced features, which makes it one of the best tools for photographers and far ahead of the other two. They are Nondestructive editing. Nothing is actually changed in an image until the photo is exported. Better controls over organizing your photos. Lightroom helps to gather a group of photos to use in a slideshow. Lightroom has larger Compare and Survey views of images. Quickly customizable interface. Simple keystrokes allow you to perform different All Lightroom controls are kept available in panels right next to the photos. Always-available History palette, it doesn’t go when you close lightroom. You gain more colors to work with compared to Photoshop and with more precise control. Local control, or adjusting small parts of a photo without affecting anything else, has long been an important part of photography. In Lightroom 2, you can darken, lighten, and affect color and change sharpness and other aspects of specific areas in the photo simply by brushing your cursor across the areas. Photoshop has far more power in its Cloning and Healing Brush tools than Lightroom, but Lightroom offers simple cloning and healing that’s nondestructive. Lightroom supports the RAW formats of more cameras than Aperture. Lightroom provides the option of storing images outside the application in the file system. It costs less than photoshop. Download Why PhotoShop is advanced than Lightroom? There are countless image processing plug-ins on the market for doing specialized processing in Photoshop. For example, if your image needs sophisticated noise reduction, you can use the Noiseware plug-in with Photoshop to do a much better job or noise removal than Lightroom can do. Lightroom’s advantages over Aperture 3 Will always have better integration with Photoshop. Lightroom is backed by bigger and more active user community (So abundant availability for tutorials, etc.) Better noise reduction tool. Especially for photographers the Lens-distortion correction tool  is perfect Lightroom Cons: • Have to Import images to work on them • Slows down with over 10,000 images in the catalog • For processing just one or two images this is a slower workflow Photoshop Pros: • ACR has the same RAW processing controls as Lightroom • ACR Histogram is specialized to the chosen color space (Lightroom is locked into ProPhoto RGB color space with an sRGB tone curve) • Don’t have to Import images to open in Bridge or ACR • Ability to customize processing of RAW images with Photoshop Actions Pricing and Availability Get LightRoomGet PhotoShop Latest version Of Photoshop can be purchased from Adobe store and Adobe authorized reseller and it costs US$999. Latest version of Aperture can be bought for US$199 from Apple Online store or Mac App Store. You can buy latest version of LightRoom from Adobe Store or Adobe Authorized reseller for US$299. Related posts:Adobe Photoshop CS5 vs Photoshop CS5 extended Web based Alternatives to Photoshop 10 Free Alternatives for Adobe Photoshop Software

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  • SPARC M7 Chip - 32 cores - Mind Blowing performance

    - by Angelo-Oracle
    The M7 Chip Oracle just announced its Next Generation Processor at the HotChips HC26 conference. As the Tech Lead in our Systems Division's Partner group, I had a front row seat to the extraordinary price performance advantage of Oracle current T5 and M6 based systems. Partner after partner tested  these systems and were impressed with it performance. Just read some of the quotes to see what our partner has been saying about our hardware. We just announced our next generation processor, the M7. This has 32 cores (up from 16-cores in T5 and 12-cores in M6). With 20 nm technology  this is our most advanced processor. The processor has more cores than anything else in the industry today. After the Sun acquisition Oracle has released 5 processors in 4 years and this is the 6th.  The S4 core  The M7 is built using the foundation of the S4 core. This is the next generation core technology. Like its predecessor, the S4 has 8 dynamic threads. It increases the frequency while maintaining the Pipeline depth. Each core has its own fine grain power estimator that keeps the core within its power envelop in 250 nano-sec granularity. Each core also includes Software in Silicon features for Application Acceleration Support. Each core includes features to improve Application Data Integrity, with almost no performance loss. The core also allows using part of the Virtual Address to store meta-data.  User-Level Synchronization Instructions are also part of the S4 core. Each core has 16 KB Instruction and 16 KB Data L1 cache. The Core Clusters  The cores on the M7 chip are organized in sets of 4-core clusters. The core clusters share  L2 cache.  All four cores in the complex share 256 KB of 4 way set associative L2 Instruction Cache, with over 1/2 TB/s of throughput. Two cores share 256 KB of 8 way set associative L2 Data Cache, with over 1/2 TB/s of throughput. With this innovative Core Cluster architecture, the M7 doubles core execution bandwidth. to maximize per-thread performance.  The Chip  Each  M7 chip has 8 sets of these core-clusters. The chip has 64 MB on-chip L3 cache. This L3 caches is shared among all the cores and is partitioned into 8 x 8 MB chunks. Each chunk is  8-way set associative cache. The aggregate bandwidth for the L3 cache on the chip is over 1.6TB/s. Each chip has 4 DDR4 memory controllers and can support upto 16 DDR4 DIMMs, allowing for 2 TB of RAM/chip. The chip also includes 4 internal links of PCIe Gen3 I/O controllers.  Each chip has 7 coherence links, allowing for 8 of these chips to be connected together gluelessly. Also 32 of these chips can be connected in an SMP configuration. A potential system with 32 chips will have 1024 cores and 8192 threads and 64 TB of RAM.  Software in Silicon The M7 chip has many built in Application Accelerators in Silicon. These features will be exposed to our Software partners using the SPARC Accelerator Program.  The M7  has built-in logic to decompress data at the speed of memory access. This means that applications can directly work on compressed data in memory increasing the data access rates. The VA Masking feature allows the use of part of the virtual address to store meta-data.  Realtime Application Data Integrity The Realtime Application Data Integrity feature helps applications safeguard against invalid, stale memory reference and buffer overflows. The first 4-bits if the Pointer can be used to store a version number and this version number is also maintained in the memory & cache lines. When a pointer accesses memory the hardware checks to make sure the two versions match. A SEGV signal is raised when there is a mismatch. This feature can be used by the Database, applications and the OS.  M7 Database In-Memory Query Accelerator The M7 chip also includes a In-Silicon Query Engines.  These accelerate tasks that work on In-Memory Columnar Vectors. Oracle In-Memory options stores data in Column Format. The M7 Query Engine can speed up In-Memory Format Conversion, Value and Range Comparisons and Set Membership lookups. This engine can work on Compressed data - this means not only are we accelerating the query performance but also increasing the memory bandwidth for queries.  SPARC Accelerated Program  At the Hotchips conference we also introduced the SPARC Accelerated Program to provide our partners and third part developers access to all the goodness of the M7's SPARC Application Acceleration features. Please get in touch with us if you are interested in knowing more about this program. 

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  • Oracle sample data problems

    - by Jay
    So, I have this java based data trasformation / masking tool, which I wanted to test out on Oracle 10g. The good part with Oracle 10g is that you get a load of sample schemas with half a million records in some. The schemas are : SH, OE, HR, IX and etc. So, I installed 10g, found out that the installation scripts are under ORACLE_HOME/demo/scripts. I customized these scripts a bit to run in batch mode. That solves one half of my requirement - to create source data for my testing my data transformation software. The second half of the requirement is that I create the same schemas under different names (TR_HR, TR_OE and so on...) without any data. These schemas would represent my target schemas. So, in short, my software would pick up data from a table in a schema and load it up in to the same table in a different schema. Now, I have two issues in creating my target schema and emptying it. I would like this in a batch job. But the oracle scripts you get, the sample schema names are not configurable. So, I tried creating a script, replacing OE with TR_OE, HR with TR_HR and so on. However, this approach is kind of irritating coz the sample schemas are kind of complicated in the way they are created; Oracle creates synonyms, views, materialized views, data types and lot of weird stuff. I would like the target schemas (TR_HR, TR_OE,...) to be empty. But some of the schemas have circular references, which would not allow me to delete data. The only work around seems to be removing certain foreign keys, deleting data and then adding the constraints back. Is there any easy way to all this, without all this fuss? I would need a complicated data set for my testing (complicated as in tables with triggers, multiple hierarchies.. for instance.. a child table that has children up to 5 levels, a parent table that refers to an IOT table and an IOT table that refers to a non-IOT table etc..). The sample schemas are just about perfect from a data set perspective. The only challenge I see is in automating this whole process of loading up the source schemas, and then creating the target schemas and emptying them. Appreciate your help and suggestions.

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  • What is the best workaround for the WCF client `using` block issue?

    - by Eric King
    I like instantiating my WCF service clients within a using block as it's pretty much the standard way to use resources that implement IDisposable: using (var client = new SomeWCFServiceClient()) { //Do something with the client } But, as noted in this MSDN article, wrapping a WCF client in a using block could mask any errors that result in the client being left in a faulted state (like a timeout or communication problem). Long story short, when Dispose() is called, the client's Close() method fires, but throws and error because it's in a faulted state. The original exception is then masked by the second exception. Not good. The suggested workaround in the MSDN article is to completely avoid using a using block, and to instead instantiate your clients and use them something like this: try { ... client.Close(); } catch (CommunicationException e) { ... client.Abort(); } catch (TimeoutException e) { ... client.Abort(); } catch (Exception e) { ... client.Abort(); throw; } Compared to the using block, I think that's ugly. And a lot of code to write each time you need a client. Luckily, I found a few other workarounds, such as this one on IServiceOriented. You start with: public delegate void UseServiceDelegate<T>(T proxy); public static class Service<T> { public static ChannelFactory<T> _channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<T>(""); public static void Use(UseServiceDelegate<T> codeBlock) { IClientChannel proxy = (IClientChannel)_channelFactory.CreateChannel(); bool success = false; try { codeBlock((T)proxy); proxy.Close(); success = true; } finally { if (!success) { proxy.Abort(); } } } } Which then allows: Service<IOrderService>.Use(orderService => { orderService.PlaceOrder(request); } That's not bad, but I don't think it's as expressive and easily understandable as the using block. The workaround I'm currently trying to use I first read about on blog.davidbarret.net. Basically you override the client's Dispose() method wherever you use it. Something like: public partial class SomeWCFServiceClient : IDisposable { void IDisposable.Dispose() { if (this.State == CommunicationState.Faulted) { this.Abort(); } else { this.Close(); } } } This appears to be able to allow the using block again without the danger of masking a faulted state exception. So, are there any other gotchas I have to look out for using these workarounds? Has anybody come up with anything better?

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  • Unable to get Stencil Buffer to work in iOS 4+ (5.0 works fine). [OpenGL ES 2.0]

    - by MurderDev
    So I am trying to use a stencil buffer in iOS for masking/clipping purposes. Do you guys have any idea why this code may not work? This is everything I have associated with Stencils. On iOS 4 I get a black screen. On iOS 5 I get exactly what I expect. The transparent areas of the image I drew in the stencil are the only areas being drawn later. Code is below. This is where I setup the frameBuffer, depth and stencil. In iOS the depth and stencil are combined. -(void)setupDepthBuffer { glGenRenderbuffers(1, &depthRenderBuffer); glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthRenderBuffer); glRenderbufferStorage(GL_RENDERBUFFER, GL_DEPTH24_STENCIL8_OES, self.frame.size.width * [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale], self.frame.size.height * [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale]); } -(void)setupFrameBuffer { glGenFramebuffers(1, &frameBuffer); glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, frameBuffer); glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_RENDERBUFFER, colorRenderBuffer); glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthRenderBuffer); glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_STENCIL_ATTACHMENT, GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthRenderBuffer); // Check the FBO. if(glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER) != GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE) { NSLog(@"Failure with framebuffer generation: %d", glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER)); } } This is how I am setting up and drawing the stencil. (Shader code below.) glEnable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glColorMask(GL_FALSE, GL_FALSE, GL_FALSE, GL_FALSE); glDepthMask(GL_FALSE); glStencilFunc(GL_ALWAYS, 1, -1); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_REPLACE); glColorMask(0, 0, 0, 0); glClear(GL_STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT); machineForeground.shader = [StencilEffect sharedInstance]; [machineForeground draw]; machineForeground.shader = [BasicEffect sharedInstance]; glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); glColorMask(GL_TRUE, GL_TRUE, GL_TRUE, GL_TRUE); glDepthMask(GL_TRUE); Here is where I am using the stencil. glEnable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP); glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, 1, -1); ...Draw Stuff here glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); Finally here is my fragment shader. varying lowp vec2 TexCoordOut; uniform sampler2D Texture; void main(void) { lowp vec4 color = texture2D(Texture, TexCoordOut); if(color.a < 0.1) gl_FragColor = color; else discard; }

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  • One email user keeps disconnecting from our exchange server

    - by Funky Si
    I have one user who keeps reporting that Outlook keeps disconnecting from our email server. All other users are fine. Our email server is running Exchange 2010 and the client is running Outlook 2003. The disconnection only lasts a moment. I have checked for logs on the client and Exchange server and can not see any reason for the disconnect, On the Client I get EventId 26 telling me Outlook has disconnected and reconnected but no reason why. Can anyone give me some suggestions of things to try and track down where the problem could be? --Update-- I have found the following log file C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Logging\RPC Client Access which suggests that it is a problem with RPC sessions. Excerpt is below 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6413,15,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,0,00:00:00,"BS=Conn:24,HangingConn:0,AD:$null/$null/0%,CAS:$null/$null/2%,AB:$null/$null/0%,RPC:$null/$null/1%,FC:$null/0,Policy:ClientThrottlingPolicy2,Norm[Resources:(Mdb)Mailbox Database 0765959540(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),(Mdb)Public Folder Database 1945427388(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),];GC:6/1/0;", 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6413,16,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,PublicLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 1, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6413,16,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00,"BS=Conn:24,HangingConn:0,AD:$null/$null/0%,CAS:$null/$null/2%,AB:$null/$null/0%,RPC:$null/$null/1%,FC:$null/0,Policy:ClientThrottlingPolicy2,Norm[Resources:(Mdb)Mailbox Database 0765959540(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),(Mdb)Public Folder Database 1945427388(Health:-1%,HistLoad:0),];GC:6/1/0;", 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6417,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,OwnerLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6417,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,0x6BA (rpc::Exception),00:02:54.7668000,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0; SessionDropped,"RpcEndPoint: [ServerUnavailableException] Connection must be re-established - [SessionDeadException] Connection doesn't have any open logons, but has client activity. This may be masking synchronization stalls. Dropping a connection." 2013-01-31T15:21:24.015Z,6420,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,DelegateLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6420,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00.0156000,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6420,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,Disconnect,0,00:02:54.2364000,, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6419,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,OwnerLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6419,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6419,5,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,Disconnect,0,00:02:54.4392000,, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6416,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,DelegateLogoff,0,00:00:00,LogonId: 0, 2013-01-31T15:21:24.031Z,6416,7,/o=EUROSAFEUK/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=andy,,OUTLOOK.EXE,11.0.8303.0,Classic,,,ncacn_ip_tcp,,,,00:00:00,Budget Highs [AD = 0][CAS = 3][RPC = 1] Session Throttled Count = 0, Can anyone help point me in the right direction for a solution?

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  • Base de Datos Oracle, su mejor opción para reducir costos de IT

    - by Ivan Hassig
    Por Victoria Cadavid Sr. Sales Cosultant Oracle Direct Uno de los principales desafíos en la administración de centros de datos es la reducción de costos de operación. A medida que las compañías crecen y los proveedores de tecnología ofrecen soluciones cada vez más robustas, conservar el equilibrio entre desempeño, soporte al negocio y gestión del Costo Total de Propiedad es un desafío cada vez mayor para los Gerentes de Tecnología y para los Administradores de Centros de Datos. Las estrategias más comunes para conseguir reducción en los costos de administración de Centros de Datos y en la gestión de Tecnología de una organización en general, se enfocan en la mejora del desempeño de las aplicaciones, reducción del costo de administración y adquisición de hardware, reducción de los costos de almacenamiento, aumento de la productividad en la administración de las Bases de Datos y mejora en la atención de requerimientos y prestación de servicios de mesa de ayuda, sin embargo, las estrategias de reducción de costos deben contemplar también la reducción de costos asociados a pérdida y robo de información, cumplimiento regulatorio, generación de valor y continuidad del negocio, que comúnmente se conciben como iniciativas aisladas que no siempre se adelantan con el ánimo de apoyar la reducción de costos. Una iniciativa integral de reducción de costos de TI, debe contemplar cada uno de los factores que  generan costo y pueden ser optimizados. En este artículo queremos abordar la reducción de costos de tecnología a partir de la adopción del que según los expertos es el motor de Base de Datos # del mercado.Durante años, la base de datos Oracle ha sido reconocida por su velocidad, confiabilidad, seguridad y capacidad para soportar cargas de datos tanto de aplicaciones altamente transaccionales, como de Bodegas de datos e incluso análisis de Big Data , ofreciendo alto desempeño y facilidades de administración, sin embrago, cuando pensamos en proyectos de reducción de costos de IT, además de la capacidad para soportar aplicaciones (incluso aplicaciones altamente transaccionales) con alto desempeño, pensamos en procesos de automatización, optimización de recursos, consolidación, virtualización e incluso alternativas más cómodas de licenciamiento. La Base de Datos Oracle está diseñada para proveer todas las capacidades que un área de tecnología necesita para reducir costos, adaptándose a los diferentes escenarios de negocio y a las capacidades y características de cada organización.Es así, como además del motor de Base de Datos, Oracle ofrece una serie de soluciones para optimizar la administración de la información a través de mecanismos de optimización del uso del storage, continuidad del Negocio, consolidación de infraestructura, seguridad y administración automática, que propenden por un mejor uso de los recursos de tecnología, ofrecen opciones avanzadas de configuración y direccionan la reducción de los tiempos de las tareas operativas más comunes. Una de las opciones de la base de datos que se pueden provechar para reducir costos de hardware es Oracle Real Application Clusters. Esta solución de clustering permite que varios servidores (incluso servidores de bajo costo) trabajen en conjunto para soportar Grids o Nubes Privadas de Bases de Datos, proporcionando los beneficios de la consolidación de infraestructura, los esquemas de alta disponibilidad, rápido desempeño y escalabilidad por demanda, haciendo que el aprovisionamiento, el mantenimiento de las bases de datos y la adición de nuevos nodos se lleve e cabo de una forma más rápida y con menos riesgo, además de apalancar las inversiones en servidores de menor costo. Otra de las soluciones que promueven la reducción de costos de Tecnología es Oracle In-Memory Database Cache que permite almacenar y procesar datos en la memoria de las aplicaciones, permitiendo el máximo aprovechamiento de los recursos de procesamiento de la capa media, lo que cobra mucho valor en escenarios de alta transaccionalidad. De este modo se saca el mayor provecho de los recursos de procesamiento evitando crecimiento innecesario en recursos de hardware. Otra de las formas de evitar inversiones innecesarias en hardware, aprovechando los recursos existentes, incluso en escenarios de alto crecimiento de los volúmenes de información es la compresión de los datos. Oracle Advanced Compression permite comprimir hasta 4 veces los diferentes tipos de datos, mejorando la capacidad de almacenamiento, sin comprometer el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el lado del almacenamiento también se pueden conseguir reducciones importantes de los costos de IT. En este escenario, la tecnología propia de la base de Datos Oracle ofrece capacidades de Administración Automática del Almacenamiento que no solo permiten una distribución óptima de los datos en los discos físicos para garantizar el máximo desempeño, sino que facilitan el aprovisionamiento y la remoción de discos defectuosos y ofrecen balanceo y mirroring, garantizando el uso máximo de cada uno de los dispositivos y la disponibilidad de los datos. Otra de las soluciones que facilitan la administración del almacenamiento es Oracle Partitioning, una opción de la Base de Datos que permite dividir grandes tablas en estructuras más pequeñas. Esta aproximación facilita la administración del ciclo de vida de la información y permite por ejemplo, separar los datos históricos (que generalmente se convierten en información de solo lectura y no tienen un alto volumen de consulta) y enviarlos a un almacenamiento de bajo costos, conservando la data activa en dispositivos de almacenamiento más ágiles. Adicionalmente, Oracle Partitioning facilita la administración de las bases de datos que tienen un gran volumen de registros y mejora el desempeño de la base de datos gracias a la posibilidad de optimizar las consultas haciendo uso únicamente de las particiones relevantes de una tabla o índice en el proceso de búsqueda. Otros factores adicionales, que pueden generar costos innecesarios a los departamentos de Tecnología son: La pérdida, corrupción o robo de datos y la falta de disponibilidad de las aplicaciones para dar soporte al negocio. Para evitar este tipo de situaciones que pueden acarrear multas y pérdida de negocios y de dinero, Oracle ofrece soluciones que permiten proteger y auditar la base de datos, recuperar la información en caso de corrupción o ejecución de acciones que comprometan la integridad de la información y soluciones que permitan garantizar que la información de las aplicaciones tenga una disponibilidad de 7x24. Ya hablamos de los beneficios de Oracle RAC, para facilitar los procesos de Consolidación y mejorar el desempeño de las aplicaciones, sin embrago esta solución, es sumamente útil en escenarios dónde las organizaciones de quieren garantizar una alta disponibilidad de la información, ante fallo de los servidores o en eventos de desconexión planeada para realizar labores de mantenimiento. Además de Oracle RAC, existen soluciones como Oracle Data Guard y Active Data Guard que permiten replicar de forma automática las bases de datos hacia un centro de datos de contingencia, permitiendo una recuperación inmediata ante eventos que deshabiliten por completo un centro de datos. Además de lo anterior, Active Data Guard, permite aprovechar la base de datos de contingencia para realizar labores de consulta, mejorando el desempeño de las aplicaciones. Desde el punto de vista de mejora en la seguridad, Oracle cuenta con soluciones como Advanced security que permite encriptar los datos y los canales a través de los cueles se comparte la información, Total Recall, que permite visualizar los cambios realizados a la base de datos en un momento determinado del tiempo, para evitar pérdida y corrupción de datos, Database Vault que permite restringir el acceso de los usuarios privilegiados a información confidencial, Audit Vault, que permite verificar quién hizo qué y cuándo dentro de las bases de datos de una organización y Oracle Data Masking que permite enmascarar los datos para garantizar la protección de la información sensible y el cumplimiento de las políticas y normas relacionadas con protección de información confidencial, por ejemplo, mientras las aplicaciones pasan del ambiente de desarrollo al ambiente de producción. Como mencionamos en un comienzo, las iniciativas de reducción de costos de tecnología deben apalancarse en estrategias que contemplen los diferentes factores que puedan generar sobre costos, los factores de riesgo que puedan acarrear costos no previsto, el aprovechamiento de los recursos actuales, para evitar inversiones innecesarias y los factores de optimización que permitan el máximo aprovechamiento de las inversiones actuales. Como vimos, todas estas iniciativas pueden ser abordadas haciendo uso de la tecnología de Oracle a nivel de Base de Datos, lo más importante es detectar los puntos críticos a nivel de riesgo, diagnosticar las proporción en que están siendo aprovechados los recursos actuales y definir las prioridades de la organización y del área de IT, para así dar inicio a todas aquellas iniciativas que de forma gradual, van a evitar sobrecostos e inversiones innecesarias, proporcionando un mayor apoyo al negocio y un impacto significativo en la productividad de la organización. Más información http://www.oracle.com/lad/products/database/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=otnes 1Fuente: Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide 2011 by Colleen Graham, Joanne Correia, David Coyle, Fabrizio Biscotti, Matthew Cheung, Ruggero Contu, Yanna Dharmasthira, Tom Eid, Chad Eschinger, Bianca Granetto, Hai Hong Swinehart, Sharon Mertz, Chris Pang, Asheesh Raina, Dan Sommer, Bhavish Sood, Marianne D'Aquila, Laurie Wurster and Jie Zhang. - March 29, 2012 2Big Data: Información recopilada desde fuentes no tradicionales como blogs, redes sociales, email, sensores, fotografías, grabaciones en video, etc. que normalmente se encuentran de forma no estructurada y en un gran volumen

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  • How to Reuse Your Old Wi-Fi Router as a Network Switch

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Just because your old Wi-Fi router has been replaced by a newer model doesn’t mean it needs to gather dust in the closet. Read on as we show you how to take an old and underpowered Wi-Fi router and turn it into a respectable network switch (saving your $20 in the process). Image by mmgallan. Why Do I Want To Do This? Wi-Fi technology has changed significantly in the last ten years but Ethernet-based networking has changed very little. As such, a Wi-Fi router with 2006-era guts is lagging significantly behind current Wi-Fi router technology, but the Ethernet networking component of the device is just as useful as ever; aside from potentially being only 100Mbs instead of 1000Mbs capable (which for 99% of home applications is irrelevant) Ethernet is Ethernet. What does this matter to you, the consumer? It means that even though your old router doesn’t hack it for your Wi-Fi needs any longer the device is still a perfectly serviceable (and high quality) network switch. When do you need a network switch? Any time you want to share an Ethernet cable among multiple devices, you need a switch. For example, let’s say you have a single Ethernet wall jack behind your entertainment center. Unfortunately you have four devices that you want to link to your local network via hardline including your smart HDTV, DVR, Xbox, and a little Raspberry Pi running XBMC. Instead of spending $20-30 to purchase a brand new switch of comparable build quality to your old Wi-Fi router it makes financial sense (and is environmentally friendly) to invest five minutes of your time tweaking the settings on the old router to turn it from a Wi-Fi access point and routing tool into a network switch–perfect for dropping behind your entertainment center so that your DVR, Xbox, and media center computer can all share an Ethernet connection. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a few things, all of which you likely have readily on hand or are free for download. To follow the basic portion of the tutorial, you’ll need the following: 1 Wi-Fi router with Ethernet ports 1 Computer with Ethernet jack 1 Ethernet cable For the advanced tutorial you’ll need all of those things, plus: 1 copy of DD-WRT firmware for your Wi-Fi router We’re conducting the experiment with a Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi router. The WRT54 series is one of the best selling Wi-Fi router series of all time and there’s a good chance a significant number of readers have one (or more) of them stuffed in an office closet. Even if you don’t have one of the WRT54 series routers, however, the principles we’re outlining here apply to all Wi-Fi routers; as long as your router administration panel allows the necessary changes you can follow right along with us. A quick note on the difference between the basic and advanced versions of this tutorial before we proceed. Your typical Wi-Fi router has 5 Ethernet ports on the back: 1 labeled “Internet”, “WAN”, or a variation thereof and intended to be connected to your DSL/Cable modem, and 4 labeled 1-4 intended to connect Ethernet devices like computers, printers, and game consoles directly to the Wi-Fi router. When you convert a Wi-Fi router to a switch, in most situations, you’ll lose two port as the “Internet” port cannot be used as a normal switch port and one of the switch ports becomes the input port for the Ethernet cable linking the switch to the main network. This means, referencing the diagram above, you’d lose the WAN port and LAN port 1, but retain LAN ports 2, 3, and 4 for use. If you only need to switch for 2-3 devices this may be satisfactory. However, for those of you that would prefer a more traditional switch setup where there is a dedicated WAN port and the rest of the ports are accessible, you’ll need to flash a third-party router firmware like the powerful DD-WRT onto your device. Doing so opens up the router to a greater degree of modification and allows you to assign the previously reserved WAN port to the switch, thus opening up LAN ports 1-4. Even if you don’t intend to use that extra port, DD-WRT offers you so many more options that it’s worth the extra few steps. Preparing Your Router for Life as a Switch Before we jump right in to shutting down the Wi-Fi functionality and repurposing your device as a network switch, there are a few important prep steps to attend to. First, you want to reset the router (if you just flashed a new firmware to your router, skip this step). Following the reset procedures for your particular router or go with what is known as the “Peacock Method” wherein you hold down the reset button for thirty seconds, unplug the router and wait (while still holding the reset button) for thirty seconds, and then plug it in while, again, continuing to hold down the rest button. Over the life of a router there are a variety of changes made, big and small, so it’s best to wipe them all back to the factory default before repurposing the router as a switch. Second, after resetting, we need to change the IP address of the device on the local network to an address which does not directly conflict with the new router. The typical default IP address for a home router is 192.168.1.1; if you ever need to get back into the administration panel of the router-turned-switch to check on things or make changes it will be a real hassle if the IP address of the device conflicts with the new home router. The simplest way to deal with this is to assign an address close to the actual router address but outside the range of addresses that your router will assign via the DHCP client; a good pick then is 192.168.1.2. Once the router is reset (or re-flashed) and has been assigned a new IP address, it’s time to configure it as a switch. Basic Router to Switch Configuration If you don’t want to (or need to) flash new firmware onto your device to open up that extra port, this is the section of the tutorial for you: we’ll cover how to take a stock router, our previously mentioned WRT54 series Linksys, and convert it to a switch. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (consider the WAN port as good as dead from this point forward, unless you start using the router in its traditional function again or later flash a more advanced firmware to the device, the port is officially retired at this point). Open the administration control panel via  web browser on a connected computer. Before we get started two things: first,  anything we don’t explicitly instruct you to change should be left in the default factory-reset setting as you find it, and two, change the settings in the order we list them as some settings can’t be changed after certain features are disabled. To start, let’s navigate to Setup ->Basic Setup. Here you need to change the following things: Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable Save with the “Save Settings” button and then navigate to Setup -> Advanced Routing: Operating Mode: Router This particular setting is very counterintuitive. The “Operating Mode” toggle tells the device whether or not it should enable the Network Address Translation (NAT)  feature. Because we’re turning a smart piece of networking hardware into a relatively dumb one, we don’t need this feature so we switch from Gateway mode (NAT on) to Router mode (NAT off). Our next stop is Wireless -> Basic Wireless Settings: Wireless SSID Broadcast: Disable Wireless Network Mode: Disabled After disabling the wireless we’re going to, again, do something counterintuitive. Navigate to Wireless -> Wireless Security and set the following parameters: Security Mode: WPA2 Personal WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES WPA Shared Key: [select some random string of letters, numbers, and symbols like JF#d$di!Hdgio890] Now you may be asking yourself, why on Earth are we setting a rather secure Wi-Fi configuration on a Wi-Fi router we’re not going to use as a Wi-Fi node? On the off chance that something strange happens after, say, a power outage when your router-turned-switch cycles on and off a bunch of times and the Wi-Fi functionality is activated we don’t want to be running the Wi-Fi node wide open and granting unfettered access to your network. While the chances of this are next-to-nonexistent, it takes only a few seconds to apply the security measure so there’s little reason not to. Save your changes and navigate to Security ->Firewall. Uncheck everything but Filter Multicast Firewall Protect: Disable At this point you can save your changes again, review the changes you’ve made to ensure they all stuck, and then deploy your “new” switch wherever it is needed. Advanced Router to Switch Configuration For the advanced configuration, you’ll need a copy of DD-WRT installed on your router. Although doing so is an extra few steps, it gives you a lot more control over the process and liberates an extra port on the device. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (later you can switch the cable to the WAN port). Open the administration control panel via web browser on the connected computer. Navigate to the Setup -> Basic Setup tab to get started. In the Basic Setup tab, ensure the following settings are adjusted. The setting changes are not optional and are required to turn the Wi-Fi router into a switch. WAN Connection Type: Disabled Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable In addition to disabling the DHCP server, also uncheck all the DNSMasq boxes as the bottom of the DHCP sub-menu. If you want to activate the extra port (and why wouldn’t you), in the WAN port section: Assign WAN Port to Switch [X] At this point the router has become a switch and you have access to the WAN port so the LAN ports are all free. Since we’re already in the control panel, however, we might as well flip a few optional toggles that further lock down the switch and prevent something odd from happening. The optional settings are arranged via the menu you find them in. Remember to save your settings with the save button before moving onto a new tab. While still in the Setup -> Basic Setup menu, change the following: Gateway/Local DNS : [IP address of primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.1] NTP Client : Disable The next step is to turn off the radio completely (which not only kills the Wi-Fi but actually powers the physical radio chip off). Navigate to Wireless -> Advanced Settings -> Radio Time Restrictions: Radio Scheduling: Enable Select “Always Off” There’s no need to create a potential security problem by leaving the Wi-Fi radio on, the above toggle turns it completely off. Under Services -> Services: DNSMasq : Disable ttraff Daemon : Disable Under the Security -> Firewall tab, uncheck every box except “Filter Multicast”, as seen in the screenshot above, and then disable SPI Firewall. Once you’re done here save and move on to the Administration tab. Under Administration -> Management:  Info Site Password Protection : Enable Info Site MAC Masking : Disable CRON : Disable 802.1x : Disable Routing : Disable After this final round of tweaks, save and then apply your settings. Your router has now been, strategically, dumbed down enough to plod along as a very dependable little switch. Time to stuff it behind your desk or entertainment center and streamline your cabling.     

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  • New Big Data Appliance Security Features

    - by mgubar
    The Oracle Big Data Appliance (BDA) is an engineered system for big data processing.  It greatly simplifies the deployment of an optimized Hadoop Cluster – whether that cluster is used for batch or real-time processing.  The vast majority of BDA customers are integrating the appliance with their Oracle Databases and they have certain expectations – especially around security.  Oracle Database customers have benefited from a rich set of security features:  encryption, redaction, data masking, database firewall, label based access control – and much, much more.  They want similar capabilities with their Hadoop cluster.    Unfortunately, Hadoop wasn’t developed with security in mind.  By default, a Hadoop cluster is insecure – the antithesis of an Oracle Database.  Some critical security features have been implemented – but even those capabilities are arduous to setup and configure.  Oracle believes that a key element of an optimized appliance is that its data should be secure.  Therefore, by default the BDA delivers the “AAA of security”: authentication, authorization and auditing. Security Starts at Authentication A successful security strategy is predicated on strong authentication – for both users and software services.  Consider the default configuration for a newly installed Oracle Database; it’s been a long time since you had a legitimate chance at accessing the database using the credentials “system/manager” or “scott/tiger”.  The default Oracle Database policy is to lock accounts thereby restricting access; administrators must consciously grant access to users. Default Authentication in Hadoop By default, a Hadoop cluster fails the authentication test. For example, it is easy for a malicious user to masquerade as any other user on the system.  Consider the following scenario that illustrates how a user can access any data on a Hadoop cluster by masquerading as a more privileged user.  In our scenario, the Hadoop cluster contains sensitive salary information in the file /user/hrdata/salaries.txt.  When logged in as the hr user, you can see the following files.  Notice, we’re using the Hadoop command line utilities for accessing the data: $ hadoop fs -ls /user/hrdataFound 1 items-rw-r--r--   1 oracle supergroup         70 2013-10-31 10:38 /user/hrdata/salaries.txt$ hadoop fs -cat /user/hrdata/salaries.txtTom Brady,11000000Tom Hanks,5000000Bob Smith,250000Oprah,300000000 User DrEvil has access to the cluster – and can see that there is an interesting folder called “hrdata”.  $ hadoop fs -ls /user Found 1 items drwx------   - hr supergroup          0 2013-10-31 10:38 /user/hrdata However, DrEvil cannot view the contents of the folder due to lack of access privileges: $ hadoop fs -ls /user/hrdata ls: Permission denied: user=drevil, access=READ_EXECUTE, inode="/user/hrdata":oracle:supergroup:drwx------ Accessing this data will not be a problem for DrEvil. He knows that the hr user owns the data by looking at the folder’s ACLs. To overcome this challenge, he will simply masquerade as the hr user. On his local machine, he adds the hr user, assigns that user a password, and then accesses the data on the Hadoop cluster: $ sudo useradd hr $ sudo passwd $ su hr $ hadoop fs -cat /user/hrdata/salaries.txt Tom Brady,11000000 Tom Hanks,5000000 Bob Smith,250000 Oprah,300000000 Hadoop has not authenticated the user; it trusts that the identity that has been presented is indeed the hr user. Therefore, sensitive data has been easily compromised. Clearly, the default security policy is inappropriate and dangerous to many organizations storing critical data in HDFS. Big Data Appliance Provides Secure Authentication The BDA provides secure authentication to the Hadoop cluster by default – preventing the type of masquerading described above. It accomplishes this thru Kerberos integration. Figure 1: Kerberos Integration The Key Distribution Center (KDC) is a server that has two components: an authentication server and a ticket granting service. The authentication server validates the identity of the user and service. Once authenticated, a client must request a ticket from the ticket granting service – allowing it to access the BDA’s NameNode, JobTracker, etc. At installation, you simply point the BDA to an external KDC or automatically install a highly available KDC on the BDA itself. Kerberos will then provide strong authentication for not just the end user – but also for important Hadoop services running on the appliance. You can now guarantee that users are who they claim to be – and rogue services (like fake data nodes) are not added to the system. It is common for organizations to want to leverage existing LDAP servers for common user and group management. Kerberos integrates with LDAP servers – allowing the principals and encryption keys to be stored in the common repository. This simplifies the deployment and administration of the secure environment. Authorize Access to Sensitive Data Kerberos-based authentication ensures secure access to the system and the establishment of a trusted identity – a prerequisite for any authorization scheme. Once this identity is established, you need to authorize access to the data. HDFS will authorize access to files using ACLs with the authorization specification applied using classic Linux-style commands like chmod and chown (e.g. hadoop fs -chown oracle:oracle /user/hrdata changes the ownership of the /user/hrdata folder to oracle). Authorization is applied at the user or group level – utilizing group membership found in the Linux environment (i.e. /etc/group) or in the LDAP server. For SQL-based data stores – like Hive and Impala – finer grained access control is required. Access to databases, tables, columns, etc. must be controlled. And, you want to leverage roles to facilitate administration. Apache Sentry is a new project that delivers fine grained access control; both Cloudera and Oracle are the project’s founding members. Sentry satisfies the following three authorization requirements: Secure Authorization:  the ability to control access to data and/or privileges on data for authenticated users. Fine-Grained Authorization:  the ability to give users access to a subset of the data (e.g. column) in a database Role-Based Authorization:  the ability to create/apply template-based privileges based on functional roles. With Sentry, “all”, “select” or “insert” privileges are granted to an object. The descendants of that object automatically inherit that privilege. A collection of privileges across many objects may be aggregated into a role – and users/groups are then assigned that role. This leads to simplified administration of security across the system. Figure 2: Object Hierarchy – granting a privilege on the database object will be inherited by its tables and views. Sentry is currently used by both Hive and Impala – but it is a framework that other data sources can leverage when offering fine-grained authorization. For example, one can expect Sentry to deliver authorization capabilities to Cloudera Search in the near future. Audit Hadoop Cluster Activity Auditing is a critical component to a secure system and is oftentimes required for SOX, PCI and other regulations. The BDA integrates with Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall – tracking different types of activity taking place on the cluster: Figure 3: Monitored Hadoop services. At the lowest level, every operation that accesses data in HDFS is captured. The HDFS audit log identifies the user who accessed the file, the time that file was accessed, the type of access (read, write, delete, list, etc.) and whether or not that file access was successful. The other auditing features include: MapReduce:  correlate the MapReduce job that accessed the file Oozie:  describes who ran what as part of a workflow Hive:  captures changes were made to the Hive metadata The audit data is captured in the Audit Vault Server – which integrates audit activity from a variety of sources, adding databases (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server) and operating systems to activity from the BDA. Figure 4: Consolidated audit data across the enterprise.  Once the data is in the Audit Vault server, you can leverage a rich set of prebuilt and custom reports to monitor all the activity in the enterprise. In addition, alerts may be defined to trigger violations of audit policies. Conclusion Security cannot be considered an afterthought in big data deployments. Across most organizations, Hadoop is managing sensitive data that must be protected; it is not simply crunching publicly available information used for search applications. The BDA provides a strong security foundation – ensuring users are only allowed to view authorized data and that data access is audited in a consolidated framework.

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