Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is making its performance library available as open-source code, which should help developers build multithreaded applications for x86 machines.
The three-year-old library contains more than 3,200 software routines that focus on specific functions, such as handling audio and video data, according to Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions at AMD. This is the first time that AMD has released a proprietary library set and released it as open source.
"This is one of our ways to help developers write software that runs really well, [and] taking a little bit of the headache out of it for them," Lewis told Computerworld. "A developer can write these functions himself, or use these to save time. We've spent a lot of time tuning [these routines] so the code runs faster and the developer doesn't have to write the routine and then optimize it himself."
The AMD Performance Library is now being called Framewave Version 1.0. It's immediately available for download at this site.
Since the routines are focused on x86 machines, that means they should work for both AMD-based and Intel-based systems. "They're well tuned to take advantage of our architecture, but they'll also run very well on our competitor's products," said Lewis.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said this should be welcome news to programmers working on multithreaded applications.
"This is good for the market because ISVs and developers can use all the help they can get in creating applications that efficiently utilize multicore processors," he added. Multimedia workloads will particularly benefit as they can be extremely power hungry in terms of processing cycles. Moving this code to open source makes it easy for developers."
But Olds noted that this also is a smart move for AMD.
"Think about the position AMD is in. Intel has them out-gunned on chip performance," he added. "This is a card that AMD can play to make it easier to developers to make stuff work better on AMD chips, which may defray Intel's performance lead a bit. It might also help them win more developer fans -- developers who say that their products work on both AMD and Intel, but might perform better on AMD processors."
Feb 23, 2008
AMD goes open source with performance library
Hackers Turn Google Into Password Hunter
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow this week released a tool that turns Google into an automated vulnerability scanner.
The hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) this week released a tool that turns Google into an automated vulnerability scanner, scouring websites for sensitive information such as passwords or server vulnerabilities.
CDC first achieved notoriety ten years ago with its backdoor Back Orifice, which demonstrated in a highly public way just how easy it was to take unauthorized control of a Windows PC.
The new tool, called Goolag Scan, is equally provocative, making it easy for unskilled users to track down vulnerabilities and sensitive information on specific websites or broad web domains.
This capability should serve as a wake-up call for system administrators to run the tool on their own sites before attackers get around to it, according to CDC.
"It's no big secret that the Web is the platform, and this platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective," said CDC spokesperson Oxblood Ruffin, in a statement. "We've seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large website, I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday."
The tool is a stand-alone Windows .Net application, licensed under the open source GNU General Public License, that provides about 1,500 customized searches under categories such as "vulnerable servers," "sensitive online shopping information" and "files containing juicy information."
The results are displayed as a list of links that can be opened directly in a browser. Example results include tell-tale error messages and Java applets for the remote control of surveillance cameras, according to CDC.
Goolag Scan is based on "Google hacking," the practice of exposing vulnerabilities via Google, which CDC says has been pioneered by a hacker going by the handle "Johnny I Hack Stuff."
Goolag Scan is, however, the first time such vulnerability searches have been built into a simple tool, according to CDC.
Feb 20, 2008
Google says ISP glitch exposes Gmail data in Kuwait
A glitch with an ISP in Kuwait has allowed at least one Gmail user to access other peoples' Gmail accounts, Google said on Wednesday.
A Gmail user in Kuwait reported to CNET News.com over the weekend that he had been having trouble for most of the day logging into his account. More troubling though, he was able to see other people's private information, including scores of personal e-mail messages, "keycodes for some embassy gate" as well as user names and passwords, Abdulaziz Al-Shalabi wrote to CNET News.com. "Most likely, other strangers are taking a look at my own personal stuff as I type this."
He said he had inadvertently logged into more than 30 other accounts and supplied about two dozen screen shots as proof. Al-Shalabi said the problem was fixed by Wednesday.
An ISP in Kuwait is having a caching problem on its servers that is affecting Gmail users there, as well as eBay accounts, said Google spokesman Jason Freidenfelds. Google has contacted the ISP and is supplying a workaround for Gmail, he said. Freidenfelds said he did not know which ISP it was or how widespread.
An eBay spokeswoman did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
I'll be updating the story as I get more information.
Nude Lindsay Lohan Photos Crash New York Magazine's Web Site
The photos resemble those taken of Marilyn Monroe in her mid-30s during a 1962 photo session at the Hotel Bel-Air.
Lindsay Lohan is as popular as ever.
The 21-year-old starlet and her fans overwhelmed New York magazine's Web site and readers complained of not being able to load its pages, which contained nude photos of Lohan posing as Marilyn Monroe.
The photos resemble those taken of Monroe in her mid-30s. Lohan posed in a blond wig for the same photographer who shot the famous Monroe pictures. In the collection, Lohan sports translucent scarves, a veil, diamonds, dramatic eyeliner, freckles, and little else.
Bert Stern shot the photos at the Hotel Bel-Air, the site of his 1962 photo session with Monroe. The location, props, and photographer may be the same, but Lohan's, uh, attributes aren't quite the same. Lohan's measurements weren't included in the captions, but she cuts more of a V-shaped figure, rather than Monroe's legendary full-figured hourglass shape.
That didn't stop the photo spread, titled, "Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe in 'The Last Sitting,' " from burning up the tubes and servers at New York on Monday.
The magazine also dished out a little companion piece titled "La Internet Reacts to La Lohan." And, of course, there are reactions to the reaction piece.
"Certainly, many were awed: This Website spent much of yesterday groaning under the weight of sweaty fingers," the magazine explained. "People magazine called Bert Stern's photo shoot Lohan's 'greatest role to date.' Defamer predicted that 'this tastefully titillating homage to Marilyn Monroe's "Last Sitting" is poised to sit alongside Drew Barrymore's role in Poison Ivy in the pantheon of greatest breast-baring comebacks of all-time.' "
By Wednesday, New York's site and the pictures loaded, handling all the interest in the original spread, the accompanying features, and any other articles readers wanted to access this week. No word on whether that reflects more on the competence of New York's IT pros or decreased traffic.
Activity seemed strong on celebrity gossip site TMZ, where more than 300 people commented on the post, "Lindsay Likes It Naked." In keeping with the site's tradition, the majority of the comments are unflattering and anonymous.
Time to dump Windows?
Can it be done? Is it the right time? Find out what it'll take to finally switch to desktop Mac OS X or Linux.
InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don't like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.
"Don't be afraid. Just switch to Linux and become a member of a really free society," wrote Carlos Raul Gutierrez.
[ Find out the deployment secrets of early Vista adopters ]
"Windows Vista was the reason I bought a Mac mini. I didn't want my only choices to be an operating system that would soon be obsolete (XP) or one that was buggy and would break much existing hardware (Vista), and I'm not enough of a geek to use Linux (do things from the command line? Puhleeze...)," wrote "Jack."
How realistic is a switch to Linux or Apple's Mac OS X? For some users -- often technically savvy people such as engineers, consultants, designers and CTOs -- it is clearly an option that already works quite well. In the past year, running Mac OS X or Linux as your default OS has been made easier by the capability to run Windows in a virtual machine, giving you access to both Windows-only applications and Web sites that rely on Microsoft's Internet Explorer-only ActiveX technology. But in a business environment, switching to a Mac or Linux PC may not be quite as easy.
The Mac OS X option
Of the plausible alternatives to Windows, Apple's Mac OS X has the largest market share and history. InfoWorld chief technologist Tom Yager has written that the latest version of the Mac OS, Leopard (10.5), is simply the best operating system available. And Macs are indeed popping up more frequently even within IT circles -- I've seen more MacBook Pros in the hands of CTOs and IT execs at conferences in the past year more than I've seen Mac notebooks in such venues ever. Although there are no real numbers on just the business adoption of Macs, it's clear that Apple is in growth mode, gaining an increasing proportion of all new computer sales for more than a year now.
InfoWorld's Yager has chronicled the adventures of one PC user who switched to the Mac OS, showing that for an individual, the conversion was ultimately a rewarding one. The TechWeb site has also provided a good guide on how to make the switch to Mac OS X.
A key tool for any Mac OS X switcher is a virtual machine to run Windows for those apps and Web sites that require it. Both Parallels Desktop 3.0 and EMC VMware's Fusion software will do the trick, as InfoWorld's comparative review has shown.
Although Macs are compatible with most typical hardware, such as monitors and drives, fitting a Mac into an enterprise's management systems and ERP applications can be a different story. Yager's Mac Enterprise blog and the Mac Enterprise user group both provide advice on managing Macs in a traditional IT environment.
The Linux option
The more technically inclined may be attracted to Linux, the most popular form of desktop Unix. Linux desktops typically are challenged by limited hardware compatibility (due to lack of drivers), limited application options, and user interfaces that require active participation to get work done, which tends to keep Linux away from the general user population. But those who work with a Linux server all day may find that using it on the desktop as well actually makes their lives easier.
Just as Mac users need occasional access to Windows, so do Linux users. Because Linux distributions run on Windows-compatible hardware, it's straightforward to use desktop virtualization software, such as Parallels Workstation, Sun's (formerly Innotek's) VirtualBox, and EMC VMware's Workstation software, to provide access to both environments.
Although some enterprises have committed to wide Linux deployment -- such as automaker Peugeot Citroën's plans to install 20,000 Novell Suse Linux desktops -- most have left Linux to the engineering and development staff.
InfoWorld Enterprise Desktop blogger Randall Kennedy argues that desktop Linux is doomed to remain a tiny niche OS, given the Linux community's lack of interest in providing a UI that regular people could use. Kennedy tried to spend a week working on nothing but the Ubuntu distribution of Linux but gave up on the fifth day.
But Kennedy's take isn't the last word on desktop Linux. Frequent InfoWorld contributor Neil McAllister put together a special report on how to move from Windows to Linux, concluding that the effort was not as hard as you might think.
Who's right? As with any platform choice, they both may be. A one-size-fits-all approach may be unrealistic. And that likely explains why many businesses will have a mix, dominated by Windows XP today (and perhaps Vista in a few years) but not exclusively tied to Microsoft's OS.
Galen Gruman is executive editor of InfoWorld.
New Windows XP SP3 Build Available for Public Download
Microsoft's recent pattern may signal that the XP service pack release is imminent.
Two weeks after it last handed a new build of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to several thousand invitation-only testers, Microsoft Corp. has posted that version for public downloading.
"We're broadening the availability of the release candidate in order to receive further user feedback prior to the release of Windows XP SP3," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon. Windows XP SP3 RC2 became publicly available last night.
On Feb. 7, Microsoft seeded Release Candidate 2 (RC2) with the 15,000 or so testers who had been working with SP3 for several months. At that time, the company said nothing about taking the version public.
This is just the second time that all Windows XP users have had the chance to try out SP3, the last scheduled major update to the six-year-old operating system. The only other public posting was of SP3 RC in December.
Microsoft, however, followed precedence Tuesday. Earlier this year, it did the same thing -- sent code to its beta testers, then released it to all comers -- during the run-up to finalizing Windows Vista Service Pack 1. In fact, although Microsoft has stuck to the vague schedule of delivering XP SP3 some time in the first half of 2008, Vista's pattern may signal that the XP service pack release is imminent.
Microsoft seeded the RC Refresh build of Vista SP1 on Jan. 11, then two days later posted it for public download. Twenty-two days later, it called a wrap on SP1, saying the code had met its RTM (release to manufacturing) criteria.
Another Vista indictor -- the posting of revised release notes just days before SP1 went RTM -- may also hint at XP SP3 be finished sooner rather than later. Tuesday, Microsoft published the first version of the XP SP3 release notes to its Web site.
Microsoft said that the SP3 RC2 download would be posted on the Microsoft Download Center. A link to it may also appear on this TechNet page.
Once SP3 ships, the next major milestone for Windows XP is June 30, when the popular operating system is slated to fall off the reseller and retail availability list.
Despite SP1, Vista is still slower than XP
Infoworld.com - Posted by Randall Kennedy on February 20, 2008
So here I am, sitting in the main terminal at Dubai International, killing time during my six hour layover by sifting through the headlines surrounding the release Vista SP1. Over at a competitor's site, two prominent bloggers are really going at it, posting contradictory benchmark results that show Vista to be either a) on par with Windows XP or b) much slower than XP on the same hardware.
In each case, the bloggers are focusing on areas in which Microsoft claims to have improved Vista performance with SP1: file copies, network transfers, etc. However, neither author seems be paying attention to the myriad other areas -- productivity applications, services, multimedia tasks -- where Vista is an absolute dog compared to Windows XP.
Did they not read my previous postings on the subject? I made it pretty clear last year that Vista was struggling big time vs. XP on comparable hardware, and that SP1 would be no panacea.
It's like the Microsoft PR machine flipped a switch somewhere and instantly reframed the entire discussion of Vista performance around just those areas it improved on in SP1.
News flash, people: File copying is the least of the problems affecting Windows Vista. Test after test shows that the new OS is a performance slug across the board.
Even when you disable all of the bells and whistles (Aero, Search) and turn-off every conceivable background service (Superfetch, ReadyBoost, etc) -- in other words, strip it down to something comparable to XP in terms of underlying OS footprint -- Vista is still a good 40 percent slower than XP on a variety of basic productivity tasks.
The only solution to this generalized performance malaise is to throw hardware at it: Vista performs quite tolerably on state-of-the-art hardware. Unfortunately for Microsoft, so does XP SP3. In fact, it absolutely screams on today's high-end, multi-core desktops and laptops, which puts customers in the position of having to choose between functionality and raw performance.
In conclusion: Don't be confused by all of these headline-grabbing "performance tests." They're focusing almost exclusively on areas that Microsoft tweaked with SP1. The fact remains that Vista will always require roughly 2X the hardware performance to deliver an end-user experience on par with Windows XP.
And when you finally do give in and buy that new "Designed for Vista" PC, do yourself a favor and provision yourself a small XP partition, just as an experiment. Don't settle for Vista until you've seen how much performance you're trading for that shiny new UI and whatever other bells and whistles you find so irresistible. You may be surprise at just how fast your new PC really is - once it's no longer encumbered by the bloat and sluggishness of "Windows 6.x."
Feb 17, 2008
Technorati - For Searching Blogs
Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. As of December 2007, Technorati indexes over 112 million weblogs. The name Technorati is a portmanteau, pointing to the technological version of literati or intellectuals.
Technorati was founded by Dave Sifry and its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, USA. Tantek Çelik was the site's Chief Technologist.
Technorati uses and contributes to open source software. Technorati has an active software developer community, many of them from open-source culture. Sifry is a major open-source advocate, and was a founder of LinuxCare and later of Wi-Fi access point software developer Sputnik. Technorati includes a public developer's wiki, where developers and contributors collaborate, as well as various open APIs.
The site won the SXSW 2006 awards for Best Technical Achievement and also Best of Show. It was also nominated for a 2006 Webby award for Best Practices, but lost to Flickr and Google Maps.
R.I.P. HD DVD: Toshiba reportedly ends the war
Well, that's it. Toshiba appears to be pulling the plug on HD DVD. Toshiba has not commented publicly, but a report on Japan's NHK says Toshiba has made the decision to withdraw from next generation high-definition DVD production.
This news certainly doesn't come as surprise to anyone remotely following HD DVD's format war with rival Blu-ray. HD DVD had suffered a string of defections, with Warner, Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart all recently pledging their alliance to Blu-ray.
The NHK report says existing HD DVD products will remain in the market for a while, but Toshiba will stop further development of HD DVD. The report also estimates that Toshiba will take a hit to the tune of "hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars" and will close factories in northern Japan.
Elsewhere this weekend, Sony and its Blu-ray buddies are going to make like VHS and party like it's 1989.
Outfitting the iPhone for business
Executive pressure is pushing the iPhone through the side door of the enterprise, but will the CEO's crush object ever truly be business legit?
You've heard it all before. The CEO buys an iPhone, falls in love, and leans on IT to shift its stack of tasks to make work-enabling his new gadget IT Priority No. 1.
But as IT departments scramble to sync e-mail and slap together Web apps for Safari-based iPhone access, the question remains: Can Apple's ear-candy crush object draft off this executive effect to true enterprise mobile legitimacy, or are execs' iPhone fetishes jeopardizing the integrity of their company's mobile strategy?
Here we examine the iPhone ecosystem's evolving backdoor bid for enterprise, one that pits security concerns, vendor intentions, and gadget affinities against caution-minded enterprise IT.
Executive inroads to the enterprise
A midsize company providing inventory supply services to schools, government facilities, and other institutions across the United States was perfectly happy with its mobile Palm-based inventory software until the CEO and other high-level execs purchased their own iPhones.
"Suddenly, they were saying, 'Hey, this is really nice,' and reevaluating their whole handheld strategy," says Ben Gottlieb, president of Stand Alone, which provides business inventory software and consulting services to the aforementioned inventory supplier. "Then came the questions about where the Palm OS was headed and whether their inventory application could be iPhone-enabled."
Mark Russell, vice president of sales and marketing at U-Line, a Milwaukee-based manufacturer of under-counter icemakers and refrigerators, had an iPhone for fun and a Nokia E70 for work until he accidentally crushed the Nokia device in his mother-in-law's recliner. Instead of getting a new E70, he asked IT to sync his iPhone with the corporate Exchange server.
"Our IT guy was nervous at first, but when Visto added iPhone capability to its Visto Enterprise Server, he gave it a try," Russell says, referring to the mobile messaging service provider, Visto. U-Line was already using Visto to sync its smartphones with Exchange.
Russell is perfectly happy with his business iPhone and has no intention of repurchasing the Nokia or any other device. And according to Daniel Koshute, U-Line systems administrator, several other employees are ready to make the switch as well.
The above examples are not unique. Like the PDAs, USB storage devices, and Wi-Fi devices that came before it, the iPhone is pushing its way through the side door of today's enterprises, thanks to a sexy interface, a superior mobile browser, and executive pressure.
"Apple has definitely achieved its goal of making you smile every time you press a keystroke," says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner.
Google finds evil all over the Web
Google turned its Web-crawling technology loose to hunt down malware-serving pages and found 3 million, meaning about one out of every 1,000 pages is malicious
The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published recently by Google.
The search engine giant trained its Web crawling software on billions of Web addresses over the past year looking for malicious pages that tried to attack their visitors. They found more than 3 million of them, meaning that about one in 1,000 Web pages is malicious, according to Neils Provos, a senior staff software engineer with Google.
These Web-based attacks, called "drive-by downloads" by security experts, have become much more common in recent years as firewalls and better security practices by Microsoft have made it harder for worms and viruses to directly attack computers.
In the past year the Web sites of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth movie and the Miami Dolphins were hacked, and the MySpace profile of Alicia Keys was used to attack visitors.
Criminals are getting better at this kind of work. They have built very successful automated tools that poke and prod Web sites, looking for programming errors and then exploit these flaws to install the drive-by download software. Often this code opens an invisible iFrame page on the victim's browser that redirects it to a malicious Web server. That server then tries to install code on the victim's PC. "The bad guys are getting exceptionally good at automating those attacks," said Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor Grisoft.
In response, Google has stepped up its game. One of the reasons it has been scouring the Web for malicious pages is so that it can identify drive-by-download sites and warn Google searchers before they visit them. Nowadays about 1.3 percent of all Google search queries list malicious results somewhere on the first few pages.
Some of the data surprised Provos.
"When we started going into this, I had the firm intuition that if you go to the sleazier parts of the Web, you are in more danger," he said.
It turns out the Web's nice neighborhoods aren't necessarily safer than its red-light districts.
"We looked into this and indeed we found that if you ended up going to adult-oriented pages, your risk of being exposed [to malicious software] was slightly higher," he said. But "there really wasn't a huge difference."
"Staying away from the disreputable part of the Internet really isn't good enough," he noted.
Another interesting finding: China was far and away the greatest source of malicious Web sites. According to Google's research, 67 percent of all malware distribution sites are hosted in China. The second-worst offender? The U.S., at 15 percent, followed by Russia (4 percent), Malaysia (2.2 percent), and Korea (2 percent).
It costs next to nothing to register a Web domain in China and service providers are often slow to shut down malicious pages, said Thompson. "They're the Kleenex Web sites," he said. Criminals "know they're going to be shut down, and they don't care."
Malicious site operators in China fall into two broad categories, Thompson said: Fraudsters looking to steal your banking password, and teenagers who want to steal your World of Warcraft character.
So how to stop this growing pestilence?
Google's Provos has this advice for Web surfers: Turn automatic updates on. "You should always run your software as updated as possible and install some kind of antivirus technology," he said.
But he also thinks that Webmasters will have to get smarter about building secure Web sites. "I think it will take concentrated efforts on all parts," for the problem to go away, he said.
