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February 17, 2009
Explorers reach South Pole target
Three men with links to Sir Ernest Shackleton have reached the South Pole.
Lt Col Henry Worsley, from Hereford, Will Gow, from Kent, and Henry Adams, from Suffolk, arrived on Sunday.
The team members, descendents of Shackleton's team or his family, took 66 days to complete the explorer's route, 100 years after he abandoned it.
Speaking from Antarctica, Mr Gow said: "It's been a very long journey, 66 days over 900 miles of pulling our sledges... we're absolutely ecstatic."
Shackleton set out on his Nimrod expedition in October 1908, hoping to become the first person to reach the South Pole.
But icy blizzards and dwindling rations forced him to turn back 97 miles from his goal on 9 January 1909.
BBC NEWS | UK | England | Explorers reach South Pole target
Posted by thdyck at February 17, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 16, 2009
RAID on Linux: tuning and troubleshooting, v. 2.65
Abstract
In order to animate a database server (MySQL and PostgreSQL) in an OLTP (mostly read requests, data occupying approx 800GB) context I bought (November 2006) a 3ware disk controller connected to a SuperMicro mainboard, bi-Xeon bi-core (hyperthreading OFF) 3.2 GHz, model 6, stepping 4, 2 MB L0 cache, 12 GB RAM, running Debian (etch) Linux AMD64 (2.6.18, now 2.6.24.2, no patches).On the RAID side I compared 3ware integrated functions to the 'md' Linux driver (beware: 'md' is not 'dm' (which is ATAPI RAID)).
This induced major performance-related problems. This document describes this process and offers hints, especially useful to the beginner, when it comes to measuring or enhancing disk performance under Linux.
RAID on Linux: tuning and troubleshooting, v. 2.65
Posted by thdyck at February 16, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
RAID on Linux: tuning and troubleshooting, v. 2.65
Abstract
In order to animate a database server (MySQL and PostgreSQL) in an OLTP (mostly read requests, data occupying approx 800GB) context I bought (November 2006) a 3ware disk controller connected to a SuperMicro mainboard, bi-Xeon bi-core (hyperthreading OFF) 3.2 GHz, model 6, stepping 4, 2 MB L0 cache, 12 GB RAM, running Debian (etch) Linux AMD64 (2.6.18, now 2.6.24.2, no patches).On the RAID side I compared 3ware integrated functions to the 'md' Linux driver (beware: 'md' is not 'dm' (which is ATAPI RAID)).
This induced major performance-related problems. This document describes this process and offers hints, especially useful to the beginner, when it comes to measuring or enhancing disk performance under Linux.
RAID on Linux: tuning and troubleshooting, v. 2.65
Posted by thdyck at February 16, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2009
Speech recognition in Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7
Windows Speech Recognition (known as WSR; released January 2007) made a bolder step and made Speech Recognition a built-in feature of the Operating System. This is an unacknowledged revolution in the sense that SR is now available on an unprecedented scale to any Windows user whose language is supported (see below). User Interface, the repertoire of commands and the command-and-control (controlling the entire computer by voice) features have all been much improved. A new Macro Feature beta was released in spring 2008, then a first release in January 2009, making it possible to create text macros, command substitutions, and sophisticated adds-on. This enhances the capabilities of WSR towards high flexibility and personal customizability.
WSR supports various languages, all available to users of Windows Vista Ultimate, through Language Packs downloadable directly from Microsoft's server via the Update Windows feature. The following languages are currently supported: English US, English UK, French, Spanish, German, Chinese (Simplified and Classical), and Japanese.
WSR is also a built-in feature of Windows 7. In its current beta state (January 2009), there are no new UI features added. It works the same way as under Vista, including the Macro Feature add-on, but various basic recognition functions have been greatly improved according to Eric Brown of the Microsoft SR Team. See here for details.
Posted by thdyck at February 15, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 12, 2009
Untangle Firewall Product Overview
Product Overview
Untangle delivers an integrated family of applications that simplify and consolidate the network and security products that businesses need at the network gateway.
* Pre-configured to work right away
* Downloadable for rapid deployment
* Integrated with a common GUI, logging & reporting
* Designed to run on generic Intel/AMD hardware
Posted by thdyck at February 12, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
pfSense Open Source Firewall Distribution - Home
pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a PC and an Xbox to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.
pfSense Open Source Firewall Distribution - Home
Posted by thdyck at February 12, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Endian - Open Source Firewall Appliance - UTM Linux Security Distribution
What is Endian Firewall Community?
Endian Firewall Community is a "turn-key" linux security distribution that turns every system into a full featured security appliance with Unified Threat Management (UTM) functionality. The software has been de signed with "usability in mind" and is very easy to install, use and manage, without losing its flexibility. The features include a stateful packet inspection firewall, application-level proxies for various protocols (HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP) with antivirus support, virus and spamfiltering for email traffic (POP and SMTP), content filtering of Web traffic and a "hassle free" VPN solution (based on OpenVPN). The main advantage of Endian Firewall is that it is a pure "Open Source" solution that is sponsored by Endian.
Endian - Open Source Firewall Appliance - UTM Linux Security Distribution
Posted by thdyck at February 12, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Remote-Exploit.org - Supplying offensive security products to the world
BackTrack is the most top rated linux live distribution focused on penetration testing. With no installation whatsoever, the analysis platform is started directly from the CD-Rom and is fully accessible within minutes.
It's evolved from the merge of the two wide spread distributions - Whax and Auditor Security Collection. By joining forces and replacing these distributions, BackTrack has gained massive popularity and was voted in 2006 as the #1 Security Live Distribution by insecure.org. Security professionals as well as new-comers are using BackTrack as their favorite toolset all over the globe.
BackTrack has a long history and was based on many different linux distributions until it is now based on a Slackware linux distribution and the corresponding live-CD scripts by Tomas M. (www.slax.org) . Every package, kernel configuration and script is optimized to be used by security penetration testers. Patches and automation have been added, applied or developed to provide a neat and ready-to-go environment.
Remote-Exploit.org - Supplying offensive security products to the world
Posted by thdyck at February 12, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 11, 2009
Swingbench
About SwingBench
SwingBench consists of a load generator, a coordinator and a cluster overview. The software enables a load to be generated and the transactions/response times to be charted.
Swingbench can be used to demonstrate and test technologies such as Real Application Clusters, Online table rebuilds, Standby databases, Online backup and recovery etc.
The code that ships with SwingBench includes two benchmarks, OrderEntry and CallingCircle. OrderEntry is based on the "oe" schema that ships with Oracle9i/Oracle10g. It has been modified so that Spatial, Intermedia and the Oracle9i schema's do not need to be installed. It can be run continuously (that is until you run out of space). It introduces heavy contention on a small number of tables and is designed to stress interconnects and memory. It is installed using the "oewizard" located in the bin directory.
CallingCircle simulates the SQL that is generated for a online telco application. It requires data files to be generated and copied from the database server to the load generator before each run, it typically requires between 1 and 8 GB of disk space. Both benchmarks are heavily CPU intensive. Experience has shown that you require at least 1 processor of load generator to every 2 processors of database server. It is designed to stress the CPU and memory without the need for a powerful I/O subsystem. Its is installed using the "ccwizard" located in the bin directory
The entire framework is developed in Java and as a result can be run on wide variety of platforms. It also provides a simple API to allow developers to build their own benchmarks.
Posted by thdyck at February 11, 2009 | Comments (0) | TrackBack