Monthly Archive:: July 2004

Indigo: The end of the rainbow

When it finally ships, the Longhorn release of Windows will include a number of interesting new technologies. But it is the technology currently code-named “Indigo” that stands out as the most important product for anyone who cares about how diverse systems are glued together. To understand Indigo, however, there are four points you need to get your mind around. Elsewhere, .NET luminaries discuss themselves, their technology expertise, and whatever else comes to mind, released twice a month. Elsewhere, the Longhorn Driver Kit is a fully integrated driver development system for Windows.

Video Production with Linux Part 2

In my first article I tried out various audio/video apps to see what Linux had to offer for video production. For the most part I was pretty disappointed with the whole experiment. Several months have passed so I decided to take another look to what has progressed since then. There were two programs that I left out because they were either not realized or it was to soon to try it out.

Four alternative Linux window managers

KDE and GNOME combine window managers with suites of applications to create comprehensive work environments. As complete as they are, it's easy to forget that there are other graphical ways to work on a Linux desktop. Sometimes a lighter-weight window manager is in order, such as for laptop usage, children's use, or quick startup applications. Here are four "alternative" window managers that are mature, fast, and functional. My Take: Should we also add *Box, WindowMaker and XFce to the mix?

Secure programming with the OpenSSL API

Learning how to use the API for OpenSSL -- the best-known open library for secure communication -- can be intimidating, because the documentation is incomplete. Fill in the gaps, and tame the API, with the tips in this article. After setting up a basic connection, see how to use OpenSSL's BIO library to set up both a secured and unsecured connection. And learn a bit about error detection as well.

IBM releases eclipse Embedded Voice Toolkit

The Embedded Voice Toolkit allows developers to more easily build embedded speech applications using a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than “command-line” coding. The toolkit provides several key components: A set of Eclipse-based plug-ins generate, manage, and test grammar and custom pronunciations. It also provides extension to IBM's range of tools.

Programming Tools for the Hobbyist

Most of us that work in the IT industry have been around for a long time. We started out in our parents basement writing code in some BASIC environment, ussually Commodore BASIC or QBASIC. Do you remember how thrilling it was? Your first program and it was something extremely basic but the point was it worked. Some of us got hooked right away and kept trying to solve problems and added more and more pushing the capabilities of whatever language we used. As we got older the environments progressed and the programming tools progressed and got more complicated.

Unix AIX Security

This paper is meant to serve as an introductory guide to the basic security and server hardening functions present in AIX. Many of the features and functions shown throughout this guide are applicable to AIX 4.3 and above, but are more directed toward AIX 5.2. This guide attempts to cover a lot of ground and offers useful and necessary insight for anyone administering AIX machines.

Web Security Threat Classification

This paper compiles and distills the known unique classes of attack, which have presented a threat to web sites in the past. Each class of attack will be given a standard name and explained with thorough documentation discussing the key points. The formation of a Web Security Threat Classification will be of exceptional value to application developers, security professionals, software vendors or anyone else with an interest in web security.