Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

With over 100 audio and video formats, FFmpeg is at the heart of countless multimedia programs, and it is one of the show-piece projects on the open source scene. Originally founded by Fabrice Bellard, Michael Niedermayer started maintaining the project in 2004. However, a team of 18 developers has now ousted him and appointed seven new project maintainers, among them the main x264 developer, Jason Garrett-Glaser ("Dark Shikari"), and Ronald S. Bultje. Some of the most active FFmpeg developers had been dissatisfied with Niedermayer's project management and had accused him of slowing down the development of the codec library, which is licensed under the GPL / LGPL, by focussing on unnecessary details and causing superfluous discussions.

When you mention hacking in the general public, the image most people think of is a nerdy guy breaking into a computer system from his bedroom. This month, I take a look at some of the tools available to do exactly that. Of course, this is for information purposes only, so please don't do anything nasty. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. Most people have heard of tools like Nmap or Nessus, but here I look at some other available tools for playing with networks.

Need to capture some data from you users? jQuery Mobile forms differ from traditional forms in a couple of ways but can save you some headaches when building your app.

The Linux blogosphere is "all shook up" these days, skewering Sony for suing a hacker for jailbreaking the PS3, and hammering Mozilla for skimping on hardware acceleration in the Linux Firefox 4 beta. Meanwhile, Google's decision to drop H.264 from its Chrome browser for open source alternatives received praise from the open source world, but also a surprising amount of criticism.

Last month I looked at some of the interesting data you can get out of /proc/. But /proc isn't just for getting information out of the system and into convenient text form. You can also use it to put information into the system, and thereby change it. The sys/ directory, which is where kernel variable information is kept, is where most of the things you might want to alter live. Changes made here will take effect immediately; no need to reboot. A real boon for working sysadmins! Note that you'll need appropriate (root) privileges to change these values. See here for a discussion of using sudo with pipes.

While it was just a couple weeks ago that a VIA Technologies representative had admitted to me their Linux / open-source strategy is basically dead (and they had failed in delivering their Linux goals for 2010), it seems that today the first Chrome 9 (VIA VX900 IGP) documentation has been released. It appears to originate from VIA Technologies but this public release is coming to the community through the OpenChrome driver project. This documentation covers the 2D, 3D, and video engines for these integrated graphics processors.

Instant messaging is typically regarded as a social tool, but it also plays an increasingly important role in the workplace as a medium for professional communication. One of the most important technologies that has helped to advance instant messaging as a business tool is the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), an XML-based open standard that fosters interoperability between real-time messaging platforms.

LOS ANGELES -- Canonical Chief Executive Officer Jane Silber has been added as a keynote speaker, with Leigh Honeywell, for the Southern California Linux Expo SCALE 9X in February.

December saw the release of the latest major update to VirtualBox, Oracle's desktop visualization tool. In its previous incarnation, it was voted as our readers' favorite virtualizer, so let's look at what 4.0 has to offer.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that the next version of Ubuntu Linux will adopt Nokia's Qt cross-platform development framework. Due in April, Ubuntu 11.04 (& Natty Narwhal& ) will offer Qt libraries as an alternative development environment to Gtk+, further extricating Ubuntu from its traditional embrace of all things GNOME.

Exactly 14 days after Linux version 2.6.37 was released, Linus Torvalds has published the first beta version of kernel 2.6.38, which is expected to be completed at the end of March or beginning of April. With this release, the merge window for the development cycle has come to an end and Torvalds has now integrated most of the changes for this version into the main development branch's source code management system.

Developing applications for the Linux desktop typically requires some type of graphical user interface (GUI) framework to build on. Options include GTK+ for the GNOME desktop and Qt for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Both platforms offer everything a developer needs to build a GUI application, including libraries and layout tools to create the windows users see. This article shows you how to build desktop productivity applications based on the screenlets widget toolkit.

LibreOffice 3.3 is almost here. The third release candidate came out on Thursday, January 13 and looks to be very near complete. It’s not a major upgrade over OpenOffice.org 3.2, but should put the project on solid footing going forward. The list of show stoppers for 3.3 is just about cleared out. If 3.3 doesn’t turn up new blockers, it looks like we’ll have a final release that looks very much like the RC3.

Xfce is a wonderful mid-sized desktop environment for those that want some customization without excessive system overhead. Xfce began life in 1996 as a simple clone of CDE, but has since progressed along side contemporaries such as KDE and GNOME. Some might even think of Xfce as a compromise between the highly customizable KDE and the higher performing GNOME. It was very popular in lighter Linux distributions for a time, and is still commonly included as an alternative choice. For a while an easy one- (or two-) click installer was available that downloaded the individual packages, compiled them, and installed Xfce for you. But no more. Today the developers released version 4.8 with some new goodies and a bit of an updated look, but with no convenient installer.

You can do a lot with free open-source software, also known as FOSS. Musicians with a yen for Linux are in luck; the array of choices for creating, editing, producing, and publishing music using nothing but FOSS software is staggering.

HP may be prepping a netbook using its Linux-based WebOS operating system, says an industry report. The computer giant is expected to announce a WebOS tablet and a smartphone successor to its Palm Pre 2 at a Feb. 9 event, yet the company will face stiff competition in both markets.

Acer is expected to release two to three Android-based tablets running Intel's & Sandy Bridge& Core processors, and will start to back out of the netbook business, says an industry report. At CES, Acer announced ARM Cortex-A9 based Iconia Tab A500 Android tablet for Verizon's 4G LTE network.

Mark Shuttleworth has announced today on his blog that as part of Ubuntu 11.10 they are looking at expanding their support for the Qt tool-kit. They are looking at now including the Qt libraries as part of their default Ubuntu installation and to include worth while Qt applications.

Security fail: When trusted IT people go bad has a great title. Then it's all downhill. I suppose it's appropriate for an audience of managers who want cheerleading for bad management more than good information. It starts off with a tale of ultimate horror: not only is your trusted systems administrator selling you pirated software and incurring the wrath of the BSA (Business Software Alliance), he is running a giant porn server from the company network and stealing customer credit card numbers.

Oracle-owned OpenOffice.org and independent LibreOffice are both nearing their freely available 3.3.0 versions and show their wares with recent release candidates. Commercial OpenOffice.org 3.3 was released by Oracle last month at a licensing fee starting at $49.95 for the Standard Edition, but has yet to release the freely downloadable version for home and small business use. That version has reached RC9, which is said to probably be the last development release before final. On the other side of town, LibreOffice has been releasing development versions as well with the latest being RC3 on January 13, which is rumored to be its last before final as well. LibreOffice has gained popular support probably primarily due to breaking from Oracle control and ownership while offering largely equal functionality.