Issue #145 / Dec 2012

I’m looking at another crop of press releases and marveling at the ever-expanding market for products that fall under the ubiquitous heading of Big Data. Big Data is everywhere. (Or is it Big Data are everywhere – to reprise that classic quandary?) Gigantic file storage appliances from vendors like Oracle and HP and software tools like Apache Hadoop continually add new building blocks to the data infrastructure. And the goal of all this? Apart from more conventional uses for scientific modeling and analysis, one of the reasons for this huge interest in accumulating data is a phenomenon known as data mining, which Wikipedia defines as a process that “attempts to discover patterns in large data sets.”

The latest Knoppix Live Linux DVD is based on Debian stable (squeeze) with newer desktop packages from Debian/ testing and Debian/ unstable (wheezy). Current computer hardware is supported by kernel 3.4.9 and Xorg 7.7 (core 1.12.3), and the Apt database now contains all data necessary to install software directly via Synaptic.

• AMD/OpenJDK/Oracle explore use of GPUs
• Smartphone security
• ASF Airavata
• Slackware 14 release
• Shuttleworth funds Inktank/Ceph
• New Apache toplevel project
• Zentyal 3.0 small business server reveals major release
• Keccak wins NIST
• SHA-3 competition

Citrix Announces XenServer 6.1

Red Hat Updates Enterprise MRG

Xen.org Releases Xen 4.2

Botnets aren’t all bad. We’ll show you how to harness the power of the botnet architecture to solve realworld problems in a business context.

An offline cache in your browser and a bit of HTML5 acrobatics combine for interactive web applications that keep working even when the Internet connection breaks down.

“HMTL5 rocks” – and Google is not the only one who feels that way. You will find many resources, frameworks, and utilities that will help you get started with the new standard.

Many web attacks are the result of programmer error. Sloppy code testing leaves a door open for the uninvited.

HTML5 brings 3D support to browsers. Thanks to WebGL, Firefox, Chrome, and company, you can render three-dimensional worlds without special plugins or viewers, and the Three.js JavaScript library makes programming easy.