Likewise Presents VMware ESXi Active Directory Integration Technology

Likewise, a provider of software for integrating Unix, Linux, and Macintosh platforms with Windows environments, announced last evening at VMworld that will demonstrate how VMware vSphere 4.1 uses the Likewise Identity Service to integrate the ESXi or ESX hypervisors securely on networks that use Microsoft’s Active Directory technology.

Likewise combines both virtual and physical desktops & servers running Unix, Linux, and Macintosh to an organization's existing network using the Active Directory technology. The result is a single and secure framework for access control and authentication in mixed networks.

"It was about a year ago that VMware first selected Likewise to provide the directory integration technology for their next release of vSphere,” said Barry Crist, Likewise CEO.

"We’re demonstrating the benefits of vSphere with licensed Likewise technology, plus more to show how security can be incorporated in a virtualization initiative right from its inception."

Microsoft’s Active Directory technology offers a secure and enterprise-ready solution for centralized authentication, access control, and identity management. VMware ESX and ESXi administrators can join those systems to Active Directory using the Likewise technology. Therefore, users will only need their Active Directory password to log-in, and administrators can securely appoint management tasks to these users, based on their Active Directory authentication information.

About Likewise

Likewise provides authentication and integration tools for mixed networks to more than 70,000 organizations, enabling secure access of Unix, Linux, and Macintosh platforms on networks using the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Likewise offers identity management and integration solutions to enhance operational efficiencies and security, and to help perform regulatory compliance in mixed networks.

Likewise Open is a tool for integrating Unix, Linux and Mac machines into Microsoft Active Directory environments.

Likewise Enterprise offers all the core authentication technology available in Likewise Open, plus world-class migration, auditing, reporting and group policy modules.

GlobalFoundries Shows Picture of Llano and AMD Orochi 8-Core

GlobalFoundries just used its first Global Technology Conference as an opportunity to offer a sneak peak at one of the upcoming Fusion processors from Advanced Micro Devices, codenamed Orochi and based on the as yet unreleased Bulldozer architecture.

The Bulldozer and Bobcat are the new architectures that will spawn working processors either by late 2010 or in 2011.

The Bobcat's first incarnation will be the Ontario mobile chip, based on TSMC's 40nm manufacturing process and with DirectX 11 graphics.

The Bulldozer architecture, on the other hand, will be used in desktops and servers, the Orochi being one of the apparently more ambitious projects that the chip maker is working on.

No real information was provided on this 8-core product besides that it will be the second 32nm-based product and will be built immediately after the Llano.

The Orochi will feature a set of 4 Bulldozer modules, which provide 8 cores and 8 threads, and will probably have an AM3+ package with an integrated DDR3 memory controller.

The aforementioned Llano APU (accelerated processing unit) was also pictured during the conference and is known to lack L3 cache.

On the other hand, the individual L2 caches will be of 1MB and will support dual-channel DDR3 and will, of course, have its own built-in graphics with support for DirectX 11.

The APU should also feature an integrated northbridge, integrated PCI Express root complex, a HyperTransport interface to the chipset and an integrated SIMD array with 480 stream processors.

The Llano will have to compete with the Sandy Bridge processors from Intel, which also have integrated graphics and will feature better performance than the current Core series.

What AMD will have to deal with is the fact that its rival will ship Sandy Bridge before it gets the Llano out, and the company hopes the graphics performance of the APU will help make up for Intel's head start.

LG's IFA Exhibition Features a High-Quality 31-Inch OLED HDTV

Though OLED is more expensive to make than regular LCDs, it is still a very good display technology because it needs no backlights and has a very high color quality and brightness, and LG definitely appears to have put it to good use when it developed its 31-inch HDTV with a supposedly infinite contrast ratio.

The IFA 2010 show in Berlin, Germany, has entered its second day and IT players have already brought forth a significant number of new or upcoming products.

NVIDIA stole a bit of the spotlight when it released the DirectX 11 mobile GPUs, and PC suppliers also got attention by unveiling multiple new systems.

Now, LG has taken the microphone in order to boast of having created a 31-inch OLED display that has a thickness of just 2.9 millimeters.

Since OLED, through its nature, enables very thin form factors, LG needed to only come up with a suitable layout for the tuner connectivity and all other connectors.

Thus, it set them all in the box at the bottom of the product, leaving only the OLED panel itself to impress with its visual quality.

Not only does the HDTV support resolutions of Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, but it is reportedly one of, if not the most color-rich and bright of all OLEDs available.

What's more, its maker claims that the contrast ratio is infinite, which should give one an idea of how sharp and clear its images can be.

That said, in order to connect to multimedia players or set-top boxes, the OLED TV has a regular digital TV Tuner, an USB port and a pair of HDMI connectors.

According to Slashgear, LG has two versions of this product on show, the only difference between them being that their stand arrangement and controls are different.

As for availability, they are expected to start selling sometime during the first half of 2010, though their likely massive prices have not been disclosed as of yet.

First Alpha of uTorrent Server for Linux Released

BitTorrent Inc. proudly announced a few hours ago the immediate availability for download of the first alpha version of uTorrent Server for Linux and UNIX-like operating systems!

The uTorrent Server application provides a state-of-the-art implementation of the popular BitTorrent protocol and a full-featured WebUI (web-based user interface).

"This morning, we are announcing a preview release of the first of two new products for Linux users. µTorrent Server, an alpha version available immediately for download, is intended for users seeking a fast, powerful and lightweight BitTorrent client without the need of the full features and complexity of the native GUI."

"The server is a daemonizable 32-bit binary of the µTorrent core, built for x86 compatible Linux. It can be managed programmatically via an HTTP API or interactively by using the (included) customized version of the popular uTorrent Web user interface." - was stated in the announcement.

Highlights of uTorrent Server:

· DHT support (Distributed Hash Table)
· UPnP port mapping
· NAT-PMP port mapping
· Upload rate limiting
· Download rate limiting
· Queuing support
· Configurable limit on number of simultaneously uploading peers
· Incremental file allocation
· Block level piece picking
· Separate threads for download and file-check
· Single port and single thread for multiple torrent downloads
· BitTorrent extension protocol
· Multi-tracker extension support
· Fair trade extension
· Compact tracker extension
· Fast resume support
· Queuing of torrent file-check if fast resume not possible
· HTTP seed support
· Resumption of partial downloads from other BitTorrent clients
· File-sizes greater than 2GB
· Selective download of multi-file torrents
· IPv6 support
· High performance network stack
· uTP - Advanced UDP-based transport with dynamic congestion control

At the moment, this alpha version of uTorrent Server for Linux is available only as an archive, intended to be used for testing purposes only. Packages for various Linux distributions (i.e. Ubuntu, Fedora) will be available in the next releases!

"Today's version is only the first step, and we will continue to support the Linux user community with new versions in the near future. If you prefer to stick to more conventional user experience, rest assured we are working hard to build a full-featured client, coming soon."

"µTorrent Linux will offer the same clean and full featured UI that millions of users of of µTorrent on Windows have enjoyed. We are hoping to get this out to you for testing in a few months. Stay tuned!"

Download uTorrent Server 3.0 Alpha for Linux right now here.

New - Google Posts Simplified Privacy Policies

Google has announced that it has updated its privacy policy and that the new version will come in effect starting October 3rd. The actual policies haven't changed, but the text has been simplified and some bits added to make the whole thing easier to read and understand by the regular user.

"Long, complicated and lawyerly—that's what most people think about privacy policies, and for good reason. Even taking into account that they’re legal documents, most privacy policies are still too hard to understand," Mike Yang, Associate General Counsel at Google, wrote.

"So we’re simplifying and updating Google’s privacy policies. To be clear, we aren’t changing any of our privacy practices; we want to make our policies more transparent and understandable," he explained.

One of the biggest changes taken towards simplifying the policies is getting rid of some of them. Most of Google's products are governed by the global Google Privacy Policy, but many have additional policies of their own.

Google is now getting rid of those for 12 products. This should make it easier to know which policy applies. Google notes that since may services share information and work together, they should have the same policies.

The second big change is to the main policy which is getting a rewrite. Some of the legal jargon is gone and some redundant parts have been removed. New content has bees added as well, where further details were needed, but, overall, the new text is smaller and easier to understand.

The new privacy policy is now available for review and will be implemented starting October 3rd. Google is providing a FAQ for the changes which should cover any uncertainties.

Google is also posting the full text of the new policy for users to get familiar with. Finally, there is also a version which shows exactly what has been removed and what has been added.

NVIDIA Releases 7 DirectX 11 Fermi Mobile GPUs

Coming to assist the GeForce GTX 480M in covering the laptop graphics market, seven new mobile graphics products have now been unveiled by NVIDIA, each boasting full support for DirectX 11 and aimed at the enthusiast and performance markets.

Though Advanced Micro Devices has been selling DirectX 11 mobile graphics cards for months, NVIDIA has had only the GeForce GTX 480M to address this market.

Eager to remedy this, the Santa Clara, California-based outfit took advantage of IFA 2010, Berlin, to trumpet the arrival of a whole collection of Fermi GPUs.

The list includes two GTX Series models, namely GTX 470M and GTX 460M, as well as five GT Series, specifically GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M.

The cards naturally support their maker's proprietary technologies, such as CUDA, PhysX and 3D Vision.

What's more, the 400M GPUs support the Optimus technology, which dynamically switches between the integrated and discrete graphics based on application requirements.

"The GeForce 400M Series takes the award-winning Fermi architecture across a complete line-up of DirectX 11 GPUs for notebook," said Rene Haas, general manager of notebook GPUs at NVIDIA.

"Coupled with Optimus technology, 400M Series notebook GPUs deliver great performance for visual computing applications when you need it, and great battery life when you don't," Haas added.

The newcomers have up to 288 processing cores, GPU clocks of up to 675 MHz, up to 1GB of GDDR3/GDDR5 and a memory width of up to 192 bits.

They should soon start to show up inside notebooks aimed at the enthusiast and performance markets, a fact confirmed by the fact that multiple laptop makers have already announced support for them.

The list of PC suppliers that intend to release Fermi-based mobile computers includes ASUS, Acer, Dell, Samsung, Lenovo and Toshiba, to name a few. Those interested in the specifications of each newcomer need only visit this page( http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html ).

Email happiness: Gmail now sorts your inbox :-)

Yay, last week Google announced the launch of Gmail priority and the beta's finally reached me.  Multiple Gmail accounts, used for personal and work stuff means a LOT of emails so now I can get the important stuff flagged up and reaching me first.

So we'll give it a whirl and see what happens. I'd have given it a go just for the sake of a nice combination of animation and soundtrack in the explanatory video!



I'll be interested to see if / how it works on my Android based phone too.