After a long hiatus and some major code overhaul, here you are, version 0.9 of udis86/. I'll be posting a HOWTO on using libudis86, soon. From the website -

Udis86 is an easy-to-use minimalistic disassembler library (libudis86) for the x86 and x86-64 (AMD64) range of instruction set architectures. The primary intent of the design and development of udis86 is to aid software development projects that entail binary code analysis.

Salient features of libudis86:

• Full support for the x86 and x86-64 (AMD64) ISAs.
• Includes support for all MMX, SSE, FPU(x87), and AMD 3Dnow! Instructions
• Supports 16/32/64 Bits disassembly modes.
• Capable of generating output in AT&T or INTEL assembly language syntax.
• Plugin-in based model for customizing ouput syntax.
• Supports different types of inputs - File, Buffered, and Hooks.
• Thread-safe and Reentrant.
• API consists of multi-level wrappers for fine-grained control over the decoder.

The package also includes udcli - a tiny command line tool based on libudis86, which accepts binary input from STDIN and prints the disassembled output to STDOUT. The code serves as a good example of how you can use libudis86.

James Anderson, a graduate student of University of California (San Diego), has come up with a solution for managing multiple upto-date copies of files across a network of computers and other devices including PDAs, Laptops etc, without manual user intervention. He calls his invention 'Transparent Synchronization' (Tsync). Released under an opensource license (GPL), and currently in its beta state, Tsync is a Google SoC project.

Tsync is a user-level daemon that provides transparent synchronization for one or more data volumes (directory trees) amongst a set of computers. Tsync uses a peer-to-peer architecture for scalability, efficiency, and robustness, which ensures that each node remains connected with all other connected nodes. The overlay network also provides a scalable means by which a Tsync node can learn about other hosts, besides the bootstrap host with which it was configured. Tsync uses strong authentication and encryption: hosts authenticate each other using the OpenSSH RSA-key authentication mechanism, and all data is encrypted using the symmetric key cryptography.

James Anderson is one among the elite group of 13 exceptions out of 400 students who were invited to work with Google as the sponsoring agency.

• Time-Saving Tool: Google Galvanizes Invention By UCSD Student During Summer Of Code
• Tsync - Sourceforge Project Page
• Tsync HOWTO
• Homepage of James Anderson

Xen is the new kid in the virtualization arena, receiving well deserved attention from the industry and the academia, with some really big players betting on it.

Xen is an open source virtual machine monitor, or hypervisor, developed by the University of Cambridge. It has a design goal of being able to run 100 full featured OS instances on a single typical computer. Xen provides secure isolation, resource control, quality of service guarantees, and live migration of virtual machines.

Linux Journal is featuring an introductory article on Xen and its design. A nice, moderately technical read: Introduction to the Xen Virtual Machine

A Wireless LAN (WLAN) is a Wireless Local Area Network that uses radio waves as its carrier. The backbone network is usually wired and provides one or more wireless access points connecting the wireless devices to the wired network. So, communication distance is often constrained by the availability and location of access points. A Wireless Mesh Network on the other hand relies on all the nodes in the network to facilitate communication, thus extending the transmission distance upto the farthest node, where each node has atleast one reachable neighboring node that is closer to the base station. Since each node acts like a repeater in mesh networks, the more the number of nodes, the more the bandwith and the stronger the signal that reaches the access point.

If you are looking for a definition of a Mesh Network -

A mesh network is a network that employs one of two connection arrangements, full mesh topology or partial mesh topology. In the full mesh topology, each node is connected directly to each of the others. In the partial mesh topology, nodes are connected to only some, not all, of the other nodes.

• Wireless Mesh Networking (O'Reilly Network)
• From the Editor: Mesh Networking Matters (TechnologyReview.com)

Last week, PacketHop released its TrueMesh mobile mesh networking software and a suite of multimedia applications that provide instant wireless group communication. According to InformationWeek -

The concept could be especially useful for law-enforcements agencies that need to set up a network around an incident scene. They can use the suite of multimedia applications to instant message each other, send photos of suspects, whiteboard on the photos, and stream video if they have cameras connected to their mobile devices. Additionally, they can locate and track different law-enforcement units that are part of the network on electronic maps.

Oh Man, its becoming more and more clear. Google is going to take over the internet world !!!!!

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk offers you:

* Choice: Get in touch over email, IM or a call

* Quality: Talk through your computer but hear your friends as if they were in the same room

* Convenience: Your Gmail contacts are pre-loaded into Google Talk so inviting or talking to your friends is just a click away

Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

Get it now on http://google.com/talk

Take a look of Google Talk to feel the simplicity and power

From Samurize News:

Samurize is the popular advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003. IT professionals, overclockers, gamers and desktop modders alike use Samurize for system information, weather reports, news headlines and much much more. And best of all, Samurize is 100% free!

You've been envious of your friends with uber cool Linux desktops having those transparent consoles and all that geeky information displayed on the desktop. Now you can have all that without swithing to Linux ;-)

Google Code:

Code.google.com is our[Google] site for external developers interested in Google-related development. It’s where we’ll publish free source code and lists of our API services.

Projects include "Core Dumper", "Sparse Hashtable", "Perftools" etc.

From TinyP2P:

TinyP2P is a functional peer-to-peer file sharing application, written in fifteen lines of code, in the Python programming language. I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless.

This is something really amazing. It shows how absurdly easy it is for information to be dispersed via P2P since almost any programmer can write such an application. It provides an insight into the largely free (as in beer, and speech) atmosphere that revolves around the web these days, and asks traditional economies to redo their business so as to profit from such an atmosphere, not at the expense of it.

The Gnome desktop puts a heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability and making things "just work", so a lot of its customizable aspects are not presented (as preference dialogs or menus) to the end user and are left to be discovered by the power users. The end-users are given a rich, feature filled desktop that satiates their needs, and as for the power-users seeking more out of their desktop, a conspicuous trail of breadcrumbs leading to desktop nirvana :). The following is a list of links to Gnome related tips, tricks, hacks etc., in no particular order.