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DevelopmentBASE, the Basic Analysis and Security EngineThe BASE project (Basic Analysis and Security Engine) is a tool for network security monitoring:
This application provides a web front-end to query and analyze the alerts coming from a SNORT IDS system.
BASE is a web interface to perform analysis of intrusions that snort has detected on your network. It uses a user authentication and role-base system, so that you as the security admin can decide what and how much information each user can see. It also has a simple to use, web-based setup program for people not comfortable with editing files directly.
To understand BASE, one must first look at SNORT, an open-source Network Intrusion Detection System. The SNORT description says:
Snort is an open source network intrusion detection system, capable of performing real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. It can perform protocol analysis, content searching/matching and can be used to detect a variety of attacks and probes, such as buffer overflows, stealth port scans, CGI attacks, SMB probes, OS fingerprinting attempts, and much more.
BASE uses its web-based interface to make access to the intrusion monitoring data simple. See the BASE screenshots (big and slow) to see how the system is used for monitoring network traffic, zooming in on interesting activity, and generating statistical reports. Base has been written by a relatively small group of developers and translators. Base is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It runs on many Unix variants as well as Windows. The software is written in Perl, PHP, Tcl, and the Unix Shell. The BASE project summary has more general information. Version 1.0 of BASE was announced this week: "This release includes many bug fixes over previous releases of BASE and ACID. It also is the first release to include the Flow-Portscan preprocessor patch. It also has support for multiple languages, with 11 languages included in the package. It also has a fully functional user authentication and role-basing system." Security administrators should find BASE and SNORT to be useful tools for monitoring their networks. The software is available for download here.
System Applications Database Software PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Beta 5 Now AvailableVersion 8.0.0 Beta 5 of the PostgreSQL database has been released. "Its been almost 4 weeks since Beta4, and alot of work, involving alot of bug fixes, and documentation improvements, to the source tree, we have just released our 5th Beta of 8.0.0. All of our major Open Items have now been completed, and we're slowly entering the final stages, involving alot of testing and documentation changes."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe November 22, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with the week's latest PostgreSQL database articles and resources.
Introducing Slony (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly is running an introductory article on Slony, a database replication package. "Slony is an experimental new feature intended to introduce powerful replication to PostgreSQL. It's a complicated problem, though. Elein Mustain introduces the Slony project, its aims, and the goals of Slony-I, the first milestone."
Interoperability Samba 3.0.9 Available for DownloadStable version 3.0.9 of Samba is out. "This is the version that production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes. There have been several important issues fixes since the 3.0.8 release."
Printing New hpnpf is availableA new release of hpnpf, an alternate backend for driving PostScript printers using the HP PJL language, is available. "After some bug fixes today it additionally supports raw printing of PCL data."
Web Site Development Magnolia 2.0 CMS released (SourceForge)Version 2.0 of Magnolia, a cross-platform content management system (CMS), has been announced. "The Magnolia 2.0 CMS combines an outstanding GUI, great usability, web-based deplyoment and J2EE enterprise strength. It is the first open source CMS using JSR-170, the "Java Content Repository API."
Cross-Language Remoting with mod_perlservice (O'Reilly)Michael Collins looks at mod_perlservice on O'Reilly. "Mod_perlservice is a cool, new way to do remoting -- sharing data between server and client processes -- with Perl and Apache. Let's start by breaking that crazy name apart: mod + perl + service."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Audacity 1.2.3 releasedVersion 1.2.3 of Audacity us available. "Audacity 1.2.3 is a new stable version of the free Audacity sound editor. This release fixes a bug that interfered with long recordings on some Windows systems, and another bug that causes random crashes on Mac OS X. It also includes several updated translations, and some other minor bug fixes and improvements."
Desktop Environments Around the Planet (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org has an Around the Planet summary that includes: "Happenings from the past week broadcast on PlanetGNOME..."
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The November 19, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest has been published. Here's the content summary: "Kicker rewrite merged into HEAD for further testing. New Kontact summary plugin for dates and holidays. kttsd adds support for Festival 2.0 MultiSyn voices. KDevelop has a new Ruby source code debugger."
Desktop Publishing New LGPL font: Essays 1743 1.0 (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org has an announcement for a new font. "I've released another LGPL font, Essays 1743, based on the typeface used in a 1743 English translation of Montaigne's Essays.
Electronics Open Collector ReleasesThe latest new electronics applications on Open Collector include VTracer 1.4 (a Verilog Testbench developer aid), and a new release of the fpga4fun FPGA tutorials, projects and boards project.
Financial Applications CK-ERP v.0.10.1 released (SourceForge)Version 0.10.1 of CK-ERP has been announced. This release adds a new vendor relationship management module. "CK-ERP is an open source accounting/ERP/CRM system that runs on top of phpGroupWare. It comprises 18 modules - Admin, Contact Management, Customer Relationship, Vendor Relationship, Ledger, Bank Reconciliation, Inventory, Service, AP, AR, PO, SO, Quotation, POS for Cashier, POS for Manager, HR, Staff Self Service and Payroll. Operating platform can either be LAMP or LAPP."
Games Cyphesis 0.3.6 ReleasedVersion 0.3.6 of Cyphesis, a small to medium scale server for WorldForge games, has been released. Changes include a cleaver tool for butchering pigs, an axe tool for chopping down trees, packaging improvements, and more.
GUI Packages Initial release of the Lit Window LibraryThe wxWidgets site mentions the first release of the Lit Window Library. "The first public release of Hajo Kirchoff's Lit Window Library (for C++) is now available at from LitWindow itself. The goal of The Lit Window Library is to speed up C++ GUI coding by a factor of 10. It greatly reduces the amount of work needed to code user interface requirements. This is not just another "better widgets" library. The library introduces two new, different concepts to UI coding: a data abstraction layer (reflections) and rule-based programming."
Usable GUI Design: A Quick Guide for F/OSS Developers (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org points to a useful article on open-source user interface design. "Free and open source software is often criticised for being less usable than its commercial equivalent. Good user interface design isn't some magical thing that FOSS developers can't do for themselves, however. Benjamin Roe has written a short article describing five key points of good interface design that any developer can use in their projects."
Imaging Applications Caliph 0.9.13 and Emir 0.8.5 released (SourceForge)New releases of Caliph and Emir have been announced. "Recently a major update on Caliph and Emir was released. Caliph & Emir are MPEG-7 based Java prototypes for digital photo and image annotation and retrieval supporting graph like annotation for semantic metadata and content based image retrieval using MPEG-7 descriptors."
Second preview of GIMP 2.2 (GnomeDesktop)The second pre-release of the GIMP version 2.2 has been announced. "Unless major problems show up, the GIMP 2.2.0 release is supposed to follow later this month." See the NEWS document for change details.
Instant Messaging XChat 2.4.1 ReleasedVersion 2.4.1 of XChat, a multi-platform IRC client, is available. This release features bug fixes, performance improvements, and more, see the changelog file for details.
Music Applications BEAST/BSE v0.6.3 announcedVersion 0.6.3 of BEAST/BSE, the BEdevilled Audio SysTem and the Bedevilled Sound Engine, has been released. "Outstanding new features include support for skins, many sample file formats, MIDI file import abilities, an improved piano roll widget, the track editor which allows for easy selection of synthesisers or samples as track sources, loop support in songs, mixer support, unlimited Undo/Redo capabilities and MIDI automation."
liblo 0.15 announcedVersion 0.15 of liblo, an implementation of the Open Sound Control protocol for POSIX systems, has been released. "This release adds some OSX compatibility fixes from Taybin Rutkin, support for OSC multipath pattern matching courtesy of Daniel Holth's pattern matcher and I've added bundle i/o."
Soundtank 1.0.1 releasedVersion 1.0.1 of Soundtank, an application that allows LADSPA plugins to be used as a software synthesizer, is out. "Release 1.0.1 contains many useability improvements, including the ability to refer to object controls & data ports by their names as well as their indexes."
Office Suites KOffice 1.3.5 Released (KDE.News)KDE.News has the announcement for version 1.3.5 of the KOffice office suite. "The KOffice team is happy to bring you the fifth bugfix release of KOffice. KOffice 1.3.5 features a new language (Breton), the PDF import filter includes a stronger security fix and there are also a few fixes for the OpenOffice.org Impress Export Filter."
PDA Software PalmDB 1.3.6 releasedVersion 1.3.6 of PalmDB, a "Pure Python library to read/write/modify Palm PDB and PRC format databases", is available.
Web Browsers Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 5 Released (MozillaZine)Version 1.8 Alpha 5 of the Mozilla browser has been announced. "This latest alpha version of the Mozilla Application Suite features around 600 bug fixes."
Miscellaneous Pooter 3.0 is outVersion 3.0 of Pooter, a multi-platform personal information manager, has been released.
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe November 16-23, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online with a new round of Caml language articles.
Java Java theory and practice: Going atomic (IBM developerWorks)Brian Goetz covers atomic variables under JDK 5.0 on IBM developerWorks. "Until JDK 5.0, it was not possible to write wait-free, lock-free algorithms in the Java language without using native code. The addition of the atomic variable classes in java.util.concurrent changes that situation. Follow along with concurrency expert Brian Goetz as he explains how these new classes have enabled the development of highly scalable nonblocking algorithms in the Java language."
Dynamic Delegation and Its Applications (O'ReillyNet)Lu Jian examines the Proxy pattern on O'Reilly. "Proxy, introduced in Java 1.3, offers an interesting way to provide an interface's implementation at runtime, but there's more that can be done. Lu Jian shows how bytecode manipulation can be used to provide dynamic delegation, allowing you to provide runtime implementations of interfaces, abstract classes, and even concrete classes."
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The November 1-9, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is available. here's the content summary: "In this beginning of November, the porters have discussed about regression tests, using new functions from the C library when they're found, the roadmap for perl 5.10, optimisations, signals, and other miscellaneous topics."
PostScript AFPL Ghostscript 8.33 beta releaseBeta release 8.33 of AFPL Ghostscript has been announced. "This is the fourth testing release of our development tree toward the 8.50 major release. We believe this to be a candidate for release quality; we expect to follow it shortly with the first stable release."
BarcodeWriter 1.1 releasedStable version 1.1 of BarcodeWriter is available. "A few times I have needed to implement routines that output Adobe PostScript for the purpose of printing barcodes in several different languages. Recently this has provoked me to cook up the following routine that implements the printing of barcodes entirely within level 2 PostScript. This means that the entire process of converting the input string into the printed output is performed by the printer itself, thus avoiding the need to reimplement the barcode generation process whenever your language needs change."
Python Python 2.4 rc1 is outRelease candidate 1 of Python 2.4 has been announced. "Notable changes in rc1 include a handful of bug fixes, including a thread shutdown race bug." See A.M. Kuchling's What's New in Python 2.4 document for details.
python-dev SummaryThe October 1-15, 2004 edition of the python-dev Summary is online with coverage of activity on the python-dev mailing list.
PyCLIPS beta 1.0_06 released (SourceForge)Beta version 1.0_06 of PyCLIPS has been announced. "PyCLIPS is a Python module to interface the CLIPS expert system shell library. This new release contains many fixes and enhancements, as the test suite is becoming more complete and users give their feedback about the module. An upgrade is suggested for everyone who regularly uses PyCLIPS since many serious errors have been corrected."
gnome-python 2.9.0 (unstable)Unstable version 2.9.0 of gnome-python, the Python language bindings to the GNOME developer platform libraries, are out. "This release contains some internal reorganisations in the modules, as previously announced in pygtk list."
gnome-python-extras 2.9.0 (unstable)Unstable version 2.9.0 of the gnome-python-extras have been announced. "This is a companion release to gnome-python 2.9.0, containing the modules that were removed from it due to wrapping libraries not part of the GNOME Developer Platform."
urwid 0.8.4 releasedVersion 0.8.4 of urwid, a curses-based UI library for Python, is out. Changes include better Cyrillic support, new screenshot functionality, improved input debugging, and more.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The November 22, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with a new collection of Python article links.
Ruby Extending Ruby with C (O'ReillyNet)Garrett Rooney explains how to extend Ruby in an O'Reilly article. "High-level languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby are very effective for application development, but linking them to existing C libraries is tedious, isn't it? Not really. As Garrett Rooney demonstrates, writing Ruby bindings for C libraries is easier than you might think."
Build Tools make: The Evolution and Alternatives (O'ReillyNet)Andy Oram and Robert Mecklenburg discuss the make utility on O'Reilly. "The make utility is an enticing servant, always there and always accommodating. Like the indispensable sidekicks found in many novels and movies, make starts out as the underappreciated supplicant to whom you throw a few odd jobs, and then gradually takes over the entire enterprise."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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