Btrfs (B-tree FS or "Butter FS"^[1][2]) is a copy-on-write file system for Linux announced by Oracle in 2007 and published under the GNU General Public License (GPL).^[3] It originated as a response to the ZFS filesystem and is expected to be free of many of the limitations that other Linux filesystems currently have.^{[citation needed]}

Btrfs is under heavy development and the current release is only intended for testing. Btrfs v0.18 was released January 2009.^[4] Plans existed for releasing Btrfs v1.0 (with finalized on-disk format) in late 2008,^[5] however this date has since passed and a new timeline for final release has not yet emerged as of April 2009^[update].

Btrfs ("B-tree FS," pronounced "Butter F S"^[1]) is a GPL-licensed copy-on-write file system for Linux announced by Oracle in 2007.^[2]

Btrfs is intended to address the lack of a file system in Linux with pooling, snapshots, checksums and integral multi-device spanning—features crucial as the use of Linux scales upward into larger storage configurations common in the enterprise.^[3] It is expected to offer a feature set comparable to that of Sun's ZFS.^[4] Chris Mason, the principal author of the filesystem, has stated its goal was "to let Linux scale for the storage that will be available. Scaling is not just about addressing the storage but also means being able to administer and to manage it with a clean interface that lets people see what's being used and makes it more reliable."^[5]

Oracle has also begun work on CRFS (Coherent Remote File System), a network filesystem protocol intended to leverage the Btrfs architecture to gain higher performance than existing protocols (such as NFS and CIFS) and to expose Btrfs features such as snapshots to remote clients.^[6]

Btrfs 1.0 (with finalized on-disk format) was originally slated for a late 2008 release,^[7] but as of August 2009^[update] is still not yet ready for production use. It has, however, been accepted into the mainline kernel for testing as of 2.6.29rc1.^[8]

The principal developer of the ext3 and ext4 file systems, Theodore Ts'o, has stated that ext4 is simply a stop-gap and that Btrfs is the way forward,^[9] having "a number of the same design ideas that reiser3/4 had".^[10]

Opera Unite: a Web server in the Web browser

With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses the power of today's fast connections and hardware, allowing all of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com.

Opera Unite is, as of this writing, available for download and testing in an alpha version. The company's information about its functionality and usability is very interesting reading.

Some examples from the project's dedicated web site shows that functionality like the following will be available:

• Host your Web sites running from your own computer.
• Share your personal photos with friends around the world without the need to upload them.
• A fun place for people to leave notes on your computer.
• A simple and safe way to share files directly from your computer.
• Opera Unite services can be accessed from any modern browser, including mobile browsers

AMTSO Fundamental Principles of Testing


AMTSO Fundamental Principles of Testing as approved by the AMTSO meeting held in Oxford 31st October 2008.

AMTSO Best Practices for Dynamic Testing



AMTSO Best Practices for Dynamic Testing as approved by the AMTSO meeting held in Oxford 31st October 2008

AMTSO Best Practices for Validation of Samples



AMTSO Best Practices for validation of samples as approved by the AMTSO meeting held in Budapest 7th May 2009

AMTSO Best Practices for Testing In-the-Cloud Security Products



AMTSO Best Practices for Testing In-the-Cloud Security Products as approved by the AMTSO meeting held in Budapest 7th May 2009

AMTSO Analysis of Reviews Process



AMTSO Analysis of Reviews Process as approved by the AMTSO meeting held in Budapest 7th May 2009

This exact virus, Induc.A, has been very “successful” – it has at least existed since around December 2008, infecting files silently without anyone noticing it. How is this possible?

The first reason the virus has not been noticed is that it does not touch any of the files that normally are under scrutiny by security tools. Instead it replaces a file in the popular Delphi programming environment with itself. This file, sysconst.pas, is compiled into a file called sysconst.dcu and imported into almost all Delphi projects created. From now on, the programmers themselves create new infected files without knowing.

Robin Wilton, a corporate architect for federated identity at Sun, described OpenID's reliance on the integrity of the Domain Name System (DNS) as a "multi-factor problem" in light of the discovery of a fundamental flaw in DNS by security researcher Dan Kaminsky.

"You may have seen the recent announcements about DNS cache poisoning, and the potential effect of this on all kinds of Internet-based applications' security," Wilton wrote in a blog post on Friday. "One area in which it can have a particularly significant impact is OpenID."

The node access system determines who can do what to which nodes.

In determining access rights for a node, node_access() first checks
whether the user has the "administer nodes" permission. Such users have
unrestricted access to all nodes. Then the node module's hook_access()
is called, and a TRUE or FALSE return value will grant or deny access.
This allows, for example, the blog module to always grant access to the
blog author, and for the book module to always deny editing access to
PHP pages.

If node module does not intervene (returns NULL), then the
node_access table is used to determine access. All node access
modules are queried using hook_node_grants() to assemble a list of
"grant IDs" for the user. This list is compared against the table.
If any row contains the node ID in question (or 0, which stands for "all
nodes"), one of the grant IDs returned, and a value of TRUE for the
operation in question, then access is granted. Note that this table is a
list of grants; any matching row is sufficient to grant access to the
node.

In node listings, the process above is followed except that
hook_access() is not called on each node for performance reasons and for
proper functioning of the pager system. When adding a node listing to your
module, be sure to use db_rewrite_sql() to add
the appropriate clauses to your query for access checks.

To see how to write a node access module of your own, see
node_access_example.module.

The development of Drupal Field API obligates us to look at taxonomy.module to keep it relevant and modern. The concerns At Drupalcon DC, Benjamin Melançon (ben-agaric) and Benjamin Doherty (bangpound) began to look at this problem and untie it. Here's what we propose.

Module reorganization

Taxonomy.module should primarily contain features for the management of controlled vocabularies: CRUD of vocabularies and terms, describing the hierarchy of terms, and other features that may or may not be fully developed yet: synonymy, term relationships.

A new module called term.module will be the field module that will replace all or most of taxonomy.module's nodeapi functionality. Hopefully it will do more, too.

Field widgets also need some development. Currently, we're using Options.module select widgets, but we shouldn't limit ourselves only to that widget. Tagging autocompletion widget will need to be built.

Tagging features live in taxonomy.module because there had been a significant overlap in the functional, UI and data requirements with taxonomy.module's support for controlled vocabularies. However, this overlap will become much less significant. I'd like to solicit the community's ideas about how to move tagging into a rational place in Drupal 7 and this proposal. We certainly do not propose abandoning tagging at all. We simply need to know where it fits in a Drupal 7 where taxonomy.module lets us manage vocabularies and term.module lets us put terms on things.

But the Pentagon's decision to hold back during past conflicts for fear of the potential collateral damage -- revealed in a Saturday report in The New York Times -- seems justified, security experts say.

The prospective national ID card was broken and cloned in 12 minutes, the Daily Mail revealed this morning.

The newspaper hired computer expert Adam Laurie to test the security that protects the information embedded in the chip on the card.

Using a Nokia mobile phone and a laptop computer, Laurie was able to copy the data on a card that is being issued to foreign nationals in minutes.

He then created a cloned card, and with help from another technology expert, changed all the data on the new card. This included the physical details of the bearer, name, fingerprints and other information.