Cody Taylor

homesalad writes “Researchers in Toronto have discovered a huge international electronic spying operation that they are calling ‘GhostNet.’ So far it has infiltrated government and corporate offices in 103 countries, including the office of the Dalai Lama (who originally went to the researchers for help analyzing a suspected infiltration). The operation appears to be based in China, and the information gained has been used to interfere with the actions of the Dalai Lama and to thwart individuals seeking to help Tibetan exiles. The researchers found no evidence of infiltration of US government computers, although machines at the Indian embassy were compromised. Here is he researchers’ summary; a full report, ‘Tracking “GhostNet”: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network’ will be issued this weekend.” A separate academic group in the UK that helped with the research is issuing its own report, expected to be available on March 29. Here is the abstract. They seem to be putting more stress on the “social malware” nature of the attack and ways to mitigate such techniques.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My H.264 videos were not really playing well with the regular codecs on my ubuntu 8.04 64 bit desktop box.
It’s my primary workstation so this blew. I looked into getting coreavc on linux. There are apparently a number of ways to do this.
This is how I did it and the issues/problems that I had getting it to work.

CoreAVC is a high performance video codec for the H.264 video format. It is not free. While it would be very easy to find a license in some dark corner of the web that is unethical.

Researching coreavc and linux on google got me this link.
I decided to go the xine way because I’ve already got Kaffiene using xine and it seems to playback smoother than mplayer.
Except for the load times which blow.

Turns out I had to install dshowserver which seems to be a way to use coreavc with all normal media players on Ubuntu.
Dshowserver is also the only supported way to use coreavc with xine.
Since I’m using 64 bit I downloaded the static libraries from here.
Put those binaries in their proper places by typing the following commands at your ubuntu command line:

cd /place/where/I/put/files
sudo cp dshowserver /usr/local/bin
sudo cp ../loader/registercodec /usr/local/bin 

Using Wine I then installed CoreAVC and moved the CoreAVCDecoder.ax from it’s installed directory to /usr/lib/win32.
That directory didn’t exist so I had to create it using

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/win32

I tried to verify that it was working with this command:

dshowserver -c CoreAVCDecoder.ax -s 1280x720 -g 09571a4b-f1fe-4c60-9760de6d310c7c31 -b 12 -f 0x34363248 -o 0x30323449

It errored out on me with this output:

No id specified, assuming test mode
Opening device
Called unk_IsDebuggerPresent
Creating new registry
MSGBOX 'Serial Number Missing!' 'CoreAVC Professional Edition' (327680)
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: 
Warning: DS_Filter() could not open DirectShow DLL.  (DLL=CoreAVCDecoder.ax)
Failed to create DirectShow filter
Failed to open win32 codec CoreAVCDecoder.ax

Apparently my license wasn’t found. It would be nice if Wine took care of that but I guess I have to do it manually.
I found some instructions here.

First execute this from the ubuntu command line:

export REGISTRY=$HOME/.mplayer/registry32

Then

registercodec -r $REGISTRY -k "HKLM\\Software\\CoreCodec\\CoreAVC Pro\\Serial" -v "55555-55555-CORE-55555-55555"

where 55555-55555-CORE-55555-55555 is your personal serial number.

To finish up execute :

registercodec -r $REGISTRY -k "HKLM\\Software\\IniFileMapping\\CoreAVC\\Settings\\C:\\coreavc.ini" -v "ilevels=2 olevels=2 di=3 deblock=7 ai=0 crop1088=0 vmr_ar=0" 

Now when I execute the same linux command:

dshowserver -c CoreAVCDecoder.ax -s 1280x720 -g 09571a4b-f1fe-4c60-9760de6d310c7c31 -b 12 -f 0x34363248 -o 0x30323449

I get a this output from dshowserver:

No id specified, assuming test mode
Opening device
Called unk_IsDebuggerPresent
len: 992
ProductVersion: 1.7.0
Decoder supports the following YUV formats: YUY2 UYVY YV12 I420 
Decoder is capable of YUV output (flags 0x2b)
Setting fmt
Starting
Initialization is complete

Which is good.

Now time for the xine patch for coreavc.
The guide said I needed the source files so I go here and download both
xine-lib-1.1.15.tar.bz2 and xine-ui-0.99.5.tar.gz
I extract them both and, back to the terminal, I change my working directory to the path to the xine-lib source directiory that I just downloaded and extracted.
Then I run the patch command:

patch -p1 < <path to coreavc-for-linux>/xine/dshowserver.patch

This is the output I got from the xine patch:

patching file src/libxinevdec/Makefile.am
patching file src/libxinevdec/dshowserver.c
patching file src/libxinevdec/nal_parser.c
patching file src/libxinevdec/nal_parser.h

While still in the xine-lib directory I try to compile xine using:

./configure
make

Which gives me these error messages:

gcc: /usr/lib/libasound.so: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [xineplug_ao_out_alsa.la] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/thadeus/core_avc/xine-lib-1.1.15/src/audio_out'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/thadeus/core_avc/xine-lib-1.1.15/src'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

I check to make sure I have alsa installed properly. I do.
So I look around the /usr/lib folder for something odd.
Turns out libasound.so.2 is in there….Not sure what the 2 is for so I copy the libasound.so.2 to libsound.so:

sudo cp libasound.so.2 libasound.so

I try compile xine again.
After maxing out my CPU for longer than I expected I finally get back to the prompt.
Time to try installing.

sudo make install

All seemed well. Now the H.264 files run relatively well using the coreAVC codec on my primary ubuntu desktop….although not as good as my windows boxes.
Thats the price I pay for using Linux.

-Cody Taylor

Getting a little bored how your photos are presented online? How about injecting some fun and humour into it. You don’t really need to be Photoshop literate

The law is slowly but surely evolving to try and prevent piracy from taking place, and when it does, to prosecute people suspected of illegal file-sharing. Which obviously isn’t good for The Pirate Bay, which is seeking to sneak around the problem with IPREDator.

If you have OnStar in your car, you may soon be able to send and receive hands-free Tweets through OnStar’s voice-activated calling system.

Imagine charging your cell phone or iPod by waving your hand, or stretching your arm, or taking a stroll. Well, it could be a reality soon.

Computer systems are essentially split in two categories. The first and most obvious category is that of personal computers. The second one is that of embedded computers. Even if every house has al least 10 embedded computers, this last category is far less obvious…

The average American adult spends eight hours a day in front of screens, and computer use has replaced radio as the second most common media activity.

This week’s news coverage of another online storage company’s data loss has people weighing in on whether “cloud computing” storage poses an unacceptable security risk.

N!NJA writes in with a Register story on a lawsuit filed against Acer for selling Windows Vista on an underpowered notebook. Of course anybody can sue for anything; it will be interesting to see if this action goes forward in the courts. “With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world’s third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-0 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory. In its official “recommended system requirements,” Microsoft recommends that an additional 128MB is required to run the Premium incarnation of its latest desktop operating system. … Microsoft says that the Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions of Vista will run on 512MB systems — with certain OS features disabled. In the beginning, Redmond called these ‘Vista Capable’ machines, and it’s facing a separate lawsuit over this potentially misleading moniker.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.