AMD unveils revolutionary 'Mantle' API to optimize GPU performance!!!

At AMD's GPU14 Tech Day event in Hawaii, alongside the brand new Radeon R9 290X GPU, the company has also unveiled a new development model called 'Mantle'. As a combination of both API specifications and GPU drivers, Mantle will allow developers to fully unlock the graphics potential of the GCN architecture of the new (and likely the previous) Radeon series, through low-level high-performance drivers.

Battlefield 4 will be the first title to use Mantle, with the technology coming through a free update in December. Mantle brings greater control of the GPU and CPU to game developers, especially in the memory department, which will allow games to harness the full potential of graphics cards. This model will be more similar to what is found on consoles, where developers have huge control over what hardware they use in their games.

While the technology is still in early stages, EA says it will allow PC game developers to harness even more graphics power than ever before. Where possible, Mantle will be used instead of DirectX 11 on compatible AMD hardware, although it's still compatible with other rendering APIs. AMD claims Mantle enables nine times more draw calls per second than other APIs, which is a huge increase in performance.

We've been told at the GPU14 Tech Day event that the Mantle API is open, so theoretically Nvidia could purpose the technology in their GPUs. It should also make cross-development between PC and console games a lot easier, and also more incredible for those with a high-performance AMD GPU.

More information on Mantle will be available at the AMD Developer Summit in November.

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RealNetworks launches RealPlayer Cloud, cross-platform storage and video playback service!!!

RealNetworks has entered the cloud storage market with their just-released RealPlayer Cloud app. The service, which offers 2GB of free storage to new users, differentiates itself from the crowd of cloud storage providers in that it’s designed to store and share video clips only. 

Described by CEO Rob Glaser as the biggest product release they’ve done in a long time, the idea for RealPlayer Cloud came about after realizing they had a strong user base on the PC with no focus on the future. Their business model didn’t apply to mobile so the team started out by focusing on a few use cases before ultimately realizing what they were shooting for could be spread across multiple platforms.

RealPlayer Cloud is said to combine their existing media player technology with a cloud backend. This, according to Glaser, allows different aspects of the platform to run in the background to make sure videos are viewable across multiple platforms – a technology they call SurePlay. Users are even able to share videos with people that don’t have RealPlayer Cloud. Just send them a link and they should be able to watch your video through most any device with a modern browser.

As mentioned earlier, the service will use a freemium model with 2GB free for new users. Technically, it’s more than 2GB as the company stores multiple versions of each video in the cloud to ensure seamless playback across all devices.  If you need more space, premium plans start at $4.99 per month.

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Amazon offers free offline instant videos to Prime members!!!

Amazon updated its line of Kindle Fire tablets with two new models today, and now someinteresting news surrounding how the company's instant video service will work on the new devices has now surfaced.

Not only do the new Kindle Fire HDX tabletsboast higher res displays, overall upgraded specs and a more compact footprint, they will also allow users to download Amazon's instant video content to view offline for free, the company announced today. As many have said, this is the first time a US based paid streaming outlet has implemented this kind of functionality.

The feature, available to Prime members, will allow you to download a TV Show or movie with up to 30 days to start watching it, and 48 hours to complete it once its been started. This is certainly great news for Prime members and Kindle owners, but only a portion of the instant video library is available through this feature.

Amazon says only a certain subset of videos will be included without having put out any specific details. According to the company, even though certain rights holders haven't signed on yet, the movies and TV shows available are still somewhere in the "tens of thousands" range. Some have suggested that this could amount to around half of the service's current 41,000 titles.

So far Amazon has partnered up with some of the major players in the space including CBS, NBC, Viacom, Sony and Warner Bros . Users can expect to see titles like Under the Dome, Downton Abbey, Justified, Dora the Explorer, and Goodfellas, to name a few.

While Google previously announced similar functionality coming to its mobile applications, and even though this is the very first time a paid subscription based service has offered this feature, its likely not enough to make Amazon's video service stand out anymore than it already does (doesn't).

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YouTube launches royalty-free music library with 150 tracks!!!

YouTube on Wednesday launched the Audio Library, a collection of 150 royalty-free tracks that video makers can use to accompany their footage. The music is available to any YouTube user and can be sorted by mood, genre, instrument or duration.

As YouTube outlines in their blog post on the subject, the right song can create a magical moment while the wrong one can kill the mood in no time flat. It’s easy to slap any old tune as background music for your video but that’s not exactly a great idea when the YouTube copyright police catch wind and yank your video from the site.

That’s not an issue if you use royalty-free tracks. YouTube’s collection includes all different genres of instrumentals including rock, R&B, jazz & blues, pop, hip hop & rap, alternative& punk and reggae, just to name a few. Tracks are also rated by mood so you can get an idea of what each song consists of without having to preview everything.

Track usage isn’t limited to YouTube use, either. Under the royalty-free designation, tunes can be used for any creative purpose for free, forever. Each track is available to download as a 320 kbps MP3 file for this very reason.

You can check out the royalty-free offerings by following the link in your video manager under creation tools. Also, if you know nay musicians interested in contributing to the library, drop YouTube a line.

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Installing Glassfish on Ubuntu 12.04

This is what I needed to do to get the Glassfish application server running on Ubuntu 12.04.

a) Install JRE for Ubuntu 12.04. Download the version applicable for you from the official website.

b) Configure your system to use the JRE you just downloaded. You can do this as follows:

---- First add the version of JRE you downloaded to the list on your system.

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /bin/java 0

---- Then ensure that all Java programs will use that version.

sudo update-alternatives --config java

c) Install a JAR archiving program. I used Fastjar from the apt repository.


sudo apt-get install fastjar

d) Download the Java EE SDK with Glassfish and JDK from the official website. Make sure you download the version applicable to you.

e) Once the download is complete ensure that the file can be run. If it doesn't have executable permissions, run chmod 755 to make it executable.

f) Run the installer using ./filename and follow the prompts. If you're lucky everything should go well. If you're not it'll hang at the penultimate step, taking forever to create a new domain.

g) The problem apparently is with Glassfish and some funny bug which needs your real hostname to be in the /etc/hosts file. At least that's what fixed it for me. Here is what my /etc/hosts file looks like.

127.0.0.1    javaee    localhost.localdomain    localhost
10.0.2.15    javaee    localhost

Maybe you don't even need the 2nd line. Maybe I'll confirm that some day. Or someone will :)

h) Reboot once (maybe not needed) and run the installer again. All should be good this time round.

i) You can also Cancel the installer if it hangs while creating a domain and create a domain manually using asadmin as follows.
sudo ./asadmin --user admin
asadmin>create-domain
asadmin>start-domain

... and follow the instructions there. Have fun :)

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Truecrypt - Permission and Mount problems

I use Truecrypt files all the time on top of my Full Disk encryption for all my sensitive customer data. I also use sshfs to mount a remote filesystem over SSH and then transfer files from my Truecrypt volume to the server.

What tended to keep happening was that when I copied files onto the server, the files would be editable only by me and not by other members of the group. This was a problem as multiple people work on a single project.

After a bit of research I found out that my local truecrypt volume was being mounted with permissions of rwx --- --- meaning just I, the owner had access. Then, when I copied files from that volume to the server, those permissions were being retained.

The solution to this was to mount my local truecrypt volume with a umask of 017. This would mean that the owner and group would be able to edit the files after I uploaded them. Problem solved.

One day though, I needed something from an older truecrypt volume and found that I couldn't mount it. I kept getting an error which said - mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/truecrypt1

Huh? Corrupt volume? I restored the truecrypt volume header from the backup it stored internally (look at the Truecrypt docs for how to do this) and tried mounting again. It still failed. After a little Googling to no avail, I started thinking what I'd changed.

Mount options. Umask. Removed the Umask mount option. Tried mounting. Works. Ha. So apparently, since I didn't use the umask option when I created the old volume, it wouldn't let me mount it if I used it. Probably a good reason for it...don't know what :)

So now, I mount Volume 1 without the Umask and Volume 2 with the Umask and both work. You can set and unset the Umask in Settings - Preferences - Mount Options and type umask=017 there.

There's another way to do it. While mounting the volume without the Umask, you can click on Options at the time of entering the password and set/unset the Mount options there. Doing this means the default mount options will be with the Umask.

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Reverse Engineering DLLs

A DLL is usually imported by an EXE. A DLL usually has a number of functions that the EXE can usually directly use. If you want to debug an EXE in OllyDbg, all you need to do is load it in Olly and set a breakpoint on the entry point of the Exe. If you want to debug a specific DLL though, it's not that straightforward.

There's 2 ways of doing this:

a) Open the DLL in Olly. If you also have an EXE called LoadDLL.exe in the Olly directory on your hard disk, LoadDLL.exe will automatically pick up the DLL you want to analyze, load it and stop at the entry point for the DLL. This though seems to work only for Olly 1.10.

b) The other way of doing this is to tell Olly to break each time a new DLL is loaded. You can do this by going to Olly's (2.01) Options - Debugging - Events and tick the box which says 'Pause on New DLL' and OK your way out.

The next time you load an Exe which in turn loads up DLLs at runtime, Olly will break each time a new DLL is loaded. So you can keep hitting F9 (Run program) until you reach the DLL you want to debug.

Now you can debug the DLL as you would debug an EXE :)

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