Tech Today w/ Ken May

walterbyrd writes “In 2012, IBM started retiring the Lotus brand. Now 1-2-3, the core product that brought Lotus its fame, takes its turn on the chopping block. IBM stated, ‘Effective on the dates listed below, [June 11, 2013] IBM will withdraw from marketing part numbers from the following product release(s) licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement:’ IBM Lotus 123 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0. Further, IBM stated, ‘Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after September 30, 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1.4.0 already? Yes, you read right. Attached to this news you will find the pre-release test version for MediaPortal 1.4.0. From the pre-release test version to the final version we are only doing bug-fixes. This means that in only about 2 months we will release 1.4.0 final! You will be able to upgrade from the MP 1.4.0 pre-release test version to the MP 1.4.0 final version easily! But how is this possible? No more annual (Christmas) final Releases? The team has successfully transitioned to a new release process. We’re calling the process a “train model”. The idea is to enable us to deliver the features you want faster by working to a more fixed schedule. That means no need to wait for our traditional Christmas releases. “Christmas” will come more often from now on! Have a look here if you want to know more. So what’s in store? You might think that because of the short development timeframe, the 1.4.0 release will be just a few small tweaks here and there. But thanks to the fantastic help from the community in Area 51 , we think you’ll be surprised! HDMI half/fullscreen fix: HDMI is THE connection these days. In 1.4.0 we have finally managed to fix the issue that plagued so many people in our community. MediaPortal no longer resizes into a small window when you use HDMI to connect your HTPC with a TV or AV receiver! MediaPortal starts faster: MediaPortal can take a fair amount of time to start. This release introduces a few changes which should reduce that startup time a bit. Standby (S3) hibernation (S4) handling reworked: MediaPortal’s compatibility with Windows power saving features has been improved. Hopefully this will allow you to save some money from your power bill. Compensate for Windows DPI settings different than 100% Windows has a feature that enables you to increase the size of text (to make it easier to read). This version of MediaPortal works better than previous versions when that feature is enabled. Video and TV-recordings thumbnails creation Our thumbnail creator for videofiles has been worked on to make it more reliable. We are also now able to create thumbnails for TV recordings on multiseat systems! Picture thumbnail creation MediaPortal 1.4.0 pre-release creates picture thumbnails more than 10x faster than MediaPortal 1.3.0. Music playback The music player implementation has also been given an overhaul. WASAPI support has been added and the existing ASIO support has been cleaned up. MediaPortal Audio Renderer Based on your feedback, the MPAR which was first introduced in MediaPortal 1.3.0 has been refined and improved even further. Blu-Ray Playback We know you love the native Blu-Ray support that was introduced in MediaPortal 1.3.0. We’ve made further improvements in this release. TV-Server enhancements The TV-Server has received numerous small fixes and enhancements such as the option to also import and export your tuner settings. New logging framework The new log4net logging has elements that can be configured, specifically the log file size and log rotation. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for 1.4.0 by using the following links: Changelog: MediaPortal Changelog: TV-Server Changelog: Installer – DeployTool  Compatibility When introducing new features and reworking areas of MediaPortal, we try very hard to make sure that compatibility to previous versions of plugins and skins is maintained. However, sometimes this is not possible. In 1.4.0 we have a few changes which will render sins and some extensions incompatible. Skins: Due to the changes introduced in 1.4.0, none of the old skins are compatible. However the changes are not that massive or numerous. Skin Designers can find out about what needs to be changed in the 1.3.0 to 1.4.0 section of the Wiki. Plugins: Due to the changes introduced in 1.4.0, you will find some plugins reported as incompatible after the upgrade. Many plugin developers have already released 1.4.0 compatible versions. But before you start testing the 1.4.0 pre-release, make sure that the plugins you are using are available in a compatible version. Developers can find out what needs to be changed to become 1.4.0 compatible in the related wiki section . WindowsXP support is about to end A little over 4 years ago, Microsoft ended the mainstream support for Windows XP, and the extended support for developers and businesses is to end in less than a year. Windows XP has served many of us well during the last 12 years. Most have already moved on to Windows 7 or even Windows 8 which both bring a lot of features and optimizations that especially HTPCs benefit from. Since quite some time we are in a state where nearly no active team member has access to a Windows XP system for development or testing, which makes maintaining Windows XP support quite a challenge. But the much bigger concern starts to be that ensuring Windows XP compatibility results in turning down reworks and new features our community would highly benefit from. The reason for this is that these features and reworks require functions that are only available in later Windows versions, and the required extra work to maintain Windows XP compatibility would result in a lot of additional and duplicate code, making the changes very complex and error prone. So we decided that in the interest of delivering our community the best Media Center on the Windows platform, the time has come to say “thank you, and goodbye” to Windows XP. MediaPortal 1.4.0 will be the last version which supports Windows XP . Starting with 1.5.0 we will do some large scale cleanups in our code and start to include new features which will require that you run MediaPortal on Windows Vista or later. Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation When doing a clean installation of 1.4.0 pre-release there is nothing special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, or 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final to 1.4.0 pre-release All MediaPortal 1.2.x and 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final installations can be upgraded to 1.4.0 pre-release, without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.3.x , then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.4.0 pre-release ! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. If you are running earlier versions of MediaPortal, it is likely that none of your plugins are compatible with 1.4.0 pre-release . If a plugin provides skin files for MediaPortal’s Default skin, then the author should also check the Skin related changes. Skins: Warning ! Due to the new features and changes introduced, none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.4.0 pre-release ! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. Upgrading Extensions: The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the MediaPortal Extension Installer , and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version. Upgrading from 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier to 1.4.0 pre-release All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.4.0 pre-release, without losing your settings. If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier, then none of your extensions (plugins and skins) will work after the upgrade to 1.4.0 pre-release! You must update your extensions after the upgrade!  So, please make sure that 1.4.0 pre-release compatible versions of your extensions are available before you start the upgrade! General note about Upgrades Manually stop TV-Service! On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.4.0 we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager (enable the “all users” option), that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade. Custom TV-Service properties If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service (like restart on error options) , then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service. Feedback Bugs If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our Bug Reports Forum . Make sure your report includes all the required information . Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean. Download Finally – the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes.   If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release!   .::. Download – MediaPortal 1.4.0 pre-release .::.   :: Post a Comment ::

alancronin writes with this excerpt from a PC World article: “Users of Android, Chrome OS, Linux, and iOS devices may not realize it, but FreeType open source software is used to render fonts on more than a billion such devices. Not only that, but the FreeType project this week got a significant update from none other than Adobe and Google. Specifically, Google and Adobe on Wednesday released into beta the Adobe CFF engine, an advanced Compact Font Format (CFF) rasterizer that ‘paves the way for FreeType-based platforms to provide users with richer and more beautiful reading experiences,’ as Google put it in an online announcement on the Google Open Source Blog. The new rasterizer is now included in FreeType version 2.4.12. Though it’s currently off by default, the technology is ‘vastly superior’ to the old CFF engine and will replace it in the next FreeType release, the project says.” The article features examples of how the new engine improves font rendering; for more explanation of the CFF, see this blog post from Adobe. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ubuntu 13.04. The stable release of Ubuntu 13.04 became available for download today, with Canonical promising performance and graphical improvements to help prepare the operating system for convergence across PCs, phones, and tablets. “Performance on lightweight systems was a core focus for this cycle, as a prelude to Ubuntu’s release on a range of mobile form factors,” Canonical said in an announcement today. “As a result 13.04 delivers significantly faster response times in casual use, and a reduced memory footprint that benefits all users.” Named “Raring Ringtail,”—the prelude to Saucy Salamander —Ubuntu 13.04 is the midway point in the OS’ two-year development cycle. Ubuntu 12.04, the more stable, Long Term Support edition that is supported for five years, was released one year ago. Security updates are only promised for 9 months for interim releases like 13.04. Support windows for interim releases were recently cut from 18 months to 9 months to reduce the number of versions Ubuntu developers must support and let them focus on bigger and better things. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Yes, Google Reader is going away , and yes, there are great alternatives . However, if you’re tired of web services shutting down on you , why not take matters into your own hands? Tiny Tiny RSS is a free, open-source syncing RSS platform with more features than Google Reader ever had, and it can’t get shut down. Here’s how to install it and set it up. More »

New submitter NuclearCat writes “Polish security researchers have found a backdoor in TP-Link routers, allowing an attacker to not only gain root access to the local network, but also to knock down the router via a CSRF attack remotely. (Further information — Google translation of Russian original). According to the researchers, TP-Link hasn’t yet responded to give an answer about issue. The good news: Users who replaced their TP-Link firmware with Open/DD-WRT firmware can sleep well.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the Linux 3.8 merge over, the Intel Linux graphics developers are looking toward 3.9. From a weblog entry by one of them: “Let’s first look at bit at the drm core changes: The headline item this time around is the reworked kernel modeset locking. Finally the kernel doesn’t stall for a few frames while probing outputs in the background! … For general robustness of our GEM implementation we’ve clarified the various gpu reset state transitions. This should prevent applications from crashing while a gpu reset is going on due to the kernel leaking that transitory state to userspace. Ville Syrjälä also started to fix up our handling of pageflips across gpu hangs so that compositors no longer get stuck after a reset. Unfortunately not all of his patches made it into 3.9. Somewhat related is Mika Kuoppala’s work to fix bugs across the seqnqo wrap-around. And to make sure that those bugs won’t pop up again he also added some testing infrastructure. ” The thing I am most looking forward to is the gen4 relocation regression finally being fixed. No more GPU hangs when under heavy I/O load (the bane of my existence for a while now). The bug report is a good read if you think hunting for a tricky bug is fun. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

McBooCZech writes “I am trying to set up a surveillance system. It is not intended to build a real-time on-line surveillance system to watch a wall of monitors on a 24/7 basis. The main scope is to record video (24/7) from the fixed cameras around our facility and when needed, get back to pre-recorded video and check it for particular event(s). Of course, it is possible to use a human to fast forward through video using a DVR-type FF function for short video sequences. Unfortunately, for long sequences (one week), it is not acceptable solution. I was searching online the whole weekend for the open source software for analysis of pre-recorded video in order to retrieve events and data from recorded video but had no luck. So I ask you, Slashdotters: Can you provide some suggestions for forensic software to analyze/find specific events in pre-recorded video? Some examples of events: ‘human entering restricted zone,’ ‘movement in the restricted zone,’ ‘light in the restricted zone.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes in with news of the continuing saga of Java patches and exploits. “If you’re a Mac user who suddenly can’t access websites or run applications that rely on Java, you’re not alone. For the second time in a month, Apple has silently blocked the latest version of Java 7 from running on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or higher via its XProtect anti-malware tool. Apple hasn’t issued any official statements advising users of the change or its reasons, but it’s a safe bet that the company has deemed Oracle’s most recent update to Java insecure. That’s why the company stealthily disabled Java on Macs back on Jan. 10, the same day a Java vulnerability was being exploited in the wild.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hydrofix writes “On Thursday TorrentFreak broke the story (verified by BBC) that the government of Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny island nation on the Caribbean, was planning to launch a legal ‘pirate’ website selling movies, music and software without paying a penny to U.S. copyright holders. Now, the World Trade Organization has given its final approval for the Antigua government to launch the website. The decision follows from long-running trade dispute between the countries, related to online gambling, which was ruled in Antigua’s favor in 2005. After the United States refused to compensate, the WTO granted Antigua the right to ‘suspend’ U.S. copyrights for up to $21 million annually.” From the article: “The Antiguan government further reiterated today that the term ‘piracy’ doesn’t apply in this situation, as they are fully authorized to suspend U.S. copyrights. It is a legal remedy that was approved by all WTO members, including the United States.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.