On Monday, September 24, 2007, WordPress version 2.3 was released to the public. For information on the changes and improvements in this new version, see Changelog for 2.3.

With a lot of significant changes to the latest release, upgrading has to be done with utmost care. Please make a back-up of your databases, posts, themes, and plugins. There are plenty of plugins affected in this release, so make sure that your plugins are included in the Plugin Compatibility List for version 2.3. In the case of this blog, one plugin had to be disabled until a working version comes out.

You may download a stable version of WordPress 2.3 at the official site.

September 18, 2007

Sierra Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Games, has delivered World in Conflict, the game unanimously chosen as the Best Strategy Game of E3 2007 to retail stores across North America today for the personal computer. The highly anticipated action-strategy game was created by Massive Entertainment, a Sierra Entertainment internal studio, and is available in both Standard and Collectors Edition versions for a suggested retail price of $49.99 and $59.99 respectively.

Sierra Entertainment is extremely proud to have delivered World in Conflict, one of the premier PC games of 2007, the best strategy game of the year and a title that will appeal to fans of all genres, said Martin Tremblay, president of worldwide studios, Sierra Entertainment. World in Conflict represents the next-generation of PC gamng, effectively blurring the lines between strategy, action and first-person-shooter with amazing DX10 graphics, groundbreaking multiplayer, and a deep, emotional single player game. Read more…

I got the chance to play World in Conflict online during the open beta event two months ago and it was a lot of fun. World in Conflict kept me occupied for a month because of that (until the beta ended). This time with the single player mode finally available, players will have a chance to go through the campaign which starts at various parts of the United States, followed by the Soviet-occupied Europe, then to Russia and lastly, back to the United States for the grand finale. The single player campaign wasn’t included in the beta version of the game, by the way.

The pretty URL’s of this blog will be removed in the next few days due to changes in the Web host’s policies. As a result, visitors will get to see a 404 error pages on this blog, especially when they come from pages aside from the main page.

I’ve been preoccupied with World in Conflict and a lot of video tutorials on Linux and networking lately. I’d love to post new articles now but the .htaccess problem has been a hindrance in publishing my new articles. I know that my previously published articles won’t be accessible to many anymore by the time the new policies will be enforced. But until then, I will have to rebuild my links, promote a new set or articles, and continue watching video tutorials.

Hoping for your consideration,

Gabriel

I’ve been playing this game for the past 3 days and I just can’t stop thinking about it. One multiplayer match lasts for about 15 minutes, or maybe even less if there’s teamwork, but be sure to allot a minimum of 4 hours. Once you’ve begun, “One more game!” will be your word for the day. World in Conflict is definitely an addictive RTS game. This game isn’t just about the graphics. More importantly it’s the gameplay that counts.

My Ancient System Specs

You may not believe it but I was able to run the game (which is by the way, in beta at the time of this writing) with less than the minimum system requirements. Don’t expect stunning graphic details, of course.

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1500+ Palomino @ 1327 MHz, 133 MHz FSB
• MOTHERBOARD: ECS L7VMM2 (VIA KM266-8236 Southbridge), 266 MHz bus speed
• RAM: 2 x 256 MB DDR, 133 MHz FSB, Generic
• GRAPHICS CARD: nVidia GeForce FX5500 256 MB 128 BIT
• HARD DISK: Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM Ultra ATA, 200 GB PATA
• SOUND: CMI 8738
• HEATSINK FAN: Thermaltake Extreme Volcano 12 @ max speed: ~5625 rpm
• MONITOR: AOC 7En, 17″ @ 1024 x 768, 32-bit
• Operating System: Windows XP SP2
• DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
• Bandwidth Speed: 384 Kbps DSL (400 Kbps downstream, 291 Kbps upstream)

Read more…

Opera 9.22 build 8800 has already been released last July 10, 2007. This is the latest build (8801) which addresses several security issues.

You can now download the offline installer from the official Opera download page.

From the Opera Changelog page:

Release Notes

This release is a recommended security upgrade…

Security Issues Fixed

• Fixed an issue that could occur when removing a specially prepared torrent transfer, as reported by iDefense.
• Prevented an issue where data URLs could be used to display the wrong address in the address bar.
• Improved the display of long domain names in authentication dialogs. Long domain names will now scroll instead of using ellipsis.
• Added Trustcenter class 3 G2 root certificate.
• Fixes for a problem with certificate import from PKCS #7 Signed and Netscape Multicert files.

We had an interesting discussion earlier on countries that have the fastest bandwidth speeds. The data from the OECD however, wasn’t quite up to date. A report from Yahoo! News came up recently stating that a 75-year-old woman is now cruising the Internet with a 40 Gbps fibre-optic connection in Karlstad, Sweden and is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, according to Karlstad city officials. It turned out that she was the mother of Peter Lothberg, networking expert who said he wanted to demonstrate the new technology while providing a computer link for his mother. The report also gave a hint of how fast the connection is:

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer — many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.

I have an average of about 50 Gigabytes of uploaded and downloaded data per month with my 384Kbps ADSL connection. This is a small figure compared to those with fibre optic lines, assuming that no quota is set by the ISP. If I had a 40 Gbps connection, I’d be an ISP in our village. Too bad Pete Lothberg’s mother only uses her Internet connection to read Web-based newspapers.

Firefox 2.0.0.5 has been released. The latest update addresses multiple vulnerabilities including the Firefox “firefoxurl” URI Handler Registration Vulnerability which was labeled by Secunia as highly critical. Please update your Firefox Web browser ASAP if you don’t have auto-update enabled.

Bugs/Vulnerabilities Addressed

• MFSA 2007-25 - XPCNativeWrapper pollution
• MFSA 2007-24 - Unauthorized access to wyciwyg:// documents
• MFSA 2007-23 - Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer
• MFSA 2007-22 - File type confusion due to %00 in name
• MFSA 2007-21 - Privilege escallation using an event handler attached to an element not in the document
• MFSA 2007-20 - Frame spoofing while window is loading
• MFSA 2007-19 - XSS using addEventListener and setTimeout
• MFSA 2007-18 - Crashes with evidence of memory corruption

Download

The update is already available in the official Web site. Other platforms and languages for Firefox are also available.

For those who don’t have auto-update enabled, click Help - Check for Updates…