GMail New Compose Menu

As you probably have known, these days, GMail is pushing their new compose menu into public and you shall see them when you logged in into your GMail account and start composing new message or replying a message.

Unfortunately, it caused some problem (well, at least for me):
- It is by default set to HTML composer, where i would prefer plain-text
- Most of the options are hidden on the bottom part
- When replying a message, the original message is hidden and an additional click is needed to see them
- When replying, again, by default it will be top-posting. I prefer to have bottom-posting as many open source community prefer it that way

I am hoping that GMail keep their old composer as long as they can while they fix the above problems.

Play Games on the Web

With the work of Mozilla and Epic Games, more and more developers are going to have a new platform for gaming environments: The Web.

Yes, Mozilla had released a new video showing how they ported Unreal Engine 3 playable on web browser. It's kinda fascinating since they ported this project consisting of lines of codes within 4 days with Emscripten and asm.js combined with WebGL.

Slackware Switch to MariaDB

So, it's more than 2 days since my last post, but here's something interesting. Slackware and ArchLinux is now migrating to MariaDB and dumping MySQL in their repository. For Slackware, this change only happen in -Current tree, so the first official Slackware release with MariaDB will be on the next release, not in Slackware 14.0.

More and more Linux distributions are migrating to MariaDB after they feel that Oracle might do more changes to MySQL in the future that restrict Open Source developers and users to work closely with them. OpenSUSE and Fedora has done this and others might follow soon. Since MariaDB is backward-compatible with MySQL, replacing them should be easy to be done.

You can just remove MySQL and then install MariaDB without losing your data. Of course you are advised to backup your data first, but on my system, i don't really backup the data first and it's still safe.

Interviewing For YKFS V

Tomorrow i will be interviewing students who would like to join the YKFS V. It's Yogyakarta Kampoeng Field School and this year, we had a collaboration with Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Last year, we had collaboration with PolyU and also ANU from Australia.

It's an honor for me to be selected as the coordinator for this year's YKFS program as i had just joined this program last year. Hopefully all goes well during preparations and also executions which will commence on this June-July.

Upgrading Server

I'm planning of upgrading one of the server i maintain on my office. It's Slackware-based, so the upgrade process will be easy and straightforward since i have been using the same procedure over years and it's working on all of my machines that i used.

The only problem is the applications inside the server that needs to be checked with newer version, especially the web applications. Hopefully there won't be any major problem and i could have a safe and enjoyful upgrade.

Half Semester

This week, i started to work in full time again after two weeks of mid test exams. But it won't be too long since next week it will be another long holiday due to easter. I guess i'm going to have some fun for some time with my daughter Alysia :)

Some markings has been done on several assignments and more to come in the upcoming weeks. So far, i'm still working on daily basis plus taking care of Alysia at night, so it's a double job in a day. That's my responsibility of being a father now. I enjoyed it though.

HD Broken and Slax Comes to Rescue

My laptop has finally reached a point where it's HDD are EOL. It's been 8 years since i bought this laptop, so i think it's already time to let it go away. The laptop was still using IDE HDD so it's very hard to find the replacement. Other than the HDD, other parts are still OK. The battery still last for 2.5 hours on Linux which is very good since nowadays laptop couldn't last that long.

So, i finally decided to use SLAX on USB Flash Drive and use it on my laptop. It's working well and since it's so modular, i can add more packages to the flash drive easily using offline method or online method. Thanks to Tomas M for creating such a wonderful Linux distribution that is based on Slackware, so no learning curve on using this distribution.

I can still use my old laptop using Linux :)

Kali Linux 1.0 Released

Offensive Security has just released a new Linux distribution called Kali. This distribution is now based on Debian instead of Ubuntu and targeting for enterprise users who wanted to perform pentest.

This distribution is compliance to Debian and FSH, so there is no need to switch to /pentest directory when you want to run any pentest-related applications. You might want to read Kali What's New.

Kali is also available for ARM platform and as usual, they provided ISO and VMWare image in their download page. The default window manager available is only GNOME for now (XFCE for armel platform). Perhaps they will add another flavour in the future. For armhf platform, they provided custom image for Chromebook, SS808, and ODroid U2.

New Pope Elected

After two days, finally new pope which will lead 1.2 billion Catholics around the world has been elected. The new pope is a cardinal from Argentina: Jorge Mario Bergoglio. He will be the 266th pope and replacing Pope Benediktus XVI whom resigned due to health problem. For his name, he will be known as Pope Francis.

Congratulations for him and for Catholics around the world

Ubuntu Spirit is Fading

Ubuntu (or should i say Canonical) is now under criticism from many developers after they tried to create another project which is called mir and also other things that iritated the Open Source developers. It seems like they wanted to create their own world without considering what others have been doing and instead of contributing to that project instead, they wanted to make something that is based on their own assumptions. It's more like what Microsoft had been doing in the past. They created their own spesifications, standards, and forced others to follow them.

Somehow, they failed to realize that Ubuntu is failing since few last releases. Their user base has dropped since then and many of them migrated to LinuxMint. I think they need to think about that issue instead of creating another project which will confuse most of their users in the future.

I must say that the spirit of Ubuntu is fading on each release and if they don't do anything right on 13.04, more users will leave Ubuntu in the future. I can guarantee that.

VMWare Workstation 9.0.2

A new release of VMWare Workstation is now available. This version fixed some problems mentioned here:

• On a Windows 7 host, when you plug and unplug a headset several times, the audio card of the guest would not work. This has been fixed in Workstation 9.0.2.
• When installing VMware Tools in Linux virtual machines, the The default screen resolution options have been standardized to 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x800 for the initial login. After login, resolution can be set to any value the user desires or Autofit can be used.
• You can now create full clones from a snapshot of a Windows XP Mode virtual machine.
• Image copy/paste now correctly function with Solaris 10 and 11 guests.
• In VMware Player, the list of available NICs in the Automatic Bridging Settings dialog window is now refreshed without restarting Player.
• A virtual machine created using Use a physical disk (For advanced users) from the new virtual machine wizard may display the following error when powering on: A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state... The cause of this issue has been fixed.
• More detailed PCI information has been added and a potential problem that resulted in risk of rebooting the host when selecting Collect Support Data has been fixed.
• Previously, when you manually disabled networking in the Network Manager and then attempted to suspend the virtual machine, the operation would fail and Workstation would show thean error The request to suspend this virtual machine failed because the corresponding VMware Tools Script did not run successfully.... This has been fixed.
• A memory leak that impacted Windows hosts and guests has been fixed.
• When running in a Linux distribution using the GNOME 3 desktop environment, Desktop folders now open as expected.
• The OVFTool has been updated to version 3.0.2.
• Disk cleanup for encrypted virtual machines has been disabled until VMware can further investigate reports of encrypted disks being damaged by this operation.
• Autostart virtual machines now power on automatically after upgrading Windows hosts to Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012.
• VMware Tools no longer crashes on Windows 2008 Server Core x64 SP2 operating system, with the following error:
  VMware Tools unrecoverable error: (vthread-3)
  Exception 0xc0000005 (access violation) has occurred.
  However, Windows 2008 Server Core x64 SP2 is not a supported operating system for VMware Workstation.
• Scrolling with a Lenovo ThinkPad UltraNav scroll button no longer requires excessive force.
• From the Linux version of Workstation, the Description field for a remote virtual machine now captures all characters entered.
• When editing Workstation preferences on Windows hosts, occasionally a permissions error would be displayed. This issue has been resolved.
• It is now possible to create a linked clone from a read-only template virtual machine.

For Linux version, this should remove all the patches that was previously needed in order to work with VMWare Workstation. No more patches ladies and gentlemen.... just install and start your machines :)

LibreOffice 4.0.1

Announcements from The Document Foundation:

Berlin, March 6, 2013 - The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 4.0.1, for Windows, MacOS and Linux, the first release after the successful launch of LibreOffice 4.0 in early February, which has yielded rates of entirely new client IP addresses requesting updates each day over the 100,000 mark (they were just 25,000 one year ago).

LibreOffice Impress Remote is now available for all platforms - Linux, MacOS and Windows - from Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.libreoffice.impressremote&hl=en. How to instructions are available on the wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Impress/RemoteHowTo.

The new release is a step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.0. For enterprise adoptions, though, The Document Foundation suggests the more solid and stable LibreOffice 3.6.5, backed by certified level 3 support engineers.

The Documentation team has also released the guide "Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0", which is available in PDF and ODF formats from the website (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/) and as a printed book from Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/shop/libreoffice-documentation-team/libreoffice-40-getting-started-guide/paperback/product-20725693.html).

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation - infrastructure, marketing, community development - with a donation. There is a donation page - with many options including PayPal and credit cards - at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

LibreOffice 4.0.1 is available for immediate download from the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Extensions for LibreOffice are available from the following link: http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center.

The change logs are available from https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.1/RC1 (fixed in 4.0.1.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.0.1/RC2 (fixed in 4.0.1.2).

WaSP Project Closing Down

In the past, browsers vendors tends to make up their own standards, creating differentiation among implementations of web standards, such as HTML, CSS, and many others. Web Standards Projects (WaSP) was formed to fix this problem by mitigating an imminent risk of fragmentation that was caused by browser incompatibilities. Later on, its focus shifted to working with the developers of browsers and editors, and to educating web developers.

Since then, this organization has growth and many new members joining this project thus creating a better environments for all of the browsers vendors. The results are clear: less differentiation of browser implementation of the web standards. Modern browsers has now supported most of the basic standards such as HTML, XHTML, CSS, SVG, and many web standards that were standarized by W3C.

They feel that their work is now done and Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality today. Therefore, they are shutting down the project and they recommend people to follow more modern projects.

Thank you for your hard work and making the web is more accessible, open, and universal in this browser wars era.

ECCouncil Secure Programmer .NET

ECCouncil has just released a new certification specializing in .NET technology aimed for developers. It's basically the same with the original ECSP certification that they had in years, but now, they wanted to focus on one single domain and that is .NET. You can get more information by visiting their certification page.

I'm not surprised to see more specialized certification for secure programmers in the future, probably PHP, Java, Perl, Python, or C?

You can also see the first look of this certification by registering the webcast here.