Cisco is Opening Their H.264 Codec for Free

Cisco has just announced that they will release their H.264 codec for public and it will be open-sourced so that it will boost WebRTC deployment in many other products, such as Firefox who have also responded by making an announcement that they will support it as soon as possible.

Cisco will release a binary module that can be downloaded for free from the Internet and this enables any open source project to incorporate Cisco’s H.264 module without paying MEPG LA license fees. This will surely boster WebRTC implementation in Firefox and hopefully Google Chrome will follow soon enough.

I love it when big organization realize that by opening technology will surely give them more benefits instead of disadvantages.

Go Open Source ......

Upgrading Slackware Machine

Few days ago, i perform my biggest upgrade ever on one of the server running Slackware. It was running Slackware 12.2 and since it will be EOL'ed by Patrick on December 2013, with two months left, i think it's time to move on. I decided to upgrade to Slackware 14.0, and i'm using slackpkg to help me on this one.

Since on that machine i have all the Slackware repository for 12.2 up until 14.0 (and even -Current), it's so easy to do so. I just changed the default configuration of slackpkg to use DOWNLOAD_ALL=on just to make sure everything is downloaded before attempting to upgrade the packages. Next is updating the mirror location to the local files and change it to Slackware 13.0 and ran

• slackpkg update gpg
• slackpkg update
• slackpkg install-new
• slackpkg upgrade-all
• slackpkg clean-system

After all of these steps are done, i reviewed changes on the configuration and merged them and make sure that it still worked. This is the most time-consuming if you have so many customized configuration. Since this is a server, there weren't so many packages installed and most of it are basic applications and libraries.

I continued with Slackware 13.1, 13.37, and finally 14.0. These upgrade steps must be done one by one. You can't jump from 12.2 to 14.0 directly or else you might skip some important packages between those two versions.

There are some packages that will not work until you reboot your system and your kernel is updated with a new one. One of them is apr-* packages which is a dependency of httpd (apache web server).

Right now, the server is running on Slackware 14.0 and i'm planning to upgrade to Slackware 14.1 once it's released (it should be released soon).

Big thanks to slackpkg to make my upgrade process went so smooth :)

Ubuntu 13.10 Released

Canonical has just released Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) to the public as scheduled. This is their latest non-LTS release before Ubuntu 14.04 which is going to be declared as LTS version.

Canonical is also providing Cloud-based service based on Ubuntu with a new service called Ubuntu OpenStack and for the first time ever, they also released it on the phone with Ubuntu Touch.

Check out the features page to find out more about their features and finally, head to the download page if you want to start downloading the ISOs. I have downloaded all of the ISOs on our campus ISO Server which is located here: http://iso.ukdw.ac.id/ubuntu/13.10/.

LibreOffice 4.2.1 Released

Italo Vignoli has just sent a press release about the announcement of LibreOffice 4.2.1, the second minor release of the LibreOffice 4.1 family, which features a large number of improved interoperability features with proprietary and legacy file formats. 

The new release is another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.1. For enterprise adoptions, The Document Foundation suggests LibreOffice 4.0.5 (with 4.0.6 expected soon), supported by certified professionals.

List of bug fixes for this release can be seen in the ChangeLog for pre-release version: RC1, RC2, and RC3. You can start downloading the binary and source codes for LibreOffice 4.2.1 in their download page.

Free Alternatives from Google and Apple

Apple has decided to give iWorks which consists of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, and iPhotos for free to all customers who bought their new iDevices, particularly iPhone 5S/C that are preloaded with iOS7, their latest mobile operating system. Shortly after that, Google released QuickOffice, which was acquired last year for free as well. This is surely a good news for all users who used these products.

QuickOffice was once a commercial product, $14.99 for Quickoffice on iPhones or Android smartphones, and $19.99 for a version for Android or iOS tablets. That really costly, but worry not, since it's now FREE!!

This really gives Microsoft a pressure since other vendords has started to give their office suite for free. Google did more than that actually, by adding QuickOffice into Chrome OS and also to Google Chrome browser few months ago.

I have upgraded my iPad 3 to iOS 7 and i'm really glad that Google provided this wonderful application for free. I loved this application, except for one missing feature: WiFI upload. It's really a nice feature and it really helped me since i don't use Windows so often. With this feature, i can upload any files i want anytime even though i'm using Linux. This feature is now missing on Google's version of QuickOffice.

Other feature that is missing is to add third party service. Google now limit it onto to their Google Drive service. I don't really use this feature as i already have DropBox on my iPad, but still it's quite annoying to see some features are removed in the latest version.

BBM for iPhone Officially Launched

BlackBerry has officially launched BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) in other platform than BlackBerry itself which is in iOS. For Indonesian people, you can start downloading BBM for iPhone from this link. It's targetting for iPhone and not applicable to iPod and iPad.

As for the Android platform, it hasn't been released yet, but probably shortly and don't try to download scam applications which tried to trick you. Just relax and wait for the official announcement and link to the Google Play.

Faulty Updates

Few days ago, i installed updates from Microsoft and it was fine after rebooting for the last time (and switched back to Slackware). Today, i tried to log in to Windows to perform an upgrade to my iPad to iOS 7 and noticed a reboot. I tried to log in to Windows again and it happened again. I tried to use safe mode, but it all failed. I guess the update is the culprit. This system has been installed on my desktop for almost 5 years without being reinstalled. I followed Microsoft's update monthly. I guess it's time to say good bye.

I have just finished installing Windows 7 on this machine and right now, i'm still installing all the applications and also patches from Microsoft since Windows 7 SP 1 was released. It's also a good time to start with a new operating system after a while.

OK, time to restart Windows (as always) :)

Linux Kernel 3.11 is Out

Just week after celebrating Linux's 22nd anniversary, Linus sent out the final version of Linux Kernel 3.11. This marks the end of 3.10 development and now the maintenance will goes to Greg whom will update on his weekly -Stable cycle and Linus will open up a roughly two weeks of merge window where all of the planned feature that has been developed or sitting on linux-next can be pushed to Linus' main tree by using a pull request.

For now, the entries in KernelNewbies hasn't been updated for Linux Kernel 3.11 (but it will soon), and since The H has shut down some time ago, the best thing you can get deeply in Linux Kernel 3.11 will be from Phoronix.

I'm compiling it right now and it should be finished soon. Let us see what visible improvements that we can get from this shiny new kernel :)

LibreOffice 4.1.1 Released

LibreOffice 4.1.1 has been released and Italo Vignoli already made the announcement via email that i received few hours ago. It's a bug fix version, so it focuses on fixing bugs found after LibreOffice 4.1 gets released last month. For Enterprise users, they are still recommending users to use the previous LibreOffice 4.0.5 which is backed by certified professionals and considered stable enough for production environments.

Another great news that comes along with the announcement was that Spanish autonomous region of Valencia's migration to LibreOffice on 120,000 PCs, which will save the government some 1.5 million Euro per year on proprietary software licenses. This adds more and more governments who are considering the migration to open source and avoid proprietary software which will force them to pay annual license fee.

LibreOffice 4.1.1 fixed so many problems during RC1 and RC2

iWork for Free

You might be happy to see the title, but don't get over excited first. Read the whole news and see if you are happy with it or not.

So, Apple is now testing iWork (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) as a cloud service and place them on iCloud.com (their cloud service along with other apps that are available on most of their iDevices, such as Notes, Reminder, Calendar, Contact, etc). This means, you don't really need to install separate iWork applications (worth US$ 9.99 each) from App Store and just use Chrome or Safari to access icloud.com and have them available on your iDevice.

It's still in Beta phase and we are not sure whether it will be free or not, but for this beta, it's free for use. For best experience, it's recommended to use Safari, since when i used the latest Firefox on Linux, it showed a message that my browser is not fully supported when trying the Keynote. I couldn't see the slideshow when i click on the Play button as well. I guess only Pages works well with Firefox currently.

Taken from Apple's Knowledge Base:
The following browsers are supported for use with iWork for iCloud beta:

• Safari 6.0.3 or later (OS X)
• Internet Explorer 9.0.8 or later (Windows)
• Google Chrome 27.0.1 or later

iWork for iCloud beta will allow you to use these browsers, but some features may not work as expected:

• Safari 5.0 - 6.0.2 (OS X)
• Firefox 9.0 and later
• Google Chrome 7.0 - 26.0.1

Other web browsers may not work with iWork for iCloud beta.

Here's the screenshot of the main page of iCloud after logging in:

RIP : My Modem

I woke up early this morning and noticed that all 4 LEDs from my modem has turned off. I didn't turn the modem off last night, so i tried to turn it off and on again, but it still went off. So i guess it's time to say good bye to my modem which has accompanied me for the last 3-4 years. It was a simple, yet nice modem so far, but lately, gets disconnected so often.

I already prepared the replacement since last month, so i just replaced it with the new one. It's quite cheap, but it has quite a lot of features. One thing i dislike about this new modem is that the original firmware has been modified by Telkom Indonesia (biggest telco operator in Indonesia) and they put a backdoor inside the modem. The reason was because to ease their job for troubleshooting. Suppose the client's modem was having a trouble, they can check it from their server or remotely change the configuration of the modem without user intervention.

For me, this is something unaccepted since it's not documented on the manual book and they don't even tell us about this. One of my colleagues have written a lengthy blog post about it on his blog (here and here). I have disabled the CWMP feature and disable all remote users and login along with other changes as well. For TP-Link users, you can try to use this reverse-engineering trick to get it done.

Anyway, the new modem is working fine here and hopefully it will last longer than the previous modem.

Amarok 2.8 "Return To The Origin" Released

After few months of development, finally Amarok 2.8 has been officially released. It also marks the comeback of their founder, Mark Kretschmann to the team after going hiatus for some time.

What are the highlights?

• A fancy audio analyzer visualization applet
• Smooth fade-out when pausing music
• Many UI improvements and visual tweaks including better support for alternate color themes
• Significantly enhanced MusicBrainz tagger
• Power management awareness with a pair of new configuration options
• Performance optimizations and responsiveness tuning all over Amarok

This release also features the first code contributions by our current Google Summer of Code students: please welcome Anmol Ahuja, Konrad Zemek and Tatjana Gornak. Our release manager Matěj Laitl takes part in GSoC as well.

Here are the detailed changelog:

Features

• Tracks from Recently Played List widget can now directly be added to the playlist. (BR 279263, BR 296090)
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• Ctrl+C copies the currently playing artist & title to the clipboard. (BR 228872) Patch by fleissig fleissig.
• Volume fade-out is now also available for pause.
• The Files browser now has a Refresh button. (BR 213666)
• The active playlist item is animated with a soft glow effect.
• Added an audio analyzer visualization applet.
• Added a function for resetting the GUI layout back to default state. (BR 300753)
• Pressing enter when searching collections now adds found tracks to the playlist and clears the search bar, this is a very convenient way to populate your playlist.
• Allow to transcode only certain (different format, playability) tracks when transferring them to a collection; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 312407)
• On-Screen-Display fades in/out smoothly.
• Added support for .asx playlists; patch by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 170207)
• Add Radio GFM radio streams to Cool Stream Script. (BR 317978)
• Added options to pause playback on system suspend and to inhibit automatic suspend if playing a track (enabled by default); patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 259862) (BR 222571)
• Playlist files are now read asynchronously when possible; patch and great deal of refactoring by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 291934)
• Added support to filter tracks to scrobble to Last.fm by label. Patch by Vedant Agarwala. (BR 140198)
• Added transcoding support for Opus codec if ffmpeg is compiled with support for the libopus library, patch by Martin Brodbeck.
• Added keyboard shortcuts for small 2 s seeks (Ctrl + Left/Right) and long 1 minute seeks (Shift + Left/Right) in addition to standard 10 s seeks. Durations are now configurable in amarokrc, see Amarok Handbook. Patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 177258)
• Added support for files in Opus codec if Amarok is compiled against recent enough TagLib (post 1.8), patch by Martin Brodbeck. (BR 312905)
• Added Ctrl+H shortcut to randomize playlist, patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 208061)

Changes

• The Jamendo service now uses a higher quality MP3 format instead of Ogg Vorbis.
• Added an option whether adding tracks to playlist should start playing. (BR 322428)
• Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.3.
• Amarok now uses FindFFMpeg.cmake from kdelibs
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• Removed LikeBack (a development feature in debug builds). (BR 312498) (BR 252323)
• Collection Browser: Artist level was renamed to Track Artist and replaced by Album Artist by default. Various Artists item is no longer shown under Track Artist level.
• Removed the splash screen.
• Playlist-related actions were harmonized, double-clicking or pressing enter will append tracks to playlist, using any "play media" action or middle-clicking will prepend tracks to queue and immediately start playing. (BR 145468, BR 145490, BR 194549)
• When a new collection plugin is enabled, its collections appear immediately without a need for restart.
• Update the MusicBrainz tagger to MusicBrainz web service 2, make it show some more good suggestions for tagging, and add some options to help choosing the best results.
• Add note about generating .mood files into Moodbar Options; patch by Harsh Gupta with tweaks by Matěj Laitl. (BR 289483)
• Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.2.
• Add prepareToQuit() signal to Amarok.Window script bindings; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 241066)
• Data CDs are now recognized in Amarok; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 316128)
• On-Screen-Display now uses the system font instead of hardcoded sans-serif. (BR 248707)
• Fancy behavior of some context menus showing different actions when Shift key is held has been reverted. All entries are now shown all the time.
• The dynamic playlist behavior has changed. It will no longer generate "pretty good" playlists that do not fulfill the given biases. Instead it might add no song at all if given impossible-to-fulfill conditions.
• The "tracks have been hidden in the playlist" warning when filtering the playlist is now displayed inside the playlist. (BR 260352)
• Update tag widget for Layout edit, filter edit, organize collection and guess tag dialog.
• When fadeout and/or Replay Gain isn't possible, gray-out related UI elements in order not to fool users.

Bugfixes

• Don't reload Wikipedia applet content if artist/album have not changed. Patch by Frank Meerkoetter. (BR 112044)
• Jamendo service: Albums are now downloaded directly instead of going via BitTorrent. This is far more reliable and also supports on-the-fly transcoding. (BR 299434)
• Work-around Solid UDisks2 backend bug that caused USB Mass Storage devices and iPods not being recognized when connected before Amarok was started. Also fixes a bug where blank devices would appear in Play Media dialog. (BR 322980)
• Definitely fix a bug where storing Last.fm credentials in plain-text isn't offered when KWallet is disabled. (BR 315306)
• Radio streams from scripted services are now instantly playable. (BR 320718)
• Recently Played List widget now keeps its own time for tracks instead of relying on the Last Played statistic. (BR 302485)
• Prevent hitting an assertion failure if just removed track from the Local Collection is edited. (BR 322474)
• Fixed a regression introduced in 2.8 Beta where tracks in the Local Collection were sometimes forgotten and then found again. (BR 322603)
• Fixed invalid SQL queries when you have files or folders with an apostrophe in your collection. (BR 322415)
• Fixed organizing/copying/moving tracks to Local Collection on Windows. (BR 279560, BR 302251)
• Various usability improvements for the applet toolbar. (BR 197948)
• Removed broken Apply button in applets' settings dialog. (BR 322015)
• Fix incorrect colors in Context View toolbar when switching themes. (BR 301305)
• Many fixes for various bugs with switching desktop color themes at runtime, including OSD, spectrum analyzer, collection browser.
• Avoid updating the MPRIS2 Metadata between tracks. (BR 321602)
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• When you remove whole directories from the Local Collection and have Watch Folders for Changes enabled, the tracks now disappear from Collection Browser. (BR 311078)
• Fix dynamic playlist bug: When "Automatically scroll playlist to current track" was enabled, Amarok would keep scrolling to the bottom. (BR 284214)
• Fix a problem where ghost tracks would remain in the Local Collection until the database is wiped. (BR 319084)
• Added missing CMake check for QtWebKit. (BR 321598)
• Definitely fix a bug where Local Collection wouldn't update in browser. (BR 262504)
• Fix crashed caused by race conditions at the end of the track scanning. (BR 319835)
• Fix crash when disabling the Free Music Charts script. (BR 321329)
• Albums having same name but different album artist won't be mixed together on the playlist if sorting by album is enabled.
• Fix crash on startup with KDE 4.11. Patch by Hrvoje Senjan. (BR 320855)
• Fix tracks not able to be dragged around when playlist is shuffled. (BR 320129)
• Prevent Last.fm scrobbles not being submitted until restart due to change in liblastfm 1.0.7. (BR 320219)
• Resume Playback on Start will correctly restore paused state, instead of always starting in playing state. (BR 313330)
• Optimize removal of tens of thousands of tracks from playlist. (BR 316242)
• Fix `amarok --queue` which didn't actually queue the tracks. (BR 317385)
• Fix suboptimal initial MusicBrainz tag dialog size by remembering it. (BR 269454)
• Fix file-browser becoming empty when a file was moved to trash. (BR 317944)
• Fix `amarok --play file.mp3` option didn't actually start playback.
• Reason why a particular track is not playable is now shown in playlist tooltip; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 313649)
• Pre-apmlifier in equalizer is now only enabled if it is actually supported; patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 301311)
• Fix Amarok crashed while doing "Organize Files" (BR 317980)
• Fix Amarok erroneously merges two albums. (BR 216759, BR 272802)
• Fix Crash on very long artist names. (BR 276894)
• Fix Move tracks to rubbish and the current track cover changes to the deleted cover. (BR 306735)
• Fix theoretical configwidget leak in services. (BR 301352)
• Fix "Local collection" text label is truncated with large font. (BR 282561)
• Fix crash by putting a broadcast in the playlist. (BR 313718)
• Fix Keyboard navigates context menu in collection will move two items. (BR 307794)
• Fix add track to playlist by double click on arrow in the collection. (BR 279513)
• Fix VFAT safe names missing a couple of idiosyncrasies. (BR 312574)
• Clarify message when Last.fm streams are not available. (BR 315771)
• Fix crash when Dynamic Playlist based on last.fm is aborted. (BR 314243)
• Fix Group by directory doesn't work in main playlist. (BR 265415)
• Don't remove common labels when editing the tags of multiple tracks. (BR 316043)
• Fix vertical positioning of On-Screen-Display. (BR 269788)
• Fix OSD sometimes misplaces the font and the font's shadow. (BR 257643)
• Prevent inability to save Last.fm password in corner cases. (BR 315306)
• Fix "Copy to Collection" window doesn't fit on small screens. (BR 283361)
• Fix crash when quitting Amarok with Statistics Synchronization open. (BR 315525)
• Fix items moving around when expanded in collection browser. (BR 305602)
• Fix Organize collection folder deletion going 'too far'. (BR 314348)
• Fix %albumartist% placeholder translates to some strange unicode symbol. (BR 314351)
• Fix bumpy fade-out when first used. (BR 312062)
• Fix crash when switching/removing organize collection presets. (BR 314344)
• Fix crash on start if a playlist source is unavailable. (BR 313460)
• Fix Copy/Move to collection picks up wrong destination path and fails silently. (BR 314460)
• Cleanup TrackOrganizer. (BR 305291)
• Fix Editing Playist Layout Editor. (BR 250594)
• Fix Display glitch for rating in verbose playlist. (BR 300118)
• Refactoring Ampache service, fix Albums with multiple disks not listed correctly. (BR 249857)
• Fix playlist sorting by type. (BR 249338)
• Fix subtle bugs when a long fade-out is initiated near the song end.
• Don't try to fade-out with phonon backends that don't support it. (vlc)
• Fix Can't edit & save an existing equalizer preset. (BR 241874)
• Clean up Equalizer Dialog. (BR 274972)

First Abroad Trip With Alysia

I just arrived back from my first abroad trip with Alysia and my wife. I was afraid about her since she is still seven months old and i never take a baby abroad. We didn't go too far from Indonesia. We just went to Singapore, 2 hours flight from Jogja so it's relatively close and luckily she didn't complained at all during her flight. That relieved me.

In overall, there's no major problems during our trip. The worst condition was that Alysia got a flu due to her cousin who got flu before her and she played with her for the whole trip. That's why she got infected as well.

It's been a good trip, even though we couldn't maximize the trip since there was one baby, 1 pre-kindergarden kid and 1 junior high school kid coming along with us. Some of the schedule got a little messed up, but that's mainly our fault for not arranging the trip better since we brought our kids along with us.

Firefox 23 Final

Firefox 23 Final has been placed on Mozila's FTP Server, but no announcement has been made for now. Probably they are waiting for the binaries to propagate to several server before they will make the announcement.

What's new on this release? Well, it's not that exciting as Firefox 22, but still there are some room for improvements. Here they are:

• Mixed content blocking enabled to protects users from man-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdroppers on HTTPS pages (learn more)
• Improved about:memory's functional UI
• Enabled DXVA2 on Windows Vista+ to accelerate H.264 video decoding
• Updated Firefox Logo
• "Load images automatically", "Enable JavaScript", and Always show the tab bar" checkboxes removed from preferences and reset to defaults
• Simplified interface for notifications of plugin installation
• Users can now switch to a new search provider across the entire browser
• CSP policies using the standard syntax and semantics will now be enforced
• Implemented a global browser console
• Social share functionality
• HTML5 <input type="range"> form control implemented
• Write more accessible pages on touch interfaces with new ARIA role for key buttons
• Added unprefixed requestAnimationFrame
• New feature in toolbox: Network Monitor
• Dropped blink effect from text-decoration: blink; and completely removed <blink> element

I think the biggest change are the new Mixed content blocking feature and also the Network Monitor. They protect the user and also help developers to have a better understanding about the network activity on a site.

Leason Learned

Last year, i taught network administration course for the first time and i admit there was a some problems during the course since i had a new method of teaching this course compared to previous lecturer. I learned from last year and prepared for the same course this year and this time, i'm fully prepared for the course.

Last year, i gave the students a clean installation of Slackware-Current image for VMWare, but it wasn't a full installation, so on some topics, i had to pause a bit and install the necessary packages before continuing. This time, i will use a clean and full installation of Slackware 14.0 for this course. I really hoped that Slackware 14.1 will come out before this course starts and i can use it, but unfortunately that won't happen for this course. Probably i can ask the students to perform an upgrade to Slackware 14.1 when the course is over :)

This year, i also prepared a special VM of Slackware 14.0 on a public server, thanks to Proxmox which is already installed and fully working. The difference is that this VM will be able to access the Internet, so they can perform a lot of experiments on this machine. I have also prepared a snapshot for this image, so i can roll it back to the original state suppose the students broke the machine.

Thanks to last year's students who gave me a valuable feedback about the course.