Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available.

It contains an important security fix and about 70 bug fixes, along with other performance improvements.

Here are some important changes:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

It’s important that everyone running WordPress upgrade to this new version. I will do so during the day. Remember to backup everything first, and if you have the chance, test it locally .

WordPress 2.5.1 Release Notes

For those of you that like me, are running Vista Ultimate, Microsoft has released two new Sound Schemes and a third set of Dreams for Dream Scene.

The new sound schemes are called Glass and Pearl. I just read that some users are making this sound schemes available for download in other sites for users of non-Ultimate Vista can install them. Try to google for them.

You can get them via Windows Update. I have them already.

More Info

Today Windows XP Service Pack 3 has been released to manufacturing (RTM).

The news are already spreading all over, but we have to wait a little longer. As of now, even subscribers of TechNet/Connect can’t get it because is not posted yet.

Quote from Microsoft TechNet Forums:

Today we are happy to announce that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) has released to manufacturing (RTM). Windows XP SP3 bits are now working their way through our manufacturing channels to be available to OEM and Enterprise customers.

We are also in the final stages of preparing for release to the web (i.e. you!) on April 29th, via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Online documentation for Windows XP SP3, such as Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and the Microsoft TechNet Windows XP TechCenter, will be updated then. For customers who use Windows XP at home, Windows XP SP3 Automatic Update distribution for users at home will begin in early summer.

Thanks to everyone here who installed the public betas – you not only gave us detailed feedback but also helped each other out with timely troubleshooting. Through the beta program we found several important issues and were able to confirm some essential fixes. We couldn’t have done this without you.

We will still be monitoring this forum during the next few weeks in case you have more feedback about the release of Windows XP SP3.

On behalf of myself, Shashank Bansal and Windows Serviceability, many thanks.

Chris Keroack
Release Manager, Windows XP Service Pack 3
Windows Serviceability

Earlier this month, Microsoft released the Windows XP SP3 Overview, a document that contains the highlights and most notable changes in the upcoming service pack.

Today, Neowin got its hands on the internal schedule planned for SP3. Here are the expected dates in which SP3 will be released:

• April 14, 2008: Support is available for the release version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP

• April 21, 2008: Original Equipment Manufacturers, Volume License, Connect, and MSDN and TechNet subscribers

• April 29, 2008: Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Download Center

• June 10, 2008: Automatic Updates

Source: Neowin

Researchers with Princeton University and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have found a flaw that renders disk encryption systems useless if an intruder has physical access to your computer — say in the case of a stolen laptop or when a computer is left unattended on a desktop in sleep mode or while displaying a password prompt screen. The attack takes only a few minutes to conduct and uses the disk encryption key that’s stored in the computer’s RAM. The attack works because content as well as encryption keys stored in RAM linger in the system, even after the machine is powered off, enabling an attacker to use the key to collect any content still in RAM after reapplying power to the machine.

“We’ve broken disk encryption products in exactly the case when they seem to be most important these days: laptops that contain sensitive corporate data or personal information about business customers,” said J. Alex Halderman, one of the researchers, in a press release. “Unlike many security problems, this isn’t a minor flaw; it is a fundamental limitation in the way these systems were designed.” The researchers successfully performed the attack on several disk encryption systems — Apple’s FileVault, Microsoft’s BitLocker, as well as TrueCrypt and dm-crypt — but said they have no reason to believe it won’t work on other disk encryption systems as well, since they all share similar architectures. They released a paper about their work as well as a video demonstration (available at YouTube) of the attack.

Source: Wired News.

This occured about one month ago but somehow i forgot to post it here for you to read. The open-source file sharing program Shareaza is facing some serious troubles because of the anti-piracy efforts of companies and coporations world-wide.

The following article was posted in Releaselog and it is very interesting. If this gets its way somehow, the open-source developers are in risk of loosing its work anytime, if legal problems such as the one Shareaza is facing arise.

Beginnings Are a Good Place To Start

In mid 2002, a lone programmer by the name of Micheal Stokes released the first version of a Gnutella client he had written, dubbed “Shareaza”. Over the next two years Micheal added to his client and coded in support for the eDonkey 2000 network, BitTorrent and a rewritten Gnutella-based protocol which he named Gnutella2.

Shareaza gradually became more and more popular and Mike started to receive several job offers based on the strength of his work on Shareaza. He eventually decided that continuing to work on a p2p application in an increasingly hostile legal climate was too risky, but he did the honorable thing and released the Shareaza source code under the GNU GPLv2 on June 1, 2004 (which coincided with the release of Shareaza v2.0).

Mike stopped working on Shareaza and went on to develop a new p2p-based streaming radio project named Mercora. As part of distancing himself from Shareaza, he transfered the shareaza.com domain to one of his old alpha testers named Jon Nilson, who continued to administer the domain until late 2007.

(more…)

Microsoft is set to begin a pilot of a new Genuine Advantage anti-piracy mechanism for Office that will add a “nag-like” feature, akin to what is now part of Windows Vista, to Office. Office already currently includes an Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) validation mechanism (for Office XP and Office 2007), but Microsoft doesn’t do a whole lot to “punish” those it deems to be running non-Genuine versions of Office. However, as part of a new OGA notifications pilot program — which Microsoft is launching in Chile, Italy, Spain and Turkey, according to an April 8 announcement buried in a Q&A on Microsoft’s Web site — Microsoft is set to turn up the unpleasantness a notch.

Today, in current OGA validation process, there is no visual & persistent representation within the experience of being a non-genuine Office user. The outcome for being non-genuine today is that the user does not gain access to Office templates and other downloads. In the pilot the non-genuine copy of Office will also have an icon on the toolbar or ribbon indicating that it is non-genuine. After receiving these dialog box notifications for 30 days, Office applications will be marked with a visual reminder that the copy of Office is not genuine. Both the dialog box and/or the visual reminder will disappear once the customer gets genuine Office and/or uninstalls the non-genuine Office products.

Source: ZDNet News.

After finishing all the testing and exploring the new options in Wordpress 2.5 i upgraded my site. Now i can focus on posting again.

I will make some time to explore the Wordpress Plugin Directory to enhance the site a little more.

It took a little longer than expected because of the formatting of my desktop machine, where i make most of the posting. Later today you will find more content posted.