BigMong

On the fence about starting your very own space program? KSP is 33% off this weekend and this weekend only on Steam! Get online and grab it today, Sale ends on Monday 10 AM Pacific Time! http://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/

VG247 seem to be saying they have the “world’s first look at the standalone version of DayZ”. Perhaps they mean from this year’s E3? Of course creator Dean Hall has been showing footage for ages, not least twenty minutes of it back in March. However, what VG do have is ten minutes of the very latest build that’s being shown at E3, featuring new animations, weapons and features, and is well worth a look.

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In a post-PRISM reality, or rather a world in which the public have knowledge of PRISM, the hack and crash nature of open city cyber-adventure Watch Dogs could be considered timely, topical or controversial. Judging by the latest footage to emerge from the heaving bowels of E3, it’s really a game about superpowers though. Strip away the theme of a game and most abilities beyond running, jumping and falling down have a supernatural whiff about them. Observe as our hero, who really needs a strepsil, summons an impenetrable darkness. He does it by pressing a button on his smartphone, which causes all the lights in the city to turn off. It’s technology rather than magic, see?

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If you have a smartphone then there’s a good chance that it comes with an ARM chip inside. The British company ARM Holdings is the market leader in smartphone processors.

Today the company announced a series of new products at Computex, with one standing out in particular. Not because it includes ground breaking features that will improve the consumer experience, but through its embedded hardware DRM.

Developed on Hollywood’s demand, the Mali-V500 video processor is the first mobile chip optimized to prevent high-definition video from being pirated.

Until now the major movie studios have been hesitant to move some of their videos to mobile platforms since these are harder to secure. However, this will change in the future if ARM’s new processor is implemented.

“In order to protect their multi-billion dollar investments, studios and content owners are demanding hardware-backed security across all devices that play their premium content,” ARM’s director of market development Cris Porthouse notes in a blog post.

“This means that in order to support premium content mobile and other consumer embedded devices must support hardware-backed protection of content from download to display.”

Mali-V500

ARM’s Mali-V500 is the first chip of its kind to offer this kind of protection, sometimes dubbed hardware DRM. According to Porthouse the video processor offers state of the art security with support for a wide variety of DRM solutions.

“In order to meet the stringent security requirements of movie content owners, Mali-V500 has been architected to efficiently support ARM TrustZone and associated media playback use cases efficiently,” he writes.

Speaking with the Financial Times, Porthouse said that Hollywood and Netflix demand hardware protection as traditional DRM solutions are no longer sufficient.

“Hollywood movie studios and major content distributors like Netflix and others are demanding for premium or early window content – their highest-value content – to be protected not just by digital rights management but by the hardware, all the way from download through to display.”

So if it’s up to ARM your smartphone will soon be shipped with built-in DRM to keep pirates at bay.

The question is, however, whether all this expensive technology will be effective in preventing movies from leaking out. Or will it mostly cause trouble for legitimate consumers, as is often the case with other forms of DRM.

Source: ARM Launches Hollywood Approved Anti-Piracy Processor

Save 75% on EVE Online during this week's Midweek Madness*!

Explore the stars, breach the unknown for rewards and adventures and face what lies on the other side in the latest update called Odyssey for EVE Online!

Explore. Build. Conquer. EVE Online immerses you in a sci-fi experience where your every action can have rippling effects across a massive online universe. Team with and compete against over 350,000 players in epic starship battles or wage economic warfare on the galactic player-controlled market.

*Offer ends Thursday at 4PM Pacific Time

Here are some news from the Developers on what they are working on for the 0.21 Update.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content.php/184

As most of you already know, 0.21 is an important update for us, because it’s the first proper update primarily focused on Career Mode, the least developed area of the game at the moment. Needless to say, we are all very excited about what’s coming.

* Revised Flight-End scene flow.
In preparation for Career gameplay, we are rethinking the way flights are ended. Gone is the ‘End Flight’ button in the Pause Menu, cause of many a tale of accidental space station deletion. Now, you’ll either get to return to the Space Center (as before), or when applicable, Revert to an earlier state (to launch or to the editors). More information on this soon.

* Player Progress Tracking System
Another step forward into Career Mode, this is an internal game system that will be used to track players as they progress towards advancing Kerbalkind to being a proper space-faring civilization. This is a core system, so don’t expect much in terms of new content from this… It will pave the way towards some very cool new features down the road though.

* Overhauled Space Center Scenery
Time to go over the most underdeveloped part of the game. Gone will be the placeholder terrain, and in comes proper scenery for the space center. And because it’s the same terrain as in flight, we don’t need to reload it when going for a launch. This should cut down transition times from KSC to flight quite a lot.

* The Astronaut Complex Facility
Another huge feature in the making, the Astronaut Complex is a new building at the Space Center, that gives you an overview of all your available victims brave explorers, and lets you recruit new ones from a list of applicants.

* Crew Management
Along with the Astronaut Complex, this adds the ability to select the crew for a vessel before launch (from the launch sites or from the editors). Pick from the list of available crewmembers, and assign them to any (yes, any) part on the vessel.

* Overhauled Space Center Facilities.
We’re also re-doing the VAB and SPH models, to bring them up to par with the facilites we already did on the previous updates.

* More Upgrades to Parts and Part Modules.
Continuing our work with moving all our parts to the new Modules system we implemented in 0.18, this update will feature yet more parts completely re-coded to the new system, allowing for many new possibilities from both stock and mod parts.

 

-KSP Dev Team

Subscriptions are Now Available to purchase for EVE Online on Steam!

Users that purchase the new EVE Online - Gallente Bounty Hunter Starter Pack are eligible to purchase a Subscription & PLEX. PLEX is an in-game item that can be used to pay for your subscription without using more traditional payment methods.

Steam customers may now sign-up for, manage, cancel or renew game Subscription Plans at any time, online directly through Steam.

Visit Steam Support for more information about Steam Subscription Plans.

MediaPortal 2 has progressed quite nicely, bringing exciting new features for every release! The rapid increase in features is a result of the clean code, structure and architecture that MediaPortal 2 is built upon. 

The main goal of MediaPortal 2 is to provide the best mediacenter software available when it comes to usability, flexibility and extensibility.

While you're waiting for the highly anticipated Alpha 2 release of MediaPortal 2, here is a short summary of what MediaPortal 2 will bring to the table.

 

Easy installation and configuration

The installation process is quite straight forward, with only one setting to configure; whether you are installing as a client, a server - or both (we'll get back to that later). The entire process takes less than two minutes.

Then you're going to need to do some configuration, like the path to where your media is located, or Windows power saving settings. Everything is configured from inside the MediaPortal 2 GUI - no need to exit to launch a configuration utility any more!

 

Low resource usage and swift startup

When you first start MediaPortal 2, you'll first notice the rather simple splash screen without any information on what's going on in the background. The simple reason for this is that there really isn't any time to read anything before you enter MediaPortal 2 - about five seconds later!

Feel free to use task manager to monitor how much CPU and memory MediaPortal 2 uses and you'll find that it uses very little resources. This is of course good for both economy and the environment, but most of all it means the road to a near inaudible system is suddenly far less bumpy.

 

Robust and flexible skin engine

Oh, the skin engine! Where to start! As you might have read already, the skin engine is totally rewritten and in contrast to MediaPortal 1, the MediaPortal 2 user interface is mainly based on vector graphics and uses less images. The advantage of using vector definitions for graphical elements instead of pixel-graphics will make them scale to different resolutions without any loss of quality. Kinda cool when we're entering the 4K era, ey?

Another cool thing is how robust the skin engine is. If you're a long time MediaPortal 1 user, you might remember the days we searched the forum for zip's containing plugins and skin-files to match your preferred skin - just hoping that everything was the same version. MediaPortal 1 has come a long way since then (thank god!), many thanks to MPEI. Because the skins are constructed hierarchically in MediaPortal 2, there will never be an issue where a particular plugin won't work with a specific skin. Worst case scenario the template for the default skin will be used.

 

Dedicated client / server - architecture

The MediaPortal 2 Server is responsible for the central management of all media. You can connect multiple clients to the server and across all those clients you get the same data. Besides the media files itself, this also includes the meta data like genre, summary, actors, as well as the play count, watched state and last time a media has been played. As a result the client is just that - a client to browse and play content from the server. You can just hook up a new computer with the MediaPortal 2 Client installed, connect to the server, and you are just about ready to go! Of course you can still use one computer for both client and server.

There is no graphical user interface (GUI) available when running the server only, but you can always monitor the status of the server from the system tray.

 

    

 

Complete modular design

Another thing that separates MediaPortal 2 from every other media center is the modular design. In MediaPortal 2 everything is a plugin. Everything! Skins, media players - they are all "just a plug-in".

Due to the modular design, one plugin won't screw up another plugin and every plugin can thus easily be improved, added/removed or replaced.

Which brings us to the next thing...

 

Multiple player architecture

Due to the modular design mentioned above, there is no longer "the" media player, as in all other media centers, but rather "a" media player. You can even call multiple players at the same time, which means you now can watch a muted channel while you listen to music (great for football/soccer half-time breaks!) or enjoy the benefits of having Picture-in-Picture (PiP)!

Oh, and have you heard about video background? Basically, it is a perfectly looped video used as skin background. You can see a video of it below, but believe me - it is even better than it looks when you get it on your big screen! Try the all new Titanium skin with this loop, and be amazed!

 

Ease-of-use localization

MediaPortal 2 uses the web-based localization platform Transifex. Translations are done by both team members and our excellent community. Even if MediaPortal 2 is only in Alpha-state, localization support is quite advanced already - currently 18 languages are more than 90 % complete!

 

 

Built-in meta data extractors

Not only does MediaPortal 2  offer built-in meta data extractors for music/audio, but it even extracts meta data from videos and pictures. Got a lot of MKV or MP4 media files? You tag them - we read them!

Got a GPS within you digital camera, or tag your pics manually with the geo-location? Great! MediaPortal 2 reads it from the EXIF meta data and allows you to display and filter by the country/region/city where they have been taken.

 

And more... much more...

As stated before, this is just a short summary of what MediaPortal 2 has to offer. Lots of minor - but still important stuff is already implemented, like proper 3rd party library usage, HTML build reports and excellent thumbnail handling - done with Windows API with fallback method.

 

Follow the development of MediaPortal 2

If you want to follow what's going on regarding MediaPortal 2, then I recommend that you subscribe to this thread. If you really want to see how much MediaPortal 2 has progressed since the last release, have a look at the changelog.

 

GIVE IT A SPIN!

MediaPortal 2 (Alpha 2) is just around the corner.

Make sure to give it a try once it is released!

(And if you can't wait - or want to help test - you can find a pre-release here)

 

 ::: Discussion thread for this blog :::

 

 

 

There’s an alternate dimension in which the day Just Cause 2 was first modded to include thousand-person multiplayer is cited as the beginning of a new, gloriously utopian chapter in human history. I’m sure of it. Quite frankly, it’s the one puzzle piece that was always missing – from Just Cause 2, from plane surfing’s never-ending fight to be recognized as an Olympic sport, from life. It is, however, still a work-in-progress, and even pure shrieking chaos is only entertaining for so long. Thus, Faction Wars. The new mode adds giant teams, classes, squad management, squad spawning, alliances, customization, and more. Underneath it all, Just Cause 2′s screaming barbed wire eagle heart still pounds away, but I think it’s safe to say that this is no longer just Just Cause.

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I am saddened to admit that I am not a Civilization player. My brain does not work in that way. No matter how much I try, I just bounce off the game, and then I’m pushed out the way by mean Civ bullies who mock my tactical and diplomatic failings. It’s like home economics all over again. But I’m a bigger man than those meanies, and don’t begrudge Civ fans the opportunity to see the new expansion pack, A Brave New World. And I don’t begrudge Revison3 the hits for the preview that I am shamelessy yoinking. Do click here, as that Sessler guy seems like a nice chap.
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The countless hours of discerning thought put into all those dumb, mindless “top 10 videogame gun” lists have just been rendered pointless. Wanna know why? Because DUBSTEP GUN. It is the most sublimely ridiculous thing I’ve seen in ages – pretty much since, er, the entirety of Saints Row: The Third. People struck by its sledgehammer-like beats fall into a state of physics-defying slow-mo undulation, equal parts stylishly modern and grotesquely unnatural. It is, in other words, a thing of the purest beauty. Oh, and it’s just the focus of this Saints Row IV video’s first couple minutes. A preview of the remaining five: “We decided that Saints Row needs a mech.”

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I’m really sorry about this. I’m about to ruin XCOM for you. Are you ready? To the tune of Sex Bomb, by Tom Jones:

XCOM, XCOM, you’re my XCOM
And baby you can turn me on

There, now you can all share in the pain. I’ve had that in my head for the past half-hour, after watching VG247‘s sneakily snuck video of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. What was once simply known as XCOM and was an FPS is now a third-person cover-based shooter that looks a whole lot more like an XCOM game of yore.

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There is a line, I think, between metagame-y stuff and full-on gamification, and I’m beginning to worry that Valve might have crossed it. Admittedly, Steam sales have tasked players with accomplishing special goals to earn tangible rewards for ages, but now all of Steam is doing it. Today, Valve introduced the beta for Steam Trading Cards, which can be earned and crafted into badges. Why are badges important? Because this: “Unlike the current badges, crafting games badges earns you marketable items like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons. Level up your badge by collecting the set again and earning more items.” Oh, you can level up now, too. Your whole profile. I guess it’s cool that we’re getting something of worth out of it, but remember when the point of gaming was, well, the games?

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There can be little doubt that Game of Thrones has turned out to be somewhat of an epic. The show has millions of fans all over the world but of course, not all of them have been paying for the experience.

In fact, Game of Thrones has become the most-pirated show and ever since that news broke people have been weighing in on the debate.

Show director David Petrarca said shows like Game of Thrones thrive on “cultural buzz” and piracy, he suggested, helps to move that along. HBO programming president Michael Lombardo and actor Rose Leslie, who plays Ygritte in the show, both described piracy as a “compliment“.

Now, a senior figure in authority (with the most grand title thus far) has thrown his opinion into the mix. Speaking in support of this week’s 17th annual UN World Book and Copyright Day, Jeffrey L. Bleich is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Australia. This longtime friend of Barack Obama is unhappy at what has transpired.

“The file-sharing news website TorrentFreak estimated that Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV series of 2012. One episode was illegally downloaded about 4,280,000 times through public BitTorrent trackers in 2012, which is about equal to the number of that episode’s broadcast viewers. In other words, about half of that episode’s viewers stole the program from HBO,” said the diplomat.

“As the Ambassador here in Australia, it was especially troubling to find out that Australian fans were some of the worst offenders with among the highest piracy rates of Game of Thrones in the world. While some people here used to claim that they used pirate sites only because of a delay in getting new episodes here, the show is now available from legitimate sources within hours of its broadcast in the United States,” he said.

Of course, good things often come from piracy. In response to the download controversy, HBO said it would try to air Game of Thrones more quickly in Australia in order to remove one of the prime reasons for people obtaining the show through unauthorized channels.

But, said the Ambassador, airing delays and other complaints are no excuse for theft.

“I realize that fans of Game of Thrones who have used illegal file-sharing sites have reasons. They will say it was much easier to access through these sites, or that they got frustrated by the delay in the first season, or their parents wouldn’t pay for a subscription, or they will complain about some other issue with copyright laws. But none of those reasons is an excuse – stealing is stealing,” he said.

Imploring fans to boycott “big businesses that make money by encouraging consumers to illegally upload material”, Ambassador Bleich asked people to imagine a scenario in which everyone downloaded Game of Thrones for free, season 3 was never made, and the show was off the air.

But Bleich’s comments weren’t well received by fans on Facebook who were less than sympathetic.

“You are an uninformed idiot, Bleich,” said one. “Why not tell HBO to allow people to subscribe to their online service around the world without having to pay for cable TV AND HBO just to get HBO Go?”

“Most of the commercial sites where we could actually watch stuff for free (that the U.S has access to) block our [IP addresses],” said another. “Content is always delivered later on our TV and rarely are shows like this delivered to free-to-air. We welcome U.S film makers etc to start treating us with some respect, not say ‘You can watch what everyone else has when WE say so’.”

In fact, digging through the dozens of comments one is hard pushed to find any that are sympathetic to the Ambassador’s plea. That being said, the vast majority aren’t boasting about getting something for free either. Instead one reads complaint after complaint from people wanting to buy a product but are being underserved by HBO.

We’ve often commented that piracy is a market signal, but it’s definitely worth saying again.

Source: US Ambassador Pleads: Stop Pirating Game of Thrones, It’s Stealing

Category: Movies/Packs Size: 14.8 g Uploaded: 21:50 21-03-2013

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Please put all dangerous saber-based weaponry out of the reach of children (and yes, that includes out of their Force reach too).

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No One Lives Forever was basically the greatest. This is an incontrovertible truth of the universe. The unabashedly groovy stealth shooter (and its sequel; though not blah blah blam blam spin-off Contract J.A.C.K) was equal parts silly and smart, with a peeling back of the proverbial weaponized banana peel yielding everything from lowbrow stereotypes to startlingly nuanced dissections of sexism and the criminal mind. Also, it had the best phonetic title acronym ever. NOLF. Just say that out loud. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s like the yelp a dog would make if its nose were being pinched by an enraged yet largely harmless lobster. But anyway, point being, wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow get another from somebody? Please? Well, happily, there appear to be at least a couple interested parties. Problem is, Cate Archer’s performed a disappearing act so formidable that even the likes of the maniacal *lightning crackles* Activision Corp can’t track her down.

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So you have an antivirus guarding your system, your firewall is up, your browser plug-ins are all up-to-date, and you’re not missing any security patches. But how can be sure your defenses are actually working as well as you think they are?

These tools can also be particularly useful if you’re trying to quickly determine how secure someone else’s PC is. They can show you just how much vulnerable software the PC has installed.

BREKKIE WRAP: WHILE you were sleeping the US was coming to grips with shootings carried out by four-year-olds and a stabbing spree at a college.

Steam, Valve’s online gaming store, provides a fair chunk of information when you view an item in its catalogue. But it could be working just a little harder. Enhanced Steam, an add-on for Chrome and Firefox, tweaks the layout of Steam’s product pages to display additional info including Metacritic user scores, included DRM and more. More »
 

Shout “Windows 8” and you’re likely to hear “Vista” echoed back at you. For Microsoft, Windows 8 has received a Vista-like reception and it’s showing in tepid sales and an abysmal market share.

Windows 8 was released to the general public on October 26, 2012, over five months ago, and only just recently captured 3% of the total desktop operating system market share.

When it was released in October 2009, Windows 7 gobbled up 10% in the same amount of time. Rubbing more salt into its wounds, Windows Vista still retains a market share lead (5%) over the new (and vastly better) 8.

So why is that? Why is Windows 8 still sputtering and choking along? We have a few theories.

THE personal robot market is about to get real with two entrants battling for consumer attention.

With 3.5 million Internet subscribers Cox is one of the few large Internet providers in the U.S. that doesn’t participate in the Copyright Alert System.

However, that doesn’t mean that the ISP is a safe haven for pirates, far from it. The provider has decided to stay on course and stick with its own program that is said to be quite effective in dealing with repeat copyright infringers.

“Cox Communications has a longstanding notice program that we enacted more than 10 years ago. The processes we have in place work to address this important issue and provide a balanced approach for our customers and the copyright holders,” Cox spokesman Todd Smith tells TorrentFreak.

Much like the Copyright Alert System, Cox also works with various “strikes”, keeping track of the number of DMCA notices received for a particular subscriber.

“The name of our program is ‘Cox Graduated Response’ and is not affiliated with the Copyright Alert System (CAS) announced by the RIAA/MPAA,” Smith explains.

The process works as follows: when a second DMCA notice is received for an account the subscriber gets a warning via email or a browser notification. Through these notifications the customers are informed about the allegedly infringing activity and are given the opportunity to call Cox to discuss the issue.

Should the infringements continue, subscribers have their Internet connections interrupted and are unable to browse the Internet until they take action.

“If we receive between two to four more complaints, the customer is placed in a ‘walled garden’. We ask them to call our Customer Safety Department to discuss and to regain access to the Internet,” Smith explains.

The notification that informs users about the temporary Internet restriction looks as follows.

Cox’s Warning Screen (click to enlarge)

After ten or more strikes the subscriber enters the mysterious last phase of the graduated response program.

“If we receive 10 to 12 complaints, our Customer Safety Department will evaluate the situation and work with the customer to find a solution to the complaints,” Smith tells TorrentFreak.

Cox did not confirm or deny that users could be permanently disconnected at this stage. We were informed by the ISP that “it is very rare that we reach this level” and that “the resolution would be evaluated on a case by case basis.”

Previously, Cox customer service did confirm that permanent disconnections are an option, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they are considered. This would also be in line with Cox’s acceptable use policy.

Similar to the Copyright Alert System, Cox isn’t actively monitoring its customers. They merely collect and respond to DMCA complaints submitted by copyright holders. At any stage subscribers are free to file a counter-notification if they are wrongfully accused.

All in all we can conclude that Cox’s program is not all that different from the Copyright Alert System. Cox gives its subscribers a few more strikes, but unlike the other ISPs it leaves open the option for a permanent disconnection.

Source: Cox Targets Pirates With “10+ Strikes” Program

Today marks the start of the 1-year countdown of when we stop supporting Windows XP. Many of you saw the post this morning on the Windows For Your Businessblog. Over the past few months I have gotten a lot of questions on what that means exactly. Here are some answers to help explain what end of support is and what you need to do to move to a modern OS like Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Microsoft will end Extended Support on April 8, 2014. Why?

In 2002, Microsoft introduced its Support Lifecycle policy based on customer feedback to have more transparency and predictability of support for Microsoft products. Per this policy, Microsoft Business and Developer products – including Windows and Office products – receive a minimum of 10 years of support (five years Mainstream Support and five years Extended Support), at the supported service pack level. Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will go out of support on April 8, 2014. If your organization has not started the migration to a modern desktop, you are late. Based on historical customer deployment data, the average enterprise deployment can take 18 to 32 months from business case through full deployment. To ensure you remain on supported versions of Windows and Office, you should begin your planning and application testing immediately to ensure you deploy before end of support.

What is the difference between extended and mainstream support?

Think of mainstream support as “full”. In other words, mainstream support means Microsoft supports a product with its full offerings including paid incident support, hotfix support, security updates, etc. This support for Windows XP ended in April of 2009.

When a product enters the extended support “phase”, the game changes:

• Extended support is only available for commercial customers
• We still provide security updates at no charge to all customers

On April 8, 2014, we will end the extended support for our commercial customers and we will no longer provide security updates for commercial or consumer customers.

What does End of Support mean to customers?

Simply, it means you should take action to move off of Windows XP. After April 8, 2014, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates. Running Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 in your environment after their end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as:

• Security & Compliance Risks: Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to security risks. This may result in an officially recognized control failure by an internal or external audit body, leading to suspension of certifications, and/or public notification of the organization’s inability to maintain its systems and customer information.
• Lack of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) & Hardware Manufacturers support: Back in 2011, many independent software vendors (ISVs) were already unlikely to support new versions of applications on Windows XP.

So no new patches after April 8^th, 2014?

Microsoft will keep hosting all patches and service packs released through April of 2014, but no new updates will be released after this date.

I heard that my anti-virus software company will continue to support Windows XP after April 8, 2014. Does that mean I am protected?

No. Securing an operating system requires a multiple layers of defense and an anti-malware is just one part of the end-to-end security stack. When EOS for Windows XP occurs on April 8, 2014 and Windows is no longer being serviced, the system and any anti-malware solutions deployed to it will no longer be able to protect the device, user and data against new and emerging threats. Vulnerabilities that are discovered in Windows XP or possibly even applications running on it will remain unpatched and many types of malware will be able to take permanent residence within devices. This can occur even if the device is running an up to date anti-malware solution. Based on this, it’s critical that organizations and consumers migrate to a modern operating system.

What is a “modern operating system”?

A modern OS refers to Windows 7 and Windows 8 as well as a modern browser like IE 8, 9 and 10. These are hardened, secure operating systems built to support users’ needs around security, mobility and overall flexibility. Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer users a great experience while reducing costs and increasing IT manageability.

Can’t I just upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8?

No. You will need to do a clean install. This means you will need to migrate the users’ data and reinstall or repackage all their applications for the new OS. This will take some time to test all of the hardware, peripherals and applications to ensure they will work with Windows 7 or Windows 8. I have listed some free tools at the end of this post to help with all of those areas.

What if I choose to stay on Windows XP and not migrate?

Using XP after April 2014 is an “at your own risk” situation for any customers choosing not to migrate.

How long has Windows XP been around?

Microsoft will have supported Windows XP for nearly 12 years next April.

Are there good financial reasons to leave XP?

According to IDC: *

• Over a three-year timespan, organizations that make the move to a modern OS will see a 137% return on investment.
• When taking into account the time needed to manage XP systems relating to items such as downtime, malware, and other maintenance, Windows 7 increases productivity by up to 7.8 additional hours per year per worker.
• Annual costs on maintenance for systems running Windows 7 compared to XP drop by a massive $700/year.

I have never done application compatibility testing or deployed an operating system. Where do I start?

First of all, start by downloading the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). It removes the need for disc imaging, migrates your data in place during deployment, and (best of all) it’s free.

Here are some other tools to help make your move from easier:

• Download the Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation to start to test your applications.
• Check out the features in Windows 8, get answers to frequently asked questions, see videos on key features or watch some video training to prepare yourself here.
• Learn how to create an application inventory, assess compatibility, explore deployment options, and learn how to prepare for deployment here.
• Considering virtualization options? Learn about Client Hyper-V, App-V and more here.
• Ready to Implement security and control measures? Click here.
• Automating the Migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 End-to-End
• Migrating User Files and Settings from Windows XP to Windows 7
• Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Guide
• Windows Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals (check the Windows compatibility status of more than 27,000 applications)
• Video: Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010

Still need more information?

Enterprise Decision Makers should visit the Windows Enterprise site to learn about other customers who have moved to a modern OS and to see the cost savings in moving to Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 8 Enterprise.

IT pros should visit The Springboard Series on TechNet to learn how to Explore, Plan, Deliver, Operate and SupportWindows 7 and 8 in your environment

Small Business should go to the Small Business Zone to learn how Windows 8 Professional can be a great fit for your organization.

 

* Source: Mitigating Risk: Why Sticking with Windows XP is a Bad Idea (IDC/Microsoft White Paper), Al Gillen, May 2012

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I spent a huge portion of my teenage years either playing Thief or thinking about Thief, and I’ve never really stopped. A couple of weeks ago, armed with a questioning mind, I travelled across an ocean to see Thief: No Longer Four and to talk to the development team at Eidos Montreal. The ’4′ is gone because crimes against typography and sense can only be endured for so long, and also because this is a reboot rather than a sequel. With my archaeological hat sitting atop my sceptic’s cap, I was determined to find whatever traces of the old remained and to see what remains for those who remember the original series so fondly.

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No matter which country you live in there are always people in authority seeking to limit which websites you’re able to view.

Admittedly some sites are quite rightly deemed repulsive to society in general and 99% of the public have few problems with them being hidden away. However, the blocking of ‘normal’ sites is much more controversial.

China is infamous for its Great Firewall and its censorship of anything it pleases from Twitter to YouTube. Iran also has concerns that its citizens’ minds will be influenced by Western thinking via the web. Overall, oppressive regimes tend to see some websites as having a destabilizing effect, so they censor them to maintain control.

In recent times the notion of website blocking has become fashionable in the West too, mainly because certain domains are viewed as offensive to the music and movie industries. The Pirate Bay is blocked in many countries and just this week the UK added another three sites to its ISPs’ filters – KAT.PH, H33T and Fenopy.

But, as mentioned countless times in the past, these filters represent mere temporary roadblocks for the determined and today we bring news of an exciting project that allows almost anyone to access any site they like in seconds. Best of all, it takes just a few minutes to setup and it’s completely free.

The Graduate School of University of Tsukuba, Japan, has just launched the VPN Gate Academic Experiment Project with the aim “to expand the knowledge of Global Distributed Public VPN Relay Servers.” We’re very happy to help them with that today.

How it works

Volunteers have given the University access to dozens of VPN servers located all over the world which people can access from pretty much any device running Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and more. No sign up or user registration is needed. Once connected the user’s IP address is hidden and switched for one issued by the VPN of their choice selected from dozens around the world.

Protocols and the SSL-VPN client

Several protocols are accepted, such as L2TP/IPsec, SSTP and the popular OpenVPN, but things get really streamlined for those who select the SSL-VPN option. This requires the easy installation of the Windows freeware client SoftEther VPN but it’s straightforward and only takes a couple of minutes.

The beauty of running the client (which is also developed by the University and will soon go open source) soon becomes apparent. Not only does SoftEther offer SSL-VPN tunneling via HTTPS to pass more easily through NATs and firewalls, it has another trick up its sleeve.

The client comes with a nifty pre-configured plugin which displays a list of all the available VPN servers offered by VPN Gate (see below). This enables the user to activate, disconnect, or switch between VPNs with just a click. This means that there is no need to set up each VPN connection manually in an operating system, although that can be done if the user prefers.

Unblock any site in an instant

Want to unblock The Pirate Bay, KAT.PH or H33T in the UK? Easy, just select any server that isn’t in the UK and preferably outside Europe. Want to access YouTube in China? Simple, just access any non-domestic VPN server. US citizen who needs to use Hulu overseas? Fine, just pick a United States server. UK citzen who needs to access the BBC iPlayer abroad? A UK server will provide the solution.

Once a server is selected and connected to the client, simply use your regular browser and other Internet applications as usual and traffic will be diverted through the VPN.

Tests

TorrentFreak carried out some basic tests yesterday and got some decent results. We successfully unblocked all of the blocked torrent sites in the UK, accessed Hulu from outside the US, and watched the BBC iPlayer and TVCatchup services from outside the UK.

Also, since the people at VPN Gate apparently have no problem with people using the service for video transfers (they mention YouTube specifically), we conducted some limited BitTorrent runs on half a dozen servers around the world. In each case we connected to a VPN server via the SoftEther Client and carried out tests with a service such as TorrentIP to ensure that our IP address when using BitTorrent had actually been changed. All but one of our tested servers worked fine while another appeared to block torrents.

Performance, logging and offering your computer as a server

As might be expected, performance changed from server to server but in each case browsing and transfer speeds were more than acceptable for a free service. Each server shows its available bandwidth so picking one with more tends to yield better results. That said, we tried a couple of slower ones and they performed just fine too.

While VPN Gate offers anonymity to a point, they do keep connection logs for around three months. In common with most other VPN services they do not monitor your activities but will comply when ordered to do so by the local courts, in this case those in Japan. However, each VPN server has its own logging policy and many appear to delete logs after a couple of weeks, if they keep them at all.

To give an outline of how the logging might affect users in real-life situations, we can look at a few scenarios.

If a US citizen carried out file-sharing on a US VPN server, he might be logged by those carrying out six strikes in the US. However, if that same user selected a server overseas, he would not be monitored by six strikes. Equally, an Iranian or Chinese citizen looking to carry out activities frowned upon by his or her government would be advised to use servers located outside their respective countries.

Finally, please use the services responsibly – respect the volunteers offering their services and consider becoming one yourself. If you have a Windows computer and can offer your bandwidth, click here for more information.

Source: Free Access To Dozens of Anonymous VPNs Via New University Project