Adam’s Blog

From The Editor’s Desk

On the trail of Fable 3, CGSociety revisited some good friends at Lionhead Studios in England this week, catching some great artists, designers and also Producer, Peter Molyneaux. A heap of art was supplied and some great stories about the recreation of the franchise.
Ballistic Publishing’s EXPOSÉ 8 and The Art of God of War 3 are in store and online to buy for the holidays. Remember there are discounts for paid CGSociety members.
Some of the guys at Thuristar, a French animation collective, have shown a teaser of their latest short called ’850 meters.’ Great work! Also, the Dominance War V mini-Challenge is showing some early promise on the battle front.
The 2010 Retrospective thread is open on CGSociety forums, looking for your input on the Top 20 CG things this year. Jump in and have your say!
Don’t procrastinate, animate!

Hi Adam,

We all need some help every once in a while – our own help site included! So we revamped theVerticalResponse Help Site to make it easier for you to get the help you need, when you need it.

Also here to help is our VR 2011 Take Action User Seminar! It’s designed to teach you about email marketing in the age of social media. Check out theagenda and register today!

Do you or someone you know have what it takes to be the next Hot Email Template Designer? Show off your skills and enter our Email Template Design Challenge! There’s lots of hot prizes up for grabs.
Cheers,

Janine Popick (@janinepopick), VerticalResponse CEO and Chief Blogger

Tor 0.2.1.27 makes relays work with OpenSSL 0.9.8p and 1.0.0.b —
yet another OpenSSL security patch broke its compatibility with Tor.
We also took this opportunity to fix several crash bugs, integrate a
new directory authority, and update the bundled GeoIP database.
If you operate a relay, please upgrade.
https://www.torproject.org/download/download
Changes in version 0.2.1.27 – 2010-11-23
o Major bugfixes:
   – Resolve an incompatibility with OpenSSL 0.9.8p and OpenSSL 1.0.0b:
     No longer set the tlsext_host_name extension on server SSL objects;
     but continue to set it on client SSL objects. Our goal in setting
     it was to imitate a browser, not a vhosting server. Fixes bug 2204;
     bugfix on 0.2.1.1-alpha.
   – Do not log messages to the controller while shrinking buffer
     freelists. Doing so would sometimes make the controller connection
     try to allocate a buffer chunk, which would mess up the internals
     of the freelist and cause an assertion failure. Fixes bug 1125;
     fixed by Robert Ransom. Bugfix on 0.2.0.16-alpha.
   – Learn our external IP address when we’re a relay or bridge, even if
     we set PublishServerDescriptor to 0. Bugfix on 0.2.0.3-alpha,
     where we introduced bridge relays that don’t need to publish to
     be useful. Fixes bug 2050.
   – Do even more to reject (and not just ignore) annotations on
     router descriptors received anywhere but from the cache. Previously
     we would ignore such annotations at first, but cache them to disk
     anyway. Bugfix on 0.2.0.8-alpha. Found by piebeer.
   – When you’re using bridges and your network goes away and your
     bridges get marked as down, recover when you attempt a new socks
     connection (if the network is back), rather than waiting up to an
     hour to try fetching new descriptors for your bridges. Bugfix on
     0.2.0.3-alpha; fixes bug 1981.
o Major features:
   – Move to the November 2010 Maxmind GeoLite country db (rather
     than the June 2009 ip-to-country GeoIP db) for our statistics that
     count how many users relays are seeing from each country. Now we’ll
     have more accurate data, especially for many African countries.
o New directory authorities:
   – Set up maatuska (run by Linus Nordberg) as the eighth v3 directory
     authority.
o Minor bugfixes:
   – Fix an assertion failure that could occur in directory caches or
     bridge users when using a very short voting interval on a testing
     network. Diagnosed by Robert Hogan. Fixes bug 1141; bugfix on
     0.2.0.8-alpha.
   – Enforce multiplicity rules when parsing annotations. Bugfix on
     0.2.0.8-alpha. Found by piebeer.
   – Allow handshaking OR connections to take a full KeepalivePeriod
     seconds to handshake. Previously, we would close them after
     IDLE_OR_CONN_TIMEOUT (180) seconds, the same timeout as if they
     were open. Bugfix on 0.2.1.26; fixes bug 1840. Thanks to mingw-san
     for analysis help.
   – When building with –enable-gcc-warnings on OpenBSD, disable
     warnings in system headers. This makes –enable-gcc-warnings
     pass on OpenBSD 4.8.
o Minor features:
   – Exit nodes didn’t recognize EHOSTUNREACH as a plausible error code,
     and so sent back END_STREAM_REASON_MISC. Clients now recognize a new
     stream ending reason for this case: END_STREAM_REASON_NOROUTE.
     Servers can start sending this code when enough clients recognize
     it. Bugfix on 0.1.0.1-rc; fixes part of bug 1793.
   – Build correctly on mingw with more recent versions of OpenSSL 0.9.8.
     Patch from mingw-san.
o Removed files:
   – Remove the old debian/ directory from the main Tor distribution.
     The official Tor-for-debian git repository lives at the URL
https://git.torproject.org/debian/tor.git
   – Stop shipping the old doc/website/ directory in the tarball. We
     changed the website format in late 2010, and what we shipped in
     0.2.1.26 really wasn’t that useful anyway.

Dear Adam,

As someone who’s given to the Wikimedia Foundation in the past, you know that our incredible community is funded by individual donations from people across the globe.  We’ll never run ads, collect profits, or compromise our independence.

We’re counting on you to keep it that way.  You make it possible for Wikipedia and its sister sites to stay free of charge and free to be improved by anyone, anywhere.

For our past annual fundraisers, we’ve relied entirely on website banners, but we’re trying something new this year.  We’re turning to those who have donated in the past and asking you to lead the way in 2010.

For the first time ever, I’m writing to ask if you can help get our efforts off to a strong start.

Can you make a donation of $5 or more to fund the work of the Wikimedia Foundation?

If you’ve already given this year, thank you very much for your support and please share your feedback on our campaign.

Below is an updated version of our annual fundraising message that went up this week.  We’re going to be tweaking and improving this as we go along, but I want to know what you think.

In keeping with the open spirit of our community, we’re tracking all of our fundraising efforts online.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on the message below and any other ways you think we can reach our goal to keep Wikipedia and its sister sites strong and independent.

Thanks,

Jimmy Wales

—

Here’s what our website fundraising banners say:

Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

And here’s our new fundraising message:

I got a lot of funny looks ten years ago when I started talking to people about Wikipedia.

Let’s just say some people were skeptical of the notion that volunteers from all across the world could come together to create a remarkable pool of human knowledge – all for the simple purpose of sharing.

No ads. No agenda. No strings attached.

A decade after its founding, nearly 400 million people use Wikipedia and its sister sites every month – almost a third of the Internet-connected world.

It is the 5th most popular website in the world – but Wikipedia isn’t anything like a commercial website. It is a community creation, written by volunteers making one entry at a time. You are part of our community. And I’m writing today to ask you to protect and sustain Wikipedia.

Together, we can keep it free of charge and free of advertising. We can keep it open – you can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want. We can keep it growing – spreading knowledge everywhere, and inviting participation from everyone.

Each year at this time, we reach out to ask you and others all across the Wikimedia community to help sustain our joint enterprise with a modest donation of $20, $35, $50 or more.

If you value Wikipedia as a source of information – and a source of inspiration – I hope you’ll choose to act right now.

All the best,

Jimmy Wales

Founder, Wikipedia

P.S. — Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it, one donation at a time. It’s proof of our collective potential to change the world.

—

If you have any thoughts on the letter, please send me an email.

Make a donation to give our 2010 fundraising campaign a strong start.

—

This SF.net update is sponsored by Trend Micro(tm) SafeSync(tm)
**********************************
Trend Micro(tm) SafeSync(tm) offers UNLIMITED online backup, storing
your irreplaceable documents, photos, and music in one safe place.
Simple to set up and easy to use, SafeSync works silently in the
background, automatically providingonline backup and restoring your
files in the event of loss or theft.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/trend-sfsitewide
**********************************
Here’s what’s going on in this November Edition:
* SourceForge Collaborates with Spoon to Promote Projects
* Updates to SF.net and SF.net Beta
* We are Proud Sponsors of FOSDEM
* We are Hiring!
* Gutenprint is POTM
* Welcome Mark Ramm, our New Product Manager
* Site Stats and Top 25 Projects
SourceForge Collaborates with Spoon to Promote Projects
—————————————————
Promoting the open source projects on SourceForge is very important to
us, which is why we are working with Spoon (http://spoon.net).
Through Spoon, Windows users can demo software apps without installing
them. This is great for users and helps bring exposure to our open
source projects. Check here for a listing:
http://sourceforge.net/directory/spoon
More Exciting Updates to SF.net Beta
————————————
* Ticket interface has been redesigned & we added flexible
support for tracking tickets against project milestones.
* Project data from multiple projects can now live in a single MongoDB
database (which can be sharded using mongo’s autosharding), or large
projects with special needs can have their own database server.
* All the commits in the svn, git and mercurial repositories have been
indexed and metadata stored in MongoDB. This improved page performance
on many SCM pages by as much as 50x.
But we haven’t been ignoring the user experience for downloads on
existing SF.net either:
* There have been many peformance enhancements to the beta stats system,
bringing us closer to entire system replacement
* We’ve done more more work on the file manager:
https://sourceforge.net/blog/grown-up-file-manager/ and doing the
scalability testing work needed to make sure that the new file manager
becomes the default soon.
We are Sponsoring FOSDEM
—————————-
We are so excited to be a sponsor for FOSDEM this year
(http://fosdem.org/2011/).
It’s free to attend, so if you’re in or near Brussels, Belgium, Feb 5-6,
2011 we hope to see you there!
We are Hiring!
—————–
Perl + Linux + MySQL/PostgreSQL = a job opening at Geeknet
Work on Slashdot, SourceForge and other Geeknet sites as part of our
US-based Service Operations team.  Team handles application integration,
sysadmin, DBA, scaling, performance analysis, and releases tools we
write in-house under Open Source license.
We expect to fill this position in a matter of days, so apply now at:
http://tinyurl.com/sog201011
Gutenprint is November’s Project of the Month
—————————————
Gutenprint (formerly called Gimp-Print) is a package of high quality
printer drivers for Mac OS X, Darwin, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and other
UNIX-alike operating systems. At present, Gutenprint supports over 1500
inkjet, dye sublimation, and laser printers. It is the most
comprehensive free source printer driver package available.
https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201011/
Welcome Mark Ramm as the New Product Manager
————————————————–
Mark Ramm has been at Geeknet for almost 2 years, working in
engineering. He’s the TurboGears 2 leader, and author of a
book on TurboGears 1. A Python expert and all around great guy, we are
thrilled to see him fill this role. Welcome, Mark!
Site Stats:
—————-
Stats for the past 7 days:
Number of downloads: 21,664,605
Number of pages served: 45,430,970
New users added: 5,011
New projects added: 1,691
Top 25 Projects:
———————————————————
1. PostBooks ERP, accounting, CRM by xTuple
https://sourceforge.net/projects/postbooks
2. ADempiere ERP Business Suite
https://sourceforge.net/projects/adempiere
3. 7-Zip
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip
4. Notepad++
https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus
5. Openbravo ERP
https://sourceforge.net/projects/openbravo
6. Pandora FMS
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pandora
7. Zenoss Core – Enterprise IT Monitoring
https://sourceforge.net/projects/zenoss
8. phpMyAdmin
https://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin
9. MediaInfo
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mediainfo
10. KeePass Password Safe
https://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass
11. Arianne RPG
https://sourceforge.net/projects/arianne
12. OrangeHRM – Human Resource Management
https://sourceforge.net/projects/orangehrm
13. DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav to Exchange
https://sourceforge.net/projects/davmail
14. Privoxy
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ijbswa
15. OpenXava
https://sourceforge.net/projects/openxava
16. ScummVM
https://sourceforge.net/projects/scummvm
17. HyperSQL Database Engine (HSQLDB)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/hsqldb
18. Clonezilla
https://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla
19. Task Coach
https://sourceforge.net/projects/taskcoach
20. TCPDF – PHP class for PDF
https://sourceforge.net/projects/tcpdf
21. Sweet Home 3D
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sweethome3d
22. TexMakerX – A LaTeX Editor
https://sourceforge.net/projects/texmakerx
23. SuperTuxKart
https://sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart
24. Data Crow
https://sourceforge.net/projects/datacrow
25. CMU Sphinx
https://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx
———————————————————
Love,
The SourceForge Team
Follow us on Twitter: @sourceforge, or @sfnet_ops for site status
Friend us on Facebook: http://p.sf.net/sf-community/facebook
Watch us on YouTube: http://youtube.com/user/sourceforge