Joomla! 2.5, the long-term-support release of the open source content management system that is the successor to version 1.7, is now available. It will be supported for at least 18 months.

Whereas previous versions were only compatible with the MySQL database, Joomla! 2.5 has been extended to include support for Microsoft SQL Server. Commenting on this in the release announcement, Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project said: "No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely."

Other key features in Joomla 2.5 includes:

• Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.

• A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.

The update also addresses two medium priority cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities and two low priority information disclosure holes.

A security update (Version 1.7.4) has also been released to deal with the same issue but, as Version 1.7 will reach end of life on 24 February 2012, users of version 1.7 are being advised to update to version 2.5.0 before then.

Following Eric "MindPhuck" Mooney's announcement that he was hanging up his nailgun and handing over the Quake.ie site to someone with more time, I have somehow finished up with it!

What you see there is the new site I designed over the last few months using the very powerful Drupal CMS. I'd been looking for something to try out the power of Drupal on for a while, and Quake.ie seemed like the perfect candidate. I am also a massive Quake fan as anyone who has ever visited thi site knows already. It is an absolute privilege to take over the site from Eric.

After much discussion and emails back and forth between myself, Eric and our common hosting provider, Digiweb to arrange handover over of the domain and secure an archived copy of the old site, today it finally all comes together. The new site is designed to appeal to the console generation, with a hidden agenda of dragging the Irish Quake Community, kicking and screaming, into the current decade!

Now, I'm not naive by any means. I know that not too many people play Quake anymore, and the Irish scene is pretty much dead in the water. However, if we can somehow introduce Quakeworld to just one or two gamers, or re-ignite the interest and restart just one clan on these shores, it will be worth the effort :)

Making good home espresso is possible, but the machines tend to cost a small fortune. ZPM Espresso, a startup in Atlanta, is hoping to change that with its open-source espresso machine.

If the company succeeds, it could have a nice market for itself, as the espresso and speciality coffee market have been growing quickly around the world. (Can you tell based on how many Starbucks there are?).

The founders like drinking espresso and they took apart a bunch of old machines to see how it’s done. They figured out how to make a machine for less money, but including important features such as PID controls, custom temperature, pressure profiles, and open source hardware and software using Arduino, a kind of microcontroller. The microcontroller governs the behavior of the thermoblock and the pump, rather than relying upon mechanical controls. That allows the data to be analyzed, saved, and shared.

To make good espresso, it helps to have the ability to control temperature and pressure precisely. Typical machines that can do that can cost more than 700 euro, but ZPM is aiming at a target price of 300 to 400 euro. One of the secrets is a custom-designed thermoblock that ZPM is creating itself. The funds will be used to set up a shop with a foundry to cast the thermoblock and other pieces. The machine uses as many off-the-shelf parts as possible, to lower costs.

The company is raising a round of money on Kickstarter, the crowdsourced funding site. Based on the progress so far, it looks like the company will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. The hope is that a community of users will share their temperature and pressure profiles online so that more people can figure out how to make a good cup of espresso. The open-source machine will be user serviceable.

Here’s a link to a video of what ZPM is trying to do. The company hopes to ship devices starting in the spring or summer. Preliminary tests show that the shots produced by ZPM can match those of professional baristas. ZPM has four employees and competes with rivals such as Crossland Coffee and Rancilio. The founders are Igor Zamlinsky and Gleb Polyakov, both Russian immigrants who grew up in Atlanta. Igor is a mechanical engineering student at Virginia Tech and Gleb is a student at George Tech.

I totally want one of these. You have my support guys!

We have come across a situation where our ioquake3 server was being used for a Distributed Reflection Denial of Service attack.

This happens if attackers spoofs some packets (with target server ip) and asks the gameserver to send all server information (about 2k of data). The gameserver sends all server information (500k of data). Attacker repeats for thousands of gameservers.

This exploit is around several years and raises its head now and then. There is one of these attacks happening right now across thousands of quake 3 servers, targeting several webservers (install and run iftop on your Linux server. Note the amount of outgoing traffic is incredibly high on port 27960 if your server is being used in the attack).

So how to stop? While infomation is scarce, and there is no REAL way to block this kind of attack, you can handle it on your Linux server easily enough with some clever use of iptables. Here's the rules:

# create chain
iptables -N quake3_ddos

# accept real client/player traffic
iptables -A quake3_ddos -m u32 ! --u32 "0x1c=0xffffffff" -j ACCEPT

# match "getstatus" queries and remember their address
iptables -A quake3_ddos -m u32 --u32 "0x20=0x67657473&&0x24=0x74617475&&0x25&0xff=0x73" -m recent --name getstatus --set

# drop packet if "hits" per "seconds" is reached
#
# NOTE: if you run multiple servers on a single host, you will need to higher these limits
# as otherwise you will block regular server queries, like Spider or QConnect
# e.g. they will query all of your servers within a second to update the list
iptables -A quake3_ddos -m recent --update --name getstatus --hitcount 5 --seconds 2 -j DROP

# accept otherwise
iptables -A quake3_ddos -j ACCEPT

#
#
# finally insert the chain as the top most input filter

# single server
# iptables -I INPUT 1 -p udp --dport 27960 -j quake3_ddos

# multiple servers
iptables -I INPUT 1 -p udp --dports 27960,27961,27962 -j quake3_ddos

You ideally should add this to your init scripts to make sure it survives a reboot of the server. Now, although requests will come in from the spoofed IPs, no traffic will go back out to them and your game server won't get blacklisted :)

Eventually, requests from the spoofed IPs will stop altogether (took 60 mins on our server).

The death of video rental starts here (sorry Xtravision). Netflix has finally launched in the Republic of Ireland and it will see customers paying just 6.99 euro a month for all their favourite movies and TV programmes from around the world. Plus, there's one month free trail right now.

How does watching unlimited movies and TV programmes for 6.99 a month sound? Pretty freaking awesome sounds about right.

One blogger sums it all up nicely, and I'll add in a few points of my own to his.

1. The sign up process is very slick and almost frictionless. You get a 30 day free trial and they assure you that you can cancel at any time without obligation so feel comfortable enough giving them your credit card details.

2. Also impressive was the range of options for viewing. I tried the Xbox and the Wii. Both were very easy to set-up and easy to use. Other options included Windows PC, PS3, Iphone/pad , Android phone/pad.

3. Picture quality on the Wii at 460p using composite cables was better than I expected and much more convenient than connecting a laptop to the TV. As movies are not in HD, there is little difference between using Xbox and Wii. In fact, only menus were smoother but I had to upgrade my Xbox subscription form FREE to GOLD (additional 5.99 a month) to use the netflix app. Think I'll be using Wii only from next month when I have to start paying for Netflix! Microsoft need to get off this pay for internet access thing - hello, I'm already paying my ISP. WTF? I can't even watch YouTube on the Xbox without a subscription fee :(

3. The service was very easy to use on both Xbox and Wii (I couldn't test on PC as I use Ubuntu Linux, and Netflix don't dig that for some reason). You can browse under a relatively small number of categories or you can search alphabetically. This simplicity makes the system easy to use but it could be a limitation if the number of videos available was greater.

4. The price of 6.99 /month for unlimited streaming is very attractive. Consider that conventional cable/satellite TV packages cost 25/month upwards and DVD rentals cost several euros per night.

5. On the downside the selection of films and TV shows is pretty poor at the moment. There are only about 70 titles on offer in each category most of which are old and many of which I have never heard of. The headline offerings that they are using to push the service include small number of popular TV shows including Braking Bad, Prison Break and Heroes. Netflix have promised to improve the selection as subscriber numbers rise but the licensing situation in Europe is messy. The rights to the best shows and films are owned by Satellite and Terrestrial broadcasters who have no interest in promoting streaming.

6. I am surprised that there is no pay per view element. I would have though that offering pay per view for the latest shows and films would be a natural extension of Netflix's service. I heard a radio interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings this morning and he went so far as to recommend iTunes for the latest shows. If Netflix was intending to offer premium content later then he would hardly point customers to a competitor.

In all, a flat fee of 6.99 per month instead of illegally downloading files or paying for Sky is great. There's enough content there to keep you busy until they get more, and the Wii controller works really well with it. I hadn't been using my Wii at all lately, but now it has a new purpose in life - unlimited movies and TV programmes on demand. Freakin' excellent :)

With ioRTCW and ioWolf now seeming more and more like a pipedream, the people who brought you the ioquake3 engine have already started working on a new project - iodoom3.

Many popular Linux games like Open Arena and Urban Terror are based on ioquake3 engine. With starting of iodoom3 project we will see more games coming to Linux in future that will be able to utilize high end features of id Tech 4 engine.

Just like what was done with Quake 3's source code, Doom 3 source code will be polished and new features and fixes will be introduced. A look at its roadmap:

* To add SDL for portability on input handling
* Cmake for building
* Cleaning up compile-time errors
* 64bit support
* Installers for the top platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux)

A wiki page has already been set up. Check it out if you want to know more. We'll be keeping a close eye on this project, and testing the 64 bit binaries out on our own server as soon as a release candidate is available :)

Do you like old school deathmatch with modern features? How about rich, colorful, arcadelike atmospheres? How about...retro Sci Fi? Then you're going to love what Alien Arena 7.53 has in store for you! This game combines some of the very best aspects of such games as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and wraps them up with a retro alien theme, while adding tons of original ideas to make the game quite unique.

Alien Arena is a furious frag fest with arenas ranging from the small, to the massive. With a large built-in player base, it's never hard to find a good match going on, at any hour of the day. The community is friendly, as well as prolific. Dozens of maps, models, and various accessories have been created by community members to add on to the game experience. The CRX engine that powers Alien Arena has received very signifigant upgrades in recent releases, resulting not only in stunning new visuals, but vastly increased performance as well.

The World of Padman 1.6. patch has been released and is available for download as an unified zip file containing binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems from the official site.

The new version solves some major game play issues and adds new features to the game. They have also added new content like oregano4's Airplane, a map for SyC, LPS and DM game modes and two new skins for the PaddyBell character model, PaddyBell and PaddyBee.

The patch it requires at least a full WoP 1.5 installation.

We have begun the process of upgrading our own WoP server to the latest release, so please be patient if you see any glitches there.

Support for PayPal as an additional payment option has landed today in Ubuntu Pay, the service that handles electronic payment for commercial apps in the Ubuntu Software Centre.

This new feature will enable Ubuntu users to comfortably and safely buy commercial apps, ebooks and magazines from the Software Centre with their PayPal account. PayPal will be an additional payment option along with the already supported credit and debit card alternatives, "a frequently-requested option by users who don’t have credit/debit cards or who get charged conversion fees by their bank for non-local currency transactions", adds Stuart Metcalfe, Canonical ISD manager.

All in all, a much welcomed feature that will contribute reinforcing the virtuous circle of the Ubuntu apps ecosystem with an easier purchasing process, more profits for app authors and increased attractiveness of Ubuntu as a target platform for app developers.