The first release candidate of PHP 5.2.0 has just been released. The source packages can be found here: http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.0RC1.tar.bz2 (fa36d378f7f1fd547b881b6323ae2c60) http://downloads.php.net/ilia/php-5.2.0RC1.tar.gz (e217195c90e123acce0c2f71ac07f88d) Given that it took a few months to reach this point and addition of new features was allowed the changelog already looks extremely impressive. Some of the key changes include things like 3 new extensions (filter, json and zip), the date extension had the rest of its functionality enabled, much work was done in terms of getting PHP 5.2 to run faster and more efficiently (in terms on memory usage). There have also been nearly 80 bug fixes made to existing functionality, which hopefully translates to a more stable release. As the RM for this release, I'd like to ask everyone to download and try this PHP version on your software, see if the code still runs properly and hopefully faster then it did before. If you come across any proble...

A quick note to anyone building PHP with cURL or http extension support as well as one of the MySQL extensions (mysql, mysqli and pdo_mysql). The MySQL binaries found on mysql.com are built against yaSSL as opposed to the more common openssl against which libcurl (usede by cURL and HTTP extensions) is linked. The conflict between the two libraries causes curl initialization of the SSL layer to fail preventing startup of the PHP extensions. To fix this problem you can either use older mysqlclient binaries (5.0.18 works) or compile MySQL yourself against openssl, either of these two will allow a working build of PHP with MySQL and curl support.

After what seems like forever a new stable version of FUDforum is finally out. The upgrade and the installation scripts can be found here: http://fudforum.org/download.php This release incorporates a number of significant changes, including the introduction of Ajax for tree views and category collapsing. Improved Help (FAQ renamed) that offers better explanation on the various features FUDforum offers to the forum users. A number of performance improvements across the board and many other improvements and features. This release also includes a security fix relating to the mime handling for image uploads, the fix is retroactive, so it'll address any bogus images uploaded before the upgrade.

Here is a new "plan" by the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency to stop piracy at the root, the kids! They invented a superhero of their own to fight the evils of piracy... Zooom.... BAM... and all that good stuff. Their website can be found here http://www.captaincopyright.ca/Default.aspx

Yesterday, I went to Montreal for a quick business trip, and as I was walking out of the terminal building in the airport I recieved a very interesting SMS from Rogers (my cell phone provider), which went like this: "Welcome to the USA! Access ur voicemail as you do at home. Dial +15147347699 to reach customer care. Enjoy!" Is there something I missed in the news? ;-)