Okay, in honour of America's birthday, I'm taking my time to do a feature of submissions in my latest journal entry. This time, it needs to be a theme of red, white and blue in honour of this holiday today! To participate, your gallery needs to have at least 10 submissions and three of them will get featured here. Infact, red, white and blue doesn't even have to do with this country too.

Here we go!

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10. :thumb312531100:

Once again, I would like to thank the ten deviants in the forums for participating! I appreciate it. If you haven't had a chance to feature your works in this journal, you'll be able to do so in the next time around.

It seems to me that I've been clinging on to this community for months now.

Now, not only that I'm starting to grow exhausted, my hands are starting to wear out. Carpel tunnel syndrome is putting a dent on typing and clicking with a mouse...so, I will most likely need some time off from this site for a while.

Have a great holiday week!

For the first time since 2006 and for a second time in franchise history, the Miami Heat have been crowned NBA champions. This after the Heat defeated the Western Conference champion, Oklahoma City Thunder, 121 to 106 and winning the series, four games to one. The last time, the Heat won the NBA Champion was back in 2006 when they defeated the Dallas Mavericks in six games. Last year, the Mavericks fought back and took out the Heat in six games, before the defending champion was swept and eliminated by the Thunder in the first round of Western Conference playoffs in four games earlier this year.

#6 forward, LeBron James won the 2012 NBA Finals MVP. Tonight, he was a top performer with 26 points, 9-19 FGM-FGA, 11 rebounds and 13 assists. Throughout the 2012 NBA Finals, he averaged 28.6 points, 47% of field goals, 10.2 rebounds and 7.4 assists. The top performer in the losing team, the Oklahoma City Thunder was Kevin Durant who scored 32 point, 13-24 FGM-FGA, 11 rebounds and 3 assists.

It was about time that LeBron James became a champion for the first time after nine NBA seasons and three NBA Finals appearances.

With that said, the shortened 2011-2012 NBA season has come to a close. As you may have already noticed, Game 1 of the NBA Finals was played on Tuesday, 12 June 2012, five days later than its originally planned Thursday, 7 June 2012 start date. The delay of the NBA Finals was due to the NBA lockout that pushed the start of the 2011-2012 NBA season to late December and shorted the regular season from 82 to 66 games.

With that, the NBA season will begin anew this fall with the 2012 NBA Preseason and a full 82 game 2012-2013 NBA season.

Congratulations to LeBron James and the Miami Heat, NBA champions...basketball's best!

Okay, now...why am I submitting some of the drawings done for me by other artists?

Because, I have granted permission by the original artist in question to upload the works either in my main gallery or in the scraps. The biggest reason is that the artist that I've talked to do not even submit their works in their deviantART account, but elsewhere such as Tumblr, Photobucket or even Tinypic.

A couple of submissions done for me are by a couple of deviants who have deactivated their account with almost no possible way to find the original image.

But while most people (like me) are perfectly capable of submitting their own works, people have to be careful what they submit. If people re-posted their work on their account whose original is:

1. Not to be posted elsewhere.
2. Not to be used as a reference/stock, in whole or in part.

Then the offending (stolen) image can get reported per FAQ #8: What are violations of the deviantART copyright policy?

You know, it's there are some people who are even paranoid about art theft where they don't want even want other people submitting their works that are either not found on their account or even for personal use. If deviants feel that they had their work stolen, these FAQs should help them out:

FAQ #155: How do I report a deviation which I think breaks the rules?

What happens if the original image is third party work or by a artist who doesn't have a dA account and that English is not their first language? This can be eventually become a complicated issue for some people.

As deviantART does not allow reports from third party websites, deviants will need to contact the artist or production company and inform them that the work was posted on his/her account without proper written consent. For artists who do not have a dA account and that English is not their first language, but the artist and the person who is reporting the stolen artwork will have to try to work with the Help Desk to try to get the stolen material removed and the offending deviant in question possibly removed from dA.


For deviants who want to submit others works and want to obtain proper permission to do so, read these FAQs:

FAQ #157: Can I use things created by other people in my submissions?
FAQ #193: How do I prove that I had permission to use someone's work?
FAQ #257: What sort of permission do I need to use someone else's work?
FAQ #306: Does "Crediting" let me use whatever I want?

Please note that there will be some people who do not even want to allow permission to others works and will eventually prompt them to remove the stolen works regardless of permission before it gets reported. Most deviants have slapped watermarks on images to prevent work from being used without proper written consent.


Now as for tracing/heavily referencing, it is considered theft too. To fix this, deviants would need to either provide proper permission or remove the stolen/traced work. This FAQ explains it all:

FAQ #304: Do you remove copies and trace-over art?

People are allowed to trace using personal reference photos (not found on the internet) or using legit stock photos.

I will have to dig up older journal entries regarding this matter. If there is anything that is missing, please let me know.

As requested by ~Albi777, I've decided once again to do a feature of submissions in my latest journal entry. I get to feature ten deviants with three submissions of their choice. To participate, your gallery has to contain at least 10 submissions and three of them will need to be featured here.

Here we go!

1. Red DustPainted by the red dust
We shoulder the weight
Scoured by the red winds
We carry the future

Connected to our origins
But never to return
We answer to Earth's people
Yet this planet is our own

Can we carry our own future
And cease being used?
Can we gain our independence
Without fighting a whole world?

Painted by the red dust
We shoulder the weight
Scoured by the red winds
We carry the future Somber WonderlandAlice chased the rabbit across the grass. It was a little brown rabbit like all in her area yet she chased it anyway. It darted into a garden bed  and she crunched in after it. She didn't even notice the root that curled around her foot and didn't see the stone until it was a mere inch from her nose. She threw her hands forward but it was too late to stop her fall.
Her head passed through the stone and she found herself tumbling down a wide rabbit hole. It was very dark, what would happen if I ran into a wall Alice thought. Bright lights appeared above her and slowly fell past, she reached out and caught one and found that it was a small torch. She pointed its beam at the walls of the rabbit hole and was relieved to see they were at a safe distance. The walls were loose dirt, with little tufts of grass growing out of them. As she fell they became smoother and smoother. She realised rather suddenly that the walls had become white plaster, just like the walls in my house

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Thanks to the ten deviants in the forums for participating! I appreciate it. If you haven't had a chance to feature your works in this journal, you'll be able to do so in the next time around.

Back on 9 February 1966, the Los Angeles Kings was found when Jack Kent Cooke was awarded an NHL expansion franchise in Los Angeles to become one of the six teams that began play as part of the 1967 NHL expansion. The Kings won their division for the only time in their history in 1990-1991 and has qualified for post-season play in 24 seasons, advancing past the first round twelve times and past the second round twice.

The last time the Kings went to the Stanley Cup Final was in 1993, only to lose to the Montreal Canadiens in five games.

And after more than 45 years of frustration, the Los Angeles Kings have won the Stanley Cup for the first time in franchise history after eliminating the New Jersey Devils, by a score of 6 to 1. The Kings win the series, four games to two. This is the largest win of the game and the series since the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Minnesota North Stars, 8 to 0 in Game 6 of the 1991 Stanley Cup Final to win the series, four games to two.

The Kings become the lowest seeded team in the NHL conference and the second lowest in points total to win the Stanley Cup.

#32 Goaltender Jonathan Quick won the Conn Smythe Trophy. Throughout the Stanley Cup Final, he allowed just seven goals in six games, capping a breakthrough season for the Vezina Trophy finalists who kept the Kings competitive while they were the NHL's lowest-scoring team for much of the regular season. He also finished with 35 wings with a 1.95 goal-against-average, a .929 save percentage and a franchise-record 10 shutouts. And in the last 20 playoff games, he yielded just 29 goals when the Kings won the Stanley Cup title.

The Devils, on the other hand...fell short in their attempt to rally from a 0-3 deficit to win the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1942. The Devils last appeared in 2003 when they won their third Stanley Cup and will now have to wait another year to win it again.

With the Los Angeles Kings crowned as Stanley Cup champions, the 2011-2012 NHL season has come to a close and this past season, including the Stanley Cup Playoffs was the last one under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The current CBA will expire on 15 September 2012. The Players' Association is now trying to move the expiration date to 30 June 2012 in order to try to avoid a repeat of the lockout that canceled the 2004-2005 NHL season.

Back on 16 May 2012, the NHL Players' Association notified its players the a memo that the league has sent a written notice that it plans to "terminate and/or modify" the CBA went it expires. During the last talks in 2004, a full season was lost and they eventually agreed to a salary cap, a 24% rollback in pay and changes in rookie play.

Right now, neither side has divulged what they would be looking for a in a new deal.

In the meantime, congrats to the Los Angeles Kings on winning their first Stanley Cup in franchise history!

Here's a follow-up to my previous journal entry that I recently posted earlier this week. Since the release of Firefox 13, the browser no longer works officially. Why is that?

Firefox 13 was complied using Visual Studio 2010 SP1, thus resulting in a lot of dead code. 448 KB of overall code was reduced as developers removed the dead Windows 2000 support code from Gecko when they switched from Visual Studio 2005.

In Firefox 13, the Microsoft.VC80.CRT.manifest msvcm80.dll, msvcp80.dll, msvcr80.dll were removed and replaced with msvcp100.dll, msvcr100.dll. Using Dependency Walker, here are the following dependencies that do not exist on Windows 2000 and Windows XP < SP2:

DBGHELP.DLL: SymFromAddr
IPHLPAPI.DLL: GetAdaptersAddress
KERNEL32.DLL: DecodePointer, EncodePointer, GetProcessID, InitalizeSListHead, InterlockedFlushSList, InterlockedPopEntrySlist, InterlockedPushEntrySList, IsWow64Process, QueryDepthSList, SetDllDirectoryW
PSAPI.DLL: GetProcessImageFileNameW
SHELL32.DLL: SHopenFolderAndSelectItems, SHParseDisplayName

In all 15 entry point dependencies were added with the first two dependencies that were added when developers switched to Visual Studio 2010.

In SeaMonkey 2.10, the browser is still complied using Visual Studio 2005 SP1 and 288 KB of code was added, but as developers removed the dead Win2k support code from comm-central, they added three dependencies in SeaMonkey 2.10+ that will deliberately not work on Win2k:

KERNEL32.DLL: GetProcessId, IsWow64Process, SetDllDirectoryW

Despite the fact that Sea<onkey is still complied using MSVC 2005 in the 2.x, it is quite obvious that MSVC 2005/2008 support will most likely be dropped in the near future as developers are starting to get some issues trying to build the latest browser complied under VC8/VC9 with newer code.

Go to the latest forum thread if you want to get Firefox 13 (and higher) running on Win2k.

Well...Firefox 13 is officially out now and it has now been made publicly available on its FTP servers since Saturday night.

Firefox 13 is based on the Gecko 13 engine featuring major improvements that were made in its predecessor, Firefox 12. The log changes in Firefox 13 was originally published on 26 April 2012 with the first public Beta release. Firefox 13 has been released in 76 languages with 10 additional test languages.

In addition to the major changes over Firefox 12, the official Windows builds have been upgraded from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2010. Because of this, the new minimum supported Windows OS is now Windows XP Service Pack 2. Windows 2000 and Windows XP pre-SP2 are no longer supported.

WHAT'S NEW IN FIREFOX 13

(NEW) When opening a new tab, users will be presented with their most visited pages.
(NEW) Major performance improvements through incremental JavaScript garbage collection.
(NEW) The new default homepage now has quicker access to bookmarks, history, settings and more.
(CHANGED) SPDY protocol is now enabled by default for faster browsing on supported websites.
(CHANGED) Restored background tabs are not loaded by default for faster startup.
(CHANGED) Smooth scrolling is now enabled by default.
(DEVELOPER) 72 total improvements were made to Page Inspector, HTML panel, Style Inspector, Scratchpad and Style Editor.
(DEVELOPER) The column-fill CSS property has been implemented.
(DEVELOPER) Experimental support for ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects has been implemented.
(DEVELOPER) Support for the CSS3 background-position property extended syntax has been added.
(DEVELOPER) The :invalid pseudo-class tag can now be applied to the element.
(DEVELOPER) The CSS turn < angle > unit is now supported.
(UNRESOLVED) If you try to start Firefox using a locked profile, it will crash.
(UNRESOLVED) For some users, scrolling in the main GMail window will be slower than usual.
(UNRESOLVED) In Windows, the use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates.
(UNRESOLVED) In MacOS, nsCocoaWindows::ConstrainPosition uses wrong screen in multi-display setup.
(UNRESOLVED) CSS:hover regression occours when an element's class name is set by Javascript.

For a complete list of changes for Firefox 13, read the bug list: [link]

WHAT'S FIXED IN FIREFOX 10.0.5 ESR

Fixed numerous security related issues.
Mac OS 10.5 top crash with signature [@GLEngine@0x620cf]

In order to install Firefox 13, your computer must meet the following system requirements:

A Pentium 4 or newer processor with SSE2 instructions or better.
Windows XP SP21, Mac OS 10.5 or better2
512 MB of system memory3
200 MB of hard disk space

_{¹ While 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and up can be used to run Firefox 13, only 32-bit official builds of the browser are supported at this time.
² Firefox may run on slower computers with less memory, but it will be less usable.}

Download Firefox 13 now: [link]

Now that Firefox 13 is out, the support for Firefox 12 has come to a end.

Additionally, Firefox support for Windows 2000 and older versions of Windows XP has come to a end. This means for users on Windows 2000, your options are gravely limited. Switcing to either a different OS version or another supported browser (such as Opera) are the only viable options. For those who are on Windows XP RTM or Windows XP SP1, Mozilla strongly recommends users to upgrade to a free service pack update in order to be up to date.

For organisations who are still on Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM or Windows XP SP1, Firefox 10.0.5 ESR has been released. Firefox 10 ESR will be maintained with security and stability updates until 12 February 2013.

Now that Firefox 13 has been finalised, Firefox 14 will migrate to the Beta channels later this week, Firefox 15 will migrate to the Aurora channels and Firefox 16 will make its first appearance in the Nightly channels.

The first public beta release of Firefox 14 will be due out later this week and the final version of the successor to Firefox 13 will be released on 17 July 2012.

Okay...first of all, it's been about six months since my mom passed away after losing her battle with lung cancer and since then, things have been pretty rough lately. Let's just see how the rest of 2012 goes.

Anyways, I'm feeling bored so it's time to do a feature of the submissions in my latest journal entry. Again, the simply rules are as follows: I get to feature ten deviants with three submissions of your choice and your gallery must contain at least 10 submissions and three of them will need to be featured here.

Here we go!

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9. :thumb300057549:

10.

Thanks to the ten deviants in the forums for participating! I appreciate it. If you haven't had a chance to feature your works in this journal, you'll be able to do so the next time around. For the two people who tried to submit three of their works, but hadn't had the time to do so, I'm sorry that I couldn't accept them, but you'll have another shot in the next feature.

Did anyone see yesterday's solar eclipse?

It affected the southern part of the United States from southern Oregon all the way to Texas. I saw that event on Ustream.

Dubbed Saros 128, Member 53 (ascending mode), the moon started to block light from the sun starting at around 5:11 PM here with the total eclipse occurring around 6:28 PM and peaking at around 6:30 PM. The eclipse officially ended at 7:46 PM...thus lasting for more than 2½ hours.

The next solar eclipse, the Saros 133, Member 45 will be on 13 November 2012 with the one here in the western part of the United States known as Saros 145, Member 22, will not occur until 21 August 2017.

The last time a solar eclipse of this nature occurred was on 10 May 1994 when Solar Saros 128, Member 57 affected Baja California, Mexico, the United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia.



is opening up commissions. Go to his journal entry for more information. I can't blame him for having me post this.

It's been exactly two years since the launch of deviantART v7 and a lot of changes have been made to this site before.

I'm wondering how much longer will dAv7 remain live before it gets replaced with dAv8. Plus, I also don't know if Firefox 10 ESR will work in dAv8 as it may either be on dA's 12th birthday or possibly next year. If I take a hard guess of sometime next year, Firefox 10 ESR probably might not make it as it will only be supported until February 2013.

Version 7 featured a smaller header design and removal of search bar except on home page which ticked off a lot of deviants. To fix this, the staff later made updates to include a search bar on every page.

If deviantART version 8 launches before 12 February 2013, users on Firefox 10 ESR through Firefox 16 will be lucky to have a functioning website for sure.

Firefox 3.6 has already been EOL'd and it might not be supported on dA too much longer. Furthermore, Firefox support on Win2k is already on life support as Mozilla just gave Win2k users the last ever update more than three weeks ago. I expected a EOL plan going into the weekend...that is if there is no more issues found.

Thoughts?

I just don't know what is next for me now.

After losing the kiriban by just mere seconds earlier this week and getting upset over the loss, I just realised that it's just not worth it to keep arguing over the loss anymore.

And along with that I can't even keep supporting dA forever. Sometime next year, I will most likely have to start cutting back on support for this site as I've been on it for almost eight years.

Furthermore, I will not have a supported browser in less than a month from now. Mozilla is going to cut the cord on Firefox 12 and abandon support for Win2k. I can strongly expect a Win2k EOL plan at mozilla.dev.planning either next week or the following week if there are no more issues with Firefox 12 found.

I can expect remaining very tiny percentage of deviants who are still on Win2k to either abandon the OS completely, switch to Opera or permanently deactivate their account on dA very soon and move to either SheezyArt or Storm-Artists.

I also can't understand while dA still supports Firefox 3.6 and PowerPC machines, but I can strongly expect Google Apps to dump support for it real soon. I'm sure that the remaining defiant Firefox 3.6 and PowerPC users will never have another chance.

Well...Firefox 12 is officially out now and it has now been made publicly available on its FTP servers since late last Friday.

Firefox 12 is based on the Gecko 12 engine and is available in over 80 languages. It features numerous improvements that were made in its predecessor, Firefox 11. The log changes in Firefox 12 was originally published on 16 March 2012 with the first public Beta release.

WHAT'S NEW IN FIREFOX 12

(NEW) In Windows, Firefox is now easier to update with one less prompt (User Account Control).
(NEW) Page Source now has line numbers.
(CHANGED) Line breaks are now supported in the title attribute.
(CHANGED) Improvements to "Find in Page" to centre search result.
(CHANGED) URLs pasted into the download manager window are now automatically downloaded.
(DEVELOPER) Added support for the text-align-last CSS property.
(DEVELOPER) Implemented experimental support for the ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects.
(FIXED) Fixed various security issues.
(FIXED) Some TinyMCE-based editors failed to load.
(FIXED) In Mac OS, WebGL performance may be degraded on some hardware.
(UNRESOLVED) Firefox will crash if you try to start the browser using a locked profile.
(UNRESOLVED) For some users, scrolling in the main GMail windows will be slower than usual.
(UNRESOLVED) Some synaptic touch pads are not able to vertical scroll.
(UNRESOLVED) In Windows, the use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates.

For a complete list of changes for Firefox 12, read the bug list: [link]

WHAT'S FIXED IN FIREFOX 10.0.4 ESR

Fixed numerous security related issues.
extensions.checkCompatiblity.* prefs didn't work as expected in ESR releases.
Firefox ESR 10.0.3 opened "What's New" page after update.

In order to install Firefox 12, your computer must meet the following system requirements:

A Pentium 4 or newer processor with SSE2 instructions or better.
Windows 20001 or better2, Mac OS X 10.5+
512 MB of system memory3
200 MB of hard disk space

_{¹ Support will be discontinued following this release.
² While 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 can be used to run Firefox 12, only 32-bit official builds of the browser are supported at this time.
³ Firefox may run on slower computers with less memory, but it will be less usable.}

Download Firefox 12 now: [link]

Now that Firefox 12 is out, the support for Firefox 11 has ended. Additionally, Firefox 12, for which it removed support for pre-Windows 7 SDKs and will be supported until 5 June is the last version of the browser that will work on Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM or Windows XP SP1. For those who are on Windows 2000, your options are gravely limited. Switcing to a different OS version or another supported browser (such as Opera) are the only viable options. For those who are on Windows XP RTM or Windows XP SP1, Mozilla strongly recommends users to upgrade to a free service pack update.

Organisations who are still on Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM or Windows XP SP1, Firefox 10.0.4 ESR has been released. Firefox 10 ESR will be maintained with security and stability updates until 12 February 2013.

Now that Firefox 12 has been released, all support for Firefox 3.6 has officially end. Due to this, jobs for Firefox 3.6 will be officially disabled. The end of Firefox 3.6 support after more than two years, brings a end to Firefox support for Mac OS 10.4 ("Tiger"), a PowerPC-based machine or a computer whose processor lacks SSE2 instructions. Mozilla will take no action to provide any fixes for users on Firefox 3.6, regardless of severity.

Now that Firefox 12 has been finalised, Firefox 13 will migrate to the Beta channels later this week, Firefox 14 will migrate to the Aurora channels and Firefox 15 will make its first appearance in the Nightly channels.

The first public beta release of Firefox 13 will be due out later this week and the final version of the successor to Firefox 12 will be released on 5 June 2012.

Thanks so much for the point donations! So far, 1,859 points have been donated at the goal has been set at 10,000.

I'm still not good enough to do point commissions on my own, but if you can....you're welcome to continue donating points until the goal is reached! I'm trying hard to save up some points in hopes of giving premium membership to someone as well as a decent points commission. If you are broke, that's okay.


In addition to this, I have set the watcher count kiriban to 1,000. Whoever becomes my 1,000th watcher gets a free drawing!

Good luck! I'll continue doing another journal feature very soon.

It was on this date 100 years ago today that the Royal Mail Ship Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 PM Greenland Standard Time (2:40 AM GMT) and sank two hours, forty minutes later at approximately 2:20 AM GST (5:20 AM GMT), killing 1,514 people thus making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. There were 2,435 passengers with 892 crew members on board.

The Titanic was owned by the defunct British shipping company, the White Star Line (aka the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company) which operated from 1870 to 1934. The ship was laid down on 31 March 1909 and was launched on 31 May 1911 (but not christened). The ship was completed on 2 April 1912 and made its first and only maiden voyage on 10 April 1912. The RMS Titanic had te radio call-sign identification MGY.

Almost all of those who jumped or fell into the water died from hypothermia within minutes. Such a disaster caused widespread public outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax shipping regulations and the unequal treatment of the different passenger classes aboard the ship. Such inquiries set up in the wake of the Titanic disaster recommended sweeping changed to maritime regulations. In 1914, this led to the establishment of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), which still governs maritime safety today.

The disaster of the RMS Titanic has created widespread popular culture over the generations to come.

Yahoo! has a special article regarding the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, you can read more about it here: [link]

For more information regaring the RMS Titanic, read these Wikipedia articles: [link] and [link]

Starting today, Microsoft Windows Vista and its family of products will transition from Mainstream Support to the Extended Support phase. The affected products include Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate. This applies to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the products listed above.

Please remember that Microsoft transitioning its Windows Vista products are gradual as it marks the progression of the products throughout the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy. The Mainstream and Extended Support expiration dates for all editions of Windows Vista was set when it was released on 30 January 2007.

Support for Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate were supposed to end after today, but Microsoft extended support for these consumer products to give users enough time to migrate to a supported OS. This decision came after Microsoft evaluated the support lifecycle for Windows Vista and make final decisions about extending support if and when it is necessary.

Here are the key points that you should be aware of if you are still using Windows Vista:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?

During the Extended Support phase, Microsoft as usual will continue to provide critical security updates, but will no longer accept requests for warranty support, design changes or new features for Windows Vista and its family of products.

Additionally, free technical support will no longer be provided and non-security related hotfixes will require an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement to be purchased. Users without Software Assurance who wish to enroll for the Extended Hotfix Support Agreement must do so before 10 July 2012 (90 days after the end of Mainstream Support) and per-fix fees also apply.

Because Windows Vista will lose Mainstream Support after today, Windows Internet Explorer 10 is not being offered for it. Internet Explorer 10 is designed for Windows 7 and the upcoming Windows 8 operating system and it would be non-trivial to port the upcoming browser to Windows Vista.

Microsoft is now strongly urging users still running Windows Vista to consider upgrading to Windows 7 as it will only be the fully supported until the release of Windows 8. This means that the slow phaseout of Windows Vista has begun and vendors will start dropping support for Windows Vista very soon. Windows 7 will be fully supported until 13 January 2015.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER EXTENDED SUPPORT FOR WINDOWS VISTA ENDS?

After Extended Support for Windows Vista ends on 11 April 2017, the product will no longer be publicly supported. This means that Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or other non-security related hot fixes. Additionally, assisted support will no longer be available.

Self-Help Online Support will be available for the product until at least 10 April 2018 after Extended Support for all editions of Windows Vista comes to a end.

Customer Support Agreements (CSA) for Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise will be available for customers who are in the process of migrating to supported products. Customers with CSAs will be able to request a hotfix through their Technical Account Managers.

Microsoft will not offer CSAs for consumer versions of Windows Vista.

POPULARITY SNAFUS

Windows Vista was Released to Manufacturing on 2 November 2006 and was made available for businesses and enterprise customers on 30 November 2006. Windows Vista was released worldwide on 30 January 2007. In Microsoft's 4th quarter 2007-2008 report, 180 million copies of Windows Vista were purchased by customers worldwide. When Windows 7 was released in October 2009, the market share for Windows Vista peaked at 18.6% in a report by w3schools and 18.83% in a report by NetMarketShare. Currently, the market share for the recent month is down to 4.3% as reported by w3schools and 7.02% usage by NetMarkShare respectively.

During the Mainstream Support period, Windows Vista was never very well supported. When Windows Vista was released in January 2007, hardware support was poor and it was the fault of the hardware manufacturers and not the design of the operating system itself. As a result of this, people had problems installing Windows Vista on computers that didn't meet the recommended minimum requirements and it ran slow for them.

And due to hardware related issues, this resulted in a lot of "Vista sucks" comments on the internet and people started to hate the OS just because it was a popular thing to do.

Along with Windows XP, Microsoft stopped selling Windows Vista to direct OEMs and terminated retail sales of the product on 22 October 2010 and ended Windows Vista pre-installation sales on 22 October 2011.

Comments regarding Windows Vista anyone?

It was on this date way back in 1992 that Windows 3.1 was released. Windows 3.1 was released to manufacturing on the 10th of March 1992 as a successor to Windows 3.0. Further editions of Windows 3.1 were released between April 1992 to February 1994 until the series was superseded by Windows 95, the first consumer oriented 32-bit graphical operating system.

Important Features
Windows 3.1 was the successor to Windows 3.0 (released on 22 May 1990) and it included significant improvements over Windows 3.0.

Windows 3.1 dropped support for Real Mode support and required a 6 MHz Intel 80286 PC with at least 1 MB of memory to run. The effect of this was to increase the system stability over the crash-prone Windows 3.0. Windows 3.1 removed CGA graphics support even though it still works in Windows 3.1 and compatibility with Windows 1.x and 2.x applications were removed as well.

Here are the brief list of changes in Windows 3.1:

Available in upgrade or full package (upgrade does not require earlier version)
Improved Setup program offers express, custom, network and troubleshooting setup
Computer-based Windows 3.1 tutorial
Consistent dialog boxes
Improved online Help
OLE Drag and drop, OLE support in many applications
Improved File Manager
Improved printer support through use of UNIdriver
New video drivers support MS-DOS graphics in a window
WD1003 virtual hard drive controller
Virtual memory changeable in Control Panel
Standard and enhanced mode operation only
TrueType scalable font support
Includes multimedia extensions (inclusions)
Includes new SMARTDrive version 4.0, HIMEM XMS manager 3.0, new EMM386.EXE
Standard mode can now run with EMM386.EXE running
Documentation includes "Getting Started" manual
266 different types of printers supported

In 386 Enhanced Mode, Windows DOS applications gained the ability for users to manipulate menus and other objects in the programme using the Windows mouse pointer that were provided that the DOS-based application supported mice. A few DOS-based applications such as late releases of Microsoft Word can access the Windows Clipboard. Because Windows' own drivers cannot directly work with DOS applications, hardware such as much require a DOS driver to be loaded prior to starting Windows.

For the first time, icons could be dragged and dropped in addition to looking more detailed. While Windows 3.1 in Standard Mode can address up to 512 MB of memory (16 MB of memory on a 80286-based PC), the OS could theoretically address up to 4 GB of memory with no single application that can ever use more than 16 MB of memory. In stand alone versions of MS-DOS (up to version 6.22), Windows 3.1 can only address up to 64 MB of system memory with up to 256 MB of memory for a swap file.

Windows 3.1 was the first version of Windows to be distributed on CD-ROM (this was more common for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 which typically came with MS-DOS 6.22 on one CD) in addition to 720 KB, 1.2 MB and 1.44 MB floppy distributions.

Several editions of Windows 3.1 were released between the 1992 to 1994 period:

1. Versions with special font support: A special version named Windows 3.1 for Central and Eastern Europe was released that allowed the use of Cyrillic and had fonts with diacritical marks characteristics of Central and Eastern European languages. At the time of its release, Microsoft introduced its own codepage (Windows-1250) and supported its use in violation of many countries' ISO standards. Microsoft ignored the official Polish codepage of ISO-8859-2, but is supported by contemporary Internet Explorer versions. In addition to this, Microsoft also released Windows 3.1J with support for the Japanese language, for which it shipped 1.46 million copies in its first year on the market (1993) in Japan.

In early 1994, Microsoft released a Simplified Chinese version of Windows 3.1 for the Chinese market. The updated system identified itself as Windows 3.2. This Windows 3.2 is the Chinese version of Windows 3.11. This update was limited to this language version as it fixed only issues related to the compliex writing system of the Chinese language.

Windows 3.2 was generally sold by computer manufacturers with a ten-disk version of MS-DOS that also had Simplified Chinese characters in basic output and some translated utilities.

2. Windows 3.11: In November 1993, Microsoft released an update for Windows 3.1 known as Windows 3.11. Windows 3.11 is not a standalone version of Windows, but rather than a software update. For those who did not own Windows 3.1, full disk sets of Windows 3.11 were available at the time. Windows 3.11 corrected problems, most of which were Novell network related and it was the first version to include Certificate of Authenticity with a more sophisticated hologram and a Microsoft (3M) sticker on the box. An 800 number to call (in the United States and Canada) and check for product legitimacy. Windows 3.11 also included updated drivers and five updated core files.

3. Modular Windows: For special versions of Windows 3.1, Modular Windows, an embedded operating system is designed to run on the Tandy Memorex Video Information System (VIS). Microsoft claimed that they created a new, incompatible version of Modular Windows 1.1 shortly after the VIS was shipped. No products are known to have used Modular Windows 1.1. The VIS included a 12 MHz AMD-80286 processor, of 1 MB ROM containing minimal MS-DOS 3.x, a few drivers and Modular Windows, a built in Mitsumi 1x CD-DROM drive and PS/2 mouse or keyboard interface. 1 MB of system RAM (640 KB base memory+384 KB extended), on-board audio and a modem.

4. Windows for Workgroups: Windows for Workgroups is an extension that allowed users to share their resources and to request those of others without a centralised authentication server.

Windows for Workgroups 3.1 was released in October 1992 and it featured native networking support. The networked based OS is a extended version of Windows 3.1 that came with Server Message Blocking (SMB) file sharing support via the NetBIOS based NBF and/or IPX network transport protocols. WFW 3.1 included the Hearts card game and introduced VSHARE.386, the Virtual Device Driver version of the SHARE.EXE Terminate and Stay Resident programme.

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 was released to manufacturing in August 1993 and was shipped in November 1993. WFW 3.11 supported 32-bit file access, full 32-bit network re-directors and the VCACHE.386 file cache, shared between them. WFW 3.11 dropped standard mode (Intel 80286) support and required a Intel 80386 machine to run. A Winsock package was required to support TCP/IP networking in Windows 3.1x. Third-party packages were used, but in August 1994, Microsoft released an add-on package that provided TCP/IP support in Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

Following the release of MS-DOS 6.22 in June 1994, WFW 3.11 largely replaced Windows 3.1 for OEM installations on then-new PCs due to its improved capabilities and greater stability.</ol>There were numerous add-ons that improved the functionality in Windows 3.1:

Video for Windows included editing and encoding programmes for use with video input boards. A runtime version for viewing videos only was also made available. Originally released as a free add-on to Windows 3.1x, it then became a integral component of Windows 95 and later.

Windows for Pen Computing was a series of Microsoft-produced add-ons for Microsoft Windows versions in the early to mid-1990s with additional tools for tablet PCs. In response to the PenPoint OS by GO Corportation, Windows for Pen Computing was developed by Microsoft. In 2002, Windows for Pen Computing was rendered obsolete by the tablet PC support in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Win32s, a add-on package was given a limited compatibility for Windows 3.1x with the then-new 32-bit Windows API used by Windows NT 3.1 and Windows NT 3.5. For testing of the new Win32s functions, the game FreeCell was included.

Microsoft released versions of Internet Explorer from version 2.0 up to the first release of Internet Explorer 5 in early 1999.

System Requirements
Here are the official system requirements for Microsoft Windows 3.0 and they're very easy to install on any PC or emulator:

MS-DOS 3.1 or later
A IBM or AMD compatible 80286 processor running at 6 MHZ or better (80386 recommended)
640 KB of base memory + 256 KB of extended memory (XMS 2.0 or later); 1 MB extended memory recommended for Standard Mode and 2 MB extended memory recommended for 386 Enhanced Mode
5.25" (high density) or 3.5" floppy drive
A hard disk with at least 6 MB of free disk space (10 MB recommended)
EGA or VGA compatible card (SVGA recommended) and monitor
Mouse recommended

Marketing Campaign
On the 1st of March 1992, Microsoft began a television advertising campaign for the first time, the advertisements, developed by Ogilvy & Mather, were designed to introduced a broader audience to Windows. From the day Windows 3.1 was shipped, 3 million copies of the OS were sold two months later. The year of Windows 3.1's release was so successful for Microsoft, it was named the "Most Innovative Company Operating in the US" by Forbes Magazine, while Windows became the most widely-used GUI-based operating environment.

Windows 3.1 Today
Windows 3.1 was superseded by the release of Windows 95 on the 24th of August 1995. Microsoft ended all support for Windows 3.1 and older versions of Windows on the 31st of December 2001. After Windows 3.1 became obsolete in the PC world, it found a niche market as a embedded operating system. During that time, both Virgin Atlantic and Qantas employed it for some of the on-board entertainment systems on long-distance jets. And it see continued use as a embedded OS in retail cash tills.

Microsoft made an announcement on the 9th of July 2008 that Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (and other versions of Windows 3.x) for the embedded devices channel would no longer be made available for OEM distribution on the 1st of November 2008.

In all, Windows 3.1 became the best selling graphical user interface in the history of computing!  What are your thoughts on Windows 3.1 and how it has changed the way how we used Windows-based PCs?

For the first time since 1998, the Kentucky Wildcats are the champions of the NCAA Division I-A Basketball! The #1 (South region) Wildcats defeated the #2 (Midwest region) Kansas Jayhawks, 67 to 59!. The last time they won a national championship was when the Wildcats as the #2 seed in the South region defeated #3 seed in the East region, the Utah Runnin' Utes, 78 to 69.

#23 Forward Anthony Davis was named the 2012 NCAA Division I-A Basketball's Most Oustanding Player! He achieved this by scoring 12 points, 15 rebounds, 5 assists throughout the Final Four. Tonight alone, he scored 6 points, made 16 rebounds and made 15 assists.

The top performer of tonight's National Championship Game, for the winning team, the Kentucky Wildcats, #20 Guard Doron Lamb went 7 of 12 and scored 22 points, made 2 rebounds and 3 assists. For the losing team, the Kansas Jayhawks, #0 Foward Thomas Robinson went 6 of 17 and scored 18 points, made 17 rebounds and 1 assist.

The Wildcats finish the 2011-2012 NCAA basketball season with a perfect 16-0 record in the SEC and with 38 wins and 2 losses overall. For the losing team, the Kansas Jayhawks, they finished the year with a 32-7 overall record (16-3 in the Big 12). This is the Wildcat's 8th NCAA title and the first one ever for John Calipari. The semifinalists were the Louisville Cardinals and the Ohio State Buckeyes.

This year's Final Four was held in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana where more than 55,000 people believed to attended the game. Congrats to the Kentucky Wildcats on winning their first national championship since 1998 and becoming champions of college basketball!

After I saw a journal entry for the obvious reasons why people are no longer doing free requests. I decided to make a response here and guess what?

I can't blame artists for pulling the plug on requests for good. The biggest reasons are money related issues and lack of time...and people can't keep requesting things into perpetuity and it really pisses other artists off. If people want requests from someone, I'm afraid that due to school and almost having no free time, their options are gravely limited. Using the Projects Forum and the Journal search are the only viable options.

If the artists want to stop accepting free (or even paid) commissions, trades, giftart, collabs, etc, it's their choice as well and I can't blame that.

Thoughts, anyone?


Oh, yeah...as compared to this, Mozilla just gave Firefox 3.6 users their last security update nearly two weeks ago and will most likely prepare to phase out support for that browser as it will not release anymore updates. You can read more about my forum post here: [link]

In brighter news, I should spend the remainder of this week, thinking up a good April Fools prank.

I would like to post a update regarding my Mechapuff R4. First of all, I would like to thank the deviants for drawing her and I appreciate it.

This is the drawing that I did earlier this year:

When the first deviant did the drawing of my character above, the armour shield that was supposed to protect her neck, was in the form of a necklace and not a neckpiece as previously though.

This drawing done by *BlueVagabond illustrates how the armour shield covers her neck:

And this design has been derived from my Mechapuff character:


This has been the case for three of my previous Mechapuff characters. I don't know why so many deviants would want to draw my Mechapuff R4 character wearing a necklace and I feel that it would be a huge burden (and even harassing) to fix the error. If it's the case, then I can't blame them for the mistakes.

If deviants ever decide to read this, hopefully, this mistake won't be made in the near future.