TCS V9 Available for download

[Phil Bates]

Just seen that the TCS website has been updated, support now redirected to CricHQ and V9 is available for download

Couldn't find a link of CricHQ support to this group I had to google it

[UTCC-Statto]

Really - I cant see anything on TCS site

[Phil Bates]

Try www.tcs27,com under download

[UTCC-Statto]

Got it - interesting that on totalcricketscorer.com it still advertises V8.0!!

On Sunday, 19 March 2017 18:18:24 UTC, Phil Bates wrote:

Try www.tcs27,com under download

[Phil Bates]

Yeah seen that, also if you check the support there's no drop down and it goes straight to CricHQ

[Chris Emery]

Downloaded - installed - checked for Play cricket functionality and then uninstalled as you can only download now from CriqHQ.

Had an email with activation code to which I replied - no problem as I've already uninstalled.

This generated a support ticket - some interesting emails to come I guess

I see on their website that they advertise ACO endorsement - surley this should be removed

I would encourage all leagues thats are listed as users ask to be removed from that list in protest too


Chris Emery

North Staffs & South Cheshire Cricket League

[Chris Mountain]

When you start up v8, which I have on my laptop, you are only asked to install them next release of version 8 (8.0.03.02) I suspect that v8 remains pointed at www.totalcricketscorer.co.uk rather than www.tcs27.com. In other words you have to know that v9 is out and go to the web site - it does not appear to auto-update.

Chris - when you download v9 does it automatically start the software update or is there any user intervention? Also, is there are data conversion from 8 to 9 (which has happened in previous new versions)?

I also note that the Release notes have not moved on to v9.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Total Cricket Scorer" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to total-cricket-scorer+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to total-cricket-scorer@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/total-cricket-scorer.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Phil Bates]

There's the answer - turn off totalcricketscorer.com and you turn off V8

[Geoff Maddocks]

What do you mean "turn off totalcricketscorer.com"? 

[Phil Bates]

If V8 is pointing to the www.totalcricketscorer.com domain to get it's authentication and CricHQ turn the domain off V8 will stop working.

[Kieron Thwaites]

It's highly unlikely that the totalcricketscorer.com will be deactivated, at least in the short term (long term is another matter).  As TCS v8 "phones home" on startup to check for newer versions, doing so will mean that it would be unable to do so, which would run counter to CricHQ's stated goal to migrate people to TCS v9.

I've previously done some network traffic analysis on TCS v8, and discovered that the network requests that it makes fall broadly into three categories:

• A "phone home" on startup solely to check for the presence of a newer version, which can be disabled by the user.
• Play-Cricket interaction.
• TCS live scoring interaction.

There's no online check for the TCS v8 licence itself (or scoreboard licence for those of us with those); this appears to be stored somewhere locally on the system (I'm guessing buried deep in the Windows registry, but I can't be bothered to figure that out, and I have licence concerns over doing that anyway).  This is easy to verify: cut your device's network connection and then ensure that TCS v8 starts up correctly (if there was an online check for the TCS license itself, the expected behaviour in this case would be that either it wouldn't start at all or that it would start in demo mode only).

For anyone worried about TCS v8 stopping working, this would therefore only apply to the three items above: as TCS v8 will shortly become unsupported, any changes in the remote API endpoints will result in undefined behaviour in TCS v8 as far as that functionality is concerned.  However, the core functionality of TCS v8, that of actually scoring a game, will remain unaffected.  CricHQ doesn't have a remote "kill switch" -- if they did, you would have seen a fairly recent update to sneak one in, but TCS v8 hasn't been updated for ages.  You would definitely stay on the older version at your own risk (if it breaks, you get to keep both halves), and it won't receive any further updates (which may be a problem if the forthcoming 2017 Code of Laws require any significant changes from a scorer's perspective -- which it probably will due to changes in penalty runs and "handled ball" finally being subsumed into "obstructing the field"), but the core functionality will still be fine.  CricHQ's wording of "TCS v8 will cease to work" is either meant to refer to Play-Cricket and live scoring functionality, is scaremongering to get people to update to TCS v9, or both.

The three areas of TCS v8 that can be remotely affected, as they depend on external API endpoints to function correctly, are the three areas mentioned above: update checking, Play-Cricket, and live scoring.

Live scoring is the most obvious area to be affected, as CricHQ wants to move this over to their platform.  Since CricHQ controls the API endpoints, they just need to move/disable those to break current live scoring (and CricHQ wouldn't even need to disable the entire totalcricketscorer.com domain for this).  That said, live scoring currently appears to work as before in TCS v9, so it appears that this won't happen immediately; rather, this will be a gradual process most likely involving point releases of TCS v9.  This would be consistent with prior CricHQ communications.

Play-Cricket is the difficult one to predict.  The existing functionality in TCS v8 will work provided that Play-Cricket does not make any backwards-compatible breaking changes to their API endpoints.  As soon as they do, Play-Cricket functionality in TCS v8 will break.  TCS v8 talks to Play-Cricket directly, so how long this will work depends on Play-Cricket and their development schedule; CricHQ has no control over this.  It's possible that Play-Cricket will maintain concurrent API versions for backward compatibility reasons, but this should not be relied on.  If you rely on Play-Cricket functionality, you should plan to migrate to an alternate solution sooner rather than later.

The update checking functionality is extremely unlikely to be remotely deactivated, for reasons already stated.

As for the tcs27.com site, the most likely explanation is that CricHQ is using that as their "staging" site, where they can test website changes before they push them to the totalcricketscorer.com site.  As a software/web developer as my day job, this is done fairly often, though usually staging sites aren't publicly accessible...

For what it's worth, I'm also holding off on TCS v9, but for slightly different reasons: our cricket season is still in progress (last games this coming weekend), and I'm not willing to upgrade to a new major version mid-season.  We have our own live scoring system (Webcricket) which has been used for a while (an experiment with CricHQ's own systems a few years back ended disastrously and, as such, the chance of us using their live scoring systems at any point in the future is exactly zero), and as a) I have been using TCS to drive the scoreboard and b) TCS has superior stats reporting/exporting functionality, I've been running both systems in parallel -- I've been running TCS while my colleague handles Webcricket, though on occasion I've done both simultaneously (highly stressful, but doable).

--K

[Richard Grover]

www.tcs27.com is re directing to www.totalcricketscorer.com

--

[Craig Kell]

Up in the air about what to do this season.

Paying hundreds of pounds a year for CricHQ seems ridiculous unless our league pays for it which probably won't happen. But at the end of the day, it just feels like the only way that I'll be able to score with my MacBook (which I only use for scoring btw).

[Phil Bates]

Craig, so what version of TCS do you run on the MacBook?

[Craig Kell]

Hi Phil, it's currently V8.

However live scoring probably won't work with that especially as the TCS site is being deactivated soon.

Long shot would be for me to install an Android Emulator onto the device so that I could get Play Cricket Scorer but I've already got Windows 7 on the system.

[Simon Winder]

I have managed to score a game after setting up on play cricket downloading scoring and uploading.

I had to end the first innings and game manually but it all worked OK. (Although I didn't do it in a match situation or with a book to compare it with.

Happy days for junior managers!

---

From: Kieron Thwaites <kieron....@gmail.com>
To: Total Cricket Scorer <total-cric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, 20 March 2017, 5:58
Subject: Re: [Total Cricket Scorer:1737] Re: TCS V9 Available for download

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Total Cricket Scorer" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to total-cricket-sc...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to total-cric...@googlegroups.com.