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My computer crashed, as happens, some of my old familiar software cant go on my new computer. I need photo editing software that puts captions under the photo. Seems simple but I've tried several with no luck. You guys always help so I appeal to your experience!! As always: "Fight the good fight" Don VB

LONDON: European researchers are working on mathematical foundations of programming to create fault free software in the future. People are remarkably tolerant of software that goes wrong, but when it comes to faulty cars or TV sets, they would insist that they be set right without much ado, the researchers said. "The software industry is still very immature compared to other branches of engineering," says Bengt Nordström, computer scientist at Chalmers University, Göteborg. "We want to see programming as an engineering discipline but it's not there yet. It's not based on good theory and we don't have good design methods...

Excerpt - Redmond, WA (AHN) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is pulling the XP operating system from its product line come Monday. The move comes 18 months after the company launched the Vista operating system. Although Microsoft will not sell the XP program any longer, they will still generate revenue from providing support for the software as it will no longer be free. Microsoft will offer extended support packages for XP until at least 2014. ~ snip ~

"For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have," Todd Bishop writes for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Microsoft Blog. "As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality." Bishop found a doozy, which also happens to illustrate perfectly why Mac users have such disdain for the "Windows experience." If you've ever...

Researchers said Windows XP Service Pack 3 delivers a measurable performance boost when compared to Windows XP with Service Pack 2.Windows XP runs some applications up to 10% faster with the latest service pack installed, a research firm has found. "We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (v.3244) delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," wrote staff at exo.performance.network, in a blog post. The researchers found that a PC loaded with Microsoft's XP SP3 completed the OfficeBench test suite in less than 50 seconds. A similarly configured system running Windows XP with...

SACRAMENTO – California's first inspection of slot machines at Indian casinos has found widespread software lapses that could be short-changing tribes, the state and millions of gamblers, the state's gambling commission warns in a new report. State inspectors approved just 60 percent of the slots that were examined last year at seven casinos, which included some of the most successful and sophisticated in the nation. But tribal representatives and commission staff members disagreed sharply about the severity of the software shortcomings flagged in nearly 500 machines examined at the casinos, including those operated by the Pala, Pauma and Viejas tribes...

I have a Tablet PC. A Toshiba R15-S829. I bought it new, and it, and all software on it, is legal. Tablet PC's come with a recovery CD, not an unlocked or unbranded version of the O/S. I would like to have an unbranded version of the WinXP/Tablet PC O/S. Historically, Microsoft only sold these to system builders. Now they are selling them to online retailers, also. I have found it for sale on four different retail websites, and marketed as either..."WIN XP PRO TABLET SP2B" or "Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC 2005 W/SP2B". In the Product info sections, it...

THE NEW YORK TIMES March 28, 2008 Santiago Journal Before ’73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising discovery. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines. The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer, a visionary Briton who employed his “cybernetic” concepts to help Mr. Allende find an alternative to...

New Genomics Software Infers Ancestry With High Accuracy ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2008) — Some people may know where their ancestors lived 10 or 20 generations ago, but the rest of us can learn our distant biological heritage only from our DNA. New genomics analysis software developed by computer scientists at Stanford appears far more adept than prior methods at unraveling the ancestry of individuals. A new paper describes the HAPAA system, which takes its name from "hapa," the Hawaiian word for someone of mixed ancestry. Going back 20 generations the software can identify what continent or broad global region an...

US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday. Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms." "Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee. "As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in...

March/April 2008 A Technology Surges In Iraq, soldiers conducting frontline street patrols finally get software tools that let them share findings and plan missions. By David Talbot First Lieutenant Brian Slaughter wanted his comrades to learn from the insurgent attack that could have killed him on May 21, 2004. Before dawn, the 30-year-old had been leading 12 men in three armored Humvees along a canal in Baghdad's al-Dora district when a massive blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) lifted his vehicle off the ground. Concealed attackers followed with a volley of rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire. But the IED...

- Snip - Last week, Gross brought his message about porn's hazards to the University of Minnesota. With him was Donny Pauling, who spent nine years as a porn producer. Pauling has walked away from the industry and the fortune he made. - Snip - The xxxchurch.com's website has resources for "those struggling with porn." One offering is free, down-loadable "accountability software" that sends a list of the dubious sites you visit to your "accountability partner" -- a friend or spouse who helps you swear off porn. - Snip - His encounters with the college women he recruited usually followed...

Microsoft researchers are hoping to use "information epidemics" to distribute software patches more efficiently. Milan Vojnović and colleagues from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, want to make useful pieces of information such as software updates behave more like computer worms: spreading between computers instead of being downloaded from central servers. The research may also help defend against malicious types of worm, the researchers say. Software worms spread by self-replicating. After infecting one computer they probe others to find new hosts. Most existing worms randomly probe computers when looking for new hosts to infect, but that is inefficient, says Vojnović, because...

Hi All, My step mother is looking at buying a MAC and she (and I) really don't know too much about them... Well, let me put it this way: She knows nothing about computers, while I've never even seen a MAC up close, though I work in IT. We both have a number of questions. My first bit of advice to her was to go to an Apple store, sit down with a sales rep, and see if the computer can do what she wants it to do. She currently has a Windows XP PC, and primarily uses paint programs...

What you can - and cannot do - with your software is often determined by the code owner's license. From not using open source APIs with closed-source digital rights management (DRM) to being barred from fiddling with Windows source code, we've seen it all. Or have we? Joining the open source and commercial melee is a document that pretty much rules out using a new JavaScript tool by anyone working in - or associated with - the pharmaceutical, farming and food, and some manufacturing industries. Oh, and certain universities are out, too. ExtTLD, for developing components on the open source...

HP has laid out plans to reduce the energy consumption of its volume desktop and notebook PCs by 25 per cent by 2010 compared to 2005 levels. The company plans to reach its 2010 goal through a variety of strategies, including more efficient power supplies and lower-energy chipsets and processors, across its volume PC portfolio. Customers will have the option of the Verdiem Surveyor remote power management software preloaded on certain HP PCs. This software can help measure, manage and reduce power consumption on PCs and monitors by up to 33 per cent, equating to around 200 kilowatt-hours per PC...

The inaugural version of OpenDisc has hit the streets! Featuring major updates for FileZilla and OpenOffice, and new versions of Blender, ClamWin, Firefox, Pidgin and WinSCP. Also by popular demand the Tux Paint stamps package makes a return to the disc. As per usual printable disc covers and labels are included, but if you’d like to view them online simply visit the cover art section. Most importantly there are five new programs on OpenDisc 07.10, three of which were added due user suggestion; Dia, GnuCash and the ever-popular VLC are now featured, as is the streamlined Sumatra PDF and TrueCrypt.

MicroSoft is making the Release Candidate for Windows Vista Operating System available to the public at the URL link above. I very recently purchased a new computer which came with Vista, there have been many "gliches" in using this new computer with Vista. I finished installing the Sevice Pack RC about 6 hours ago and I've found significant improvement in the performance and stability of the system. My personal tips: 1) The download is approximately 448MB in size so you you might want to consider your download speed when and if you choose to download this RC. 2) The install...

Windows XP trounced Windows Vista in all tests, regardless of the versions used or the amount of memory running on the computer, says Devil Mountain Software.In the latest Mac versus PC ad, that put-upon Windows guy quietly concedes he's "downgrading" from Vista to XP. He may have good reason: new tests show that the older XP runs common productivity tasks significantly faster than Microsoft's newest operating system. Researchers at Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based developer of performance management tools, have posted data from their most recent Windows performance tests -- and Vista, even after it's been upgraded to the new...

How often have you heard it said that "patents foster innovation?" That phrase rings true in pharmaceuticals, where investment requirements are enormous and failure common. But does it also apply in areas such as software? Does it really take the promise of a legal monopoly to motivate a typical founder or CTO to innovate? And what about the advantages patents give big companies over emerging ones, simply because the former can credibly threaten expensive patent litigation while the latter cannot? I'll talk about the negative impacts of software patents another time. But today I'd like to make the case...

My boss has asked me to find the version of Linux/Unix that Samba is developed and tested on, in that we might find the most reliable Samba platform. I'm guessing it's developed on Fedora, and tested on RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), which would mean www.centos.org would qualify, but I'd like to hear what knowledgeable FRiends ... know. Thank you.

What could make the Free Software Foundation (FSF), proprietary software companies, and at least one venture capitalist into allies? The End Software Patents (ESP) coalition, a new organization poised to swing into action next month under the leadership of Ben Klemens. The campaign currently has seed funding of a quarter million dollars from sources those associated with the group won't disclose, and hopes to augment that with donations from individuals and companies for a struggle that, to judge by the usual amount of time it takes to push major changes through the US Supreme Court, could take five years or...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2007 – As part of its continued commitment to honoring troops and their families, software giant Microsoft Corp. announced today that it has become a corporate supporter of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program. The America Supports You program connects citizens and corporations with military personnel and their families serving at home and abroad. “As the demands of service continue to challenge and strain America’s armed forces, domestic efforts to support soldiers and their families grow increasingly important,” said Curt Kolcun, vice president of Microsoft’s Federal Division. “Joining America Supports You is a key part of...

Three years ago, Ted Mondale's new company signed a $550,000 contract with Hennepin County to provide a computer software program that was supposed to revolutionize the way data from real estate records is made available over the Internet. The revolution is off to a slow start. Though the county has paid $314,000 to Nazca Solutions Inc., which Mondale cofounded as part of a career move from politics into technology, there is still no program ready for public use. Mondale had originally promised a finished product in six months and, following two years of tinkering, said it would be ready last...

IBM's Office Rival In launching a free, open-source based software suite, Big Blue hopes to compete for Microsoft's Office clients. The design incorporates user feedback with a nod to Web 2.0 by Matt Vella IBM's (IBM) recent launch of a free, full-featured suite of business software dubbed Symphony is a bold attempt to grab market share from Microsoft's (MSFT) bread-and-butter Office product. But even as early adopters buzz over Symphony's strengths and weaknesses, the release shows how IBM, much like its arch-rival, is trying to find ways to make traditional enterprise software relevant in a Web 2.0 world. For one...

BELGRADE (AFP) — An Indian company looking to cash in on eastern European "near-sourcing" signed a deal here to construct an IT park that Serbia hopes will become the biggest on the continent. The deal with Bangalore-based property developer Embassy Group was potentially worth up to 600 million dollars (425 million euros) over five years, which would make it Serbia's biggest ever greenfield investment, said Economy and Regional Development Minister Mladan Dinkic. Greenfield projects are implemented from the ground up by an investing company on sites where there had been no previous activity. "I'm very satisfied ... that today I...

Russian OS is to be installed on every school computer in Russia by 2009. Furthermore, every pupil will get the opportunity to operate the applied software produced in Russia, Leonid Reiman, acting Minister of Communication stated at a press conference. Experts and market participants consider the terms within which software is to be developed quite reasonable. According to Mr. Reiman, that might significantly reduce Russian dependence on foreign software.... The Ministry of Communication Press Service explains the Ministry plans to install Russian OS and alternative program package in every Russian school. The dates to carry out tenders for OS development...

The week's not off to a great start for Microsoft. On Monday, a European court upheld almost $1 billion in antitrust penalties against the software maker. A day later, it's IBM that is taking aim at Microsoft with the release of a free office software suite called Lotus Symphony. IBM said Tuesday that Symphony, based on open source software from the OpenOffice.org project, will be made available as a free download essentially to whoever wants it. The package contains a word processor called Lotus Symphony Documents, as well as Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. IBM is calling the...

We just found out Google Presentation is out! The Google Docs is now completed! With the introduction of Google Presentation, now you can collaborate a presentation online. This has been a missing piece of Google office suite. They even change the name from Google Docs and Spreadsheet into Google Docs. Multiple collaborator can edit the same presentation at the same time. The software is just amazing since it uses a highly compatible CSS so you can view it in all browsers. You can also upload images and changes backgrounds using the theme selector. When you can done with the presentation,...

A Seattle man is suing Autodesk for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in an attempt to restrict the resale of its software. The plaintiff, Tim Vernor, alleges that Autodesk has repeatedly sent copyright infringement notices to eBay, where he has tried to sell legal copies of Autodesk software, because the company does not want the used copies to compete with new sales of the software. According to a copy of the complaint seen by Ars Technica, Autodesk began sending copyright infringement notices to eBay in May of 2005. He says that Autodesk never took the appropriate legal action to...

I think I have a nifty idea for a software project, but since I am not independently wealthy AND I don't feel like having it ripped off so that I wind up with nothing, I was wondering if my fellow Freepers could advise me on how I could wisely go about getting funding for this project, and protect myself. If I should only stick with close friends and relatives, then I will do so. Thank you.

Considering the similarities between computers and human beings, both are analogous in that they have hardware and software. The first is made of metal, silicon and code – the second is made of neurons, nerves, and experience. Computer hardware has evolved dramatically since its initial invention. According to Moore’s Law, transistors have consistently shrunk by half - approximately every two years since the 1960s. If we were to compare the size or processing power of a single neuron to a single transistor, we might say our brain “power” would have increased more than 2 million percent since Moore announced...

Simple question. I am looking for any recommendations on firewalls(free download). Thank you, TJI

I am searching for software that was discussed and linked here. It was software that tested computer addresses and blocked the tracking of physical addresses of the computer. I had never realized that my physical address was available to the right software, when I surfed. Would somone be so kind and post the links to the sites that do this. I have not been able to find them on scroogle searches or FR searches. Thank you.

By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it. Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States. Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A California man has pleaded guilty to providing restricted software products to China, marking the first successful U.S. prosecution for illegal exports of military-related software code, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday. Xiaodong Sheldon Meng, 42, formerly of Beijing and now a resident of Cupertino, California, has pleaded guilty to violating U.S. laws on economic espionage and arms export controls, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. Prosecutors said Meng improperly installed a demonstration unit of a simulation product at the Peoples' Republic of China Navy Research Center and exported to China a restricted visual...

Microsoft’s next version of its small-business/home productivity suite, due imminently, will be free and ad-funded. Microsoft Works 9.0 — which will be the new product’s name, if Microsoft opts to stick with its current nomenclature — might also debut at some point as Microsoft-hosted low-end productivity service, as many have been speculating. A hosted version of Works would give Microsoft a head-to-head competitor with Google Docs & Spreadsheets and other consumer- and small-business focused services, analysts have said. For the time being, however, the new version of Works will be ad-funded, according to Satya Nadella, the newly minted Corporate Vice...

Salesforce.com repackages Apex code as developer 'platform'Software as a Service (SaaS) isn't dead, but it could soon be overtaken by Platform as a Service (PaaS), according to SaaS pioneer Salesforce.com. With this week's launch of its re-packaged Apex Code platform under the oddly-named Summer '07, Salesforce.com claims this is the next step in the expansion of service-based computing. "The first generation of SaaS was about providing applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) and email packaged as services. With Summer '07 we are taking this to the next level and delivering a platform with tools and services for the developer,"...

Last week, when I condemned the flood of crippled trial software, ads and offers that come loaded on new Windows Vista computers, readers reacted strongly. I received roughly 700 emails, all but a handful agreeing with me. The column was the most popular article that day on WSJ.com and was cited on numerous other Web sites. Clearly, many people are furious about these unwanted programs and icons, which are sometimes called craplets. Many would like to smite them without going through the laborious process of uninstalling them manually, one at a time. Some readers suggested strategies. The following are some...

India’s largest outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has set up a global delivery center in Guadalajara, Mexico, with plans to hire up to 5,000 staff there over the next five years. Having a center in Mexico helps TCS, of Mumbai, as it will be closer to U.S. customers and on a similar time zone, said Pradipta Bagchi, a spokesman for TCS said on Thursday. The South American market also provides a significant opportunity for TCS because of a large number of regional companies investing in information technology and related services, Bagchi said. TCS currently has about 5,000 employees in South...

Requesting help from any Freeper who may know of a solution... We had a power outage overnight. When I tried to reboot this morning, my desktop didn't come up. When I select the "Restore Active Desktop" command, it fails with the error message: "Internet Explorer Script Error" and the details "An error has occurred on the script of this page" referencing Line 65, character 1, and error message: Object doesn't support this action; Code: 0. And it provides a URL followed by "Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?" with the default to "Yes". After hitting enter,...

ATLANTA - The lesson plan was called "Artificial Unintelligence," but it was written more like a comic book than a syllabus for a serious computer science class. "Singing, dancing and drawing polygons may be nifty, but any self-respecting evil roboticist needs a few more tricks in the repertoire if they are going to take over the world," read the day's instructions to a dozen or so Georgia Tech robotics students. They had spent the last few months teaching their personal "Scribbler" robots to draw shapes and chirp on command. Now they were being asked to navigate a daunting obstacle course...

A timeline: A Windows update icon shows up on the bottom of the computer screen to show that a new update is available. It is the patch so that hackers don't use Windows updates to piggy-back onto the computer. Try to download and install patch. The icon shows up repeatedly for several days, even though it states that it has been downloaded. A BBC article about malware using a trojan to piggy-back on Windows update is put on the BBC site. Mentions the patch. Download and install Avast anti-virus. Next day, put in registration key for Avast. Later, the Avast...

China pirates less softwareInTech News, 17 May 2007 The software piracy rate in China is down for the third consecutive year. That’s the good news. The bad news is about 82% of the software the Chinese use is illegal. The Wall Street Journal reported piracy has been declining for three years, according to new estimates from an industry group, creating hundreds of millions of dollars in new business in the world's second largest personal-computer market by unit sales. Software piracy is still high by international standards: The study, conducted by research firm International Data Corp. for the Business Software Alliance,...

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant. A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers....

A large retail chain had a problem. It sold three similar power drills: one for about $90, a purportedly better one at $120 and a top-tier one at $130. The higher the price, the more the store profited. But while drill know-it-alls flocked to the $130 model and price-fretters grabbed its $90 cousin, shoppers often ignored the middle one. So the store sought advice from a new breed of "price-optimization" software from DemandTec Inc. What followed offers us a clue about important shifts that technology is bringing to retail shopping. After analyzing an array of variables, including sales history and...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement from 10 other countries conducted over 90 searches worldwide as part of "Operation Site Down," designed to disrupt and dismantle many of the leading criminal organizations that illegally distribute and trade in copyrighted software, movies, music, and games on the Internet. Operation Site Down is the culmination of three separate undercover investigations conducted by the FBI. In the past 24 hours, more than 70 searches were executed in the United States, and more than 20 overseas. Four individuals were arrested in the United States, and searches and/or arrests occurred in the following...

NEW DELHI - 100,000. That's the number of new jobs that India's top five software companies plan to add this fiscal year, riding a boom in outsourcing that's fattened profits. That's on top of a record 76,500 new employees who joined these companies last year. The figures underscore how rapidly U.S. and other Western companies are shifting work to low-cost India, where outsourcing is no longer limited to call centers or back office work such as billing and salary records. Companies like Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Infosys Technologies Ltd. now have thousands of engineers developing software to improve corporate...

California continues to employ far more technology workers, pay higher wages and attract more venture capital than any other state. But the overall U.S. tech sector is also growing at a surprisingly brisk clip - for now. That's the conclusion of a highly anticipated annual report by AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, the country's largest technology trade association. Researchers relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, mostly from 2006. According to the 2007 "Cyberstates" report, to be published Tuesday, the U.S. tech industry employed 5.8 million people last year - up 2.6 percent from 2005. The...

Look like EMC has VMware's upcoming IPO penciled in for late June and that the S1 registration papers should start circulating soon. EMC said in February that it would float 10% of the subsidiary, which could be valued at $10 billion.