HOW TO FORWARD E-MAIL APPROPRIATELY!

I know that most of you handle email properly, but it is a good reminder and I'm sure that you get email from some people that do not delete the names of previous senders ( and receivers ) so you might want to pass this on to them -

A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails. Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures. Please share it with your e-mail buddies! Do you really know how to forward e-mails? Most of us DO NOT know how. Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an e-mail, there is information left over from the people who got the message before you -- namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps: (1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever you know how to. It only takes a second. You MUST click the 'Forward' button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't hit the forward button first you won't have full editing functions . I particularly dislike having to scroll through 200 E-mail addresses before I get to the e-mail. (2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the 'To:' or 'Cc:' fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your 'BCC:' option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the 'TO:' field of the people who receive it. That way you aren't sharing all those addresses with every Tom, Dick or Harry. (3) Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You can rename the subject if you wish or even fix spelling. This one is very important - please read and heed! (4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent. These are the ones that often end up having picked up a virus from somebody. This is really important! (5) Have you ever gotten an e-mail that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The e-mail can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses. A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and e-mail addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and e-mail address on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don't believe the ones that say that the e-mail is being traced, it just ain't so!) (6) One of the main ones I hate is the ones that say that something like, 'Send this e-mail to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.' Or, sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen. IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN! (Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!) I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed. (Could this be why I haven't won the lottery?) (7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for Years! Just about everything you receive in an e-mail that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes. com/ It's really easy to find out if it's real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on. So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses. Finally, here's an idea! Let's send this to everyone we know (but strip my address off first, please!). This is something that SHOULD be forwarded.

Dear Tech Support: Installing a Husband

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as :

• Romance 9.5 and
  
• Personal Attention 6.5,

and then installed undesirable programs such as:

• NBA 5.0,
• NFL 3.0 and
• Golf Clubs 4..1.
  

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,

Desperate.



DEAR DESPERATE,

First, keep in mind,

• Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while
• Husband 1.0 is an operating system.
  

Please enter command:

• ithoughtyoulovedme.html and
• try to download Tears 6.2 and
• do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.

If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications:

• Jewelry 2.0 and
  
• Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to

• Grumpy Silence 2.5,
• Happy Hour 7.0 or
  
• Beer 6.1.

Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0-program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend

• Cooking 3.0 and
• Hot Lingerie 7.7.
  

Good Luck Babe!


Tech Support

8 Ways to Maintain a Clean, Lean Ubuntu Machine

Once in a while, you may want to do some maintenance on your Ubuntu machine and clean up unnecessary files that are chunking up large storage space in your hard disk.

Here are 8 ways that you can use to clean up your Ubuntu:

1) Analyze your disk usage

The first thing that you need to do is to find out which files are consuming the large bulk of the storage space in your hard disk. Go to Applications->Accessories->Disk Usage Analyzer and click on the Scan Filesystem at the top to get it to analyze your disk usage pattern. You will be able to see instantly which files/folders are taking up the bulk.

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The 10 Most Mysterious Cyber Crimes

The best criminal hacker is the one that isn't caught—or even identified. These are 10 of the most infamous unsolved computer crimes (that we know about). 

by Corinne Iozzio

The most nefarious and crafty criminals are the ones who operate completely under the radar. In the computing world security breaches happen all the time, and in the best cases the offenders get tracked down by the FBI or some other law enforcement agency.

But it's the ones who go uncaught and unidentified (those who we didn't highlight in our Cyber Crime Hall Fame that are actually the best. Attempting to cover your tracks is Law-Breaking 101; being able to effectively do so, that's another story altogether.

When a major cyber crime remains unsolved, though, it probably also means that those of us outside the world of tech crime solving may never even know the crime occurred.

These are some of the top headline-worthy highlights in the world of unsolved computing crime—cases in which the only information available is the ruin left in their wake.

The WANK Worm (October 1989)
Possibly the first "hacktivist" (hacking activist) attack, the WANK worm hit NASA offices in Greenbelt, Maryland. WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers) ran a banner (pictured) across system computers as part of a protest to stop the launch of the plutonium-fueled, Jupiter-bound Galileo probe. Cleaning up after the crack has been said to have cost NASA up to a half of a million dollars in time and resources. To this day, no one is quite sure where the attack originated, though many fingers have pointed to Melbourne, Australia-based hackers.

Ministry of Defense Satellite Hacked (February 1999)
A small group of hackers traced to southern England gained control of a MoD Skynet military satellite and signaled a security intrusion characterized by officials as "information warfare," in which an enemy attacks by disrupting military communications. In the end, the hackers managed to reprogram the control system before being discovered. Though Scotland Yard's Computer Crimes Unit and the U.S. Air Force worked together to investigate the case, no arrests have been made. 

Click here to continue reading the article.....

Seven Client OSes That Could Replace Windows

1. Seven Client OSes That Could Replace Windows
2. Mac OS X
3. Linux
4. Solaris/OpenSolaris
5. FreeBSD
6. Midori
7. iPhone OS/Symbian/Android
8. The Revenge of Netscape

For the slideshow please click on this link

The Cyber Crime Hall of Fame

Rules are made to be broken the same way networks are made to be hacked into. These are nine of the most infamous criminal hackers to ever see the inside of a jail cell.

by Corinne Iozzio

There are all sorts of crimes, but the ones that probably happen most often and hurt the most are crimes of opportunity—breaking into a house with an open window, nabbing the wallet from a purse left unattended, stealing an unlocked car, etc. Now, for the average Joe, breaking into NASA's infrastructure and bringing online giants like Amazon to a grinding halt would not fall into that category; for someone with in-depth networking and computer know-how, though, it's a different story altogether.

Often the greatest tech crimes in history have little more reason behind them than "because it was there." More often than not, a hacker sees an open window—a hole in system's security, a backdoor, etc.—and climbs on through. And they don't do it for any real worldly gain, but merely to prove that they can. That's not to say that there isn't malicious intent underlying some attacks (take Vladimir Levin's $10.7 million hoax on CitiBank, for example). And we're not saying that all hackers are bad guys, but a few fall prey to the dark side and use their talents for evil—not good.
What does it take for a cyber crime to catch our eye? In compiling our list, we looked for a few things: ingenuity (had it been done before?), scope (how many computers, agencies, companies, sites, etc. did it affect?), cost (how much in monetary damages did it cause?), and historical significance (did it start a new trend?). Only one of the nine crimes we highlight ranks on all four counts. No matter how you slice it, though, each one of these security cracks warrants a, well, we'll let you fill in the exclamation.
John Draper
Possibly best known by the moniker Cap'n Crunch (yes, like the cereal), John Draper is one of the first people to which the term "hacker" can be applied. In the 1970s, Draper used a toy whistle found in Cap'n Crunch cereal to hack phone lines and make calls. Draper realized the whistle produced the exact tone necessary to signal that an active call on a phone line had ended—2600 Hz, to be precise—when in fact it had not, thus allowing the call to continue even after the exchange thought it had ended. Draper was found out in 1972 when the phone company flagged his strange billing patterns; he was eventually sentenced to two months in prison. "Phreaking," or the hacking of telecom systems, as it's now called, can be directly traced to Draper.
Ranks For: Ingenuity, Historical Significance
Kevin Mitnick
Though Kevin Mitnick landed on the hacking radar in 1981 (at age 17), he didn't hit the really big time until 1983. While a student at USC, Mitnick gained access to ARPANet, an Internet predecessor used by large corporations, universities, and the U.S. Army. Getting into ARPANet provided him with access to the Pentagon and all the Department of Defense's files, but he didn't actually steal any data. It's a glory thing. After the system administration got wise, Mitnick was arrested on the USC campus and served a short stint in a youth detention center—the first sentence for illegally accessing a computer system. The incident marked Mitnick's second arrest, but he would continue to be on the FBI radar and has since been the subject of many more arrests, investigations, and court cases.
Ranks For: Ingenuity, Scope
Click here for the full story

Cover story: Top 50 tech visionaries

Christopher Null

Information Age

19/08/2008 13:29:00

It’s easy to look at a laptop, an iPod, or a laser printer as nothing more than a tool to get work done with or to while away your free time on, but these and many other high-tech devices didn’t fall off a tree. They emerged following years of hard work – and in some cases, an entire career devoted to a single technology – by inspired researchers, designers, and developers. Our list of technology visionaries includes the guy who invented a way to store data in a portable form – and who almost got demoted as a result. It recognises the woman who popularised the term “bug” after a moth flew into a computer relay. And it acknowledges a genius who might have saved modern gaming by inventing Jump Man. Our opinion doesn’t have to be the last word on the subject, however. If you have additional nominees who deserve recognition, or if you want to chime in to agree with or reminisce about or rail against our choices, please send your opinions to informationage@idg.com.au.

Click here to continue reading.....

The Ten Greatest Hacks of All Time

09.15.08

We reached back into the early days of computing and dredged up the most inspiring examples of hacker brilliance we could find. 

by Sascha Segan

Tech knowledge is like the Force: It can be used for good or for evil. And the greatest hackers in history are the ones who used their powers for good, to take technology to exciting places it was never intended to go.

You can hack your TiVo, your AppleTV, your Canon PowerShot, or (of course) your PC to make it do things its creators never intended. But we tried to go even further in our list of history's top ten hacks. We've looked back to computing's earliest days to find the most inspiring examples of hacker brilliance—in our entirely subjective opinion, of course. And none of these hacks are crimes—or at least, they shouldn't be. 

click here to continue reading

How to Extend Laptop Battery Life

Imagine you are sitting at the airport and you have just enough time to log in and check your email on that cool new laptop. Just as you get to your inbox, the light starts flashing saying you are running out of battery power and wouldn’t you know it, your cord won’t reach the outlet. There are certain steps you can take. The following fifteen tips can help you extend your battery’s life.

1. Defrag your hard drive regularly so it runs as efficiently as possible. Only perform this activity when plugged in, not on battery power. Mac OSX is equipped to better handle fragmentation so Apple users may not need this tip.

2. Dim the monitor. Many laptops have this option available and many include CPU and cooling enhancement enabling you to squeeze every last bit of power from your battery.

3. Reduce the number of programs that are active in the background. You may be running programs such as ITunes, Desktop Search, and so on. These all contribute to your CPU usage which quickly lowers battery life. Shut down everything you don’t need when operating on battery.

continue reading....

The PC Secret Formula
Click by Click Help to Put
the Life Back Into ANY PC

Ten key differences between Linux and Windows

Jack Wallen

Published: 03 Sep 2008 16:04 BST

Before debating the relative merits and shortcomings of Linux and Windows, it helps to understand the real distinctions between them. Jack Wallen has distilled the key differences into one list.

I have been around the Linux community for more than 10 years now. From the very beginning, I have known that there are basic differences between Linux and Windows that will always set them apart. This is not to say one is better than the other; it's just to say that they are fundamentally different.
Many people, looking from the view of one operating system or the other, don't quite get the differences between these two powerhouses. So I decided it might be useful to list 10 of the primary differences between Linux and Windows.
Click here to continue reading.....

Jokes for Computer Geeks

A little boy goes to his father and asks, “Daddy, how was I born?”

The father answers, “Well, son, I guess one day you will need to find out anyway! Your mom and I first got together in a chat room on Yahoo. Then I set up a date via email and we met at a cyber-café. We sneaked into a secluded room, where your mother agreed to download from my hard drive. As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall. Since it was too late to hit the delete button, nine months later, a Pop-up appeared that said: Scroll down—you got made!”

PC Running Slow? Speed it UP!

Revolutionary product speeds up your computer



There are many reasons why your computer could be running slow...

I'm myself pretty much a hard core computer user, couple of friends have mentioned that if a new computer needs to be tested in just a couple of hours, it should be given to me.



Simply because my normal computer workload is pretty much at maximum at all times. I have Mozilla FireFox open with 20-50 different tabs, couple of Adobe Acrobat windows, couple of word files, Editplus (text editor) with 30 tabs, plus of course Adobe Photoshop, mail programs, MSN and these are just the main things.



So if a PC has a reason to strike for some reason, it should definitely be my computer. However, luckily I haven't really had any big problems except for speed issues due to my hardcore memory and CPU consumption. Most of the 'computer speed up' software out there focuses only on ONE problem area, but with a user like me, its far from enough. Products like "PC Doctor" and "Registry Fixer" are decent products but they leave a lot of your computer's speed potential unused (I know that after I have tested the product PC Secret Formula).


PC Secret Formula system covers all important areas so your computer is literally forced to perform at maximum speed and that's why I would definitely recommend the PC Secret Formula to everyone who feels their computer is running slower than it could be should be.


While I use my laptop around 16 hours a day, I haven't really done much to keep it running fast and safe. I run a firewall and anti-virus software. In the past I have tried some spyware software pieces, registry cleaners and so on, but overall they haven't done much good, some of them have actually screwed up my computer.

And this makes me happy to see a tested product, which teaches me how to do it all safely. At least for me it worked like a treat, really made my PC faster again and at the same time didn't cause it to blow up or anything like that.


Did you know that some anti-virus software might make your computer virus-free but at the same time take up so much of your PC resources that it makes your computer reaaaly slow?


Using PC Secret Formula


PC Secret Formula has been designed so that you run through the entire program step by step. First you get your machine cleaned up and to get familiar with software (btw, all the software names there are freeware, so no extra costs). It takes some time the first go around but it's very clearly explained.


You'll learn exactly what to do and most importantly, what NOT to do. How to use the software and a number of built-in Windows utilities to fix your slow computer. After that there's a regular maintenance plan outlined that will take much less time but will keep your machine in great shape.


Usually people charge a lot for just a registry cleaner, but in this package, its included! With this program you really get your money's worth plus more..


What I didn't like about PC Secret Formula? After going through the system I'd say there are one thing that I don't like about it. Firstly, being a hardcore computer user I know enough about computers as well as different tasks. What I don't know much about is how to speed up my computer.


I know a few things but I haven't really had any time to work on obtaining knowledge in that area. And here I'd like to see special chapters that would be combined of the section of the book. There could be like 3 different combinations, one for hardcore users like me, another for intermediate PC user and finally one for hardcore amateur. Right now the sections of PC Secret Formula all together last just a bit less than an hour's read, but for me it would be enough to have a 10-15 to get straight to the point.


Overall impression

PC Secret Formula has easy-to-follow, professionally produced and well put together ebook, but in addition to that, every single chapter also has notes attached which provide additional notes that will further enhance your PC's performance. So if your computer is running slow and you want to speed it up today, PC Secret Formula is the system you should use.

Microsoft sees end of Windows era

Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows.

Called Midori, the cut-down operating system is radically different to Microsoft's older programs. It is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC.  It is seen as Microsoft's answer to rivals' use of "virtualisation" as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day computing.

Continue reading..

Swiss schools boot (out) Windows

The hills are alive with the sound of Linux

The Inquirer

By Stewart Meagher: Wednesday, 09 April 2008, 11:25 AM

FROM SEPTEMBER this year 9,000 computers in Swiss state schools will pull the plug on dual boot capability.

The computers which have up until now been running Windows as well as Ubuntu will forever be free from Microsoft when they become Linux boxes.

The move comes after instructions from the country's Department of Public Instruction which has become a serious advocate of Open Source software.

Whilst the move will obviously save money from the public purse, school officials point out that the switch also levels the playing field for those students who might not be able to afford expensive Microsoft software.

Manuel Grandjean, director of the Media Service Schools, also pointed out with alacrity usually absent in civil servants, that the move would also "avoid providing captive customers for large companies". Stick it to The Man, Manuel! µ

L'Inq
ZDnet

World's fastest internet connection 'used to dry laundry'

Last summer a 75-year-old woman from Karlstad became the envy of internet users worldwide.

With her blistering 40 gigabits per second connection, Sigbritt Löthberg had the world's fastest internet connection - many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user had experienced such a high speed.

Continue reading

OS Wars: The Battle for Your Desktop

by Eric Griffith

Read the full article

Pick The Best OS For Your Life

We're under no illusions that our choice of a top operating system is going to change how most of our readers do their computing. What you use on your PC comes down to a lot of things: your comfort level, what's forced upon you by the IT staff at work, philosophical beliefs, economic status, you name it. It's impossible to quantify what makes a perfect OS—but that didn't stop us from trying!

If the OS you have already works for you, don't rush to change. Sure, we like the Mac OS, but switching to it from Windows means buying new hardware. If you're happy with XP, don't rush to Mac, or even Vista just because it's new. XP has a lot of life left—until 2014, at least, when Microsoft will stop supporting it. But you can still use it after that. And Ubuntu: There's no reason not to try it, since it's free. Just be careful. Back up your data first, in case something goes kerflooey.

Contemplating a change? First consider what kind of user you are. Here are our suggestions:

WEB SURFER
Any OS. You don't need anything fancy to browse the Web and send e-mail.

OFFICE DRONE
Windows. Get things done with minimal fuss.

GAMER
Windows. Millions of gamers can't all be wrong. (Or buy a Nintendo Wii.)

PHOTOGRAPHER
Windows. All cameras work with it, and the imaging tools are plentiful.

VIDEOGRAPHER
Mac OS. It's what the pros in -Hollywood prefer.

ARTIST/MUSICIAN
Mac OS. The other artsy people will laugh at you if you use anything else.

TECH DO-IT-YOURSELFER
Ubuntu. You'll get the most satisfaction from taming this somewhat wild beast.

OPEN-SOURCE SUPPORTER
Ubuntu. Not lining the pockets at Apple and Microsoft just feels good.

Microsoft Handed Record Fine by EU

By David Worthington

The European Union has levied a record-setting €899 million (US$1.35 billion) fine against Microsoft.

EU regulators are penalizing Microsoft for charging "unreasonable prices" to software developers for access to information about Windows client and server protocols prior to Oct. 22, 2007. The sanctions stem from the EU's 2004 antitrust ruling against the company, which was upheld in September 2007 by the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg, the EU's second highest court. Microsoft was found to have abused its dominant market position as set forth in Article 82 of the Treaty establishing the European Community.

Microsoft was initially fined €497 million, or US$613 million in 2004, followed by an additional €280.5 ($357 million) in July 2006 for failing to obey the 2004 order. The cumulative fines amount to nearly €1.68 billion, or over $2.5 billion at today's rate.

Best free programs

‘THAT’S a cool looking notebook,” the customer at the computer shop said.

He was referring to the Asus Eee PC, an ultra-portable notebook that I was buying. The notebook’s small form factor and attractive price had made quite an impression, and he asked me a few more questions. The fact that the computer had no hard disk but used a flash memory drive seemed to intrigue him, but the idea of Linux—the operating system installed on the Eee PC—seemed to stump him. He had only heard of the operating system but had never used it.

“Okay ba ’yan? [Is it okay?]” he asked.

In the brief time I had, I tried to explain to him that Linux wasn’t just okay, it was superior to Windows in terms of security. In the two years since I switched from Windows, I told him, I had never been hit by a virus attack—and I’ve never had to use any antivirus software.

What about programs, he wanted to know. On Linux, I explained, all your software is free (in both senses of the word). There is no need to pay exorbitant licensing fees or use pirated programs and you are free to modify them to suit your needs.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to get into too much detail and merely advised him to download Ubuntu, one of the most popular free Linux distributions, so he could try it out. If I had time, I’d probably have given him this list of commonly used Windows programs and their counterparts in Linux:

Azureus, BitTorrent or uTorrent. Utorrent, the hands-down best utility for downloading large files in Windows, does not run on Linux. Azureus does, but it’s a memory hog and not all that good. Fortunately, there are Deluge and qBittorrent, which are feature-rich and efficient alternatives. Transmission, a simpler torrent handler that is available on Mac OS X, now also runs on Linux.

Dreamweaver. Site designers looking for a what-you-see-is-what-you-get tool like Dreamweaver can turn to the free and open source Kompozer or Nvu for their Web authoring needs.

iTunes. For many iPod users, iTunes is defacto program for playing and organizing music files. Apple’s program isn’t available on Linux, but there are many alternatives. These include Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox and Songbird.

MS Office. OpenOffice.org comes already installed on many Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, and is comparable (and compatible) with Microsoft’s Office suite. OpenOffice Word Processing is the equivalent of Word; OpenOffice Spreadsheet does what Excel does; OpenOffice Presentation is the free version of PowerPoint; and OpenOffice Database is the counterpart of Access. Longtime MS Office users will take some time to get accustomed to the slightly different menus, but there are enough similarities to make the transition fairly quick and painless. For most users, there really is no need to shell out thousands of pesos for MS Office, or worse, break the law by using pirated versions of the software, when OpenOffice is available free.

MS Outlook. Need an integrated e-mail, contacts and calendar program in one? Evolution, which is already installed with Ubuntu, or use Mozilla Thunderbird, which is also available free.

MSN and Yahoo Messenger. You don’t need to be cut off from your MSN or Yahoo instant messaging buddies with Pidgin, a program that can handle accounts from both networks as well as AOL and Google Talk. Skype users will be happy to know that a Linux version of the popular Internet phone program also runs on Linux.

Nero Burning. The defacto CD burning software that is bundled with many CD writers is available on Linux but is free only if you are a registered user, and is not open source. Fortunately, there are many open source alternatives, including Brasero, GnomeBaker andK3B, all of which enable users to create data and audio CDs, VCDs and DVDs.

PageMaker, MS Publisher or InDesign. Desktop publishing in the Linux world can be done through the free and open source program called Scribus.

Photoshop. Gimp, short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free and open source image editor that does many of the things Adobe Photoshop does, including photo retouching and image composition. Photoshop users will need to get used to multiple docks and the different menu layout and terms, but there’s a lot of help available, including videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to accomplish certain tasks in Gimp. Like Photoshop, Gimp has a large variety of plug-ins that enable users to apply special effects and perform other operations more easily.

Winamp. The venerable MP3 player is not available on Linux, but Audacious or XMMS will make longtime Winamp users right at home. Both players support the same audio formats and even Winamp skins.

Windows Media Player. Nobody should miss Windows Media Player because there are many better open source alternatives for playing video on your computer. VLC Media Player is on top of my list, but Mplayer and Totem Movie Player will do the same job.

A few years ago, it was easy to dismiss Linux alternatives as inferior copies of programs available in Windows or Mac OS. Anyone who uses these applications today knows this is no longer true. And the truly amazing part is, all of them can be downloaded free of charge, with no danger of a virus attack—or a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Now if that’s not a great deal, I don’t know what is.

Column archives and blog at http://www.chinwong.com

US Army struggles with Windows to Linux overhaul

from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/us_army_linux_integration/

The greatest penguin migration of all time
By Austin Modine
Published Tuesday 5th February 2008 20:53 GMT

In multiple media reports over the past two weeks, the US Army has professed its love for the penguin. The Army eventually intends to move from a Windows-based infrastructure over to Linux for its new, roughly $200bn weapons program.

But the Army has largely been prepping new Linux-friendly weapons, vehicles, and devices before the completion of a software network to connect them to its existing Windows-based infrastructure — or blithely, putting the chariot before the warhorse.

When the Army began development of its next-gen hardware (dubbed Future Combat Systems, or FCS), they turned to Boeing and SAIC to develop the operating system rather than basing the software on its established Blue Force Tracking.

Blue Force is a Windows-based satellite tracking system designed by Boeing rival Northrop Grumman. It was used in combat in Afghanistan in 2002 and later in Iraq. Both the development of the FCS project and Blue Force are currently being funded at the same time. In 2008 the Army budgeted $3.1bn to the FCS program and $624m for Blue Force Tracking.

And while it seems both systems are being embraced by the Army, Boeing's OS and Blue Force may not share the sentiments with each other. FCS is going Linux.

"Boeing and the Army said they chose not to use Microsoft's proprietary software because they didn't want to be beholden to the company," reports The Washington Post. "Instead, they chose to develop a Linux-based operating system based on publicly available code."

That potentially presents a major problem for the first brigade of Linux-based FCS vehicles expected to be introduced in 2015. Linux-based systems have a limited ability to communicate with Microsoft-based systems. And interoperability issues aren't something you want to deal with in a war zone.

According to the US Army online pub, Defense News, they'll first try to patch things up using Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

"Red Hat 5 will link Linux with Microsoft and allow FCS forces to link with other brigade combat teams," an Army official told Defense News. "This will be an interim solution because over the long haul, eventually all of the Army's networks will be Linux-based."

For a long-haul migration from Microsoft to Linux — the Army doesn't seem to be so sure what it will do. So they're bringing some 70 programmers, engineers and other IT professionals to Washington to brainstorm in four "Battle Command" summits.

The first two summits were held in September and November, with two upcoming sessions in February and April. According to Defense News, the Army says there has been "progress" in outlining time lines for the integration.

Works for us. ®

French spit on Windows XP and embrace Linux

February 2, 2008 |
By Matt Jansen

French spit on Windows XP and embrace Linux Police in France have abandoned Windows XP, citing too much reliance on Microsoft and an interest in Linux’s lower price. Meanwhile Bill Gates was trying to hand out more “free” training on Microsoft products in Paris.

In France, the police force is governed by one central body and that branch of government uses 70,000 desktop computers, according to the Web in France Magazine.

Ubuntu Linux will be installed on all of these machines, replacing Windows XP by 2014.

Deputy director of the gendarmerie’s IT department, Nicolas Geraud says “the reasons behind the move are tri-fold. First, to reduce the force’s reliance on one company and offer more choice by diversifying IT suppliers; second, to give the gendarmerie control and oversight of the operating system; and third — cost. This last might have been reason enough all by itself. The move away from Microsoft licensed products is saving the gendarmerie about seven million euros (10.3 million dollars) a year for all its PCs.”

Of course Microsoft thinks that’s a mistake, claiming that running Windows XP or Vista actually will save money because trained consultants are readily available, and asserts that Linux systems create more integration issues.

“With its 100,000 employees, the French gendarmerie is the largest administration to shift to open sourcing for its operating system, but not France’s first. The National Assembly adopted Ubuntu’s version of Linux for its 1,200 desktop PCs last year.”

That’s a lot of lost business for Microsoft, and it hints at growing problems for the company as it tries to compete with web-based software and an increasingly powerful Linux and open source movement.

Gates may be retiring just in time.

Picked up at Blorge.com

23,000 Linux PCs forge education revolution in Philippines

Linux still cheaper than heavily-subsidized Microsoft products
Rodney Gedda
29/01/2008 10:53:27

Providing high school students with PCs is seen as a first step to preparing them for a technology-literate future, but in the Philippines many schools cannot afford to provide computing facilities so after a successful deployment of 13,000 Fedora Linux systems from a government grant, plans are underway to roll out another 10,000 based on Ubuntu.

Visiting Australia to discuss Linux and open source software in education at this year's linux.conf.au in Melbourne, independent open source consultant Ricardo Gonzalez, said there were a number of factors that led to Linux being chosen over the venerable Microsoft Windows.

Gonzalez, based in Manila, told Computerworld Linux became popular in the Philippines soon after the 1997 Asian financial crisis when open source was investigated for its value proposition to organizations.

"Open source was a viable business alternative because no one was doing it commercially," Gonzalez said.

While Gonzalez was teaching the IT dealer network how to profit from open source, Microsoft launched its anti-piracy policy in the Philippines, so he told the government there was an alternative.

Also at the time, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Education launched the PCPS program, or PCs for Public Schools with the aim of providing one PC for each of the 10,000 public high schools in the country.

With funding from the Japanese government, the PCPS program started around the 2000 timeframe when the contractors installed Windows PCs, but five years later it was discovered a lot of the computers were not being used because nobody knew how to use them.

A company by the name of Advanced Solutions Inc (ASI) asked Gonzalez to come on board as a consultant as it was preparing to do bids for 1000 schools. However, this time it would not be only desktops, but one server, 10 desktops, and Internet connectivity in every school.

"We wanted to use Fedora 5 and it went all the way to office of [the Filipino] President and they kept passing it around saying 'why would they offer something for free, and how would they support and teach it'," Gonzalez said. "The project dragged on for four to five months to a point where Microsoft matched the price by offering Windows XP for $US20 a copy and throwing in Office for $US30, but we still came out cheaper. Microsoft was also providing free training to high school teachers."

After "jumping through all the hoops", including having the Department of Science and Technology evaluate the Linux solution for its usefulness, ASI got the contract and all 10,000 computers were delivered at the end of December, 2007.

"Because we saved so much we gave the government 3000 additional units, so now another 300 schools have Linux networks," Gonzalez said.

However, the Philippines' Linux education story is just beginning and the "reward" for the successful initial deployment was before Gonzalez left for linux.conf.au, the company got the contract to do another 1000 high schools over the next 12 months.

"The flavour this time is Kubuntu and Edubuntu," he said, adding the old questions about Linux's suitability aren't being asked any more. "They have also asked us to install the Joomla! and Drupal content systems on the server so students can create content," he added.

"People in the government now understand Linux can do so much for so little outlay"

ASI had initially requested the then IBM, now Lenovo, to factory-install the Linux images, but Gonzalez said since IBM had no experience with Linux deployments, and there were too many errors, some 60 percent of the operating system images had to be deployed after the PCs arrived.

"We were only three people, but during the next contract they put in more people to make sure it gets out the door faster - they doubled it to six people," he said. "There will be a phase four, five and six -- it just depends on funding."

With 7000 islands in the Philippines, the task at hand is no mean feat as the team had to install the systems, test them, do integration work, ship the computers out, ensure it was installed correctly, and provide training to the schools' principal and head of IT.

"If you look at it from a third-world perspective I'm very pleased," Gonzalez said. "For us it's one of the biggest Linux installations in the Philippines. The question is if it's free does it work, but with Linux it does work and it's free."

Gonzalez believes the project has helped begin a mindset revolution for accepting the power of free software.

"People in the government now understand Linux can do so much for so little outlay," he said. "In a brand new computer 50 percent goes to the operating system and office suite, so how many people can afford that?"

When asked why the popular One Laptop Per Child, which ships with Linux, was not used instead, Gonzalez said at the time it was not feasible due to the sheer number of units that needed to be purchased all at once.

To analyze the results of the program, Gonzalez is conducting a survey and he intends to study the flow-on effects to people's home computers, which may take some time to eventuate.

"There are 80 million Filipinos who are sending 20 million text messages so I'm thinking how to get SMS into the education market and tie it down with open source," he said. "I'm looking for the guy who has already done that."

Regarding the country's universities, Gonzalez said they are very much "tied down" to Microsoft, and course material is still tailored for the proprietary world.

"If Linux and open source wants to take hold in the education market it must deliver course material for high schools and elementary schools."

From Computerworld.com.au

Vive la Ubuntu libre!

Jan. 30, 2008

The Linux desktop may be moving forward slowly in the United States, but it's a vastly different story in Europe. Today, Jan. 30, Chris Kenyon, Canonical's director of business development, announced on a Canonical blog that "the Gendarmerie Nationale [the French national police force] announced the migration of up to 70,000 computers to Ubuntu over the next three years."

This move is part of a steady progression that the Gendarmerie Nationale has been making from proprietary to open-source programs.

The Gendarmerie, which approximates the U.S.'s FBI, had already moved from Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office to Firefox and OpenOffice.

The Gendarmerie's PCs are currently running Windows XP. The French government, however, has decided that Linux, rather than Vista, is the more affordable upgrade path. France's National Assembly is already running desktop Linux.

In an AFP (Agence France-Presse) report, Col. Nicolas Geraud, deputy director of the Gendarmerie's IT department, said, "We will introduce Linux every time we have to replace a desktop computer, so this year we expect to change 5,000 to 8,000 to Ubuntu and then 12,000 to 15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014."

There are three specific reasons why the Gendarmerie is making the Linux switch. These are: to free the agency from being locked in to one vendor: Microsoft; enable the force's IT department to have complete control of the operating system, and, last, but never least, cut down costs.

According to the AFP story, Geraud said that France will save more than 7 million Euros, approximately $10.3 million, a year by using Ubuntu instead of Windows.


Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

From desktoplinux.com

Your PC's Been Arrested—Now What?

01.01.08
If anyone misuses your network, guess who's liable?

by Oliver Rist

It's a typical Monday morning, except after you saunter into the office sipping Starbucks, the door flies open behind you and a flurry of federal badges rush into reception with warrant paperwork. Turns out Elliott in sales has been downloading child pornography. Or maybe Grant in accounting has been skimming a few dollars off every customer bank transfer. Or perhaps Elaine in receivables has been running a long-standing overbilling scheme.

If this moment is the first time you've considered how to respond to a cyber law-enforcement incident, you're certainly not in the best position. But don't panic—even a surprised business manager can save the day. Follow these five steps to shield your business from a potential legal disaster.

1. ENFORCE YOUR COMPANY'S EXISTING FAIR USE, DATA RETENTION, AND PRIVACY POLICIES TO THE LETTER. Documents like these aren't just lawyer fodder. They're designed to discourage your employees from committing cybercrime in the first place. Every employee must be briefed on these policies and should have easy access to them. Deviating from your policies for any reason sends the wrong message. Stick to your guns.

2. TALK TO A LAWYER—FIRST. Peter Brill of the Brill Legal Group, a New York–based criminal defense firm with eight years of cybercrime experience, says that most corporate law firms today employ at least one attorney familiar with cybercrime. Find out who that lawyer is at the firm you deal with and make him or her your first call after encountering any kind of trouble. It's a good idea to talk to this attorney before disaster strikes, too, about screening employees (so the company can't be held negligent) and what the best steps would be in an emergency.

3. DON'T DESTROY THE EVIDENCE. If you're the one who happens on Elaine's overbilling scheme, there are two things Brill maintains are paramount: First, don't destroy anything. Odds are she's already under investigation somewhere, and if your fingerprints are discovered on a smashed hard disk or a file-deletion audit trail, you're going to jail right along with her, even if you were just trying to protect your livelihood. Second, remember that your first "crime scene" conversation shouldn't be with the cops or with Elaine. It's with your lawyer and only your lawyer.

4. HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY. For the business owner or manager, being honest with whatever law-enforcement agency winds up handling the case is definitely the best approach. "The FBI, for example, doesn't like shutting down businesses," says Brian Chee, lab director at the Advanced Network Computing Laboratory at the University of Hawaii and also an acting university information-systems security officer. Grabbing an immediate backup snapshot of your servers, say, and then spiriting it off-site in case the FBI decides to walk out with hard disks or servers can land you in a lot of trouble. "Talk to them," says Chee, "and generally they'll work with you to take what they need while making sure your business can stay up and running."

5. PUT YOUR DISASTER-RECOVERY PLAN INTO ACTION. Yeah, the Feds kicking down your door qualifies as a disaster. While some cybercrime incidents involve simply taking one workstation away and putting one miscreant employee into handcuffs, others can make a much greater dent in your company's productivity. If the Feds walk out with several workstations and servers, for example, or declare the entire office a crime scene for x number of days, it can all but cripple an unprepared business. If this happens, fall back on your disaster-recovery plan—your business has one, right? Make sure guilt-free employees have a place to work, even if you need to organize a telecommuting phase. Acquire replacement servers and populate them with the most recent off-site backup. All standard disaster-recovery stuff. "The key is not to panic," says Chee. Sure, it's not a "standard" disaster, but keeping your response orderly is the best way to assuage employee fear, maintain customer calm, and keep the business running.

Farewell, Netscape, but I Suppose It's Time

By: P.J. Connolly

The holidays aren't really the holidays without a ghost of years past, and in 2007, the ghost was called Netscape.
When I heard that AOL had pulled the plug on the Netscape Web browser, I was less surprised by the news than by the revelation that the company was still maintaining it.

At the risk of betraying my age, let's just say that I've been around the track a few times, and I remember when the rumors surfaced in 1993 of a graphical Web browser that was being worked on at the University of Illinois' main campus. As a Northwestern grad, I wasn't sure that the farm boys could make it work, but I was happy to be proven wrong.

In those days, I was the IT manager of a daily legal newspaper in San Francisco, and a year or so before, my proposal for a dedicated connection to this thing called the "Internet" that would aid our writers and editors in research—and to be honest, I was looking forward to using it myself—had been unceremoniously shot down as a waste of money. But when the whispers of a browser called "Mosaic" became a buzz, all of a sudden I was on the hot seat.

Perhaps one of the things that saved some of us in those days was that HTML was just another markup language. I'd been monkeying with 1980s-vintage typesetters and publishing software for several years at that point, so a lot of the early process of putting copy up on the Web was a simple matter of changing the macros that set up the formatting strings. After all, XML is just SGML with better marketing, isn't it?

Honestly, in 1994 it was more exciting to have a connection nailed up than it was to make something render attractively on a Web page. But the standards were lower then, and the bandwidth sucker that became Flash was still a dream.

Time passed and Microsoft got its act together—on the fourth try. Like most of the computing community, I became tired of the bugs in Netscape Navigator, and eventually realized that Internet Explorer worked "well enough." (At least, it did for Windows.)

Even though much of the Netscape Navigator legacy lives on in Mozilla Firefox, it's not the same thing. Like the child who surpasses the parent's achievements, Firefox is the browser that Netscape should have built.

So the story ends a couple of weeks from now, when AOL officially ends support, and since it's been a decade since Netscape was relevant, I guess it was overdue. But that doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to an old friend, no matter how long it's been since you had any fun together.