Very recently, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property released an interesting (if 84 page long) report on preventing theft of IP. You can read it here: http://ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_052213.pdf It’s interesting because it proposes the use of malware to prevent theft. In other words, they suggested that malware (spyware, rootkits, ransomware and Trojans) can be deployed to test your computer for pirated software and lock it until you ...
Great. Yahoo has joined the Empire. Your “New” Yahoo Mail will now scan the contents to bring you “relevant” ads. Who knows what else it will do (check this out)? “When you upgrade, you will be accepting our Communications Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. This includes the acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content, which Yahoo! uses to deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse prot...
Popular? Well, according to Neowin the free app has seized second place among the free apps the W8 Apps Store. Interesting as it only launched a few weeks ago. Anything with the name Photoshop is going to garner some interest, but this is a phenomenon. It might have something to do with the Photoshop meme, or getting something for “free”. So, I figured I’d give it a spin to see what the deal was. You can find it here: http://www.photoshop.com/tools/expresseditor
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The Justice Dep’t. filed a secret lawsuit against Google to try to force it to give up user data without a search warrant: This after a different court ruled the process unconstitutional. There’s nothing short of the First and Fourth Amendments at stake here. This is yet more fallout from the Patriot Act. The Federal prosecutors are truly determined to keep the “right” to warrantless searches of your data. Google is just as determined to prevent it, terming t...
This is especially for beginners. Unless you’re a Ps/Ai/Id/Ae/Dw etc. guru, you can profit from this free 5 days of totally awesome. Lesa Snider – Photoshop, Jack Davis – Graphic Design, Khara Plicanic – InDesign, and on and on. These are awesome teachers, and I learned my Ps from Lesa Snider on a program similar to this, only it was three days of intensive CS6 that left me eternally grateful to her and the wonderful folks at creativeLive who make these event...
Just saw this on The Chive, and found it fascinating. This artist merges science and art. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is her name, and she deserves a “Bravo!”. She picks up chewing gum, cigarette butts, hair, etc. (some of that etc. could be on the yucky side), and takes samples from them to a DIY biology lab. There she extracts the DNA, and prints out the result. About 30 parameters are then fed into a 3D printer from a program she customized, and a face is printed out.
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This one comes via my son. PhoneClean is a cool, free utility which should be used occasionally to clean up your iOS device and return it to its former peppiness. If you have an iOS device (as in the title), go to http://www.imobie.com/ and learn about this freebie here: http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/ There’s a user guide here: http://www.imobie.com/phoneclean/guide.htm There are many other guides accessible from the homepage or, you can take a look at t...
This is a handy little program for those who wish to modify the W8 boot. As far as I can tell, it should live peacefully with Stardock’s W8 programs, but if not, it can be saved on a stick for times you’ll be asked to fix someone’s W8 computer. It’ll give you rapid access to legacy settings which you’ll need. I published another article today before I discovered this gem through gHacks (thanks, gHacks!). Hope the Wiz and others find this useful....
Well, I didn’t buy W8, and am not using it, but there are folks here who do so, “This Bud’s for you!”. One of W8’s features is an amazingly rapid boot. Actually, it’s a “hybrid boot”: a cross between hibernation and booting. But, let’s say you’re having a problem which you need “Safe Mode” to solve. How can you do it in such a rapidly booting environment? F2 and F8 time periods are reduced to really tiny periods. According to the MSDN blog, “ the interval wherein Windows wa...
Chasys Draw IES (CDIES) is as the title says, a new and free image editing suite for Windows. According to its dev it’s built on three pillars: “Character (no Photoshop imitations here), Performance (fast, efficient and stable) and Innovation (new techniques and out-of-the-box thinking).” – J.P. Chacha It’s made of four modules: “Chasys Draw IES is a suite of applications including a layer-based image editor with animation, icon editing support and sup...
Computer scientists at the Technion (Haifa, Israel) have developed and actually constructed a molecular transducer: “Scientists developed and constructed a molecular transducer, which is an advanced computing machine. This molecular computer was built entirely of biomolecules, such as DNA and enzymes that can manipulate genetic codes. This unprecedented device can compute iteratively, namely, it uses the output as a new input for subsequent computations. Furthermore, it produ...
Flickr has expanded the free storage to 1 Terabyte. If you need or want more, that will require subscription. If you have a Yahoo or Flickr account, there’s nothing you have to do. You’ve already received your 1 Tb. If you create an account? No problem. You receive 1Tb. Well played, Flickr. Flickr Pro while being continued, is no longer being sold as such. If you have it, it’s being continued, for now. Also, no 300 Mb/month limit anymore. What hasn’t chang...
Was casting about for something which might help folks, when I ran across this in “How To Geek”. I compared Google with bing and ran into no differences, but I didn't test all the searches in the paragraph detailing them in Google. Turns out Google and bing have these instant answer things built in, and there will be times when they will help. Guaranteed. For instance, I was talking with my son on fb, and he asked me about the weather here (he’s in Tel Aviv). I...
NSS Labs surveyed the five browsers with the most market share for security against “socially engineered” malware. The browsers tested were Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera. You can view the NSS report here: https://www.nsslabs.com/reports/2013-browser-security-comparative-analysis-socially-engineered-malware The test is aimed at mobile devices (however, syncing will affect the non-mobile machines as well). The results were pretty amazing: ...
Will wonders never cease? I hope you remember my post at the end of last year regarding BitDefender AV Free. If you don’t, it’s here: http://drjbhl.joeuser.com/article/438717/BitDefender_AV_Free Following the post, problems cropped up: No “whitelisting”, no “quarantining”, etc. You might be happy to learn, as I was, that sometimes companies listen. I ‘m sure I wasn’t the only one to write to them concerning the defects you all found. I supplied them with the url of ...