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Witness the definitive, irrefutable, immutable ranking of the most brilliant software programs ever hacked. Most red-blooded technologists will offer a quick opinion on what's the greatest software ever, but when you take the time to evaluate what makes software truly brilliant, the choices aren't so obvious. One of the most significant pieces of programming I know wasn't even software. Before the British built the Colossus machine, which translated German teletype code during World War II, it took the Allies up to six hours to decode a message and a day or more to pore over intelligence, draw conclusions, and pass...

Business software giant CA is to cull 1,700 of its workforce. News of the massive restructure came as the firm released its Q1 2007 results and reported a 64 per cent drop in net income compared to the same period in 2006. About half the cull will take place in North America, with the rest drawn from global operations. In all, 10.5 per cent of CA staffers are for the chop. Execs hope the plan, which is to be completed in 2008, will save the firm $200m annually. The redundancies themselves will cost the firm $200m. Revenues were actually up...

A faulty definition update from Symantec left vicars in a quandary after it identified a popular ecclesiastical application as spyware. An 8 July update to Norton Anti-Virus identified a key component of Visual Liturgy - a component called vlutils.dll - as a piece of malware called SniferSpy. Visual Liturgy is a legitimate application used by Church of England vicars to plan and deliver church services. Symantec said a subsequent update to Norton Anti-Virus fixed the SNAFU. However, Church House Publishing, the publishers of Visual Liturgy, said they have received no such assurances. Church House has advised users to ignore warnings...

Microsoft plans this week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads. Consumers who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged US$1.50 per download, beginning Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT, a Microsoft representative said.

Indian technology companies are no longer just taking computer-related projects -- Web development, software coding and IT drudge work -- from their U.S. and European counterparts as outsourcing suppliers. They are actively acquiring U.S. and European technology firms in software development and Internet commerce, sources tell UPI's The Web. Is this a replay of the late 1980s when Japanese firms gobbled up U.S. tech firms -- and a pending sign of U.S. economic weakness? Hardly. It's simply a sign of the maturation of the international technology marketplace.

The networking technology underpinning Windows Vista may be less stable on release that that behind Windows XP, according to an analysis by security firm Symantec. Microsoft has re-written its networking stack for Windows Vista in order to allow for "easier maintenance, improved performance, and improved stability". But an analysis by security researchers at Symantec found a variety of security flaws with early builds of the OS. In a white paper based on this research, Windows Vista Network Attack Surface Analysis: A Broad Overview (PDF), the researchers conclude that Vista may be less stable, at least for the immediate future, than...

Free Software? Perhaps you've heard of the Open-Source software movement, but thought maybe they were cheap, college-student-written, "Brand X" knock-offs. Maybe you presumed the only people who could use such programs wore pocket protectors and broken bifocals. Or maybe you had recent experience and found the installation too confusing, with "targzs," incomprehensible "readme files," etc. The open-source movement has come of age, armed with self-extracting files, crossplaform capabilities, and extensive documentation. (That means you simply download the program, and it installs itself; it works on any operating system including, yes, Windows --not just UNIX -- and it teaches you how...

Stealth firm plays reversi with VoIP codeChinese software developers have reportedly reverse engineered Skype's internet telephony software to develop a clone. The unnamed company has developed a software client using the same protocol and encryption technology used by Skype. This software, which is still in the early stages of development, was used to call Charlie Paglee, co-founder of Voice over IP startup Vozin Communications. Although the software lacks features that indicate whether someone is online or instant messaging technology, Paglee reports that the mystery firm involved plans to add these features (along with stability improvements) and release a stable version...

Our household needs a new computer system. Your ideas/suggestions are appreciated! I realize some of this may not be possible, but here's a list of what we would like: * This computer should boot quickly, in a matter of a few seconds. * This machine should not attempt to "help" with everything, or offer "tours" * This machine should do exactly what I, the user, command it to, immediately, and without trying to help. * No extras should be loaded. * The CPU should be able to last for 20 years or longer, and the drives should be redundant (mirrored)....

A computer system that automatically tracks the movements of proteins within a living cell has been developed by a team of biologists and computer vision experts. It could save researchers the hours often spent analysing microscope images by hand, to determine the way a cell works. The system, called CellTracker, automatically analyses a series of still digital images captured through a microscope. Doug Kell at Manchester University in UK, the lead biologist involved with the project, believes the system could dramatically speed up studies of cells' function. "Most people just fix cells [in one place], which kills their metabolism," he...

I belong to a Vets' association and I attempting to put all the past Newsletters on CD in a format that is secure not allowing changes and searchable to both a MAC and a PC. Below, is the process used as a test. I am in dire need for some solutions and hope there is someone out there that has used various software to accomplish a similar result. My dilemma: First, I OCR scan using MS Office Document & Imaging. I save the .tif file and send the text to Word 2002. Next, I run spellcheck on the newly created...

I belong to a Vets Association that for many years has published a newsletter. I would like to scan these newsletters and be able to search the text along with burn them to CD. Can anyone give me advice on a program for scanning that will result in the ability to search? AND do I need special equipment such as a special scanner) to be able to do it. My operating system is XP Pro SP2 (2002). Thank you for any assistance.

Back in 1972, by some accounts (http://www.livinginternet.com/e/ei.htm), a new form of communication known as email was born. It was a practical implementation of electronic messaging that was first seen on local timeshare computers in the 1960s. I can only imagine how much fun and revolutionary it must have been to use email in those early years, to have been at the bleeding edge of the curve. Almost ten years later, in November 1981, Jonathan Postel published RFC 788 (http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc788.html) (later deprecated by RFC 821 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0821.txt), also by Postel, and RFC 822 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0822.txt) by David Crocker), thereby inventing the foundations of...

Funding comes as companies look to identity-driven authorization to boost network security.Applied Identity, a startup specializing in network security controls, announced Friday it raised $12 million in a second round of funding, reflecting the growing demand for tools that help companies track precisely who is accessing what network data at any given time. The Series B round was led by OVP Venture Partners, based in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. Previous investors in the company—Bay Partners, Sigma Partners, and Globespan Capital Partners— also participated. Applied Identity has raised a total of $23 million in venture funding since the company was formed...

A gaping security flaw in the latest versions of Symantec's anti-virus software suite could put millions of users at risk of a debilitating worm attack, Internet security experts warned May 25. Researchers at eEye Digital Security, the company that discovered the flaw, said it could be exploited by remote hackers to take complete control of the target machine "without any user action." "This is definitely wormable. Once exploited, you get a command shell that gives you complete access to the machine. You can remove, edit or destroy files at will," said eEye Digital Security spokesperson Mike Puterbaugh.

The European Patent Office will be bound by proposed legislation that will exclude software from patentability, according to the EC, in a move that has startled opponents of software patents Software patent campaigners were shocked on Wednesday by an apparent change in stance towards software patents by the European Commission. The European Commission said last week that computer programs will be excluded from patentability in the upcoming Community Patent legislation, and that the European Patent Office (EPO) will be bound by this law. "The EPO would... apply and be bound by a new unitary Community law with respect to Community...

Even at NASA, host to some of the brightest engineering minds, the term "collaborative engineering" might not elicit excitement until you imagine its possibilities -- better spacecraft designs within a shorter turnaround time. Thanks to a recently launched NASA software system, more efficient space mission planning soon could be a reality. Developed by a team of engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the new system was created to support the NASA design teams charged with engineering the spacecraft of tomorrow – advanced vehicles to realize the Vision for Space Exploration. The vision plans for the return...

The CAD/CAM company thought it was protecting itself, having employees of the Indian outsourcing company that was debugging its source code sign non-disclosure agreements. But when a disgruntled outsourcing employee swiped a copy of the code a few years back and tried to sell it to the CAD/CAM vendor's competitors, the vendor found out that the NDAs were of little use when it came to prosecuting the alleged thief in India. "They weren't worth the paper they were written on," says Nenette Day, an FBI special agent out of Boston who did double duty as both the case agent and...

SAN FRANCISCO--Symantec will fight off Microsoft's security software challenge by being better at coming up with new ideas, the company's CEO said Monday. John Thompson vowed that it would put more resources into research and development over the coming the year, speaking to reporters at the Symantec's annual Vision conference here. "Our strategy is to out-innovate Microsoft. We know more about security than they ever will," Thompson said. Microsoft's development of security products for its upcoming Vista update to the Windows operating system prompted Symantec to be bullish about taking on the software giant. "Competition with Microsoft is inevitable, given...

Accidental publicist Agencies risk unwitting release of sensitive information using popular office software BY Michael Arnone Published on Apr. 10, 2006 A new front line of national and corporate security is emerging, and some of the most common document applications, including Microsoft Word documents and PDFs, are putting people on it without their knowledge. In the past several years, federal agencies and private-sector companies have released documents on the Internet that they thought did not contain sensitive content, but they actually did. That has led to embarrassment, scandals, firings and national security breaches when unintended readers discovered the hidden data....