software

The old adage is still very much relevant today: there is no such thing as a free lunch. The meaning, of course, is that while something may appear to be free, there is almost always going to be strings attached. Such is the case concerning ... Microsoft with their latest "free" antivirus offering. The new software, Microsoft Security Essentials (also codenamed "Morro") was introduced under the assumption that millions of people would soon get a chance to experience a more secure PC, laptop or netbook . But as the wait time for the beta version release dwindled down to mere hours yesterday, ... (view more)

In a move designed to give the government unprecedented control over what users will and will not be able to see on the Internet, the Chinese government reportedly wants all computers sold in China after July 2009 to come pre-installed software that ... automatically censors the Internet. That's not surprising when you consider the fact that China recently ranked number one as the most complete Electronic Police State in the world. (Source (PDF): cryptohippie.com ) During the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre this past week, China reportedly blocked access to websites like ... (view more)

Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or "bots," that run autonomously and automatically. The term is often associated with malicious software but it can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing ... software. Zombie Computers and Botnets While the term "botnet" can be used to refer to any group of bots, the word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised computers (called Zombie computers) running software, usually installed via worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command-and-control infrastructure. How it ... (view more)

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device. How it Works A driver typically communicates with the device through the computer bus or ... communications subsystem to which the hardware is connected. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device. Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the ... (view more)

According to a new study, more than 40 per cent of the world's software is pirated. The study also claims the software industry lost $53 billion to pirates last year, though that figure has a major flaw in its calculation. According to the Business ... Software Alliance (BSA), the United States has the world's lowest piracy rate, with just 20% of software being unlicensed. However, the size of its software market means the losses have the biggest financial value, totaling $9.8 million last year. Across the world, the study found that while piracy dropped in the majority of countries, the ... (view more)

Malware (a portmanteau of "malicious software") is any software program developed for the purpose of causing harm to a computer system, similar to a virus or Trojan horse. Malware can be classified based on how it is executed, how it spreads, and/or ... what it does. The classification is not perfect, however, in the sense that the groups often overlap and the difference is not always obvious, giving rise to frequent flame wars. Overuse of the term 'Virus' Because viruses were historically the first to appear, the term "virus" is often applied, especially in the popular media, to all sorts of ... (view more)

Release Candidate (RC) The term release candidate (RC) refers to a software version with the potential to be a final product, ready to be released to the public for final testing. In this stage of product stabilization, all product features have ... been designed, coded and tested through one or more Beta cycles with no known software bugs (defects). During the 1990s, Apple Inc. used the term "golden master" for its release candidates, and the final golden master was the general availability release. Gamma, Delta, Omega, Zenith Release Candidates Other terms include gamma (and occasionally also ... (view more)

A kill switch (also called an e-stop) is a security measure used to shut off a device (usually in an emergency situation) in which it cannot be shut down in the usual manner. Unlike a normal shut down which shuts down all systems naturally in a ... progressive manner, a kill switch is designed to completely abort the operation at all costs. Often, kill switches are used to protect people from sustaining an injury or being killed, in which case damaging the machine may be considered to be acceptable. Physical World Applications Treadmills often use a safety key (essentially a kill switch) that the ... (view more)

In computer science, a virtual machine (VM) is a software implementation of a machine (computer) that executes programs like a real machine. System Virtual Machine vs Process Virtual Machine A virtual machine was originally defined by Popek and ... Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine". Current use includes virtual machines which have no direct correspondence to any real hardware. Virtual machines are separated into two major categories, based on their use and degree of correspondence to any real machine: a System Virtual Machine and a Process Virtual Machine. A system ... (view more)

Cloud computing or cloud services is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Examples of cloud computing include Google Apps which provide common business ... applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers. The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams, and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or ... (view more)