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A MAFIAA CABAL called the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which is an umbrella group for the entertainment cartels such as the MPAA and RIAA, has demanded that Indonesia, Brazil and India should be placed on a special trade watchlist merely because they recommend the use of open source software.

Apparently the outfit has been leaning on the US Trade Representative to consider those nations for its “Special 301 watchlist”, which is supposed to list all those nations who are enemies of capitalism.

The lobbying was uncovered by Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh. Apparently the problem is that the entertainment industry lobbies regard open source as communism, or at least socialism.

Last year the Indonesian government sent around a circular to all government departments and state-owned businesses, recommending that they should adopt open source software.

According to the IIPA, this encouraged government agencies to use Free Open Source Software (FOSS) with a view towards implementation by the end of 2011, which the circular states will result in the use of legitimate open source and free software and a reduction in overall costs of software in the country’s government agencies.

But the IIPA said that that Indonesia deserves Special 301 status because encouraging, yet not forcing, such takeup “weakens the software industry” and “fails to build respect for intellectual property rights.”

Full Story ~ The Inquirer

There’s been a flurry of blog posts about the integration of the WooThemes Custom Navigation into WordPress core, so I thought it was time we posted the official word. For 3.0, the main user-facing feature we wanted to include was a better site menu management system. Currently, dealing with menus is clunky, using Page IDs or in some cases categories, if a theme uses categories instead of pages for the menu. We wanted a menu system that had the drag and drop ease of the widget management screen, could combine Pages, Categories, and Links, was able to be re-ordered, allowed submenus, and enabled hiding specific Pages or Categories from the menu altogether. We were in the process of building this when WooThemes introduced their Custom Navigation system. Watching their introductory video, it seemed that their system did pretty much everything we wanted to do for core, so we reached out to them about contributing to core.

As you’ve probably heard, it worked out, and the first patch has been submitted. It does require some code modification, which is happening now. The decision to incorporate the Woo menus happened right before our planned feature freeze for the 3.0 development cycle, so we pushed our freeze date back by two weeks to allow the addition. We’re now targeting the 3.0 release for early May, and we think it will be worth the extra two-week wait.

Full Story ~ Wordpress.org

A couple videos from WooThemes‘ website showing the WooThemes Custom Navigation in use and how it works:

WSCC is a free, portable program that allows you to install, update, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites. WSCC is only an interface, you need to download and install the utilities separately. Alternatively, WSCC can use the http protocol to download and run the programs.

The included Update Manager can check for newer versions of the utilities already installed and can download and install the missing items.

When you run the executable it will ask to “install”. Don’t let this fool you into thinking it’s not a portable application. Simply install it to a location (computer, thumb drive, etc.),

Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 32/64-bit
Download WSCC 1.8.9.2 Portable

WinGuggle is a small application that can Set, Change and Backup your Original Equipment Manufacturer’s Information. It can also get your Windows 7/Vista/XP and Office Product Key for Backup easily. How? No Installation is needed, Just unzip the archive and launch the application.

• Now includes Bitmap Browser for images available on your PC (Windows 7 and Vista are supported)
• System Summary of the most important information such as Hardware components, CPU information, Disk Drives, Audio and Video Codecs, Display Drivers and many more.
• Before installation or upgrading to a new OS, It is recommended to run WinGuggle System Summary to a separate disk like flash drives or removable drive first to archived automatically all the System Information needed and if problems occur, you can still view the previous System Information like Sound Devices and Display Drivers. Prevention is Better than Cure!

Features:

• Recover Windows 7/Vista/XP and Office Product Key (CD Key)
• Change OEM Logo and Information Completely (Windows 7, Vista and XP)
• Change Performance Information and Tools OEM Logo (Windows 7 and Vista)
• Removing OEM Logo and Support Information in Windows 7/Vista/XP
• Manual and Automatic Backup of OEM Logo and Information Settings
• Reset to Default Restores the Original Settings

Windows 7/Vista/XP
Download WinGuggle 2.1 Build 1 Revision 1 (x32/64)
Download WinGuggle 2.1 Build 1 Revision 1 (x32)

NetWorx is a simple and free, yet powerful tool that helps you objectively evaluate your bandwidth situation. You can use it to collect bandwidth usage data and measure the speed of your Internet or any other network connection. NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks.

The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.

The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dial-up duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis.

Download Networx 5.1
Download Networx 5.1 Portable

Google released Buzz last week as a better way to manage the growing deluge of social networking information, but privacy concerns have caused quite a fallout. First, numerous complaints online caused Google to quickly change some features. Then came a complaint to the FTC from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Now Google is facing a class-action lawsuit filed this week in federal court in California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Eva Hibnick, a resident of Florida, though the suit seeks to include all 31.2 million Gmail users as potential plaintiffs. Buzz was rolled out to most, if not all, Gmail users last week. In at least some cases the feature was automatically activated, and generated publicly accessible lists of followers gleaned from users’ Gmail accounts and Gtalk conversations. There is real concern that sensitive information related to some contacts could have been exposed.

Google made numerous changes last weekend in an attempt to make it easier to opt out of the service and make contact lists private. It also dropped the automatic following features, replacing it with a list of suggested contacts. Buzz won’t automatically connect and use public data from Picasa and Google Reader without a user explicitly activating the connecting, either.

Full Story ~ ars technica

MyDefrag is a disk defragmenter and optimizer, a maintenance utility to make your harddisk faster. Fast, low overhead, with many optimization strategies, can handle floppies, USB disks, memory sticks, and anything else that looks like a disk to Windows. Included are a set of easy to use scripts for endusers, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus commandline version that can be scheduled by the Windows task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts.

MyDefrag is extremely solid because it is based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft. Most defragmenters are based on this API, including the free defragmenter that comes with Windows and many commercial defragmenters. Basically all MyDefrag does is send “move this file to that location” commands to the API. The API is part of the operating system and can safely move almost any file on the disk, without risk and while the computer is in full use.

• Fixed a bug in the grammar of the MaxRunTime statement. It can now be used multiple times in a block, as intended.
• Added a logfile footer with the finishing time and total running time.
• Added ExcludeVolumes(CDRom(yes)) to the settings, to hide the cdroms in the the MyDefrag script chooser window.
• If MyDefrag is started with some volumes names (“MyDefrag.exe -v C: -v D:”) then the script chooser now only displays those volumes.
• Added support for volume device names, for example “\Device\HarddiskVolume1″.
• Added the ImportListFromProgramHints fileboolean.
• Added several options to WhenFinished, such as Hibernate, Standby, and WarnUsers.
• Fixed a problem in the calculation of the ZoneSize and ZoneBegin numbers.
• Changed the selection criteria of FastFill (more favor files high on the disk) to move less data and finish quicker.
• Changed the installer so the association between MyD scripts and a new version of MyDefrag is not deleted any more when an old version is uninstalled.
• Fixed a bug that could cause certain VolumeBooleans to crash.
• Added the MoveToEndOfDisk fileaction.
• Added the NumberBetween volumeboolean.
• Added the FileSystemType volumeboolean.
• Added the FileLocation fileboolean.
• Added the Minimum() and Maximum() NUMBER operators.
• Added the RememberUnmovables setting.
• Added the Highlight.MyD example script.
• Added the SetColor “text” setting.

Windows 7, 2008, Vista, 2003, 2000, and for X64
Download MyDefrag 4.2.8

Unused and bad sections appear in the registry with time. It leads to errors and poorer system performance. Ainvo Registry Defrag will allow you to improve the Windows performance and stability due to registry defragmentation. The program is designed in the form of a convenient wizard so even inexperienced users can speed up their computers. Defrag allows you to defragment all registry sections on all popular systems including new Windows 7 and 64-bit platforms. The dynamic defragmentation map is used to evaluate the condition of the registry. Defragmentation results are displayed in the form of a convenient and visual report. The program is now more stable because the defragmentation procedure is now started at the operating system startup.

• Registry defragmentation (removing corrupted and unused blocks of data) after which your computer will work faster.
• Defragmentation will allow you to avoid errors in Windows and will provide for the stable work of the operating system.
• You can use the program if one of the following operating systems is installed on your computer: Windows 7 / 2008 / Vista / 2003 / XP.
• 64-bit operating systems are supported: Windows 7 / 2008 / Vista / 2003 / XP.
• The program will carefully save a backup copy of registry files to the drive before defragmentation.

Download Ainvo Registry Defrag 3.3.1.947 (installer)
Download Ainvo Registry Defrag 3.3.1.947 (portable)

WirelessKeyView recovers all wireless network security keys/ passwords (WEP/WPA) stored in your computer by the ‘Wireless Zero Configuration’ service of Windows XP and by the ‘WLAN AutoConfig’ service of Windows Vista. It allows you to easily save all keys to text/html/xml file, or copy a single key to the clipboard.

Version 1.33:

• When loading WirelessKeyView under Windows 7 in the first time, the ‘Code Inject’ mode is now turned on by default.

Windows 7/Vista/XP SP1+/
Download WirelessKeyView 1.33
Download WirelessKeyView 1.33 x64