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DVD copying software gets pulled

Software which claimed to be a legal way of copying DVDs has been withdrawn following legal action.

RealNetworks - the firm behind the software - has responded to restraining order issued by a US court stopped selling the RealDVD software.

Six major movie studios jointly sued the company on 30 September - the day the software was launched.

San Francisco District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel is due to review the case on 7 October.

Common ground

RealDVD is touted by RealNetworks as a legal way to turn a PC into a media server.

“It makes it easy to pause a program and resume right where you left off, makes it easy to find the movie you want and no more lost or scratched discs,” said Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, on his firm’s blog.

Mr Glaser claims that a second layer of encryption is built into the software but the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) said RealDVD circumvents its rules about copying.

The RealDVD site was taken down on 3 October but a defiant message posted to it read: “Rest assured, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs for your own use.”

Mr Glaser expressed disappointment at the turn of events.

“As a company with a nearly 15 year track record of innovation that’s both great for consumers and fully respectful of intellectual property, we’re disappointed that the movie studios thought they had to file lawsuits,” he wrote in his blog.

The release candidate 2 of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now ready for testing. This test release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage.

OpenOffice is a great free alternative for opening and creating office documents. OpenOffice 3 series is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 documents. OpenOffice 3 will open Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, allow you to edit them, and also save them back in Microsoft’s format, where other users of the Microsoft Office suites can open them.

OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 RC2 Release Notes

Download OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 RC2

VirtualDub 1.8.6 is out and is a stable release containing bug fixes for issues reported by users. Notable bug fixes include errors handling audio in NTSC DV type-1 files, several crashes, and a few glitches in batch mode (job control).

Those of you on the forums know that I’ve been pushing out experimental features as “1.8.X2″ test releases. Chances are at this point that I will rename that to 1.9.0, because there is enough in it that I wouldn’t want to pollute the 1.8.x branch in case there are enough fixes to warrant 1.8.7. After that I’m kind of screwed with respect to major version numbers, although I guess I’ll deal with that when I get there.

Build 30009 (1.8.6, stable): [September 21, 2008]
[bugs fixed]
* Wheel scrolling in the Set Text Information dialog closes the edit control.
* Save Segmented AVI now works with VBR audio.
* Animated GIF export now fails with an error if the current output format is
compressed or otherwise not supported.
* JobControl: Fixed crash when one machine attempts to run a job in
distributed mode right when another machine deletes it.
* JobControl: The filter crop mode saved in jobs was opposite from selected.

CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.

Key Features

* burn all kinds of discs
* audio-CDs with or without gaps between tracks
* burn and create ISO files
* data verification after burning process
* create bootable discs
* multi-language interface
* bin/nrg → ISO converter, simple cover printing and much more!
* Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista

Download CDBurnerXP Pro 4.2.1

Full List of Features

CDBurnerXP Pro 4.2.1 Changelist:

Version Version 4.2.1.919 - 2008-08-23 22:54:26

* + Added Bahasa Melayu translation
* + Added eject option for burning audio discs
* + Localised installer
* * Command line version accepts drive letters as well
* * Removed ISO creating dialog (too complex appearance and not necessary)
* ! Corrected error handling for copying data discs a bit
* !

SmartFTP is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client which allows you to transfer files between your local computer and a server on the Internet. With its many basic and advanced features SmartFTP also offers secure, reliable and efficient transfers that make it a powerful tool.

SmartFTP can be used for:
* Web site publishing and maintenance
* Upload and download of images, documents, movie and music files
* Share your files with your friends and coworkers
* Backups of local or remote files

Changes:
* SFTP over SSH
Secured connection to SFTP servers over SSH.
* Thumbnail View and Preview for Remote Browser
Thumbnail view is a great way to see image files on the server. The Preview feature shows images, html and text files with one click.
* Visual Compare
Compare folders and visually display differences between their content.
* Email Notifications
Receive emails when transfers complete or fail.
* License Model Change
SmartFTP is no longer free to use.

Full Changelog

Download SmartFTP 3.0.1021.4

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

Autoruns’ Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc.

You’ll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically!

Autoruns works on Windows 2000 SP4 Rollup 1 or above.

Download Autoruns 9.31

Autorunsc Usage

Autorunsc is the command-line version of Autoruns. Its usage syntax is:

Usage: autorunsc [-a] | [-c] [-b] [-d] [-e] [-g] [-h] [-i] [-l] [-m] [-n] [-p] [-r] [-s] [-v] [-w] [-x] [user]
-a Show all entries.
-b Boot execute.
-c Print output as CSV.
-d Appinit DLLs.
-e Explorer addons.
-g Sidebar gadgets (Vista and higher).
-h Image hijacks.
-i Internet Explorer addons.
-l Logon startups (this is the default).
-m Hide signed Microsoft entries.
-n Winsock protocol and network providers.
-p Printer monitor drivers.
-r LSA providers.
-s Autostart services and non-disabled drivers.
-t Scheduled tasks.
-v Verify digital signatures.
-w Winlogon entries.
-x Print output as XML.
user Specifies the name of the user account for which autorun items will be shown.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

* Posterize adjustment.
* Intersect selection mode.
* Dramatically improved performance for selection editing modes (add, subtract, intersect).
* Bug fixes.

Download Paint.NET 3.35

Other changes from the Roadmap and Change Log
Paint.NET 3.35 Documentation
Paint.NET Plugins

Basic antivirus and antispyware protection for Windows available to download for free. Limited features, no support, for private and non-commercial use only.

* The most downloaded software on CNET’s Download.com
* Quality proven by 70 millions of users
* Easy to download, install and use
* Protection against viruses and spyware
* Compatible with Windows Vista and Windows XP

Download AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0.138

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0 PDF User Manual

CurrPorts displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer. For each port in the list, information about the process that opened the port is also displayed, including the process name, full path of the process, version information of the process (product name, file description, and so on), the time that the process was created, and the user that created it.

In addition, CurrPorts allows you to close unwanted TCP connections, kill the process that opened the ports, and save the TCP/UDP ports information to HTML file , XML file, or to tab-delimited text file.
CurrPorts also automatically mark with pink color suspicious TCP/UDP ports owned by unidentified applications (Applications without version information and icons)

Download CurrPorts 1.40

FileZilla is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.

Features
Among others, the features of FileZilla include the following:

* Easy to use
* Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
* Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
* Available in many languages
* Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
* Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
* Drag & drop support
* Configurable Speed limits
* Filename filters
* Network configuration wizard

Changes

* Show number of filtered files in status bars if directory appears empty
* Support for international domain names was accidentally commented out
* Add missing path separator in remote filename on file exists dialog
* Fix shrinking panes if using widescreen or blackboard styles
* MSW: If showing file changed notification dialog after editing a file, program could become unresponsive in some cases
* MSW: Fix visual problems with right-to-left languages introduced with the flicker corrections in 3.0.11
* MSW: Main component can no longer be unselected in the installer

Download FileZilla Client 3.0.11.1