Microsoft will build into its forthcoming Office 12 desktop suite a “save to PDF” capability, according to Office program manager Brian Jones.

Jones communicated word of Microsoft’s PDF plan for Office 12 on his blog on Saturday afternoon. He posted that Microsoft will add native support for PDF in Word 12, Excel 12, PowerPoint 12, Access 12, Publisher 12, OneNote 12, Visio 12 and InfoPath 12.

Source: microsoft watch

Paramount Home Entertainment is the latest company to back the Blu-ray Disc format as the next-generation DVD standard.

Paramount said Sunday it will join a growing list of media and technology companies endorsing Blu-ray that includes Sony Corp., Apple Computer Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc.

Paramount will still market all its DVD movies in the competing HD DVD format so consumers can have a choice, company officials said.

Backers of HD DVD include Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Toshiba Corp., Universal Studios and others.

Paramount decided to support the Blu-ray format after an analysis of the cost and copy protection solutions available, according to a prepared statement. Paramount also said it was attracted by Blu-ray’s storage capacity, which is five times that of current DVDs.

“We have been intrigued by the broad support of Blu-ray, especially the key advantage of including Blu-ray in PlayStation 3,” said Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures, Worldwide Home Entertainment.

Paramount will begin releasing its content in the Blu-ray format in North America, Japan and Europe when the hardware is available to support it.

Source: AP

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Friday making Internet “phishing” identity theft scams punishable by law.

The bill, advanced by state Sen. Kevin Murray, is the first of its kind in the United States and makes “phishing”—getting people to divulge personal information via e-mail by representing oneself as a business without the approval or authority of the business—a civil violation.

Victims may seek to recover actual damages or $500,000 for each violation, depending upon which is greater.

Source: eWeek

When plugging a USB device to Windows XP, the operating system will popup an icon indicating that a USB device is connected. Most users got trained before you disconnect the USB device from the computer you must first click on this icon and select “Safely Remove Hardware�? in order not to loose data.

Indeed this is the right way to go if you have an old operating system, but since Windows XP SP1 Microsoft changed the caching policy for removable storage, so write caching is disabled by default.

Disabling write caching means that, instead of saving up changes for a file on a removable storage device and then doing a bulk write, Windows XP writes changes to the file as the changes are made. This keeps data on removable storage devices more current, mitigating the likelihood of data loss.

Thus if you are finished using your USB drive after few seconds, it is perfectly safe to remove your USB drive even without selecting the “Safely Remove Hardware�?.

One more small tip: You can also hide the “Safely Remove Hardware�? icon completely by customizing the task bar.

Codase is a new kind of search service for open source code. Rather than treating code as text, Codase understands programming languages, and treats code as code, the way it’s supposed to be. This unique and syntax-aware approach provides the most accurate and detailed search results with fine granularity levels of controls. With Codase, developers can search functions, classes, strings, constants, macros, comments and other programming language constructs.

Codase hosts huge amount of open source codes providing a much better coverage, as it covers codes usually hidden inside compressed files and source control repositories, where general search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves, fail to find and index them. In addition, Codase only indexes and searches high quality codes with every line of code literally validated and compiled by source code analysis engine. This initial alpha release focuses mainly on Linux C/C++ code. Future releases will address other programming languages and platforms.

A California judge has sided with Google Inc. in an age discrimination lawsuit filed by a former manager who alleged the online search engine leader had fired him because he didn’t fit in with the company’s youthful culture.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge William Elfving granted Google a summary judgment on all the case’s key issues in a Sept. 21 ruling. The judge concluded that Brian Reid, formerly Google’s director of operations, hadn’t presented enough evidence to prove Google fired him in February 2004 because of his age.

Reid, who was 54 when he filed the suit more than 14 months ago, said one of Google’s executives told him that he lost his job because he didn’t fit into Google’s youthful atmosphere. He also contended that Google discriminated against him for having diabetes - another allegation that Elfving found to be meritless.

Source: AP