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New Delhi: With an aim to promote cyber security, the government has launched a malware analysis centre called the Cyber Swachhta Kendra (CSK).

The centre, launched by ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY), will work with different Internet service providers (ISPs), academia, banks and anti- virus companies in the industry in providing citizens with digital tools that will protect data by removing the malicious content on their computers, laptops and mobile phones.

India is going to take a lead in the digitization process of the world. We have joined the distinguished club of countries that already have malware cleaning systems for the use of its citizens. As of now, we have 13 banks & Internet service providers using this facility. With the expanding digital footprint in the country, I see a surge in start-ups in the area of cyber security by the end of the year, said Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister of electronics and information technology.

All alerts related to any malicious content penetrating into any users system will first be disseminated from the Kendra to the different ISPs who will further pass it onto the users through messages or email notifications. Based on these alerts, users can visit the CSK website, to download the various tools to clean their systems for free.

With an estimated budget of Rs90 crore, the centre has been developed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) of the ministry along with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Quick Heal Technologies and Amrita University.

Security is too critical an area for a single stakeholder to take control of , thats why so many entities are part of this initiative and all of them need to bring their combined capabilities together, said Aruna Sundarajan, secretary, MEITY.

The various digital solutions created are USB Pratirodh for usage of USB mass storage devices, App Samvid for Microsoft software based operating systems and M-Kavach for mobile devices.

First Published: Tue, Feb 21 2017. 09 54 PM IST

The rest is here:
Govt launches free anti-virus software for PCs, mobile phones - Livemint

Short Bytes: Cyber Swachta Kendra, a botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre,is a new project led by the Indian government. The project finds its utility in identifying infected users and helping them with removal tools. It includesthe development of various security tools for mobile and desktop machines.

The announcement was made by the IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. The Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre will collect details about the systems infected with botnets. It will work with the ISPs, who will have to identify the infected users, inform them, and help them with a link to the Botnet Removal Centre. The users will be facilitated with a Bot Removal Tool -powered by Quick Heal.

M-Kavach an antivirus solution for mobile devices is a part of the project which includes security tools like USB Pratirodh a desktop access control application for connected storage devices, AppSamvid an application whitelisting tool for Windows OS, and browser extension called BrowserJSGuard.

You can visit the official website of the Cyber Swachta Kenda here.

If you have something to add, drop your thoughts. Dont forget to tell us your feedback.

Also Read:10 Best Free Antivirus Software Of 2017

Originally posted here:
Indian Government Launches Free Antivirus Software For Smartphones And Computers - Fossbytes

Avira Free Software Updater is a program for Windows by German security company Avira that checks Windows PCs for software updates.

It is recommended -- most of the time -- to run up to date versions of programs installed on Windows. The main reason for that is security, as older versions may have security issues that newer versions patched. Other reasons may be stability and new features.

There are reasons for not updating software, for instance when a new version is worse than the old, or when you only have a license for an older version and want to keep on using it without having to renew it.

Avira Free Software Updater is a free program to check if updates are available for installed programs on a Windows machine.

Warning: The program installs Avira Browser Safety during installation as a Chrome extension. The program installer has no option to block this from happening. You can block the installation in Chrome however as you will be prompted when that happens.

The program scans the system when you run it, and lists all programs that are outdated after a brief moment.

Avira Free Software Updater lists the name of the program, the developer, a link to the program website on the Internet, and a big update button. The installed version, but not the latest version, is displayed when you hover the mouse cursor over the download icon next to the program icon.

This means that you have no option to verify that a new version is indeed available, and what version number that new version has.

The update button advertises the Pro version of the application only however, and does nothing else in the free version.

You can click on the website link however to open it, and download the latest version manually from it.

The only other option that you have right there is to run a rescan. This can be useful if you have updated some programs and want an updated status report.

The two menu options on the left, my software and events, offer additional information. My Software lists all programs that Avira Free Software Updater detected on the system. This is likely not identical to the number of installed programs though, as the program seems to support only some programs.

Events on the other hand is a log that lists information on scans and updates.

The Pro version of the application, Avira Software Updater Pro, adds the update functionality to the program, and an option to keep software up to date automatically. It costs 24.95 for a one-year subscription though.

How is the program stacking up against one of the best software update programs out there? Sumo is a long standing program that is available as a free and pro version as well.

I ran Sumo on the same system, here is the conclusion:

Avira Free Software Updater, and the Pro version, have a long way to go to reach feature parity with Sumo. Some issues are fixed easily, like missing version information, while others, support for more programs, may take time to get right.

The software program should display an option during installation to inform users about the installation of the Avira Browser Safety extension for Chrome, and disable it.

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Avira Free Software Updater

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Windows

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Avira Free Software Updater review - Ghacks Technology News

Do you remember those days in the early nineties when most screensavers were showing flying 3D metallic logotypes? Did you have one?

In this article, I want to go back in time and briefly revise the period in the history of computer graphics (CG) development when it transitioned from research labs to everyone's home computer. The early and mid-1990s was the time when Aldus (before Adobe bought the company) was developing PageMaker for desktop publishing, when Pixar created ToyStory, and soon after 3D modeling and animation software Maya by Alias|Wavefront (acquired by Autodesk). It was also a moment when we got two very different models of CG development, one practiced by the Hollywood entertainment industryand one practiced by corporations like Adobe and Autodesk.

By recalling this history, I hope to be able to shed new light on the value of free software for CG, such as Blender or Synfig. Maybe we can even re-discover the significance of one implicit freedom in free software: awayfor digital artists to establish relations with developers.

It may seem natural today that CG software and GUIsempower digital creativity, but in fact, they wereto a great extentthe result of the attempts of the software industry to automate design and manufacturing.

In the early 1980s the U.S.felt threatened about losing its global economic power. The way it sought to overcome this threat was to envision software as a tool to reduce costs in manufacturing, by automating parts of it. CAD software was in great demand, primarily as a way to reduce the costs for manufacturing, but also to increase U.S. competitiveness. It sped up the development of algorithms for digital drawing and rendering. In this context, Autodesk managed to emerge as a market leader with its AutoCAD and outcompeted many other similar products with a cheap price and features. (At that point in time CAD software used to be developed in-house for large corporations and cost tens of thousands of dollars. However strange it may sound, Autodesk wasamong the first to make CAD software affordable for less wealthy companies at the time, but not, of course, for individual creators.)

This was also the moment in history in which computer graphics transitioned from being part of scientific work to becomingwidely available for noncoding users. This move required producers to minimize maintenance obligations and costs by creating documentation and support services that detached users from developers. However, in the 1990s the business of CAD and desktop publishing software companies (like Adobe) stagnated and needed to diversify.

These growing CG software giants began to swallow smaller companies and incorporate these tools into their portfolios. As a result, individual CG creators got digital tools for drawing and animation, but dispossessed them from influence on technological development, a situation that art critique Boris Groys summarizes in his post,Art Production (March 18, 2013): "The post-industrial 'creative industries' presuppose the innovative, project-oriented and, in a certain way, autonomous working process. But on the other hand, the artists, designers, or writers use the means of production that they do not own or control." We may think that this is the default state of things that we end up with ever since the industrialization of work. But, this is not entirely true.

While CAD software was moving CG away from science (at least for the end user) in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Hollywood industry was experimenting with renewing animation by new tech and by bringing users into software development. Initially, such experiments were rather limited. Somewhere around the 1970s, Lucas Film tried to experiment with CG for making visual effects. Disney tried in the 1980s to introduce CG as a way to automate parts of its animation production. These tests did not have a big impact because these studios had a very well established division of labor, technology, and production pipeline. Any changes caused by new technologies would disrupt the ongoing work process and require major restructuring that they were reluctant to do (cited below,Tai).

For this reason, their early experiments were more of a test of what it would be to have some CG in a movie rather than an attempt to actually develop new algorithms. This was changed by Pixar.

A landmark moment is the call made by John Lasseter to the CG engineering community, through his 1987 SIGGRAPH paper, to improve the visual appeal of animation by redefining Disney's principles of motion for 3D. This paper was the first one in SIGGRAPH that came from an artist and not an engineer. It showed the need to bring artists and CG developers together in a conversation and to jointly improve both technology and the visual expressions that came with it.

In fact, the realization that artists need to be part of developing CG and computing was made in the 1960s through the work of an organization called Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). The organization tried to attract the computer industry (Xerox, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Bell Labs) to fund experiments between electronic engineers and artists. E.A.T. thought that "corporations could extend their innovative capacity by providing artists access to their prohibitively expensive tools... Artists would realize their vision, engineers would learn to do different thingslook at things differently, and companies would harvest the ideas and patents." (cited below,Wisniowski). Some of the experiments that this organization managed to facilitate became exemplars of the nascent-at-the-time multimedia and technological arts.

Artists and engineers together would explore holograms, lasers, video, and computer graphics. For example, "Manfred Schroeder investigated the information content of visual images together with Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton, to make one of E.A.T.'s most renown works called 'Computer Nude' a computer plot of a nude compiled from mathematical symbols" (cited below, Wisnioski).

This 1967 image was one of the first computer-processed prints in the history of digital graphics, and it was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in the first computer art exhibition to be arranged in New York, which was named "The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age." Through such works, the engineer was also redefined as "an artist who begins with an idea or need" and then uses his "special tools," constrained by time and budget, to bridge the "creativity gap" between theory and reality (Wisnioski).

Ok, so, fast forwarding (rewinding?)back to the early 1990s, what Pixar, and later Dreamworks, SONY, and Ghibli realized was that there was no way to renew a visual medium without messing up with technology and involving artists and users in the process. Ever since, even if their general production process still resembles a factory with a hierarchical management, the development of artist vision and technology for each film go hand in hand.

Historically, they have tried to downplay the importance of technological development in public opinion, because the industry wants people to believe that their products are made by exceptionally talented artists (something very evident in some of the writings of Ed Catmull, Pixar's co-founder, for example).

This is changing now, with Pixar itself celebrating its technology and the possibility to bring together artists and developers through videos like The magic ingredient that brings Pixar movies to life. Yet, the Hollywood industry makes money not out of technology, but out of the content that it brands and circulates. So, we end up in a situation in which we have software companies that develop CG software, but users not being able to experiment with the algorithms, nor can they contact developers and experiment with alternative techno-art visions.

We now have a Hollywood industry that further pushes the development of CG algorithms and what can be done with them without making the tech available (or only sharing it to a very limited degree). There have recently been signals that this may be changing; for example, Ghibli made their Toonz animation software available for Linux users. But so far, sharing technology remains an exception.

On the backdrop of this history, free software like Blender, Synfig, Krita, and other projects for CG gainsignificance for several reasons that stretch beyond the four freedoms that free software gives.

First, free software allows the mimicking of the Hollywood industry's models of work while making it accessible for more individuals. It encourages practice-based CG development that can fit individual workflows and handle unexpected circumstances that emerge in the course of work, rather than aiming at a mass product for all situations and users. Catering to an individual's needs and adaptations of the software brings users work closer to craft and makes technology more human. Tools and individual skill can be continuously polished, shaped, and improved based on individual needs, rather than shaped by decisions "from above."

This sense of craft gets stronger as artists get in a direct contact with the developers of their tools of work. When they do so, artists and users start guiding technological development, and software engineers change into being servants rather than masters of technological development. I have written more about this in Free software beyond radical politics.

Perhaps the most important quality of free software for CG is precisely this one: to encourage connections between users and producers of technology, reshaping the ways in which technology gets produced nowadays. What happens when these connections get established?

My observations about the effects of these connections are based on some research I have been doing on the Blender and Synfig communities. One obvious outcome is that users gain a greater freedom and advantage to move between freelancing jobs across the world, because technology and a community to help are always easily available.

Surprisingly, most Blender users whom I have met in the past three years do not turn this into their advantage and try to escape the freelancing condition nor do they experiment radically with creating new aesthetic expressions with CG. Instead, the goal of many seems to be to try to reproduce the stylistic visions of Hollywood and bring them to the products they make for television, advertising, and other industries. There are some exceptions, of course, and there are artists who experiment with the medium (for example, the work of the ELI KURUS collective: Platonic Solids 3-D scans of plasticine sculptures 2015), but as a rule they end up being somewhat marginalized and receive less recognition by the community.

The freedom of users to connect to developers seems to bring so much satisfaction that it shifts away focus from problems of employment. The rush for catching the new job and updating portfolios seems to remove time from reflecting on what could be changed in the form of work, which occurs when the form of engaging with the technology has changed and been brought back to craft.

After all, short-term contracts and constant movement between continents might be a cool lifestyle, but they benefit economically mostly the industry that decreases its production costs and responsibilities for creators. Technology and a specific organization of work have given the birth of this very entertainment industry that follows the factory-like model and pushes everyone to constantly move around on short-term contracts. I wonderwhy more people, and not just the Blender Institute, are not trying to create alternative models of work for making computer graphics.

Tai, P.-y. (2012). The Principle of Animation: History and Theory of a Social Technology. Doctoral Dissertation. University of California Irvine, Irvine.

Wisnioski, M. H. (2012). Engineers for Change: Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America. Engineering studies series. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Here is the original post:
Rewriting the history of free software and computer graphics - Opensource.com

RokkinCat Milwaukee Innovation: Software developer- focused hackathon http://www.rokkincat.com

Hack & Tell attendees present a game that alters the rules of chess.

One by one, the presenters got up in front of the crowd gathered in the Ward4 space in Milwaukee. They discussed what they accomplished during the day; some worked on their own versions of chess, others on software development tools, others on projects related to their day jobs.

More than 90 people showed up on a recent Saturday for the latest Hack & Tell, an event aimed at helping to increase the level of comfort between Milwaukees software developers and the citys startups.

The event is produced quarterly by RokkinCat, a Milwaukee startup that serves as a technology partner for businesses, and the focus of Hack & Tell is on spending the day building something, not on whether there is a business model behind the idea.

Nick Gartmann, one of the companys founding partners, said hed gone to other hackathon events where the focus was on a particular technology or on the business plan. The result was often an event at which there were 60 to 70 entrepreneurs, a few designers and maybe 10 to 15 programmers.

It made it very difficult for anybody to build a product or a prototype, he said.

The typical ratio of entrepreneurs to software developers also made programmers more hesitant to come to similar events in the future.

Showing up and getting swarmed by 60 entrepreneurs who were looking for a developer was kind of intimidating, Gartmann said.

RokkinCat has been running Hack & Tells over the past two years with a focus on people building things. Participants own the intellectual property for anything they build, there are no restrictions on what the project involves and the prizes at the end of the day are mostly low-value items.

Gartmann said the last two years have been about building trust for the event within the developer community. Starting with the first event this year, the company sought to add more sponsors and has brought on a number of them, including Wantable, gener8tor, Bright Cellars, Ward4 and GitHub.

The goal is also to make the events a better place for software developers and startups to interact, Gartmann said.

Theres a stigma in the Midwest about working for a startup, said Gartmann, noting that most developers are more interested in working at a larger company and startups have to compete with the job benefits those bigger companies can offer.

The idea is for Hack & Tell to be a place where people can meet and work on what interests them. An attendee once built a web store for his wifes jewelry business. Others have come to learn to code, taking advantage of the chance to ask programmers for advice. People have done video animations, written songs, worked on screenplays and even quilted. Some people continue to work on the same projects each time, allowing attendees to see their growth.

Casey Sobrilsky, IT director at Wantable, attended his first Hack & Tell in January and said he was somewhat surprised by the number of non-technology projects.

He came to the event with a specific purpose working on an application to help Wantable track packages. It worked well for him because it helped create an eight-hour window in which he could sit down and code.

I like that it doesnt have to be like that, he said, referring to Hack & Tells open-ended approach to projects; people can come to learn something new or improve.

He also said it was a benefit for Wantable that he could stand up in front of a room full of software developers and tell them y Sobrilabout what the company does.

We have a really hard time finding developers because were using platforms that arent super common to the area, he said.

Sobrilsky brought most of his team from Wantable and they came away with some new ideas of how to address challenges.

Januarys event was the best-attended Hack & Tell to date. Gartmann said more than 120 people signed up for the event, blowing away the previous high of 88.

The hope is to continue using the events to build comfort, collaboration and community among Milwaukee software developers. Gartmann said the team that started RokkinCat has a very entrepreneurial focus and Hack & Tell is one way of contributing to the citys startup scene.

From our perspective, theres just not enough people starting things to have a healthy ecosystem, Gartmann said.

RokkinCat Milwaukee Innovation: Software developer- focused hackathon http://www.rokkincat.com

Hack & Tell attendees present a game that alters the rules of chess.

One by one, the presenters got up in front of the crowd gathered in the Ward4 space in Milwaukee. They discussed what they accomplished during the day; some worked on their own versions of chess, others on software development tools, others on projects related to their day jobs.

More than 90 people showed up on a recent Saturday for the latest Hack & Tell, an event aimed at helping to increase the level of comfort between Milwaukees software developers and the citys startups.

The event is produced quarterly by RokkinCat, a Milwaukee startup that serves as a technology partner for businesses, and the focus of Hack & Tell is on spending the day building something, not on whether there is a business model behind the idea.

Nick Gartmann, one of the companys founding partners, said hed gone to other hackathon events where the focus was on a particular technology or on the business plan. The result was often an event at which there were 60 to 70 entrepreneurs, a few designers and maybe 10 to 15 programmers.

It made it very difficult for anybody to build a product or a prototype, he said.

The typical ratio of entrepreneurs to software developers also made programmers more hesitant to come to similar events in the future.

Showing up and getting swarmed by 60 entrepreneurs who were looking for a developer was kind of intimidating, Gartmann said.

RokkinCat has been running Hack & Tells over the past two years with a focus on people building things. Participants own the intellectual property for anything they build, there are no restrictions on what the project involves and the prizes at the end of the day are mostly low-value items.

Gartmann said the last two years have been about building trust for the event within the developer community. Starting with the first event this year, the company sought to add more sponsors and has brought on a number of them, including Wantable, gener8tor, Bright Cellars, Ward4 and GitHub.

The goal is also to make the events a better place for software developers and startups to interact, Gartmann said.

Theres a stigma in the Midwest about working for a startup, said Gartmann, noting that most developers are more interested in working at a larger company and startups have to compete with the job benefits those bigger companies can offer.

The idea is for Hack & Tell to be a place where people can meet and work on what interests them. An attendee once built a web store for his wifes jewelry business. Others have come to learn to code, taking advantage of the chance to ask programmers for advice. People have done video animations, written songs, worked on screenplays and even quilted. Some people continue to work on the same projects each time, allowing attendees to see their growth.

Casey Sobrilsky, IT director at Wantable, attended his first Hack & Tell in January and said he was somewhat surprised by the number of non-technology projects.

He came to the event with a specific purpose working on an application to help Wantable track packages. It worked well for him because it helped create an eight-hour window in which he could sit down and code.

I like that it doesnt have to be like that, he said, referring to Hack & Tells open-ended approach to projects; people can come to learn something new or improve.

He also said it was a benefit for Wantable that he could stand up in front of a room full of software developers and tell them y Sobrilabout what the company does.

We have a really hard time finding developers because were using platforms that arent super common to the area, he said.

Sobrilsky brought most of his team from Wantable and they came away with some new ideas of how to address challenges.

Januarys event was the best-attended Hack & Tell to date. Gartmann said more than 120 people signed up for the event, blowing away the previous high of 88.

The hope is to continue using the events to build comfort, collaboration and community among Milwaukee software developers. Gartmann said the team that started RokkinCat has a very entrepreneurial focus and Hack & Tell is one way of contributing to the citys startup scene.

From our perspective, theres just not enough people starting things to have a healthy ecosystem, Gartmann said.

Follow this link:
RokkinCat's Hack & Tell sets software developers free - BizTimes.com (Milwaukee)