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Open Source

Open Source OCR That Makes Searchable PDFs 133

Posted by timothy from the word-of-advice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In my job all of our multifunction copiers scan to PDF but many of our users want and expect those PDFs to be text searchable. I looked around for software that would create text searchable pdfs but most are very expensive and I couldn't find any that were open source (free). I did find some open source packages like CuneiForm and Exactimage that could in theory do the job, but they were hard to install and difficult to set up and use over a network. Then I stumbled upon WatchOCR. This is a Live CD distro that can easily create a server on your network that provides an OCR service using watched folders. Now all my scanners scan to a watched folder, WatchOCR picks up those files and OCRs them, and then spits them out into another folder. It uses CuneiForm and ExactImage but it is all configured and ready to deploy. It can even be remotely managed via the Web interface. Hope this proves helpful to someone else who has this same situation."
Mars

New Evidence Presented For Ancient Fossils In Mars Rocks 91

Posted by Soulskill from the hope-the-protectors-leave-them-alone dept.
azoblue passes along a story in the Washington Post, which begins: "NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars. In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life. 'We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life,' team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology."

Comment Reasonable Response (Score 3, Interesting) 36

by __aalmrb3802 (#29244915) Attached to: Security Test Prompts Federal Fraud Alert

Perhaps I am missing something obvious (wouldn't be the first time), but it seems to me that the issuance of the alert was a very reasonable thing given that the credit union which received the CDs did not know that it wasn't a real attack when they issued it. Of course, you would think that whomever had requested the penetration test would have been watching for something like this and stopped the alert from going out, but that's a different problem...
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Linux Fund loses its MasterCard funding source

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The LinuxFund was established in 1999 to provide grants to Free and Open Source Software projects from funds raised via a credit card featuring a picture of Tux, the Linux Penguin. This credit card was offered through MBNA America Bank, which was purchased in 2006 by Bank of America. Last week, LinuxFund credit card holders received mail from Bank of America informing them that the LinuxFund card would be discontinued. The LinuxFund website did not post any details, but Linux.com has more details about the end of the credit card including statements from David Mandel, executive director of the LinuxFund, assuring that the LinuxFund will look different but continue. It is not clear how the LinuxFund plans on raising funding.

In the past, the LinuxFund provied one-time grants of, if I recall correctly, $500-$1000 USD to many projects including SDL, FilmGimp, Xiph.org Foundation, CrystalSpace, K12LTSP, and Kismet. The LinuxFund stagnated in 2003, and in 2005 it was reorganized by new leaders and by 2006 provided a stable $6000 per year contribution to a number of larger projects including Wikipedia, Blender, Debian, Gentoo, and OpenSSH.
Microsoft

Submission + - VMware attacks Microsoft?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: On Monday VMWare will release a white paper detailing its concerns with license changes on Microsoft software that may limit the ability to move virtual-machine software around data centers to automate the management of computing work. This was reported by Steve Lohr of the New York Times in an article published on February 24, 2007. Two choice quotes: "Microsoft is looking for any way it can to gain the upper hand," said Diane Greene, the president of VMware. ... "This seems to be a far more subtle, informed and polished form of competitive aggression than we've seen from Microsoft in the past," said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. "And Microsoft has no obligation to facilitate a competitor."

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