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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...

Feed Techdirt: Why Should XM Have To Pay The Record Labels In Order To Innovate? (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
In a bit of unfortunate news, it appears that XM has given in and decided to settle its dispute with the record labels. The company has already settled with Universal Music, with the other major labels expected to quickly follow suit. The Reuters article incorrectly states that this was a patent infringement suit (fact checking, anyone?) but it's actually a copyright issue, where the record labels were using copyright to try to prevent XM from innovating. Specifically, XM has a license so it can play music from the record labels and it fairly pays all the royalties required. The problem, though, was that XM decided to introduce a new device, the Inno, that allowed XM subscribers to record songs and listen to them later. That's a perfectly legitimate use -- and the courts have backed up the fact that "time shifting" by recording programs is perfectly legal. Not so, according to the RIAA, who suddenly felt that because people could record the music from XM, XM now had to pay another licensing fee on top of the licensing fee it already paid. This went directly against what the RIAA had said earlier, when it promised that it would never use copyright laws to prevent new technologies like the VCR, TiVo or the iPod. The Inno clearly fits in as a device just like that... and yet, here was the RIAA demanding extra money to allow such a device to exist. It's really too bad that XM wouldn't continue this fight in court, as it's clearly on the right side -- but with its economic troubles and the impending merger with Sirius, it looks like the company decided it was easier to just pay off Doug Morris and his cronies to leave it alone. Chalk another short-term victory up for Morris, who continues to do everything possible to win in the short-term at the expense of the long-term.

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Feed Al Gore: ex-VP, environmentalist, gadget freak (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We all know former-VP Al Gore loves his Apple gear. Besides sitting on Cupertino's board of directors, he was happy to be shown toting his then-PowerBook around giving that wacky Academy Award-winning Keynote presentation of his. But today in Time's photo essay of his life, we got to see another side of Al Gore: gadget junkie. It's not too often you catch a glimpse of these high profile figures' inner info-sanctums, but we're not at all disappointed in how he holds court over the internet kingdom legend holds he created.

From here it looks like the dude's all hooked up with a triple-head 30-inch Cinema Display rig (daaaamn!), what appears to be a Sharp HDTV on the wall (we're gonna guess that's a LC-32D7U), Humanscale Leap ergo-chair, and an iPod (didn't the President, who owns one, help develop 'em?), whose box sits up in his shelf. Not to get all political and stuff, but surely this office, messy though it may be, is a step up from Bush's humbler means of input, no?

P.S. -Yeah, fine, we're creepy gadget stalkers, what of it?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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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