Is Internet censorship obsolete?

Many people live in countries subject to Internet censorship, and are unable to access information available on blocked sites. The Psiphon project offers a solution to this problem. It requires the cooperation of Psiphon providers in censorship- free countries who facilitate the linking. Psiphon is a service of the CiviSec Project operated by the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. The CiviSec Project is funded by the Open Society Institute.

Web users contact the Psiphon site, and receive passwords and Web links. When the Psiphon search bar appears on their screens, they may begin surfing the Net free of blocking by government agencies. Net censors observe a nondescript IP address and have no idea which site the Psiphon user has accessed. The encrypted message appears to be one of the millions of encrypted financial transactions running through the Internet. Prospective users should visit the FAQ and Forum sections on the site to learn how the system works and how to minimize discovery by censors. Any system is vulnerable to government investigation and users should be aware of the risks involved in bypassing censorship protocols. Government investigators might even set up bogus "anonymous" proxy sites to lure and track censorship law violators. Be sure you know well the person who agrees to set up your Psiphon connection.

http://psiphon.civisec.org/

For a discussion about how certain countries attempt to defeat programs like Psiphon, go to: http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/list-of-possible-weaknesses.html

Check out another program called Freegate, available at the Download.com site:
http://www.download.com/Freegate/3000-2085_4-10415391.html

New software saves printer paper and trees

A new software program called GreenPrint deletes the blank pages that follow documents printed from the Internet. A “print overview” page allows you to decide what to delete from your website printout, thus saving paper and ink. The program also includes a PDF writer, which converts a document with one click.

https://printgreener.com/index.html

Free office suite program looks a lot like Microsoft Office

Open Office is a free program that has many of the features of Microsoft Office. The average computer user, or even small business owner, may not want to invest hundreds of dollars in Microsoft Office. Open Office is a full-featured office suite which includes a word processor, presentation program (resembling Powerpoint), a spreadsheet program, a vector drawing tool, and a data base program. The program is available in many languages, including Irish Gaelic , Scotch Gaelic, Hindi, and Esperanto, Japanese, and German. Updates are free.

Open Office is a multi-platform program, meaning that it is compatible with Linus and Mac. It works with many other office suite products. I've used it to open Wordperfect documents received in an e-mail attachment. Users who are computer-savvy may participate in the development of the program.

http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/new.html