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COMPUTER NEWS

Obama's $3.8 trillion proposed budget: Parsing the tech priorities

by Larry Dignan

President Obama rolled out his $3.8 trillion proposed fiscal 2011 budget that's teeming with technology projects throughout the Federal government's departments and agencies.

I went through the budget with an information technology lens so you don't have to. Here's a look at the notable technology projects and investments (blog, tables by agency).

Department of Defense: Better health IT infrastructure

According to the budget overview:

This funding increase allows DOD to address its highest priorities, such as the President's commitment to reform defense acquisition, develop a ballistic missile defense system that addresses modern threats, and continue to provide high quality healthcare to wounded servicemembers.

The $548.9 billion proposed Department of Defense budget is 3.4 percent higher than the 2010 enacted level. Aside from the usual - weapons systems, prosecuting two wars and cutting high risk contracts - a lot of the budget is focused on medical care for the troops.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Using Your Camera's RAW Mode

Dave Johnson

In the old days, there were more graphics file formats in use than languages spoken at the United Nations, including BMP, PCX, TIFF, TGA, and a few dozen more. Thankfully, now, you generally just need to know about JPEG to manage all of your photos. You might occasionally hear about a file format called RAW. Some time ago, I told you all about the RAW format in "Shooting in RAW, Part 1" and "Shooting in RAW, Part 2." Some things have changed since then, so let's take another look at using your camera's RAW mode.

Refresher: What Is RAW?

Oddly, RAW is not a single file format, and you'll never see a photo with a .RAW file extension. Instead, it's the name we use to refer to several different file formats that all preserve your photos at the best possible quality. Nikon uses the NEF format, for example, while Canon uses CRW and CR2. While they're all different, they have one thing in common: Each represents a high-quality, unprocessed version of what the camera's sensor saw when you pressed the shutter release. A RAW file has no image compression, no noise reduction, no color enhancement. Most importantly, it preserves the full range of colors and brightness originally captured by the camera, which are discarded right away when a digital photo is saved in JPEG format, for example, impossible to retrieve later.

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COMPUTER TIPS

02/10/10 Depressed - Replace Real Friends with Virtual Ones

Newk's Nook: Depression isn't something I associate with using a computer. Ah me..I think I go sit in a corner & be glad I don't live in England.

People who spend a lot of time surfing the internetare more likely to show signs of depression, British scientists said on Wednesday.

But it is not clear whether the internet causes depression or whether depressed people are drawn to it.

Psychologists from Leeds University found what they said was "striking" evidence that some avid net users develop compulsive internet habits in which they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites.

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SECURITY

Google Tightens Chrome with New Security Features

By Larry Seltzer

Google has announced a number of security enhancements that are being implemented in Chrome. Some have already been implemented in other browsers, including Firefox and IE and in significant add-ons like NoScript.

Strict-Transport-Security is an HTTP response header that a site can send to a browser to tell it only to communicate with the site via HTTPS. This should provide extra security against snooping, although it's not bullet-proof. It's already implemented in NoScript and a native Firefoximplementation is being worked on. Some security-conscious web sites, including Paypal, have begun to use it.

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TECH

Google Chrome 4.0

Michael Muchmore

The major advantage Firefox users have claimed over Google Chrome is the ability to customize their browser by choosing from a vast library of extensions. But that advantage falls away with the introduction of extension support in Google Chrome 4. Sure, the library is far behind Firefox's in sheer numbers, but at 1,500 on the first day, Google Chrome looks likely to narrow the gap pretty quickly. For a look at some of our favorites, check out our 11 Cool Chrome Extensions story. Version 4 also adds bookmark syncing, something that's been available in minor browser competitor Opera for over a year, and the Google Chrome 4 has even faster JavaScript performance-impressive in a browser that's already far and away speed the leader!

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BELOW THE FOLD

Reliability and Service: Technology's Most (and Least) Reliable Brands

Christopher Null, PCWorld

When you buy a new PC, camera, printer, or TV, you want a dependable device from a manufacturer that's committed to supporting its customers. We asked 45,000 readers and found out which companies you can really trust.

Every year, consumers purchase millions of computers and peripherals. And every year, millions of those devices break down.

For anyone who plans to buy a piece of hardware, the overall reliability of a vendor's products and the quality of its service are important considerations. Unfortunately, much of the information that people use in deciding which product to buy is fragmentary and anecdotal--not the kind of data you'd want to base a three- or four-figure decision on.

To obtain some hard data about which vendors have done the best job over the past year, we recently polled approximately 45,000 visitors to PCWorld.com, asking them about the mechanical soundness of their tech products--laptop PCs, desktop PCs, HDTVs, digital cameras, and printers--and about the quality of the tech support they received when those products required service. For similar evaluations of smartphone vendors, see "The Smartphones You Can Rely On."

Perhaps the most surprising thing about our most recent survey results is how closely consumer opinions about reliability and service this year match those we reported last year (see "Product Reliability and After-Sale Service, 2008").

Once again, Apple and Canon were far and away the favorite brands in our survey, earning high marks across the board on measurements of both reliability and service. Apple won top honors in notebooks and desktop PCs, while Canon dominated the field in printers and cameras.

But a number of other companies made impressive gains. Vendors that enjoyed markedly improved ratings in their survey results over the past year include Toshiba among laptop makers, Sony in desktop PCs, Brother for printers, Pioneer among HDTV brands, and Nikon in cameras.

At the other end of the ladder, our list of cellar dwellers did not change much, either. Across the board and in every category we tracked where it had a significant presence, Hewlett-Packard ranked as the least-reliable manufacturer in the survey. Among manufacturers that experienced momentum in the wrong direction were Dell (which took a disappointing tumble in both laptop and desktop PC reliability), Sony (which sank in televisions), and Fujifilm (in cameras).

After watching HP turn in dismal results on our survey for the past several years, we asked what was happening. Why were our readers rating a top-tier company as subpar in reliability and support, year after year?

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