accounting

Feds raise questions about big media's piracy claims

After spending a year studying how piracy and illegal counterfeiting affects the United States, the Government Accountability Office says it still doesn't know for sure.

Congress tasked the GAO in April 2009 with reviewing the efforts to quantify the size and scope of piracy, including the impacts of Web piracy to the film and music industries. In a 32-page report issued Monday, the GAO said most of the published information, anecdotal evidence, and records show that piracy is a drag on the U.S. economy, tax revenue, and in some cases potentially threatens national security and public health. But … Read more

Find the process you want, when you want

If you've ever tried tracking down a process in Windows Task Manager, you know it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Process Explorer makes the job a lot easier. This freeware utility displays running processes in an intuitive tree format that includes not only process names, but also program icons and other data, such as description, image, and processor time.

It also can identify the process for a given application window or look up a process name in Google--a handy way to spot spyware. The latest version, more than three years in the making, introduces several … Read more

Survey: 63% don't change passwords very often

Security firm Symantec on Friday released results of a survey on password management that showed 63 percent of respondents don't change their passwords very often, 45 percent use a few passwords that they alternate for all accounts, and some 10 percent don't change their passwords at all.

These are a startling numbers as, according to the survey, 44 percent of respondents said they have more than 20 accounts that require a password.

Worst of all, the survey also found that about 10 percent of respondents have used their pet's name as a password. This is as bad … Read more

MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature from MacFixIt in which we answer questions e-mailed to us by our readers. This week we have questions asking for clarification on our previous article about account and group associations, the system displaying the wrong printer icon in the system preferences, and a common problem where upon deleting a file you will be prompted to delete it immediately instead of putting it in the trash.… Read more

iTunes 9.0.3: Error 42408 or Error 42404 possible resolutions

When downloading purchases from the iTunes Store or authorizing those purchases on your machine, you may encounter either Error 42408 or Error 42404, stating that the action could not be completed. The following are some troubleshooting steps you can use to help resolve these error messages.… Read more

Tackling file account association and permissions changes in OS X

When you get information on a file or folder in OS X, you will see a "Permissions" section where a few user and group names are listed, followed by read or write permissions for those names. This method of granting access to files can be relatively straightforward, but many times there will be odd names listed in the permissions field, and people have wondered about them and what they mean.… Read more

Unintuitive financial tool

iCash bills itself as a simple program, a financial management tool for people who don't know anything about accounting. Unfortunately, the program did not seem to bring either intuitiveness or outstanding features to the table, making it a pretty mediocre choice among similar programs.

iCash's interface looks nice enough, with attractive buttons and tabs that organize its main features. However, the way that the program attempts to organize things--both accounts and transactions--doesn't always make sense. The program comes with a 13-page Word document Help file, and it does seem that with careful studying a user could figure … Read more

Login items disappearing, or not staying away after removal

Apple's login items are exceptionally useful for launching programs, running scripts, and opening documents, folders, or other resources that are regularly accessed upon logging in. For instance, a common program to run as a login item is an email client such as Mail. Adding an application to the login items is as easy as right-clicking it in the Dock and choosing "Open at Login" from the contextual menu (in the "Options" submenu in Snow Leopard), but to add other items you must use the Accounts system preferences.… Read more

Dealer's choice

Dealer Solutions is a full-featured program for managing automotive dealerships. With an attractive interface and a full suite of management tools, Dealer Solutions is a great choice for auto dealerships of every size, or anyone who manages a fleet of vehicles, for that matter.

Dealer Solutions sports a well-designed and fairly intuitive interface, although it does take some getting used to, thanks to its copious features. The program's major features are arranged in tabs down the side, including tabs for inventory, contacts, deals, and accounts. Each of these sections is quite detailed, allowing users to create quotes, print window … Read more

Does Twitter mean business with 'Contributors' test?

One of the hottest use cases for Twitter, as you well know, is businesses communicating with their customers or potential customers. Up to this point, Twitter really has not introduced any new features to support these business users, but as a part of an initiative to roll out more business-specific features, Twitter on Monday introduced "Contributors." Contributors allows business accounts to designate other Twitter users, usually employees or PR, to tweet on their behalf. Twitter is currently testing this with "a limited subset of folks."

The screenshot above is what this new feature will look like, … Read more