Free Republic

You can't flip through a newspaper or wander around the Internet these days without stumbling across a debate over whether bloggers are journalists. This isn't trivial. Journalists often get access to places and information that others don't. Because they're surrogates for the public, they can get close to the action when emergencies break out. They benefit from the California Shield Law, which allows them, in most instances, to keep secret sources secret.... The Federal Elections Commission soon will explore whether campaign-finance laws apply to partisan bloggers whose work may, in effect, be akin to donating their services to campaigns.... It's...

Jef Raskin, the human-computer interface expert largely credited with beginning the Macintosh project for Apple Computer, died Saturday at age 61. Raskin, the author of The Humane Interface, died of cancer, according to a man who answered the telephone Sunday at Raskin's Pacifica, Calif., home. Raskin joined Apple in January 1978 as employee No. 31, but left the company in 1982 amid a well-documented dispute with Steve Jobs. The Macintosh was launched in 1984. Reskin was an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a visiting scholar at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1970s when...

Experts: International domain names may pose threat The new trick is a variation of the 'homograph attack' The new trick is a variation of a known technique called the "homograph attack" and takes advantage of loopholes in the way some popular Web browsers display domain names that use non-English characters. It could allow malicious hackers and online identity-theft groups to trick unsuspecting users into divulging sensitive personal information, according to an advisory from The Shmoo Group, a hacker collective, and from Secunia. snip For example, attackers could register a Web domain "bloomberg.com," which looks identical to the popular business news...

PlanetOut Network SUMMARY: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) signed a hate crimes bill on Wednesday that includes crimes motivated by a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a hate crimes bill on Wednesday that includes crimes motivated by a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. It was the second time this month that Schwarzenegger, a Republican, signed legislation that protects the rights of LGBT residents in the state. He signed a law on Sept. 13 that required insurance companies to provide coverage to registered domestic partners. Known as the Omnibus Hate Crimes...

<p>Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs are advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on economic issues.</p> <p>Kerry, 60, the four-term Massachusetts senator challenging President George W. Bush, ``reached out to them and they're giving him economic advice about the deficit and job creation,'' said David Wade, Kerry's campaign spokesman.</p>

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Internet has played a significant role in the latest increase in cases of syphilis among gay men by introducing partners more likely to practice high-risk sex, according to a study. About 22 percent of homosexual men diagnosed with early stage syphilis reported meeting one or more of their sexual partners through the Internet around the time they were infected, said the study by the Los Angeles Health Department on Wednesday. Researchers at a national conference in Philadelphia on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases also said they found gays who used the Web to meet sex...

The top-of-the-line iPod music player from Apple Computer can hold four solid weeks of music. But what if you just want a little peace and quiet? As it turns out, Apple sells that too - sounds of silence for 99 cents. Steve Halberstadt of Raleigh, N.C., made such a purchase last week after discovering that Apple's iTunes store, the Web's leading downloadable music outlet, had added "The Whitey Album," a 1995 release by Ciccone Youth, a jokey side project of the rock band Sonic Youth. The album's second track album, "Silence," consists of 63 seconds of exactly that. (The band...

<p>The SCO Group has announced it plans to take legal action to block Novell Inc.'s proposed purchase of SUSE Linux AG. The company claims that it has inherited a non-compete agreement, which was part of a broader agreement signed between Novell and one of SCO's ancestors, The Santa Cruz Operation Inc., when Novell sold Unix's intellectual property rights.</p>

American businesses continue to march in lock step with homosexual ideals.America's top corporations continue to take on policies pleasing to homosexual activists. A new ranking shows more companies than ever are rewriting employee manuals to include gay ideals. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation found that two out of every of three companies on the Fortune 500 list of America's top corporations now specifically protect sexual orientation in their employee codes. The group rated companies on seven criteria, such as offering domestic-partner benefits or diversity training. More than 20 companies scored a perfect 100, representing a 91 percent increase over last...

Martin Luther King Jr.'s image has been used to protest a potential war on Iraq, denounce a gay rights law and sell wireless phone service. The trouble, of course, is that the civil rights leader "is not here to speak for himself," said the Rev. Richard Bennett, executive director of the African American Council of Christian Clergy in Miami. On the eve of the holiday commemorating King's birth, some scholars and civil rights leaders say that while it's not much of a stretch to assert that King would have opposed war with Iraq -- he was an advocate of nonviolence...

<p>To the PC industry, such thinking is lethal. It represents not just the bottoming out of a business cycle, but a seismic shift. It's the death of the business model that drove the industry for the past 20 years. Now, even as computers have raced ahead in speed, sales have slowed -- down 5% last year alone, according to Gartner Group. Declines were unheard of in the 1990s, when double-digit annual growth was the norm, some years even approaching 30%.</p>

Frustration with Microsoft is prompting more companies to consider "un-Windows" alternatives, according to a study released Tuesday. "Corporate user resentment and dissatisfaction with Microsoft and some of its practices is at an all-time high," says Laura DiDio, senior analyst with the Yankee Group and the report's author. That frustration is pushing more companies to consider Linux-based operating systems as well as Apple's OS X, she says. Licensing Hostility The survey, conducted last April and May by the Yankee Group and Sunbelt Software, asked 1500 corporations about their satisfaction with Microsoft. Bottom line: Many customers aren't happy. At the heart of...

<p>LONDON, May 20 — Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker.</p> <p>Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for the past week, and in typical newsgroup style, users have pilloried Sony for deploying "hi-tech" copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store.</p>