Free Republic

Mac clone maker wants Apple to stop saying it's breaking the lawThe Mac clone maker that's been battling Apple for more than a year in federal court last week asked a judge to rule that its business is legitimate, and to stop Apple from saying different. In an amended complaint submitted last Thursday, Psystar asked U.S. District Court Judge William Hoeveler to rule that it is legally allowed to sell machines with Apple's Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, pre-installed. "A declaration by this Court of the legal rights of Apple and Psystar with respect to Psystar computers running...

BANGALORE: For the first time since the success of India's maiden unmanned moon mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is ready to outsource more high-end work to private companies — everything from building more complicated systems to assembling it.

A BIKER has appealed after losing his licence when speed cameras clocked him riding at an impossible 383 mph. Motorbike mad Paolo Turina of Cernusco Lombardone, Italy - who also copped a £200 fine - claims the speed camera was clearly so defective the charge should never have been brought. The 26-year-old said: "If I could go that fast I'd enter my bike in the MotoGP world championships. What did they think they were clocking - a jet fighter?" Police claim the camera was working perfectly but bungling staff botched the charge paperwork, as reported in the Austrian Times.

Did a search on Recovery.gov.........hilarious

HOLLY HILL -- The yard sale at 722 Center Ave. has been canceled. That much is clear. The rest of the story, including allegations that police threatened to arrest the 80-year-old homeowner because she didn't have a permit? Not so much. The facts are these: After 60 years in Holly Hill, Pauline Liles is moving to Tennessee to live with her daughter's family. Her husband, Jack, is already there, having suffered a stroke that has immobilized him. Pauline, an old hand at yard sales, was hoping to sell most of their stuff before joining him next week. She advertised the...

One of the most important things to remember about socialism – or coercion of any kind – is it fails eventually because human beings have an innate desire for liberty and a strong need for personal property rights. In fact, the origins of government lie in the need of agricultural communities to protect themselves from violence and theft. So it is particularly ironic that in more recent times, it is government itself that has more frequently played the role of bandit. When you start taxing people at extreme rates to pay for socialist "benefits," when you start telling them which...

Mountain View wants your exabyte Google’s massively global infrastructure now employs a proprietary system that automatically moves and replicates loads between its mega data centers when traffic and hardware issues arise. The distributed technology was first hinted at — in classically coy Google fashion — during a conference this summer, and Google fellow Jeff Dean has now confirmed its existence in a presentation (PDF) delivered at a symposium earlier this month. The platform is known as Spanner. Dean’s presentation calls it a “storage and computation system that spans all our data centers [and that] automatically moves and adds replicas of...

Upstart multicore, Linux-compatible chip maker Tilera don't need no stinking tier one server makers. That means no IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or Sun Microsystems. At least not yet. The company has just lined up $25m in its C round of funding, which includes $10m from Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese PC maker that is the volume leader in notebook manufacturing in the world. And as Tilera has confirmed to El Reg, Quanta is going to use Tilera chips to build servers. As it turns out, one of the reasons why Tilera announced its future Tile-Gx family of 100-core mesh processors last week,...

It is becoming more and more evident, to the astute observer of realistic economics, that the second dip in the "W" global recession is coming up quickly. This is of course, identical to what took place between the 1929 collapse and the 1931 final landing. The world economy fell hard, bounced high and than fell into a deep black hole, that it took it thirty years to climb out of. This time will be worse, at least for the Anglos and more specifically the Americans. ...Now for the Yanks. The Americans, more so than any others are about to find...

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford, the only Detroit automaker to dodge direct government aid and bankruptcy court, surprised investors with net income of nearly $1 billion in the third quarter and forecast a "solidly profitable" 2011.

ONE of Queensland's richest men is fighting the Government to let his nine-year-old grandson continue to drive a 30-tonne front-end loader at the family quarry. Dirk Karreman, a multimillionaire who owns Karreman Quarries at Mt Cotton, southeast of Brisbane, said grandson Dane was six when he started learning the ropes. Last year, a complaint was made about Dane, then eight, being allowed to operate a Caterpillar 980H loader, but Mr Karreman said he was in a "restricted area" and there was no danger to anyone. "You basically cordon him off in an area he works on by himself and the...

AN Indian man claims he has been cheated by the cosmetics firm that makes popular deodorant Lynx after failing to land a girlfriend for the past seven years. Vaibhav Bev has been using Lynx deodorant since 2002, in the hope the company's promotional campaign - which features scantily clad women throwing themselves at men - had some basis in real life. Mr Bev is suing the maker of Lynx - marketed as Axe in his home country - for more than $100,000, seeking compensation for "depression and psychological damage". "I used it for seven years but no girl came to...

[Excerpt] "Sometimes our technology, in creating these securities, outpaces our ability to cope with them." That's what Larry Fink told the New York Times in May 1987 when asked about Howie Rubin's trading disaster. In the past, Fink would have made that statement to a reporter and then celebrated with his team the fact that one of his competitors, particularly one like Merrill Lynch, which he saw as a pesky upstart in the field he aimed to dominate, was now being nailed with massive losses. But Fink wasn't celebrating, because, much like Howie Rubin, he had just gotten his first...

THE Federal Government told scientists monitoring the huge oil leak off Australia's northern coast to focus on the Indonesian side of the leaking well. The instruction meant waters closer to the Australian coast, which contain more biodiversity and include important whale habitats, were not assessed for oil contamination in a report that the federal Environment Department released on Friday. To complicate matters, fire broke out yesterday on the oil rig, which has been leaking oil into the Timor Sea for 10 weeks. Oil field operator PTTEP Australasia said the West Atlas rig and Montara well-head platform were on fire. No...

REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Thousands of Icelanders lined up at McDonald's restaurants to order their last Big Macs before the U.S. fast-food chain abandons the crisis-hit island at midnight Saturday due to soaring costs. The world's largest fast-food company said earlier this week that all three of its restaurants in Iceland, operated by franchisee Jon Ogmundsson, would shut down October 31. The outlets have been packed since the announcement, with lines at one restaurant on the east side of the city backing up out the door and onto the street. At lunchtime Friday the outlet's parking lot was full and staff...

Has anyone heard anything about a 912DC march part two? Loads of people I know would go if there was another since they couldnt go this time. I also had a great grassroots idea that I would have no idea how to start... sort of a "Mansion March" where thousands of people being represented by Pelosi, Ried, and Frank march in their neighborhood and surround their home... not sure the legality of it, but to get the media there and letting the world see how these fat pigs live would be a big plus... just dont put me at Barney...

Shoes are hollow objects that humans enjoy sticking their feet into as a means to keep them warm and dry, and to protect them from rough terrain. Interestingly, men and women have widely differing opinions on such a simple invention.

No one saw the truck drive off, it left the alley between the bank and another business. You could pick up the cash and no one would see you. What should you do?

Apple iPhone and Google Android phone owners can now watch live NBA games The National Basketball Association is now offering mobile phone owners the ability to watch entire live games for $40 per year. Just a few games into the 2009-2010 NBA season, this is the first time entire games are available for streaming -- only game highlights were previously available through an official service. There are now three methods to watch complete games in the NBA:  via TV, PC, or now using a mobile phone.  Initial estimates report 59M mobile phone owners have the ability to watch streaming NBA...

Frugality Is A Given This Holiday Season Lean times demand creative ways to make merry: Be less lavish, shop early, haggle over prices, buy with cash, give heirlooms, make your own gifts and reuse decorations. Shopping early, leaving the credit cards at home and using only cash can help you save money. (Christopher Serra / For The Times) Andrea Chang November 1, 2009 The holiday shopping season is getting underway, but despite the not-so-gentle prodding of retailers and some economists, Americans are in no mood to overspend. ¶ Millions are still struggling with unemployment or reduced income. Others are concerned...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has a problem. The world's biggest retailer tips the scales at just over $400 billion (U.S.) in annual sales. It is a perpetual growth machine. But it doesn't have a stock valuation to match. At Wal-Mart, repeatedly held out as a winner in this recession as consumers traded down, sales will barely budge in the current fiscal year, ending Jan. 31. Despite the bargain hunters and the demise of weaker rivals, Wal-Mart revenues will edge up just 1 per cent in fiscal 2010. Wall Street fell out of love with "The Beast of Bentonville" (for its Arkansas...

With bailouts and other unabashed socialist projects being embraced by both political parties to "save our economy," has free-market economics been proved faulty?  In the bailout-a-week political climate, it is all too easy to believe that free-market economics are as passé as powdered wigs. Everyone, it seems, is a socialist now, and the old gospel of laissez-faire and free enterprise has been discredited by a cascade of free-market failures that threaten to bring down the economy of the entire developed world. "For too long, the prevailing attitude in Washington has been that the market always knows best," Congressman Henry Waxman...

Michelle Triola Marvin dies at 75; her legal fight with ex-lover Lee Marvin added 'palimony' to the language After their cohabitation of six years, she took him to court, seeking $1.8 million, but won just $104,000, and that award was later thrown out.Michelle Triola Marvin, a former nightclub singer whose claims as the onetime live-in girlfriend of actor Lee Marvin led to a landmark ruling that established the legal concept of palimony, has died. She was 75. Marvin, who had fought lung cancer for the last 18 months, died Friday at the Malibu home she shared with actor Dick Van...

...The hormone fuels sex-drive in both men and women and is associated with competitiveness and dominance.Prior research has shown that high levels of testosterone are also linked to risky behaviour such as gambling or excessive drinking.Scientists in the US measured the amount of testosterone in saliva samples taken from 500 male and female MBA business students at the University of Chicago.Participants in the study were asked to play a computer game that evaluated their attitude towards risk.A series of questions allowed them to choose between a guaranteed monetary reward or a risky lottery with a higher potential pay-out... play safe......

Unless they had explicitly named them, the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer and the House’s Waxman-Markey global warming bills could not have been better designed to inflict more pain on the states that swung red in the last election than on those that went blue. The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the Senate and House’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act both call for dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, eventually 83%. (Isn’t it curious that neither bill is titled after the impending global warming catastrophe that they are supposedly designed to avert?) When EPA’s data for carbon dioxide emissions...

Mission Our mission is to identify a select number of significant public issues and stimulate action on those issues through communications programs that make a measurable difference in our society. To that end, the Ad Council marshals volunteer talent from the advertising and communications industries, the facilities of the media, and the resources of the business and non-profit communities to create awareness, foster understanding and motivate action.

A few months ago, needing to cut my monthly budget way down, I examined every place where I could cut. One of the things I noticed was how much money I was spending on a liberal newspaper that was continuing to jack its price while constantly shrinking in size and increasing in content from other news agencies (i.e., less NJ news, which is the reason I bought it in the first place). So I quit the Star-Ledger cold turkey. Other than the comics and the weekly food sections, I discovered that I don't miss it. On Sundays, an acquaintance is...

The economic crisis combined with the election of a potentially anti-gun liberal to the White House acted as a big stimulus for the gunmakers. But it seems that all that happened was that gun demand got pulled forward, because now sales are totally falling off a cliff. A reader sends along some recent numbers from Ruger (RGR).If you look at the bottom line -- firearm sales -- it only looks like there was a slight sequential dip. But ignore that. The number to look at is orders received in 3Q, which were down 80%. Due to their backlog, actual firearms...

Joe Eboh, a conman who was persuaded to prove evidence of his initiation into the Holy Church of The Painted Breast in a reverse scam Dear Honourable Friend. Those generous Nigerians who e-mail you with promises of a fortune are themselves being targeted in a new drive to deter cyber criminals. Millions of internet users have received messages offering them a huge financial reward if they help to release money trapped in a foreign bank account. And, although the majority of these e-mails are deleted, the fraudsters still find a sufficient number of gullible Britons to cost the country millions...

Dayton is being considered as a potential retail and residential development site by Hong Kong business mogul Zengbin Song, of Tian An China Investments Company. Working with local business owner Jack Gong, the Dayton Economic Development Corporation has now established a relationship with the Chinese investment community. Mr. Gong is the President of Overseas Operations for the Dayton office of Lucky Toys, a Six Flags distributor. Most recently, Gong developed, and leased, a shopping center in Willis, Texas. As part of a 60-member Chinese delegation to the Houston market, Song was attracted to Dayton as a high-growth submarket in the...

Prypiat is an abandoned city in the Zone of alienation in northern Ukraine. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.

According to security researchers, computer servers at the government institutions of Poland suffered a well-synchronized cyber attack, which was allegedly launched by Russian sources in September 2009. The details of this attack on the Polish government are not yet revealed, as reported by the daily Rzeczpospolita. The attack took place in the beginning of September, a particularly intense moment, near about Westerplatte visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The purpose of his visit was to commemorate the outburst of the Second World War, as reported by NATIONAL on October 11, 2009. Meanwhile, security experts informed that generally botnets are...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks tumbled Friday, more than erasing the previous session's gains, as investors dumped a variety of shares at the end of a rough week and choppy month on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost nearly 250 points, or 2.5%, according to early tallies. The Dow lost as much as 278 points earlier. It was the Dow's biggest one-day selloff on a point basis since April 20. The S&P 500 (SPX) index fell 30 points, or 2.8% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) shed 52 points, or 2.5%. The selloff was broad based, with all...

Even with Friday's dip, both oil and retail gasoline prices are near their highs of the year. The good news is energy prices typically peak around this time of year amid buying in anticipation of winter heating season. "Odds favor we'll get a correction in oil," says Frank Holmes, CEO and CIO of U.S. Global Investors, which has about $2.5 billion of assets under management, including the Global Resources Fund. "Usually when it's coldest in NY is when oil prices are actually making their bottom." That's good news for consumers in the near term, but long-term "there's a real [trend]...

Ex-Microsoftie says that Windows 7 is doomed and Linux, free software, will ultimately dominate.A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. But he goes further. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system. These topics came up yesterday during my interview...

A flurry of court fights, union-filed grievances and even a federal intervention are complicating the Schwarzenegger administration’s budget-balancing action requiring state employees to take three Fridays each month off without pay, which amounts to about a 14 percent pay cut and the administration says saves the state about $2 billion annually. The Social Security Administration, in a filing in Alameda County Superior Court, said the furloughs of personnel in the state Disability Determination Services Division, or DDSD, “does not save the state a single penny and actually costs the state money.” The Social Security Administration estimated the furloughs in the...

Stocks plunged Friday, erasing all of the previous day's big gains, as a drop in consumer spending fanned worries that the economic recovery won't be sustainable. Major stock indexes tumbled more than 2 percent in afternoon trading, including the Dow Jones industrials, which gave back all of Thursday's 200-point gain. The biggest declines were among banks, energy and materials companies. As stocks fell, investors moved to safer assets like the dollar and Treasurys. At the same time, the Chicago Board Options Exchange's Volatility Index, known as the market's fear gauge, soared nearly 25 percent to 30.88, the highest since early...

Battle of the South Florida billboards heats up The billboard catches the attention of drivers and truckers traveling on the highways. "YOUR WIFE IS HOT" -- BETTER GET YOUR A/C FIXED," it reads, in big bold letters. A clever and sexy slogan developed in January by Air Around the Clock, an A/C and appliance service based in Broward County. But now the slogan is generating a lot of heat after its competitor, All Year Cooling, flipped the phrase this summer. "YOUR WIFE IS NOT HOT! Because you called All Year Cooling to replace your A/C rather than the other guys,"...

Here is video of a CBS News report questioning the truthfulness of the number of jobs the White House is reporting that have been "saved or created" as a result of Obama's Stimulus Plan. CBS News reporter Chip Reid shows some shocking examples of jobs Obama's report claims were created, but turned out to be totally untrue. It calls into question the honesty of any numbers on the economy being put out by Obama's White House. CBS News might need to get ready for the "Fox News" treatment with reporting like this! . . . (VIDEO)

To hear President Obama crow in vindication of his Stimulus Bill, one would think the light at the end of the tunnel is visible on the economic front. Obama has taken credit for the third quarter GDP growth of 3.5% as well he should. However, we need to examine what that growth was based upon and whether it was a bona fide growth of the economy or the counting of stolen booty. The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, private inventory investment, federal government spending, and residential fixed...

Verizon Wireless opened up to us. Verizon Communications Inc. and Motorola Inc. proudly and excitedly showed off their new Droid smart phone in a meeting Wednesday afternoon.First impression: The device is fast, powerful, fully featured and well-designed -- a combination of adjectives we've never used for a Verizon cellphone.When was the last time a Verizon phone got this much hype? The BlackBerry Storm? Ouch.Yet, one is coming on Nov. 6, and it has a good chance of living up to the hype. A phone with Google's fast-improving Android operating system, a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and digital zoom, a...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Face paints are a Halloween staple, but a new study has raised safety concerns around their use. The research shows they may contain toxins dangerous to kids, yet the harmful substances aren't listed on the package. It's a crucial part of many Halloween costumes, getting just the right look with face paints. But tests ordered by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics came up with some pretty scary results. "Unfortunately we found lead in all 10 of the products we sent to the lab and six of the ten contained heavy metals that are allergens," said Mia...

The father of Colorado's so-called Balloon Boy may not have gotten his reality TV scheme off the ground, but Richard Heene is at least getting his own action figure. Connecticut-based toymaker Herobuilders.com is adding Heene to a quirky collection that includes the Sarah Palin Super Hero and the Obama Joker doll. There's also a Bernie Madoff Action Figure with a fistfull of hundred-dollar bills and a Dick Cheney doll hoisting a shotgun. Heene's mini-me wears an "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt with the arrow pointing upwards. It sells for 34.95. Heene and his wife, Mayumi, called 911 earlier this month to...

Back when Norman Rockwell ruled Saturday evenings, Adobe wasn't even a gleam in some nerd's eye, but a new book shows that the painter was, nevertheless, a photoshop god. Very few Gizmodo readers were even born when Rockwell painted his last Saturday Evening Post cover, but we all know them. You hear that name and suddenly you can picture those overly detailed, cartoonishly dramatic but ultimately kinda corny depictions of American life. Well, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, written and compiled by Ron Schick, has given me immense newfound respect for the man, for the meticulous photography, the real people...

What would happen if any other political party pushed for a cap and trade bill that could create green jobs of which 9 out of 10 created would be unsustainable, require government subsidizing and cost the nations economy millions of real jobs? And this is not to mention the increase in manufacturing costs that would be passed on to us in time of depression. No matter if you are a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or an Independent, what do you think is going to happen when the government revenues are down and spending is quadrupled? As one senator from Florida was...

Poll: Offshore drilling Should Florida allow drilling for oil within five miles of its Gulf Coast beaches? Yes No

OSLO (Reuters) – A man was caught by Norwegian customs carrying a tarantula in his bag, and a further 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos taped to his body, media reported Monday. The 22-year-old Norwegian was stopped in a routine check by Kristiansand customs after arriving on a ferry from Denmark, newspaper Faedrelandsvennen reported. Customs found the tarantula, before deciding to give him a full body search that revealed 14 stockings -- one for each snake -- taped around his torso, top selling tabloid VG said. Reptile smuggling is not uncommon in Norway, which prohibits people holding many...

North America - A man in the North America community reported Monday the burglary of his residence. Danny Brantley reported to Deputy Wes Bebout he left his residence at 70 Small Road and at some point between 10 a.m. and 1:05 p.m. someone took cash and a bottle of hydrocodone pills from his house.

Two solo homers for Chase Utley. The Bronx bombers appear to have wasted their ace as they are down to their final four outs.