Free Republic

A Dutch teenager who sent a threatening tweet to American Airlines as a joke has been arrested after walking into a police station and giving herself up. However, the 14-year-old's prank has set off a chain of copycat tweets to American and other US airlines. The girl, who uses the twitter name @QueenDemetriax, is being interviewed by officers after she apparently appeared at the police station in Rotterdam, accompanied by a relative. She has not been charged with any offence. American Airlines had threatened to report her to the FBI after she tweeted: "hello my name's Ibrahim and I'm from...

Continued support for Windows XP was discontinued by Microsoft recently, so many PC people may now be migrating over to Windows 8. One thing newcomers will notice missing in the latest version of Windows: the Start menu! If you’re feeling instantly lost without the old Start menu, don’t worry; you’re not alone. Thousands of PC fans would argue that the Start menu offers a more compact, concise, customizable listing of programs and files than the tile-filled Start screen. Microsoft scoffs at that idea. It points out that every time there’s a new version of Windows, there’s an instant spike in...

Microsoft has been on a roll lately. Office for iOS (and soon Android), free Windows licenses for small devices, universal Windows and Windows Phone apps, Siri rival Cortana, even a promise to eventually return the start menu before Windows 9. But when it comes to Windows 8, it seems the company has a permanently loaded pistol aimed squarely at its feet. So it fits that just one week on from the launch of “Windows 8.1 Update 1” (the smart upgrade mouse and keyboard users have long awaited) stupidity would strike once again. “Windows 8.1 Update is a cumulative update to...

Video Linky Here

In what is surely the most customer-antagonistic move of the new Windows regime, Steve Thomas at Microsoft posted a TechNet article on Saturday stating categorically that Microsoft will no longer issue security patches for Windows 8.1, starting in May. Call this the "let them eat cake" approach to support for Microsoft's flagship operating system. ... Yes, you read that right: With three weeks left until Windows 8.1 end of support -- until the next round of security patches appear with Windows 8.1 not included in the party list -- Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to get Windows 8.1 Update...

Children's perplexed reactions to a Sony Walkman have been caught on camera, with the majority frustrated at operating clunky buttons over a touch screen. Los Angeles-based filmmakers Benny and Rafi Fine asked volunteers aged six to 13 to guess what the bulky device was, with suggestions including a 'walkie-talkie' or 'boombox'. 'What is this?' one nine-year-old girl quizzed as she investigated the Eighties-era cassette player, while another exclaimed 'I'm not going to give up, I'm a survivor,' as she determinedly tried to figure out how it worked.

Google has updated its terms of service to reflect that it analyzes user content including emails to provide users tailored advertising, customized search results and other features. The Internet giant’s scanning of users’ email has been controversial with privacy groups describing it as an intrusion into user privacy. Competitor Microsoft claims in its “Don’t Get Scroogled by Gmail” campaign that its Outlook.com email service is superior to Gmail as unlike Google it does not go through email looking for keywords to target users with paid advertisements. In a case in California over Google’s interception of email, District Judge Lucy H....

Remember when we all loved Google? Its search engine was both simple to use and an unbiased portal to anything you wanted to know. It was founded by two college students at a time when Silicon Valley was a shining beacon of what was right in the world, during sunny economic and political times.We don't love Google so much any more, mainly because we trust it less and less. More and more people have realized that the Google search engine is hugely biased in favor of advertisers, and the results are increasingly manipulated by Google for inscrutable purposes. Google seems...

A humorous video walks you through the exodus of the Jews as if it happened today.What if Moses had Facebook? That's the question a Jewish group in Israel began formally asking in 2011. And by Monday - on the eve of Passover - more than 2.5 million people had clicked in to watch a YouTube video trying to answer that question, all with a jazzy version of the Passover classic, "Dayenu," set in the background. When Aish.com first publicized the "Google Exodus - Passover Movie," just 50,000 people had seen the clever 2:17-minute clip. Silicon Valley plays a prominent role...

I have some antiques on CL and chose to be notified via the CL relay notification method. What is it with those that ask me to email them direct and put in a Gmail address. One time I copied the address and sent a test from a gmai account and it said "no such user" Do the want to send me attachments and trash my iMac? Just curious if any Frpeer Techie know

That spaceship that launches when you win a game of Sid Meier’s Civilization 5 with the science victory isn’t an ending - it’s the beginning of Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth. In Fall of 2014, it’ll pick up that story and put us in charge of the effort to colonize a new alien world full of life, and build a new, unwritten future for humanity.

A Saudi court in Jeddah has ordered the permanent closure of a liberal website for publishing what was perceived as “anti-Islamic content”, Al Arabiya reported on Sunday, citing the Saudi news website Sabq. According to Sabq, a number of Saudis had demanded the closure of the Saudi Liberal Network for posting stories and comments that are considered against religion and morality. …

On April 1, a new game called Goat Simulator was released, and for obvious reasons, everyone thought it was a joke. But this was no April foolery. Back in February, a YouTube video for the game — initially just a joke prototype — racked up more than 2 million views. As with all amazing things on the Internet, there was so much interest in the video, that developer Coffee Stain Studios released it as an actual, playable game. Gameplay is fairly simple: you run around and get points by head-butting things to destroy them. (excerpt)

Apple said Thursday that its mobile, desktop and Web services weren’t affected by a major flaw in a set of security software used by hundreds of thousands of websites. The flaw, codenamed “Heartbleed” and first reported by Web security firm Codenomicon, was discovered in a technology called “OpenSSL” — a set of encryption software used by Web companies to safeguard user information. Sites that use OpenSSL will display a small “lock” icon in the top left-hand corner of your Web browser’s address bar (though not all sites showing this lock use OpenSSL); the technology is used on more than two-thirds...

For the first time, U.S. Internet advertising revenue has surpassed that of broadcast television thanks to sharp growth in mobile and digital video ads. That's according to a report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which said Thursday that Internet advertising revenue rose 17 percent to a record $42.8 billion in 2013. Broadcast TV ad revenue, in comparison, was $40.1 billion in 2013.

Computers vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug are actively being targeted online, say security experts. However, it is not yet clear whether the scanning efforts are benign or are the work of cyber-thieves keen to steal data, they say. The news comes as some security professionals and developers advised people to change all their passwords.

I just received a Samsung Galaxy S4 cell phone and can't figure it out. I was satisfied with my old Motorola flip phone; it rang when I wanted, reminded me of meetings and even sent text messages. This new thing has a pretty screen and more stuff than a space shuttle, but finding it and making it work is next to impossible with no grandkids here to help.

CLAREMONT, N.H.,A 79-year-old substitute teacher chose to resign from teaching after a very unfriendly dispute with school administrators in Claremont, N.H. Carol Thebarge opted to give up her job after 35 year instead of “unfriending” her students on Facebook. "Do we have the right as teachers, when we respect our students and our students respect us, to have that relationship?" Thebarge told WMUR. "I feel like mine is very safe. I have never been inappropriate." School administrators at Stevens High School told Thebarge that her account was a potential safety concern, especially after another teacher was let go after being...

Recently I could not get my copy of Adobe FlashPlayer to work. I have tried to reload it a couple of times, with NO success. I am on a Windows based system. Any suggestions??? Many, many THANKS for your help!

I just dumped Firefox. I didn't like what the did to their CEO, forcing him out. Dennis Praeger is encouraging everyone to uninstall Firefox, so I did. I then went to their feedback site and told them why. I was gracious, some of the comments were not.

Got rid of a 1970's "Home Entertainment Center", and wifey wants a semi-huge screen TV

It’s been my experience that, despite any progress, Ubuntu and distros like it have made in gaining new users, those in the tech media continue to get it wrong. In this article, I’ll examine how the tech media continues to spread misinformation about Linux on the desktop, why it happens and what we as users can do about it. Linux is difficult to install Years ago, merely installing and configuring Linux for the desktop could be extremely difficult. And while recent technologies such as UEFI have added some extra hurdles for distribution developers, the end user is able to install...

Update: Police say they've busted the Macbook thief. Read our story here. A blog post ago we told you about some ballsy people who were tipping over Smart Cars in various San Francisco neighborhoods. So while we were on the subject of brazen fools, we decided to show you some surveillance of a latte-drinking thief who reportedly stole a computer from a downtown coffee shop. A local iOS developer is on the hunt for her Macbook which was snatched from the cafe while the victim was in the restroom. The only good part to this is that the victim was...

Summary: Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Word and Publisher are patched, some products for the last time. Today Microsoft released four security updates for Windows and Microsoft Office. These will be the last publicly-released updates for Windows XP and Office 2003. A total of 11 vulnerabilities were addressed by these updates, including seven for Windows XP and four for Office 2003. Separately, Microsoft released fixes for Internet Explorer 10 and 11 to address vulnerabilities fixed by Adobe in the Flash Player bundled in the Metro versions of IE. Among the vulnerabilities patched is a critical error in the handling of RTF...

A serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic library has been discovered that allows attackers to steal information unnoticed. Known as the Heartbleed bug, the vulnerability allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of systems that run vulnerable versions of OpenSSL, revealing the secret authentication and encryption keys to protect the traffic. User names, passwords and the actual content of the communications can also be read. ... OpenSSL recommends that uses immediately upgrade to version 1.0.1g. If that's not possible, users should recompile OpenSSL with the -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS flag to remove the the heartbeat handshake. The 1.0.2 version of...

If people were played here, when does the boycott of OKCupid start? A narrative is emerging that the entire Brendan Eich evisceration campaign was a public relations stunt by OKCupid. That narrative is emerging from the left, based on facts uncovered by the right.Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller was the first to report that the founder of OKCupid, who also is the CEO of Match.com, donated many years ago to an anti-gay marriage congressman: Sam Yagan, who is currently CEO of the Match Group, which controls OkCupid, donated $500 to Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 back when he...

Let me see whether I have this right. Brendan Eich was forced to step down as CEO of Mozilla because it became public that he opposed same-sex marriage, the same position that President Barack Obama, darling of the LGBT community, held prior to his phony conversion. Why didn't the left demand that President Obama resign as president of the United States prior to the consummation of his "evolution" on the issue in favor of same-sex marriage? Was it because liberals knew he was never actually opposed to same-sex marriage and that his stated opposition was an opportunistic ruse to make...

In 31 years of broadcasting, and 40 years of writing, I have never advocated a boycott of a product. Quite the opposite, in fact. During the 2012 presidential campaign, when the left attempted to destroy Chick-Fil-A for its owner's views on same-sex marriage, I suggested on my radio show that the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, stand in front of a Chick-Fil-A restaurant while enjoying some Ben and Jerry's ice cream. In that way, I argued, he could show one of the great moral differences between the right and the left. Though Ben and Jerry are leftists, we conservatives do not...

Graphene is slated as the major breakthrough of this century. Infact it could very well propel the semiconductor a couple of decades easily (compared to the performance trend via Moore’s law ). Graphene transistors are more than capable of being clocked at 500Ghz so you get the idea of what Samsung is claiming to have achieved: a replicateable production process of Graphene nodes.Graphene.Experimental gFET Graphene Production – Scientific breakthrough of this century to be used in CPUs* of wearable devicesOK, I admit, I was being slightly sarcastic when I wrote the headline. It seems sort of ironic that if Samsung’s...

Hello. I am member of Mozilla's development team and these postings here lately force me now to react. Let me first clarify one thing. I do that because someone has finally to speak out some things... Things which should clearly brought out to the public.... First, the incident about our short time CEO Eich..... many of us do NOT agree with what has happened. There has been a massive amount of pressure inside and outside of Mozilla which brought him to resign from his post. About the ads in the new tab page... Our reasoning for this is to make...

Seagate introduced Backup Plus FAST portable drive; the world's first portable 4TB storage device, providing twice the capacity and speed of existing external portable drives. This new Seagate Backup Plus FAST drive features a super speed USB 3.0 interface to deliver transfer speeds up to 220MB per second, making it the perfect companion for a field photographer or filmmaker looking to quickly move large files to backup."With Backup Plus FAST, Seagate has taken a very mature product category and has delivered innovative enhancements to address the real world challenges of our customers," said Rajesh Khurana, country manager, India & SAARC,...

Seagate announced it is now shipping the world's fastest 6 TB hard disk drive (HDD) - the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4. Boasting industry-leading performance, the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 is an important step forward in scale-out data infrastructures delivering supersize storage and enterprise reliability to meet the explosive growth of corporate and cloud-based data centers."Unstructured data growth is doubling exponentially and will propel the digital universe to reach 16 Zettabytes of data by as early as 2017. This will cause cloud service providers to look for innovative ways to store more within an existing footprint while lowering...

A retired art teacher committed suicide at the Dignitas clinic because she was frustrated at the lack of interaction in modern life, because of our reliance on computers and the Internet. The 89-year-old, who asked only to be identified as Anne before her death, was frustrated with the trappings of modern life, including fast food, consumerism and the amount of time people spend watching television. Anne, a former electrician with the Royal Navy, was not terminally ill or seriously handicapped and traveled to Dignitas in Switzerland last month. Before her death she told the Sunday Times: “People are becoming more...

This would make for another great issue on conservative talk shows.For the last five or six years the Liberals and Democrats have been pushing for this Universal Health-Care plan.They are so concerned over the uninsured.But are they aware that It's The Democrat Party That Caused All This??.Who Purposely Collapsed The Economy In 2008?,And what happened after the Liberals ruined a perfectly good economy and health-care system during the Bush years?Millions lost their jobs and their health-care!,yet according to them,it's all the fault of Bush and the GOP.Yah,right!,and all Americans are so dumb that they are expected to believe such horse-manure.

I got an older Compaq Presario Laptop and I've been toying with the idea of putting Ubuntu on it. I was wondering if I would need to totally wipe the HD to get Ubuntu to run properly or can I install it while leaving Windows 7 on and it will still run OK. I am going to get a new laptop eventually but am in no hurry so it would be nice to still keep windows But I can manage for now without it being I use my Entertainment System Computer most of the time. Thanks in advance for any...

I've read all threads about Mozilla melt down and all suggestions to replace Firefox but everybody seems to have a different opinion. So what is the best alternative to Firefox? Hopefully some of you guys will agree on one browser. I switched to Opera and I like it but just want to make sure. What about Seamonkey? Security etc..? Thank you for your time :-)

As long as Firefox/Mozilla is willing to can their conservative CEO...shouldn't we cast our vote by canning Firefox/Mozilla.

Mozilla, the company that operates the web browser Firefox, experienced its highest level of negative customer feedback the day after its embattled co-founder Brendan Eich resigned as CEO after gay rights activists objected to his appointment. On Thursday, Mozilla forced Eich to resign just two weeks after hiring him. At issue was a $1,000 donation Eich gave in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a successful ballot initiative which banned gay marriage. The decision to remove the man who invented the web scripting language JavaScipt did not sit well with many customers — many of them pelted Mozilla’s website...

Let the ads begin. Obama and his Liberal friends want to hand over the World Wide Net To The East.Then we are talking massive GOP landslide wins come November.Lets just call it a Double Whammy for the Democrats.Are the rats going to denounce their own plans to hand over the net?,Now they would have to defend Obama-Care and their own party giving the internet to Putin!.Let's hope the GOP and Conservative candidates go for it!!!

With the news about the Mozilla Foundation and the desire of many FReepers to drop the Firefox browser, there are some viable (IMHO) alternatives, both of which are character-based:Links is text WWW browser with tables and frames. It runs on Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Windows. Lynx is a text browser for the World Wide Web. Lynx 2.8.7 runs on Un*x, MacOS, VMS, Windows 95/98/NT, DOS386+ (but not 3.1, 3.11), as well as OS/2 EMX.

This morning, http://www.drudgereport.com/ would not "resolve"; that is, the request hunts and hunts for a full page load. Now, www.breitbart.com won't load and http://www.wnd.com/ is loading slowly. Yet, http://www.nytimes.com/ and other left wing sites load fine. Hmmm.....

A young Ocean Beach boy is in the spotlight after he discovered a back door in to one of the most popular gaming systems in the world. When 5-year-old Kristoffer Von Hassel is playing his Xbox, his feet don't touch the ground. But something he did has made the smartest guys at Microsoft pay attention. “I was like yea!” said Kristoffer. Just after Christmas, Kristoffer's parents noticed he was logging into his father's Xbox Live account and playing games he wasn't supposed to be. “I got nervous. I thought he was going to find out,” said Kristoffer. In video shot...

Earlier this morning we posted a report titled "Apple's iPhone is King of Manhattan as Shown in Stunning Map." In that report we covered Business Insider's viewpoint that the iPhone's success in Manhattan proved the great divide in America between the rich and poor. They chose a series of New York maps to prove their point. However, that was a subjective slant to support their position. While I appreciate their report bringing some of this to light, the fact is that if you work with the source mapping service, you'll find a somewhat different reality that expands on Business Insider's...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaPgfErzeu0 After helping to inaugurate CNN.com on the Internet in the early 1990s, Garzik worked at a succession of Internet startups and service providers for over two decades, all while working on open source software engineering projects. Involvement in one of the best-known open source projects, the Linux kernel, led to an extended tenure at Linux leader Red Hat, during open source's most formative years. In July 2010, while reading slashdot.org, Garzik stumbled across a post describing bitcoin. Immediately recognizing the potential of a concept previously thought impossible − decentralized digital money − he did what came naturally: developed bitcoin...

It's getting easier for consumers to buy and spend bitcoin, the cybercurrency that has captured much of the tech world. With each passing month, Bay Area entrepreneurs are rolling out new technology for consumers to buy and store bitcoin, shop online with the virtual currency and send it to friends.

Just wanted to get up to speed on how these outfits operate, from people in the know. Banners? Clicks? What?

After being publicly sacked by al Qaeda leader Aymann al-Zawahiri and accidentally beheading a fighter from one of their main allies in Syria, it’s fair to say the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)’s PR campaign has suffered in recent weeks. So, like any half decent group of militant extremists, they obviously want to address this slip. Unfortunately, a traditional media outreach is very difficult for them, given ISIS’s policy of kidnapping journalists. So they've turned, like many before them, to social media. Over the past few weeks, foreign fighters from ISIS and their subgroup the Muhajireen Brigade have been...

Linux can't be understood in terms of hierarchy. Neither can the Internet. That's because both are examples of heterarchy at work. Flatland, an 1880 novella by Edwin A. Abbott, is about a world with just two dimensions, inhabited by lines and polygons. Trouble starts when a sphere shows up. For business, the same kind of trouble started when Linux and the Internet showed up in the mid-1990s. No matter how useful Linux and the Internet prove to be, business still has trouble getting its head around a virtual world composed of end points that are all autonomous, self-empowered and at...

https://startpage.com/eng/top-ten-ways-startpage.html

Microsoft really wants people to stop using Windows XP. The company launched a new promotion that offers XP users $100 off the purchase of a new PC that costs more than $599 through the Microsoft Store from now until June 15. Buyers will also get 90 days of free support and free data transfer from their old XP-powered PC. Microsoft is ending support for XP, which has been around for more than a decade, in April. That means any security flaws found by attackers after that point won’t be patched, leaving users who are still clinging to their old computers...