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My thanks to @girlygeekdom on Twitter for highlighting what must be the most surreal Internet marketing plan ever - British girl band the Sugababes are being used to promote Windows 7. There is a website called 'sugababeslovewindows7' to announce it. I'm as flummoxed as anyone by this. Let's take to one side the fact that I'm a 44 year old man and not at all in the Sugababes' market - what exactly is this trying to say about the brand? That it's easy to use? OK, check - but surely it's no longer acceptable to dismiss young females as incapable...

Timeline of job losses at link. It's interesting to watch it county by county. http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html

Another iPhone worm has been spotted in the wild.Unlike the previous exploitation, which merely changed a jailbroken iPhone's wallpaper to a picture of Rick Astley of "Rickrolling" fame, this new threat allows hackers to steal sensitive information. According to security firm Sophos, which wrote about the exploitation after a Dutch ISP spotted it late last week, the worm attacks jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch devices only. The worm "uses command-and-control, like a traditional PC botnet," Sophos wrote in a blog post on Saturday to warn users about the exploit. "It configures two startup scripts, one to execute the worm on...

Apple is set to files its brief on Monday detailing the damages and injunction details it wants to see imposed on Psystar for building and selling unauthorized Mac clones. Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar in Northern California several months ago claiming the small PC maker was violating the Mac OS X end user license agreement, and that it was violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with the steps it used to install the Mac operating system on PCs. Psystar claimed that it should be allowed to build and sell PCs with Mac OS X pre-installed and that Apple is...

A bug in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is causing more than 50 million files stored online to leak potentially sensitive information that could compromise user privacy, a security researcher said. The documents stored in Adobe's PDF format display the internal disk location where the file is stored, an oversight that can inadvertently expose real-world names and login IDs of users, the operating system being used and other information that is better kept private. The data can then be retrieved using simple web searches. Google searches such as this one expose almost 4 million documents residing on users' C drives alone....

There may be a new virus about. I have begun getting multiple copies of incoming emails (anywhere from 4 to 32 copies). So have two other friends who use different ISPs. Has anyone else had the same problem? What might be the cause and cure? Thanks.

Need help in repairing my broken laptop power cord. I have tried many techniques to figure out how to open up the adapter box. The plastic is too weak to crack open w/ just a screwdriver. It just scratched with pressure, while the seam remained firmly bonded. Any advice on how to open the adopter box without throwing the adapter to Obama's face? BTW, I have an HP laptop. A new one at Best Buy costs $139.00.

FACEBOOK can be a double-edged sword, a Canadian woman learned when an insurance company cut her health benefits, claiming she was healthy after seeing pictures of her smiling in bikini at the beach. Nathalie Blanchard, 29, took long-term sick leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, more than a year ago for severe depression. She was receiving monthly benefits from her insurance company, Manulife. When Ms Blanchard called Manulife to ask why the payments dried up, the insurance company said that "I'm available to work, because of Facebook," she told CBC television. She said that Manulife cited several...

The man accused of robbing a Charlotte bank Tuesday afternoon and leading highway patrol officers on a dangerous high-speed chase in two counties has also been involved in gangs in Los Angeles, according to authorities. WBTV has also learned that the suspect is an avid user of the online social media tool "Twitter" and uses the website Myspace -- both to possibly help further his aspiring musical career. The robbery in Charlotte this week happened at a Wachovia branch on West Sugar Creek Road. The police report says Carlos Burns handed the teller a note demanding cash. The chase ended...

A few years ago rivals mocked Jonney Shih, chairman of Asustek, and his purse-size laptop computers. Millions of netbooks later, Shih is having the last laugh. On a hillside above the Hsing Tian Kong temple in the northern reaches of Taipei, Jonney Shih sits on a wobbly stool next to an ornate low wooden table. Dressed in a taupe suit, white shirt, and silver tie emblazoned with jaguars, Shih, 57, cheerfully waves off three umbrella-wielding employees who try in vain to shield their boss from the hot sun and a swirl of menacing bees. But Shih, who is waiting to...

Sarah Palin has breathed some life into the word "lamestream". We've been using "lamestream" here at Free Republic for quite some time. I looked up the word in the Urban Dictionary and found Sarahs use of the word was not defined. So I sent in this definition: "An insult directed at the dominant commercial news services for bias in covering politics". They turned it down!

We're In The Money

Apple agreed to turn over iPhone source code in antitrust lawsuit, but then reneged, plaintiffs say iPhone owners charging Apple and AT&T with breaking antitrust laws asked a federal judge this week to force Apple to hand over the iPhone source code, court documents show. The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2007, accuses Apple and AT&T of violating antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act, by agreeing to a multi-year deal that locks U.S. iPhone owners into using the mobile carrier. On Wednesday, the plaintiffs asked U.S. District Court Judge James Ware to compel Apple to produce the source code...

Unless you've just arrived in 2009 on a time machine, you know that smoking isn't good for you. Did you know, that smoking isn't good for your computer, either? It's true, at least according to Apple. Two readers in different parts of the country claim that their Applecare warranties were voided due to secondhand smoke. Both readers appealed their cases up to the office of God Steve Jobs himself. Both lost. Back in April, Derek copied us on his e-mail to Jobs: I took my mid 2007 apple macbook (black) into the Jordan Creek Apple Store in West Des Moines,...

Science is rich with happy flukes. Remember the story of penicillin? Alexander Fleming discovered the bacteria-destroying mold by accident when he left a culture dish uncovered in his lab in 1928. Eight decades later, here's another one: a Googlesoftware program called SketchUp, which was intended largely for architects and design professionals, has found a very unexpected and welcome fan base—children with autism. SketchUp is not only entertaining kids with autism spectrum disorders, it's providing them with skills that might one day help them as they age out of school and into the workforce. It all started when Google's Tom Wyman...

A radical new day has dawned for the operating system. Today Google finally aired its long awaited Chrome Operating System. The operating system was detailed at a press conference starting at 1 p.m. EST, and the open source code was posted online just before the start of the presentation. The new operating system brings a dramatically different look and perspective to the market and just may give Microsoft and OS X some tough competition by reinventing a tired old wheel -- the operating system -- offering the first laptop/desktop OS built around the browser and web applications. A Google engineer...

Good grief!

At a time of high unemployment, many people are looking for jobs online. Unfortunately, there are a lot of online scammers out there who advertise on the popular job boards like Monster, Careerbuilder or Hotjobs for positions that look legitimate and easy to do. I am posting this as a public service from an e-mail sent to me by the job board -- MONSTER.COM. Protect yourself from Online job scammers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is." Whether you are searching for a new job through Monster or other websites, keep in mind that the...

Police in the Lithuanian town of Kaunas arrested 22-year-old Svajunas Beniukas on animal cruelty charges after internet users helped police identify him and the bridge from which the small brown dog was thrown. The video shows a man holding the dog, called Pipiras, Lithuanian for pepper, and laughing as his friend records the event on his mobile phone. Checking that the coast is clear, he makes a joke about dogs flying and then drops the animal off the bridge. Crashing onto a farm track below, Pipiras yelps in pain, and lies twitching on the ground. But despite falling over 20...

The push is on to build exascale systems that can solve the planet's biggest problems There is a race to make supercomputers as powerful as possible to solve some of the world's most important problems, including climate change, the need for ultra-long-life batteries for cars, operating fusion reactors with plasma that reaches 150 million degrees Celsius and creating bio-fuels from weeds and not corn. Supercomputers allow researchers to create three-dimensional visualizations, not unlike a video game, to run endless "what-if" scenarios with increasingly finer detail. But as big as they are today, supercomputers aren't big enough -- and a key...

ANACONDA — The slim, white cartridges fit easily into the compact, black machine. With the push of a button, text becomes voice and reading becomes possible again. After five years of development, the National Library Service has perfected its new digital talking books. In Montana, three Anaconda World War II veterans were the first to receive theirs. The veterans, Svend Wind, 82, Sid Beausoleil, 86, and Clarence Jones, 87, gathered Wednesday morning at the Hearst Free Library, where members of the Montana Talking Book Library presented them with the new machines.

Over the past two decades, Ricardo Dominguez has been utilizing electronics and the internet to piss off just about every high-level administrative authority in the US. In the late 90s, his performance-art-cum-activist organization the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) set up a participatory website-jamming network called the FloodNet system, which allowed anyone with an internet connection to gum up the official sites of the US Border Patrol, White House, G8, Mexican embassy, and others, rendering them inaccessible. The Department of Justice retaliated with an electronic attack on the EDT that aimed to destabilize the group and interrupt their online meddling. As...

A backlash against anonymous commenters and trolls seems to be underway. Only last month, a court case was settled where anonymous commenters ended up having to pay big fines to the women who they defiled using vulgar, derogatory remarks on an internet forum. And previously, an anonymous blogger in the modeling industry was forced to reveal her identity after numerous malicious posts about a colleague showed up on her blog. Now the latest scandal in this new trend of "giving the trolls what they deserve" is causing a controversy all of its own. And this time, the nasty comment didn't...

From time to time, I get messages saying my earlier email was rejected or blocked for being spam. Is there some way I can get a report on my email address, sort of like a credit check? If my address has a bad reputation, how can I repair it. I am not sending spam, but perhaps someone is spooking me? Thanks.

If Comcast takes over NBC Universal, will Jay Leno return to 11:35 pm?... As Mr. Leno explained in a candid interview with trade bible Broadcasting & Cable: "If you are making buggy whips and no one is buying buggies anymore, do you keep making buggy whips? I don't know. This is an economic decision." In Jack Welch's day, an employee perhaps would not have expounded so freely... Yet, truth be told, Comcast's shareholders don't want the job of fixing NBC either. Only the controlling Roberts family does—and then because the alternative may be having no great future as a prominent...

Note: The following text is a quote: SPEAR PHISHING E-MAILS TARGET U.S. LAW FIRMS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRMS 11/17/09—The FBI assesses with high confidence that hackers are using spear phishing e-mails with malicious payloads to exploit U.S. law firms and public relations firms. During the course of ongoing investigations, the FBI identified noticeable increases in computer exploitation attempts against these entities. The specific intrusion vector used against the firms is a spear phishing or targeted socially engineered e-mail designed to compromise a network by bypassing technological network defenses and exploiting the person at the keyboard. Hackers exploit the ability of...

A series of tests have revealed that even newer Windows 7 PCs are being bogged down by unnecessary software that makes them run much more slowly than Macs. Comparing factory versions of several notebooks versus clean models, PC Pro finds that Acer and Sony systems take about two whole minutes more to boot because of the "crapware," or third-party utilities and trial apps, preloaded out of the box. They also consume roughly 1GB more extra active RAM and also rob the system of as much as 2.4GB of space in Acer's case. Other Windows PC makers are only slightly better,...

Apple Inc., the most profitable handset vendor, and the wireless unit of AT&T Inc. were sued by a customer and accused of misleading buyers of iPhones. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, and AT&T, the second-largest U.S. mobile-telephone company, misled consumers when they said the iPhone would have “multimedia messaging service” capability, the customer said today in a proposed class-action complaint in U.S. District Court in New York. The feature allows users to send pictures to each others’ phones. “MMS functionality was one of the reasons people chose to buy or upgrade” to an iPhone, and it has become “clear that...

After-sale warranty firm says 17% of Apple's laptops fail within three years Apple's line of laptops ranked fourth in a multi-year reliability survey of nine notebook makers, according to a study of 30,000 portable computers published today by a company that provides after-sale warranties. SquareTrade, which broke out the warranty claims of its customers by manufacturers, said that Apple took the No. 4 spot, behind ASUS, Toshiba and Sony, which held No. 1 through No. 3, respectively.

Why is it that whenever Microsoft tries to have a little "fun" it comes across as creepy or overly controlled? This time it's Microsoft's Mission Viejo Store employees engaged in a fit of awkward boogie that some would call the Electric Slide. Oh boy, corporate fun... it's a bit like corporate rock only less natural. Now go ahead and view the entire 4 minutes and 44 seconds of the video after the break, we double-dog dare you.

I saw this, and I thought it should be on our "para"-site.

Many people have asked me what is so important about “tweeting” and would it be helpful for their business. I will provide you with some examples in terms of when it would be helpful. Here are some benefits of using twitter to generate business: 1. Bring traffic to your site. If you follow someone and they follow you back, they will most likely check out the link to your website which you have set on your profile. 2. Offer a special promotion. Commerce Casino occasionally sends out a tweet where if you respond within a certain period of time, you...

The heavyweight of ultra-light mobility Light and compact, a smartbook is the perfect way to work and play without ever having to stop. As powerful as a laptop, a smartbook lets you create or enjoy whatever you want while you're on the go. Built-in 3G mobile broadband means you can connect at high speeds wherever your wireless coverage can reach. And like a mobile phone, it lasts as long as you do and is instantly ready to go when you are.

Okay, so this may not be important breaking news about astronomy, but it may answer a burning question posed by most people who have watched or read "2001: A Space Odyssey": that is, why does the computer HAL-9000 sing the song 'Daisy Bell' as the astronaut Dave Bowman takes him apart? Well, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke made HAL's final act in the world this song as a tribute to HAL's great ancestor, the first IBM computer to ever sing. Click below for more on this geeky topic! In 1962 Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the novel – and...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- It was an Internet romance and it led to an attempted murder and a suicide in Orlando. Police say a woman, scorned by a man she thought was her online lover, showed up at his Middlebrook Pines Apartment (see map) late Sunday night with a handgun. The man survived the shooting, but then the shooter killed herself. Paula Harris, 30, drove all the way from the Atlanta, Georgia area, according to investigators, and checked into the Holiday Inn at Universal Boulevard and Sand Lake Road (see map), just over four miles from 44-year-old Andre Barboza's Orlando apartment....

Retail experts say the sweetest deals in the coming weeks will be on smaller LCD televisions and some bigger-size plasma TVs. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you're in the market for a new flatscreen TV this holiday season, you're in luck. As nervous merchants prepare to draw reluctant shoppers with juicy sales, retail experts say some of the sweetest deals in the coming weeks will be on high-definition televisions.As they compete for customers, TV sellers are going to wage a price war, and the biggest bargains will likely be on smaller models."The difference from prior holiday discounts on TVs is...

Welcome to the third edition of Eva's Useful Guide to Ubuntu! This guide contains many tips to enhance and customize a fresh Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" installation. I have been using various Linux distributions since 1998, and Ubuntu since its first release in 2004. During the last five years, I have accumulated some experience installing and maintaining Ubuntu systems. This guide was first meant to be my own reference, but I think it can be useful to anyone wanting to get the best of his Ubuntu box.   SummaryA. Media codecs, DVD support and more B. Use the Gnome Control...

DOes anyone know of any good downloading programs? The reason I'm asking is because I'm interested in downloading movies and while LimeWire works well, I am also looking for episodes of "Rome" and eventually "The Tudors."

The HTC HD2 mobile phone has been released in Europe and will be coming to the USA after the first of the year. This smartphone will feature a 1 GHZ processor and a 4.73 Capacitive touch screen, 512 MB ROM, 448 MB RAM, Micro SD Slot capable of taking a 32 Gig card, 5 mega pixel camera with dual flash, and many other features. The links below give a overview with pictures of the phone and a comparison of it with the iPhone. Note to Apple Fans - This video is not a rub on the iPhone it is just...

Psystar just got what's coming to them in the California case. Here's the order [PDF]. It's a total massacre. Psystar's first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple's motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted. Apple prevailed also on its motion to seal. Psystar's motion for summary judgment on trademark infringement and trade dress is denied. So is its illusory motion for copyright misuse. There are still issues remaining for trial, despite Psystar's attempt to present everything now as being moot. Here's what's left to be decided at trial: Apple's allegations of breach of contract; induced...

Apple won a sweeping legal victory against Macintosh clone maker Psystar Corp. Nov. 13 when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled (PDF, courtesy of Groklaw) that Psystar had violated Apple’s copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Judge William Alsup struck what may be a death blow for Psystar by granting Apple’s motion for summary judgment while denying Psystar’s counterclaims. The only real surprise here was the swiftness and thoroughness of Apple’s victory. Judge Alsup basically ruled that the OS X End User License Agreement (EULA), which prohibits the installation of the software on non-Apple hardware, is legal and...

Easy to use PC is aimed at elderly first time PC usersUsing the Internet has many benefits for people. They can find information about health conditions and keep in contact with friends and family. The problem is that for some users modern computers are very difficult to use and understand. This is a particularly big issue for the elderly. A new computer has debuted in the UK called SimplicITy that is aimed directly at the elderly. The computer forgoes the complexities of the full windows operating system and uses Linux. Rather than offering users direct access to the normal Linux...

Who do I remove this @#$&&%^, Security Tool, a very nasty malware. Thanks

At about this time of year someone starts a thread in which everyone can chip in his ideas and leads for extraordinary shopping bargains in the run-up to the big shopping day after Thanksgiving. Two years ago I got a terrific deal on a computer and 24 inch screen from Dell through these threads. It was a rather complicated affair in which the computer had to be selected, then upgraded, then have a rebate and coupon applied, yet it was well worth the effort and it was certainly a deal I never would have found otherwise. Any good tip on...

LOS ANGELES – For NASA's stuck Mars rover, the Spirit may be willing, but the wheels could prove too weak. The space agency on Thursday outlined a rescue plan to try to free the rover Spirit, which has been bogged in a sand trap on the red planet for half a year. The risky operation is expected to last several months. "If it cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, it's likely that this lonely spot straddling the edge of this crater might be where Spirit ends its adventures on Mars," said Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars...

I am running Windows XP tablet edition and cannot connect to my wireless network. I have been to help and support and it tells me to go to Open Network Connections, Click the wireless network connection icon, and then, under Network Tasks, click View available wireless networks. The problem is I don't have a "Wireless Network Connection Icon" in the Network Connection area. I had to format my hard drive and load everything back onto it with the setup disks and after getting everything back on this is the only problem I am having. I can connect to the wireless...

This is a test. A test of the brilliance, perseverance and perspicacity of the tech gurus here on FR. Whoever gets me working again will get a $20 donation to FR in his/her name. I have a box I built about two years ago that has Windows XP SP3 on it.I used to be able to hook up my Canon ZR80 camcorder to it and capture video. I have used Pinnacle's Studio 9 and also Windows Movie Maker.I haven't tried to capture video in a while and yesterday, well, you guessed it. It wouldn't work. My PC will not detect...

Microsoft Patents Sudo?!! - Updated 2Xs Wednesday, November 11 2009 @ 10:36 AM EST Lordy, lordy, lordy. They have no shame. It appears that Microsoft has just patented sudo, a personalized version of it. Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft. Here's Wikipedia's description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft's description of its "invention". This is why what the US Supreme Court does about software patents means so much. Hopefully they will address...

It’s amazing how much the world changes before breakfast.At 6am Pacific this morning, a joint Intel & AMD press release hit our inboxes like a nuclear bomb: AMD and Intel are settling their differences. And just like that, the CPU landscape as we know it has significantly changed.We’re previously talked about the spat between AMD and Intel, one that Intel was looking increasingly likely to lose. AMD had had leveraged some very serious accusations against Intel over actions Intel supposedly undertook earlier this decade: paying OEMs and retailers not to use or carry products utilizing AMD processors through the use...

My wife and I are going to get a Blu-Ray player and I was looking for suggestions on a good (medium priced) player with Netflix streaming capability. Thanks!