Free Republic

At first glance, things could not be going worse for Microsoft. Its long-dreaded nightmare scenario is playing out. The PC industry as we've known it is collapsing. PC sales fell 14% in the first quarter, according to IDC, the worst ever drop in history. Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system is accelerating the collapse, says IDC. The new tile-interface is scaring consumers. Microsoft is scrambling to fix Windows 8 to address these concerns. And even if Microsoft fixes Windows 8, it could be too late. Its biggest rivals — Apple and Google — have taken complete control of the next...

U.S. officials charged an Uzbek citizen in Idaho with providing bomb-making knowledge and other support to an Islamist militant group, knowing that it would be used in an attack, authorities said on Thursday. Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, a national of Uzbekistan living legally in Idaho, was arrested in Boise and faces a three-count grand jury indictment in Idaho and a single-count indictment in Utah, prosecutors said. They said Kurbanov provided information and money to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The group supports establishing strict Islamic rule in Uzbekistan. Authorities said...

Mozilla is out with the Firefox 21 open source browser release today, fixing at least 8 security vulnerabilities, three of which are rated as being critical. The new release also provides new features that – depending on your viewpoint – could either improve or reduce user privacy.One of the new features in Firefox 21 is the Health Report. Mozilla first began talking about the health report in September of 2012 as a non-invasive reporting mechanism. The report is intended to deliver information to users about the 'health' of the browser and its components. The report also shares that data with...

According to BotObjects' product copy, this previously unknown hardware and software company has a revolutionary product on its hands in its new ProDesk3D 3D printer. Among other highlights, which my colleague Michelle Starr wrote about earlier this week for CNET Australia, the ability to print objects in a full range of colors from common PLA plastic would instantly put the ProDesk3D at the top of the consumer-grade printer market. Follow along the reader comments on the various posts covering BotObjects announcement though, and you'll find a common refrain of skepticism. "So we have computer-generated images of the printer. No images...

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

When Joseph Schumpeter described capitalism as a process of creative destruction more than 70 years ago, he couldn’t have conceived of the miracle that is 3D printing. Yet this hair-raising technology is about to tear apart existing structures in a way that would undoubtedly have shocked even Schumpeter, a great economist struck by the free market’s revolutionary, anti-conservative tendencies. Remarkably, 3D printing allows actual objects to be designed and created (or “printed”) surprisingly quickly with a computer connected to a printer-like device, using special material (often plastic, but increasingly almost anything) as “ink” and “paper”. With the costs of the...

SNIPPET: "Muslim convert Richard Dart declared “judging is only for Allah” and refused to stand in the dock as he was jailed for six years for terrorism yesterday." SNIPPET: "Mr Justice Simon said the three held “radical Islamist beliefs” and showed they were “committed to acts of terrorism”. Dart, 30, of Ealing, west London, was jailed for six years; Mahmood, 22, from Northolt, west London for nine years and nine months, and Alom, 26, of Stratford, east London, for four years and six months." SNIPPET: "Dart and Alom travelled to Pakistan to try to get terrorist training, and took advice...

An 18-year-old Aurora man was arrested Friday night before he tried making his way to Syria to join a ‘jihadist militant’ group, federal authorities said. Abdella Ahmad Tounisi was taken into custody without incident late Friday at O’Hare Airport by members of the Chicago FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force as he attempted to board a flight destined for Istanbul, Turkey, according to the FBI’s Chicago office. Tounisi, a U.S. citizen, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel G. Martin Saturday for allegedly attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He appeared on Saturday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Tounisi,...

The controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) just passed the U.S. House, and will now head to the upper Senate chamber for further deliberation. Rinse and repeat. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it still poses a major threat to Fourth Amendment rights, according to civil liberties campaigners. The bill was passed 288-127 in favor of the bill after two days of debate and discussion on the House floor. Only 18 members of the House abstained from the vote. CISPA will allow private sector firms to search personal and sensitive user data of ordinary U.S....

Patches 42 security holes Oracle has released a major security update for the version of Java programming language that runs inside Web browsers. The patch fixes 42 vulnerabilities within Java, including "the vast majority" of those that have been rated as the most critical. Oracle Executive Vice President Hasan Rizvisaid that a series of big security flaws in the Java plug-in for browsers have been uncovered in the past year by researchers and hackers, and some have been used by criminal groups. One hacking campaign infected computers using Microsoft Windows and Apple software inside hundreds of companies.Earlier this year the US Department...

Microsoft may recant its Windows 8 design theology, bloggers reported Tuesday, by offering Windows 8 users an option to bypass the "Modern" UI and by restoring the Start button and menu to the beleaguered operating system. A pair of longtime Microsoft hands, Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet and Tom Warren of The Verge, citing unnamed sources and messages on Windows discussion forums, said Microsoft was considering those tweaks for an upcoming update, called "Windows Blue" by some and "Windows 8.1" by others. The upgrade, the first of a planned faster development and release tempo, is allegedly slated for an October...

If you are old enough to have experienced it, you probably had that moment in the ’90s or early 2000s when you realized everything was about to change. The sweeping Internet was changing music, reading, how we processed information, even the words we used to communicate. The change was fundamental and it happened so quickly, many of us had to catch our breath and keep ourselves from getting dizzy when we realized its significance. It may sound like hype, and I’ll try to avoid overstating it, but a lot of us who write about where technology is going are starting...

PC sales certainly haven’t been good over the past year or so, but this past quarter was record-setting bad. Shipments of PCs fell 14% worldwide last quarter, according to IDC. It was the worst yearly decline since IDC began tracking the data in 1994. … Bob O’Donnell, a vice president at IDC, said in the company’s report that “the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market.” …

The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study. Chemists at The Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium. The material's structure is closely related to that of graphene—a much-touted two-dimensional material comprised of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart,...

“Over the next five years,” says technology fortuneteller Daniel Burrus, “we are going to see a transformation in how we sell, market, communicate, elaborate, innovate, train and educate people.” Burrus has been following and (accurately) predicting technology trends for more than 30 years. He says when he was “talking about social media in the early ’90s, before the first Web browser.” When he talks, the technology industry listens. So what kind of “transformation” is Burrus talking about now? He starts by explaining a change in marketing. When the Monty Python franchise was lagging on DVD sales a few years back,...

Enlarge Image Turn on. A computer simulation of the expected result from a biological AND gate (top) and the actual data (bottom). Credit: J.Bonnet et al., Science (28 March, 2013) For the first time, synthetic biologists have created a genetic device that mimics one of the widgets on which all of modern electronics is based, the three-terminal transistor. Like standard electronic transistors, the new biological transistor is expected to work in many different biological circuit designs. Together with other advances in crafting genetic circuitry, that should make it easier for scientists to program cells to do everything from monitor...

Got this for $350 when taxes are included. Has Windows 8. I have not opened the box yet and will wait until Sunday to see if there isn't some thing better out there at Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot etc... So what do freepers think of this model? The CPU comes in at above 2100 on CPU benchmark site and I will be adding 4gb memory soon to make 8gb. This cpu is Ivy Bridge which is the latest

Laboratory advance shows that nano-imprinting could help the hard drive industry meet its long-term goals for data storage capacity. Researchers at HGST, a major manufacturer of hard disk drives, have shown that an emerging fabrication technology called nano-imprinting could be used to double the data storage capacity of today’s hard disks. They say the patent-pending work, done in collaboration with a company called Molecular Imprints, could lead to a cost-effective manufacturing process by the end of the decade. Hard disk drives store data in magnetic material on the surface of a spinning disk. During production, this material is deposited as...

IDC readjusted its PC sales forecast after seeing weak shipments in February. Weaker than expected February PC shipments prompted International Data Corporation to reassess the market and adjust its expectation for the first quarter. Whereas IDC previously expected PC shipments to decline by 7.7 percent in Q1, the market research firm now says the drop could hit double digits, followed by a mid-single-digit decline in the second quarter before a recovery is in sight.

our pc finally kicked the bucket need advice on cheap or free computers.... had just started working from home and this threw a giant monkey wrench in that.

Cyber-attacks and cyber-espionage pose a greater potential danger to U.S. national security than Al Qaeda and other militants that have dominated America's global focus since Sept. 11, 2001, the nation's top intelligence officials said Tuesday. For the first time, the growing risk of computer-launched foreign assaults on U.S. infrastructure, including the power grid, transportation hubs and financial networks, was ranked higher in the U.S. intelligence community's annual review of worldwide threats than worries about terrorism, transnational organized crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The world’s largest search engine is now experimenting with jewelry that would eliminate the need to remember dozens of passwords. As part of research into doing away with typed passwords, Google has built rings that not only adorn a finger but also can be used to log in to a computer or online account. The search and ad company first revealed its plans to put an end to passwords in an academic paper published online in January (see “Google’s Alternative to the Password”). The effort focused on having people plug a small USB key that provides their credentials into a...

A federal appeals court on Friday said the Border Patrol cannot confiscate or download every laptop or electronic device brought into the U.S., ruling that people have an expectation their data are private and that the government must have “reasonable suspicion” before it starts to do any intensive snooping. In a broad ruling, the court also said merely putting password protection on information is not enough to trigger the government’s “reasonable suspicion” to conduct a more intrusive search — but can be taken into account along with other factors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges said it was...

Summary: In the first day of the Pwn2Own cracking contest, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 10, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox web browsers have all gone down in flames. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Networking | March 7, 2013 -- 18:20 GMT (10:20 PST) In the eternal war between crackers and security professionals, the hackers have won the latest battle. ZDI_Twitter_AvatarIn ZDI's Pwn2Own hacker competition one browser after another fell. At the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada, the HP Zero Day Initiative's (ZDI) annual Pwn2Own competition has ended its first day of competition and Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 10,...

Looking to spend $400-$700 for a decent notebook to be used primarily for software development and graphics. Need some speed and horsepower, and durability. These things typically last me about five years, and this one here (a Sony Vaio) is nearing the end of the line. Brands you'd recommend? Lenovo is highly regarded but very, very Chinese. I'd like to stay away from that. And I hate Apple with a passion. This will be running Linux.

JENNIFER LUDDEN, HOST: Human ears, gun parts, bars of chocolate, musical instruments, robots - just a few of the things that have recently been created from scratch by 3-D printers. Apparently and amazingly, you just put in the materials, upload a design and press start. My printer doesn't even work with just old paper and ink. But we'll hear more about this potential. The possibilities seem endless. Some believe 3-D printing will revolutionize manufacturing, but the technology is also raising thorny questions about copyright and regulation. If you use 3-D printing, tell us what you make. Our numbers are 800-989-8255....

Meet the groundbreaking new encryption app set to revolutionize privacy and freak out the feds. For the past few months, some of the world’s leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention. Today, they’ve decided it’s time to tell all. Back in October, the startup tech firm Silent Circle ruffled governments’ feathers with a “surveillance-proof” smartphone app to allow people to make secure phone calls and send texts easily. Now, the company is pushing things even further—with a groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app that will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone...

The White House is poised to release a cybersecurity executive order on Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter told The Hill. The highly anticipated directive from President Obama is expected to be released at an event Wednesday morning at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where senior administration officials will provide an update about cybersecurity policy. The White House began crafting the executive order after Congress failed to pass cybersecurity legislation last year. Officials said the threat facing the United States was too great for the administration to ignore.

An interesting article caught my eye at jobstractor.com — the programming language trends review. The company analyzed more than 60,000 job vacancies during 2012 to produce a chart of the most sought-after technologies: Language Jobs PHP 12,664 Java 12,558 Objective C 8,925 SQL 5,165 Android (Java) 4,981 Ruby 3,859 JavaScript 3,742 C# 3,549 C++ 1,908 ActionScript 1,821 Python 1,649 C 1,087 ASP.NET 818 Despite developer complaints, demand for PHP and Java (server/Android) remains strong. You would also expect those jobs to require some SQL knowledge although that has a strong showing in its own right. ActionScript is a dying art...

For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees. After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in. The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business...

Windows 8 pro review (upgrade XP to Windows 8 with Classic Shell)I am writing this hasty and imperfect review of Windows 8 for fellow Freepers (etc.) in case someone is looking into buying it, and as the 39.99 (about 42.00 with taxes) upgrade ends tonight. Better late then never i suppose. And the the media center upgrade is only fre till then ($10.00 afterward) which should be standard. And no, I have no affiliation with MS. My review is on how W/8 runs this old PC (used mainly for Christian ministry). This is a 2005 Sony VGC-RA840G (Asus P5LP-VX 64...

The latest rallying cry emanating from the DPRK's newDear Leader Kim Jong Un (they call this one 'Supreme Leader') -who apparently seeks to develop computer skills amongst the zombified populace he inherited- is the super-catchy (their translation) 'Rapider, More, and Exacter!' Confusion grows as you hear the plan is based on the BIG rollout what they say is a 'North Korean-built' notebook... one that looks an awful lot like the $70 Chinese-made Sylvania 7-inch 'netbook' sold at CVS (a surprise perhaps only to those who thought the Norks made their own Lincoln Continentals). The DPRK has also introduced their own operating system/search engine- dubbed 'Red Star/My Country', both designed...

Such a case came about in 2012. The scenario was as follows. We received a request from a US-based company asking for our help in understanding some anomalous activity that they were witnessing in their VPN logs. This organization had been slowly moving toward a more telecommuting oriented workforce, and they had therefore started to allow their developers to work from home on certain days. In order to accomplish this, they’d set up a fairly standard VPN concentrator approximately two years prior to our receiving their call. In early May 2012, after reading the 2012 DBIR, their IT security department...

Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday. The news was first reported by the MIT newspaper The Tech, citing both his uncle and his attorney. Swartz was 26.

[No quote due to Reuters source. Title is accurate representation of article. Please see link.]

It's a long way from hitting store shelves, but the new Papertab tablet debuting at CES shows where the technology is headed. Plastic Logic and the Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab's new PaperTabhuman media lab Queen's University Canada Computers are getting smaller and thinner all the time, and it's not hard to imagine one that eventually looks and feels like a sheet of paper. One company, Plastic Logic, is demonstrating an early prototype of just that this week at the Consumer Electronics Show. The company's Papertab tablet has a long way to go, but you can see what researchers envision...

The tech industry cheerleads the displacement and reconfiguration of huge institutions like the music industry and telecoms. The arms industry shares many of the attributes of those industries, and is poised for fundamental change that is much like the changes they have experienced. If the product of the arms industry were not arms, the inevitable upheaval would be anticipated and prophesied with glee by the usual pundits (this website included). It’s not, because the general availability of weapons is not something we as a community can agree on as an unmitigated good. For that matter, even free speech and assembly...

How to remove a computer virus QUICK SIMPLE VIDEO http://www.tvkim.com/watch/2555/kim-on-komand-how-to-remove-a-computer-virus?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=tvkim&utm_content=2012-12-14-article-screen-shot-b Computer viruses are the most dreaded inhabitants of the digital world! Here's how to kill them dead. Visit my security center for more detailed tips:      http://www.komando.com/securitycenter  

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

Some Republicans are siding with Democrats around the proposition that online sales should be taxed. Now, Congress is adding a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow such a tax. The so-called Marketplace Fairness Act, which also has a House counterpart, the Marketplace Equity Act, will allow states to collect sales taxes on retailers who are located out of state. This would be a fundamental expansion of states’ power to tax; it arguably violates the privileges and immunities clause, allowing states to set up tariffs against other states’ businesses...

  "German Islamists Target Youth on the Internet" By Christoph Sydow 11/01/2012 "Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan." PHOTO CAPTION: "A growing community of German-speaking Islamists has developed on the Internet. Aiming to find new recruits, they glorify jihad and call for attacks on Germany. A new study warns that such online propaganda might foster a new generation of terrorists." SNIPPET: "International terrorist groups like al-Qaida recognized the importance of the Internet for recruiting new supporters early on." SNIPPET: "Intelligence services can also take advantage of the anonymity of Internet forums to deliberately plant false information or obtain insider...

Based on the popular National Geographic Channel TV show by the same name, Doomsday Preppers challenges you to prepare for a new (and even more fabulous) life below the ground. Design a multi-level dream bunker complete with everything you need for post-apocalyptic bliss, from a gym to a greenhouse to a disco bar! Video at Link

Dan Crow, another former Apple employee from the 1990s, also says Apple has shown itself to be doomed without Steve Jobs, in a piece for The Guardian headlined “We’ve Passed Peak Apple�: Why do I think Apple has passed its peak? There are a number of signs. The most visible recent one is the Maps debacle. Replacing Google Maps with an obviously inferior experience shows how much Apple has changed. Apple’s success had been all about offering users the best possible experience; suddenly it is willing to give users a clearly worse experience to further its corporate interests - in...

Anyone know if there is a way to roll-back from Yahoo's new Homepage re-design that was just launched [NOT the Yahoo Mail re-design from a few years ago]? My Mom uses Yahoo - and just got switched over. Hates the re-design, wants her old Yahoo Homepage back. This is not the My Yahoo homepage.

SNIPPET: "Indonesian anti-terror police, Densus 88 secure a terror suspect's house during a raid in Mojosongo, Solo in Central Java. Indonesian police have arrested 11 members of an Islamic group allegedly planning attacks on American diplomatic missions, a spokesman says." SNIPPET: "The group had planned to hit the US embassy and a US consulate, as well as a building near the Australian embassy in the capital Jakarta that houses the office of American mining giant Freeport-McMoran, police said. Police said they were from a new outfit called HASMI, the Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, and explosives and a bomb-making manual...

A dash of algebra on wireless networks promises to boost bandwidth tenfold, without new infrastructure. Academic researchers have improved wireless bandwidth by an order of magnitude—not by adding base stations, tapping more spectrum, or cranking up transmitter wattage, but by using algebra to banish the network-clogging task of resending dropped packets. By providing new ways for mobile devices to solve for missing data, the technology not only eliminates this wasteful process but also can seamlessly weave data streams from Wi-Fi and LTE—a leap forward from other approaches that toggle back and forth. "Any IP network will benefit from this technology,"...

SNIPPET: "New York City is the center of a public uproar as Internet blogger Pamela Gellar rises with an “anti-jihad” ad campaign." SNIPPET: "Gellar and her group are protesting the Jihad, which in definition is the religious duty of Muslims. According to the Dictionary of Islam, jihad is defined as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims.” The literal meaning of jihad, according to the British Broadcasting Network, “is struggle or effort, and it means much more than...

Updated at 8 p.m. ET: NEW YORK - A suspected terrorist parked a van packed with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb next to the Federal Reserve building in Lower Manhattan and tried to detonate it Wednesday morning before he was arrested in a terror sting operation, authorities said. The suspect, 21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, is a Bangladeshi national who came to the U.S. on a student visa in January for the specific purpose of launching a terror attack here, authorities said. He allegedly told an undercover agent last month that he hoped the attack would disrupt...

(CNN) -- There's no escaping the fact that the Human Brain Project, with its billion-dollar plan to recreate the human mind inside a supercomputer, sounds like a science fiction nightmare. But those involved hope their ambitious goal of simulating the tangle of neurons and synapses that power our thought processes could offer solutions to tackling conditions such as depression, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. The Human Brain venture is the next step in a long-running program that has already succeeded in using computers to create a virtual replica of part of a rat's neocortex -- a section of the brain believed...