Free Republic

SALEM — In a paranormal public hearing last night, dozens of psychics argued before a city licensing panel about what the future holds if Salem cracks down on rogue clairvoyants. Unfortunately, no clear vision emerged from the meeting. One side told councilors the city needs to embrace its standing as the Witch City by allowing more licensed psychics. But opponents warned that oversimplifying the process could bring predators bent on making an easy dollar, rather than ethically telling fortunes. The debate unfolded before a hearing of the City Council's licensing committee, which is pondering tightening its regulation of Salem's fortunetelling...

Dog Owner Protests Force Virginia Senators to Postpone Bill Vote Responding to a wave of dog owner concerns, the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee yesterday postponed until February 20, 2006 its vote on HB339 - "Licensing of dogs and cats." HB339 passed the House of Delegates by a split vote on February 14, 2006. Only after its passage did most Virginia pet owners become aware of the bill's far-reaching negative implications. Pressures to defeat this legislation continue to mount. HB339 is a major assault on citizen's privacy. It requires that a Virginia pet-owner database be established, first at...

pple's Made for iPod licensing program may drive away some big-name manufacturers from producing iPod accessories. As noted earlier this year, Apple has notified companies that it will collect a 10 percent royalty fee for products that access the iPod port and may drive manufacturers such as Bose and Altec away from the iPod accessory market, as many believe the fee is much higher than comparable license fees, which are about 1-2 percent, according to Smarthouse: "The move will significantly impact iPod accessory manufacturers with some considering dropping accessories from their portfolio.... Dominique Water the head of Bose's Asia Pacific...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation that puts restrictions on 16- and 17-year-old drivers, creates an office to prevent sexual abuse in prisons and ban "pocket bikes" from roads, sidewalks and public trails. __ YOUNG DRIVERS: Young drivers will be barred from driving between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. during the first year after getting a drivers license unless accompanied by a licensed driver who is at least 25 years old. The new law also prohibits 16- and 17-year-old drivers from transporting passengers under age 20 during that first year of licensed driving. The law,...

Attorney says Bahamas faces too many risks By MINDELL SMALL,Guardian Staff Reporter mindell@nasguard.com Continuing to voice strong opposition to the proposed Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) attorney Paul D. Moss said The Bahamas faces too many risks if it signs on to it. Mr Moss is Chairman of the group 'Bahamians Agitating for a Referendum on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (BARF)' Over the past three years BARF has been seeking to highlight what it refers to as the "dangers" of not only the CSME but also the WTO and FTAA. BARF said it studied the three...

(CNSNews.com) -- The world's first tobacco control treaty comes into force on Sunday, as the World Health Organization and 57 countries declare war on the tobacco industry and "the tobacco epidemic." More than 160 nations signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and 57 countries -- including France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Mexico -- have ratified it. The legally binding treaty is "designed to reduce the devastating health and economic impact of tobacco," according to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control website. In addition to banning advertisements for tobacco products, the treaty encourages countries to increase tobacco taxes and...

Having so often been the bearer of bad news from the legal front, I am thrilled to have some good news to report for a change. The old-fashioned shrinkwrap license appears to have suffered from what may well be a mortal wound. Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe, CompUSA, Best Buy, and Staples have agreed in the settlement of a California lawsuit to change their ways, and you can already see the first results at the software retailer nearest you.   In January 2003, California resident Cathy Baker walked into her local CompUSA store to return copies of Windows XP and Norton AntiVirus...

Retiring to the sofa after turkey dinner tomorrow, most Americans may feel they have little in common with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. But one defining feature of 17th-century Americans remains: We still migrate for freedom. American mobility is legendary and the notion that it is driven by a desire for liberty is the basis for the methodology behind the Pacific Research Institute's U.S. Economic Freedom Index released last week. Kansas is America's freest state while New York -- home of the Statue of Liberty -- ranks at the bottom. The Index uses five categories -- fiscal, regulatory, judicial, government...

COLUMBUS, Miss., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microtek Medical Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: MTMD - News), a leading manufacturer and marketer of infection control products, fluid control products and safety products to healthcare professionals, announced today the signing of an agreement which grants to Eastern Technologies, Inc. ("ETI") a worldwide exclusive license to manufacture, use and sell the Company's OREX materials and processing technology in the nuclear industry, homeland security industry and certain other industrial applications (the "OREX Nuclear Business"). Dan R. Lee, Microtek's President and Chief Executive Officer commented, "The completion of this agreement is a positive development for Microtek and...

Times (New) Roman and its part in the Development of Scalable Font Technology By Charles Bigelow Charles Bigelow posted this article to the Usenet newsgroup "comp.fonts" in May 1994 in response to the question: What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman? I am grateful to Prof. Bigelow for his permission to publish the article. I have taken the liberty of retitling it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: Re: What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman? From: Charles Bigelow Date: 5 May 1994 "Times Roman" is the name used by Linotype, and the name they registered...

Pharmacist faces complaint over failure to dispense birth control (Published Tuesday, March 16, 2004 09:10:04 AM CST) Associated Press MADISON, Wis. -- The state Department of Regulation and Licensing has filed a complaint against a pharmacist who refused to fill a woman's birth control prescription because of his religious beliefs. The complaint against Neil Noesen was filed with the Wisconsin Examining Board over an incident that happened in the summer of 2002. It said Noesen, 30, was working as a fill-in pharmacist at the K-Mart Pharmacy in Menomonie and had told the managing pharmacist he wouldn't fill prescriptions for...

A small woodworking tool manufacturer, Stots Corporation, includes a license agreement on its TemplateMaster jig tool. The tool is licensed, not sold, and customers cannot sell it or lend it to others. Nor can they sell or lend the jigs they make with it. We’re all familiar with license agreements on software tools that limit what you can with the product. But what about a license agreement on a real tool limiting what you can with the product and the things you make with it? “Shrinkwrap licenses are showing up everywhere,” a reader recently wrote. “I just bought a jig...

When Burt Rutan rolled out the SpaceShipOne suborbital spacecraft earlier this month (see “Rutan aims for space: A look at SpaceShipOne”, April 21, 2003), one of the biggest surprises had nothing to do with the vehicle’s unique design or flight profile. Instead, despite the fact that the vehicle seemed ideal to win the X Prize and usher in the era of suborbital space tourism, Rutan made it clear there were no plans to put the vehicle into commercial service. SpaceShipOne would fly under an “experimental research and development glider” license on a series of flights to determine what the operating...

<p>Will the licensing efforts of a key patent holder derail Linux's corporate growth?</p> <p>Every so often in the tech world, an intellectual-property lawsuit comes along that gets the coders clucking, predicting that it's the end of the digital world as we know it. A year ago, it was British Telecom's attempt to collect royalties on hyperlinks. And Amazon now and then comes under fire for some of its business-process patents.</p>

Windows 2000 servers are cheaper to run than Linux ones, sometimes, says an IDC study which was by strange coincidence sponsored by Microsoft. The study will come as welcome relief to Microsoft salespeople who have been parroting the 'cheaper than Linux' line to general disbelief, but whether anyone else will believe it is another matter. Nor indeed should we take the study at anything like face value. IDC set itself the task of measuring total cost of ownership of the two server operating systems over a five year period, segmenting this into five areas of server operation. Over a...

Lester Warby is the kind of guy who reads the fine print. And the fine print for the latest updates to Microsoft Windows has him worried. Warby -- who is the chief information officer at Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union -- believes that the terms for the end user license agreement (EULA) for Microsoft's Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and XP Service Pack 1, might well put the credit union in violation of new federal privacy laws. At issue is Microsoft's "automatic update" feature, which allows users to automatically get upgrades and patches to their systems. To get the...

Teenager shot friend dead with airgun The Evening Chronicle, 9/9/2002 A 15-year-old boy has been sent to a young offenders' institution for two years for shooting a friend dead with an airgun. Daryl John Allison was 13 when horseplay with an air rifle ended in tragedy as he shot 14-year-old Matthew Sheffield in the head. A judge said the Government should use the current session of Parliament to address legislation governing the ownership and use of air weapons. Judge Peter Fox QC said: "Such legislation is urgently needed. For Matthew not to have died in vain it would be appropriate,...

Landmark Decision Clears Way For First Commercial Lunar Flight San Diego - Sept 2, 2002 TransOrbital, Inc. has become the first private company in the history of space flight to win approval from the U.S. government to explore, photograph, and land on the moon. The company expects to launch its Trailblazer Mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within the next 9-12 months. The approvals and licensing by U.S. State Department and The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) position TransOrbital as only company presently authorized by the U.S. Government to return to the moon. Once launched, the Trailblazer will...

Filed at 8:26 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - No-nonsense Sgt. Joe Friday of ``Dragnet'' and the clean-cut cops of ``Adam-12'' never had to do anything like this. But the City of Angels has made it clear that its real-life police department is here not only to serve and protect, but also to collect licensing fees. The city of Los Angeles has threatened legal action against the makers of two new TV police dramas if they use likenesses of the city's trademarked police department badges, logos, or even the LAPD's good name, without city permission. The municipal government is insisting...

<p>SEATTLE - Fierce resistance is brewing to Microsoft's new software licensing program for businesses.</p> <p>By Aug. 1, Microsoft will cut the 30% to 50% discount it has long granted businesses for upgrading to the latest version of its software. Instead, it is pushing companies into paying upfront subscription fees locking them into future upgrades.</p>