Free Republic

Okay, I need some expertise here My sound driver keeps cutting out, videos wont play, sound wont work once it starts videos play 2 or 3 seconds and stop, if I click on the position icon on the progress bar, they begin again but stop, no sound Also, my picture preview in Windows Explorer has stopped working rebooting doesn't change the picture preview, but the sound driver seems to come back on sometimes When I shut down, my windows exit sound usually comes back on, too

A French bank apologized after posting a photo on Facebook of a squirrel caught hanging upside down by his testicles on a bird feeder. Caisse d'Epargne shared the photo on Facebook as part of a marketing campaign for a line of insurance. The photo was accompanied by a slogan, "Because accidents don't just happen to others, insurance will also cover you for any temporary injuries." TheLocal.fr said Friday many of the bank's 24,000 Facebook followers thought the account had been hacked. When the bank realized followers' reaction they apologized and took down the photo. "We wanted to make use of...

Yet another student has landed in trouble for having something that represents a weapon, but isn’t actually anything like a real weapon. This time it’s an autistic middle school student in South Carolina who was suspended until further notice after he brought a cartoonish drawing of a bomb he drew to school, reports local NBC affiliate WYFF. The student, 13-year-old Rhett Parham, showed his drawing to some older students at Hill Crest Middle School in Greenville. They reported it to school officials. They boy said he got the idea to draw the bomb from a video game called Bomberman Hero....

The attempted closing of memorials in Washington, D.C., has produced many photographs, but few have been as gripping as this one: Morgen @morgenr Obama's America... pic.twitter.com/P38BDsne5d

The Resolute Desk (above) was built from the timbers of the HMS Resolute and was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes. It is considered a national treasure and icon of the presidency.

Here's the by-now famous pic of George Zimmerman that went viral on the internet the past 2 weeks as the story of the TrayVon Martin shooting became a national news story:  But do a Google image search for 'George Zimmerman and this is what comes up: http://tinyurl.com/79dj95c Do you...uh....NOTICE anything there?  The difference in skin tone between the various pictures?  Let's call up one of the lightened versions and put them side by side: 

A simple image of a Lynchburg, Va., Marine and his bride praying before their wedding has gone viral. In the photo, Bre and Josh Curtas are seen holding hands from around a corner so that the groom cannot see the bride. According to Bre, who started a Tumblr account after the photo went viral, the future husband and wife were were praying for their marriage. “My husband prayed that God would bless our marriage, that through thick or thin together we would never lose hope in one another,” she wrote. “That instead of focusing on each others imperfections we would...

On Monday, the Obama White House reportedly held a moment of silence for the victims of last week’s Boston terror attack. For whatever reason, however, the press was barred and the White House released this photo of the president looking at his shoes paying his respects: Over at White House Dossier, Keith Koffler notes that this is another in a series of carefully crafted images released from the White House designed to craft Obama’s image in the wake of the terrorist attack: Presidents rarely engage in this type of private symbolism, which has regal sense to it – the leader...

At the link an image which might suggest that the Attorney for mass muderer James Holmes was also one of the grieving parents of Sandy Hook. Third image places her with her husband as a 'crisis actor" with her husband. Last name "Sexton".

Arrr you in?

Conspiracy theorists have worked themselves up into a lather over a mysterious blotch visible in the first black and white photographs taken from NASA's new Curiosity rover as it landed on Mars. The faint but distinctive dot which can be seen on the horizon of the Red Planet was taken by a device on the $2.5 billion robot called its Hazcam and relayed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back to Earth. However, two hours later when the satellite made another pass over Curiosity, the rover sent another batch of images that revealed that the blotch had eerily disappeared.

The Arizona police sergeant who posted a picture of an Obama T-shirt riddled with bullet holes on his Facebook page has been suspended and demoted, according to officials. Pat Shearer, a 25-year veteran of the Peoria Police Department, has been suspended for two weeks without pay and demoted to the rank of officer. "We expect our employees to exercise sound judgment and not bring discredit upon our police department," Police Chief Roy Minter said in a written statement. The infamous photo (pictured above) showed a group of young, casually dressed high school students brandishing firearms and holding up a T-Shirt...

Hello FReepers. I hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday. I am looking for a picture I know I have seen on FR before. It's a picture of Obama reacting in a feminine manner to a karate demonstration. I believe the whole thing happened at the WH a few years back, but I could be mistaken. I've looked for this picture every way I know how, but still can't find it. I was hoping some of you FReepers would kindly help me out.

I inadvertently turned off the capability to copy and past a picture using Internet Explorer 8. I was able to do this until a couple days ago. I've done a little research and it appears I should be able to fix this by going to tools, tools internet options, security, custom levels, misc, drag and drop copy and paste, and enable this capabilty. This has been on enable all along and there must be something else I need to change. Any ideas! Thanks for your help!

Bethany College men's golf team has been suspended from three tournaments because of a team picture. Golf coach Jon Daniels says all 15 members of the men's team were involved in taking a picture on a hilltop with nothing on. The men posed with the head of their golf club covering their private parts. The picture was then posted on facebook with the title Men's Bethany Golf Team. The coach says the boys were inspired by pictures of the UCLA men's players who posed with a bucket of golf balls in front of their private parts. Those pictures were published...

Like "pictures" of Osama bin Laden's dead body, photoshoppers have been busy making fake images of a dead Muammar Gaddafi. The most prevalent one is this one, supposedly showing him in a pool of blood: But this picture is an obvious fake to anyone who has paid careful attention to the news in the last few months. Look at "Gaddafi's" left shoulder. Anyone who remembers pictures that came out after bin Laden died of dead men in his compound remember the "water gun" photo, which appeared to show a water gun behind a dead, bloody man lying on the floor....

Presenting: World's Dumbest Home Depot Customer Well, this picture is said to be real, taken by a transportation supervisor for a company that delivers building materials for 84 Lumber. When he saw it in the parking lot of IHOP, he actually ran and went to buy a camera to take pictures. The car is still running, as can be witnessed by the exhaust... The driver finally came back after the police were called, and was found crouched behind the rear of the car, attempting to cut the twine around the load! Luckily, the police stopped him and had the load removed. The...

<p>Anthony Weiner officially resigned from the House of Representatives this week, and today his name has disappeared from the wall outside his former office. This sign now adorns office 2104 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.</p> <p>Weiner represented New York's Ninth Congressional District, but history is sometimes blurred by time, and Weiner was, at least as of this photo's snapping, remembered as having represented the "Nineth" district instead. We hope the typo has been corrected, especially since red pen may not show up so well on the dark brown sign.</p>

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) talks to NBC News about the lewd picture scandal. NBC's LUKE RUSSERT: "That's not a picture of you?" REP. ANTHONY WEINER: "You know, I can't say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted."

NORMAN, Okla. — The power generated by a tornado is hard to wrap the mind around. They can scoop up entire houses and fling them thousands of feet. Big rigs are blown apart like papier mâché toy trucks, and even cows have been known to take a ride they didn’t sign up for. And with at least 10 souls lost to the tornadoes that ripped through central Oklahoma on Tuesday, they can be — and often are — deadly. Even though Norman and much of Cleveland County was spared during the outbreak Tuesday, it was affected in a different way....