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The KDE team has released KDE 4.3. This release comes packed with improvements and bug fixes - in fact, over the last six months, 10000 bugs were squashed, 2000 feature requests handled, and 63000 changes were checked in by 700 people. We've already talked about this new release in quite some detail last week, but let's take a look at the most important new features anyway. The Plasma desktop shell comes with a new default theme called Air, which looks a lot less heavy than the previous Oxygen theme. Plasma has also been improved performance-wise, and it takes up less...

Back on Friday we published Mac OS X 10.6 benchmarks and found it to offer some terrific performance improvements , but at the same time, there were a few notable regressions. Apple engineers have been working hard at pushing technologies like Grand Central Dispatch (GCD), OpenCL, full 64-bit support, and other changes to their OS X stack to bolster its performance capabilities and reduce the overall footprint. Now that we have tested Mac OS X 10.6, we are seeing how its performance compares to that of Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" will be out in October and does have...

Here is a surveillance video of a 71 year-old gas station clerk that was beaten for refusing to sell cigarettes to a teenager. (Watch Video)

For Immediate Release September 5, 2009 Historic Event Made it alive While experts said it was impossible, after surviving 7,000 miles of open ocean the Brown brothers stepped off their tiny open fishing boat at 6:40 pm, London Time, Friday, September 4, 2009 at the Limehouse Marina in downtown London making world history by setting several world records, The Smallest Powerboat to Cross The Atlantic, The First Flats Boat to Cross the Atlantic, and the Longest Ocean Voyage in a Flats Boat. The tiny open fishing boat, an Intruder made by Dream Boats in Hudson Florida, separates itself from other...

Obama transition chief and head of the leftist Center for American Progress, John Podesta, laid in to Glenn Beck tonight with a spirited but after the fact defense of former Obama administration official Van Jones that was posted tonight at Think Progress:Van Jones is an exceptional and inspired leader who has fought to bring economic and environmental justice to communities across our country. He has chosen to resign because he believed he was serving as a distraction to the president’s agenda. I respect that decision. Van was working to build a common ground agenda for all Americans, and I am...

The resignation early Sunday of “green jobs” adviser Van Jones says as much about the Obama White House as it does about Jones – marking the latest sacrifice to the political gods after a long summer of compromises and surrenders highlighted the limits of White House power. The departure – nominally the choice of a still-defiant Jones, who said he feared distracting from important business – confirmed Obama’s choice of pragmatism over confrontation and a belief that controversies sometimes are better solved by capitulation, a view that infuriates Obama’s allies on the left. It confirmed that the real opposition party...

Just got tweeted

This just in: Van Jones has "resigned" his post as the Obama administration's Green Jobs Czar. In his statement, released early this morning -- over the Labor Day weekend, curious timing that -- he made the dubious claim he had been "inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.'" But black-hearted "opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me.[1] They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." Now, he finds himself under the bus, with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and other Obama associates who embarrassed the president...

Van Jones, Obama environmental adviser and "green jobs" czar, resigned late Saturday night, the culmination of days of controversy (ignored by the mainstream media) after the Gateway Pundit blog dug up evidence of Van Jones being a "Truther." He signed a 911Truth.org petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen." And the New York Times does its first story on the matter -- the day after Van Jones resigned his administration post. Last month, the New York Times jumped on the conservative fringe of "Birthers" who question Obama's Hawaiian birthplace and thus...

Not that it matters anymore, but Savage reported on Van Jones way back in March. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6WMDOu3h3Y

The Obama Administration lost one of its most outspoken members at the weekend when Van Jones, the President’s “green jobs czar”

President Obama has named Ron Bloom, an influential figure in the national labor movement before joining the administration's auto task force earlier this year, as his senior counselor for manufacturing policy. In that role, Bloom will help Obama try to rebuild a U.S. manufacturing sector that has lost millions of jobs in recent years, the White House announced Sunday. Obama is expected to discuss Bloom's new position Monday when he speaks to the AFL-CIO in Cincinnati. "Last week we learned that our manufacturing sector expanded for the first time in 18 months and had the highest monthly output in two...

This has been the summer of the town hall meeting trolls. This Astroturf movement has been whipping up hysteria -- warning that health care reform is the first step in Obama's master plan to set up a socialist government. These right-wing nutjobs have a vendetta against Obama, they depict the president as a socialist who is against Mom, apple pie and democracy. Obama is a wonky intellectual who speaks in calm and measured tones, and I find it difficult to understand how anybody could possibly mistake him for a dangerous radical. But I guess I'm not a racist who sees...

It seems some of the Kos Kids regret voting for Obama. You have to read it to believe it. Enjoy! I think we are all really disappointed. We thought we were getting something fresh, intelligent and new when Obama came in. I have to admit, I also feel defeated with this resignation. I also hope I buck up soon, but either I don't understand Obama's MOA, or something. Maybe he is weak, on a slow learning curve, maybe he will surprise us in all those wonderful ways. I don't know anymore, and the bitterness I am hearing in these comments...

The sadistic attack on two boys aged nine and 11 by a pair of brothers of similar age has shocked and appalled in equal measure. But what background did the attackers themselves have and what turned them to such extreme violence? As the horrors of the bloody attack on two young boys in Edlington, near Doncaster, are digested, a picture is emerging of the feral, troubled upbringing of their abusers. Whichever side of the story you focus on, it makes uncomfortable reading. The young attackers grew up in a large family with a mother who left them to their own...

British officials claim Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton were kept informed at all stages of discussions concerning Megrahi’s return. The officials say the Americans spoke out because they were taken aback by the row over Megrahi’s release, not because they did not know it was about to happen. ‘The US was kept fully in touch about everything that was going on with regard to Britain’s discussions with Libya in recent years and about Megrahi,’ said the Whitehall aide. ‘We would never do anything about Lockerbie without discussing it with the US. It is disingenuous of them to act as though...

Date goes from bad to worse By Michael P. McConnell Daily Tribune Staff Writer Police say man skipped out on restaurant bill, stole woman's car. FERNDALE — A first date went from bad to worse when police say a man not only skipped out on a restaurant bill but stole his new girlfriend's car while she was still seated at the table. A Detroit man faces trial on charges he stole his date's car after they ate and he asked her for her keys so he could get his wallet out of her vehicle. "She gave him her keys and...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is addressing one of his key constituencies - organized labor - on Monday as union members gather to celebrate the holiday named for their movement. As Obama prepares for a critical speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation about his efforts to overhaul health care, a supportive audience at the AFL-CIO's annual Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati should provide welcome relief from the highly charged partisan atmosphere surrounding the issue. Besides addressing health care, Obama will tell the assembled union members he has named Ron Bloom as senior counselor for manufacturing policy. Bloom has...

Interesting piece where a veteran liberal investigative reporter looks into his own beating and finds himself confronting harsh and lingering questions of race and the causes of crime. " I’d gone downtown that day to talk to a man who had a dream of creating an agency of investigative journalists (a dream, but no funding), and I went to see him because I’m one of thousands of journalists who’ve lost their paychecks in the last two years. I was dismissed by the Chicago Reader in December 2007. (The New York Times noted the coincidence that I lost my job just...

Every Sunday for years I listen to the Big Broadcast 7 - 11pm est. Never thought to offer it to other Freepers. The Big Broadcast runs popular radio programs from the '30s, '40s and '50s. Listen Live Info