Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a fiery orator versed in the classics and a hard-charging power broker who steered billions of federal dollars to the state of his Depression-era upbringing, died Monday. He was 92.

May 07, 2010 Free Software and Tech Progress By Keith Curtis Moore's law has been humming along for four decades now, doubling our CPU power every eighteen months. Cellphone-sized devices today have more capacity than a stadium of computers from twenty years ago. Networked digital computers are giving us new forms of collaboration on a massive scale, causing our society to enter the digital renaissance. We now have the tools to solve some very tough problems; one might argue that we never could cure cancer without creating computers and the internet first. While the shiny hardware always gets all the...

NASCAR places Edwards on three-race probation More concerned that 12 car flipped on a 1.5-mile track By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM March 9, 2010 01:12 PM EST NASCAR president Mike Helton on Tuesday announced Sprint Cup driver Carl Edwards has been placed on probation for the next three Sprint Cup races as a result of Edwards intentionally wrecking Brad Keselowski this past Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Helton said the decision came "after meeting and discussing the events Sunday evening, all day Monday and [Tuesday] morning." Helton added that an additional meeting "that was still being set" would be arranged between...

Brown might stay in politics Congressman urged to run for supervisor's job By Andy Paras The Post and Courier Tuesday, February 23, 2010 U.S. Rep. Henry Brown may not be done with public office after all. The Hanahan resident, who said in January that he would not seek re-election to Congress and instead retire to his farm, now is looking at all the political options in his home county. That includes a possible bid for Berkeley County supervisor. "He has a political future," said Brown's political consultant, Rod Shealy, while stopping short of confirming the buzz around the supervisor race....

Rep. Henry Brown expected to announce retirement today Staff report Monday, January 4, 2010 Republican Congressman Henry Brown is expected to announce his retirement this morning. Brown will release a statement at 10:15 a.m., according to his longtime political consultant, Rod Shealy. Columbia-based blog, The Palmetto Scoop, first reported the news this morning.

Scammers pumping out emails that try to trick recipients into parting with large sums of cash are getting a helping hand from the Democratic National Committee. According to a researcher with anti-spam company Cloudmark, 419 fraudsters have been relaying a "significant" amount of messages through the democrats.org domain name. The abuse, which dates back at least to the beginning of this month, helps evade filters that internet service providers employ to block the messages. "Unfortunately, because they're able to relay mail through the Democratic Party server, it does affect the Democratic Party's IP reputation, as well as their domain sending...

Red Hat Enterprise clone poised to 'die' CentOS airs dirty laundry as admin 'vanishes' Posted in Operating Systems, 30th July 2009 17:40 GMT According to six concerned CentOS developers, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone is poised on the edge of the abyss. In an open letter posted to the CentOS website and the project mailing list, six fellow developers accuse project co-founder Lance Davis of putting the entire project at risk by disappearing from everyday involvement without ceding control to others. "You seem to have crawled into a hole...and this is not acceptable," the letter reads. "Please do not...

Standard and Poor’s announced that Red Hat would join the S&P 500 as of the close of trading on Friday. Red Hat replaces lender CIT Group, which had a market capitalization below $275 million, ranking it 500th in the index. The market seemed to like the S&P news. In after hours trading Friday, Red Hat was up 8.45 percent to $22.34. Red Hat, the fast-growing provider of open source software solutions to enterprise customers, will be added to the S&P 500 GICS (Global Industry Classification Standard) Systems Software Sub-Industry index. The company has been aggressively pursuing new opportunities to help...

The United States have broken up. The economy is in shambles. Earthquakes and Hurricanes have ravaged the Southeast, and a low-intensity civil war is raging in Tennessee as the federal government tries to reassert itself over the states that are in open rebellion. The federal government is led by President Tambor, the first African American president - and closet Marxist - who is craven enough to try to use the military against its own citizens, and ruthless enough to bring in vicious foreign mercenaries when our own troops won’t completely turn against us. Then it gets bad. Really bad. Foreign...

MONTREAL - A survey of media reports around the world says the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama received more coverage than the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. Montreal media company Influence Communication says the inauguration and associated events took up 60.54 per cent of all news coverage in 160 countries during a 24-hour period from Jan. 20 to Jan. 21. Not surprisingly, the U.S. media gave the inauguration the most prominence - 71.12 per cent of all coverage. Canada comes in at 61.45 per cent. In all, Influence Communication says if a person were to try to take...

VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Information and Communications has issued an instruction on using open source software products at state agencies. Accordingly, by June 30, 2009, 100% of servers of IT divisions of government agencies must be installed with open source software; 100% of staffs at these IT divisions must be trained in the use of these software products and at least 50% use them proficiently. IT divisions at government agencies comprise the IT departments of ministries and government agencies, provincial and municipal Departments of Information and Communications. Open source software products are OpenOffice, email software for servers of...

Apple's Security Paradox Andy Greenberg, 12.03.08, 06:47 PM EST Even as Macs have multiplied, the number of viruses and Trojans targeting them has fallen. As Apple's slice of the computer market grows, cyber security researchers have long warned that hackers would someday turn their attention away from PCs and toward innocent Macbooks and iPhones. That day, it turns out, has yet to come....

COLUMBIA — Gov. Mark Sanford has been charged by the nation's Republican governors to lead their association through the toughest times the GOP party has faced since 1994. The two-term South Carolina governor was elected by his peers Friday to serve as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, the same day the Washington Post mentioned him as a potential candidate for president in 2012. In an exclusive interview with The Post and Courier by phone Friday, Sanford did not rule out a run but said that's not where he is focused. Sanford said the party has a lot of work...

Evening Post Publishing Company announced today it was freezing benefits in its defined benefit retirement plan, which is funded entirely by the company. Current employee pensions will be computed on their years of service through Dec. 31, 2008. The move was taken because of soaring costs of maintaining both the pension plan and the employee 401(k) program. The latter is not affected by the decision.

Business PC buyers are still overwhelmingly opting for XP, computer giant HP has revealed. HP's revelation, made at the launch of a new range of business notebooks, flies in the face of Microsoft's persistent PR claims that Vista has sold tens of millions of copies — and is selling at a faster rate than XP ever did. However, HP explained how Microsoft is coming up with these "Vista" sales figures. "From the 30th of June, we have no longer been able to ship a PC with a XP licence," said Jane Bradburn, Market Development Manager, Commercial Notebooks for HP Australia....

ALBANY, N.Y. - MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann, who spotlights misbehaviour nightly with his "Worst Person in the World" recognition, owes New York state for unpaid business taxes, according to a tax warrant notice. And his conservative counterparts and bloggers are making sure the debt is fodder in the ongoing political commentators' feud. Olbermann, the host of "Countdown," owes New York $2,269.50, according to a tax warrant obtained by The Associated Press. State Tax and Finance Department spokesman Tom Bergin said the debt recorded against the TV host's Olbermann Broadcasting Empire Inc., based in Los Angeles, is still open. MSNBC spokesman...

The Fall of Microsoft Office By Anders Bylund (TMF Zahrim) May 27, 2008 On the same day that the state of New York published a report supporting open formats for electronic documents, mighty Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) said that it would support the open-source ODF format in Office 2007. Redmond's own Open Office XML specification may be heading for the great Recycle Bin in the sky, never to come back. What happened? The twin developments are noteworthy to astute investors for multiple rasons. While several European countries, the EU itself, and the state of Massachusetts have distanced themselves from proprietary document...

There's another round of mass SQL injections going on which has infected hundreds of thousands of websites. Performing a Google search results in over 510,000 modified pages. As more and more websites are using database back-ends to make them faster and more dynamic, it also means that it's crucial to verify what information gets stored in or requested from those databases — especially if you allow users to upload content themselves which happens all the time in discussion forums, blogs, feedback forms, et cetera. Unless that data is sanitized before it gets saved you can't control what the website will...

Can the Redskins' search get any more screwy? Still without a head coach, FOXSports.com has learned that Washington has fired defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Williams is widely considered one of the best and most aggressive defensive minds in the NFL, and his unit was the strength of the Redskins' playoff run. Still, the highest paid defensive coordinator in the NFL, is without a job despite having one year remaining on his contract. Williams shouldn't be unemployed for long, as the St. Louis Rams have already requested permission to interview him and the Jacksonville Jaguars have shown interest as well. Williams...

Item 3.01 Notice of Delisting or Failure to Satisfy a Continued Listing Rule or Standard; Transfer of Listing. On September 18, 2007, The SCO Group, Inc. (the “Company”) received a Nasdaq Staff Determination letter (the “Determination”) from the Listing Qualifications Department (the “Staff”) of The Nasdaq Stock Market indicating that, as a result of the Company’s having filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the Staff determined, using its discretionary authority under Nasdaq Marketplace Rules 4300 and IM-4300, that the Company’s securities would be delisted from The Nasdaq Stock Market and that trading in the Company’s...