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SALISBURY -- When Sarah Leach opened the box UPS had delivered, she fully expected to find a new computer she'd ordered. Instead, she says, she found packing peanuts and something that was clearly not a laptop -- several shrink-wrapped packages full of thousands of dollars worth of drugs. Leach called police immediately. She was so frightened she waited for them to arrive on her front stoop.

In his suicide note, the computer software engineer who flew a small plane into a building with Internal Revenue Service offices in Texas on Thursday cited a 1986 tax law as a major motivation for his action. The law, known as Section 1706 of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, made it extremely difficult for information technology professionals to work as self-employed individuals, forcing most to become company employees.

A federal invasion-of-privacy lawsuit may be the least of the Lower Merion School District's problems. Allegations that the affluent suburban district used webcams on school-issued laptops to "spy" on students in their homes has now caught the attention of Montgomery County detectives and the FBI, both of which are looking into whether the practice violated wiretap and privacy laws. The district is also fighting off a coast-to-coast onslaught of negative publicity that appeared to be growing more intense yesterday. Some creeped-out students have placed tape over the cameras, and parody T-shirts are already being sold on the Internet – including...

In a lawsuit filed in federal court, a school district in suburban Philadelphia has been accused of using a Webcam embedded in a school-issued laptop to covertly photograph a 15-year-old student in his home.According to the boy’s parents, Michael and Holly Robbins — who filed the class action suit against Lower Merion School District, on behalf of their son, Blake, and all the the other students whose privacy may have been violated in a similar fashion — the family discovered that the laptop could be used for remote spying three months ago. The suit states that on Nov. 11, 2009,...

Although I’m sitting in the living room of a second-floor condominium in Germantown, Maryland, what I see on the monitor of Dan Ward’s Dell computer invites me to imagine I’m in the cockpit of an Embraer 145 regional jet. Visible through a cockpit window is the jetway, which runs from the passenger door to a gate at Terminal 3 of Chicago O’Hare. The cockpit instruments are dark, but after Ward types in a few commands, the control panel lights up like a Christmas tree. Soon Ward, senior pilot for Delta Virtual Airlines, is keying flight data into the flight management...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, February 5, 2010 Resident of India Pleads Guilty in International Online Brokerage “Hack, Pump and Dump” Scheme WASHINGTON - A resident of India pleaded guilty today to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft charges arising from an international fraud scheme to "hack" into online brokerage accounts in the United States and use those accounts to manipulate stock prices, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Deborah K.R. Gilg of the District of Nebraska. Jaisankar Marimuthu, 35, a native of Chennai, India, pleaded guilty...

The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes. FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday. As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory....

I had the free version of AVG on my computer but these past few days things started messing up all over the place (processes getting slower and slower, couldn't download, mouse right click stopped working, among others). Went online and followed the suggestion on one site to remove AVG, which worked! Everything is running blazing fast, no hiccups, mouse is working again. Only problem is my computer isn't protected from viruses, malware, etc. Looking for a FREE product that works without all the unnecessary bells and whistles. Any recommendations, FReepers? TIA!

The longer you spend surfing the Web, the more unhappy you’re likely to be, says a new study from Great Britain that shows that Internet “addicts” are more likely to be depressed. Researchers analyzed Internet use and depression levels in more than 1,000 British residents between the ages of 16 and 51. Some 1.2% were labeled “Internet addicted” by researchers at Leeds University.

Throughout the computer industry companies of all sizes, from garage startups to Microsoft, are bracing for the possibility that their future will be in the hands of people like Sean Whetstone. The head of computer operations for Reed Specialist Recruitment, an employment service with operations on three continents, Whetstone recently upgraded his company's 6,000 desktop computers. Chief information officers order new Dells or HPs all the time. But the computers Whetstone brought in for his employees aren't the traditional metal boxes that sit next to desks or under monitors. They are "virtual" computers. Each employee has a keyboard and a...

There’s a particularly nasty virus making the rounds right now. It’s informally known as the Antivirus Live virus, as it bombards your PC with scary, real-looking security warnings and masquerades as a program — Antivirus Live (pictured) — that can protect and repair your system.

SNIPPET: SEOUL, Jan 27, 2010 (AFP) - South Korea's spy agency said Wednesday it had issued an alert against cyberattacks aimed at stealing data from government networks. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) did not say whether North Korea was responsible. Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based group specialising in the North, said the latest attack was led by Pyongyang, which runs elite hacker units. The NIS said its alert was heightened "from normal to concern" on Monday after a massive inflow of overseas hacking attacks. The attacks were aimed at stealing data from government and other state networks, it...

SNIPPET: "Zakaria Amara, 24, the leader of the group - which planned to detonate truck bombs outside the Toronto offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Toronto Stock Exchange and an Ontario military base - was sentenced to life in prison on Monday. He will be eligible for parole in 2016 - 10 years from the day of his arrest." SNIPPET: "Another conspirator, Saad Gaya, 22, was sentenced on Monday to 12 years in prison." SNIPPET: "Amin Mohamed Durrani took part in a plot to establish an armed, Al-Qaeda-type terror cell in Toronto "and then to create some sort...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

“The Worst of the Worst” SNIPPET: “These are some of the jihadi pundits who are making waves on al Qaeda’s Web forums today — and could potentially trade their keyboards for suicide vests tomorrow.” BY JARRET BRACHMAN | JANUARY 22, 2010

The first IP router on a commercial satellite has successfully passed its in-orbit test, moving the military and commercial customers closer to an era of faster satellite communications. The Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) technology is expected to reduce latency and increase efficiency, said Steven Boutelle, vice president of Cisco Global Government Solutions Group. Boutelle, who served as the U.S. Army’s chief information officer prior to joining Cisco, said IRIS can route data to multiple ground receivers in a single step, eliminating the need to double-hop to a teleport, reducing latency and increasing transponder utilization. The router and modem software...

SNIPPET: "MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Munich international airport was re-opened on Wednesday after a three-hour shut down caused when a passenger left the security check even though his laptop computer set off an explosives detector, police said. About 1,200 police did not find the man in their search of the terminal, which was shut down and completely evacuated. "

Just a few months ago my old computer reached the point where duct tape wouldn't help. My plan of having multiple drives didn't work, 2 out of 3 blew out with the rest of the package.My new computer came with Vista which started showing signs of instability almost right away. I heard Rush talking about Carbonite backup and signed up for the plan. Last Thursday my OS really started going bonkers, nothing I tried would help. System restore would not work at all. Late Saturday I ran a reformat and recovery and got back on line. I only reinstalled the...

I was just sitting at my computer and my antivirus software warned me that an attamp to attack my computer had been blocked. When I clicked on details, the offending source was homelandsecurity.com. Just weird.

Google’s Nexus One apparently got Apple worried enough to rush the fourth-generation iPhone ahead of schedule. The upgraded handset should make techies happy while giving iPhone critics a few less reasons to complain. Officials at KT, Apple’s exclusive iPhone carrier in South Korea, told the Korea Times that the Californian gadget maker might launch the fourth-generation iPhone in April, ahead of the usual June-July timeframe. Apple’s in a hurry, sources claim, because the Nexus One, Google’s so-called superphone, has upped the ante with its superior hardware based on a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and five-megapixel camera. Sources described the iPhone 4G...