Free Republic

With the Supreme Court increasingly appearing to have made up its mind about SSM the liberals and media are gearing up for a huge party to end all parties. We all know how gracious leftists are in victory so it'll likely be difficult to surf the internet, watch tv, or even listen to the radio or read the newspaper regardless of whether you really cared about the ruling itself for a certain time. Anybody have any plans to take a break from the media or are you just going to weather it? Any tips on what to do until the...

"The Echo may be the closest thing we’ll have to a Star Trek computer at home." – CNET "Echo could hear my voice even when music was playing loudly…" – USA Today "With Amazon Echo, it was love at first sight." – Re/code What is Amazon Echo? Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It's hands-free and always on. With seven microphones and beam-forming technology, Echo can hear you from across the room—even while music is playing. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. Echo connects to Alexa, a cloud-based voice service,...

'XARA' is an acronym for 'unauthorized cross-app resource access' and lumps together several exploits against OS X and iOS. Update: Apple has provided iMore with the following comment on the XARA exploits: Earlier this week we implemented a server-side app security update that secures app data and blocks apps with sandbox configuration issues from the Mac App Store," an Apple spokesperson told iMore. "We have additional fixes in progress and are working with the researchers to investigate the claims in their paper." The XARA exploits, recently disclosed to the public in a paper titled Unauthorized cross-app resource access on Mac...

There's no more bad blood between Apple and Taylor Swift. After the singer took the hardware giant to task in an open letter, for deal terms specifying that no labels would be paid during a user's free 90-day-trial of Apple Music, the company backed down and changed course, telling Billboard Swift's words hit home.How long had they been contemplating the concession and will Apple, a company currently valued at $700 billion, eat the cost at its own expense? Those were just a couple of the questions we had for Apple senior vice president of internet services and software Eddy Cue.Apple...

The NSA and its British counterpart the GCHQ have put extensive effort into hacking popular security software products to “track users and infiltrate networks,” according to the latest round of Snowden docs unearthed today by The Intercept. Cybersecurity companies, including the Moscow-headquartered Kaspersky Lab, were targeted by government agencies to gain intelligence of the latest exploits. Details of the security software’s inner workings were deciphered by agencies through a process called software reverse engineering (SRE), which allowed them to analyze and exploit the software suites. A top-secret warrant renewal request issued by the GCHQ details the motivations behind infiltrating the...

Every once in a while, I find myself in a situation where I'm being asked by someone who wants to migrate from a Microsoft Windows operating system if Linux is indeed a new home for Windows refugees.Migrating from an operating system to a different one is not for everyone, no matter if you're switching from Windows to Linux, or from Linux to Mac, or from Mac to Windows, as it involves special hardware (in some cases) and a lot of time learning how the new OS works, something that we are short of these days.It just happens that I’ve had...

Well, that was a “Swift” response. Less than 24 hours after chart-topping singer Taylor Swift criticized Apple for not paying royalties to artists during the three-month free-trial period for its new Apple Music service, the company’s chief content czar signaled the policy has been reversed via Twitter. “Apple will always make sure that artist are paid,” tweeted Apple’s Eddy Cue on Sunday night in a series of three tweets that called out Swift. Cue’s response may have headed off what could have been a bruising battle for Apple during a crucial period in which Apple Music is attempting to compete...

Karen Finley, former CEO of the Phoenix-based Redflex Traffic Systems, pleaded guilty today in federal court to an eight-year bribery-and-fraud scheme that helped the company retain photo-enforcement contracts with two Ohio cities. Finley, 55, of Cave Creek, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Terence P. Kemp of the Southern District of Ohio to a charge of "conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery and honest services wire and mail fraud," the U.S. Department of Justice announced this morning. She resigned from the company in 2013 after the corruption scheme was alleged by a whistle-blower. Top executives in Redflex's Australian-based parent company,...

Microsoft backtracks blog post containing apparent "Free" Windows 10 upgrade promise for all preview testers Microsoft has been forced to quietly edit a misleading blog post that seemed to suggest that anyone could get their mitts on Windows 10 for free – if they first installed a test version of Redmond's upcoming operating system for PCs. The only caveat appeared to be that folk had to use a Microsoft Account (MSA) that's connected to the firm's Windows Insider program. Microsoft had said that a freebie upgrade would then be applied for anyone who has installed its latest Windows 10 preview...

The superstar said Sunday that she will not allow her album '1989' on Apple's new streaming service She explained on Tumblr that this was because the tech giant will not pay for songs streamed during free trial period These are the echoed sentiments of every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much.' Swift's '1989' was by far the top-selling US album last year and remains high on charts - insisted that she was speaking for all artists and not just herself. Swift found the...

Sunday, June 21, 2015: Windows 10 is the current hot topic of discussion among techies. Microsoft has already made it clear that Windows 10 upgrade will be absolutely free. The free upgrade will move you to the same edition of Windows that you are currently using. For example, if you are upgrading from Windows 7 Home Premium, you will be upgraded to Windows 10 Home. However, you will have to pay to upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro. here is a large base of users who are using unlicensed version of Windows. Some users are still running...

This PC gets a free Windows 10 upgrade, no questions asked In the always confusing world of Microsoft licensing, there are two sets of rules.One is written down in license agreements, drafted by Microsoft's large legal team, with separate terms for PC makers and end users. These combined terms are extremely specific about the rights and responsibilities of every party to the license agreement. They are aimed primarily at Microsoft's commercial customers and its PC-building partners, who account for more than 98 percent of all revenue from Windows desktop licenses.The other set of rules is unwritten, for the most part....

"There definitely seems to be a coalescing of opinions to opt out," one indie label executive tells Rolling Stone Days after Apple executives announced their splashy new music-streaming service last week before a roaring crowd of developers in San Francisco, they presented 250-page licensing contracts to skeptical independent record labels. Indie sources say the tech giant does not intend to pay them royalties for Apple Music's free, heavily marketed, three-month trial period — and many are refusing to sign. "I hesitate to say 'everyone,' but a lot of independent labels are of the same mind — that it's kind of...

She said she wanted to draw attention to feral cat problemA New Castle woman is tired of the feral cats on Cedar Street. Rochelle Smolnik said they threaten her children and are dangerous. “He had a broken tail and his leg was all scratched up,” her 8-year-old daughter, Lily Smolnik, said, “And he hissed at me and he started to growl at me too and he had white stuff all coming out of his mouth.” VIDEO: Watch Shannon Perrine's report The mother was so frustrated, that she sounded off on Facebook. One post read: “F.Y.I. to all neighbors on...

Reviving an old computer is like restoring a classic car: There’s a thrill from bringing the ancient into the modern world. So it was with my first “real” computer, my Mac Plus, when I decided to bring it forward three decades and introduce it to the modern Web. It’s a lowly machine, my Mac. The specs pale in comparison to even my Kindle: 8 MHz CPU, 4 MB RAM, 50 MB hard drive, and 512 x 384 pixel black-and-white screen. My current desktop PC is on the order of 200,000 times faster—not even including the GPU. Still, that Mac Plus...

Scientists have collaborated to create "what is essentially the world's thinnest light bulb". The development is yet another based upon the pure carbon wonder-material called graphene. Researchers passed current though atom-thin, flexible, transparent strips of graphene which reached temperatures over 2500°C, producing bright light visible to the naked eye.

Apple has determined that a very small number of 3TB hard drives used in 27-inch iMac systems, may fail under certain conditions. These systems were sold between December 2012 and September 2013. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will replace affected hard drives free of charge. Apple is contacting affected iMac owners who provided a valid email address during the product registration process to let them know about this program. If you have not been contacted, but think you have a 3TB hard drive, you can enter your serial number to see if it’s part of this program here....

The first time I seriously tried to use the Apple Watch was to board a plane on a recent cross-country trip. The experience showed the promise of wearable devices, but it also revealed there are challenges to solve before smartwatches are worth buying for anyone other than tech enthusiasts eager to try the latest gadget. I previously read that I’d be able to call up my boarding pass on the Apple Watch, so I opened the United Airlines app by tapping its logo in the app menu. But the process was a bit more complicated than I thought. The app...

[NOTE: This one is for the techies, especially those evaluating Windows 10 Previews] Microsoft has released Build 10136 of Windows 10 Mobile, part of the “One Windows” wave set to be released later this year. Windows 10 for PCs is due on 29 July, but the phone version is likely to follow later. It's just as well, since this build still does not feel release-ready, though progress from the last build is dramatic and the operating system now looks better and works more smoothly. The main deficiencies are with performance overall, and bugs in specific apps. Performance is inconsistent; on...

Does the Indiana University XARA whitepaper make your head hurt? Here's an in-depth look at what "cross-app resource attacks" actually mean for your iOS and OS X systems. This week, security researchers from Indiana University released details of four security vulnerabilities they discovered in Mac OS X and iOS. The researchers detailed their discoveries of what they call "cross-app resource attacks" (referred to as XARA) in a whitepaper released Wednesday. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of confusion surrounding their research. If you're not at all familiar with the XARA exploits or are looking for a high-level overview, start with...