Free Republic

As if Boeing Co.'s Delta IV program doesn't have enough problems, a society column that ran last Sunday in the Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain gave Boeing's PR staff reason to take another swig of Pepto. The column by Chieftain writer Sandy Stein details a farewell party held recently in Pueblo for Phillip Marshall, who left Pueblo to become plant manager at Boeing's Delta rocket plant in Decatur. Based on e-mails to The Times from some of Marshall's new employees, not everyone took the "Sweet Home Alabama"-themed party in the "all-in-good-fun" spirit. In fact, it seems a lot of Boeing's Southern workers...

Columbia Investigator Fears NASA Won't Change By Marcia Dunn CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A Nobel Prize-winning member of the board investigating the space shuttle Columbia disaster says he fears NASA won't change its culture, possibly leading to yet another accident. The "same faulty reasoning" that led to the 1986 Challenger accident also led to Columbia, said Douglas Osheroff, one of the 13 board members wrapping up the report on the Columbia accident. "No matter how good the report looks, if we don't do something to change the way NASA makes its decisions, I would say that we will...

The Article Questioning SCO: A Hard Look at Nebulous ClaimsEben MoglenUsers of free software around the world are being pressured to pay The SCO Group, formerly Caldera, on the basis that SCO has “intellectual property” claims against the Linux operating system kernel or other free software that require users to buy a “license” from SCO. Allegations apparently serious have been made in an essentially unserious way: by press release, unaccompanied by evidence that would permit serious judgment of the factual basis for the claims. Firms that make significant use of free software are trying to evaluate the factual and legal...

The Intrinsic Rights Of Martian Bugs The Spacefaring Web 3.14 by John Carter McKnight Scottsdale - Aug 01, 2003 Recent evidence of vast amounts of water ice on Mars supports the possibility of indigenous life. At the same time, that water could enable human settlement and massive environmental engineering, or terraforming . A moral conflict could face us soon, pitting Terrestrial life against the Martian. The course of action we choose should be informed by broad debate: the ethics, as much as the biology, of Mars deserves full exploration. Should intelligent extra-terrestrial life be discovered, presumably through a deep-space...

<p>LOS ANGELES - The Department of Homeland Security has issued an unprecedented second warning to Internet users about a security flaw in Microsoft Corp. software that could leave about 75 percent of the country's computers vulnerable to hacker attacks.</p> <p>The latest warning comes two weeks after Microsoft issued a bulletin notifying computer users it had discovered a critical flaw in its most common Windows operating systems, including its newest versions, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.</p>

SCO Group's ongoing legal action against IBM and end users of Linux has quietly left one company out of the dog fight: Sun Microsystems.In the legal battle, SCO is claiming that the Linux operating system IBM sells and that many other companies use runs infringes on intellectual property rights it holds to some Unix code.Sun has started to embrace Linux, though on a much smaller scale than have competitors Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. However, it continues to back its Solaris version of Unix. Responding to a question from Silicon.com this week, Sun CEO Scott McNealy said: "I don’t want to...

(CNN) -- Seeing a rise in hacker activity that could be a prelude to a broad Internet attack, security experts Thursday urged computer users to protect their machines by installing a free patch offered by Microsoft. The Homeland Security Department warned it has detected an increase in hackers scanning the Internet to find vulnerable computers. "That's a sure sign the intruder community is actively interested in finding out who they can exploit," said Jeffrey Havrilla, an Internet security analyst at the government's CERT Coordination Center, which monitors computer security. Concerns mount The vulnerability affects almost all computers running Microsoft's Windows...

31 July 2003 Scott McNealy, the chairman, president and CEO of systems vendor Sun Microsystems, has dramatically warned companies of the legal dangers of using open source software such as the Linux operating system. Following on from SCO Group's threats to sue Linux users over its intellectual property claims, McNealy told an audience of UK businesses that they should steer clear of open source software unless their suppliers can offer insurance against such legal action. "Don't touch open source software unless you have a team of intellectual property lawyers prepared to scour every single piece [of the open source code]....

Coleman launches inquiry into RIAA's piracy crackdown(Washington-AP) -- Senator Norm Coleman has begun an inquiry into the recording industry's copyright lawsuits against online music swappers.Coleman says the recording industry's tactics could ensnare innocent people.The Minnesota Republican chairs the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations. He's asked the Recording Industry Association of America for copies of its subpoenas issued to Internet providers, and description of its safeguards against targeting innocent people. Coleman says the industry has legitimate concerns about copyright infringement. But he says the industry seems to have adopted a ``shotgun'' approach that could hurt people who don't know the rules...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government and industry experts are increasingly concerned about brewing hacker activity they consider a precursor to a broad Internet attack that will target a serious flaw in Windows software from Microsoft Corp. Experts are advising computer users with renewed urgency to apply a free repairing patch that Microsoft has offered on its Web site since July 16, when it acknowledged that the flaw affected nearly all versions of its flagship Windows operating system software. The Homeland Security Department cautioned Wednesday that hackers in recent days have successfully tested new tools to seize control of such vulnerable...

IBM exec: 'Forces' at work against Linux By Andrew ColleyStaff Writer, CNET News.comJuly 30, 2003, 12:57 PM PT An IBM executive has claimed that a "set of forces" is attempting to derail Linux, and hinted that Microsoft and SCO Group are among those responsible. Al Zollar, a general manager of sales for IBM eServer iSeries, told delegates attending the company's Asia Pacific Strategic Planning Conference in Queensland, Australia, on Tuesday that a "set of forces" was attempting to stymie adoption of the open-source operating system. "They're mostly located in Redmond, although they have recruited a few allies," said Zollar. Microsoft...

THE SCO WAR might go down as the first Open Source lawsuit, in a couple of senses. First, because the GNU General Public License, or GPL, might be legally tested for the first time. Secondly, SCO has probably sealed its defeat by ticking off many intelligent Open Source users. It's quite probable that the GPL will be tested in court. If not in the SCO vs IBM case, then in other litigation, either by or against SCO. IBM recently issued a memo, as reported by C|Net here. The IBM memo explicitly refers to SCO's prior distribution of Linux under the...

Is anyone else having trouble accessing their msn.com email tonight?

I can not get this picture to post inside a thread. I am just curious. I never had any problems before posting pictures, but this one is the only one with a http://www33. Is it something to do with brinkster's redirection? Thanks for any help.

AMD quietly trimmed the prices of its top-two single-processor system Opteron 100 series and its dual-processor Opteron 200 series yesterday possibly paving the way for a new, faster version of the chips. The Opteron 144's price was cut from $669 to $438, a cut of around 35 per cent. The Opteron 142 fell from $438 to $292, down 33 per cent. the Opteron 140 remains unchanged at $229. All prices are for processors sold in batches of 1000. The Opteron 244 was previously priced at $794; now it's $690, a drop of 13 per cent. The Opteron 242's price was...

update IBM has launched a counterstrike against SCO Group's attack on Linux users, arguing that SCO's demands for Unix license payments are undermined by its earlier shipment of an open-source Linux product. IBM's assertion came in a message to its sales force last Thursday evening, four days after SCO said Linux users must pay the company for a Unix license or face possible legal action. SCO Group, owner of the Unix intellectual property, contends that Unix code was illegally copied line by line into Linux and that companies such as IBM illegally transferred improvements made to Unix into Linux. SCO's...

Men should think twice about how tight they wear a necktie because it could increase their chances of developing glaucoma, a group of serious eye diseases. Research reported in the British Journal of Ophthalmology on Tuesday showed that a tight necktie raises blood pressure in the eye, which is a leading risk factor in the illness that can lead to damage to the optic nerve and loss of vision. "A tight necktie increases IOP (intraocular pressure) in both normal subjects and glaucoma patients and could affect the diagnosis and management of glaucoma," said Dr Robert Ritch of the New York...

The U.S. budget deficit doesn't foreshadow a decrease in defense spending, Northrop Grumman Corp. Chief Executive Ron Sugar said in an interview on Fox News on Monday. "It's interesting that only a (small) percent of our gross national product is devoted to defense, but nothing can be more important, in my judgment, than the obligation of a nation to defend its people," Sugar said. "Given the threat is real, I think the resources are going to have to be there." Sugar also told Fox News the threat of a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. is "imminent," and that the...

As much of the world nears an Internet address crunch, North America stands as an island apart, threatening to fragment plans for the biggest overhaul of the Web in decades.Global momentum is growing for a new address system, known as IPv6, which promises to vastly expand the pool of unique numbers available for connecting PCs and other devices to the Net. The standard is widely seen as a necessary successor to the current IPv4 system, which some fear could run short of addresses in Asia and Europe within the next few years. But few analysts expect the problem to affect...

BALD EAGLE STATE FOREST, Pa. - At first glance, the forest around Sand Spring Run looks just as it should, with a lush understory of grasses and ferns shaded by tall maple, oak and hemlock. But a closer look shows that the hemlock trees — a keystone species along streams like this — are under attack from at least two insects with the potential to devastate hemlock stands throughout the Northeast. Usually dark green, the hemlock's needles have faded to a pale, almost yellow color indicative of an infestation of elongate hemlock scale insects. The cottony, white spots indicate the...