Free Republic

Sky News is now streaming its TV channel for free over its website 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite Rupert Murdoch's mumblings about charging for all online content, the site is free - for now at least. Murdoch said yesterday that it was time for aggregators and search engines must start paying for news content - a slight refinement on previous announcements which seemed to want to get some money out of the readers.

So the United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) puts forward the denier’s opinion that having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate so-called greenhouse gasses is bad for the economic strength of the United States. Some companies quit the Chamber. Now we’ve got fake USCC Web sites and news releases “reversing” their opinion? The fake Web page that has the release is exactly like the Chambers real site, but the URL is totally wrong. Click on the graphic below to see the full page.

The Web can be a mean-spirited place. But when it comes to online reviews, the Internet is a village where the books are strong, YouTube clips are good-looking and the dog food is above average. One of the Web's little secrets is that when consumers write online reviews, they tend to leave positive ratings: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Internet retailer Newegg Inc. plans an initial public offering of stock worth up to $175 million, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission on Monday. City of Industry, Calif.-based Newegg focuses on sales of electronics, hardware and software to consumers and small businesses. The company did not specify the timing of its IPO, on which market it intends to float its shares or its intended ticker symbol. Newegg said it plans to use the IPO proceeds to repay debt and for general corporate purposes, while using $25 million to expand in Canada and...

In recent quarters Oracle has been taking aim at Salesforce.com, noting that its Siebel On Demand was poaching customers. On Thursday it was Salesforce’s turn to return fire. Following Salesforce’s fiscal second quarter earnings, CEO Marc Benioff, as chatty as ever, took aim at his trash talking nemesis, Oracle chief Larry Ellison. Benioff said on a conference call: I am excited to welcome back Success Factors to the Salesforce.com family. Success Factors dropped Oracle On Demand after the application failed to deliver and sales reps pleaded to return to Salesforce. When sales teams are demanding your application to support their...

Over the next decade, systems which create and store digital records of people's movements through public space will be woven inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. We are already starting to see such systems now, and there will be many more in the near future. Here are some examples you might already have used or read about: Monthly transit swipe-cards Electronic tolling devices (FastTrak, EZpass, congestion pricing) Cellphones Services telling you when your friends are nearby Searches on your PDA for services and businesses near your current location Free Wi-Fi with ads for businesses near the network access point...

There's no economic doom and gloom for Silicon Valley tech workers, those who who still have their jobs, that is. The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the health of Silicon Valley shows tech workers doing better now than they were during the dotcom boom -- much better. "While the employment picture may sound a bit negative, the wage picture was much more sunny," said Amar Mann, regional economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, who co-authored the report titled "After the Dot-Com Bubble: Silicon Valley High-Tech Employment and wages in 2001 and 2008." The BLS,...

I don’t like carrying cell phones. When it came to buying a wireless phone, I was one of the last holdouts. My house is a bit remote and to this date it has absolutely no cell coverage. Back in 2001, almost everyone I knew already had a cell phone. Finally, I broke down and bought a top of the line Motorola. It was in the $300 plus price range with a two year contract. I even bought a serial port Outlook synchronization device to download contacts and calendar information. I did have fun learning to use all of the device’s...

The 'Creative' Technology Behind The AP's News Registry from the magic-beans dept The Associated Press' attempt to DRM the news is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but its claims for the news registry's capabilities seem pretty misguided, once you examine the technology behind it (the "magic DRM beans"). Ed Felten dug into the details of the registry's microformat, hNews, which the AP announced a few weeks earlier, and here's where it gets really interesting: the hNews rights field is based on the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL). If the AP thinks it'll be able to build...

We've been closely following EEStor's potentially game-changing ultracapacitor--a technology that could allow for electric cars that charge almost instantaneously and drive hundreds of miles on a single charge. And if a purportedly "leaked" phone conversation from EEStor CEO Richard Weir currently making the rounds is legit, the long-in-development ultracapacitor has hit a breakthrough, and could be unveiled within months. ... EEStor's ultracapacitor works more or less exactly like the capacitors found in electronics today, briefly holding and releasing small charges, only on a much larger scale; it would be able rapidly take on enough juice to power a car for...

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

New Version Reflects Lowered Price on Mac Notebook NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks. In the new version of the ad, Lauren doesn't talk about how much the Mac costs, but she does say: 'It seems like you're paying a lot for the brand.' 'Greatest single phone call' Just last week Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was ecstatic about a phone call from Apple lawyers, who demanded that Microsoft stop showing...

I came in nn it appears a harddrive was failing. Jumped in the car to take it to the computer guy. I should have a solid backup to restore plus I had a new 80 gig HD in a box.

WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies are facing a severe shortage of computer specialists, even as a growing wave of coordinated cyberattacks against the government poses potential national security risks, a private study found.

The doctrine of karma states that one's state in this life is a result of actions (both physical and mental) in past incarnations, and action in this life can determine one's destiny in future incarnations. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Karmic Koala, the newest member of our alliterative menagerie. Mark Shuttleworth introduces Ubuntu 9.10-Karmic Koala! A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2, and making it...

Note: The following text is a quote: 09 July 2009 EGYPT ARRESTS TERRORIST CELL OF 25 MEMBERS CAIRO, July 9 (Xinhua) The Egyptian authorities have arrested a terrorist cell of 25 members, 24 Egyptians and one Palestinian, for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in Suez Canal, Egyptian Interior Ministry said in statement issued on Thursday. According to the statement, the members of the cell who believe in Jihad (Holy War) were located in Cairo, Alexandria and Daqahlia governorates and communicated through internet with other terrorist groups outside Egypt. The cell's members, mostly engineers, were developing high-tech and electronic devices...

I have a .VOB file, from a DVD, from which I would like to extract 10 minutes. I am using Avidemux, but find the documentation to be virtually nonexistent. I have a really simple objective: extract a continuous 10 minutes from this original .VOB file. IF this were an audio file, and IF I were using Audacity, the process is simple: I would highlight the section of audio. Then I would - "trim" the audio outside the shaded area - save the result as a new file Or, I could - copy the highlighted section - open a new file...

The job picture shows IT jobs suffering along with the rest of the economy, but the hemorrhaging appears to have stopped in 2Q. BY CHRIS MURPHY The hemorrhaging of IT jobs stopped in the second quarter, as the IT sector added about 44,000 jobs amid a moribund white-collar job market, the latest government surveys show. However, the IT unemployment rate, at 5.5%, remains at its worst mark in five years. The economy employs about 8% fewer IT professionals than one year ago, a 343,000 job decline, with just under 3.8 million employed today. The analysis is based on Bureau of...

15 Must-Have Web Apps for Students June 28, 2009 in Tips and Tools Welcome! If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to get updates in your RSS feed reader. Thanks for visiting! This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer. For more from Karen, check out her blog about Online College Courses, or follow her on Twitter. College students are increasingly reliant on computers – and, for many of us, that means spending tons of money software that we’d rather not use anyway. The reality, though, is that there are a ton of great, free...

China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software Tuesday, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Web surfers hours before it was due to take effect.