Free Republic

A Saudi man who claims he invented the concept of e-commerce during the early days of the internet says that he is talks with big firms who wish to avoid litigation for stealing his world-changing idea. “There are now undergoing negotiations with big companies inside [the kingdom] and abroad to find a solution without opting to head to international judiciary,” Faisal bin Fahd al-Osaimi told the local Saudi daily Okaz. Osaimi said he presented the concept of e-commerce to the late King Fahd in 1991, the same year the internet was born. The late king reportedly referred him to the...

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, back from the campaign trail, have something productive to do in Washington. They’ve taken the lead against President Obama’s plan to give up U.S. protection of the open Internet. The Obama administration announced in 2014 it would end U.S. oversight by canceling the Commerce Department’s long-standing contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann. Despite enormous effort over the past two years by the multi-stakeholder community of network engineers and developers, no one found an alternative to U.S. stewardship that would protect the global Internet from censorship by authoritarian regimes. The...

The folks responsible for the entries in the Associated Press Stylebook have announced that the word “Internet” will no longer be uppercased, thus breaking my heart and making some of our writers very happy. We will lowercase internet effective June 1, when the 2016 Stylebook launches. #ACES2016 pic.twitter.com/nGz63zc5YP— AP Stylebook (@APStylebook) April 2, 2016 The AP Stylebook, which many newspapers and websites (one word? really?) use to guide their style efforts, defines Internet as “a decentralized, worldwide network of computers that can communicate with each other.” It’s a pretty big definition and has warranted the glory of a capital I. But...

Today we go big picture and present a re-blog of a post that appeared on the Zero Hedge website. The post is a brief summary of an interview that Alex Jones did with Matt Drudge. The reason that I am bringing it to your attention is that it represents another bad omen for His creation, i.e. the FAITHFUL. (see original ZH post here and Jones interview below) Now that you have seen the interview, I am bringing this issue to your attention to illustrate the sheer SCOPE of the CLAMPDOWN that is PRESENTLY taking place with respect to the DISSEMINATION...

Tyler Durden 10/09/2015 The very foundation of the free Internet is under severe threat from copyright laws that could ban independent media outlets, according to Matt Drudge. "I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said Drudge, warning web users that they were being pushed "pawn-like" into the cyber "ghettos" of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. As DCClothesline.com reports, During an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Drudge asserted that copyright laws which prevent websites from even linking to news stories were being advanced. “I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said...

Bill and Hillary Clintons’ convict crony Webster Hubbell said that Ken Starr’s investigation into his wrongdoing “made me a better person.” Hubbell, 67, told The Daily Caller that he has no bitterness toward independent prosecutor Starr, whose extensive investigation of the Clintons snared Hubbell for overbilling his clients at Arkansas’ Rose Law Firm — where he worked alongside Hillary Clinton. Hubbell served about a year and a half in prison. “You always have regrets,” Hubbell said. “I don’t have any bitterness toward anyone, even Ken Starr. He was doing his job. It made me a better person. It gave me...

More than 10,000 websites blocked users from computers in Congress on Friday, in a demonstration against any possible re-authorization of NSA surveillance powers. “This is a blackout,” read the site to which computers from congressional IP addresses were redirected. “We are blocking your access until you end mass surveillance laws.” “Right now the code affects only visitors from Congress, we’re willing to keep it up,” said Holmes Wilson, a co-founder of Fight for the Future, the group which wrote the code and is leading the online protest. The redirect site also includes semi-nude, sometimes explicit photos submitted by people, under...

Google slow to respond. A Polish security firm has discovered more vulnerabilities in the Java coding platform used on Google's App Engine (GAE) cloud computing service, which could allow users to get access beyond their own virtual machines. The Security Explorations team, which has made a name for itself by unearthing large numbers of security holes in Oracle's Java framework over the past few years, said it had reported seven vulnerabilities to Google, along with proof of concept code. Three of the flaws allow complete bypass of the GAE Java security sandbox. Such a bypass could be used by attackers...

We keep hearing about how awful it is that with the rise of the Internet people now flock to news sites that fit their worldview. We keep hearing about how awful it will be if the 500 channel cable television bonanza is lost to people jumping into their own personal warren holes of specialized subscription channels made available by the new frontier of streaming.

In post-Soviet Russia, you don’t make memes. Memes make (or unmake?) you. That is, at least, the only conclusion we can draw from an announcement made this week by Russia’s three-year-old media agency/Internet censor Roskomnadzor, which made it illegal to publish any Internet meme that depicts a public figure in a way that has nothing to do with his “personality.” Sad Keanu? Nope. Sad Putin? Absolutely not. “These ways of using [celebrities’ images] violate the laws governing personal data and harm the honor, dignity and business of public figures,” reads the policy announcement from Roskomnadzor. To be clear, this isn’t...

Taylor Swift has bought the web domain names TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult. The addresses are part of a public sale by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The web domain names go on sale to the public on 1 June but some stars and companies are being given the opportunity to buy them ahead of then.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted the end of the Internet as we know it. At the end of a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where his comments were webcast, he was asked for his prediction on the future of the Web. “I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear,” Schmidt said.

Federal regulators did not need President Obama to arrive at the net neutrality rules that it voted to issue on Thursday, according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler. After the agency on Thursday voted to issue tough new rules that fell largely in line with those the president wanted, Wheeler countered Republican concerns that the White House put any undue pressure on the legally independent agency. “I’m quite comfortable that we made this decision with independence and wisdom and based on the record,” he told reporters after the vote. Wheeler has previously said that he began to think...

James Cook November 6, 2014 The FBI and Europol have conducted a joint operation to take down the internet's thriving "deep web" drug marketplaces. The official FBI New York Twitter account just confirmed the seizure of Silk Road 2.0, saying that the site's alleged operator, Blake Benthall, was arrested in San Francisco on Wednesday. He now potentially faces life in prison, the FBI says. Benthall appears to be an employee of SpaceX, Elon Musk's private rocket company. (snip)

Anyone else having trouble? Major sites.. esp.. Yahoo ... all failing

And also her costume appears to be painted or possibly even just tattooed on. And I guess she’s in a crawling position, even though she’s clearly perched on a ledge, so she doesn’t really need to do the whole “wall-crawling” thing.

A Norwegian Islamic extremist has launched a Facebook campaign against the Europride festival, which is held in Oslo this week, describing homosexuality as "a nasty and cruel disease". British embassy flies the rainbow flag (25 Jun 14) Equality minister booed at Oslo Pride (23 Jun 14) Norway's Islamist referee convicted of hate speech (07 Feb 14) Ubaydullah Hussain, who was convicted of hate speech against Jews in February, launched the site on Wednesday with an attention-grabbing image of a rainbow flag in flames. "This group is created to show our opposition to "gay pride (which is really gay shame)," Hussain...

If you fancy yourself as a .guru or any other newfangled Internet address, Google wants you to try out its new domain name registration service. The search giant quietly launched Google Domains on Monday as an invite-only beta service. It’s being billed as an easy way to set up an address on the Web with simple management tools. Until now, Google has told people looking to register that it “doesn’t register or host domain names.” It referred them to partner companies including GoDaddy and eNom. Google Domains, though, has features that might make people think twice before going with other...

With the news about the Mozilla Foundation and the desire of many FReepers to drop the Firefox browser, there are some viable (IMHO) alternatives, both of which are character-based:Links is text WWW browser with tables and frames. It runs on Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Windows. Lynx is a text browser for the World Wide Web. Lynx 2.8.7 runs on Un*x, MacOS, VMS, Windows 95/98/NT, DOS386+ (but not 3.1, 3.11), as well as OS/2 EMX.