Free Republic

The television two-step is familiar to nearly every household with a TV set and a Netflix subscription. To watch cable, the television must be on one setting; to browse Netflix, it has to be on another. For some family members, toggling between the two is easy; for others, it’s so befuddling that it discourages any straying from cable at all. Now, in a sign of on-demand TV’s popularity, some cable companies, including Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, are talking with Netflix about doing away with the two-step and making the subscription service — and other online video services —...

On a characteristically foggy evening here, a group of predominantly single venture capitalists, tech executives, hedge-fund managers and philanthropists gathered for a cocktail party in a penultimate-floor suite at the St. Regis apartment complex. As guests ate oysters, baby lamb chops and perhaps the world’s smallest cheeseburgers, they were pitched a multiday, intellectually rigorous singles mixer to be held in January 2014 on Necker Island, Richard Branson’s 74-acre Caribbean paradise, “curated” by Kelleher International, a long-running, high-end matchmaking service that is targeting Silicon Valley with particular vigor. Wearing an Alexander McQueen dress and towering Valentino heels as she sold the...

Prepaid phone plans, where you pay the full price for a cellphone and then pay lower monthly rates without a contract, seem to offer what most budget-conscious people want. So why haven’t they really caught on?

Over the weekend a very interesting op-ed appeared out of the Xinhua news agency. Before we get going let’s just remind ourselves just who Xinhua is – from wiki:The Xinhua News Agency (/ˈʃi�nhwɑ�/;[1]) is the official press agency of the People’s Republic of China and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences in China. It is the largest news agency in China, ahead of the China News Service. Xinhua is subordinate to the State Council and reports to the Communist Party of China’s Propaganda and Public Information Departments. Xinhua’s headquarters complex, the “pencil building”, is at No. 57...

Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She's also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story. So Lucy's enjoying her GYPSY life, and she's very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing: Lucy's...

FULL TITLE: Walmart to foot bill for food stamp spending spree fiasco sparked by computer glitch - because they were supposed to stick to $50 limit per customer WalMart will have to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars of groceries bought by Louisiana food stamp recipients after a computer glitch gave them unlimited funds on their government-issued credit cards. The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, which oversees the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card program in the state, said WalMart could have instituted an emergency $50 limit for each customer, but chose not to - and as a...

The healthcare.gov website has been online for two weeks. But folks are having trouble signing up. One person who says she's been trying for two weeks straight to sign up is CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. ..... Snip .....

The Tech Report crew seems to think that SteamOS and Mantle could ruin PC gaming. I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion but I'm sure you guys will have plenty to say on the topic. Now, all of a sudden, next year's gaming landscape looks to be shaping up very differently. Instead of three major platforms based on a common hardware architecture, game developers will face two monolithic platforms and a fragmented one—the PC—that will have two starkly different operating systems and three different APIs—Direct3D, OpenGL, and Mantle.

I don't understand how not increasing the debt ceiling is going to cause a default. Defaults come from not paying debt. Besides, borrowing money to pay money owed is not a good budget plan. Can't the GOP pass a bill releasing the funds to pay our debt while holding back the debt ceiling increase .... wouldn't that amount to a spending cuts and can't we capitalize on that?

The last surviving stretch of German autobahn built under Hitler is set to disappear, almost 80 years after it was first constructed. The four-kilometer stretch of road on the A11, northeast of Berlin in the state of Brandenburg, dates from 1936 and was part of Hitler’s massive motorway-building program of the Reichsautobahn.Newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that the road survived Nazism and Communism and, despite some repair work, is still the original stretch from the 1930s. …

Dow futures down -105 at this time. Were -95 a little earlier.

All is not well in the luxury world. Stalwart luxury buyers in China are cutting back, according to recent statements from Burberry and Richemont, among others. New data from research firm Euromonitor International confirms that the industry is in a bit of a slump. Global luxury sales are on track to grow by 3% this year, the slowest rate in four years. Euromonitor reckons that growth will pick up next year, though, driven by its strongest segment in recent years: accessories, specifically men’s accessories. The luxury goods industry has been “manning up” of late, says Fflur Roberts of Euromonitor. A...

We use the term “reserve currency” when referring to the common use of the dollar by other countries when settling their international trade accounts. For example, if Canada buys goods from China, it may pay China in US dollars rather than Canadian dollars, and vice versa. However, the foundation from which the term originated no longer exists, and today the dollar is called a “reserve currency” simply because foreign countries hold it in great quantity to facilitate trade. The first reserve currency was the British pound sterling. Because the pound was “good as gold,” many countries found it more convenient...

Meet the newest mascot at Fukushima Industries! This cute, winged egg is the perfect face for a company that manufactures the kind of industrial refrigerators, blast chillers, freezers and refrigerated showcases that you might find in a restaurant or a supermarket. The name they chose for this little egghead, though, probably needed a bit more work…

One thing I haven't seen discussed or brought up is the fact that any shutdown, slim down or even default is repairable and only a temporary problem. But the creeping (well, it's past creeping now) socialism being brought about by Obama's executive orders, his unimpeded co-op of enumerate Congressional powers, his decisions to not enforce laws he doesn't like -- those are irreparable. Government rarely (peacefully) goes backwards. Taxes never go down and agency power is always expanding behind the backs of their congressional oversight. So bring on the shutdown, slimdown or default. Those can be fixed. Use those as...

He is a passionate campaigner on green issues, and now Jeremy Irons has backed a campaign to ban lorries from the quaint Oxfordshire town where he lives. The Oscar–winning actor has thrown his weight behind an action group to prevent HGVs using the narrow streets of Watlington as a rat-run between the M40 and M4. The market town—reputedly the smallest in the country—is regularly snarled up with lorries whose drivers, looking for a shortcut between Oxford and Reading, are directed there by their satnavs. …

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee has put together this chart to show that U.S. has added two times more debt than economic output in the last two years:"President Obama said that increasing the debt limit does not increase the debt," the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee says in a statement. "But when the Treasury department started using so-called extraordinary measures to avoid a breach of the debt ceiling in May, 2011, the debt limit stood at $14,294 billion. "Today it stands at $16,699 billion, which was reached when Treasury started using extraordinary measures in May...

Dr. Ben Carson, the former director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, drew a parallel between Obamacare and “socialized medicine” and cited Communist leader Vladimir Lenin’s support for government-run health care as the “keystone to the establishment of a socialist state.” Speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. on Friday, Dr. Carson said that Obamacare “was never about healthcare. It was about control,” and making all Americans “subservient to the government.” He then commented on why the Democrat-dominant Congress in 2010 moved swiftly to pass the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. “And why did they...

Best-selling conservative author Ann Coulter, who has used her nine books to launch vicious attacks on Democrats, is turning her guns on Republicans in a new book out Monday, calling Florida Sen. Marco Rubio a hypocrite, urging donors freeze contributions to the GOP, and demanding that only governors or senators run for the party’s presidential nomination. Her point in “Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 -- Especially a Republican” is to shake the party out of its doldrums in time for the 2014 and 2016 elections. “Elections matter. We’re trying to make the country a better place. But if our...

(Reference: E.F. Lincoln's The Medieval Legacy, London, Macgibbon & Kee; c1961.) The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" stated: "William set aside a vast deer preserve and imposed laws concerning it, so that whoever slew a hart or hind was to be blinded. He forbade the killing of boars, even as the killing of harts, for he loved the tall deer as if he had been their father...The rich complained and the poor lamented, but he was so stern that he cared not though all might hate him." (at 135). William established as forest or game preserve large tracts that embraced villages and wastelands...

Video of why we can't compete with the Chinese: http://static.video.qq.com/TPout.swf?auto=1&vid=r010673xh67

Lets raise the Debt Ceiling to 100 Trillion dollars,it's all borrowed money anyway,digitized,monetized,whatever.We pay off the 17 Trillion dollar debt,send everyone in the United States a check for a 1000 dollars and there will be trillions left over to fund everything!

Husband is out mowing the lawn. Unexpectedly, a cat runs in front of the mower. He manages to miss hitting the cat directly, but cuts off the cat's tail. He picks up the cat and the tail and yells to his wife for help. When she arrives, the panicked husband says "Look what's happened, what should we do???" We wife replies, "Take him to Walmart!" The husband replies, "Wallmart????, Why Walmart????!!!!"

**SNIP**Unlike Americans who tell pollsters they don’t like the new law and find it confusing, the business professionals dealing with the day-to-day reality of the new health insurance landscape accept the Affordable Care Act as straight forward approach to begin cutting the rising cost of health care for people and companies. At the conference, sponsored by the Sun Life Financial Inc., these health care and corporate professionals pointed to reductions in the expense health care puts on small businesses with less than 50 workers. And they think people who work for small companies – as well as part time workers--...

The dilapidated offices where plans for the Titanic were drawn up are to be re-opened as part of a £5 million regeneration project. The future of the historic building that used to house the headquarters and design studios of Harland and Wolff shipbuilders in Belfast has been secured by the Heritage Lottery Fund award. While the drawing offices will be opened for public use, the majority of the landmark structure is set to be transformed into a luxury Titanic-themed boutique hotel. The listed building is only yards from where the doomed liner was built and then launched more than a...

Harvest is in full swing across the country, and farmers in many states are surprised at the abundance of corn they’re getting from their fields. Dairy farmer Ben Steffen, who also grows corn, soybeans and wheat on 1,900 acres near the southeastern Nebraska town of Humboldt, said his first corn field brought in 168 bushels an acre, above the average of 140. … The best crops in the U.S. are in areas that received adequate rain combined with cooler temperatures at the time corn pollinated, a welcome sight after last year’s dismal harvest due to the drought withering corn and...

A New York State Supreme Court judge on Tuesday voided Nissan’s contract with New York Citys’ Taxi and Limousine Commission that would have forced taxicab operators to buy and use taxis based on the Nissan NV200 van. Judge Shlomo Hagler said that the commission “exceeded its authority” by awarding Nissan the exclusive ten year contract to supply New York City’s taxis. The ruling was the outcome of a lawsuit filed against the commission by the Greater New York Taxi Association. Nissan beat out Ford and a Turkish company in a 2011 competition to win the contract, part of NYC Mayor...

[Summary: The Education Establishment likes to pretend that new digital options mean kids don’t need traditional skills. That is a non-sequitur and probably dishonest. ] A new development in education is deciding what “literacy” should be in the 21st century.  With a swirl of technological breakthroughs all around us, elite educators are gaga at the plethora of excuses for pooh-poohing subjects routinely taught in the dark age known as the 20th century.  The National Council of Teachers of English recently announced: “Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change,...

The left has been doing this for years, but you never hear them screaming, that they should be labeled as politically sponsored. If you think about it, it is a very effective and CHEAP was to get your propaganda into the minds of the sheep, in a specific window of time. No one is recognizing this as a propaganda tool... The left hides behind "artistic free speech" to get what they want.

A bill calle dthe Gramham Rudman Bill or somthing like that used to prevent over spending. Why isn't that ever talked about anymore?

The National Security Agency's $2 billion mega spy center is going up in flames. Technical glitches have sparked fiery explosions within the NSA's newest and largest data storage facility in Utah, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and delaying the facility's opening by one year. And no one seems to know how to fix it. - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/10/08/2-Billion-NSA-Spy-Center-Going-Flames#sthash.JiSTgTHk.dpuf

Liberals don't just indulge in magical thinking - the entire point of liberalism is to live inside magical thinking. As a result, liberals allow themselves to believe that their chosen method of power, namely soft-totalitarian socialist-communism, is not just powerful, but infinitely powerful. Because magical thinking is not just a partial break from personal responsibility, it is an absolute break that requires an absolute power to protect them from every having to come out of it. So, when the limits of their power finally are broken by the realities of the actual world they live in, they literally cannot grasp...

How would you react if telekinesis was real? Well, we imagine it would look something like this. Those were terrified customers at a coffee shop in West Village, Manhattan after a young girl seemingly slammed a man against the wall using other-worldly powers. But before you start freaking out yourself, we’ll go ahead and let you know the scene wasn’t real. It was actually a publicity stunt designed to promote the upcoming horror film remake “Carrie," which stars Chloe Moretz as the shy outsider who terrorizes a town with her telekinetic powers after being pushed too far by a prank...

I’m waiting for the American Psychological Association to declare that Peter Pan Syndrome is not only nothing to be ashamed of, but something to celebrate. Why should those in what used to be called the young adult years bother to grow up, when our benevolent government is encouraging them to remain dependent well into their 20s? In this, the first leg of our glorious new non-workers’ paradise of Obamacare, there are dozens — probably hundreds — of ways that the new regime will make health care less effective, more expensive, less efficient, more dysfunctional, more confusing and more byzantine. But...

Lawsuit reform is an issue that enjoys wide-ranging bipartisan support, with demonstrated appeal to advocates of small government and progressive government alike. All Americans have an interest in the fundamental rule of law and in the fair and justified treatment of participants in our economy. As lawsuit reform aims to pursue accurate justice, so it aims to keep the economy properly functioning. Oklahoma legislators recently voted in bipartisan majorities to reinstate more than two dozen lawsuit reforms that had previously been struck down on a technicality by the state supreme court. Alabama passed a key lawsuit reform with overwhelming majorities...

Days before the government “shutdown” started, the Air Force contracted for an $84,380 upgrade on its “Exit” signs for the Joint Base Charleston-Weapons Station in Goose Creek, S.C. According to the Statement of Work, “approximately 973 existing wall/ceiling mounted exit lighting signs” will be removed and replaced with “0.92 Watt LED lighting signs.” …

Biggest security purchase since Intel wolfed down McAfee Intrusion prevention's a hot topic in the world of security, as reflected in the $2.8bn price tag Cisco has paid to complete the acquisition of network security specialists Sourcefire.The purchase - which was announced in July - is the largest security firm purchase since Intel's $7.7bn acquisition of McAfee in 2010. And it's a huge personal payday for Marty Roesch, creator of the open-source intrusion protection system Snort. He took Snort's basic technology and built commercial code under the Sourcefire brand since 2001."I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sentimental. When...

UPDATED The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is preparing to make campaign donations to Republicans that vote to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, putting it at loggerheads with the Tea Party. That is significant, because The Chamber provides a financial counter balance to House incumbents that could face a primary challenger if they support a “clean” continuing resolution to fund the operation of the U.S. government or to raise the sovereign debt that can be issued by the United States Treasury to avoid a default. The shutdown crisis began last week over an attempt to nullify the...

Divided government requires bipartisan negotiation By Eric Cantor, Published: October 8 Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, is the House majority leader. For three years, Congress and the White House have been building to this moment. Not the debt limit or Obamacare specifically, but this clarifying moment of Washington dysfunction. President Obama has led us here by continually thwarting the will of Congress and dismissing its role in our constitutional republic. This must end. .... snip ....

The revamped $100 bill costs 12.5 cents to produce — a 60% increase over the 7.8 cents it cost to print the older version of the bill. The government has printed 3.5 billion of the new $100 bills, which it began delivering to financial institutions Tuesday. How soon customers will see the new bills depends on their distance from a regional Fed office, demand, and a few other factors. Among the reasons it’s more expensive than the older currency: Its new security features, which help prevent counterfeiting. For one, there’s a blue 3-D ribbon running through the center of the...

Poll in need of a freep: http://www.katu.com/news/national/House-GOP-dismisses-default-warnings-as-more-hype-226952791.html Currently: Obama 26% House Republicans 35%

Eating five times a day can help keep weight down, a new study has suggested, as scientists reject the idea that three daily meals is the key to staying healthy. Researchers say a daily routine of breakfast, lunch, dinner along with two further snacks a day can help shed pounds. But breaking the routine can lead to weight gain—for instance, skipping breakfast is associated with putting on weight, according to the study published in the International Journal of Obesity. …

It may only take a minute or two to boil a kettle, but the agonizing wait for that reassuring click is now over, with the launch of the world’s first WiFi version. The ultimate in mod cons for the consumer too busy—or lazy—to enter the kitchen and do the job manually, the iKettle can be switched on from your smartphone from anywhere in the home. The technology promises to cater for any “urgent hot drink scenario”, enabling the user to remain on the sofa, or in bed in the morning, until the water is ready to pour. …

U.S. banks, with nudging from regulators, are planning for the day when the economy recovers, rates rise, and depositors yank money from safe but low-paying accounts. Those withdrawals could be fast and painful for banks, which will have to pay depositors with either cash on hand, money borrowed from elsewhere, or in a worst case scenario the proceeds of asset sales. SNIP "What happens to deposits when rates rise is a big unknown," said Kerri Corn, director for market risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Washington, D.C. regulator. "That's a main worry for us." The...

″ Exclusive: Seems awfully antitrusty from this point of view Sources high up at Nvidia say that the program that bribed Origin PC to drop AMD products and publicly badmouth the company, its products, and anything related is called “Tier 0″. The plan was hatched by Nvidia sales and it has a few bits to it. Tier 0 partners have to drop competitive products, AMD in this case, publicly badmouth AMD, and put out press releases/bang the publicity drum on the subject. The idea is to make it look like a grassroots problem that high-end gaming PC makers are all...

It’s hard to watch any sporting event without seeing a commercial featuring a star athlete such as Peyton Manning or LeBron James. Now, a study published on Oct. 7 in Pediatrics shows that a lot of the foods they are promoting are unhealthy, concerning pediatricians because adolescents are among their primary viewers. “Professional athletes wouldn’t endorse tobacco today because it would be a liability for them,” lead study author Marie Bragg, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University, told the Globe and Mail. “We’re hoping one day that the same would be true for unhealthy foods.” …

European lawmakers are trying to tighten rules governing the multi-billion dollar tobacco market by imposing bigger and bolder warnings on cigarette packs, banning most flavorings like menthol and beefing up regulation of electronic cigarettes. … Treatment of smoke-related diseases costs about €25 billion ($34 billion) a year, and the EU estimates that there are around 700,000 smoking-related deaths annually across the 28-nation bloc. …

I'm sorry for the vanity, but I just can't stop myself from venting my anger, sitting here as I am with CNN's "Crossfire" on TV in front of me. I thought Stephanie Cutter was one world-class you-know-what during the campaign last November. But, now, she is supposedly qualified to be in this show? She asks questions and then answers them herself. She interrupts, badgers, rudely mocks . . . I mean, she's a real piece of work. She's horrible! I mean, she really ought to be on MSNBC. That's how bad she is.

For many, it was a period of financial turmoil as banks failed, stock markets tumbled and millions lost their jobs. However, billionaire Warren Buffett kept on doing what he does best and began investing in a handful of blue-chip companies during the financial crisis. Five years on and the value of those deals are clear for all to see, America’s second-richest man earning another $10 billion thanks to his choice investments. … The fall of 2008, when the market was shaky and confidence was low, a number of stocks of companies that had decent reputations were at record lows, including...

Logitech Readies G-Series Controller for iPhoneNow that Apple iOS 7 operating system officially supports various gaming accessories, expect both iPad and iPhone to gain various controllers and add-ons designed with games in mind. Apparently, Logitech is among the first to offer one of such devices for the iPhone. Logitech is reportedly working on a controller that basically transforms iPhone into a game console. @Evleaks has managed to publish the first photos/renderings of the first Logitech gamepad for the iPhone, which is expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks. The Logitech G-series controller for iPhone is a long block with a...