Free Republic

What was that we were hearing a few days ago from Google about the importance of free speech, protection from tyranny, etc.? We take it that this moral crusade doesn't include support for a free press. "An attorney for Google and YouTube indicated today that the Web giants may call a prominent tech reporter to the witness stand in an effort to reveal who leaked the journalist confidential documents from the ongoing Viacom and Premier League copyright cases." the enormously public stance and actions Google is taking right now to protest censorship and government control over the media in China,...

CBS (NYSE: CBS), in a bid to extend its online properties, announced today that it would purchase CNET Networks (NASDAQ: CNET) for $1.8 billion in cash, or $11.50 a share. Through the acquisition of the popular Internet network, whose properties include ZDNet, news.com and TechRepublic, CBS is looking to build out its online presence and become one of the most heavily trafficked brands on the Web. CBS, which largely sat out the cable channel buying boom in the early 1990s compared to its competition such as NBC, has been trying to leapfrog into the Web as a way to diversify...

The FBI has recently adopted a novel investigative technique: posting hyperlinks that purport to be illegal videos of minors having sex, and then raiding the homes of anyone willing to click on them. Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images. A CNET News.com review of legal documents shows that courts have approved of this technique, even though it raises questions about entrapment, the problems of...

Lock was cut on gate barring road San Francisco man died close to feed, shelter in wilderness, officials say The Associated Press Updated: 3:25 p.m. PT Dec 8, 2006 CENTRAL POINT, Ore. - A San Francisco man who got stranded with his family in the snowy wilderness had taken a wrong turn in the car down a logging road that is normally blocked by a gate, but vandals had cut the lock, authorities said Friday. James Kim, 35, was found dead of exposure in a mountain creek Wednesday, two days after his wife and the couple's two daughters were rescued...

GRANTS PASS, Oregon (AP) -- The remote logging road that James Kim and his family drove down before getting stranded deep in the Rogue River Canyon is normally blocked by a locked metal gate, but it was open the night they got lost because a vandal had cut the lock, authorities said Friday. The Kims were stranded more than a week with little food after driving 15 miles past the gate. James Kim was later found dead of exposure after setting out on foot for help. Kati Kim and their daughters, Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, were airlifted out....

Just heard on CNN Headline News he was found. Rescue personal saw flashing object and found him. No word of his condition.

Searchers Find SF Man In Oregon Wilderness POSTED: 8:00 pm PST November 30, 2006 UPDATED: 12:12 pm PST December 6, 2006 MERLIN, Ore. -- Airborne rescuers spotted a flash in a heavily wooded area and then caught a glimpse of a man laying face down they believe may be missing San Francisco resident James Kim in the Oregon wilderness Wednesday.Searchers were being lowered from the helicopter to assist the man.There was no immediate word on his condition.Clothing and bits of an Oregon map turned up Tuesday in a drainage in which search and rescue teams sought James Kim, 35, who...

Searchers intensified their efforts Tuesday to find a San Francisco man missing for more than a week in a rugged, remote area of the snow-covered Oregon Coast Range as his wife and two young children, rescued just the day before, recovered in a hospital. Trained dogs, horse patrols and a helicopter with heat-sensitive sensors were sent to join other helicopters, snowmobiles and foot patrols Tuesday for 35-year-old James Kim. Trackers had followed his footprints until dark Monday night. "They determined that he went over the side of the road into the Big Windy Creek drainage area and that's when the...

Snowbound in a car with their two daughters -- one a 4-year-old, the other an infant -- Kati and James Kim tried to keep warm by running the engine at night. Snip When the food ran out, James Kim ate wild berries, uncertain whether they were safe, his family said. Finally, when no help arrived, authorities said he set out on foot to find help in the remote area of southern Oregon, wearing only tennis shoes, pants, a sweater and a jacket. Snip Kati Kim flagged down a helicopter search crew with an umbrella and was rescued along with her...

Wife and two daughters of senior editor James Kim found in Oregon; search is still on for James Kim, who left the car on foot two days ago. The wife and daughters of missing CNET senior editor James Kim have been found alive and airlifted to a local hospital, authorities announced at a press conference in Merlin, Ore., Monday afternoon. James Kim left the car on snowshoes two days ago to seek help and has not been found, the official said. The search for him continues. According to the official speaking at the news conference, the conditions of Kati, Penelope...

After searches in Oregon's Curry and Douglas counties, new information on missing CNET senior editor James Kim and family is narrowing the search back to the Bear Camp area in Josephine County, according to reports Monday. A cell phone tower received a signal from one of the family's cell phones last Saturday near Glendale, but officials say the signal is only an indicator the family could have been within 26 miles of Glendale late Saturday night, say local news reports. Glendale is located off Interstate 5, south of Roseburg, where the Kims were confirmed to have stopped at a Denny's...

PORTLAND, Ore. Dec 2, 2006 (AP) — Authorities said Saturday that new clues in their search for a San Francisco family who went missing a week ago during a vacation in Oregon show no indication of foul play. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office said a search of James and Kati Kim's credit history showed they had stopped for dinner Nov. 25 in Roseburg, about 160 miles south of Portland and 65 miles northeast of Gold Beach. The Kims and their two children had reservations at a lodge in Gold Beach but never arrived. "We don't have any indication of foul...

Family missing on return from Seattle trip 05:33 PM PST on Friday, December 1, 2006 By DAVID KROUGH and FRANK MUNGEAM / kgw.com Oregon State Police photo Missing father and children. PORTLAND - Police from San Francisco and Oregon were looking for information on a family missing since the Thanksgiving weekend that was last seen in Portland. S.F. detectives said James Kim, his wife Kati, and their young children, 4-year-old Penelope and 7-month-old Sabine, took a trip to Seattle for the holiday. They were supposed to return home on Tuesday, but co-workers became concerned Wednesday when the couple did not...

NET senior editor James Kim and his family are missing. The 36-year-old Kim, his wife Kati, and daughters Penelope (4 years) and Sabine (7 months) left their home in San Francisco last week on a road trip to the Pacific Northwest. They were last seen on Saturday, November 25, in Seattle, according to the San Francisco Police Department, which has opened a missing persons' investigation. They were driving a 2005 silver Saab station wagon with California personalized plates of "DOESF." Those with information about the Kim family's whereabouts are asked to contact the SFPD immediately--at 415-558-5508 during normal business hours...

Excerpt - Newsweek is reporting that HP has called an emergency board meeting. [Link] Read the reports on this fiasco whereby Chairwoman Patricia “Patty” Dunn is at the center of a spy case whereby reporters phone records were illegally obtained resulting in all sorts of legal and SEC violations and the sudden resignation of Tom Perkins as well as other issues. There is no way — after a corporate witch hunt that results in spying that targets a New York Times reporter, Fortune Magazine reporter, CNET reporters and others — that this woman stays in office. ~ snip ~

Excerpt - ... According to an internal HP e-mail, [Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia] Dunn then took the extraordinary step of authorizing a team of independent electronic-security experts to spy on the January 2006 communications of the other 10 directors-not the records of calls (or e-mails) from HP itself, but the records of phone calls made from personal accounts. That meant calls from the directors’ home and their private cell phones. ...

Microsoft has instituted a scary new antipiracy policy on the forthcoming Windows Vista: if you steal it, it won't look pretty. The OS includes a new graphics display engine called Aero, which performs such mission-critical tricks as creating translucent windows, animating flips between open programs, and displaying "live icons" that show a graphical representation of a file. But if a piracy check shows that you haven't purchased Vista, you won't get the fancy-pants graphics action. Oh, and if you buy the cheapest version of Windows Vista, you won't get Aero either. Oh, and if you don't have a fast enough...

Excerpt: (full Story at link) Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess. This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal...

This story isn't over. Oh, sure, the predictable part is over: Google has apparently lifted its threatened yearlong boycott of all CNET news reporters after little more than two months, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt granted an interview last week to CNET News.com reporter Elinor Mills. She is the same writer who triggered the ruckus by Googling Schmidt and publishing the results - including Schmidt's approximate net worth, his recent sales of Google stock and a link to a document that included the executive's home address - to help illustrate a story about Google-related privacy issues. Google's public relations department...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt believes passionately in his company's mission, which he describes as corralling all human information, then making it universally accessible. ``When we talk about organizing all the world's information, we mean all. And we mean all people. And we mean universally accessible,'' he declared at a daylong Google presentation to journalists on May 19. But Schmidt apparently has his own definition of ``all'': Everyone in the world except me. In what is shaping up as an emerging public-relations black eye for the Mountain View-based Internet search company,...

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is refusing to speak with reporters at CNET’s online news site after it ran a story that used Google’s chief executive to illustrate how easily the company’s search engine finds personal information. Google told News.com, the online tech news service of CNET Networks Inc., last week that it would not speak to any of its reporters for a year, according to News.com’s editor.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is refusing to speak with reporters at CNET's online news site after it ran a story that used Google's chief executive to illustrate how easily the company's search engine finds personal information. ADVERTISEMENT Google told News.com, the online tech news service of CNET Networks Inc., last week that it would not speak to any of its reporters for a year, according to News.com's editor. Google was angered by a story last month that focused on potential threats the search engine leader's product poses to personal privacy, said Jai Singh, the News.com editor-in-chief. To demonstrate the...

When I left a steady newspaper job nine years ago to help launch this online news site, many people called me nuts. Too risky, no credibility and no brand loyalty, the naysayers said. It seemed OK to me: I'd worked at big daily newspapers and a magazine for 15 years, and, as a news hound, welcomed the chance to publish scoops in real time. It's a simple "model," as the MBAs put it: We get a scoop and publish it on the Internet ASAP. No "back shop," no printers, no newspaper delivery people. Readers like it, and the print competitors...

Free Republic has been reported on, for the first time that I know of, in the Japanese- language press online.Granted, it is a Japanese translation of a recent original on-line American article; nevertheless, it has been no doubt seen by thousands of Japanese readers on the Internet! Here is the URL, (as well as linked above):http://japan.cnet.com/news/media/story/0,2000047715,20073486,00.htm

Primetones offering to host MP3.com files11/26/2003 5:58:56 PMLOS ANGELES, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Start-up company Primetones said Wednesday it is in talks to preserve MP3.com Inc.'s audio library, scheduled for destruction on Dec. 2, just weeks after Vivendi Universal (V) agreed to sell MP3.com to CNET Networks Inc. (CNET) . "The loss of these MP3.com audio files is a catastrophe that may be felt for generations to come," said David Blumberg, director for artist development at Primetones, the Texas company that has offered to transcribe and host the more than 1.2 million tracks, which were uploaded by more than 250,000...

CNET tech sites: Price comparisons | Product reviews | Tech news | Downloads | Site map Pro-U.S. message replaces Aljazeera.net By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com March 27, 2003, 11:40 AM PT update Visitors to both the Arabic and English versions of the Al-Jazeera Web site on Thursday were greeted with an American flag and a pro-U.S. message, the work of an apparent online vandal. The controversial Middle Eastern news service was the victim of a domain hijacking. The actual defacement appeared on a free Web site service provided by NetWorld Connections. Technically known as a "redirect," the...

I was doing my nightly google and found Declan McCullagh of CNET, a former Jerry Brown worker with a web page of photos of (FreeRepublic.com activists protesting anti-globalization protest against IMF and World Bank) as he puts it! And he sells them........ A high-resolution version of http://www.mccullagh.org/image/d30-28/osama-bin-clinton.html is on file and may be available for licensing or prints. Some images may not be available because of intellectual property rights. That I would bring it to the attention of FReepers for discussion. Who is this guy?