Free Republic

(Reuters) - IBM reported a 4 percent drop in third-quarter revenue, worse than expected by Wall Street, amid a decline in hardware and emerging markets even as it beat earnings estimates. IBM shares fell 6 percent in after-hours trade to $175.56 (110.10 pounds). Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said on a conference call for investment analysts that third quarters tended to be difficult for the world's largest technology service provider but added the company faced some particular challenges this year. Profitability in its hardware business declined by $1 billion year-to-date and currency effects had a $500 million year-to-year negative impact,...

The Yomiuri ShimbunThe Japan Tourism Agency is keen to fulfill its mission of making Japan a popular destination by using so-called big data, the collection of massive amounts of digital data. To help develop new tourism spots and routes, the agency plans to collect big data from travelers via the Global Positioning System and their mobile phones or other devices. A working group of experts, soon to be formed, is expected to establish a method by the end of March to analyze the data. The agency plans to collect big data—various information such as messages posted on social media sites—from...

<p>A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.</p>

Net outflow in direct investment reached 120 U.S. billion dollars in the past eight years as Korean companies` overseas investment expanded while foreign investors` domestic investment plunged. Various investment indicators compiled by the government also show the Korean economy facing the worst investment position since its bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Sluggish corporate investment incurs massive economic losses as it adversely impacts production, employment and consumption and eats into growth potential in the longer term. The past eight years of net direct investment outflow led to loss of 1.67 million jobs. According to the Bank of Korea and Statistics...

As investment in alternative energy rebounded in 2011, U.S. wind and solar companies found stiff new competition — Chinese firms dominating the green industries that American officials looked to for growth. Supporting those Chinese companies was a surprising patron: the World Bank, a Washington-based development agency whose steady counsel and financing have helped China challenge U.S. economic dominance, and in this case may have cost the United States jobs. Sometimes criticized as a tool of U.S. foreign influence, the bank’s 30-year engagement in China may actually tell an opposite tale — of an institution that helped lay the foundation for...

The UK Chancellor George Osborne said this morning that Britain tends to view China as a "sweatshop on the Pearl River". In reality, he told the Today programme, "it's at the forefront of medicine and hi-tech and computing". An official tweeted a picture of him, headphones on, gazing out at the grey urban landscape of Beijing. To coincide with his visit - and that of science minister David Willetts - a new report calls for China to be seen as a land of scientific opportunity not a black hole of intellectual theft and cybercrime. The study is by Nesta, a...

The government is mulling legislation that would open the door wider for foreign IT specialists that seek a job in the country. A brainchild of the Communications and Press Ministry, the bill would allow IT companies to skip some of the burdensome foreign labor rules. Currently, Russian law gives some leeway to all companies that offer their potential hires dubbed as "high-skilled foreign employees" at least 2 million rubles ($64,000) in annual compensation. If the ministry-sponsored bill becomes law, it will amend the legislation to reduce the threshold by half for IT companies. "The ministry wants to make it easier...

TOKYO, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Japan is looking to allow private sector funds and trust banks to manage a part of its $1.27-trillion pool of foreign exchange reserves in a drive to manage them better, a government source told Reuters on Sunday. Until now the government has managed the foreign exchange reserves itself, but its ability to do so has been stretched as the reserve roughly doubled over the past decade, thanks to massive yen-selling interventions to weaken Japan's currency. The government needs to clear legal hurdles on its use of foreign exchange assets if it wants to draft in...

Good Evening, I hope everyone's enjoying this Saturday. I'm in the market for a laptop. The hard drive on our pc gave up the ghost. We've replaced/installed another HD, but it's time to purchase another notebook. We purchased a MacBookPro for our child for college. Naturally, we loved it, but our family will not be investing in another Mac in the near future. I'm trying to avoid Windows 8 like the plague. I'm interested in hearing your anecdotes. We never used a Dell laptop, but our friends like it. Another tech recommended Acer, but I'm not sure about that. Thanks...

Faced with the untenable decision of becoming what he called a “listening post” for the FBI, Lavabit founder Ladar Levison said he had an ethical obligation to his customers and the community to shut down the secure email service used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.Levison, who this week filed an appeal of the court order demanding the SSL keys that would unlock all the traffic coming in and out of his company’s network, gave a wide-ranging interview with CBC Radio’s The Current program. He told the Canadian show that his company’s fate was sealed the day the FBI showed up...

Beijing prosecutors had approved a police application to arrest Liu Hu, a journalist suspected of fabricating rumors online, Beijing News reported on Oct 10. But prosecutors did not announce what crime Liu is charged with, the report said. Zhou Ze, Liu's lawyer, said on his micro blog that Liu was arrested for defamation, according to the report. Before Liu's detention in August, Liu, working for a newspaper in Guangdong province, used his real-name Sina micro blog account to make corruption allegations against Ma Zhengqi, vice-minister of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye arrived in Indonesia's capital on Thursday for a three-day state visit aimed mainly at boosting economic cooperation with the world's fourth-populous nation rich in energy and resources. Jakarta is the last stop of Park's weeklong trip to Southeast Asia that earlier took her to Indonesia's resort island of Bali for a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and then to Brunei for a series of regional summits led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The latest overseas trip is part of Park's "sales diplomacy" campaign aimed at bolstering South Korea's economic and...

SEOUL, Oct. 9 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has increased jamming satellite navigation signals in South Korea in recent years, a ruling party lawmaker said Wednesday, a move that has raised safety concerns for civilian flights and ships. North Korea disrupted global positioning system (GPS) signals for several days in each year in 2010-12, said Kim Gi-hyeon, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, citing government data. GPS is a satellite-based navigation system widely used by planes, ships and the military as well as ordinary drivers. In 2010, the North jammed satellite signals for four days in August, which affected only...

Hundreds of documents meant to ensure the safety of South Korea's nuclear reactors have been forged, a top official said Thursday. Kim Dong-yeon, a minister at the Prime Minister's Office, said government officials combed through about 22,000 test results for parts used in 20 reactors that are currently online. Among the test results, 277 documents or 1.2 percent were fabricated, said Kim. A separate probe of 218,000 out of 275,000 test results for eight other reactors also showed that 2,010 documents or 0.9 percent were forged, said Kim. The eight reactors include five reactors that are being built and three...

BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- China's ChiNext Board, a Nasdaq-style index tailored for growth enterprises, is facing increasing bubble risk in a profit frenzy, the China Business News reported on Thursday. During Wednesday's trading, the ChiNext Index hit a historical high of 1,418.48 points before retreating slightly to close 2.03 percent up at 1,415.83 points. Compared to the start of the year, the index has increased more than 98 percent. The jump of the secondary market came against a backdrop of sluggish performance of the main board this year and almost one year of suspension of initial public offerings. The...

HANGZHOU, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Al Jazeera Media Network will host the fourth World Media Summit (WMS) in 2016, a presidium meeting of the WMS decided here Thursday.

Former contractor of the U.S. intelligence service Edward Snowden travels in Russia freely and looks forward to finding a job, his attorney said Wednesday. "He feels okay, travels and reads," Anatoly Kucherena, who acted as Snowden's solicitor during the American's month-long confinement in the transit zone of a Moscow airport, told reporters, adding the whistleblower does not work at the moment. The former employee of the National Security Agency will make up his mind "shortly," Kucherena said, explaining that Snowden's savings and donations from supporters allow him to lead "a modest life." The lawyer also said Snowden's father was coming...

US officials claim that the government's massive data collection has protected the country from terrorist attacks. After The Guardian's first revelations about the National Security Agency's digital surveillance programs, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Representative Mike Rogers, head of the House Intelligence Committee, jumped to the NSA's defense by pointing to two terrorist plots supposedly foiled by the organization's digital surveillance programs. Lawyers and policemen involved in these cases disputed these claims, but this did not keep NSA chief Keith Alexander from taking it up a notch by raising the number of foiled attacks to...

SEOUL - Samsung’s first smartphone with a curved display screen enter the South Korean market on Thursday, as the electronics giant seeks to maintain its lead in the increasingly saturated market. Galaxy Round — a 5.7-inch handset with a display that is slightly rounded on both sides — will hit stores in South Korea by Thursday afternoon, said SK Telecom, the country’s top wireless operator that carries the device. Curved screens — said to be lighter and thinner than current display panels — are at a nascent stage in display technology, which is shifting towards flexible panels that are bendable...

Dan Auerbach 10-8-13 We’ve long suspected that the NSA, the world’s premiere spy agency, was pretty good at breaking into computers. But now, thanks to an article by security expert Bruce Schneier—who is working with the Guardian to go through the Snowden documents—we have a much more detailed view of how the NSA uses exploits in order to infect the computers of targeted users. The template for attacking people with malware used by the NSA is in widespread use by criminals and fraudsters, as well as foreign intelligence agencies, so it’s important to understand and defend against this threat to...

This morning my facebook newsfeed look normal - many entries going back hours before and some a few days before (about a dozen or more entries). Then, as of just a short while ago, my Facebook newsfeed shrunk to just three entries. And, I then did an "edit" (a link for it occurs at the bottom of the newsfeed) and found nothing out of order on what/whose posts I block from my newsfeed. Then I checked my friends list and noticed a couple where the "include in newsfeed" had been turned off; which I corrected; but all the other tags...

I am an unrepentent Luddite, operating Mac0S9 in a Windows world. On Friday night I suffered the mother of all computer crashes....sent an email and just as it transmitted the background browser/email program crashed and the word processing program froze. Usually a forced reset cures all, but not this time. Nor did a "hard reset" by spiking the power. Each time reboot attempt resulted in a flashing icon indicating an unreadable hard drive. Hours and many dollar later the failing hard drive which had caused the freezes and crashes was replaced, and, most importantly, almost all the data was recovered...

The traditional wood furniture industry has its share of problems. Faced with cheap plywood and chip wood that can be packed flat to ship inexpensively before assembly, furniture made of solid wood has become rarer and more expensive. 4 AXYZ founder and CEO Samir Shah has an idea. Instead of working with layers of cheap wood, he wants to work with layers of nice wood. And he’ll do it with 3D printing. “Effectively what you’re seeing is solid wood furniture is too expensive and quality is dropping. We have something that is not rocket science, even though it is patent...

The man whose name is synonymous with computer security shreds Obamacare’s web strategy. The very worst kind of identity theft is medical identity theft, but when you also combine this with all sorts of additional...

In the immediate wake of the initial Snowden revelations about the NSA demanding and receiving millions of phone records of Americans from the telcos, the agency officials and their apologists in Congress reflexively countered the public outcry with the narrative that domestic spying saved us from terror plots and that numerous such plots were thwarted by NSA breaches of privacy. NSA Chief, General Keith Alexander, in testimony before a Senate committee in June, made this statement - “It’s dozens of terrorist events that these (programs)have helped prevent, from my perspective.” Alexander also appeared before a House committee as seen in...

<p>What are human workers going to do when super-intelligent robots and computers are better than us at doing everything? That is one of the questions that a new study by Dr. Carl Frey and Dr. Michael Osborne of Oxford University sought to address, and what they concluded was that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs could be automated within the next 20 years. Considering the fact that the percentage of the U.S. population that is employed is already far lower than it was a decade ago, it is frightening to think that tens of millions more jobs could disappear due to technological advances over the next couple of decades. I have written extensively about how we are already losing millions of jobs to super cheap labor on the other side of the globe. What are middle class families going to do as technology also takes away huge numbers of our jobs at an ever increasing pace? We live during a period of history when knowledge is increasing an an exponential rate. In the past, when human workers were displaced by technology it also created new kinds of jobs that the world had never seen before. But what happens when the day arrives when computers and robots can do almost everything more cheaply and more efficiently than humans can?</p>

Is having a college or university diploma still the avenue to a well-paying job or is the ability to access information technology enabling job seekers to bypass costly higher education that may leave them in debt for years to come?

"CNN reports that Jared James Abrahams, a 19-year-old computer science student, has been arrested for allegedly hijacking the webcams of young women — among them reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf — taking nude images, then blackmailing his victims to send him more explicit material or else be exposed. Abrahams admitted he had 30 to 40 'slave computers' — or other people's electronic devices he controlled — and has had as many as 150 total. His arrest came six months after a teenager identified in court documents as C.W. alerted authorities. She has since publicly identified herself as Cassidy Wolf,...

(Credit: Heather Donald, YouTube) A military veteran in Crawford County, Michigan has been arrested and charged with a felony assault with a deadly weapon even after HE was the one who called the cops in the first place when he found a man trespassing on his property.When the man’s wife tried to video tape what was happening the cops told her to turn off the camera and tried to take it.  (You can see the video below… only because the wife figured out how to restore the “deleted” file)The Blaze has reported that Thomas Donald was out hunting with his...

SAN FRANCISCO: Malaysia is seeking to be a data management centre as its plan to develop further its information technology industry. Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said Malaysia has the advantage of space, infrastructure and incentives for the industry. He, however, acknowledged Ma­­lay­sia’s lack of data management scientists. “This is a new skill that we need as thousands of data scientists will need to be produced in Malaysia’s quest to be a data management centre,” the Prime Minister said after attending the Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council meeting here on Monday. The council was set up in 2010 as...

From the start, we've built our strategy by listening to the people carrying it out -- you. OFA doesn't just slap the word "grassroots" on what we do and call it a day -- we live by it. Every once in a while, we want to take a chance to check in with where our supporters are, what's important to you, and what you want to focus on in your organizing in the months ahead. Answer this quick, one-question poll and let us know what you're thinking. We learn a lot from these surveys, and we've spent the first eight...

The denunciations in state media said "reptile media" were making allegations designed to "hurt the dignity" of Mr Kim, his wife, Ri Sol-ju, and the regime. The state-run KCNA news agency claimed the reports were the work of "psychopaths" and "confrontation maniacs" in South Korea's government and the media. "This is an unpardonable, hideous provocation hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership," KCNA stated. "Those who commit such a hideous crime ... will have to pay a very high price." Reports in South Korea initially claimed that Hyon Song-wol, with whom Mr Kim was romantically linked around 10 years ago,...

A proposed free-trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai has fired the imagination of optimistic investors looking to China’s new leaders for pro-market reforms. Backed by Premier Li Keqiang, the 28.8 sq km zone in Pudong district – itself a greenfield site two decades ago – is supposed to be a bold experiment in financial deregulation and trust-busting private industries. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing is touting Shanghai’s FTZ as a challenge to his home city’s competitive edge. However, the details have remained fuzzy. What exactly will investors be permitted to do inside the FTZ? Will China’s currency be fully convertible? Who...

(Reuters) - Police in China on Monday released a teenager detained for questioning on his microblog authorities' handling of a man's death, a move that triggered an Internet outcry over censorship. State media had said that the junior high school student, surnamed Yang, was the first person detained under strict new rules to tackle what the government calls the spread of online rumours. The release of the 16-year-old in the western province of Gansu represents a victory for many microbloggers, who protested online after his detention last Tuesday for comments on his Twitter-like microblog. Yang had said that a man...

BEIJING: China's new law against online rumour mongering claimed its first victim when police detained a 16-year-old schoolgirl for raising questions about official investigations in a murder case. The tweet posted by the girl named Yang was picked up and retweeted over 500 times as it evoked a lot of interest in the Twitter-like Sina Weibo. The new law, which was issued last week, stipulates that a person would be punished if a rumour posted by him/her is retweeted more than 500 times. Yang's detention has caused a lot of resentment over the internet with many web users protesting against...

Poll in the LA Times: Do you support Starbucks' gun stance? Yes 46% 1,017 votes No 54% 1,209 votes Just a few hundred votes could dishearten the anti-second amendment types. Supporting Starbucks' right to chose does not mean we have to support their choice. > Link to poll, below picture, above story

After naming the wrong man and the shooter, and getting the weapons used completely wrong, here’s yet one more thing the corrupt media is not telling you: From Pamela Geller [Atlas Shrugs] Law enforcement officials told NBC News that Alexis created a webpage with the name “Mohammed Salem.” This is the first I am hearing of this, and have seen no media mention of it (although the fact that he had been a Buddhist has been headlined and recounted numerous times, despite the fact is that there is no compulsion to violence, oppression and ethnic cleansing in the teachings of...

The same company that scrutinized former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden for a U.S. government security clearance said on Thursday it also checked the background of the Navy Yard shooter, allowing him to obtain a "secret" clearance. USIS, working as a contractor for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), conducted a background review of Aaron Alexis, identified by law enforcement authorities as the shooter who killed 12 people at the Navy Yard before he was shot dead. "Today we were informed that in 2007, USIS conducted a background check of Aaron Alexis for OPM," USIS spokesman Ray Howell said in...

(Reuters) - South Korean upstart Infraware Inc is in a David and Goliath battle with software giant Microsoft over a lucrative niche of the mobile office business and just like the diminutive biblical hero, it believes it can win. Infraware already dominates the market for office software applications on Android devices and says it now has a killer strategy to extend that domination to Apple Inc handsets as well by giving its best-selling Polaris app away for free. The contest between the $250 million Korean minnow and the $270 billion U.S. titan illustrates how small firms can outwit lumbering technology...

To check your Adobe Flash settings. Go to any Adobe add. (EZ find. drudge top center.) Right click in add and select "Settings". Select center tab where you can see check boxes asking if the web site, "s0.2mdn.net" can access your camera and microphone. There are other check boxes of "Privacy" concern in the other tabs. Also right click Adobe add and select "Global Settings" for other privacy selections.

The NSA has been widely monitoring international banking and credit card transactions, a new report says referencing Edward Snowden’s leak. The agency targeted VISA customers and global financial service SWIFT and created its own money flows database. Referring to information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor, German Der Spiegel reports that the surveillance was carried out by a branch called "Follow the Money" (FTM). After the information on transactions was obtained, it was redirected to the NSA's own financial database, called "Tracfin". According to the leaked documents, in 2011 the database contained 180 million records,...

I have installed wireless IP cameras at my house in the mountains with Blue Iris software to allow 24/7 monitoring of the premises. This system has built-in motion sensors and night vision. When the motion sensor is tripped, two pictures are sent to my email account. A short video is also made and recorded. Without going into details, this house is in a very remote location with few people in the immediate vicinity. However, anyone doing surveillance within the radius of one mile would be noticed and reported. The cameras are inconspicuous but effective as shown here. The individual in...

New Delhi, Sept. 11: A township housing Japanese electronics companies is under consideration as this will shave off electronics imports and cut the trade gap. “Both sides (India and Japan) have noted the idea of establishing a JEMT (Japanese Electronics Manufacturing Township) with Japanese assistance in India and agreed to take this up in the forthcoming meeting of the joint working group,” a joint statement released by India and Japan said. Last year, India imported electronic goods worth $32 billion. Commerce minister Anand Sharma and Japanese minister of economy, trade and industry Toshimitsu Motegi met today and discussed the possibilities....

Thai women have been warned to be careful about dating foreign men they meet on social networking sites, because they could end up being tricked, robbed and lured into sexual encounters. Charoensri Chaikhat, chairwoman of the Phayao Women's Network, said on Wednesday that there have been many reports of Thai women being scammed by foreign men they met on Facebook. "On Facebook, you cannot tell the true identity of a person on the other end because the person can manipulate photos and use a false name," Mrs Charoensri said. She said a woman in northern Thailand was recently lured into...

PUTRAJAYA, Sept 10 — The Court of Appeal expects to reach a decision this October on whether Catholic newspaper, The Herald, may continue to use the word “Allah”. Justice Datuk Seri Mohamed Apandi Ali, who leads a three-member panel presiding over the case, said they need time to study the submissions and go through the various documents provided. “Not to worry, it won't take too long. We take judicial notice of the crowd outside, which shows the sensitivity of the issue," he said, referring to Muslim groups gathered at the entrance to the Palace of Justice in support of the...

People who post defamatory comments online in China will face up to three years in prison if their statements are widely reposted, according to a judicial interpretation issued on Monday. The document, released by the Supreme People's Court(SPP) and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, stipulates that people will face defamation charges if online rumors they post are viewed by more than 5,000 Internet users or retweeted more than 500 times. If those posting rumors are repeat offenders, or if their online rumors caused the victim or the victim's immediate family members to commit self-mutilation or suicide or experience mental disorders, they...

Since the beta test launching of Google Glass along with rumors surrounding the secretive Apple iWatch, “wearable tech” is a term frequently popping up in the headlines. We only have conjecture as to what the full scope of Apple's iWatch might be, however, it is difficult to imagine that it will bring revolutionary functions beyond what is already provided by the iPhone and iPad line. It begs the question... (continued)

The "Beijing Regional Platform for Jointly Refuting Rumors," an official monitor of false information published by people online, on Thursday issued a list of "Top 10 Online Rumors," to showcase a month-long government crackdown on such fabrication. The mechanism, which went into operation on Aug. 1, was formed jointly by major websites headed by Qianlong.com, under the direction of the Chinese capital's municipal authorities responsible for Internet information. The top 10 false "news stories" published by individuals online are as follows: 1. "Infant soup" made of babies' bodies has been available in Guangdong Province; 2. A bus was kidnapped in...

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused U.S. intelligence services of a lack of professionalism for their failure to round up NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whose arrival and subsequent stay in Russia fractured U.S.-Russia relations in early August. Incidentally, Putin's comments came around the same time that he was originally meant to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama, but Obama canceled that meeting in August after learning of Russia's decision to grant Snowden asylum. And now, with his remarks on the eve of the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg on Thursday, Putin, himself a former spy, could have hit a nerve...

"Once upon a time when the Internet was new, a chat room on AOL would have been the closest thing to "Social Media". Then suddenly there came a promising website called classmates.com. The web domain was user friendly, easy to remember and made it clear what the visitor should expect. Over a period of years from the late 1990s into the middle 2000s, Classmates grew at a steady pace. It got to a point where one could find many of their old friends on there. The members were easily in the millions, if not tens of millions and they were...