Free Republic

Recently I had a fairly pedestrian thought, a thought I've been having on and off for 10 years: "I want to put some music onto my portable music listening device." This used to be a relative cinch: I'd put the music on iTunes, plug in my iPod, and drag the songs over. Now, anytime I dare hook my iPhone up to a computer, there's software that needs updating, apps and photos I need to clear away for extra room, and esoteric rules regarding what is allowed to "sync." After finally getting an album onto my phone, another software update a...

“Notorious piracy website The Pirate Bay was taken offline yesterday, as part of a raid by Swedish authorities,” Electronista reports. “The server raid in Stockholm, which took place yesterday morning, is said to be performed as part of a large operation to protect intellectual property, with several servers and other computers seized for further examination by the police.” “Yesterday’s event joins copious others in the history of The Pirate Bay where authorities have attempted to reduce piracy,” Electronista reports. “It also occurs just over a month after co-founder Fredrik Neij was arrested in Thailand, after fleeing Sweden following his 2009...

Classic battles: Ali vs. Frazier. Yankees vs. Red Sox. Toddler vs. iPad? Well, not exactly. CNNMoney gave two nursery school classmates a brand new iPad Air 2 and let them loose in our studios for a (very) non-scientific stress test. Good news for iPad owners: You can literally throw the device from the top of a 12-foot staircase and see it survive. (A note: CNN's newsrooms have a thin layer of carpeting, but the iPad endured nearly a dozen such plunges.) We mistakenly thought that when the toddlers grew tired, we'd see how well the tablet withstood a full-blown tantrum....

The computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web has called for affordable access to the Internet to be recognized as a human right, as a report showed that billions of people still cannot go online and government surveillance and censorship are on the rise. Tim Berners-Lee said Thursday the Internet can help tackle inequality—but only if it comes with the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. The Briton, who launched the Web in 1990, made the remarks as he released his World Wide Web Foundation’s latest report tracking the Internet’s global impact. …

Comcast's attempt to expand WiFi hotspots around the country has been met with a class action lawsuit in San Francisco by customers who claim the cable giant is trying to use their wireless routers to let others access the Internet. According to the Courthouse News Service, the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court by lead plaintiff Toyer Grear and it charges that Comcast gave unsuspecting customers across the country routers that would broadcast secondary signals allowing others to connect with the Internet without the customer's approval. ... The suit claims Comcast hoped to piggyback off its customers so it...

The technologies of the past, by replacing human muscle, increased the value of human effort – and in the process drove rapid economic progress. Those of the future, by substituting for man’s senses and brain, will accelerate that process – but at the risk of creating millions of citizens who are simply unable to contribute economically, and with greater damage to an already declining middle class.

Apple today released iOS 8.1.2 which includes bug fixes and addresses a problem where ringtone purchased through iTunes Store may have been removed from your device. To restore these ringtones, visit Restore Ringtones on your iOS device. iOS 8.1.2 is compatible with the following iOS devices: iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPad 2, iPad (third-generation), iPad (fourth-generation), iPad Air, iPad mini, iPad mini with Retina display iPod touch 5G The iOS 8.1.2 update is now available as an OTA download.

OAKLAND, California (AP) — A billion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Apple will likely continue, after a 65-year-old Massachusetts business consultant read about the plaintiffs’ floundering case online and volunteered to represent consumers in the suit. A federal judge said she’s tentatively satisfied with a proposal to add Barbara Bennett the new named plaintiff in the lawsuit over Apple’s iTunes software and the price of its iPods. Bennett, who sometimes used her iPod to listen to music while ice skating, boarded a plane early Tuesday and flew to California at the request of lawyers who are suing Apple Inc. on behalf of...

Wikipedia is much maligned as a serious reference source. However, with regard to trivial subjects, Wikipedia can be a rich source of obscure and oddball facts about subjects that most people don't care about. For example, no respectable encyclopedia would have an article about snipe hunting but Wikipedia fails to disappoint in that regard. Or how about A Flock of Seagulls? If you played in a garage rock band that sold 47 copies of an album (and mostly to friends), you can get an entry for that band (so long as somebody outside the band writes it). Or what about...

<p>The antitrust lawsuit against Apple is on its last legs after a federal judge dismissed the plaintiffs' last remaining witness.</p> <p>Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said Monday she was "concerned" and "troubled" by the remaining plaintiffs' witness in the class action case.</p>

Parent involvement key to keeping kids safe online. These days, kids let their fingers do the talking, instant messaging or texting their "BFF's" at any time of the day or night. BFF is "best friend forever" in Internet shorthand. ... Do you know what "POS" means in kid lingo? That's "parent over shoulder." Don't worry, the three dads we asked didn't know either. We stumped another mom with "ASL." That's "age-sex-location," a phrase swapped liberally throughout the Internet when strangers meet.

<p>OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — In an unusual legal twist, a federal judge decided Monday that a billion-dollar, class-action lawsuit over Apple's iPods should continue, even though she also disqualified the last remaining plaintiff named in a case that has been on trial since last week.</p>

I have noticed over the last few months that the temperature I get for my location from Yahoo Weather on my iPhone is running 3-4 degrees F higher than the actual temperature that I observe through my own equipment or on various thermometers around town. For instance, right now it is 29 degrees F, the puddles are frozen, and the termometer outside my window, the radio and the bank across the street all agree that it is 29 degrees F. But my iPhone is telling me it is 34 degrees. If this just happened from time to time, I would...

Cybercriminals will train their gaze on Apple more often next year. Attacks on OS X have begun to rise, and an acceleration of those attacks is likely, SentinelOne noted, because Apple continues to grow its share of the enterprise market, where it has become a darling of executives who are ripe targets for hackers. Apple's security problems are compounded by its reputation as a "safe" platform. Cyberspies will flourish and hackers will target Apple devices more often in 2015. Until now, Russia, China and the United States have dominated the cyberespionage scene, but their success will start to attract new...

The latest monthly report from internet security specialist Doctor Web shows that whilst Windows and Android users have no cause for complacency, November saw substantial numbers of malicious programs aimed at Mac OS X and Linux platforms. Trojans remain the most popular form of attack making up 8.7 percent of all malware detected. Trojan.InstallCore.12, which installs different adware, toolbars and browser extensions, ranks first. BackDoor.Andromeda.404, which downloads other malicious programs into an infected system when commanded to do so by intruders, ranks second. In November BackDoor.Andromeda.404 was distributed in large quantities by email thanks to a mass spam campaign. It...

It's a Saturday morning in June at the Royal Society in London. Computer scientists, public figures and reporters have gathered to witness or take part in a decades-old challenge. Some of the participants are flesh and blood; others are silicon and binary. Thirty human judges sit down at computer terminals, and begin chatting. The goal? To determine whether they're talking to a computer program or a real person.

“Apple Inc said it discovered that the lead consumer in a $1 billion group antitrust lawsuit over the iPod didn’t buy a device in the time period covered by the case, which could derail a trial now under way,” Karen Gullo reports for Bloomberg. “Bill Isaacson, Apple’s attorney, told U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers that plaintiff Marianna Rosen’s iPod was purchased in July 2009, three months after a deadline for iPod owners to be included in the case. The case, filed in 2005, is over claims that Apple sought to thwart rival music stores to maintain a monopoly over...

Can't print Google maps anymore and can't figure out what is wrong. Can print any other webpage via usual means, just can't get a selected address map to print. Can someone lend assistance to the technology-challenge freeper please?

Parents are reportedly now finding it tougher to discipline their children, because a punishment could result in “parent shaming” by their kids on social media. A recent article in The Daily Mail asserted that social networks are creating a generation of parents who are afraid their children will complain about them online or even secretly record a parental lecture or rant and then post it. “You can’t be in fear of raising your kids,” Siggy Flicker said on “Fox and Friends Weekend,” adding that the first thing she takes away from her children as punishment is what they value most:...

Chancellor Angela Merkel is calling for preferential services for certain providers on the web at her keynote speech at a conference in Berlin on Thursday. Merkel said that some key services for the digital economy would require reliable transmission quality and should therefore be treated differently from other data. At the Vodafone-hosted Digitizing Europe conference in Berlin, she called for a splitting of services, “one for free internet, and the other for special services,” adding that it was up to Brussels to negotiate how it would work. "An innovation-friendly internet means that there is a guaranteed reliability for special services,"...