Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Search at Grundy County plant called part of ongoing probe" SNIPPET: "But a source said the owner of the plant, which processes lamb and goat, was taken into custody at his home in Chicago. Documents and records were taken from the plant and from a Chicago travel agency on West Devon Avenue, also owned by the same person, the source said."

Sponsored search results lead to malware By Susan Bradley The ads served by Bing and Google along with your search results are linking more and more often to sites trying to infect your machine. Neither Bing nor Google effectively prescreens these bogus advertisers, so it's up to us to detect and avoid them. You may recently have used either Google or Microsoft's new Bing search engine to find the popular Malwarebytes Anti-Malware utility. If so, chances are good that the sponsored ads alongside your search results contained links to the very malware that the security tool is designed to remove....

The FBI on Wednesday announced that it had charged 53 defendants, the largest number ever charged in a cybercrime case, following a multinational investigation into a phishing scheme that operated in the United States and Egypt. Thirty-three of the 53 defendants named in the indictment have been arrested, the FBI said, and several others are being sought. The investigation, dubbed "Operation Phish Phry," began in 2007. Authorities in Egypt have charged 47 defendants linked to the phishing operation. Phishing is a form of social engineering that attempts to convince Internet users, via e-mail or other means, to provide online credentials...

A voice, clearly Obama's, was on a Yahoo music ad advocating that people visit the below site: http://www.serve.gov/ What's up with that? I have noticed this over the last couple of weeks, but with a .gov website?

A great explosion of purity is about to come , But "not" as before(as Katrina) ,something straight from my kingdom , The heavenlies are about to applaud , I AM The Lord behold I alone am God ! Yet for my children of my rod and staff , They shall rest in my bossom of Zion and laugh , For the Joy of The Lord is their strength , And these are my children of victiory that have gone the full length , Obedience to me has become their rod , My staff is their com(fort) for I AM their...

. The president's progress with the battered economy has been both praised and criticized. How well are his efforts measuring up with you? Extremely well. We are undoubtedly moving in the right direction. Fairly well. There's still a long way to go. Not well at all. His plans are hurting more than helping. Not sure/No opinion.

After 'Obama Joker' debacle, Flickr changes takedown policy September 2, 2009 Flickr came out looking like the bad guy when it removed an image of President Obama portrayed as the Joker from "The Dark Knight." Onlookers accused Flickr of having a "political agenda" and being a "bully." For the most part, Flickr has stuck to a retort along the lines of: Sorry, kids, but that's the way the law works. But the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site has since retreated, at least in one respect. Flickr revised its takedown policy Tuesday to be more clear when something has been removed as a...

Unwinding bet on a Microsoft merger costs tycoon nine figures Pity the poor billionaire: Corporate raider Carl Icahn is still paying for last year's effort to marry Yahoo off to Microsoft. Icahn recently sold 12.7 million shares of Yahoo, new regulatory filings show, at less than $15. He acquired his stake at an average price of $25 a share last year in an effort to pressure Yahoo into accepting a takeover bid from Microsoft. That means he's taken a loss of about $130 million. And unless Yahoo's fortunes take an abrupt turn for the better, he's likely to face more...

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is trying to make positive changes in the United States, but is being fought at every turn by right-wingers who hate him because he is black, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday. In an unusually conciliatory column in the state-run media, Castro said Obama had inherited many problems from his predecessor, George W. Bush, and was trying to resolve them. But the "powerful extreme right won't be happy with anything that diminishes their prerogatives in the slightest way." Obama does not want to change the U.S. political and economic system, but "in...

I was on the Yahoo homepage a second ago, and found a link that mentioned IQ's and such of famous people and what do you know! Obama is a genius! But I love how they come to that conclusion. And guess what? Republican IQ scores are very low. Who would have guessed...

The popular photo sharing website Flickr has taken down the original version of the now famous Obama Joker poster that’s been sweeping the nation. Apparently, management is concerned about a copyright infringement issue due to the appearance of the Time magazine logo in Firas Alkhateeb’s parody that ended up being reprinted with the word “Socialism” at the bottom. Oddly, a quick search of Flickr identified a number of Bush parodies with Time’s logo present (vulgarity alert below the fold).

It's rarely a good PR move when a social Web site decides to remove a politically-charged image--the InterWebs get angry. One such case came to light today: A Photoshop mockup of President Obama as the Joker from The Dark Knight, superimposed on the cover of Time magazine, has been removed from Flickr. The 20-year-old Chicagoan who made the photo got an email from Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!, saying the it had been removed due to copyright concerns. Plenty of tech pundits are saying Flickr was strong-armed by Time, Inc., which didn't like its brand associated with something so...

Welcome back to Yahoo! Pro Pick'em! After minutes of thoughtful and deliberate consideration, the name of our league this year is Fishy Football Reform. Our league is here to help anyone who is entirely sick of the health-care debate and wants to hide from it for a few minutes a week. Actually, it tends to become an all-consuming week-after-week ego-deflating compulsion. You'll beat yourselves up for having put 16 points on the Bears to beat the Iggles only to have Jay Cutler go "oopsies!" with the football while only yards away from the game-winning score. Most everything is the same...

La Mesa man finds out when free speech is no longer protected, after he is convicted of making threats against a candidate for president. SAN DIEGO, California - Walter Edward Bagdasarian walked out of federal court Tuesday morning the same way he walked in, wearing a stoic expression on his face and clutching the hand of his wife. But, when Bagdasarian came out of the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building he was a man guilty of threatening the man running for the country's top spot, now President Barack Obama. "The government's position essentially was that the defendent intended to make...

For more than a year now, rumors of a potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo have ebbed and flowed. And it looks like the denouement of this epic tale may finally be upon us. A search and advertising deal between the two tech giants is expected to be announced within the next 24 hours, according to All Things D's Kara Swisher, who cites multiple unnamed sources.

Q. The president's progress with the battered economy has been both praised and criticized. How well are his efforts measuring up with you? Not well at all. His plans are hurting more than helping. 65% Extremely well. We are undoubtedly moving in the right direction. 26%

Yahoo's (YHOO) board is meeting today to talk about a search deal with Microsoft (MSFT), the WSJ reports. The meeting follows a series of conference calls, held as Microsoft and Yahoo grow closer to signing a deal. Sources tell the WSJ some Yahoo board members remain wary of a deal, and that even if it were to be signed, it would not be announced today.

GeoCities web hosting has been around since the very early days of the internet and while it’s not widely used anymore, it’s name still arouses a fond memory in the minds of early adopters. Every once in awhile, a long-dead GeoCities site will even crop up in search results. Yahoo, the current owner of GeoCities, has decided to finally put the sites and the entire service to rest, announcing that GeoCities will cease to function on October 26, 2009.

Microsoft and Yahoo! are close to finalising a deal on search and display advertising. The deal which just won't die isn't over yet, but senior executives have flown from Redmond to Silicon Valley for final discussions. If the fine print can be settled, a deal could be announced within a week, All Things Digital reports. So much for Bing then. The deal would allow Microsoft to take over Yahoo!'s search business in exchange for several billion dollars while Yahoo! would sell display ads for both firms. One source told the website the deal is "down to the short strokes" which...

Note: Poll included. SNIPPET: "A poll of the active members of a particular jihadi forum asked "which is the best place to distribute news of the jihad" (or words to that effect), and YouTube and jihadi forums tied for first place. You're shocked, I know..."