Free Republic

For anyone unaware, Fallout 76 is an online only, pay to play MMO. It no longer is a single player RPG. This forever changes the Fallout experience for me. It’s dead. I have grown up enjoying the Fallout world. Sadly, I will never wander the landscape of post apocalyptic West Virgina. After waiting the almost a days time to download the 52 gig latest iteration, I finally got to play. WRONG. Online account must be paid for before “signing in”. Deleted that beyotch straight away. Adios Bethesda.

Today's Cryptogram: Hint M=R SN ST UWJWM NEE ICNW NE GW RBCN HEO XSKBN BCJW GWWU. KWEMKW WISEN Our last puzzle: BEING IGNORANT IS NOT SO MUCH A SHAME AS BEING UNWILLING TO LEARN. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram) Please don't post the answer for everyone to see, but you're free to post how long it took you to figure it out, and you can certainly post the answer to my private reply. If you're starting out and need more clues,...

Remains of the year laid bare as we flay July to December Where were we? Ah yes... it was the summer of GitHub committers' discontent – as many looked on in horror as Redmond swallowed it for $7.5bn in June. But things were about to heat up further...July brings joy, junior Surfaces and jiggly financials Hayfever season began well for Microsoft as the giant took another potshot at Google and Apple's device crown. Could the Surface Go take down Chromebooks and iPads? Or was another Surface RT disaster in the offing?For the latter question, no – the Go is a...

The Vulture picks over the remnants of January to June It seems a lifetime (or two Windows 10 releases) ago, but 2018 started with Microsoft, and other software vendors, staring down the twin barrels of Spectre and Meltdown.The Spectre of January's Meltdown Flaws in Intel's silicon meant that Microsoft had to scramble to mitigate the vulnerability at the operating system level (having quietly seeded the fixes to its hardy crew of Windows Insiders towards the end of 2017). The flaw potentially allowed miscreants to read data from the operating system's protected kernel memory area of machines equipped with the broken...

Today's Cryptogram: Hint X=S IZGHS GSHCTLHN GX HCN XC WDEF L XFLWZ LX IZGHS DHQGAAGHS NC AZLTH. IZHYLWGH OTLHRAGH Our last puzzle: THE BEST WAY TO PREDICT THE FUTURE IS TO CREATE IT. ABRAHAM LINCOLN You can find this little fun word game, to combat early dementia and senility in us baby boomers, in several daily publications, unfortunately they are copyrighted so we can't use them here. So, we're just going to make up our own. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram) Beware, the...

Today's Cryptogram: Hint Q=T QCO NOAQ VXG QR BWOIMLQ QCO YEQEWO MA QR LWOXQO MQ. XNWXCXH UMPLRUP Monday's puzzle: CHOOSE A JOB YOU LOVE, AND YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO WORK A DAY IN YOUR LIFE. CONFUCIUS

When I was a youth, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, one of the biggest treats that my father would give us would be a trip to one of the nearby “Army and Navy” stores. We would hop in the car, and then ride for a spell (depending on the direction) from a half an hour to an hour and a half drive. We would stop along the way to get a soft-serve cone at Dairy Queen, and then spend an hour or so in the store. They all looked pretty much the same no matter where you went. The nearest...

A keen-eyed vendor spotted the classic truck south of the border A classic Chevrolet pickup truck stolen from a California parking lot has been found in Mexico, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The truck’s owner, car collector Bob Brown, reported it stolen just before Christmas 2015. He said he had left the 1957 pickup unlocked when he went into a grocery store in Arroyo Grande, north of Los Angeles, for about 10 minutes. When he came out, the uninsured truck was gone. “When I lost it, I just checked off [$20,000],” Brown said. “I put it on my...

Here's today's cryptogram. Hint: A=O ORAAQN C XAT LAS WAJN, CDE LAS YFWW DNJNZ RCJN PA YAZV C ECL FD LASZ WFGN. OADGSOFSQ Yesterday's puzzle: I’M CONVINCED THAT ABOUT HALF OF WHAT SEPARATES THE SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS FROM THE NON-SUCCESSFUL ONES IS PURE PERSEVERANCE. STEVE JOBS

“Gentlemen, this is a football.” on the first day of training and “Winning isn’t everything…it’s the only thing.” Vince Lombardi "Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble the football"....WOW - John Heisman "I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game." – Bear Bryant / Alabama " It isn't necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it!” - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame "At Georgia Southern, we don't cheat. That costs money, and we don't have any."...

You can find this little fun word game in several daily publications, unfortunately they are copyrighted so we can't use them here. So, we're just going to make up our own. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram) Here's today's cryptogram, a quotation by a famous American inventor and businessman: Clue B=S W’G JIUQWUJLP VKEV ETIMV KESC IC RKEV BLAEXEVLB VKL BMJJLBBCMS LUVXLAXLULMXB CXIG VKL UIU-BMJJLBBCMS IULB WB AMXL ALXBLQLXEUJL. BVLQL ZITB Beware, the game is very addictive. If this is your first time, don't...

Here, I would like to relate a little about what it was like growing up as a boy in Pennsylvania. For, I am a native born American who lived through the 1960’s and through the 1970’s. I am pretty typical for my generation. The 1970’s was the decade of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. It ended on a whimper with Jimmy Carter at the helm. Here we talk about the 1960’s and 1970’s and what it was like growing up at that time. School I attended elementary school. First I attended a private Catholic school in Connecticut, and then when...

Still searching for the perfect last-minute present for the person who has everything? Well, New Zealand is selling a nudist park. Katikati Naturist Park advertises itself as a place “for clothes free recreation and relaxation” in northern New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty.  And it’s on the market. The 14-acre park is located in lush New Zealand countryside, surrounded by kiwifruit trees and located just a couple miles from the bay beaches. The future owners of the property will inherit “motel type units, cabins, caravans, fifty-one powered sites and over twenty tent sites,” where traveling nudists can stay. Guests can swim in...

Whether it’s a program you found on the Internet or something that came in your email, running executable files has always been risky. Testing software in clean systems requires virtual machine (VM) software and a separate Windows license to run inside the VM. Microsoft is about to solve that problem with Windows Sandbox.

You can find this little fun word game in several daily publications, unfortunately they are copyrighted so we can't use them here. So, we're just going to make up our own. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW (does not apply to today's cryptogram) Here's one for today's quotation by a famous American inventor: Clue V=E PWVK VNVZMIWSKA GVVJG IX OV AXSKA UAUSKGI MXB, ZVJVJOVZ IWUI IWV USZTHUKV IUQVG XCC UAUSKGI IWV PSKY, KXI PSIW SI. WVKZM CXZY Beware, the game is very addictive. If this is your first time, don't...

I've discovered that there are a few of us out there, who can't start the day without doing the daily Cryptoquote or cryptogram. You can find this little fun word game in several daily publications, unfortunately they are copyrighted so we can't use them here. If anyone is interested in starting a club, we can take turns making one up and posting here daily. Just drop me a line that you're in. The way it works is a letter stands for another letter. For example: AXYDLBAAXR is LONGFELLOW Here's one for today: Clues B=E and R=Y CYB MASCYBS XAGNUASQ RZP...

Update Internet Explorer now after Google detects attacks in the wild Microsoft today emitted an emergency security patch for a flaw in Internet Explorer that hackers are exploiting in the wild to hijack computers.The vulnerability, CVE-2018-8653, is a remote-code execution hole in the browser's scripting engine.Visiting a malicious website abusing this bug with a vulnerable version of IE is enough to be potentially infected by spyware, ransomware or some other software nasty. Thus, check Microsoft Update and install any available patches as soon as you can.Any injected code will run with the privileges of the logged-in user, which is why...

The classic car world was shocked last year when one of the two missing Ford Mustangs used to make the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller “Bullitt” was accidentally discovered rotting away in a junkyard in Mexico, where it had been sitting since…well, no one exactly knows. It was a once-in-a-lifetime movie car moment. At least until this past January, when the secretive owner of the other Mustang – the “hero” car McQueen drove in all of his close-up shots – pulled it out of storage for the first time in decades to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the film. The...

A silver medieval ring thought to be up to 600 years old has been unearthed by a man who took up metal detecting after watching a TV sitcom. The gold-gilded ring was found by Gordon Graham in a field in the north of the Isle of Man. Archaeologists believe the piece, which is engraved with geometric shapes, dates from between 1400 and 1500 AD. An inquest hearing at Douglas Courthouse declared the ring can be officially classed as treasure. Allison Fox, a curator of archaeology at Manx National Heritage, said it may date back to the time when the first...

Every time I work up a good sweat, I feel like my cancer cells are sweating, too. Over the past 7 years, running has been a constant for me. I ran cross country in middle school, but quit because I didn’t think I was good enough (silly me!). I’ve always been into fitness and ran casually in college, but it wasn’t until 2011 that I really buckled down and started running consistently. I ran my first marathon in 2012, and since then, I’ve run over 40 marathons and ultras. In fact, in September, I completed the Northcoast 24-Hour Endurance Run....