Free Republic

Can the problems impacting the financial sector impact technology companies? You bet they can! We know there is a credit crunch and that the economy is slowing. This is translating into falling revenues and a drop in new orders. Tech company management is hunkering down. So are consumers. IT budgets are stagnant or falling and cost cutting will be the order of the day. Below we look at some specific ways that the tech sector will be reacting to this situation. Surprisingly, there are some impacts that may turn out to be net positive for certain tech companies. As expected,...

The U.S. drone aircraft involved in strikes against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants across the border have enhanced tracking ability. WASHINGTON -- As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

ExitReality is the latest virtual world to come onto the scene and is launching out of private beta tonight. Its big bold feature is the capability to turn any site you're on into its own 3D world with interactive elements created from content found on the page. This includes photos, videos, and music files. The service requires a small system plug-in that currently runs only on PCs. I was told no Mac version is planned, but may come into the picture if there's enough of a demand. Once the plug-in is installed, you just need to click a button in...

Measuring the Democratic and Republican Party platforms on science and technology policy"Scientific progress is one essential key to our security as a nation, to our better health, to more jobs, to a higher standard of living, and to our cultural progress," declared Vannevar Bush in a letter introducing his report, Science: The Endless Frontier, to President Harry Truman in 1945. In that report, Bush, the director of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development, argued that some areas of science "are likely to be cultivated inadequately if left without more support than will come from private sources." Ever since,...

Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign manager and Internet impresario, describes Super Tuesday II--the March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island--as the moment Barack Obama used social tech nology to decisive effect. --SNIP-- "The campaign, consciously or unconsciously, became much more of a media operation than simply a presidential campaign, because they recognized that by putting their message out onto these various platforms, their supporters would spread it for them," --SNIP-- "we provided the tools, remote training, and opportunity for supporters to build the campaign on their own," the Obama campaign told Technology Review in a...

With over two decades in the Senate, John McCain of Arizona has developed quite the resume with respect to technology legislation. BetaNews' Ed Oswald takes a look at where McCain stands on some of the most high-profile issues. Perhaps simply because he is 72 years of age, Sen. John McCain is often the brunt of jokes that presume he knows little or nothing about modern technology, consumer electronics, or the Internet. Yet McCain's record tells a different story. As a 22-year veteran of the US Senate, including six years spent as chairman of the Commerce Committee and having also chaired...

As the Democrats' presumptive vice presidential nominee prepares to take the stage to accept the nomination of his party this evening in Denver, BetaNews' Ed Oswald takes a look at his long record. Hailing from the state of Delaware, Senator Joe Biden has spent 36 years in the Senate. Along the way, he's gained a reputation for his direct, often outspoken, sometimes confrontational personality. His positions on technology, which reflect that personality, are sure to please some and enrage others. Coming from a state which has some of the most lenient business and tax laws, its no surprise that many...

In the second of our four-part series examining the positions of the presidential and vice presidential candidates on technology policy, BetaNews' Ed Oswald takes a look at the Illinois Democrat. With respect to the growing middle ground between technology and politics, it could be viably argued that no one has embraced technology as part of his or her campaign -- at least as an ideal -- more than Sen. Barack Obama. The use of online means to recruit campaign volunteers and to incite action on behalf of candidates, dates back to the 1984 campaign of Sen. Gary Hart. Web pages...

While Gov. Palin is fairly new to the political scene nationwide, the Alaska native's stance on key topics may give clues into the policies she would support if she were elected Vice President. [M.E.'s NOTE: BetaNews contacted the press office of Gov. Sarah Palin earlier this week, and received assurances that we would be receiving responses to our inquiries about the governor's position on critical technology issues, five of which we listed and explained in detail. This has been the week of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, so any number of reasons may have delayed the press office's...

WESTFORD -- Gary Levaseur looks cool driving his electric blue snowmobile down the street in the summer. Well, it's not really a snowmobile anymore. The drywaller has built a prototype and patented his invention that converts snowmobiles to three-wheeled motortrikes. The conversion can be done in just two hours, meaning the sleds that usually gather dust for eight or nine months a year can be used year-round. His converted Arctic Cat is a slick-looking machine that can go up to 75 mph and get and estimated 30-plus mpg, Levaseur said. "It turns a lot of heads," he said. "I like...

Imagine yourself going to a news stand and picking up Esquire’s September issue. Its cover isn’t made out of paper as usual, actually, it’s electronic! The cover, which comes with its own battery pack, will flash “the 21st Century Begins Now.” A moving cover? That’s something new.

Kids With History of Skipping School To Wear Ankle Bracelets Equipped With Satellite Technology (AP) Court authorities here will be able to track students with a history of skipping school under a new program requiring them to wear ankle bracelets using satellite technology. But at least one group is worried the ankle bracelets, with Global Positioning System monitoring, will infringe on students' privacy. Linda Penn, a Bexar County justice of the peace, said she anticipates that about 50 students from four San Antonio-area school districts - likely to be mostly high schoolers - will wear the anklets during the six-month...

Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama's campaign encouraged millions of mobile phone users to sign up to receive a text message so they could be "the first to know" who Obama's vice presidential choice was. It was a deft bit of techno-political marketing. But hours before the text was sent, the campaign's famously tight communications ship sprung a leak. So the first to know that Sen. Joseph Biden would be in Springfield on Saturday were not those who had signed up for a text message, but those who were watching cable television news programs at around 10:45 p.m. PDT...

Sorry for the Vanity but I have a great concern. It's been a good summer for McCain. The ads are good, the American public is starting to learn more about the "real" B. Hussein Obama and he's dropping in the polls. That's the good news. I think that on a level playing field, Mac can beat B. Hussein. But, has anyone thought about the strategy of the scheme to text Obama supporters and notify them of the VEEP selection. He now has hundreds of thousands of cell phone numbers. Visualize, on Election Day, a gazillion Text Messages going out over...

WASHINGTON - When Barack Obama announces his choice for vice president, the real payoff may come during the next few months — one text message at a time. Obama's campaign plans to break the news of the Democratic candidate's vice presidential pick to people who have signed up to receive e-mails and text messages from the campaign. It should give Obama's team access to tens of thousands of cell phone numbers that could be used to mobilize voters under 30 on Election Day. "What Obama is creating is this army of individuals, these grass-roots activists, who are out there trying...

"...E-voting systems have to be completely redesigned with security in mind, McDaniel says. In the short term, this means adding more thorough vote-auditing capabilities so that discrepancies can be investigated. "The elections systems should have the same quality, the same reliability, the same testing and the same certification requirements as financial systems," he says. "If the systems used by banks, which have to report to the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], had this level of quality, no one would put their money in the bank."..."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would emphasize public-private research and development grants to encourage the government's application of technology and establish a nationwide public safety network for first responders by the end of his first term, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has said. In general, McCain would also make more government information available online. McCain announced his government information technology plans as part of his overall technology platform that was published on his campaign’s Web site Aug. 14. In addition to encouraging the government’s use of IT, much of the platform focuses on the premise that with lower taxes, freer trade,...

I have been wanting to get this topic on airplanes going for awhile. I hope some of you find an interest also.

Under fire for being a technophobe, John McCain will unveil a technology agenda that bundles previously announced pro-business proposals with continued support for a hands-off approach to regulation. The plan, dubbed "John McCain and American Innovation," is set to be released Thursday on the Republican presidential candidate's campaign Web site. It will call for a 10% tax credit on wages paid to all research-and-development employees. At the same time, it will reiterate Sen. McCain's opposition to Internet taxes and new laws guaranteeing net neutrality, the idea that Internet providers must treat all legal Internet traffic equally.

A 'Frankenrobot' with a biological brain A hand holding a biological brain and a robot. The brain consists of a collection of neurons cultured on a Multi Electrode Array (MEA) which communicates and controls the robot via a Bluetooth connnection. Scientists in Britain announced that they had stitched together thousands of rat neurons into primitive brains capable of controlling the movement of robots.Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue. Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on...

Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird's Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting Well this is just perfect. At the exact moment Li Ning was rounding the lip of the Bird's Nest during the amazing torch-lighting climax, someone snapped this photo of our good friend the BSOD nestled amongst the Nest's steel twigs. Perhaps an Opening Cermonies IT dude spit out his coffee on the machines in the server room when Li took to the sky? Another question is what a projection screen is doing inside the Nest at that location, but I think the better question is what wasn't going...

Fireworks over the Olympics pyrotechnics erupted when it was learned that part of the elaborate display broadcast to the world in the opening ceremony was altered, done digitally in 3-D computer graphics. While the dramatic fireworks display actually happened as portrayed on television, members of the Beijing Olympic Committee said it was necessary to replace live video with computer-generated imagery because the city’s hazy, smoggy skies made it too difficult to see, according to The Beijing Times, which first reported the story. Committee members also said they were concerned that the helicopter pilot who would have flown overhead to film...

The 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign is turning into the election year that mainstreamed wireless technology. Barack Obama’s campaign has announced its intention to let texters know who his running mate will be in the days leading up to the Democratic convention Aug. 25-28 in Denver.According to Obama website, voters can be the “first to know� who Obama’s vice president will be by going online and providing a cell phone number (or e-mail address), or by texting VP to 62262 to receive a text message with the breaking announcement.Obama\'s campaign has used wireless and Internet technology to build more of a...

Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptopAt the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval. And then some of them tried to kill it. Microsoft, makers of most of the computer software in the world,...

The federal Environmental Protection Agency maintains a full laboratory where it will gladly test a miraculous fuel-saving device for $30,000. But so far, the biggest customer of the lab has been the Federal Trade Commission, which uses it to debunk false advertising claims. Such claims of astounding mileage gains have increased as gizmos promising gas savings — some newly hatched and others a fresh twist on old themes — have proliferated, draining the pockets of gullible drivers seeking relief from high gasoline prices. From clamp-on magnets to water sprays, from air spinners and vaporizers to fuel vibrators and gas tank...

The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight. Video at link.

Few people might be aware of this: There are passages in the Bible that coincide with scientific principles that weren't discovered by scientists until hundreds of years after the Bible had been written. Here are some examples:

...As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school. America’s edge boosted productivity and growth. But the happy era ended around 1970 when America’s educational progress slowed...

Media sources such as CNN, and also several questionable academics have come out with a multi-pronged attack on John McCain's knowledge of the "Information Economy" this week. Amongst those is a media professor from American University named Steinhorn Comments By L. Steinhorn, Prof of Communications Steinhorn claims that McCain's funny syllogism of "A Google", his desire to avoid email, and lack of a MySpace webpage prove that McCain does not understand the Information Economy. He points to Barrack Obama's use of YouTube and MySpace to win over young voters as proof that he understands modern economics. This is false on...

While an 11-year old, Louisville, Kentucky boy is using a toy radar gun to get drivers to slow down through his neighborhood, the police are finding that real radar guns might not be a match for GPS--at least not when contested in court. According to a press release issued by Rocky Mountain Tracking, an 18-year old man, Shaun Malone, was able to successfully contest a speeding ticket in court using the data from a GPS device installed in his car. This wasn't just any old make-a-left-turn-100-feet-ahead-onto-Maple-Street GPS; this was a vehicle tracking GPS device--the kind used by trucking fleets--or in...

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2008 – War fighters from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom are testing new battlefield systems that can discern friend from foe during the “Bold Quest Plus” joint military demonstration conducted at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The demonstration’s purpose is to provide warfighters with combat-identification technologies that maximize mission effectiveness while minimizing the chances of fratricide, John Miller, operations manager for coalition combat identification at U.S. Joint Forces Command, based at Norfolk, Va., said today during a conference-call interview with reporters. The command is sponsoring the demonstration at Eglin, which began July 11. Miller...

PARIS (AFP) - Soaring oil prices are an "opportunity" which will speed up orders for new aircraft which consume less fuel, the chief executive of US aircraft giant Boeing James McNerney said in an interview published Sunday. "The high price of oil is speeding up the process of the oldest, least efficient planes being taken out of service because they are no longer profitable," he told the weekly Journal du Dimanche.

Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has admitted that he never uses email and that his staff has to show him websites because he is only just "learning to get online myself"..........

Another National Security Threat by: Melinda Zosh, July 08, 2008 With the Olympics quickly approaching, the world’s eyes are on China and its rising power as a world influence. Experts at the Heritage Foundation recently said that China now has the third largest economy in the world; it is the second largest after the U.S. In addition, 2003 marked the first year China’s GDP reached over one trillion dollars; it hit 1.4 trillion dollars, to be exact. China is a top steel, aluminum and fine copper producer. It has the world’s second largest auto market. But even more importantly, China...

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - From online courses to kid-friendly laptops and virtual teachers, technology is spreading in America's classrooms, reducing the need for textbooks, notepads, paper and in some cases even the schools themselves.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senators Debbie Stabenow, Amy Klobuchar and David Sandalow, an energy expert from the Brookings Institute, held a press conference today to showcase new automotive technologies that can help reduce our dependence on oil. With oil and gas prices expected to remain at record highs in the near future, rapid technological innovations in the transportation sector are critically important to help reduce energy costs, end our nation’s addiction to oil and reduce global warming pollution. “We need a clean energy revolution to unleash our brightest and most creative scientists, engineers and corporate leaders because we cannot...

MANILA, Philippines, June 30 (UPI) -- The Philippines is pushing for clean coal technologies. Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes is calling for incentives supporting new technologies including "bridge fuel" to help avert a power crisis in the near future. Reyes said the government is supporting coal projects that use new technologies that will help to eliminate greenhouse gases. "I understand that this technology is widely used in many countries, like Korea, Germany, U.S. and Japan. Until such time that the renewables will come in and kick in and really be available on a commercial basis, then we still have to use...

We asked technology innovators, luminaries, and users what the Web might be in five to ten years. Sir Tim Berners-LeeDirector of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the Web; Cambridge, MA"I would like to see the Internet reach people in rural areas and help alleviate poverty. I would like to see more people reaching the Web from devices big and small, fixed and mobile. I look forward to more voice technology--in hands-busy scenarios such as driving, and also to increase accessibility (e.g., for people with low vision). The long tail of video on the Web is creating a...

Aren't all of those tech gadgets great? PDA's, cell phones, laptops and so on have all had a beneficial impact on our lives. However, not ALL innovations have this effect! See for yourself in this latest installment of "Geeks On Caffeine!"

UK IT students are hiring coders in India to complete their coursework for as little as £5 a go. A-level and university pupils are logging onto computer coding websites and farming out their work to foreign IT graduates. Academics at Birmingham City University have detected 1,000 students cheating worldwide since they began monitoring the websites in 2004. The majority of these students are studying an IT-related course and about one third are from the UK. Students contract their work to the lowest bidder, with prices ranging from £5 for simple undergraduate coursework, to £100 for postgraduate dissertations. Birmingham City computing...

She's big-busted, petite, very friendly and she runs on batteries.

We just had a very strong earthquake which fiercely rocked and rolled the main Island of Honshu in Japan. TV broke with news on all channels IN ADVANCE OF EARTHQUAKE, warning people to "get ready". 8:43 a.m. local time Saturday (just about 10 minutes ago). 7:43 p.m. Friday Eastern Time. Then, sure enough, the long, rolling shaking began, and increased in intensity. I estimate the shaking to have gone on for at least 45 seconds. It hit here at 8:45 a.m. It literally gave us 2 minutes to prepare. I have never experienced an advance earthquake warning. The epicenter is...

Security scanners which can see through passengers' clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

A transformation in the pace of economic growth can be achieved even without nanofactories. These pre-nanofactory methods would transition well to a world with nanofactories when they do arrive. A coordinated effort by research, companies and government could be made to plan and develop Rapid Automated Manufacturing by 2030. There could be an increase in economic growth into the 10-20% per year range even for developed countries like the USA. Technology roadmaps and planning would be needed to perfect materials, supply chains, real time monitoring, approval processes and deployment of the technologies and methods listed below, the world could transition...

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

Washington, D.C. (June 1, 2008) -- Toshiba will soon launch an upconverting DVD player that purports to offer a picture that will rival Blu-ray's high-def disc. That's according to a report from the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. Toshiba was the chief backer of HD DVD, the high-def disc rival to Blu-ray. But the company pulled the plug on HD DVD at the end of March due to disappointing sales and overwhelming studio support for Blu-ray. At the time of the exit announcement. Toshiba executives hinted that it would soon release a standard-def DVD player that could compete with Blu-ray rather...

As the FCC auctions off an unused spectrum of airwaves, the winner may be forced to provide free wireless internet for most of the country. No date or terms for the auction have been set, but the government's deal requires that free service on the 25 MHz spectrum reaches at least half the in five years and 95 percent within ten years. The agreement, proposed by FCC chairman Kevin Martin, also stipulates that the bidder must filter out obscene content for allowing the winner to use the remaining portion of the spectrum for commercial purposes. "We're hoping there will be...

"...just by walking down the street you could be subject to a personal biometric system, you could be scanned by the gateway of the transit system, there could be something embedded in the street or in the flooring beneath you... you could be touching other tangible interfaces in the environment around you... the lamp posts and the other features of the streetscape could have informational services... and last but not least there's the surveillance element, there's a UAV, a robotic helicopter which is also surveying the cityscape and communicating with all of these devices... This is really what I mean...

MIT researchers point to potential economy-boosting technologies As the economy appears to falter and as more Americans fear that the country is on the wrong track, here's something to keep in mind: There is hope on the horizon. History is filled with examples of how technology helped usher in new eras of prosperity. The rise of the Internet is a good case in point: Few people who experienced the economic recession of the early 1990s could have foreseen how the Web and related information technologies would improve their lives and unleash whole new industries within a few short years. To...

BEX, Switzerland - A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane Wednesday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps.