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For 15 years, a sculpture known as Kryptos has stood in a courtyard inside the heavily guarded Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Its coded message, made up of thousands of letters on a copper scroll, has stumped code breakers for 15 years. And although it's been seven years since anyone has made any progress cracking it, there's been an explosion of renewed interest in Kryptos since writer Dan Brown hid references to it on the jacket of The Da Vinci Code -- one of the hottest books in North America. And that has made life interesting for Kryptos'...

It can be thought of as a sort of natural law that every government will increase taxation until it hurts. Once the burden of taxation has become sufficiently painful to a sufficient number of people, a tax revolt will begin – either at the ballot box, or at the palace gates-- and taxation will be rolled back to a less painful level, often by a new government. One way to avoid this danger is for government officials to learn to live with a relatively low tax rate. This option, of course, is similar to the idea that an alcoholic would...

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5 Report says Israeli unit cracked Iranian code A secret intelligence unit, known as Unit 8200, broke a sophisticated Iranian code enabling Israel to monitor communications, including contacts with Pakistan regarding the development of Iranian nuclear weapons, The New Yorker reported on Tuesday. "On a trip to the Middle East last month, I was told that a number of years ago the Israeli signals-intelligence agency, known as Unit 8200, broke a sophisticated Iranian code and began monitoring communications that included talk between Iran and Pakistan about Iran's burgeoning nuclear weapons program," investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh wrote....

ROME (AP) - Italian police raided the homes and offices of 186 suspected members of a child pornography ring - including three Roman Catholic priests and a local mayor - that downloaded pictures from an exclusive Web site, officials said Tuesday. The group downloaded photos and video of sex abuse against children, whose ages ranged from 4 to 8, from a Web site that could only be entered with a password, according to a police officer in the Sicilian town of Syracuse, where the investigation was based. The officer, who cited office policy that he could not be identified, said...

In an attempt to pre-empt computer hackers, Microsoft is developing "virtual" PCs to scour the web for previously unseen attack code. At the software giant's Cybersecurity and Systems Management lab, based in Washington State, US, researchers are building a squad of the virtual PCs - created in software rather than hardware - to explore the darker corners of the world wide web. To any website they visit, the machines appear to be a normal home computer. But the PCs are seeking out code designed to attack a computer and will sound an alarm if any code is executed in contravention...

Two California entrepreneurs are developing an IT services business plan that reads like a CIO's paradise: sharply lower IT prices coupled with easy access to software and engineering outsourcing developers just a short boat ride away. It's the "Code Boat," a plan by David Cook and Roger Green, the founders of SeaCode. Their venture calls for staffing a cruise ship three miles off the Southern California coast with customer IT specialists and then making the ship available to IT headquarters staffers through a short water taxi ride. "We're getting a good reception," said Green, a veteran software developer and executive....

REMOVE YOUR TIE -- SAVE THE PLANET Just as a 1,000-km journey begins with a single step, it seems that the arduous process of reducing Japan's greenhouse gas emissions starts with the simple removal of a few neckties. A sales clerk explains how to wear a jacket and shirt without the hassle of a necktie at Aoki International Co.'s shop in Yokohama's Tsuzuki Ward. Environment Minister Yuriko Koike holds up a panel showing how to wear a suit fashionably without a necktie at the Environment Ministry on Wednesday. This, at least, appears to be the thinking behind the government's latest...

This is a call to tech minded Freepers (everyone from software engineers to hobbyists) to contribute in some way to make FR better than it already is from a technical standpoint. FR (i think) uses a from scratch proprietary system so any improvements to the system would have to first have to suggested then petitioned to JimRob to look at the code. Bandwidth and other issues could most likely addressed by updating the FR system with valid W3C code and implementing various caching tricks. THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM OF HOW FR IS RUN NOW. We all enjoy FR and...

PIERRE, S.D. - Gov. Mike Rounds has signed a bill that defines new crimes, repeals antiquated crimes and revises the elements of many existing crimes. The bill was drafted last year by the state Criminal Code Revision Commission, which spent months reviewing hundreds of criminal laws. Legislators made several changes to the measure, but the bulk of it was untouched. It has been three decades since the last major overhaul of the state criminal code. With one exception, the new code will be enacted July 1, 2006. Beginning this July 1, the measure will restore gun rights after one year...

ROME -- As is just about everywhere else in the world, Rome is awash in editions of "The Da Vinci Code," the blockbuster whodunit with a narrative that includes a Vatican coverup of an explosive theological secret: Jesus was married! Despite the heretical plot twist, in which Jesus fathered a child with his wife, Mary Magdalene, Dan Brown's novel was on sale at the bookstore of Gemelli Polyclinic, the Rome hospital where Pope John Paul II underwent a tracheotomy last month and spent 18 days recovering before being released Sunday. Well, enough is enough. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, once a top...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Asked when he was near death to name things he regretted not doing, Andrew Jackson said: ``I didn't shoot Henry Clay, and I didn't hang John C. Calhoun.'' President Bush, who seems determined to leave office with nothing undone -- except, maybe, horsewhipping Harry Reid -- vows to transform not only Social Security but the hydra-headed tax code.</p>

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The terrorist believed to have flown a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, obtained a California driver's license without providing the required Social Security number for identification, officials are acknowledging for the first time. Nawaf Alhazmi then used that license when he registered for the flight training that enabled him to pilot the doomed airliner. Alhazmi used a loophole, since closed, in California law that allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign drivers without Social Security numbers to use a generic number in its place. Even some foreign citizens with Social Security numbers skirted the...

DISCOUNTING FOR AN UNDERWATER EARTHQUAKE that sent 40-foot-high waves traveling thousands of miles across the open sea to inflict death and destruction on an unimaginable scale, it was kind of a sleepy holiday for the Washington political community, newswise. So you can understand the titillation that shimmered through the capital when the local paper announced, a few days after Christmas, that President Bush might delay his plan to "simplify" the tax code! "Bush Expected to Delay Major Tax Overhaul," said the headline in the Washington Post. At last there was something else to talk about on Inside Politics.

I BIT MY TONGUE AND RESISTED the urge to fire off an angry email. Reading through an on-line discussion board for budding Catholic apologists like myself, I had come across a message written more with an excess of zeal than with a correct understanding of canon law. Granted, the offending message was written with the best of intentions, and I also admired the offending author as a competent biblical apologist when it came to defending the Catholic faith against Protestant challenges. Nevertheless, this apologist’s competency with the Bible didn’t extend to the Code of Canon Law. And the question had...

CEOs: Reform entitlements firstBusiness Roundtable says deficits pose threat By William L. Watts, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 2:32 PM ET Dec. 13, 2004 WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- The White House and Congress should focus on reforming Social Security and other entitlement programs before looking at a broad overhaul of the tax code, a group representing the chief executives of America's largest corporations urged Monday. "We are very concerned that unless action is begun now, future growth in spending -- especially in the three significant entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- will overwhelm the federal budget and the economy," wrote...

Bible Code being explored on History Channel

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

NOTE: If I know anything about the rabid naysayers on FR, at least some of the RELIGIOUS [vs spiritual] types will wail and rant that ANYTHING having to do with numbers and The Bible has to be crossing the line into dealing with Biblically forbidden NUMEROLOGY. This is nonsense. The dictionary definition of “numerology” makes clear that numerology is the study of numbers, as the figures designating the year of one’s birth, “to determine their supposed influence on one’s life, future, etc.” [Quix color, bold emphasis on the definition from: HERE: http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0562554.html Clearly, the Biblically prohibited issue is INTEREST IN,...

As President Bush rebuilds his cabinet, we can expect to hear many in the media and on Capitol Hill claim the president lacks a mandate for his nominees and his policies. That's nonsense. The president earned more than 59 million votes -- about 3.5 million more than John Kerry -- in large part by making a convincing case for several clear-cut policy goals, including Social Security reform, a muscular foreign policy and, critically, fixing the tax system. "The American people deserve and our economic future demands a simpler, fairer, pro-growth system," President Bush announced in his acceptance speech at the...

Bush's Top Priority Items scuttled by Republican Leadership Bluebay Mediavannrox 11-17-2004 Bush's Top Priority Items scuttled by Republican Leadership. Less than two weeks after the decisive 2004 election, senior republican senate leaders have openly opposed key policy agenda of the Bush Administration. Questions have arisen concerning whether or not this president has a "Popular Mandidate" to implement his programs. His greatest hurtle is within his own party. Key to the 2004 - 2008 policy programs unveiled by the President include Tax Reform, Judicial Nominations, The War on Terror, and Social Security Reform. At every step in these key policy...