Free Republic

Only in Amerika Developing the capability to build dossiers on all Americans By DOUG THOMPSON Nov 21, 2002, 07:50 As part of its expanded powers under the guise of “homeland security,” the federal government is developing interlinked databases that will track financial transactions, phone calls, Internet activity, gun ownership and even vehicle use of all Americans, Capitol Hill Blue has learned. One such database, the Orwellian-sounding Total Information Awareness System, is a Pentagon-based computer project headed by former Iran-Contra figure John Poindexter, director of the Information Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency that originally...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 25 The Earth's Magnetic Field Credit & Copyright: Gary A. Glatzmaier (UCSC) Explanation: Why does the Earth have a magnetic field? The electrical conductivity of the molten plasma of the Earth's core should be able to damp the current magnetic field in only thousands of years. Yet our five billion year old Earth clearly causes magnets to point to (defined) north. The mystery is still being...

Porn shows up in businessman's slide show Associated Press FORT WORTH -- A North Texas businessman has been jailed after co-workers reported an image of child pornography showed up on a screen as he gave a computer slide presentation recently. James Andrew Smith of Denton was in the Mansfield Jail under $300,000 bond after he was charged with two counts of possessing child pornography and one charge of promoting child pornography. Exel Inc. co-workers told police Smith had just completed a PowerPoint presentation on Sept. 4 when he tried to open another document on his laptop computer. The co-workers said...

This was a real memo sent out by a computer company to its employees in all seriousness. It went to all field engineers about a computer peripheral problem. The author of this memo was quite genuine. The word is that the engineers literally rolled on the floor! (Especially note the last couple of sentences.) Re: Replacement of Mouse Balls. If a mouse fails to operate or should it perform erratically, it may need a ball replacement. Mouse balls are now available as FRU (Field Replacement Units). Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should only...

This is where you start:http://www.gotapex.com/deals.phphttp://techbargains.com/Above two sites also have forums w/ more computer deals.http://forums.techbargains.com/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=17http://www.gotapex.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=b484800ee2b6b4e6ba70d881669159aa&forumid=5LCD monitor bargains:http://www.techbargains.com/cheaplcdmonitor.cfm  I HAVE NO FINANCIAL INTEREST IN ANY MANUFACTURERS OR STORES LISTED  

Michael Sands CMO at Orbitz Depending upon whom you ask, Michael Sands is either a successful user of pop-under ads or an apologist for them. As the chief marketing officer for Orbitz, a Chicago-based online travel site founded by American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United Airlines in 1999, Sands has overseen pop-under ad blitzes like Orbitz's current "shear the sheep" campaign. Sands, who joined Orbitz in late 2000 after highly successful work in e-commerce and integrated marketing for Oldsmobile during the late 90s, doesn't seem rattled by the complaints of agitated web surfers. He has seen that the ads are...

A simple way to exploit an unfixed defect in Internet Explorer has been discovered that allows malicious web sites, and possibly malicious email messages read with Outlook or Outlook Express, to take control of a computer. All you would need to do is click a web link and the owner of the web site could take almost any action they desired on your computer. Simple, working exploit software was recently published to a public mailing list. There is no patch to fix the problem. Anti-virus and personal firewall software will not prevent an exploit. It is hoped that Microsoft will...

HELP with Bad Cookies.I have the Lavasoft Ad-aware software. I tells me that I have these two cookies (named below) that allow people to find out things about my computer and me.I have set my E:\temps folder as where I put my internet explorer temporary files. I tried editing these files and removing everthing and writing in the word JUNK and then making them read-only files. Well, the cookies came back with a [2] instead of the [1].I get doubleclick from the SF Rain Radar and fastclick from the DRUDGE Report. At least I have found out where they are...

Poll Problems Reported In Central Florida Ballots Being Put In Box To Be Hand-Counted In Gotha Posted: 7:59 a.m. EST November 5, 2002 Updated: 8:34 a.m. EST November 5, 2002 ORLANDO, Fla. -- Poll problems have been reported at two polling locations in Central Florida Tuesday, according to Local 6 News. Local 6 News reported that the scanners were not working at the Gotha Precinct 101 in Orange County, Fla. Voters were putting their ballots in a box to be hand-counted, according to the report. The scanners also are not working at the Port St. John precinct #159 in Brevard...

On any regular day I will go to Drudge then come to FreeRepublic, I've been doing this for years now. Lately, when I move from one to the other I get a full screen pop-up taking me to a site called WWW.SpyOnYou.com. It always seems to occur after I click on my link to FR while on Drudge or vice versa. I've searched for cookies and sure enough I find one - then I delete it - then later the popup occurs again - and the cookie is back. Any ideas on how to skip this part of my internet...

I've been having a terrible time getting into this website. Anyone else having the same problem?

On the afternoon of July 17, a self-proclaimed expert in biochemistry composed an e-mail message to Saddam Hussein. The message, sent from an MSN Hotmail account on a computer in China, recommended the use of methyl bromide, an agricultural pesticide, as an effective chemical weapon against the U.S. Army. "For weapon use, have function: no color, no smell, will let person dead in a few second," wrote the e-mail's author, who provided the phone number and address of a distributor in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from which the toxic chemical could be purchased "in cylinder or in can." The chilling electronic...

“However, these small radio stations are often just people with an Internet connection, a computer and a bunch of CDs or pirated MP3s who would rather steal from the rightful copyright owner than adhere to the agreements of civilized society. The four years worth of back royalty payments from webcasters were due on Sunday October 20, 2002 but that was postponed by organizations representing the artists including the Recording Industry Association of America (the RIAA is normally considered the villain in these discussions) and Republican Senator Jesse Helms (who is normally always considered the villain to liberals/leftists) has postponed voting...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. Reuters Photo The company hopes to have products available by 2005 using the advanced circuitry, perhaps even a "display card" that could store data and be carried around for use with various gadgets from games machines to mobile phones to car navigation systems. "This could be something the size of a business card, perhaps with a wireless function and touch-screen input," Mikio Katayama, head of Sharp's mobile display...

“EDS also found that the Navy’s computers were often purchased by different departments at the political whim of the department heads (Think: 'I’m a rear admiral, so I should have better computers than some captain.') Some PCs used by clerks were clunky old all-in-one Macs from 1984 while other clerks were using new Intel Pentium 4 systems with CD burners and 21” flat panel monitors.”

Hey, I was reading an article on al-Qaeda in Time (itself a reasonably interesting read), and I noticed something kind of spooky: the letters "CIA" are capitalized throughout the article!!! Totally freaked me out, makes me wonder if al-Qaedas are hacking articles and sending messages through them! Check it out yourself: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,366218,00.html?cnn=yes

When asked about a train schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits. When you are counting objects, you go "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D...". When you dream in 256 palettes of 256 colors. When your spouse says "If you don't turn off that damn machine and come to bed, then I am going to divorce you!" and you chastise her/him for omitting the "else" clause. You try to sleep, and think sleep (8 * 3600); /* sleep for 8 hours / When you are reading a book and look for the scroll bar to get to the next page. When after...

From a 1999 email... At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry to the car industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics: 1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day. 2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road,...

When I try to look at a foreign news website, I get this box that says download either uniscribe of arabic text display. What will it do if I download those?

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 27 Accretion Disk Simulation Credit: Michael Owen, John Blondin (North Carolina State Univ.) Explanation: Don't be fooled by the familiar symmetry. The graceful spiral structure seen in this computer visualization does not portray winding spiral arms in a distant galaxy of stars. Instead, the graphic shows spiral shock waves in a three dimensional simulation of an accretion disk -- material swirling onto a compact central object...