Free Republic

After many months of not being able to login to FR from my west Texas server, everything now seems to be okay. For many months, whenever I typed in my user name and password at FR and clicked on the "Log In" button, I got only a "dead" response from the server. After trying MANY things, i.e., reformatting, changing my op system, and even changing PCs, I finally wrote to my ISP asking if they had the FR site blocked. After checking, my ISP decided the problem was their "Intrusion Detection" (software?) which was blocking perl script access. The problem...

Neal Boortz ask the question in his Neal's Nuze section this week: When will Spam be stopped, or become less? http://boortz.com/nuze/200601/01052006.html#spamWith all the tough talk I see no progress and maybe more Spam than ever. I suspect the answer is "money". Follow the money to the companies that combat Spam and you will find an industry that has been built for combating Spam, and Viruses.

It's doubtful that Las Vegas bettors would have put any money on an ultra-Orthodox Israeli schoolteacher and mother of five taking the city by storm and setting the annual Consumer Electronics Show on its ear. But that's exactly what inventor and super mom Sarah Lipman did, overcoming the odds while casting a whole new light on the way users can interact with their computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. She's not alone. Indeed, Lipman, who heads her own company - Power2Be Technology - represents part of a new generation of strict religiously observant Israeli women who are finding ways...

Distinguishing fine wine from plonk is usually left to connoisseurs and winemakers, who rely on their senses, rough chemical measurements and the whims of nature to produce an exceptional tipple. But a Carnegie Mellon University professor, working with industry scientists in Chile, is hoping that computer models will identify the traits of good wine -- eventually helping vintners produce more of it. Lorenz "Larry" Biegler, who teaches chemical engineering at the university, is working on mathematical formulas to automate the fermentation process, adjusting ingredients and conditions to ensure robust flavors and higher yields from grape harvests. Scientists don't fully understand...

If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn't read this. Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet. Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page. He had the brainstorm for his million dollar home page, called, logically enough, www.milliondollarhomepage.com, while lying in bed thinking out how he would pay for university. The idea:...

Researchers tracked three browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were "known unsafe." Their definition of "known unsafe": a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available. MSIE was 98% unsafe. There were only 7 days in 2004 without an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. Firefox was 15% unsafe. There were 56 days with an unpatched publicly disclosed security hole. 30 of those days were a Mac hole that only affected Mac users. Windows Firefox was 7% unsafe. Opera was 17% unsafe: 65 days. That number is accidentally a little...

I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop, and it has an S-video jack and a serial display VGA jack (15 pin D shell female). I would like to display images on a television. The television (it's analog, not digital) has no S video jack, neither does it have a VGA jack. It does have red-white-yellow inputs (?RCA jacks?). What is the best or most economical way of getting images onto the TV? Is there an S-video-to-yellow video adapter cable (would be, I imagine, S video on one end, yellow RCA on the other)? What other alternatives do I have? Thanks.

This alert is a follow-up to a post made yesterday on our blog: http://www.websensesecuritylabs.com/blog/ Websense® Security Labs™ has discovered numerous websites exploiting an unpatched Windows vulnerability in the handling of .WMF image files. The websites which have been uncovered at this point are using the exploit to distribute Spyware applications and other Potentially Unwanted Soware. The user's desktop background is replaced with a message warning of a spyware infection and a "spyware cleaning" application is launched. This application prompts the user to enter credit card information in order to remove the detected spyware. The background image used and the "spyware...

WHITE PLAINS, New York - It was Easter Sunday, and Patricia Santangelo was in church with her kids when she says the music recording industry peeked into her computer and decided to take her to court. Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer, but the industry didn't see it that way. The woman from Wappingers Falls, about 80 miles north of New York City, is among the more than 16,000 people who have been sued for allegedly pirating music through file-sharing computer networks. "I assumed that when I explained to them who I was and...

A critical software bug has been discovered in several of the most widely used anti-virus programs. It could be exploited to take control of a computer or to steal information, according to an analysis produced by the independent security analyst who made the discovery. The glitch affects 39 different Symantec products - including both home and enterprise versions of its anti-virus software. It resides within the Symantec anti-virus library, which is used by all of the packages. The analyst, Alex Wheeler, discovered that a critical error occurs when the Symantec anti-virus library decompresses files from "RAR" format for analysis Symantec...

Sober Helps Catch Child Porn Offender By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews December 20, 2005, 3:13 PM For once the never-ending Sober worm actually did some good. A 20 year-old child porn offender turned himself in earlier this week after mistaking a message generated by the worm as an actual communiqué from Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office. The e-mail said "an investigation was underway," which apparently spooked the man into believing the authorities were aware of his online activities. He was charged after police found pornographic images of children on his computer. A spokesman for the Paderborn, Germany police credited the worm...

NEW YORK - In the year 2009, on the 25th of April, a man named Greg is supposed to get an e-mail. The e-mail will remind Greg that he is his best friend and worst enemy, that he once dated a woman named Michelle, and that he planned to major in computer science. "More importantly," the e-mail says, "are you wearing women's clothing?" The e-mail was sent by none other than Greg himself — through a Web site called FutureMe.org. The site is one of a handful that let people send e-mails to themselves and others years in the future....

[...] Today, Souvaine chairs the Tufts University computer science department, which has more female professors than male. But few younger women have followed in her generation's footsteps. Next spring, when 22 computer science graduates accept their Tufts diplomas, only four will be women. Born in contemporary times, free of the male-dominated legacy common to other sciences and engineering, computer science could have become a model for gender equality. [...] When Tara Espiritu arrived at Tufts, she was the rare young woman planning to become a computer scientist.[...]The same men always spoke up, often to raise some technical point that meant...

Company Introduces Full-Function Computer on a Flash Drive by KYW's tech reporter Bob Bicknell By now you’ve seen those thumb-sized "flash drives" you can just stick into your computer’s USB port and use like a portable hard drive. But now, that same little device can do a whole lot more. No longer are flash-memory hard drives reserved for just documents or MP3 files. Now, thanks to the folks at Fingergear, you can carry a mini computer with you. The aptly named "Computer on a Stick" is a small, lighter-sized USB drive that carries its own operating system (Linux), a complete...

A systematic effort by hackers to penetrate US government and industry computer networks stems most likely from the Chinese military, the head of a leading security institute said. The attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the techniques used make it appear unlikely to come from any other source than the military, said Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an education and research organization focusing on cybersecurity. "These attacks come from someone with intense discipline. No other organization could do this if they were not a military organization," Paller said in a conference call...

I am looking to put a new motherboard and processor in my desktop. I am looking to have the best I can get the cheapest possible of course. I have a tower, a 350 watt power sourse, dvd writer, just looking to upgrade. Need an onboard video card, or advice on how to go

Besides housing the apes in natural habitats for public viewing, the building houses the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, a zoo-funded research component that employs Ross. Keo was the first ape to be trained to use the screen, in January. Currently Keo is doing a task Ross calls "match to sample." Teaching apes to use computers is not new. Keo was the first ape to be trained to use the screen, in January. Teaching apes to use computers is not new.

  We Support Our Troops!!!!  Thank you for your service!!! Let's hear what YOU want for Christmas this year. If you don't celebrate Christmas, we'd still love to hear what new toy, gadget, gizmo, or whatchamacallit you'd like to have.  If you don't know, Gummy  has some ideas for you!! Just look below.  Some of our Canteeners have offered suggestions, too.       HiJinx Okay, at the top of my political wish list is Zarqawi's head on a spike. At the top of my tech wish list is a top of the line 19" LCD monitor. At the top of...

I'm looking to buy software to monitor computer useage by teens. I'm leaning toward Spector Pro but wanted to get feedback from y'all. Any recommendations or comments?

Gummy Style!            Newsflash:  Gummy Hates to Shop November 22, 2005 I hate to shop.  I know. You are thinking, "She's not normal."  Perhaps I should clarify.  I hate to drive to a busy mall or store, get out, fight the crowds, look in umpteen stores for the best bargain, and come home with nothing but achy feet and head.  When Al Gore invented the internet, he did it for me.  Honest. (Psssst....He would have told you that, but he's afraid you wouldn't believe him.) OK,  you've guessed it...I do all my shopping online.  Below are my best tips for online...