Free Republic

http://www.techeye.net/science/wired-chinese-and-japanese-kids-forget-how-to-write Wired Chinese and Japanese kids forget how to write Can you blame them? 27 Aug 2010 11:35 | by Nick Farrell | posted in Science Wired Chinese and Japanese kids forget how to write - Writing Chinese and Japanese is a particularly difficult skill and since computers came along it is fast becoming something that kids are forgetting. Sure they can read and write their language on a computer, but according to BreitBart when they pick up a pen they have forgotten how to do it. Dubbed "character amnesia", the problem is becoming widespread across China, and some are...

I have an HP Laserjet4P printer that I connect to my Dell Vostro 1320 laptop via a parallel-to-USB cable. If I plug this cable into three of my four USB ports, I cannot print. I see, in my printer queue, the document, plus the remark "use printer offline." Only when I plug into the fourth USB port do I succeed in printing. When I do so, the "use printer offline" message disappears, the printer light blinks and prints and the queue entry disappears. What is going on? Thanks.

  154 lives were lost when Spanair Flight 5022 crashed moments after taking off from Madrid-Barajas International Airport in 2008. Now documents from an investigation into the incident are showing that a malware infection may have been to blame.According to the investigation, the computer system used to monitor technical problems on the plane was infected with a trojan. As a result, there were no alerts or warnings for three technical issues which "if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off."The investigation is still not complete and authorities are trying to determine just how the malware got onto the...

Initially hailed as a solution to the biggest question in computer science, the latest attempt to prove P ≠ NP – otherwise known as the "P vs NP" problem – seems to be running into trouble. Two prominent computer scientists have pointed out potentially "fatal flaws" in the draft proof by Vinay Deolalikar of Hewlett-Packard Labs in Palo Alto, California. Since the 100-page proof exploded onto the internet a week ago, mathematicians and computer scientists have been racing to make sense of it. The problem concerns the speed at which a computer can accomplish a task such as factorising a...

SNIPPET: "Thousands of online banking customers have had their accounts drained by a sophisticated new computer virus, internet security experts say. Around £675,000 was taken from a "large UK financial institution" over the last month with 3,000 customers hit - and the attacks are ongoing. Online security firm M86 Security Labs said the customers were infected with a Trojan virus - which cannot be detected by traditional anti-virus software - while browsing the internet. The Trojan, known as a Zeus v3, copies the passwords and usernames of customers' online details and transfers their funds to a different account. It then...

NOTE The following text SNIPPET is a quote: International Hacker Arraigned After Extradition Elaborate Scheme Stole over $9.4 Million from Credit Card Processor ATLANTA, GA—SERGEI TŠURIKOV, 26, of Tallinn, Estonia, has been extradited to the United States. TŠURIKOV appeared today and was arraigned before United States Magistrate Judge E. Clayton Scofield III, on federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, computer fraud, and aggravated identity theft. TŠURIKOV was indicted by a federal grand jury on these charges on November 10, 2010, along with VIKTOR PLESHCHUK, 29, of St. Petersburg, Russia; OLEG COVELIN,...

Just a link. I think per the rules.

I was out running errands the other day and there was a weird picture laying on the printer when I got back. Can a virus do this or do I have a teenager who's possibly up to no good?

Investigators have found concrete evidence on computers used by Pfc. Bradley Manning that link him with the leak of classified Afghanistan war reports, a U.S. defense official said. The disclosure came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged Thursday to "aggressively investigate the leak" and find ways to prevent further breaches, and told reporters that he had invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist the probe. Defense officials said the FBI was investigating whether civilians aided Pfc. Manning in providing the information to WikiLeaks, a Web-based group that this week released 76,000 secret reports from Afghanistan. Pfc. Manning already was...

The Indian government has unveiled the prototype of an iPad-like touch-screen laptop, with a price tag of $35 (£23), which it hopes to roll out next year. Aimed at students, the tablet supports web browsing, video conferencing and word processing, say developers. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said a manufacturer was being sought for the gadget, which was developed by India's top IT colleges. An earlier cheap laptop plan by the same ministry came to nothing. The device unveiled on Thursday has no hard disk, using a memory card instead, like a mobile phone, and can run on solar...

After getting frustrated out of the lemons his problems gave him, David Miller made his own corporate lemonade. Due to the frustration of always having to call technical support to solve his own frequent hardware problems, he started taking the initiative to educate himself.

THE COMPUTER DATA BANK: WILL IT KILL YOUR FREEDOM? All around the U.S., computer centers may be talking too much about everybody and everything BY JACK STAR LOOK SENIOR EDITOR Did your sister have an illegitimate baby when she was 15? Did you fail math in junior high? Are you divorced or living in a common-law relationship? Do you pay your bills promptly? Are you willing to talk to salesmen? Have you been treated for a venereal disease? Are you visiting a psychiatrist? Were you ever arrested? Have you taken an airplane trip in the past 90 days; with whom:...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.justice.gov/usao/mow/news2010/harrison.ind.htm JULY 9, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BLACK MARKET TRAVEL AGENTS 38 DEFENDANTS INDICTED IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FRAUD LOCAL INVESTIGATION EXPOSES NATIONWIDE NETWORK THAT USED STOLEN IDENTITIES, CREDIT CARDS TO PURCHASE AIRLINE TICKETS KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that 38 defendants from across the United States have been charged in a series of indictments that allege an extensive network of black market travel agents who used the stolen identities of thousands of victims as part of a multi-million dollar fraud scheme...

"A state appellate court ruled in Schwarzenegger's favor Friday, but the state controller, who issues state paychecks, says he can't comply. One reason given by Controller John Chiang, a Democrat elected in 2006: The state's computer system can't handle the technological challenge of restating paychecks to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour."

Computer scientists at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., are asking industry for novel technologies and approaches that offer dramatic advances in high-performance military computer performance, and enable so-called extreme scale computing -- the notion of exceeding today's peta-scale computing to achieve one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. DARPA released a broad agency announcement Monday (DARPA-BAA-10-78) for the Omnipresent High Performance Computing (OHPC) program to help develop tomorrow's high-performance computers to meet the relentlessly increasing demands for greater performance, higher energy efficiency, ease of programmability, dependability, and security in aerospace and defense computing for military...

For the last few days, both my computers started having trouble loading Free Republic pages, sometimes taking several minutes. I've noticed more than usual multiple postings for the same Freepers which tells me they are having the same problems. Has this been a problem with other users or it it just my problem? Thanks

AUSTRALIANS would be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a new plan to fight cyber crime. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers like Telstra and Optus could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved. Those are two of the recommendations to come from a year-long inquiry into cyber crime by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications. Results of the inquiry, titled Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime, were released last night in a 260-page report....

I am using Audacity to edit an audio file. Within this file, I would like to select a portion and add an effect. I want the effect to begin no earlier and no later than what I want. Similar to the ending. Right now,I am selecting a portion of the file based on an educated guess. Then I listen to the whole selection, and adjust the beginning and ending of the selection accordingly. The problem is, doing it this way takes a long time, because I have to listen to the whole selection. I thought I could just jump to...

SNIPPET: "OTTAWA — The May 18 firebombing of an Ottawa bank was feared to be just the start of a "domestic terrorism" campaign launched by three anarchists bent on acts of destruction at the G20 summit in Toronto, with one of the accused firebombers stockpiling boxes of ammunition and gunpowder, the Ottawa Citizen has learned." SNIPPET: "Ottawa Police Chief Vern White had publicly branded those who attacked the bank branch as terrorists days after the firebombing, which was filmed and posted online in a "catch-me-if-you-can" video by a group called FFFC-Ottawa. The acronym stands for Fight for Freedom Coalition, according...

This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?