Free Republic

Has anyone used or is anyone out Free Republica using Open Office Suite? What has your experience been like? When did it switch from free to member fee based?

BLINK and you would have missed it. The expression of disgust on former US president Bill Clinton's face during his speech to the Democratic National Convention as he says "Obama" lasts for just a fraction of a second. But to Paul Ekman it was glaringly obvious. "Given that he probably feels jilted that his wife Hillary didn't get the nomination, I would have to say that the entire speech was actually given very gracefully," says Ekman, who has studied people's facial expressions and how they relate to what they are thinking for over 40 years. It seems that Clinton's micro-expression...

Welcome to SpinSpotter All the news that's fit to de-spin. Spin doesn't belong in the news. It's like putting motor oil in the mojito. We have tremendous respect for journalists, but who would argue that the media circus isn't out of control? A full 66% of Americans think the press is one-sided. Now there's a website and software tool that exposes news spin and bias, misuse of sources, and suspect factual support. At SpinSpotter, you'll experience the news in a profound new way. Yes, the truth is back in town.

Is there any software available for downloading YouTube and other online video clips to your harddrive? Names of programs and/or url's for such software appreciated.

A criminal gang is using software tools normally reserved for computer network administrators to infect thousands of PCs in corporate and government networks with programs that steal passwords and other information, a security researcher has found. The new form of attack indicates that little progress has been made in defusing the threat of botnets, networks of infected computers that criminals use to send spam, steal passwords and do other forms of damage, according to computer security investigators. Several security experts say that although attacks against network administrators are not new, the systematic use of administrative software to spread malicious software...

My computer crashed, as happens, some of my old familiar software cant go on my new computer. I need photo editing software that puts captions under the photo. Seems simple but I've tried several with no luck. You guys always help so I appeal to your experience!! As always: "Fight the good fight" Don VB

LONDON: European researchers are working on mathematical foundations of programming to create fault free software in the future. People are remarkably tolerant of software that goes wrong, but when it comes to faulty cars or TV sets, they would insist that they be set right without much ado, the researchers said. "The software industry is still very immature compared to other branches of engineering," says Bengt Nordström, computer scientist at Chalmers University, Göteborg. "We want to see programming as an engineering discipline but it's not there yet. It's not based on good theory and we don't have good design methods...

Excerpt - Redmond, WA (AHN) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is pulling the XP operating system from its product line come Monday. The move comes 18 months after the company launched the Vista operating system. Although Microsoft will not sell the XP program any longer, they will still generate revenue from providing support for the software as it will no longer be free. Microsoft will offer extended support packages for XP until at least 2014. ~ snip ~

"For the opening piece in our series on Gates leaving daily life at Microsoft, one goal was to give a clear picture of the Microsoft co-founder's role inside the company, as a gauge of the impact his departure will have," Todd Bishop writes for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Microsoft Blog. "As part of that, I went back through the internal e-mails turned over in the antitrust suits against the company, looking for new insights into his personality." Bishop found a doozy, which also happens to illustrate perfectly why Mac users have such disdain for the "Windows experience." If you've ever...

Researchers said Windows XP Service Pack 3 delivers a measurable performance boost when compared to Windows XP with Service Pack 2.Windows XP runs some applications up to 10% faster with the latest service pack installed, a research firm has found. "We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (v.3244) delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," wrote staff at exo.performance.network, in a blog post. The researchers found that a PC loaded with Microsoft's XP SP3 completed the OfficeBench test suite in less than 50 seconds. A similarly configured system running Windows XP with...

SACRAMENTO – California's first inspection of slot machines at Indian casinos has found widespread software lapses that could be short-changing tribes, the state and millions of gamblers, the state's gambling commission warns in a new report. State inspectors approved just 60 percent of the slots that were examined last year at seven casinos, which included some of the most successful and sophisticated in the nation. But tribal representatives and commission staff members disagreed sharply about the severity of the software shortcomings flagged in nearly 500 machines examined at the casinos, including those operated by the Pala, Pauma and Viejas tribes...

I have a Tablet PC. A Toshiba R15-S829. I bought it new, and it, and all software on it, is legal. Tablet PC's come with a recovery CD, not an unlocked or unbranded version of the O/S. I would like to have an unbranded version of the WinXP/Tablet PC O/S. Historically, Microsoft only sold these to system builders. Now they are selling them to online retailers, also. I have found it for sale on four different retail websites, and marketed as either..."WIN XP PRO TABLET SP2B" or "Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC 2005 W/SP2B". In the Product info sections, it...

THE NEW YORK TIMES March 28, 2008 Santiago Journal Before ’73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising discovery. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines. The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer, a visionary Briton who employed his “cybernetic” concepts to help Mr. Allende find an alternative to...

New Genomics Software Infers Ancestry With High Accuracy ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2008) — Some people may know where their ancestors lived 10 or 20 generations ago, but the rest of us can learn our distant biological heritage only from our DNA. New genomics analysis software developed by computer scientists at Stanford appears far more adept than prior methods at unraveling the ancestry of individuals. A new paper describes the HAPAA system, which takes its name from "hapa," the Hawaiian word for someone of mixed ancestry. Going back 20 generations the software can identify what continent or broad global region an...

US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday. Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms." "Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee. "As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in...

March/April 2008 A Technology Surges In Iraq, soldiers conducting frontline street patrols finally get software tools that let them share findings and plan missions. By David Talbot First Lieutenant Brian Slaughter wanted his comrades to learn from the insurgent attack that could have killed him on May 21, 2004. Before dawn, the 30-year-old had been leading 12 men in three armored Humvees along a canal in Baghdad's al-Dora district when a massive blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) lifted his vehicle off the ground. Concealed attackers followed with a volley of rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire. But the IED...

- Snip - Last week, Gross brought his message about porn's hazards to the University of Minnesota. With him was Donny Pauling, who spent nine years as a porn producer. Pauling has walked away from the industry and the fortune he made. - Snip - The xxxchurch.com's website has resources for "those struggling with porn." One offering is free, down-loadable "accountability software" that sends a list of the dubious sites you visit to your "accountability partner" -- a friend or spouse who helps you swear off porn. - Snip - His encounters with the college women he recruited usually followed...

Microsoft researchers are hoping to use "information epidemics" to distribute software patches more efficiently. Milan Vojnović and colleagues from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, want to make useful pieces of information such as software updates behave more like computer worms: spreading between computers instead of being downloaded from central servers. The research may also help defend against malicious types of worm, the researchers say. Software worms spread by self-replicating. After infecting one computer they probe others to find new hosts. Most existing worms randomly probe computers when looking for new hosts to infect, but that is inefficient, says Vojnović, because...

Hi All, My step mother is looking at buying a MAC and she (and I) really don't know too much about them... Well, let me put it this way: She knows nothing about computers, while I've never even seen a MAC up close, though I work in IT. We both have a number of questions. My first bit of advice to her was to go to an Apple store, sit down with a sales rep, and see if the computer can do what she wants it to do. She currently has a Windows XP PC, and primarily uses paint programs...

What you can - and cannot do - with your software is often determined by the code owner's license. From not using open source APIs with closed-source digital rights management (DRM) to being barred from fiddling with Windows source code, we've seen it all. Or have we? Joining the open source and commercial melee is a document that pretty much rules out using a new JavaScript tool by anyone working in - or associated with - the pharmaceutical, farming and food, and some manufacturing industries. Oh, and certain universities are out, too. ExtTLD, for developing components on the open source...