Free Republic

When Jake Walker upsets his girlfriend, Jaci Boydston, he might buy her flowers. When Jaci feels she owes an apology to Jake, she agrees to play a round of the Nintendo fighting game "Super Smash Brothers." Jaci and Jake, who both attend Kansas State University, are a modern couple dealing with a modern issue. One of them is a gamer; the other is not. Theirs is not an unusual plight. For decades gamers and non-gamers in love have struggled to find harmony. At Kansas State the frustration is rampant. Like most college campuses, it is a place where the release...

My local Walmart is advertising a HP Pavillion ze2308wm for $378. Is this a decent laptop? I've never had a laptop before and when I travel it would be useful. Opinions please.

Any Freepers "folding@home"???? For those not familiar with F@H -> some diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer and even "mad cow" disease are believed to be linked to protein (mis)folding. A scientist team from Stanford University studies this phenomenon to try and find a cure to these diseases. To do this, they have designed a software (folding@home) which enables people to donate unused power from their computer to speed up medical research!

US updates quarantine procedures ahead of possible bird flu pandemic 47 minutes ago US health authorities have called for updating quarantine procedures, including better access to passenger lists for incoming ships and planes, to improve preparedness for a possible bird flu pandemic. The proposed changes, which include more authority to administer medical treatments and vaccines to people under quarantine, are part of a review started two years ago following the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. "Existing communicable disease regulations are outdated, have not kept up with advances in disease control measures and have not been substantially updated for over...

It looks like 67-year old Mavis Childs may have set the trend by seeking the services of medical facilities in India at a huge cost-savings for an operation that the NHS made her wait for over two years. Now the NHS itself is taking a cue from her and has short-listed the leading Indian chain of hospitals, the Apollo group for its outsourcing plans. While Childs experienced the infamous “NHS waiting list” long enough to realize that she may die waiting, there are many still who endure pain for years before the NHS allots an operation day. In light of...

Ok, I bought a puter from WalMart on July 23,2005. Compaq Presario SR1403wm XP SP2 came preinstalled. I have 256 memory 65 gig hard drive. Windoze does not recognize my cd/dvd/rw drive. Gone in BIOS! Got to tinkering around and saw a lot of freaking i tunes crap on there from August 2004????WTF I have NEVER been to i tunes or even opened it??? So did WalFart sell me a refurbished system as a new one? It appears they sold me a HUGE VIRUS w/ a PUTER wrapped around it,,lol. Meanie is MAD!!! tech help sux and I feel smashing...

MOSCOW, November 15 (RIA Novosti) - Two hundred Russian engineers in Moscow are designing a cargo aircraft, the Boeing-747LCF, that will be used to deliver components for the new Boeing-787 Dreamliner passenger plane. "Moscow is handling the design of this special cargo plane, which will deliver components produced in Japan, Britain, France, and Russia to the aircraft-manufacturing plant in Seattle for final assembly of the Dreamliner, which will only take three days," Sergei Kravchenko, the president of U.S. aircraft giant Boeing in Russia and the CIS, said. Kravchenko said the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) had built an experimental test bench...

Sony is apparently borrowing a tactic from hackers for its digital-rights management technology, and some security experts question the practice. Security researchers have identified a rootkit -- software used by hackers to hide their malicious code from anti-virus and anti-spyware defenses -- within the copy protection scheme Sony BMG Music Entertainment uses to prevent music CDs from being copied to computers. The digital rights management (DRM) technology that Sony BMG uses limits the number of times a CD can be "ripped" to a computer. To prevent the DRM software from being easily circumvented, the copy protection's creator -- a U.K.-based...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — In a recent online poll of 382 business managers, some 71 percent of respondents said that they have fallen asleep or been sleepy during an “uninteresting” presentation, according to a survey by Infommersion Inc. Some 43 percent of respondents have caught other people dozing, according to Infommersion (San Diego), a developer of data visualization software. The most difficult types of presentations to remain fully awake through were individual speeches (35 percent), followed by training sessions (23 percent) and then general meetings (16 percent), according to the software firm. Webcasts revealed themselves as the easiest type of...

NEW DELHI: Increased use of satellite phones by terrorists is posing a serious problem for security agencies working at intercepting their communication traffic. As a result, the agencies have of late missed vital information that could otherwise have been used to prevent major terror attacks across the country because they do not have the sophisticated interceptor equipment required to monitor satphone traffic. The matter came to the fore at a high-level meeting of top security and intelligence officials in the home ministry to discuss the loopholes in the agencies’ functioning in the wake of Saturday’s serial blasts in Delhi. "Discussions...

Exploding carbon nanotubes could serve as bombs that kill tumors, scientists have discovered. In the last two years, researchers have reported killing cancer using nanotubes and hollow nanoparticles known as nanoshells. Investigators gave cancers injections of nanotubes or nanoshells and then heated them up to 130 to 160 degrees F with high-power lasers. Now nanotechnologist Balaji Panchapakesan at the University of Delaware and his colleagues report they can heat carbon nanotubes enough to explode using just low-intensity near-infrared lasers. "They work almost like cluster bombs," Panchapakesan said. "Once they are exposed to light and the resulting heat, they start exploding...

It’s an industry that’s getting the cash registers ringing and presenting India as the back office headquarters of the world. It’s also the industry that mostly employs jumpity post-adolescents who, a decade ago, would have either been part of the odd market survey team trying to check how much consumption interest there is in a to-be-launched lipstick, or would have been whiling away their time until they got married or a job, whichever came hurtling first. So it’s not Reliance or Infosys, but it’s a job that we apparently do well and, believe it or not, it’s work that a...

BEIJING - At a ceremony today in China's Great Hall of the People, AMD (NYSE:AMD) executives signed agreements with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and Peking University to license AMD x86 microprocessor design technology that will enable Chinese development of low-power and embedded computer solutions for consumer and commercial markets. AMD also announced the contribution of US$750,000 to support technology deployment for primary education in rural China and opened a new headquarters for AMD Greater China. "AMD and China share a deep mutual respect for the ability of technology to promote economic and educational opportunities," said AMD...

When and where on earth can you see the longest sunrise? And how long can you see it? Stumped? Well, then, sample another. What would you see from the moon more often: the sun or the earth? A five-member team of 14-to-17-year olds will hone their skills over the next 10 days to unravel a few more secrets that the skies hold. Their aim: to win as many medals as possible at the International Astronomy Olympiad that kicks off in Beijing on October 25. It will not be an easy task — they will be up against competition from over...

October 20, 2005 - Sony Computer Entertainment announced today the PSP Giga Pack for worldwide release later this year. The Giga Pack is a bundle that includes the PSP hardware, AC Adapter, standard battery pack, headphones with remote control, pouch, cloth, USB cable and a stand. And the best part: an included one gig Memory Stick.

Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. this week began marketing a technology that inexpensively adds face recognition to camera-equipped cellphones. Oki's "Face Sensing Engine" (FSE) "middleware" decodes facial images within 280mS on a 100MHz ARM9 processor, and can restrict access to mobile devices by recognizing their owners, the company says. Oki says its FSE technology can help protect sensitive personal information such as phone numbers and email addresses from unwanted access, in the event of loss or theft of a mobile device. The use of face recognition, based on the mobile device's built-in digital camera, eliminates the need for users to...

When technology attacks From 'BlackBerry thumb' to computer-vision syndrome, today's gadgets produce a host of painful side effects By Jonathan Sidener STAFF WRITER October 17, 2005 Grandma never knew how good she had it. Her telephone was attached to the wall. She never had to worry about dropping it in the toilet. Growing up stitching needlepoint, she didn't suffer from stress injuries inflicted by a video-game controller. She kept her photos in a shoe box. There was no chance of the Anna Kournikova virus wiping out her record of little Billy's first birthday party. She didn't have a "crackberry," as...

WASHINGTON — Technology and communications companies rank third on the list of U.S. and U.K. industries with the most litigation, according a new survey of manufacturing companies. The survey by the law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, a leading intellectual-property litigator based in New York and Houston, found that the average U.S. manufacturer currently faces 40 lawsuits. Of those, an average of 18 were initiated in the last year. While product liability remains the largest generator of lawsuits, the survey found that intellectual property disputes are an emerging problem, especially for technology companies. IP and patent lawsuits accounted for an estimated...

Google has begun to make good on its commitment to plow a small fraction of the proceeds from its wildly successful stock offering into social investment projects. Funding for "good works" will largely be derived from the donation of 1 percent of the equity from last year's initial public offering, along with 1 percent of its annual profits. Google said Tuesday that it plans to organize its charitable work under the umbrella of a new organization it calls Google.org. The mission is to focus on vast issues like global poverty, energy and the environment. "These are big problems, so our...

Shares of Apple Computer Inc. continued to tumble Wednesday, after the company reported robust sales of its personal computers and still-sizzling iPods, but overall shipments of the digital music player falling shy of Wall Street's high hopes.