Free Republic

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on April 8 it has received enough H-1B applications to meet the congressionally mandated cap of 85,000 H-1B visas for fiscal year 2009. The H-1B visas are given to foreign workers in “specialty occupations” (science, engineering, law, medicine, computer programming, etc.) where U.S. employers have filed petitions claiming there are not qualified U.S. applicants to fill the jobs. The total current 85,000 includes an annual 65,000 “cap” and an additional 20,000 exemptions for applicants with advanced degrees. If precedent holds, other exemptions will add tens of thousands more; in 2008 the number...

I.B.M. withdrew its $7 billion bid for Sun Microsystems on Sunday, one day after Sun’s board balked at a reduced offer, according to three people close to the talks. The deal’s collapse after weeks of negotiations raises questions about Sun’s next step, since the I.B.M. offer was far above the value of the Silicon Valley company’s shares when news of the I.B.M. offer first surfaced last month. Sun, an innovative pioneer in computer workstations, servers and Internet-era software, has struggled in recent years and spent months trying to secure a suitor. With I.B.M. and others shying away from a deal,...

Kind of weird there right now. Either they are playing a April Fools joke on everybody or they have been hacked, I don't think it's conficker. They are pretty liberal at that site though so if they are hacked no tears from me.

People like to publish top-10 lists of all sorts. And "reasons to switch to Linux" is no exception. Many of those have been published, and the latest entry is here. However, I think the author completely forgot a very important point. Also, some of the points he makes should be examined a bit more closely and critically. The comments on the original article reflect some valid and some unfounded criticism. Let me just run through those points (italics are quotes from the original 10-point list, my comments are directly below each point) and provide my own take on those: Free: ...

Japan gave its military the green light on Friday to shoot down any incoming North Korean rocket, with tensions high ahead of a planned launch that the US and allies say will be an illegal missile test.Japanese and US warships have already deployed ahead of the April 4-8 window, when the secretive North has said it will launch a communications satellite -- warning that shooting it down would be seen as an act of war. But South Korea, Japan and the United States have all warned the North that any launch would be unacceptable, amid fears the regime is actually...

give these little girls a listen...they can sing!

Apologies if this has been covered - haven't seen it in any of the Mac / PC wars. :) Could be some other FReepers have wondered the same thing. Any big concerns one should be aware of, regarding adding an additional, new DDR memory "card" into a dinosaur PC notebook?

Jerry Jalava has built a special prosthetic finger which contains computer storage for photos, movies and other useful files. While the prosthetic looks like a normal finger Jerry can peel it back from the 'nail' and plug it into the USB slot on his computer using it as an additional hard drive. ...snip... Using a traditional prosthetic finger Jerry has been able embed a 'USB key' - like the ones used in traditional flash drives - giving him the world's only two gigabyte finger. The finger is not permanently attached to his hand meaning it can be removed when plugged...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge Tuesday ordered a former District of Columbia employee facing corruption charges to remain jailed in a case that prompted his former boss to take a brief leave of absence as President Barack Obama's computer chief. Yusuf Acar, who was the acting chief security officer in D.C.'s technology office, is accused of defrauding the city through a sophisticated bribery and fraud scheme. The allegations include billing the city for items that were never delivered and "ghost" contract employees who didn't work. Authorities say Acar approved falsified bills and split the money with vendors who submitted...

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito. In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these...

Here is an example of a new 3d browser http://www.mb3dengine.com/ Be nice to the site, it almost can's handle more then a few users and make sure you give it time to load. Also use your scroll mouse.

The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov, envisioned as the primary vehicle for President Obama to communicate with the online masses, has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve. Obama, for example, would like to send out mass e-mail updates on presidential initiatives, but the White House does not have the technology in place to do so. The same goes for text messaging, another campaign staple.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Anybody want some top-secret seagoing vessels? The Navy has a pair it doesn't need anymore. It has been trying to give them away since 2006, and they're headed for the scrap yard if somebody doesn't speak up soon.One is called Sea Shadow. It's big, black and looks like a cross between a Stealth fighter and a Batmobile. It was made to escape detection on the open sea. The other is known as the Hughes (as in Howard Hughes) Mining Barge. It looks like a floating field house, with an arching roof and a door that is 76...

I was pitched headfirst into the world of e-books in 2002 when I took a job with Palm Digital Media. The company, originally called Peanut Press, was founded in 1998 with a simple plan: publish books in electronic form. As it turns out, that simple plan leads directly into a technological, economic, and political hornet's nest. But thanks to some good initial decisions (more on those later), little Peanut Press did pretty well for itself in those first few years, eventually having a legitimate claim to its self-declared title of "the world's largest e-book store." Unfortunately, despite starting the company...

Anyone have any experience with this nasty piece of spyware. I had not even heard about it, until this morning when I put it on my neighbor's computer. It would have been bad enough if I had done it to my own, it's horribe I did it to his...so...what's the best way of ridding myself of this evil interloper. And for once, I'm using that term about something other than Obama! Thanks!

<excerpt>In the middle of last week I tipped over from a state of mild fearfulness about the global economy to one of wild panic over what is to become of us. On Wednesday, I became host to all sorts of crazy worries – big, unmanageable ones as well as little, stupid ones. I worried about there being anarchy on the streets of London – while at the same time fretting over whether I should have painted the boxroom cream rather than white. This is the sort of mixed-up mental state I am familiar with from bouts of wakefulness at three...

An apparent system error left millions of visitors to the site puzzled when links to all search results were flagged with the warning 'This site may harm your computer'. It is thought the site had erroneously identified all other websites - and some of its own pages - as containing malicious software or 'malware'. The glitch, which prevented internet users from directly clicking through to search results, was fixed within 30 minutes although users of Google's email service Gmail have since reported finding genuine messages sent mistakenly to spam folders. The errors prompted panic among web surfers who at first...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- While a number of technology giants have been making public disclosures about job cuts in recent weeks, IBM Corp. has been quietly eliminating positions in a number of divisions including its storied research unit, according to an organization seeking recognition as a union with the company. nearly 200 jobs have been cut from the research group, 1,200 from the systems technology group, over 300 from finance nearly 100 from human resources. an IBM spokesman, said the company is not commenting on the number of job cuts underway or on which business units are affected. Alliance@IBM believes...

President Barack Obama's aides, who ran the most tech-savvy US election campaign in history, were forced into a red-faced admission Monday -- the White House email system has crashed. "Our email system is not working so well," press spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at the start of his daily briefing. "We'll endeavor to get you information from earlier in the day, hopefully in a little bit more of a timely manner, if we can get the email to work." At one stage, Obama aides were forced to turn back the clock and hand out copies of memoranda signed by the...

If you don't like going to Drudge and dealing with popups or getting tracked by third party cookies, I would suggest that you visit the following site: Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts FileThis site maintains an updated "HOSTS" file that has a pretty comprehensive list of known ad and spyware sites and will cause your browser to not go to those sites if the page you are loading wants to get a banner ad, popup ad, webbug, or third party tracking cookie. The list of blocked sites is updated about once a month. How does it work? When you...