Free Republic

The U.S. Army Special Forces is equipping 18 A Teams (officially known as ODAs, or Operational Detachment Alpha) with Land Warrior electronic equipment. But the Special Forces gear will have one special addition; satellite communications. Normally, Land Warrior comms use line-of-sight (FM) radio. But in the hilly Afghan terrain, and with the dispersed tactics used by Special Forces, satellite communications makes more sense. This is yet another field test for the cancelled Land Warrior project. Last Summer, the army sent an infantry brigade, equipped with Land Warrior gear, to Afghanistan. All this is happening, in spite of the fact that,...

Now appearing on Google: The story of my life. And yours. Not everyone can read it, but the engineers and advertising specialists at Google can. And now users can get a peek, thanks to Google Dashboard, a new service developed at the search giant’s outpost in Zurich. Dashboard lets registered Google users see what the company knows about them. If you’ve got a Google account, just punch up www.google.com/dashboard, and get ready to feel your skin crawl. Google knows just about everything about me. No deep, dark secrets; just thousands of tiny data points which, when put together, could provide...

Long story short. I am looking to get a new cordless phone that is bluetooth enabled. This way I can link my cordless phone and my cell phone (i.e. when at home, and without having to do call forward, I can get the cell phone calls on my home phone). I know the Vtech DS6321 is the newest model that I know of that does this, but has one drawback, or is missing one feature that I need. Call Blocking on the phone. My current cordless phone has call blocking on it (Panasonic KX-TGA740), but none of the other features...

A power outage at Metro's headquarters has led to massive problems systemwide, allowing people to ride some buses for free and shutting down WMATA's Web site, call center and e-mail alert system. Metro said it experienced a power outage at about 2:45 a.m. that took down the data center responsible for communication functions. Besides the Customer Call Center not being able to make or receive calls, Metro said the following problems have developed: Some Metrobus fareboxes are not functioning and if that is the case, customers are being allowed to ride without paying a fare. The NextBus system is not...

Do you remember when James Bond escaped a sticky situation in Tomorrow Never Dies using his remote-controlled car? Well now technology has jumped from the world of fiction to reality. Computer scientists in Germany have developed an iPhone application that turns the smartphone into a remote control for their self-constructed car. The driver can operate the steering, brakes, and accelerator pedal with just a few strokes of the mobile's touchscreen.A video camera placed on the dashboard transmits a signal to the iPhone, which allows the 'remote driver' to see everything in front of the car and adjust the car's movements...

Not even kidding - talk about a revolution in sidewalk pro-life counseling technology: The Star Trek Tricorder, a device that allows medics to check their patients in the field in the sci-fi TV show, took a step closer to becoming reality today thanks to a new device being shown off by General Electric in the US. The device, which is a cross between a mobile phone and an iPod was shown at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. Called Vscan, the clamshell designed gadget is aimed at doctors, and possibly would-be parents who could use it in...

HOW TO UPGRADE WINDOWS 7 BETA OR RC TO WINDOWS 7 RTM (RETAIL VERSION) You can’t upgrade directly from a pre-release version—at least, not without a quick and easy workaround. Here is that workaround...The ProblemWindows 7 checks whether or not the current version you are running is a pre-release copy, and prevents you from upgrading further. For reference purposes, this is the error you’ll see when you try and upgrade.The SolutionThe solution is to edit a file inside the Windows 7 DVD—which you’ll have to extract to the hard drive to proceed. If you are using an ISO image for...

Tomorrow there will be free one year licenses for security software! Coiciding with W7 release of course. http://us.pandasecurity.com/windows7party/index.html http://usa.kaspersky.com/shakeitup/ I don't know panda security, but Kaspersky, cool! One day only, for one year free! I'll try to ping this tomorrow.

Sky News is now streaming its TV channel for free over its website 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite Rupert Murdoch's mumblings about charging for all online content, the site is free - for now at least. Murdoch said yesterday that it was time for aggregators and search engines must start paying for news content - a slight refinement on previous announcements which seemed to want to get some money out of the readers.

So the United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) puts forward the denier’s opinion that having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate so-called greenhouse gasses is bad for the economic strength of the United States. Some companies quit the Chamber. Now we’ve got fake USCC Web sites and news releases “reversing” their opinion? The fake Web page that has the release is exactly like the Chambers real site, but the URL is totally wrong. Click on the graphic below to see the full page.

The Web can be a mean-spirited place. But when it comes to online reviews, the Internet is a village where the books are strong, YouTube clips are good-looking and the dog food is above average. One of the Web's little secrets is that when consumers write online reviews, they tend to leave positive ratings: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Internet retailer Newegg Inc. plans an initial public offering of stock worth up to $175 million, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission on Monday. City of Industry, Calif.-based Newegg focuses on sales of electronics, hardware and software to consumers and small businesses. The company did not specify the timing of its IPO, on which market it intends to float its shares or its intended ticker symbol. Newegg said it plans to use the IPO proceeds to repay debt and for general corporate purposes, while using $25 million to expand in Canada and...

In recent quarters Oracle has been taking aim at Salesforce.com, noting that its Siebel On Demand was poaching customers. On Thursday it was Salesforce’s turn to return fire. Following Salesforce’s fiscal second quarter earnings, CEO Marc Benioff, as chatty as ever, took aim at his trash talking nemesis, Oracle chief Larry Ellison. Benioff said on a conference call: I am excited to welcome back Success Factors to the Salesforce.com family. Success Factors dropped Oracle On Demand after the application failed to deliver and sales reps pleaded to return to Salesforce. When sales teams are demanding your application to support their...

Over the next decade, systems which create and store digital records of people's movements through public space will be woven inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. We are already starting to see such systems now, and there will be many more in the near future. Here are some examples you might already have used or read about: Monthly transit swipe-cards Electronic tolling devices (FastTrak, EZpass, congestion pricing) Cellphones Services telling you when your friends are nearby Searches on your PDA for services and businesses near your current location Free Wi-Fi with ads for businesses near the network access point...

There's no economic doom and gloom for Silicon Valley tech workers, those who who still have their jobs, that is. The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the health of Silicon Valley shows tech workers doing better now than they were during the dotcom boom -- much better. "While the employment picture may sound a bit negative, the wage picture was much more sunny," said Amar Mann, regional economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, who co-authored the report titled "After the Dot-Com Bubble: Silicon Valley High-Tech Employment and wages in 2001 and 2008." The BLS,...

I don’t like carrying cell phones. When it came to buying a wireless phone, I was one of the last holdouts. My house is a bit remote and to this date it has absolutely no cell coverage. Back in 2001, almost everyone I knew already had a cell phone. Finally, I broke down and bought a top of the line Motorola. It was in the $300 plus price range with a two year contract. I even bought a serial port Outlook synchronization device to download contacts and calendar information. I did have fun learning to use all of the device’s...

The 'Creative' Technology Behind The AP's News Registry from the magic-beans dept The Associated Press' attempt to DRM the news is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but its claims for the news registry's capabilities seem pretty misguided, once you examine the technology behind it (the "magic DRM beans"). Ed Felten dug into the details of the registry's microformat, hNews, which the AP announced a few weeks earlier, and here's where it gets really interesting: the hNews rights field is based on the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL). If the AP thinks it'll be able to build...

We've been closely following EEStor's potentially game-changing ultracapacitor--a technology that could allow for electric cars that charge almost instantaneously and drive hundreds of miles on a single charge. And if a purportedly "leaked" phone conversation from EEStor CEO Richard Weir currently making the rounds is legit, the long-in-development ultracapacitor has hit a breakthrough, and could be unveiled within months. ... EEStor's ultracapacitor works more or less exactly like the capacitors found in electronics today, briefly holding and releasing small charges, only on a much larger scale; it would be able rapidly take on enough juice to power a car for...

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

New Version Reflects Lowered Price on Mac Notebook NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks. In the new version of the ad, Lauren doesn't talk about how much the Mac costs, but she does say: 'It seems like you're paying a lot for the brand.' 'Greatest single phone call' Just last week Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was ecstatic about a phone call from Apple lawyers, who demanded that Microsoft stop showing...