Free Republic

When it comes to improving fact-checking, most of the focus tends to be on how fact checkers select the claims they examine, the sources they turn to in determining “truth” and the strength of their arguments. While it receives less attention, the editorializing language fact checkers use can be just as harmful to the public’s trust in their work. Browse through the first five pages of FactCheck.org’s Barack Obama archive and fact checks of the former president’s statements are headlined with relatively clinical terms such as “misrepresents,” “misleading” and “cherry-picks.” In contrast, the first five pages of the site’s Donald...

~snip~ Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the...

WHY NO HEARINGS ON "GLOBAL WARMING"? Because they can't get scientists to lie under oath. In fact, most reputable scientists say the planet is getting cooler. "Voodoo" science is being used as an excuse to impose draconian legislation. The truth is: that 97% of CO2 emmissions -- the cause of so-called global warming -- occur naturally; of the final 3% America only contributes .6% -- a negligible amount. These globalist have a hidden agenda with their proposals, and it is not to promote the public interest. It is an agenda to give "big brother" more control over our lives, and...

In October of this year, Newzbin reported that it was anticipating legal action against its Usenet indexing service by a yet unnamed entity. Over a month later, Newzbin reports that it has been sued by the MPA (Motion Picture Association). The MPA is the international version of its US-based counterpart, the Motion Picture Association of America. According to Newzbin, the indexing service has been suspending some reports due to complaints - something that community members have noticed over the last several months. "You may have noticed that recently we suspended a number of existing reports. This was done after receiving...

RIAA aims lawyers at usenet newsgroup service 'Worse than P2P' By Cade Metz in San Francisco → Published Wednesday 17th October 2007 22:42 GMT The Recording Industry Ass. of America has now attacked a company that provides access to internet newsgroups. Last Friday, RIAA lawyers chucked a federal lawsuit at Usenet.com, claiming that the Fargo, North Dakota newsgroup service "enables and encourages" people to swap copyrighted music. The organization that represents the country's big-name record labels is convinced that Usenet.com infringes copyrights in ways that extend well beyond peer-to-peer file-sharing services. "[Usenet.com] provides essentially the same functionality that P2P services...

In the wake of its victory in the first file-sharing case to go to trial, the RIAA has moved on to its next target: the nefarious home of millions of illicit files, Usenet. Yesterday, a consortium of record labels filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Usenet access provider Usenet.com. In its complaint, the RIAA accuses Usenet.com of offering subscribers "essentially the same functionality" as do commonly-used P2P networks. The record labels cite Usenet.com's high-speed servers, the access it provides to the alt.binaries hierarchy, and the service's advertising that it provides the "'hottest way of sharing MP3 files over the Internet'...

Anybody know what's happening with Google Groups? Hasn't worked since very early yesterday morning... Also, does anybody know of another (free, easy) way to access (and even post on) Usenet?

Leaked memo says Bush planning a THIRD TERM The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the office of the White House Counsel are preparing a draft document laying out the President's wartime authority to remain in office past 2008, The Register has learned. The scheme is described as an emergency "continuity presidency," made necessary by the extraordinary circumstances and unique challenges of protecting the United States from the threat of international terrorism...

The Boston Globe is reporting on a battle between Usenet and the movie industry. Usenet is actually an separate entity from the Internet and is basically a collection of tens of thousands of newsgroups ranging from aardvarks to zebra. Picture files are also widely available and it remains one of the most readily available sources of pornography. With the advent of high-speed downloads and readily available video and music compression software, Usenet has become a haven for downloading pirated movies. I once worked with a guy who would sometimes download 2 or 3 movies a night. The Boston Globe has...

An obscure data network technology called the Usenet has become the newest battleground between the entertainment industry and digital music and movie pirates. Late last month, the Motion Picture Association of America filed its first-ever lawsuits against Internet companies that help people download illegally copied films over the Usenet. The association says that the companies, NZB-Zone, BinNews, and DVDRS, provide a Google-like search service for Usenet, one that lets its users find thousands of pirated films, including recent hits such as ''King Kong," ''The Chronicles of Narnia," and ''The 40-Year-Old Virgin."The three companies did not respond to e-mail messages requesting...

This is a usenet/bulletin board discussion from 1983 (or it is supposed to be, anyway) about Return of the Jedi. It is interesting to read the comments and compare how "internet speak" has changed over the years. Click the link for the discussion topics.

PERSPECTIVE The world's largest ISP is cutting off direct access to one of the oldest, coolest -- and strangest -- parts of the Internet. America Online has quietly announced that it will discontinue providing member access to Usenet newsgroups next month. In recent days, AOL subscribers who access keyword "Newsgroups" are greeted with a pop-up message informing them of the change: "Please Note: The AOL Newsgroup service will be discontinued in early 2005." According to a notice on AOL's Web site, the newsgroup shut-off will occur in February, severing subscribers from the thousands of discussion groups that make up Usenet....

Ok, wtf.. Go to Google usenet. They've totally ruined it today! The archive is completely unusable in this new format.

<p>Suzy Gonzales zipped around this small ranching town on a red scooter, wearing a fuchsia wig and carrying a stuffed two-headed cat that she'd stitched together from scratch.</p> <p>She favored plaid skirts with green sneakers, came from a tight-knit family and earned a full scholarship to Florida State University. She had a radiant smile.</p>

There exists a series of 'nonsense' postings in Usenet. (Please no jokes about Usenet already being full of nonsense). Obviously computer generated.  These often have Arabic names interspersed in the content. One speculation is they might just be 'merry pranksters' posting vast amounts of nonsense to confuse Usenet readers. Another speculation is this might be the 'increased al-Qaeda chatter' we hear about when the Home Land Security changes the color to a redder hue. Note the increase just after Dec. 22 (the date that the Shoe Bomber was captured trying to blow up Miami to Paris, flight AA 63). We...

I have recently begun reading and posting to a Usenet newsgroup called alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic (ARCRC). It has been -- to say the least! -- an eye-opening experience. Rarely have I seen Catholic-bashing of such a vituperative and hateful nature. The level of sheer venom in the average thread makes one of our "never-ending" FR religion threads look like a 1040 long form. Atheists, agnostics, and their allies run rampant, gleefully blaspheming and sarcastically denying the Lord Jesus Christ, ridiculing the Church, and posting all sorts of anti-Christian garbage. Many of the Catholics (and rational Protestnts) on the group, while willing,...

I don't know how many of you spend much time in the USENET groups, but... There are a number of groups established for local political discussion, mn.politics, fl.politics, tx.politics, etc. I've been banging around USENET for 15 years or so now, and in all that time, these groups were primarily hangouts where left-thinking people could sit around and congratulate each other on how left-thinking they were. Back during Algore's attempt to steal the Presidency, I got pissed off, and starting posting some of the advocacy pieces I was reading in mn.politics, to help the leftist loons there understand just how...