Free Republic

Saying gun manufacturers should take steps to track guns, a Boston city councilor is proposing that global positioning technology be installed in firearms. Councilor Rob Consalvo wants to put a tracking device into newly manufactured guns and have legal gun owners retrofit their firearms so owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police use a computer chip to locate stolen cars. ''Let's use that same technology to track weapons so we know where they are when they're stolen or bought illegally," he said. ''I think it's a common-sense idea." Consalvo has asked Springfield-based Smith &...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants. With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer. Tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) computer chips inserted into Graafstra's hands make it all possible. "I just don't want to be without access to the things that I need to get access to. In the worst case scenario, if I'm in the alley naked, I...

Advocates of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) make increasingly strained arguments that the state has a moral obligation to provide health insurance for underprivileged children. That moral obligation rests on social justice theories which posit that access to publicly funded health insurance is fundamental to human dignity and therefore an imperative. Former Lt. Governor Bill Ratliff has entered the fray on the side of CHIP, arguing in a recent speech (reprinted by The Austin American Statesman) that support for CHIP, a government-run program, rests on certain biblical teachings, and accuses those legislators who oppose increased funding and revenue to...

OMAHA, Neb. - Researchers studying infectious diseases, such as AIDS, may be able to find answers more quickly thanks to a new tool that lets them see how a Rhesus monkey's 20,000 genes respond. That tool, called a gene chip or microarray, was developed with the help of researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in roughly half the time and cost of previous gene chips of humans and mice, said John Harding, with the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health. The gene chip for the Rhesus macaque monkey will be especially useful because...

The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of transmitting unique vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers more than 300 feet away. Officials in the United States say they'll be closely watching the British trial as they contemplate initiating their own tests of the plates, which incorporate radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags to make vehicles electronically trackable.

Public health attorneys in California have potato chip makers in their sights for not listing a cancer-causing chemical present in many brands.

When I was a child (growing up in Southern California)...there lived an old lady down the street...just like in every neighborhood in the country. Just like in every neighborhood....her house was a little ratty looking. Overgrown with weeds...grass...bushes...and in need of a painting. Just like in every neighborhood.....us kids were convinced that it was because she was a witch (or something like it)......none of us wise enough (or smart enough) to realize it was because she was a little old lady...and lived alone...that the house looked like that. One day ,as kids (especially dumb ones) will do, we called her...

Bomber the dog has gone underground. He was given a new home in a new town with a new family, even a new name. "He's in the doggy witness protection program," Jill Parnham said. Parnham and the 2nd Chance Pet Rescue chose to pay $5,000, as stipulated by a small claims court ruling, rather than surrender the Labrador mutt to the family who lost him last year. That much money could buy a purebred champion, possibly a multiple champion "with super breeding potential" in the world of show dogs, said Judythe Coffman, a longtime breeder, author and American Kennel Club...

BEAVER, Okla. - James Pratt has a chip on his shoulder -- a cow chip. The local fire chief is ready to defend his title Saturday at the World Champion Cow Chip Throwing Contest. About 150 people usually compete in the event, choosing from about 230 cow chips. Each contestant gets two throws, with the longest distance winning. Pratt throws with an overhand, baseball-like motion. "I've seen people throw like a discus and under their leg," he said. "They've tried everything." He says he doesn't practice but takes care selecting his chips, looking for those that are about 6 inches...

March 21, 2005 10:02AM "We can take someone's thought and put it on a screen," says Tim Surgenor, chief executive of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, manufacturer of the device, which is called BrainGate Neural Interface System. A Foxborough, Mass., company has developed technology that plugs a human brain into a desktop computer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems has developed BrainGate, a product aimed at enabling quadriplegics to do things like surf the Web, write e-mails, play video games and operate TV remotes and telephones just by thinking. "We can take someone's thought and put it on a screen," said...

A little electronic capsule, smaller than a dime, could be one of the biggest technological advances in how we share and store private medical records. It may also be one of the most controversial. Known as the VeriChip, it is a microchip that is implanted under a person's skin, and then scanned with a special reader device to reveal important medical data about that person. Applied Digital, the Florida-based company that makes the VeriChip, hopes the implant will revolutionize how doctors obtain medical information, particularly in emergency situations. Theoretically, if a person can't speak, medics could scan that person...

SUTTER, Calif. (AP) - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy.

Dubbed a "supercomputer on a chip," the Cell microprocessor has until now been long on ambition but short on specifics. At a technical conference in San Francisco, the three electronics giants described a chip that could provide ten times the performance of the latest PC chips and churn through many tasks at once. Aimed squarely at the "digital home" market highly sought-after by Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news), the Cell initiative, which has been in development since 2001, is viewed by some as a formidable, if fledgling, competitor to the world's largest chip maker. While IBM showed off prototypes of...

This is my first post so I hope I got it right. This is breaking here in San Anonio. A single engine plane has been forced down at Stenson Field south of San Antonio. Homeland Security, DPS and SAPD are on the scene. They are waiting for a Chinese tranlator but they have Chinese illegals in custody and said that the pilot was someone Homeland Security has been looking for. I'll post more as it comes available.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 19, 2005 CONTACT: Kevin Schweers SENATOR HUTCHISON LAMENTS LOST HEALTH CARE FUNDING Texas Forfeited $104 Million in Additional CHIP Funding, HHS Says WASHINGTON, DC -- In a setback for Texas taxpayers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced that the State of Texas forfeited $104 million in Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding for fiscal year 2002, raising the total lost by the state since 2000 to more than $700 million. “The health care system in Texas, and particularly our county hospital network, is under enormous pressure because of the large number of...

Larry K. "Chip" Boose, 42, of 373 E. McKinley St., Chambersburg, died Thursday, Nov. 18, 2004, in his home.

...Conclusion to "A Freeper's Last Days". A longtime lurker and 3 year Freeper, known here as "kixx" and to the rest of us as Chip Boose, has heard the Calling of Our Lord. Chip passed on to take his place in the Choir of Angels late last night at about 11:40 PM Eastern time at his home in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Chip was surrounded, even at that late hour, by family and friends. For the last 5 days his house was so full of friends and family that the timbers strained to support the weight of the love that was shared....

Have you been chipped, yet? You could be soon, for the Food & Drug Administration has now cleared the way for a Florida corporation, Applied Digital Solutions, to market a tiny electronic device called VeriChip that is surgically implanted under the skin of your arm or hand. Don't worry, says the corporation soothingly, being chipped doesn't hurt you, and it's really for your own good. For example, they say, if you have an accident, your implanted chip could contain vital medical information that could be accessed by an ambulance crew (assuming the crew has bought a hand-held, chip-reading scanner, which...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The highest-ranking U.S. soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq has been sentenced to eight years in prison. Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick, a U.S. Army reservist from Virginia, also was sentenced Thursday to a forfeiture of pay, a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank to private.

Privacy advocates are concerned that an implantable microchip designed to help doctors tap into a patient's medical records could undermine confidentiality or could even be used to track the patient's movements.