Free Republic

Opinions? PC tech mystery Last week my hard working Sony VGC RA840G PC (circa 2005), 2.8ghz, 3gb ram, under XP media center (a gift), which came with a hard-to-ID mobo (appears to be a Asus p5lp-vx), would not boot into Windows, but would just hang at the stage when loading settings would take place. It would boot using safe mode, but even booting with only windows services (chosen via msconfig) would result in the same terminal hang. In safe mode I scanned the system with an up to date online scan (Bit Defender), as well as Kapersky root kit scanner...

How exactly has Tim Tebow been winning games? The Denver Broncos have been the beneficiaries of a complete resurgence since Tebow was named the starter. Although Kyle Orton has proven to be a viable starter in the NFL, he could not get the job done with the team they have assembled in Denver. Yet using the exact same team and barely ever throwing the ball, Tebow has very little but win. A group of Harvard students known as the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective recently set out to figure out why that has been the case.

I am posting this in general/chat. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it. I am running Windows XP on my desktop, all service packs okay. My icons and taskbar will disappear/reappear...usually I can get them back by opening task manager and "bringing to front" a program. The thing is running notoriously slow. My McAfee is finding some viruses and quarantining them, but it is driving me CRAZY. Also, for no reason, my web browsers (explorer AND Firefox) will suddenly open these "web sites" for "work at home" opportunities...I've never asked for these sites to open, they just do it on...

"In the spirit of the Fourth of July, we’ve put together some posters with a few of our favorite quotes from our Gov (1.0) heroes. They helped define the very principles we want our fellows to realize through Gov 2.0 — democracy, participation, and patriotism — so they couldn’t be more relevant now. Check out all six below; each links to a printable (and text-selectable) pdf. Share, print, and post them to spread the word, and help others see how we’re all — coders, old and new — speaking the same language." Quotes in binary from Kennedy, FDR, Susan B....

The stereotype of computer scientists as geeks who memorize Star Trek lines and never leave the lab may be driving women away from the field, a new study suggests. And women can be turned off by just the physical environment, say, of a computer-science classroom or office that's strewn with objects considered "masculine geeky," such as video games and science-fiction stuff. "When people think of computer science, the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science-fiction memorabilia and junk food," said lead researcher Sapna Cheryan, an...

Tiger Woods is in a world of hurt! He's been busted cheating on his wife with ten women, his endorsements are drying up and his public image is shot! What's he going to do to repair all this? Simple! He'll follow the same game plan of every other morally bankrupt celeb in damage control mode! NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit is web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread! Thanks a bunch!

News Commentary. Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" commercials have generated lots of Mac vs. Windows PC debate. Surely there can't be enough, so I'd like to generate even more. Quite unexpectedly, I'm a PC. I don't buy new computers very often, and for a long time I slightly favored Macs over Windows PCs. So no one perhaps is more surprised than me that my now four-month old laptop is a Sony and not an Apple. I found my decision process to be similar to Lauren and Giampaolo, the protagonists of the first two Microsoft "Laptop Hunters" commercials. Microsoft got something right...

In tough times, auto companies will cover your payment if you lose your job. Believe it or not, this is not a new sales tactic... NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thank you!

Richard Garriott is a geek. He loves fantasy; he has two thin braids running down his back that, for pictures, he swings over onto his chest for maximum effect. Back in the 1980s, he developed a series of fantasy role-playing video games under the Ultima umbrella, making him, perhaps, the Henry Ford of gaming. He made a fortune, and he used it to build two houses in Austin, Texas, named after the home of the hero of his video games, Britannia Manor. (The one he lives in now, Britannia Manor Mark 2, is equipped with a set of secret passageways,...

THE next time you want to bag the bonk of your life, you need a partner who knows a lot about your hardware. While computer nerds are obviously good at IT, what we didn't realise is that they're good at "it" too. An anonymous study of 2,000 British men and women concluded that out of all jobs, computer geeks make the best lovers. They were found to be the most selfless in the sack, the most adventurous and more likely to use love gadgets. Seventy-eight per cent of techies that were questioned also claimed that sex toys were part of...

BEWARE of geeks bearing formulas. That's the lesson most of us have learned from the financial crisis. The "quants" who devised the risk models that induced so many financial institutions to buy mortgage-backed securities thought they had reduced risk down to zero. Turns out they got a few things wrong. Their formulas were based on only a few years of actual data. Or they failed to take into account the possibility that housing prices would fall. Or that the market for mortgage-backed securities might suddenly stop functioning. The lesson seems clear. Don't allow a whole system to become hostage to...

Michael Jackson is setting out on a concert tour after a twelve year hiatus. Nothing unusual about that...until you take a look at who's helping him put the tour together! NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread! Thank you very much!

A new study connects young adults' use of video games to poorer relationships with friends and family – and the student co-author expresses disappointment at his own findings. Brigham Young University undergrad Alex Jensen and his faculty mentor, Laura Walker, publish their results Jan. 23 in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The research is based on information collected from 813 college students around the country. As the amount of time playing video games went up, the quality of relationships with peers and parents went down. "It may be that young adults remove themselves from important social settings to play...

This comic pretty much sums up the attitude of the author with regard to the "do nothing" congress. Yep, it's time for another slam on democrats by "Geeks On Caffeine." Note: The author has requested that you visit the web site and that you refrain from copying and pasting the strip into the body of this thread. Thanks!

Aren't all of those tech gadgets great? PDA's, cell phones, laptops and so on have all had a beneficial impact on our lives. However, not ALL innovations have this effect! See for yourself in this latest installment of "Geeks On Caffeine!"

Confused by the title? Confused by the concept of a "man" giving birth? Confused in general about how society let this nonsense happen? Well, you're never going to be as confused as the baby boy of the pregnant "man"! See why in this cartoon from "Geeks On Caffeine."

Heard about the pregnant "dude" on Oprah? Well he's in "Geeks On Caffeine" and...uh...well, the title of this post pretty much says it all. Further evidence of the decline of Western civilization? A sign of the apocalypse? Or just another story about a nutbag that expects the rest of the world to buy into personal delusion? YOU MAKE THE CALL!!

A business owner has to worry about many "groups" with a social agenda. After coffee shop owner Joe Black had a run-in with the Transsexual Mafia, the next group with a social bone to pick made its presence known!

You don't know where it will happen. You don't know when it will happen. You don't know who it will happen to. But if you own a business or believe in conservative societal norms, at some point you will feel the impact when the TRANSSEXUAL MAFIA STRIKES!!!!

Purchasing a pistol with your stimulus package money is foolish if you consider that for the same money...

Has anyone pondered the best way to spend your inbound stimulus package checks? "Geeks On Caffeine" shows us all why it's best to keep the money in the good 'ol U.S. of A.!

Okay, a question for you techies out there. I just renewed my Norton Anti-virus system and the renewal for my SpySweeper is coming up as well. Is it necessary to have SpySweeper also? If Norton Anti-Virus is sufficient then it doesn't make sense to renew SpySweeper. Some have said they might even be interfering with each other. So to renew or not to renew SpySweeper? That is the question.

My wife just got a Windows automatic update for Windows Vista. The problem is that her machine is running XP.She tried to reject the update but the machine automatically re-started and now she's getting messages like "No operating system found". We're both just users with not a clue of what to do.

I am changing my email address and want to change it on the blackberry however the manual does not cover very well deleting or renaming email to the unit.

There hasn�'t been a wedding like it for quite some time. About seven centuries, in fact. The bride arrived riding side saddle on a white mare in a dress made from 270 feet of silk. And waiting for her was her knight in shining armour - £10,000 of hand-forged steel trimmed with brass and velvet. The scene was the wedding of Sian Jenkins and Rupert Hammerton - Fraser, who are so fascinated by the Middle Ages that they recreated a medieval ceremony down to the minutest detail - the bride even promised to be �bonny and buxom in bed�, a...

Thanks to the techno geeks at FR our family after much thought are a happy owner of a 60 in HDTV Wega. The Wega is in tandem with two other tv screen one of which I am wireless posting. So really happy and it was a whole lot of work on my behalf but the crew of techno geeks helped sort out the salesmen pitches. So NOW I want new advice. Since King Vanity and I are more home bound and I am working around from shift to shift and with his needs I can't get out to do a...

California continues to employ far more technology workers, pay higher wages and attract more venture capital than any other state. But the overall U.S. tech sector is also growing at a surprisingly brisk clip - for now. That's the conclusion of a highly anticipated annual report by AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, the country's largest technology trade association. Researchers relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, mostly from 2006. According to the 2007 "Cyberstates" report, to be published Tuesday, the U.S. tech industry employed 5.8 million people last year - up 2.6 percent from 2005. The...

Thanks to The Board of Wisdom for lifting the day after Christmas doldrums with the Top 10 geeky sayings. 1. There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't. 2.If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0. 3. Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips." 4. My pokemon bring all the nerds to the yard, and they're like you wanna trade cards? Darn right, I wanna trade cards, I'll trade this but not my charizard. 5. 1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d. 6. I'm...

A spectre is haunting the Internet -- the spectre of Digital Re-education. All the powers of the old Tech have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Microsoft, Public Education, Labor Unions, The Major Telecoms, Dial-Up… The history of all hitherto existing Social Networks is the history of lowbrow genius and vis-à-vis GUI sub-systems.

Rocket scientists, long considered the gold standard in intelligence among all professionals, are not nearly as smart as originally thought, according to a controversial new study published today by the American Association of Brain Surgeons. The study, which appears in the organization's monthly publication, Popular Brain Surgery, is entitled "The Intelligence of Rocket Scientists: Myth Versus Reality," and suggests that rocket scientists' reputation for smartness is largely undeserved. "It does require a superior intellect to function as a rocket scientist," the article concedes. "Having said that, though, rocket science is not brain surgery." The article drew an immediate rebuke from...

this New York Times photograph of a crowd of Lebanese refugees: This is probably nothing. If it’s photo manipulation, it’s certainly an incredibly mundane example, and I can’t think of a reason why anyone would do it. I’m tossing this to the lizardoid community for comment from the other photoshop geeks out there, without rendering any judgment yet. In other words, I am not saying this is a definite fake; I know we’ve got quite a few experts at digital manipulation among our readers, and I’m sincerely asking for their opinions. But look at the image of the man in...

MENLO PARK, California (AP) -- They may sport love handles and Ivy League degrees, but every two weeks, some Silicon Valley techies turn into vicious street brawlers in a real-life, underground fight club. Kicking, punching and swinging every household object imaginable -- from frying pans and tennis rackets to pillowcases stuffed with soda cans -- they beat each other mercilessly in a garage in this bedroom community south of San Francisco.

So why is illegal immigration sucha problem? This cartoon breaks it down for you in four simple panels.

We Support Our Troops!  For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.Part 1 Today we'll look at some gadgets that changed the way we lived  in the 1950's, 60's and 70's.  Next week, we'll look at the 80's  and 90's.  I'm sure you can think of MANY more gadgets in these eras.  Please share them with us!*All single starred items below indicate that I had one of these. (If prior to 1973, my parents had one and I got to use it. I started young, folks!)  **All double-starred items indicate...

New thread for this week. Congrats to all new members who joined this week! We've made excellent progress so far and have smoked the DUmmies and Kossacks. Let's keep folding!

A continuation of the Freeper Folder Thread

Today is one of the worst days for Technical Support people in the computer industry. People around the globe, unwrapping their new computers, iPods, cell phones, and other technological marvels will be popping in the batteries or plugging in various connectors only to find out they have absolutely no idea what they're doing. It gives me chills down my spine. There's no telethon for chills down the spine, is there? I'd be the poster child, standing up on stage with... um... Christopher Lloyd or...um... Rob Schneider. Yeah, any time a movie of his is out, I've got Spine Chill Syndrome....

Aliens landed in Palmdale last week. At least that's what it looked like from the Antelope Valley Freeway. An eerie green glow emanated from hangar 703, near Plant 42, shining across miles of sleepy houses. From the Vista Point, it looked like Venus had descended from the night sky and taken up residence on Avenue P. I followed the light. Because that's what you do with ominous and unexplained lights, right? You follow them. Besides, it was only 2:30 in the morning. OK, full disclosure, I had directions to the source of the green light. I didn't need them, but...

Chalk another one up for the Conservative war room. The gang that brought you the "Paul Martin Supports Child Porn" news release in the 2004 campaign made another embarrassing error on the second day of the election campaign. Early on Wednesday, Press Gallery reporters were informed about a press conference with Conservative MP Jason Kenney shortly after noon regarding an offensive item on the Liberal party Web site. The press conference was to be held at the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill as the temperature hovered around zero. About five minutes later, reporters were told the press conference would be...

I put a $50 pre-order on an Xbox 360 in August 2005. The video game store employee (a walking commercial on why to go to college) promised a delivery date of November 23, 2005. Yesterday, the store left an auto mated message; "Microsoft is not going to deliver the quantity of Xboxes they promised. Your Xbox won't arrive until 2006." Unfortunately, my kids played the answering machine before I got home from work. It was a shock and disappointment for them, as several did not know I ordered it. I can only find mention on news of a delayed launch...

Go into almost any nightclub across the country and you'll see great-looking women and hungry men on the prowl, craving chemistry, connection — and a phone number. They're all looking for love. But the oldest game in the world can be brutal. "Either you have it or you don't. Some guys are smooth, some guys aren't. That's it," said an attractive clubgoer in South Beach, Miami, named Kristi. "There's the losers and the winners." Maybe that's right, but there's also a movement afoot that says the art of seduction can be learned. One of its students is Joel, a successful...

Hewlett-Packard employees in Palo Alto are working to save the house and one-car garage — dubbed the birthplace of Silicon Valley — where William "Bill" Hewlett and David Packard began manufacturing their first product in 1939. "We took the whole thing apart and are rebuilding it using the original frame and original 52 boards," said archivist Anna Mancini, who's overseeing the restoration. "We want to do it right. We want to do everything right." After dismantling the 12-foot-by-18-foot garage, sanding down the boards to eliminate termites and reinforcing the frame to withstand earthquakes, workers nailed the original Douglas-fir planks back...

Where are all the women who forsake social outings to stay up all night writing computer code and read science fiction? Most of those computer "geeks" (as the stereotype goes) live in countries that mandate math and science courses through the teenage years. That's one of the conclusions of a new study exploring the gender gap in computer science, a profession dominated by men. Professors of sociology at the University of California at San Diego and Western Washington released a study Friday that showed that women are vastly underrepresented in computer science in 21 nations--Germany, Czech Republic and Belgium being...

Everyone has gotten at least one of these. Someone in Nigeria has died and left 879 billion dollars to them, but it is a) in a foreign bank b)being held from the poor recipient unjustly c) waiting on someone to pay some fees or any number of other reasons why the recipient can't get the money. Some of the situations change to ruthless industrial tycoons who face death and are now repentant and want to disburse their riches to widows in refugee camps.

It is arguable that the most famous line in “Revenge of the Sith” comes from Padme Amidala. When Palpatine announces to a rapturous Senate that the Republic is to be re-organised as the first Galactic Empire, she says: "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause”. We are supposed to infer from this statement that freedom has been traded for security, and democracy traded for a dictatorship. As such, it is supposed to be a dark day, a tragedy, one which will take 20 years and the original three films to remedy. However the question that no one asks...

For some in the tech industry, the chance to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in its opening couple of days is just not something they're willing to pass up—at any cost. And while that early viewing may be a badge of honor for geeks around the world, the "Star Wars flu" may pull down productivity figures, analysts warned. "There's nothing like being here for the first showing," said an IT manager for a financial brokerage firm on Wednesday, while standing in line in front of the Metreon theater complex in San Francisco. He had called in...

My computer crashed today. Again. The third time in a year. The news of a computer problem comes as a shock to absolutely no one because every one of us has experienced a major computer crisis within the last year. Like death and taxes, computer crashes are as common as Paris Hilton home videos — if you don't already have one, you will soon. The problem is — I'm a writer. If my computer doesn't work, I don't get paid. This is difficult to explain to the geeks who "fix" my unruly laptop. They have all the time in the...

If a movie isn't playing at a theater, will its fans sill line up outside? For "Star Wars" fans, the answer is a resounding yes.Saturday, 46 days before "Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith" opens on May 19, the trilogy's enthusiats began their vigil outside Grauman's Chinese Theater.Problem is 20th Century Fox doesn't plan to open the film at the Chinese, opting instead for the ArcLight a few blocks east."Star Wars" or no, the diehards are resolute about keeping their line on Hollywood Boulevard.

Stress kills 6 IT geeks The Asianage (3/29/2005 12:15:05 AM) Chennai, March 28: Six software professionals under the age of 33 have died and two top executives from renowned software companies have become paralysed because of stress-related heart ailments in the last six months in Chennai, says a study by Mitran Foundation, a Bangalore-based voluntary association of practising doctors. "All the six who died, and the two who became invalid, had no family history of heart attacks or any pre-history of heart ailments or paralysis. They were all in their prime, between 27 and 33 years, and handled challenging projects...

It seems like just about every day some group, organization or individual gets the word out through the media pipeline that they are not happy with W. A few days ago it was the farmers, and now the geeks have voiced their disapproval of Bush. Members of the American Association for Advancement of Science had a meeting yesterday at which they talked about lots of things I don't understand, and managed to get in a few digs at the President. W. is, silencing the voice of science because money for research and advanced training are being cut. Even worse, according...