Free Republic

...Educators who supplement or replace their day jobs with online teaching for local public schools are discovering that the perks of working at home come with hurdles: grappling with awkward or confusing lines of communication with their pupils; gauging student performance without seeing facial expressions; and struggling to withstand the urge to check e-mails from students during weekends. Online courses, mostly in high schools, have proliferated in recent years despite debate about their effectiveness compared with face-to-face instruction. The number of times students enrolled in distance education courses connected with public schools (using Internet, two-way video or other technologies) rose...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have arrested a prominent Internet dissident for violating his probation terms, a rights group said, as the country steps up a pre-Olympic crackdown on dissent to ensure the Games go smoothly. Du Daobin, from the central province of Hebei, was given a suspended sentence for subversion in 2004 having been detained by police in Wuhan for posting online essays in support of fellow dissident, Liu Di. Du was then released into house arrest, Reporters Without Borders said in an emailed statement, but was arrested this week having been accused of posting articles on overseas websites...

BERLIN - More than 1,600 years after it was written in Greek, one of the oldest copies of the Bible will become globally accessible online for the first time this week. From Thursday, sections of the Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the oldest complete New Testament, will be available on the Internet, said the University of Leipzig, one of the four curators of the ancient text worldwide. High resolution images of the Gospel of Mark, several Old Testament books, and notes on the work made over centuries will appear on www.codex-sinaiticus.net as a first step towards publishing the entire manuscript online...

I think we're all aware of the fact that the looney-left liberals have out done us in using the internet to their political advantage. Just about every time I go to my Yahoo homepage, I see an online ad linking to Barack Obama's website. Well, finally, the "Right" is coming around. The WAPO ran a story today re: RightOnline. Anyone interested in being a player in the Conservative online effort might want to check out their website: http://www.rightonline.com/

Get online and check it out.

Welcome to the most grassroots-driven platform development effort in the history of American politics! The Republican Party is seeking your input as we develop the policies and principles upon which we should stand for the next four years. On this website, you can share your thoughts, participate in polls, and communicate directly with the policymakers who will be shaping the party's agenda. All comments and feedback will be reviewed and taken into full consideration as we prepare for our convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. We hope that this process will guarantee the greatest amount of public input into any platform in...

Britons can trace Australian ancestors online Last Updated: 11:18AM BST 04/06/2008 Sixteen million Britons related to free settlers who colonised Australia will be able to trace their ancestors online from today.AP Records list the Irish ancestors of Nicole Kidman Although often portrayed as a nation of convicts, Australia's early population was largely based on immigrants who voluntarily sailed from Britain in search of a better life. The details of 9 million people who arrived in New South Wales between 1826 and 1922 are to be made available. More than 2 million of them were free settlers from Britain leaving behind...

A 14-year-old Boise, Idaho, girl has disappeared and is believed to be in danger after meeting a 27-year-old man on the Internet. Police say the girl may be in the Seattle area with the man, who is wanted on a kidnapping warrant. The girl, Saddie "Elaine" Julian, was last seen Wednesday morning. Authorities are asking for the public's help in locating her. She is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 90 pounds, with pale skin, long red hair and a thin build. According to police, Saddie developed an online relationship with Morgan Douglas Jones, 27, of Birmingham, Ala., while playing...

I have been checking out various on-line IT courses for my college age home schooled son. I found this site for $149.00 that features a full menu of options for a flat one year membership, SECURITY+ CERTIFICATION A+ CERTIFICATION ACCOUNTANCY ADOBE CISCO CLAIT CONTACT MANAGEMENT COREL DATABASES DESKTOP DTP ECDL E-QUALS GRAPHICS I-NET+ CERTIFICATION INTERNET LOTUS MCSE MICROSOFT MOS NETWORK+ CERTIFICATION NOVELL PROGRAMMING SERVER+ CERTIFICATION SOFT SKILLS UNIX WEB DEVELOPMENT and the other one in the link--whose typos on their web page do not inspire me with confidence.(My typos I attribute to my Saturday ration od Sam Adams) Bottom Line:...

About a year ago in my first visit to Second Life, the popular online virtual world, I spent half an hour trying to make my avatar, or online character, look like a hotter version of myself — which isn't easy when you don't know how to use the tools. When I finally made it onto Money Island to mingle, a stranger approached me and said, "Hello there, Devon." I froze. Then I tried to run. I was desperately searching for the teleport tool when my sister walked into the room, peered over my shoulder at the computer screen and said,...

If you buy books, movies or other items from Amazon.com, be prepared to pay more soon. The online retail giant isn't raising prices. Gov. Eliot Spitzer is raising taxes - at least he hopes to. Spitzer has proposed closing a loophole in state tax law that allows out-of-state Internet retailers - Amazon.com being the biggest by far - to avoid charging sales tax to New Yorkers for online purchases. Rather than pay tax when they buy online, New York residents are supposed to account for the sales tax on their personal income tax returns. Few do, and the state loses...

The security of the online computer system used by more than three million people to file tax returns is in doubt after HM Revenue and Customs admitted it was not secure enough to be used by MPs, celebrities and the Royal Family. Thousands of "high profile" people have been secretly barred from using the online tax return system amid concerns that their confidential details would be put at risk. This provoked anger from consumer groups and accountants who said the same levels of security should be offered to all taxpayers regardless of their perceived fame. HMRC was responsible for losing...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2007 – A nonprofit group is using a treasure hunt to get people interested in helping military families. “We hope treasure hunters, individuals and corporations will generously donate to the scholarship fund for the families of our brave men and women in uniform who protect our freedoms each and every day,” said Gayle Osterberg, a spokeswoman for the group, ThanksUSA. “More than 1,300 scholarships have been awarded to the kids and spouses of active-duty military personnel in all branches of the service, … including those in the Guard and reserves.” ThanksUSA is a supporter of America...

If you want to be a savvy shopper on Black Friday, you may want to do your buying the day before.This year, many retailers will offer deals traditionally reserved for the day after Thanksgiving on Turkey Day via their Web sites, consumer experts say."I will be on the computer shopping on Thanksgiving Day," said Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org, a leading consumer Web site. "Last year, I sat at home on Black Friday and felt so smug not having to go out and fight the crowds."You will, indeed, find crowds if you venture out the day after Thanksgiving to shop....

Dozens of FReepers undoubtedly know this, but, sadly, yr hmbl srvnt does not. Seems to me that I recall an online site, perhaps ESPN or ABC, where one can ''watch'' a graphical play-by-play of virtually any football game. The game one is ''watching'' features a display of a field, where the ball is spotted and where it moves on each play, with a description of the play just run. Many thanks in advance for any and all help, and FReegards!

A few weeks back I blogged about allegations of cheating at an online poker site called Absolute Poker. While things looked awfully suspicious, there wasn’t quite a smoking gun, and it was unclear exactly how the cheater might have cheated. A combination of some incredible detective work by some poker players and an accidental (?) data leak by Absolute Poker have blown the scandal wide open. Some opponents became suspicious of how a certain player was playing. He seemed to know what the opponents’ hole cards were. The suspicious players provided examples of these hands, which were so outrageous that...

A CANDIDATE for the US presidency is being buoyed by a huge online campaign that may be a fake a grassroots movement organised by party staff. YouTube footage of Texan Republican Senator Ron Paul, whose candidacy has been overshadowed in the media by competitors Rudi Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain, has been viewed by tens of thousands of people in the last week. As of 11am AEST today, a compilation of different clips of Senator Paul was the top rated video of the past 24 hours. The clip had been viewed nearly 60,000 times since it was uploaded yesterday....

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. is unveiling a Web component for its desktop-based Office programs that lets computer users store, share and comment on documents, but the software maker did not go so far as to let people create new files from scratch online. Microsoft Office Live Workspace, as the free Web site is called, isn't quite live. Starting Monday, users can sign up to be part of an early "beta" test of the service. A number of those users will be able to start using the service at some point this year, Microsoft said. Office Live Workspace will give users...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office has launched an investigation into allegations that a local corrections deputy bragged about using a Taser gun on people in an Internet chat room. FOX 12’s news partner, the Portland Tribune, was the first to break this story. Now, authorities at the Justice Center Jail want to know if the same deputy, identified as David B. Thompson, also filed a false police report to cover up the beating of an inmate. Lt. Jason Gates of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said he is appalled at the alleged online comments of thecounty corrections...

I recieved the following email yesterday afternoon and I am steaming mad. The video chain Blockbuster video has been aggressively advertising thier alternative to the growing success of Netflix. I was pressured by the folks who work at the video stored for months to join Blockbuster Unlimited. They touted the ability to rent movies online just like Netflix but with the added bonus of being able to take a movie back into any store and exchange it free for another title, along with being able to also just rent from the store. This sounded like a great deal and sold...

Welcome to the Weekend Singles' Thread Welcome to the thread. We're glad to have you here. This weekend's topic is online dating sites. We've all seen the ads for e-Harmony on TV and for Match.com at various places around the internet. Yahoo has a personals section. AOL has a personals section. Craig's List has a personals section (if your immune system is strong enough). The local ISPs in most major cities often have personals ads somewhere on their websites. Many specialty websites have arisen for special interest personals. ConservativeMatch.com and RepublicanPeopleMeet come to mind. The question is "Are any of...

NEW YORK (AP) - It's bad enough that a cratering housing market is leading to a slump in real estate advertising at newspapers, as a dreary series of earnings reports showed this week. What's worse is that a lot of that advertising may never come back to newspapers even if the real estate sector recovers. That's because a significant chunk of those advertising dollars are moving - you guessed, online. Exactly how much of a shift is occurring is difficult to measure in terms of dollars or market share, but several real estate executives say they are making a conscious...

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Democratic presidential hopefuls struggled Monday night to answer questions posed by young, Internet-savvy voters who challenged traditional political labels and the candidates' own place in a broken political system. "Wassup?" came the first question, from a voter named Zach, after another, named Chris, opened the CNN-YouTube debate with a challenge to the entire eight-candidate field: "Can you as politicians ... actually answer questions rather than beat around the bush?" The answer was a qualified yes. The candidates faced a slew of blunt questions and, in some cases, responded in kind. To Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois: Are...

Warner Music Group and online community Imeem have partnered to stream ad-supported music and video on Imeem's free social media networking site. The companies announced the move Thursday and said WMG had also dismissed its copyright infringement claims against Imeem. WMG filed a lawsuit against Imeem in U.S. District Court, Central District of California, in May. It claimed Imeem attracted about 16 million users, at least in part by allowing them to share copyrighted music. The companies said their agreement results in the first free, ad-supported online access to all the music and video content from a major label. WMG...

People who have anxiety problems or depression can get just as good help on the Internet as face-to-face with a psychiatrist, according to a Swedish investigation, Now a new Internet service is being expanded. This means Sweden will become the first country in the world to offer cognitive behavior therapy via the Internet as a routine method for treating patients who have problems such as social phobias or panic attacks. Psychiatrists say the online service will compliment traditional care and it means more people can be treated, more cheaply. But critics say sitting at a computer simply can’t be as...

WASHINGTON - Detailed plans for the new U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad appeared online Thursday in a breach of the tight security surrounding the sensitive project. Computer-generated projections of the soon-to-be completed, heavily fortified compound were posted on the Web site of the Kansas City, Mo.-based architectural firm that was contracted to design the massive facility in the Iraqi capital. The images were removed by Berger Devine Yaeger Inc. shortly after the company was contacted by the State Department. "We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas," said Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman....

Fox News Debate

“Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears? Our study suggests that Wikipedia is 6 times more liberal than the American public. Now it’s time for the Conservatives to get our voice out on the internet!” So begins the rallying cry for Conservapedia.com, aspiring right-leaning rival to Wikipedia.org - the online encyclopedia project that now claims 7.2 million articles in 251 languages and traffic that ranks it among the world’s top 15 sites. Wikipedia is adamant about striving to maintain a “neutral point of view.” But because it is “written collaboratively by...

Ron Paul's Online Rise To those who say the Internet arcs toward the trivial, try this on for size: Currently, the most searched-for phrase on the blog aggregate site Technorati.com is Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Paris Hilton is No. 5. Commentators often refer to the Internet as the great equalizer, but when it comes to the 2008 election, it appears that the murky economy of Web traction may even give an edge to the long shots. And Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas and an avowed Libertarian known around D.C. as "Dr. No" for his persistent opposition to just...

The government has ordered an Internet auction site to remove an advertisement in which a Brazilian man offered to sell his wife for about $50. The Secretariat of Public Policies for Women announced late Friday it had ordered Mercado Livre, partially owned by eBay Inc., to remove the ad and warned it was violating a law banning the offer or sale of "human organs, people, blood, bones or skin." The advertisement was no longer visible on the site Saturday. It was posted by a man who gave his name as Breno and said: "I sell my wife for reasons I...

Boston, MA – Governor Mitt Romney announced today that his innovative Internet video channels have topped 1.5 million total viewings after just 15 weeks in operation and continue to break new ground by dynamically streaming his message of change in Washington to Americans across the country. Mitt TV now offers more than 100 different video clips in eight channels, including a documentary about Governor Romney's accomplishments, remarks on major issues, news and interview clips, full-length speeches, Congressional endorsements, and questions and answers from his "Ask Mitt Anything" events. "A major part of our effort is to make sure we're getting...

Web cartoonist Randall Munroe has created a map showing the "world of online communities". The map depicts communities such as LiveJournal, YTMND, Usenet, and Second Life as geographic regions whose sizes are based upon their populations, and whose locations are based upon their purposes and orientations. It's enlightening, funny, and worth a look.

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. is expanding its online music section to include the lyrics of 400,000 songs, hoping to strike a chord with Web surfers looking for a more reliable alternative to Internet sites that publish the words without the permission of the copyright owners.The Sunnyvale-based company is touting the free service to be unveiled Tuesday as the Web’s largest legally licensed database of lyrics.“It fills a huge, gaping hole out there,” said Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo music. Song lyrics have been available through scores of other Web sites for years, but most of those destinations are...

THE names, ages and professions of passengers listed on the Titanic's fateful journey have gone online for the first time, 95 years after the luxury ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage. Dozens of pages featuring the original handwritten passenger list are available, revealing the cabin class of passengers. They poignantly show the emigration plans of many hopefuls setting sail from Southampton for a new life in America in 1912. The White Star liner, touted as "unsinkable", left port on April 10, only to sink after hitting an iceberg, with the loss of 1,523 lives. Among the passengers, for example,...

Group Launches Post-Abortion E-Cards   Nonprofit's E-Cards Aim to Let Friends and Family Show Support After an Abortion   By LISA LEFF  SAN FRANCISCO Mar 13, 2007 (AP)— A nonprofit organization has unveiled a series of electronic greeting cards that concerned friends and relatives can send to a woman after she chooses to have an abortion. Like Exhale's confidential talk line for women who have had abortions, the six e-cards available on the group's Web site were designed to be nonpartisan and encompass the range of someone's potential responses to going through an abortion. "Women having abortions are calling our line because...

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md., Feb. 23, 2007 – The problem of “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink” can apply as much to deployed troops cut off from their pure water supply as it did to the ancient mariner stranded at sea in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s beloved poem. Clean water is critical to military operations, used in everything from drinking to hygiene and field sanitation to food preparation to medical care, Army Maj. Bill Bettin, chief of the field water section for the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine here, told American Forces Press Service. The...

....Consider the element of choice. A generation ago, a single in search of romance might encounter a dozen or so potential partners. Today, he or she can choose from among thousands. But can all these choices add up to blissful companionship for everyone? A study of jam suggests an intriguing answer. Gourmet jam isn't much like a mate, but in a study by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper of Columbia University and Stanford University, respectively, customers presented with only a few flavors at a supermarket display were much more likely to buy some jam and also more likely to...

Need a Demonstrator? Now You Can Rent Them OnlineBy David Gordon Smith January 18, 2007 GUNS FOR HIRE REUTERS Loud public protests accompanied the recent revelation that doctors had hired protesters for a December demonstration in front of Berlin's Reichstag. A German Web site has come up a novel niche market -- renting out demonstrators for public protests. Good-looking protestors can help an organization get its political message to the public for as little as €145 a day. **SNIP** Judging by their profiles, most of the 300-plus people currently listed in the "rent a demonstrator" category are young and attractive....

Questionable directions given by online mapping services could have contributed to the death of James Kim, who perished while trying to save his stranded family. Kim, 35, was driving home from a vacation with his wife, Kati, and daughters, four-year-old Penelope and seven-month-old Sabine, on November 25 when he took a wrong turn and they became lost in the wilderness in Oregon, in north-west US. Kim left his family on Saturday to find help, but never returned. When searchers found his lifeless body yesterday, he had already walked 13 kilometres through rugged terrain, wearing only light clothing. But Kim -...

I'm going to start rolling my own again. The price has not gone up on generic cigarettes but the taste has deteriorated. It is like smoking straw.

SANTA ANA, Calif., Nov. 17, 2006 -- Just in time for the holidays, Operation Homefront has launched “eCarePackage,” an online service that allows caring citizens to send care packages to deployed troops and their families. Operation Homefront is part of CinCHouse.com, a community for military wives, and is a team member of America Supports You, a Department of Defense program connecting U.S. citizens with members of the military. Servicemembers and families can register on www.ecarepackage.org, which protects their identity and location, and visitors can “adopt” them based on common interests. Then visitors select individual items to create a customized...

It was a dubious maneuver, which not only prevented any real floor debate over the ban, but also attached an intrusive, unnecessary, big government measure to a bill that addressed important national security concerns. This meant that any senator who held the position that what Americans do with their own money in their own homes on their own time is none of the government's business couldn't vote against the gambling ban, lest they risk being smacked about the head with the "soft on national security" cudgel.

November 01, 2006 -- Nielsen//NetRatings (NASDAQ: NTRT), a global leader in Internet media and market research, announced today that 36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are Republicans, 30.8 percent are Democrats and 17.3 percent are Independents. With campaign Web sites becoming increasingly important to reaching the electorate, candidates need to keep their fingers on the political pulse of the Internet. The Web site with the highest concentration of Republicans was RushLimbaugh.com, with an 84.8 percent Republican audience (see Table 1). NewsMax.com and Bill O'Reilly.com ranked No. 2 and 3, with audiences that were 65.4 percent Republican. The Drudge Report and...

Hi all I thought maybe some of you would find this helpfull. I have a site of 4000+ Christian books, magazines, images, audio files, and video files. All free of course. As far as I know all files are in the public domain or have liberal copyrights so you should be fine using them on your own websites or giving them to people. Enjoy:) http://www.thebibleproject.com Also a discaimer. I am putting the books on the site I like and find helpfull. But if you find something you do not like feel free to message me in private and we can...

Raymond Merrill bought a $5,000 engagement ring for Regina Filomena Rachid and declared in e-mails, "I have more kisses for you than there are stars in the sky." Rachid's photos adorned his computer desktop and the walls in the San Bruno home he was fixing up. He had a stack of the Brazilian woman's glamour shots -- one with her topless, her jeans seductively unzipped partway. Wedding plans were discussed, messages on his computer show. Merrill, a 56-year-old divorced carpenter and musician, thought he had found love online.

US politicians could soon be rubbing shoulders with orcs and night elves in World of Warcraft. The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the US Congress has announced it is investigating the amount of commerce taking place in virtual game worlds. The investigation is unlikely to mean that in-game trading will start to be taxed. Many popular virtual worlds such as Eve Online and Second Life revolve around trade of one sort or another. Cash call In a statement announcing the investigation, the Committee said its probe was prompted by the "dramatic increase in the popularity of online gaming". It said...

Stephen Kenny remembers being in high spirits one evening after imbibing "one martini or maybe three" on his way home from work. He was in such a good mood, in fact, that he decided to get his girlfriend a present. "I logged on to this luxury jewelry Web site and I bought her a pair of $1,500 earrings--or what I thought were $1,500 earrings," said Kenny, who works at an intellectual property law firm in Burlington, Vt. "Maybe my vision was blurred or I just missed a decimal point, but they turned out to be $15,000." When he discovered what...

The next wave in online dating has singles rating each other -- and one misstep can taint a reputation. When popularity trumps the search for a soulmate. It's no exaggeration to say that online dating has revolutionized the world of relationships since it took off a decade ago. Now, with growth slowing, sites are looking for new ways to stand out. One increasingly popular strategy: Letting users rate each other, either based on their profiles alone or on the experiences of a first date. Members of Engage.com3 can review people after one date for politeness and honesty. Consumating.com4 users give...

A new study released this week shows that a “substantial” number of American adults would rather play casual online games -- online fare like Bingo --than watch television during their free time. Casual Gaming Replacing TV Viewing, Survey Says The study – commissioned by the firm Real Networks and conducted by Harris Interactive -- determined that 31 percent of those over18 preferred online gaming to TV.

Though Curruthers was quite a vocal advocate for the legalization and regulation of online gaming, more than a billion dollars in value of online gaming stocks on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) were lost after his legal hassle emerged. David Curruthers, the former chief executive officer of BetonSports.com, was arrested on July 16 while changing planes in Dallas, en route from London. By Gene Koprowski