Free Republic

Has anyone noticed the degradation of political activism as reflected in the quality of e-mail forwards? During the election, when this country was in the grip of political passion, the internet hummed with outraged forwards explicating and excoriating the current snakepits and malevolence of public policy. Every citizen in possession of a computer (and that's every citizen! Some citizens have several, one in every color for every mood!) forwarded madly his or her opinions. These forwards, judging by volume and pitch, were not just opinions: they were expressions of the forwarder's innermost soul, as radical in their way as the...

An influential congressional committee has dropped a political bombshell by suggesting that a tax originally created to pay for the Spanish American War could be extended to all Internet and data connections this year. The committee, deeply involved in writing U.S. tax laws, unexpectedly said in a reportThursday that the 3 percent telecommunications tax could be revised to cover "all data communications services to end users," including broadband; dial-up; fiber; cable modems; cellular; and DSL, or digital subscriber line, links. Currently, the 3 percent excise tax applies only to traditional telephone service. But because of technological convergence and the dropping...

The United States was the 800-pound spam-spewing gorilla throughout 2004, a spot it held from wire to wire throughout the year, an anti-virus firm announced Monday. According to researchers at U.K.-headquartered Sophos, the U.S. accounted for 42.1 percent of the world's spam, more than three times the next-guiltiest nation, South Korea, which launched 13.4 percent of the globe's junk mail. China, Canada, and Brazil rounded out the top five. "When we first reported on the top spamming countries back in February 2004, the U.S. had the excuse that the CAN-SPAM Act had been in existence for a couple of months,"...

NOTE: If I know anything about the rabid naysayers on FR, at least some of the RELIGIOUS [vs spiritual] types will wail and rant that ANYTHING having to do with numbers and The Bible has to be crossing the line into dealing with Biblically forbidden NUMEROLOGY. This is nonsense. The dictionary definition of “numerology” makes clear that numerology is the study of numbers, as the figures designating the year of one’s birth, “to determine their supposed influence on one’s life, future, etc.” [Quix color, bold emphasis on the definition from: HERE: http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0562554.html Clearly, the Biblically prohibited issue is INTEREST IN,...

American internet link to Ken Bigley torture videosby SHARON CHURCHER, Mail on Sunday 11:44am 17th October 2004Terror: Hostage Ken Bigley blindfolded in Iraq The brutal videos of British hostage Ken Bigley begging for his life were distributed on the internet by a radical Islamic website hosted by an American firm with ties to the Bush administration. The Mail on Sunday began investigating the site, hostinganime, after it showed images of Mr Bigley being held in a cage, shortly before he was decapitated by the Al Qaeda cell known as Tahid wal Jihad. The site posted links to footage in...

9/26/2004 Best News and Punditry on the Web============================== Grandmother thought she would take this pause before the first of the great presidential debates in this year of our Lord, to offer up those web sites that offer the quickest, wittiest, wisest comments, punditry and unbiased presentation of the political or cultural facts as are currently occurring. We begin with the slickest, then onto those sites famous for “community blogging” onto the best Blog on the Internet as Grandmother currently envisions this new medium. The BEST-The American Spectator This site offers up only a few pundits for mental digestion. It features...

OPINION -- There was something almost quaint about the Chicago Tribune’s editorial assertion August 24 declaring that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth controversy surrounding John Kerry’s war record was over. Forgetting that we are in the midst of a “new media” revolution that allows everyday Americans to investigate truth claims on their own - without the clouded filter of biased journalists - the Tribune editors wrote, “That should be the end of the debate about John Kerry's experience in Vietnam.” Days before, the Tribune had injected itself prominently into the presidential campaign and the Swift Boat controversy by giving...

NEW YORK (AP) - Thirty-five years after computer scientists at UCLA linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot gray cable, testing a new way for exchanging data over networks, what would ultimately become the Internet remains a work in progress. University researchers are experimenting with ways to increase its capacity and speed. Programmers are trying to imbue Web pages with intelligence. And work is underway to re-engineer the network to reduce spam and security troubles. All the while threats loom: Critics warn that commercial, legal and political pressures could hinder the types of innovations that made the Internet what it...

Looks like they are closing up at Joe Wilson's little shop of horrors. And the Keery wen search function returns nothing when Joe Wilson's name is entered.

KerryEdwards.com is getting a lot of attention, but you won't find any pictures of the Democratic presidential candidate and his running mate. The online address belongs to Kerry Edwards, a bail bondsman from Indianapolis, Indiana. He joined CNN's Carol Lin to discuss the coincidence and the Web site. (snip) LIN: Now, you voted for President Clinton. Why not help out the party again? EDWARDS: How do you mean? LIN: Sell it to the Kerry people for whatever they're willing to pay for it. EDWARDS: For whatever they're willing to pay for it? LIN: Yeah. EDWARDS: I don't think they're willing...

LARS LUNDIN and his database are matchmakers of a sort, trading in information about matches made long ago. Genealogists send him family trees, and his computer compares them with other family trees in a database of more than two million current and former Danish citizens. Each month, he estimates, his computer finds more than 1,000 connections between cousins. Projects like Mr. Lundin's are becoming increasingly common as both amateur and professional genealogists use the Web to pool resources, compare notes and connect family histories. Some, like Mr. Lundin, do it for fun, while others are building companies that offer higher-quality...

Some jokers who don't like the Democratic presidential candidate are trying to make his campaign Web site, johnkerry.com, the first answer to a search of the word "waffles" on Google, the No. 1 Internet search engine. They've nearly succeeded on the No. 2 search engine, Yahoo. By Sunday, eight days after the prank began, johnkerry.com was listed second among 703,000 results of a Yahoo search of the word "waffles." At the No. 3 search engine, MSN Search, johnkerry.com was also the second Web page result of a search Sunday for "waffles." On Google, johnkerry.com was not in the top 1,000...

I found this website by accident on Google. It's a very well organized Pro Islamic Jihad website in English with many articles and pictures including: An insiders look at the Iraqi Resistance A Rational for American Hegemony Bin Laden's Network Islam under Attack 9-11 Theories Many "newstories":Apr 01, 2004 US Military Vows Revenge For Attacks On American Civilians In Iraq Apr 01, 2004 Iraqi Resistance Sources: US Lost More Than 20 Soldiers In Fallujah Apr 01, 2004 Puppet Police Try To Win Over Iraqi Resistance In Fallujah Apr 01, 2004 Spain Names Madrid Bombing 'Mastermind' Apr 01, 2004 Taliban Kill...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The Internet has played a significant role in the latest increase in cases of syphilis among gay men by introducing partners more likely to practice high-risk sex, according to a study released on Wednesday. About 22 percent of homosexual men diagnosed with early stage syphilis reported meeting one or more of their sexual partners through the Internet around the time they were infected, said the study by the Los Angeles Health Department. Researchers at a national conference in Philadelphia on the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases also said they found gays who used the Web to meet...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The Whitehouse.com Web site, one of the best examples that the Internet isn't always what it seems, is getting out of the pornography business. Its owner says he's worried what his preschool-age son might think.</p> <p>"He'll be going to kindergarten next year,'' said Daniel Parisi, who started the Web site in 1997 that is frequently confused with the official government site, www.whitehouse.gov. Parisi, 44, said he worried that his son's classmates might taunt him about the family's business.</p>

Web surfers battling "spyware" face a new problem: so-called spyware-killing programs that install the same kind of unwanted advertising software they promise to erase. Millions of computers have been hit in recent years by ads and PC-monitoring software that comes bundled with popular free downloads, notably music-swapping programs. The problem has attracted dozens of companies seeking to profit by promising to root out the offending software. But some software makers are exploiting the situation, critics allege, turning demand for antispyware software into a launch pad for new spyware attacks. A small army of angry Web users has set up a...

Satanists hack 46664 site December 12 2003 at 09:56PM The Independent On Saturday Nelson Mandela's 46664 Aids awareness campaign is synonymous with good intentions and positive messages. But web users eager to give a minute of their time to the fight against Aids may be in for a nasty surprise when they hit the site and antichrist symbols and degrading images of Christ appear. When a Cape Town web user, who did not want to be named, logged on to the site earlier this week to find out why the official 46664 T-shirts were sold only in the United Kingdom,...

Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with the creation of the World Wide Web, will be anointed a knight by Queen Elizabeth. Berners-Lee, 48, is being knighted in recognition of his "services to the global development of the Internet" for helping to invent the Web. Buckingham Palace announced the news yesterday as part of its 2004 New Year's Honours list. Berners-Lee is a British citizen who lives in the U.S. and serves as director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which he also helped found. He will be officially made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE). The rank...

Web's inventor gets a knighthood Sir Tim says his invention was 'just another program' The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work. Dubbed the "Father of the Web", he came up with a system over 10 years ago to organise, link and browse net pages. The famously modest man said he was "quite an ordinary person", and although it felt strange, he was "honoured". Sir Tim was recently reunited with the machine he used to invent the web when he e-mailed 80 schools from the UN's summit on the information...

Rush is quoting posters from DU again. They're server crashed! He was quoting about how posters thought Bush was more of a danger than Saddam!