Good afternoon. Back in country waiting in chicago for my connector should be back in akron by 9.
ray t. mahorney wa4wga
back to the US later this morning should start rolling at 7 EST ETA Chicago
should be around 4 EST this afternoon. Watch this space.
Schools shun Kindle, saying blind can't use it
Nov 11, 2009 12:03 AM (ET)
By RACHEL METZ
Associated Press
http://ping.fm/jFVMZ
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Amazon's Kindle can read books aloud, but if you're
blind it can be difficult to turn that function on without help. Now two
universities say they will shun the device until Amazon changes the setup.
The National Federation of the Blind planned to announce Wednesday that
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University won't
consider big rollouts of the electronic reading device unless Amazon
makes it more accessible to visually impaired students.
Both schools have some Kindles that they bought for students to try this
fall, but now they say they won't look into buying more unless Amazon
makes changes to the device.
"These universities are saying, 'Our policy is nondiscrimination, so
we're not going to adopt a technology we know for sure discriminates
against blind students,'" said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the
National Federation for the Blind.
Amazon.com Inc. spokesman Drew Herdener said many visually impaired
customers have asked Amazon to make the Kindle easier to navigate. The
company is working on it, he said.
According to the National Federation for the Blind, there are about 1.3
million legally blind people in the U.S. Many more people have other
disabilities such as dyslexia that make it difficult to read.
The Kindle could be promising for the visually impaired because of its
read-aloud feature, which utters text in a robotic-sounding voice. For
blind students in particular, the Kindle could be an improvement over
existing studying techniques - such as using audio books or scanning
books page by page into a computer so character-recognition software can
translate it for a text-to-speech program.
But activating the Kindle's audio feature probably requires a sighted
helper, because the step involves manipulating buttons and navigating
choices in menus that appear on the Kindle's screen.
The federation says the device should be able to speak the menu choices
as well.
Electronic books still make up a small portion of the overall book
market, but it's a fast-growing segment. In hopes of getting even more
people to try the Kindle, Amazon released the $489 Kindle DX this year,
which has a large screen and is geared toward textbook and newspaper
readers. The company then worked with several colleges to give out
Kindles this fall with digital versions of their textbooks on them.
The Federation for the Blind sued one of the schools that participated
in this pilot program - Arizona State University - in June, along with
the American Council of the Blind and a blind ASU student, arguing it
was discriminating against blind students. That case is ongoing.
The group also filed complaints with the Department of Justice against
five other schools that are participating in the Kindle trial with
Amazon. Wisconsin and Syracuse are not among those schools.
Ken Frazier, director of Wisconsin-Madison's library system, said the
library bought 20 Kindle DX devices for use in a history class this
fall. Though he's not sure how many blind students are at his school, he
said many students have difficulties reading texts for various reasons,
such as learning disabilities.
"Our experience is that when you make technology accessible, everybody
benefits," he said.
(had to pass this along.)
http://ping.fm/qOtbI
NEW YORK - Britney Spears' Twitter and MySpace accounts have apparently
been hacked.
Messages on her Twitter profile Thursday - purported to be from the
27-year-old pop star - claimed she worshipped the devil. The handful of
unusual messages were deleted after Spears' management regained control
of the account.
Her Twitter feed boasts more than 3.7 million followers and is updated
by herself and her "team" of handlers. A message Thursday apologized for
"any offence the hacker's messages caused."
Spears' MySpace account was taken over at about the same time.
Hacked messages have gone out from Spears' Twitter account before.
This time, Twitter users appeared to suspect something was up. The
subject "donthackbritney" was one of the most popular topics on the site
Thursday.
http://ping.fm/a6d6y
COSHOCTON - A free service enjoyed by hundreds has been shut down due
to illegal activity conducted by one individual.
"It's unfortunate that one person ruins it for those who use the
service legitimately," said Commissioner Gary Fisher.
About five years ago, the county made a free wireless Internet
connection available in the block surrounding the Coshocton County
Courthouse at 318 Main St.
It was disabled last week after someone used the wireless local area
network address to illegally download a movie.
The county's Internet Service Provider - OneCommunity - was notified
by Sony Pictures Entertainment about the breach, and the county's
Information Technology Department was in turn notified by OneCommunity.
Elizabeth Kaltman, vice president of corporate communications with the
Motion Picture Association of America, said movie piracy is something
the industry fights everyday.
"It's a very, very common occurrence all across the U.S., in towns big
or small," she said.
Part of it could be due to a generation that's grown up with computers
and the Internet.
"They're used to instant access and instant gratification," she said.
"They have the philosophy 'if it's there, I can take it.'"
It's not true. There are many sites out there offering illegal movie
and music downloads, but there's also a growing number of sites that
offer video streaming legally. Those are available on the MPAA's Web
site, Kaltman said. In addition to the recognizable names such as
Netflix and Blockbuster, Disney Video, Fox on Demand, Cartoon Network
and others have joined the instant download move.
"There are a growing number of ways to get the information they want
legitimately," she said.
The MPAA focuses most of its efforts on catching the source of the
movies, like pirates who illegally use a camcorder in a theater.
"We target piracy at its source," she said. "We really focus on
keeping the product out of the market in the first place."
Illegal downloads would be prosecuted as a civil matter, she said, and
could be subject to fines up to $150,000.
Mike LaVigne, IT director, said the number of people who access the
Internet using the connection varies widely, from perhaps a dozen
people a day to 100 during busy times such as First Fridays and the
Coshocton Canal Festival.
It's used by Coshocton County Sheriff's deputies who can park in the
300 block and complete a traffic or incident report without leaving
their vehicle. Out-of-town business people can park and use their
laptops to make connections.
During festival times, vendors find it a convenience to check the
status of credit cards being used to make purchases, LaVigne said.
Because it's a single address used by many people, it's difficult to
tell who made the illegal download, although the county plans to
investigate the matter .
Each of the 270 to 300 computers in the regular county system have
password protected secure log-ins, and so could be readily identified
if illegal activity had taken place at one of those locations. Its
firewall also prevents access to illegal sites, said Commissioner Dane
Shryock.
LaVigne has done some homework and found a program that would prevent
the illegal downloads from happening in the future; however, it would
cost the cash-strapped county about $2,900 to implement, $2,000 for
equipment and then $900 annually for the filtering program.
Commissioners questioned whether the investment would be justified for
the free service, but LaVigne said it could be put to use on the
entire county system to monitor activity.
"It would be beneficial to both realms," he said.
This short-range service is entirely separate from the wireless
broadband being deployed throughout the county by Lightspeed.
file it as pre-Copenhagen child abuse on the part of the world wildlife fund
and another in the growing list
of "teach your parents well" examples.
http://ping.fm/rLdXc
Ray T. Mahorney
WA4WGA
M0WGA
Global warming fear mongering and child abuse return to British TV.
here is the original ad which prompted the complaints about its tactics and
lack of scientific accuracy. The UK government spent �6,000,000 in an
attempt to continue a hoax and to scare the children into presuring their
parents to submit to what more and more we learn is a hoax. Don't think it
won't happen on our side of the atlantic because it will if the
administration cant get cap and tax through the senate. These are the
tactics which will be used and are being used in a limited way in US
elementery schools.
http://ping.fm/U76rM There's another version of this
which now appears to be running from Sunday night without the fearful child
at the end they're not backing away from the ad though and that is alarming.
http://ping.fm/D5kR5
Jihad's 5th Column Posted 11/06/2009 07:27 PM ET
Hasan: Invisible with PC blinders on? APView Enlarged Image
War On Terror: The Fort Hood terrorist is being portrayed as an "anomaly,"
an "aberration," a "lone wolf." Sadly, he's just one of many examples of
jihadist traitors in the ranks of the military.
Together they form a dangerous Fifth Column, and the Pentagon - thanks to
institutionalized political correctness - is doing next to nothing to root
them out .
Instead, brass are actively recruiting Muslim soldiers - whose ranks have
swelled to more than 15,000 - and catering to their faith by erecting
mosques even at Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va. More, they're hiring
Muslim chaplains endorsed by radical Islamic front groups, who convert and
radicalize soldiers.
In the wake of the worst domestic military-base massacre in U.S. history,
this is an outrage to say the least. And the PC blinders explain how Fort
Hood commanders could have failed so horrifically in protecting their force
from the internal threat there.
The terrorist suspect, an Islamic fanatic, penetrated deep into the Army's
officer corps before gunning down, execution-style, more than 40 of his
fellow soldiers. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly killed 13 at the Texas
post, which boasts some 40 Muslims.
Witnesses say he shouted "Allahu Akbar" - Allah is great! - before opening
fire in a crowded building where troops were sitting ducks, waiting to
deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, both wars that Hasan angrily opposed.
"Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor," he reportedly said
earlier this year, referring to the U.S. - the country he swore to protect.
During the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, another devout Muslim in the Army
had a similar conflict. Sgt. Hasan Akbar also resorted to violence, fragging
17 fellow soldiers, killing two. Why? He opposed the killing of fellow
Muslims. "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape
our women and kill our children," he was overheard by soldiers who survived
the grenade attack as saying.
Clearly, his loyalties lay elsewhere. And he's hardly alone:
. Navy Signalman Hassan Abujihaad last year was convicted of tipping off
al-Qaida to battle group movements in the Persian Gulf, including disclosing
classified documents detailing the group's vulnerability to terror attack.
. Army reservist Jeffrey Battle in 2003 pleaded guilty to conspiring to wage
war against the U.S., confessing he enlisted "to receive military training
to use against America."
. Army reservist Semi Osman in 2002 was arrested for providing material
support to al-Qaida and pleaded guilty to weapons charges after agreeing to
testify against other terror suspects.
. Marine Abdul Raheem al-Arshad Ali trained at a suspected al-Qaida camp and
was charged with selling a semi-automatic handgun to Osman.
. Army Sgt. Ali Mohamed trained Green Berets at Fort Bragg's elite special
warfare school before stealing military secrets for al-Qaida and helping
plan bombings at three U.S. embassies in 1998.
. Army Spec. Ryan Anderson in 2004 was convicted of leaking military
intelligence to al-Qaida terrorists, including sensitive information about
the vulnerabilities of armored Humvees.
. Army sniper John Muhammad was put on death row after fatally shooting 10
in the nation's capital a year after 9/11.
While good and decent Muslim soldiers have served admirably, the list of
those who have put their allegiance to Islam above country is long, and this
is by no means an exhaustive accounting.
The Pentagon must do a better job of vetting such recruits. And it must do a
better job of force protection - starting with beefing up its counterspying
operations - before more intelligence is compromised and more soldiers are
lost.
2009 Investor's Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. Investor's
Business Daily, IBD and CAN SLIM and their corresponding logos are
registered trademarks of Data Analysis Inc.
November 3, 2009 5:41 AM PST
Hulu adds episode release schedule
by Harrison Hoffman
News.com
http://ping.fm/vSmOA
Hulu has debuted a long-requested feature
Amazing what you find on Napster. Poking around for the Album on which Days
Gone Down appears by Gerry Rafferty I wasn't able to find it but I did find
several versions of Baker Street. Two which stood out and for wildly
different reasons were these One done by the Foo Fighters from an album
called the shape and the color. The things that jumped out at me about this
version were first how wrong it was the arrangement sounded angry but the
singer sounded as if he were asleep and merely phoning in the performance.
The other wrong note about this one was a lyric change. In the original the
lyric is "he's got this dream about buying some land give up the booze and
the one night stands." The changed lyric reads "he's got this dream about
buying some land give up the crack and the one night stands" Now am I the
only one to have caught this and am I the only one who has a problem with
this change? It was jarring in the extreme! The other one was just funny
it sounded like something you'd here in a lift or on hold it was done by The
Pickwick PanPipers. Just in time for the holidays the Raleigh Ringers
http://ping.fm/FISvY
are running promos for there tour dates and one of them is in Pittsburgh so
while still on Napster I plugged the Raleigh Ringers into the search field
and yes they're up there. Imagine Free Bird or Knights in white satin done
on hand bells or even Rock you like a hurricane. These folks are serious
about handbells and it shows in their site and their library. If you don't
subscribe to Napster, Consider it you never know what you will find.
http://ping.fm/372vH
Ray T. Mahorney
WA4WGA
M0WGA
November 4, 2009
End to a Fight Over Skype May Be Near
By BRAD STONE
NY Times
http://ping.fm/aqJEw
SAN FRANCISCO - The bitter battle over the future of the Internet
calling service Skype appears to be nearing an end.
A resolution of the litigation surrounding the service, which is owned
by eBay, could be announced as soon as this week, according to several
people who have been briefed on the situation. The parties "sound
optimistic that there's a settlement," said one of these people, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because talks were at a delicate stage
and could still collapse.
The proposed settlement is between a consortium of private equity
investors, who successfully bid for Skype in September, and the original
founders of Skype, who have filed several lawsuits in an effort to
scuttle the consortium's $1.9 billion deal to buy a majority of Skype
from eBay.
Skype allows its 520 million registered users to make free calls to one
another using their PCs or mobile devices that run Skype software. It
charges its users comparatively low rates to call regular phones, but
that money adds up. Skype brought in $185 million for eBay in the last
quarter and was the fastest-growing part of its business.
The legal settlement, according to two people briefed on its outlines,
would restructure the group that is buying Skype. Niklas Zennstrom and
Janus Friis, who created Skype and sold it to eBay in 2005, would take a
significant stake in the new Skype.
Index Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm whose partner,
Michelangelo Volpi, was at the center of litigation over the Skype sale,
is most likely withdrawing from the deal.
It was not clear how much of the new Skype Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis
would own, although they would receive at least one seat on the new
company's board. Crucial to the proposed deal is that they drop their
various lawsuits against eBay and the other Skype buyers.
Lewis M. Phelps, a spokesman for the founders, said they had no comment
on "rumors about the existing litigation." Alan Marks, an eBay
spokesman, declined to comment.
The settlement would bring a close to a legal battle that started in
March, when Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis sued eBay in a British court.
The pair said that eBay had violated the terms of a contract that
allowed Skype to use a core technology, held by a company they own
called Joltid, that provides the service's underlying peer-to-peer
infrastructure.
The move was primarily tactical. Behind the scenes, Mr. Zennstrom and
Mr. Friis were organizing their own bid to buy Skype back from eBay. As
part of their proposal, they offered hundreds of millions of their own
money and the Joltid intellectual property, and were joined by a group
of private equity firms.
But eBay did not accept their bid, partly because of animosity between
the Skype founders and eBay management, according to a person involved
in the proposal.
Then in September, eBay said it was selling 65 percent of Skype to a
rival group of investors led by Silver Lake Partners, a private equity
firm in Silicon Valley.
That group had been organized by Index Ventures. Mr. Volpi, a new
partner there, had worked for the Skype founders at Joost, an
unsuccessful online video start-up that also used the Joltid technology.
Mr. Volpi asserted that he had the expertise and contacts to lead the
effort to redevelop Skype so that it no longer relied on the Joltid code.
A wide-ranging legal imbroglio ensued. Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis sued
eBay and the consortium of buyers on the grounds of violating the Joltid
copyright, this time in United States District Court in Northern
California. They asserted that damages could accrue at $75 million a day.
Joost and Joltid also sued Mr. Volpi and the other members of the buyout
group in federal court in Delaware. That lawsuit claimed that Mr. Volpi
had improperly used confidential information about Skype's software to
assemble the buyout team and make a successful bid.
The lawsuit sought to prevent Mr. Volpi and Index from sharing that
knowledge, making it difficult for them to continue as participants in
the group.
According to a person with knowledge of its legal strategy, eBay was
prepared to argue that it was Mr. Zennstrom himself who, as chief
executive of Skype until late 2007, closely intertwined the Skype and
Joltid code and made it difficult for eBay to make changes to Skype
without violating its Joltid contract.
But even the act of fighting the lawsuit seemed likely to damage the
reputations of everyone involved. For example, in some of the e-mail
messages entered into evidence and made public, between Mr. Volpi and
Danny Rimer, a fellow partner at Index Ventures, Mr. Volpi frankly
assessed the strengths and weaknesses of other members of the
deal-making team.
GigaOm, an industry blog, first reported last weekend that the parties
were close to a deal.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s
vulnerable-to-8-out-of-10-viruses-181444
Staff
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Windows 7 is still virus vulnerable, warns a security specialist.
SophosLabs reported in its security blog that a test Windows 7 system on
a clean PC was affected by 80 per cent of viruses.
Sophos' Chester Wisniewski, said engineers loaded a full version of
Microsoft's recently launched operating system, and configured it to
follow system defaults for UAC (User Account Control) without installing
an anti-virus package.
Ten samples of net nasties that arrived in the SophosLab security feed
were tested to, as Wisniewski put it "see how well the newer, more
secure version of Windows and UAC held up".
"Unfortunately, despite Microsoft's claims, Windows 7 disappointed just
like earlier versions of Windows," he wrote.
"The good news is that, of the freshest 10 samples that arrived, two
would not operate correctly under Windows 7."
Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report released this week said the
infection rate of a Windows Vista machine running Service Pack was 61.9%
less than on an up-to-date Windows XP computer.
But only around one in five Windows users are using the new operating
system or Vista.
"With millions of hosts still infected with Conficker, ZBot and Bredo,
it is obvious a lot of unprotected machines are still out there, and it
is no surprise that most of those are XP."
"But let's not get complacent," he said, "Microsoft seems to be saying
that Vista is the least ugly baby in its family. You can be sure the
next report will highlight its even less ugly younger sibling, Windows
7.
"Windows 7 is no cure for the virus blues, so be sure to bring your
protection when you boot up."
http://ping.fm/n0KEo
11.04.09
Post a Comment
by Michael Muchmore
With all the clamor about Facebook and Twitter, people forget that
there's a Web service that's been around longer and attracted over 600
million users worldwide: MSN.com.
Microsoft has decided to give the site a new haircut, and add some new
features like integration with social networking sites, including
Facebook and Twitter, according to Bob Visse, senior director of MSN,
who met with PCMag.com staff last month to show off the new web
information portal.
In fact, Visse told PCMag that 52 percent of MSN users also use
Facebook, and 14 percent also use Twitter. The new design cuts links by
50 percent, and gives more prominence to Bing search and one main story
in a rotating "carousel" of the day's top five news and lifestyle
stories.
"The old design had way too much stuff on the page," Visse told us. "We
really changed the way the navigation works on the page. It's much
cleaner, [a] much more simplified design, and we can dynamically load
content from tabs, so that you don't have to click through to another
page. One of the things that came through in all our research was that
more and more people use their home page as a 5 to 7 minute "info
snack." The main areas we invested in are to fix the design, use
technology to improve relevance, harness search, local content, video,
and social networking."
The new MSN Local Edition section provides local media and community
news based on a user's ZIP code. And the site is moving towards offering
longer-format video, rather than the few minutes people devote to
YouTube, with content from MSNBC, FOX Sports, Hulu and Hearst.
Using the New MSN
On visiting the new home page, I was first struck by its cleaner look,
with a larger expanse of white background rather than all of the blue
framing in the current MSN.com. The page is much less deep than before,
and it loads faster. The lead stories are more prominent. Gone are the
sea of links at the top of the page, for things like Dating, Airfares,
Horoscopes, Yellow Pages, and more. Six clear links at the top offer
"News," "Entertainment," "Sports," "Money," "Lifestyle," and "More".
Resting the mouse over any of these drops down several subcategory
choices, such as MLB (Major League Baseball) for Sports, and Travel
under Lifestyles - all the same links are there, but better organized.
Those top choices let you drill down into more specific topics, but
below the middle of the page, you encounter seemingly redundant choices
- "Latest," "MSNBC," "FOX Sports," "Celebs," "Finance," "Lifestyle," and
"Games". Instead, these are tabs to the latest content from the source
publications. Scrolling down reveals stock quotes, weather, and tabs
from Local, Movies, Jobs, and Maps. In the lower center is Popular
Searches (which the new Yahoo home page places way more prominently at
the top), and the ability to create shopping-specific searches.
At the lower right, below a sizable display ad, is your mail and social
networking control panel. The latter has three tabs for Windows Live,
Facebook, and Twitter, and I was easily able to incorporate my Facebook
updates into the module after granting a few permissions. The Windows
Live stream, which you set up at live.com, can in turn incorporate many
more social sources, such as Yelp, Flickr, and Pandora.
The local weather is handy to have, and three-hour and five-day
forecasts are a click away. Clicking on Local news took me to a Local
Edition page, with choices for news, weather, sports, movies & events,
restaurants, gas & traffic, and maps presented in the left-hand nav bar.
Clicking on map searches took you to a separate Bing page; it would be
nice to get Bing results integrated onto the MSN page. One nitpick: the
preview site couldn't find any local events for my neighborhood, aside
from movies and major sporting events across the river.
In all, the new site is a step up from the previous MSN, and makes it
easier to gather your interests onto one page, unless you're the type of
tinkerer who likes to set up a Netvibes or My Yahoo personalized portal.
The new MSN will be on view at preview.msn.com beginning on Wednesday,
and will roll out to all viewers by early next year.
let your voice be heard. With a vote to take control of you and socialize
fully a sixth of the nations economy,
Congressman Mike Pence released the following video, urging all Americans to
rise up and let their voices be heard in regard to the Pelosi health care
plan.
http://ping.fm/4WoTC
$16 million for radio death
WHEC-TV News
10/30/2009 10:58 AM
http://ping.fm/LSan0
A California jury has awarded more than $16 million to the family of a
young mother who died after drinking a large amount of water during a
radio contest.
However, the station's parent company, Entercom Communications
Corporation of Boston, was found not to be negligent in Jennifer
Strange's death.
The jury also determined Strange was not negligent in her own death.
The jury, which delivered the split verdict after nine days of
deliberation, awarded a total of $16,577,118.
Widower Billy Strange sued local radio station 107.9 The End and parent
company Entercom Communications Corporation in connection with the
station's 2007 "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest.
His wife died of apparent water intoxication after drinking more than a
dozen bottles of water over a three-hour period in an attempt to win a
video game system.
"I'm very thankful and appreciative that the jurors took their time and
that they held the appropriate people accountable," Strange said after
hearing the verdict Thursday.
Jennifer Strange's family members hugged each other in court after the
verdict was read.
Billy Strange earlier testified about the devastating impact his wife's
death has had on him emotionally.
just in time for Christmas folks here's an interesting toy for me to play
with.
http://ping.fm/TrS2K
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