Wal-Mart offers "Black Friday" prices

...it will unveil five holiday sales items tomorrow/Thursday on its Web site...an Acer laptop with a 14-inch LCD screen for $348...the special items are available for purchase only in Wal-Mart stores Friday...

I have heard that the sales will begin at "8 a.m."

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World to face laptop famine this Xmas?

"...That's the message coming out of Taiwan, source of almost all of the world's laptops, from the big brands to the little-known names..."Just an "FYI"...don't let news panic or scare ya...shop smart, "layaway" if you feel it's needed...consider waiting for the "end of the year/beginning of the year" sales...

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Windows Vista VHD

Microsoft has provided a VHD to test Windows Vista for 30 days...a way to see the features of Windows Vista without having to upgrade your current operating system. The VHD format is supported by VirtualPC and Virtual Server which are free to download...(a VHD of Office is available, also...)

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Microsoft privacy guru's site hacked

...a Web site run by Microsoft's chief architect of identity and access, has been hacked and defaced.

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USB to eSATA adapter

$15...No driver needed for Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista, Linux or MacOS 10 or higher. Vender driver is required only with Windows 98SE...http://usb.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00368

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10 common Web design mistakes to watch out for

Enhance your Web site’s chances of success by keeping these design principles in mind.

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"Roommates" on MySpace.com: a review

For me, the first sentence says it all...I didn't plan on watching it, and am glad I haven't.

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Facebook dishes out notes designated private

This isn't the first time Facebook has failed to make good on promises to keep user information private...

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vynil, and CD, disc

The disc is a combination of a CD or DVD, consisting of two interconnected layers: the silver layer includes digital information, and the upper black layer can be used on a record player...

AIM v6.5 vulnerability

...it still does not utilize the Local Zone lockdown. This means that if someone will found another way to inject a script to a message, it will still be possible to execute arbitrary code from remote...

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how not to hire a webmaster

Laugh in the Fast Lane

The Webmaster Disaster

By Roger Yohem

When the Internet revolutionized the business world, it caught many executives by surprise. They were not prepared for the pending evolution, and some blew it off as a trendy marketing gimmick.

At the time, it was easy to see why. New college grads were job hunting with a menu of innovative yet unproven job skills. Their generation had grown up in a web of bits and bytes, servers, and search engines.

Many students that I talked to aspired to be Dot.Com Prima Donnas. But sadly, their personal communications skills were weak.

At the time, the CEO I worked for saw the Internet’s potential as a powerful sales tool. His “vision” was to use it to grow his small company, to give us a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace.

What I didn’t know at the time put me at a huge disadvantage. I didn’t know the company was littered with his college friends and family members. I also didn’t know that three other Marketing directors had predeceased me.

Although building the Staff was my call, I did inherit a talented but moody graphic designer. Moving fast, I hired a marketing specialist, PR director, writer, and student intern from the UA.

For my last opening, I wanted a savvy Webmaster. But when I approached the CEO, his “vision” went blind. He already had lined up his daughter’s boyfriend.

From Day One, the boyfriend was as productive as an Internet worm. He lived three time zones away, was still in college and available only on his schedule. He talked a good game, but couldn’t walk the walk.

And as for details, the only accuracy that mattered were the hours on his time sheet.

At my Friday Staff meetings, I invited officers in from other departments. They had 10 minutes to share their responsibilities and projects with us.

After several frustrating weeks with the boyfriend, I invited the CEO to our meeting to critique our website. Within minutes, he was fuming. The website was a disaster.

“What the hell is going on here?” was his challenge to me.

I told him the problem was the boyfriend. Phone calls were not returned. Emails unanswered. And the work he did do was so sloppy, it had to be corrected four or five times over.

The CEO was in disbelief, so I called the Webmaster wannabe and put him on the speakerphone. He told the CEO my directions were never clear.

As the boyfriend babbled on, I opened my files. When the boyfriend said, “I never got that,” I handed the CEO his original memo. When he said, “That’s not what Roger asked for,” I handed the CEO the copy of the checklist.

Some of the Work Orders were even marked boldly: “3rd Request, fix TODAY!” As my Staff listened in, the worm continued his squirmy defense.

The CEO took over my computer, asking about specific assignments. On one page, they began to argue. The boyfriend insisted he had made an important data change. It wasn’t there. As I handed the memo to the CEO, I took a giant red Magic Marker and wrote the corrections right onto my PC monitor.

I circled the error on the glass screen and underlined it twice.

“Hey! You can’t do that!” the CEO popped. To which I replied, “Well, neither can your Webmaster.”

The next Tuesday, the CEO came to my office. As we discussed the situation, he kept looking at my monitor. I knew exactly what was bothering him-- I had left the Magic Marker edits on my screen.

Eventually, he agreed a change was needed. He would deal with the boyfriend. (He was taken off the website but kept on the payroll).

By Friday, I had a few candidates lined up for interviews the next week. Things were back on track until the CEO came into my office. He shut the door.

Quietly, he told me he had “taken the liberty” of finding a new Webmaster. He had hired a “really sharp” college student who had taken “some” Internet classes.

Warily, I hung on his every word: “My son starts work for you on Monday.”

This is a true story, drawn from Yohem’s 25-year communications career with Tucson Electric Power, Southwest Gas, and the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association. The names are changed to protect the guilty. Yohem’s column looks at the lighter side of “challenges” in the business world.

March 28, 2007

$100 Zune30s on Woot! today

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Radiohead Fans Feel Duped By Low-Quality In Rainbows

DON'T PAY FOR THIS MUSIC/ALBUM UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THIS STORY...

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Windows Update automatically changing user settings (again)

After Patch Tuesday this week (October 9), some Windows Vista users noticed something strange: Windows Update had changed their Automatic Update settings and rebooted their machines automatically without their consent.

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Big Brother or Big Help? OnStar 2009 can stop moving cars via satellite

I understand its beneficial uses...however, I trust NO ONE...

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Want blind visitors? Get alt tags

The simplest thing you can do is to place alt= tags on all images, so their content can be understood and thus "read" by screen readers, which are used by blind people to access Web content.

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woman loses Kazaa file-sharing case

DULUTH, Minn. —

...a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.

The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.

...her attorney, Brian Toder...

...Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies.

...the record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn’t have a Kazaa account.

gaming competitions (on TV)

The World Cyber Games 2007 Grand Finals is scheduled to begin on tomorrow/Thursday in Seattle at Qwest Field, will be shown live at http://www.worldcybergames.com, and televised on Spike TV on October 12th.

---------------------------------

Official Games

PC - 8 games
WarCraft III : The Frozen Throne (1v1)
StarCraft : Brood War (1v1)
Half-Life : Counter-Strike (5v5)
FIFA Soccer 2007 (1v1)
Need for Speed Carbon (1v1)
Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars (1v1)
Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs (1v1)
Carom3D (1v1)

Console (Xbox) - 4 games
Gears of War (4v4)
Dead or Alive 4 (1v1)
Project Gotham Racing 3 (1v1)
Tony Hawk¡¯s Project 8 (1v1)

...over 700 gamers from 75 different countries...12 championship titles using PC, Xbox 360, and (for the first time this year) mobile platforms.

===========================

Arizona contestants

18-year-old Nick "HolyHuman" Pesu, a Higley High School grad, who lives in Gilbert
Pesu's game is Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
He earns a salary as a member of NWRS (or "New Russia"), a Warcraft III team with players in three countries...

-------------------------------------

Alex Brola of Surprise
20
a k a Skew
Brola has been playing StarCraft for about four years (the game introduced in 1998).
It is his third trip to the finals. Brola said he placed in the top five at the 2004 U.S. Finals and in the top nine the following year.

http://www.alexbrola.com/

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The World Cyber Games 2007 National Final was held earlier this year...it will be televised on November 9th...Spike TV will air a one-hour special on the competition.

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The Championship Gaming SeriesTM - CGS - (claims to be) the only worldwide professional gaming league...

The League’s 2007 World Championship will take place December 6-14 in Los Angeles. There's a $1,000,000 total prize purse, of which $500,000 will go to the World Champion team.

It will be broadcast by DIRECTV in the U.S., BSkyB in the UK, STAR in Asia and the Middle East, SKY in Mexico and Brazil, and DIRECTV Latin America in the rest of Latin America.

Your job search is tax deductible

You can claim job-seeking expenses as long as the amount of all miscellaneous itemized deductions is more than two percent of your adjusted gross income...your job search must be for a job in your current, or most recent, trade or business and should be at a similar level of responsibility with duties similar to those of your most recent job.

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