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When did people start deciding that PowerPoint was a desktop publishing tool? I couldn’t tell you how many times do I get a PPT from someone wanting it posted online, once I open it, and it’s a flyer or a newsletter. Not to mention they’re usually hideous to begin with …

Microsoft Publisher was created for a reason, people! Don’t have Publisher? Use Word. On a Mac? Use Pages.

So the Chargers played so sloppy today they didn’t deserve to win. Oh well, on to next week.

Or at least just one of the many reasons.

Let’s take a look at some recent work I’ve been doing at SPARTA. We are implementing an internal web forum/message board. We are using JForum as the base because everything we do is already in Java. Not only just because it’s in Java, but it has added features like Single-Sign-On support so we can integrate it with our own Domain logins. Also, it has a fairly easy-to-customize template system.

So my primary task this week was to get JForum in place and integrate it with our common look and feel. Easy enough. Let’s see how the pages look in Firefox:

Not bad …

Now let’s check Safari:

Perfect …

How about IE?

Uh oh …

What exactly is wrong with the Chargers defense? Are we missing Merriman that badly?

So last week’s game against Carolina was a disappointing loss for sure. Losing the game on the final play of the game. But it was a little easier to take knowing that Carolina won fair and square and that we just flat out lost the game.

Denver didn’t win, they were handed the game, twice.

The first came on just the second offensive play for the Chargers. It was ruled an interception, the replay clearly showed that Chambers was down before the ball was ripped out, so Turner challenged the play. However, the replay equipment was conveniently malfunctioning and after 2 minutes, the ruling on the field had to stand. Denver was given the ball and they quickly scored a touchdown.

The second was a fumble by Denver QB Jay Cutler on the San Diego 10-yard-line, recovered by the Chargers, but was blown dead and ruled an incomplete pass by the ref. They reviewed it and said, “yes it should have been called a fumble, but because it was already blown dead, we can’t overturn it.” Denver got to keep the ball and scored another touchdown, and then a subsequent 2-point conversion for the win.

Yes you could argue that the Chargers should have been able to overcome both blown calls, and that they had no business winning a game in which they allowed 31 points to be scored in the first half; I will give you that. The defense has been looking mighty weak the last two games. But the offense persevered and managed to score 21 unanswered points, even successfully converting a 2-point attempt, to take a 38-31 lead. I was excited again, thinking, “yeah we’ve got this”.

But then disaster.

Given the emotional rollercoaster that was yesterday’s game, and the tough loss a week ago, I’m thinking this is going to be a long season …

… or why my kids will never have access to MySpace (or whatever unpoliced social networking site comes along by then).

See this story about eight high school teenagers (6 girls and 2 boys) being arrested for luring a 16 year old “friend” to the house of one of the arrested and ambushing her and beating her up, even knocking her unconscious at one point by slamming her into a wall.

The media refers to it as a “fight”, but generally a fight will include the other party involved fighting back. If you see the video, you can see she did very little to fight back and was just constantly beat down.

So what horrible, disgusting thing did this girl do to deserve such a heinous punishment? She supposedly “bad-mouthed the other girls” on her MySpace page. Excuse me? Someone talks bad about you on a MySpace page so you and 5 of your girlfriends beat the living daylights out of her? How petty …

Trash talking on a My Space page is what led to this beat down according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. But the victim’s mother says it wasn’t her daughter who bad-mouthed the girls on the social networking page. It was someone else.

Talisa says “Well we knew that someone had hacked into her My Space because she made us aware of it.”

I’m actually inclined to believe that the MySpace got hacked. It is extremely easy to get into someone else’s MySpace page, whether by guessing (or knowing) their password or phishing or by hijacking their login or other means. Add to it the fact that the victim told her parents her MySpace got hacked (presumably before the attack happened), then I’m led to believe that she more than likely didn’t post what was supposedly so horrific that such a beating was deserved.

They videotaped the entire beating and were going to post the video on YouTube and MySpace to publicly humiliate the victim.

The victim’s father is furious with internet companies that post the videos.

Patrick says “I’m very upset with these internet companies as far as I’m concerned My Space is the anti-Christ for children.”

While I agree MySpace is NOT a place for children to be on, I can’t exactly hold them, or YouTube responsible for the video being posted. So many videos get posted to both websites that it is literally impossible to moderate them. The manpower and time it would take to police every video is too great. Plus, they simply provide the tools, they don’t control the content, nor do they control the actions of their users.

Now, the beat-down was going to happen regardless of YouTube’s existence. Though, you could argue that the comments never would have been posted to the internet and the beating wouldn’t have happened if MySpace didn’t exist. But MySpace surely isn’t the first, and only, social networking site. It could have easily have happened on Facebook, Friendster, Blogger, MSN Live Spaces, Xanga. It could have happened over Instant Messaging or on a web forum post or you name it. To single out MySpace and YouTube is oversimplifying the problem and looking for someone to blame.

One thing I will admit, more than likely it was YouTube’s existence to prompt the teens to videotape the entire beating. But that’s the good thing about this entire sadistic situation, the evidence is all there. Instead of humiliating the victim like they originally planned, it’s now being used against all 8 involved as they’ve all been arrested and are being tried as adults. Ha ha, the joke’s on them!

Court records show all of the teens are charged with kidnapping and battery.

The kidnapping charges are first-degree felonies that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. The battery charges are first-degree misdemeanors that carry a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

Three girls also face a third-degree felony charge of tampering with a witness, which carries a maximum of five years in prison.

I hope they throw the book at them! I’m glad they’re being tried as adults and facing SERIOUS felonies and their lives are ultimately over at this point, before they really had begun yet. They did it to themselves and really, they’re getting what they deserve. I just hope they see some extended jail time because there is no telling the psychological harm the victim will be dealing with for some time.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh on the accused, but when you hear things like this:

Even though those involved could face prison time, Judd says the teens showed no remorse after their arrests.

“When they were in a holding cell, they were all laughing,” Judd says. “One of the teens arrested, who is a cheerleader, asked, ‘Does this mean I’m going to miss cheerleading practice tomorrow?’ The others were cutting up and said, ‘It looks like we won’t be going to the beach this weekend.’”

… it just makes my blood boil and realize these girls really are just the scum of the earth. And do I really need to point out the likely wonderful job the parents did raising these attackers?

Not too surprisingly, the parents have already announced that the victim will not be returning to public school as she is still having nightmares and is still healing. They will home school her from here on out. I can’t say I blame her.

I know I’ll continue to follow this story as I hope everyone involved gets what they deserve.

This entry is going to be kind of long, but I feel it’s imperative that as many people read it as possible. I began this by writing my own summary but I found a more succinctly-writting account of the events. As such, I’m going to take snippets from this PC World article written by Steve Bass, and I’ll add my commentary to each quote.

Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, has been convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor by exposing as many as ten seventh-grade students to porn sites.

It’s a short story: On October, 19, 2004, Amero was a substitute teacher for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School. A few students were crowded around a PC; some were giggling. She investigated and saw the kids looking at a barrage of graphic, hard-core pornographic pop-ups.

The prosecution contended that she had used the computer to visit porn sites.

The defense said that wasn’t true and argued that the machine was infested with spyware and malware, and that opening the browser caused the computer to go into an endless loop of pop-ups leading to porn sites.

Amero maintains her innocence. She refused offers of a plea bargain and now faces an astounding 40 years in prison (her sentencing is on March 2).

Having been in middle school and high school not all that long ago, I can attest to how students will just take over the teacher’s computer before the teacher even knows what happened; it’s especially easy if the teacher leaves the room. So I can’t exactly hold the teacher too responsible here for allowing the students to get on the computer.

And if the prosecution was so sold on her visiting porn sites while at the school, did they ever think to check her home computer to see if she has a habit of surfing porn sites while at home? Or maybe they did and they didn’t find any evidence of it so they conveniently left that out of the trial.

But that’s all besides the point …

I’ll admit all my don’t haves right away: I don’t have access to court records; I don’t have first-hand evidence of what occurred; and I haven’t examined the computer’s hard drive myself.

What I do have is a working knowledge of spyware and plenty of experience cleaning infected PCs.

I also have a copy of the report written by computer forensic specialist W. Herbert Horner, the expert witness who testified in Amero’s defense. You can read it, too; it’s on the NetQos site.

Like Mr. Bass, I have been in countless situations where friends and family call me, sometimes frantically, because their computers are uncontrollably infested with pop-ups, many times pornographic. It is extremely clear to me at least, and I’m sure to many of you as well, just how easy it is to get infested with malware and pop-ups without even knowing it.

Horner made an image of the computer’s hard drive. He saw that there was no firewall and that the antivirus program was outdated. He also found 42 active “spyware/adware tracking cookie/programs.” Most important, Horner said that 27 of the spyware apps were accessed before Amero had access to the computer.

To me, the implication is clear that Amero hadn’t used the PC for browse for porn, as the prosecution claimed.

So the defense expert comes on to say that several of the malware programs and popups were installed even before Amero used the computer? Fancy that …

I can also attest to just how surprising it is that somewhat innocent-looking websites are linked to or run by sex sites. These sites do this just so they can install this malware onto unsuspecting computers.

What I learned in other articles is that the kids who took over the computer were looking at websites about hairstyles. I’m not going to link to any sites because I don’t want those sites getting any exposure, but I easily found several hairstyle sites that were actually run by sex sites. These seemingly-innocent websites contained self-installing software that you don’t even know about until popups mysteriously start appearing.

The defense wanted Horner to have Internet access at the trial in order to re-create what happened to Amero in the classroom. The prosecution objected, claiming they hadn’t had “full disclosure” of Horner’s examination.

In my opinion, had the defense attorney been on his toes, and had the jury seen the demonstration, Amero would have been found innocent.

Agreed 100% again. Anyone care to argue?

It should be pointed out at this point that the computer the teacher was using was a PC running Internet Explorer 6.02 on Windows 98. Any person who has had 10 minutes of experience with Windows and Internet Explorer knows that this situation has the explosive potential for disaster. Not just that, but the internet filtering software that filters and blocks inappropriate websites at the school was out of date, as was the antivirus software, and there was no anti-spyware software installed at all.

The question is, Who should be held responsible? After reading articles in the Norwich Bulletin, the area’s local newspaper, and a chat with someone familiar with the case, I’ve come to some conclusions. (And if you’ve ever helped a computer novice deal with a PC loaded with spyware, I think you know who I’m siding with.)

…

To begin with, the prosecutor pointed his finger at Amero because she didn’t turn off the computer right away.

Wait, what? So now we’re not just saying she purposely visited these pornographic websites, but that she didn’t do enough to keep the students from seeing these popups? Okay …

Except several students testified in the trial that she did try to keep the kids off the computer by covering up the monitor. But guess what? 12-year-olds are curious and pushy and if they know something is there, they’re going to try to see for themselves.

Amero even tried to enlist help from another teacher in the teacher’s lounge, and that teacher helps her and crisis averted, right? Wrong. The kids have already seen the porn, they tell each other, and then tell their parents. The parents get all up in arms and want blood.

But I’ve learned from my source that Amero is a rank novice. About the most she can do is check e-mail on AOL using her husband’s home computer. That says lots, no?

For instance, when faced with the classroom PC’s pop-ups, her reaction was to click the red “x” in the corner of each box–which, as anyone who’s faced spyware knows, often results in another pop-up.

So put yourself in her situation: you’re a substitute teacher who is not very comfortable around PCs, using an unfamiliar computer, when all of a sudden you start seeing explicit popups. You’ve been told not to turn off the computer itself, so you panic. You don’t know enough to just turn off the monitor. You try to click on the X in the upper-right corner and it just spawns more popups. What can you do at this point?

But wait, it gets better …

More important, though, if the school had done its part in protecting its students, it would have up-to-date anti-spyware and antivirus programs installed on every PC.

On January 24 the Norwich Bulletin reported that the school district’s technology administrator, Information Services Director Bob Hartz, said, “from August to October 2004, the district’s filtering system didn’t regularly add newly discovered pornographic sites to its restricted Web sites database.” Oddly enough, they upgraded the software just after Amero’s incident.

In my opinion, Amero is the victim here.

No kidding. The way I see it, the school is ultimately the one culpable in this situation because it was due to their negligence that this was allowed to happen. If there was anyone that put these children at risk, it was the school by not updating their protection software. The school must know this but they’re just using Amero as a scapegoat and destroying her life to protect their own hides. The parents of the students are calling for the wrong people to be prosecuted. They should be going after the school, not the teacher.

So let’s recap. A substitute teacher is teaching a class when she finds her students on the computer giggling. She sees what’s on the screen and immediately kicks the kids off the computer and tries to cover the screen, because it’s all she knows to do. The school finds out, they fire her, and the DA brings charges against her. The judge doesn’t allow key defensive evidence, and as such, the jury wrongfully convicts her.

Now she is facing 40 years in prison when sentenced on March 2. In case you haven’t figured it out already, I personally feel what has happened to this teacher is an absolute travesty. An appeal is already in the works and a support fund has been set up by the family. There is also a blog set up by the teacher’s husband with information about the case.

I’m normally against most lawsuits and feel this country is entirely too sue-happy. However, if and when she wins her appeal, I feel Amero should turn around and sue the school district and the city. The school for negligence in allowing this to happen in the first place, and the city for wrongful prosecution.

That’s my take. I want to know what you all think. Let me know in the comments.

Maybe I’m spoiled by the fact that Channel 4 showed over 100 Padres games in HD this year, or that the Chargers opened the season on Monday Night Football, but I am absolutely floored by the fact that this Sunday’s Chargers vs Ravens game will not be shown in HD on CBS. And believe me, I’m not alone.

Here you have two undefeated teams, both with absolutely stellar defenses, and numerous sports reporters and analysts listing this as one of their top games to watch this week. With so much on the line in this game and so much national interest, why did CBS decide that this game was not worth the effort and resources to broadcast in HD?

Let’s take a look at the map of CBS games broadcasting at 10:00AM (PDT):

• Blue covers the regions where the Chargers vs Ravens game will be seen
• Red covers the regions where the Colts vs Jets game will be seen (in HD)
• Green covers the regions where the Dolphins vs Texans game will be seen

Using that map, we can see that, geographically speaking, the Chargers game is broadcast over a much larger area. So that would be one argument in favor of broadcasting that game in HD instead of the Colts vs Jets game.

Another argument here is what I’ve said already, we’re talking about two very strong undefeated teams with dynamic defenses and the best running back in the league on the Chargers.

Whereas in the one HD game they are broadcasting in the morning, the Colts at the Jets, you have one great team (Colts) playing a somewhat mediocre team (the Jets). The Jets have one of the worst defenses in the league with which Peyton Manning should have no trouble owning. Not to mention that this game isn’t even a divisional matchup.

Okay, you can argue that the Charges and Ravens aren’t in a divisional matchup either, but I’d all but guarantee more people are interested in seeing this bitter battle between two strong contenders than watch what should be a pretty one-sided game.

I think a bigger question here is why does CBS only cover three NFL games in HD each week when Fox is able to cover six games in HD? I doubt it’s a money issue seeing as how CBS is currently the most successful of the networks. Is it Infrastructure? Well if so, then find out what Fox is doing right because they’re walking all over you when it comes to sports in HD. I used to really like CBS’ NFL coverage, but right now they are definitely leaving much to be desired.

Oh well, I can look forward to next week when the Steelers come to San Diego to play on NBC Sunday Night Football. At least that way we’re guaranteed to see it in HD …