Six Men Shot: Police report a bar fight at El Deportivo bar on Kernersville Road turned into a shooting when several men involved in the fight left the bar then returned with a shotgun. Wounded in the the shooting were: Carlos Jonas Santiago, 22, Olimpo Rodriguez Ortiz, 40; Filberto Ramirez, 34; Christine Nava Rocincuet, 35; Xandart Cristian Arellanes, 30; and Alfred Toran, 23. The men with the shotgun drove away from the bar in red Honda.

State Laptop Stolen: A laptop from the Division of Aging and Adult Services contained up to 85,000 unprotected Social Security numbers. George Bakolia, the State CIO said the laptop was stolen in Atlanta and the information was not encrypted in violation of state policy.

12 Year Old Shot: Police arrested the father of a twelve year old boy found shot last Saturday morning. Two men were found intoxicated at the scene, the boys father and Garcia Cisneros.

 N.C. Treasurer Richard Moore Against Wachovia Deal: N.C. Treasurer Richard Moore has stated he is against the Wachovia, Wells Fargo deal and will vote the states Wachovia shares help by the state pension fund against the deal.

That’s right get a FREE copy of Microsoft OneNote 2007 just for watching a webcast, submitting a survey and being a Teacher. This Tuesday Microsoft will host a webcast on using OneNote as an effective educational resource:

Join me this Tuesday at 1:00 pm PST for a late lunch webinar where I’ll be covering the OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers. This is a great resource to help teachers get up to speed on OneNote and how it can be used as an effective education resources. The toolkit is a OneNote notebook filled with templates, tutorials, how to articles, videos, teacher-focused OneNote explanations, lesson plan examples and other resources to help get teachers started using OneNote in the classroom. I’ve blogged about this toolkit in the past and this Tuesday I’ll be showing it live.  

Click here to sign up for this Tuesday’s webinar

Microsoft will also be giving a free a copy of OneNote 2007 for any teacher that views the webinar and completes the survey at the end! More details on how you get your free copy are listed below. So spread the word that teachers can get a free copy of OneNote if they watch this webinar on Tuesday.

Speaker: Mike Tholfsen—OneNote Product Team
When: Live Nov 11 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time  

*View the webinar and complete the survey at the end to receive a FREE copy of Microsoft Office OneNote!

*Offer good only to legal residents of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia actively employed as K-20 teachers/faculty members at accredited educational institutions in the US. Limit one (1) copy of Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 per teacher / faculty member. All proof of academic status must be received by November 30th, 2008. Offer expires at 11:59 PST on November 30th, 2008, while supplies last, and is not redeemable for cash. Offer is non-transferable except as otherwise provided herein. Taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the recipient. Any Award(s) returned as non-deliverable will not be re-sent. Please allow 6 - 8 weeks for shipment of your Award(s).

Before we can send you a copy of Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 you will need to provide proof of your academic status. No order will be shipped until a valid academic ID is received.. We will place your order on "hold" until we receive your valid academic ID. Upon receipt of your academic ID, we will ship out your order. You can send your academic proof one of the following ways:

1. Fax a signed copy of the letter to 425-708-6649, ATTN: TeacherTech
2. Mail a signed copy of the letter to: Microsoft, One Microsoft Way, Attn: TeacherTech — Lincoln Square/20257, Redmond, WA 98052.
3. Email a signed copy/PDF of the letter to Teachtec@microsoft.com

Acceptable Forms of Academic Proof:

(Any one of the following)

• Dated Student ID Card
• Dated Faculty ID Card
• Dated, current class schedule
• Letter from school on school letterhead
• Recent faculty/staff payment stub (please black out salary information)

If you currently use a Smartphone with Verizon you may want to go by the store or call customer service ASAP to confirm what packages are available to you for what phones because as of November 14th, 2008 Verizon will require a $29.99 data plan for all data capable phones. Current Verizon customers on a plan with no data plan but a Web 2.0 phone will not be required to change their current plan however if you go into Verizon on November 14th and want that high end phone which also has Internet Access you WILL BE required to buy a data plan.

This is at least the rumor based on a “leaked” document from Verizon and it appears legit enough to be worth confirming what your options are. Verizon is slated to release multiple “SmartPhones” including the Blackberry Storm and with this plan change going into effect on the 14th it’s safe to say that’s the day most of these phones will be released. Granted what use is a Storm without data however many people prefer the higher end phones so they can get things like an MP3 player, speaker phone, Bluetooth, etc which very often only comes on the phones which also support Internet Access. My phone falls into this class and although it is several years old and has Mobile Web I have no data plan as I don’t want Internet Access on this phone. If I was to walk into Verizon on the 14th and bought my same model I would have to not only pay for our nationwide phone service we use but also another $30 for something I have no use for or at least that’s how it appears.

So if your thinking of changing phones or even want to lock in the current Pay As You Go plans you better get over to Verizon before the 14th:

MTV has finally put it’s music video collection online. That’s right you want to watch that video from college that you can barely remember or find something newer and tired of watching endless “Real TV” shows on MTV hoping they might show a music video well now you can.

Now it’s up to you to figure out if there was some deeper meaning behind this video.

Today Microsoft released a security update that fixes a remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Server Service. This is a serious vulnerability and Microsoft has seen targeted attacks using this vulnerability to compromise fully-patched Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 computers so Microsoft released the fix "out of band" (not on the regular Patch Tuesday).

This security update resolves a vulnerability in the Server service that affects all currently supported versions of Windows. Windows XP and older versions are rated as “Critical” while Windows Vista and newer versions are rated as “Important”. Because the vulnerability is potentially wormable on those older versions of Windows, we’re encouraging customers to test and deploy the update as soon as possible. MSRC Blog

Most perimeter firewalls will block exploit attempts from outside your organization

If you are behind a perimeter firewall that filters inbound connections to TCP ports 139 and 445, you will not be reachable from the Internet. This is a common home user scenario. In this scenario, only the machines in your local LAN will have the ability to exploit this vulnerability. That said however the exploit is wormable and as a Trojan has been seen in the wild. The Trojan Gimmiv will certainly be modified so antivirus vendors will likely be behind in detection.

All users are urged to immediately download and install this update either by visiting Windows Update or selecting your operating system from the following website:

MS08-067

Here’s a quick fix to a rather common problem with Windows Update.

Error number: 0×80244022

When trying to run Windows Update from Internet Explorer you get an error 0×80244022 you could spend hours trying to fix this or try this little trick to get around the problem.

Leave the browser with the error code running and either start another Internet Explorer or even just anotehr IE Tab and then try Windows Update again. Odds are pretty high it will run just fine this time as long as that first failure window stays open.

Go Figure.

In typical fashion of those that don’t understand something the Administration of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has submitted to the Board a change in the “Standards of Professional Conduct” to ban the use of “Social Networking” sites by staff and teachers. The Board had an initial vote to approve the changes with only two nays to the following changes:

Teachers, school administrators and all other employees shall refrain from communication with WS/FCS students using, through, by and/or on social networking sites, including but not limited to MySapce.com and Facebook. Teachers, school administrators and all other employees shall not list WS/FCS students as “Friends” on social networking sites, unless the student is the employee’s child, grandchild, sibling, cousin, niece or nephew.

A “social networking site” primarily focuses on building on-line communities of people who share interest and activates or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most are internet based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as email and instant messaging services.

During the Board meeting the rule change was put forth as a needed because using sites such as Facebook allow teachers to communicate with students without the ability of the Administration to monitor that communication. This of course makes no sense as stated by Board Member Buddy Collins since the current rules do allow for written, oral, telephone and even text messages as a means to communicate with students and none of those are monitored. Mr. Collins goes on to further point out that creation of such a rule shouldn’t be needed as long as the hiring process for staff was administered correctly. In other words this is not a technology problem but a Human Resource problem, something we have made comment on with businesses in the past. The need to monitor Internet use, except in cases of compliance, is not a technology problem, it’s an HR problem.

In stark contrast to the provision put forth by the Superintendant to ban the use of technology other school systems are looking for ways to expand the use of the Internet. In eSchoolNews.com Assistant Editor Maya Prabhu quotes Jared Stein, director of instructional design services at Utah Valley University:

"I believe that educators should keep a clear line separating educational relationships from social relationships," he said. "As long as the use of the tool is related to learning, education, or professional development, I don’t see it as being a problem."

Maybe even more to the point is this article in Edutopia.org:

But the rewards are worth it, he says, estimating that online school-based communities will multiply rapidly in the coming year. "You see how motivated the kids are," he adds. "Here you were, banging your head getting students to write. Then you give them a blog, and now you just can’t get them to stop."

And lastly citing Mary Madden of Pew Internet, an American think-tank dedicated to studying the social impacts of technology this post at Macleans.ca says it all:

“The fact that high-school teachers and college professors are starting to use these tools makes sense,” says Mary Madden, senior research analysts at Pew Internet, an American think-tank dedicated to studying the social impacts of technology. Teachers “are able to leverage a tool students already use instead of asking them to learn how to use a separate application,”

 

As the list of states around the US investigating voter registration applications submitted by Acorn grows server local counties have joined into the mix with their own “questionable” applications.

County elections officials have sent about 30 applications to the state Board of Elections for possible fraud investigation, Poucher said. Those applications were submitted by the grassroots organization ACORN, whose voter registration activities have been questioned in Durham and other communities, as well.

The same voters’ names appeared multiple times on the ACORN applications in question, Poucher said.

The News & Observer