Dell has informed the state that it believes it met the requirements during it’s years of operating in North Carolina and will not repay those monies. Governor Bev Purdue and other state representatives have said Dell would be forced to repay all the incentive money they were given however Dell has claimed some $6 million is covered in the agreements and will not be repaid. The Governor’s Office has released a “corrected” statement saying Dell may be able to keep some North Carolina taxpayer money.

Animated map showing unemployment rates growing across the nation.

I am seeing around a two dozen or more virus laden emails a day right now all with the same general subject lines such as:

“payment request from "Qualcomm" or “payment request from "Google"” or “Your Credit Balance is over its limit”

These all contain a backdoor Trojan in the attachment so again and again I remind everyone to not click those attachments you get in email. I like that “transaction inspector module”, they are always looking for something that will just make people click away, well DON’T!

When you leave messages on your e-mail server, you can choose from several options to delete your messages. To make your choice, you need to consider several factors about your e-mail usage, such as how long you want the messages to be accessible from multiple computers and the storage limits imposed by your e-mail server administrator. If you exceed your storage limit, you might be unable to receive new messages or might be charged additional fees.

Nothing local or business related here, just some happy Monday morning sounds.

I’ll let the legal types dig into the exact ruling but in a case brought by Janet Joyner and Constance Lynn Blackmon the courts have ruled the County Board of Commissioners is violating the law in holding invocation or prayer prior to County meetings. Of course it looks like the county gets to pay the legal fees associated with this as well.

 

Relief
Plaintiffs seek relief in the form of a declaratory judgment, an injunction prohibiting Defendant from allowing sectarian prayers at its Board meetings, nominal damages, and the payment of reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees.  (Id. at 15.)  This Court should declare that the effect of Defendant’s policy is to violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and allow the recovery of nominal damages and attorney’s fees as part
of the costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.  The Court should enjoin the continuation of the Policy as it is now implemented.

Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket No. 63) be granted.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation, Office of The Inspector General has informed Smith Reynolds Airport that it is in breach of it’s grant agreement for runway improvements. Smith Reynolds received a grant back in 1997 for those improvements and contracted Mainline Contractors out of Raleigh which reportedly was not keeping up with payments to sub-contractors and subsequently filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

The airport and it’s Director, Larry Scantlin, were informed of the pending investigation on August 17th with a formal letter from the Department of Transportation in which Richard Walls, Director of Aviation, states:

That notice goes on to state that if the airport cannot address the above issues the “Department will take legal action.” On Tuesday it appears the Office of the Inspector has judged that the airport is at fault and it appears this means the airport will be forced to repay grant money, pay subcontractors for unpaid work or a combination of the two. Tom McKim, the chairman of the Airport Commission of Forsyth County disagrees with the state report and said:

"Obviously we disagree with (the report), and we believe that our contract with Mainline satisfied our obligation under the grant," McKim said. "The efforts we made to monitor what Mainline did with respect to payments were also adequate."  JournalNow

Here’s an early Christmas present for all those going in and out of Greensboro, Piedmont Triad Airport, FREE Wifi courtesy of Google. Unlike the typical $10 or more per day to get that twenty minutes of browsing before your flight you will be able to check that last email all thanks to Google. On top of this if your flying Virgin America, probably not for most of us, you will also be able to browse the Internet on any flight.

Word of warning as I’ve posted here before on using public WiFi:

• Always use a software firewall, XP’s built in Firewall will suffice
• Do not browse any site where you will enter private data unless that site is SSL, even then there is a risk of a man in the middle attack
• NEVER send private data via email, on a Public WiFi or not!
• Always assume your browsing is monitored when on a Public WiFi