- Credits -
Editing & Special Effects: Lam
Camera, Lighting & Sound: Lam
Writing, “Acting”, Ad-libbing: Paul

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What treasures are in your attic?

Everyday folk discovering colossally valuable collectors’ items amid everyday junk has been the lifeblood of antiques shows for years, but it’s not every day you see a real-life gold-in-the-attic tale play out on eBay.

Last week, North Carolina eBay user lace_thongs35 thought she was putting up an everyday, 80s-era Nintendo Entertainment System (together with five games) up on the popular auction site. But less than an hour after the first bid, the price was over $6,000 — and on Wednesday, when the auction closed, the final selling price topped $13,000.

Why? Not the console itself, but one of the games bundled with it — a deeply obscure 1987 release called Stadium Events, a highly sought-after collectors’ item. But it wasn’t even the game itself that was worth the bulk of the money — it was the original cardboard box, which collectors value at a breathtaking $10,000. Fewer than 10 complete copies of the game are thought to exist, and retro gaming aficionados consider it one of the hardest-to-find NES games ever made.

Bet you’re wishing you hadn’t let Mom throw out your Nintendo collection now, eh?

Microsoft is all grins and cheers after posting record earnings, fueled by the fastest operating system sales in history (Windows 7). (Source: Gearfuse)

Windows 7 marked a complete turn around for the company

A year ago Microsoft was struggling.  The world’s largest software firm had built up a massive user base, but it was losing their respect.  Its current (at the time) operating system Windows Vista brought many innovations, but also frustrations that led to an icy public reception.  So Microsoft decided to do something unprecedented — it would allow the public to try its latest version of Windows, and then take their advice and use it to produce something people could truly get excited about.

That gamble paid off handsomely and it reversed the fortunes of struggling Microsoft, returning it to dynamic growth.  Windows 7 launched in October of last year and proved a commercial smash.  All the Apple commercials in the world couldn’t damper the public enthusiasm about the new operating systems.  And Microsoft stepped up its own populist ads featuring average Joes and Janes experiencing (or suggesting) the improvements, fueling further growth.

Now Microsoft’s brand image is at a new high and Microsoft just reported its best quarter in its history.  Microsoft reports a net revenue of $19.02B USD, a 14 percent increase from the previous year.  Microsoft also reported operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share of $8.51B USD, $6.66B USD and $0.74 USD per share, up 43 percent, 60 percent and 57 percent, respectively from a year ago.  The revenue was boosted by $1.71B USD in deferred revenue on Windows 7 preorders, among other things.

The key factors in Microsoft’s rejuvenation were Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  Since October 22, Microsoft sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses, the fastest sales pace of any operating system in Microsoft history — or world history for that matter.

Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft comments, “Exceptional demand for Windows 7 led to the positive top-line growth for the company. Our continuing commitment to managing costs allowed us to drive earnings performance ahead of the revenue growth.”

Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft adds, “This is a record quarter for Windows units. We are thrilled by the consumer reception to Windows 7 and by business enthusiasm to adopt Windows 7.”

Looking ahead Microsoft does have some key areas it needs to improve on.  Currently its phone offerings are in shambles (though a surprise early release of Windows Mobile 7 could change that) and its search business still trails Google, despite recent gains.  Still, Windows 7 has been such a huge hit, even if all of Microsoft’s other units fail to post gains, the company will still be in pretty good shape.  Windows 7 has truly delivered Microsoft a comeback for the ages.

Microsoft stock opened slightly up this morning on the good news, opening at $29.89 a share, about 2 percent up.  Since it has slid slightly to about $29.29 a share.

Source: Daily Tech

Go-Jamaica - Flash representation of the final moments of flight AA 331 - News

Forty passengers were reported injured when an American Airlines plane crashed and broke in two after landing at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston shortly after 10:00 last night.

“The injured passengers have been taken to the Kingston Public Hospital,” Information Minister Daryl Vaz told the Observer. “There are no reports of fatalities.”

Vaz, Transport and Works Minister Mike Henry and National Security Minister Dwight Nelson were quick on the scene and engaged in a head count from the passenger manifest to determine if anyone was missing.

An injured American Airlines flight 331 passenger is being pushed in a wheelchair by a member of the flight crewl at the Norman Manley International Airport last night. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)

Flight AA331, a Boeing 737-800, had just arrived from Miami in pouring rain with 148 passengers and a crew of six when the accident occurred.

“The plane crashed and broke almost in front of me,” said a shaken Naomi Palmer who was in seat number D8.

Palmer said she was feeling some pain and was being supported by a friend on the outside of the arrival area when she spoke with the Observer.

The plane overran the runway, smashed through the perimeter fence, crossed the Port Royal road and ended up on the beach.

“The pilot couldn’t stop the plane,” one male passenger who opted not to be named, told the Observer.

Another passenger, Verona Hall, said, “The plane landed and people started clapping. We saw the lights of Kingston. Then all of a sudden we didn’t see the lights anymore. I looked through the window and I saw white lines, so I felt I was on the tarmac, but it was actually a rough touchdown. The plane broke and we began to smell fuel.”

Hall said the flight was actually late leaving Miami as airport authorities offloaded all the luggage in order to remove one suitcase from the cargo hold.

Niko Hurley, who was travelling from San Francisco and connected in Miami, told the Observer that the lights in the plane went out, the overhead bin opened and luggage fell onto his head.

“We smelt fuel and realised that some people were injured and we began to help them out of the plane because we weren’t sure if there was a bomb or something,” he said.

His mother, Bambi Fowles, who was on her way to pick up her son, cried as she told the Observer that she heard about the accident when she got to the Harbour View roundabout and saw that it was blocked by police.

“I begged and begged the policeman to let me through,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m just so relieved because I feared the worst.”

People at the arrival area of the airport waiting to pick up their friends or loved ones first got a hint that something was wrong when they saw passengers emerging from the Customs hall bloodied and shaken.

Some of the injured passengers were placed under a permanent tent outside the arrival hall and were seen nursing their wounds with towels and shirts.

One young woman who was apparently there to pick up someone, started filming the activities under the tent but was accosted by police who carted her off to the Airport Police Station.

The absence of any medical personnel to tend to the injured passengers angered a woman who gave her name as Heather Robinson. “I wasn’t on the plane, but I was here to witness the most embarrassing scene,” she said. “It is a shame that as a country our airport is not ready to deal with a crisis.”

Verona Hall was also angry at the authorities. She said that after the plane stopped, the passengers were made to wait for what seemed like half-an-hour before help arrived.

“This is an embarrassment that there was no emergency plan at this airport,” she fumed.

Airport officials were not available for comment last night. However, it is expected that the crash will be investigated by aviation officials today.

Last night, American Airlines issued a statement saying that it is in direct contact with officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration and is co-operating fully with appropriate authorities.

“American Airlines will not speculate as to possible causes of the incident. At this point, no additional details can be confirmed,” the airline said.

Additional reporting by Vernon Davidson
Source: Jamaica Observer

THE United States Drug Enforcement Administration (USDEA) yesterday confirmed that reggae artiste Buju Banton is now in a Florida lock-up after being charged with intent to distribute cocaine.

Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, was held on Thursday, Florida DEA information spokesman David Melenkevitz told the Sunday Observer.

“Mr Myrie was arrested on a case based in Tampa. He is charged with intent to distribute cocaine, five kilos or more,” Melenkevitz said. “Right now he’s in custody in South Florida and he’ll be transferred to Tampa.”

BANTON... has been in the United States since September promoting his new album Rasta Got Soul

Asked when the transfer would take place, Melenkevitz said he couldn’t give a date, only that it would be “in the near future”.

Melenkevitz also said he did not know the circumstances that led to the deejay’s arrest. However, he confirmed that the arrest was not made at an airport.

Banton has been in the United States since September promoting his new album Rasta Got Soul.

His arrest comes almost two months after he rejected demands from gay activists in California that he promote respect for homosexuals via his music and at a town hall meeting.

The gay lobbyists also demanded that he donate the proceeds from his anti-gay anthem Boom Bye Bye to local gay group Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG).

But Banton told local talk show host Mutabaruka on his Cutting Edge show on Irie FM in October that he could never endorse the demands and that he would never sell himself out as that would contradict his religion and culture.

He also said that the night after he met with the gay lobbyists his tour concert was pepper-sprayed.

Since then, the Rasta Got Soul Tour, which opened on September 12 in Philadelphia and was scheduled to end November 1 in Orlando, Florida, has been fraught with problems, as gay rights advocates have forced a number of cancellations.

For almost two decades Banton has been a target of gay rights groups angered by his music, particularly Boom Bye Bye, which they point to as promoting the murder of homosexuals.

Last week, one gay rights group protested the Grammy nomination of Banton’s Rasta Got Soul announced two weeks ago.

The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Centre described the nomination as “appalling” and voiced the hope that the recording academy would “not bestow the prestigious honour of a Grammy on someone whose music promotes murder”.

“We’re shocked that Buju Banton, a singer with a long record of performing a song that glorifies the murder of gay people, would be honoured with a Grammy nomination, regardless of the artistic merit of any of his work,” the centre said on its website.

Yesterday, Melenkevitz said that Banton would be prosecuted by the US Attorney for the Middle District of Florida.

Source: Jamaica Observer

Jamaica Observer Article
Wray & Nephew warehouses go up in smoke
Wednesday, December 02, 2009

FIRE fanned by a brisk evening breeze yesterday destroyed warehouses owned by the country’s main rum distillers — Wray and Nephew — on Spanish Town Road in Kingston.

The fire sent jitters throughout the trade ahead of the Christmas season when demand for the company’s popular liquor products hits peak. But no one was injured in the blaze, although employees who watched helplessly from outside the premises estimated that millions of dollars worth of goods went in the flames.

Neither the cause of the fire nor the extent of the damage were ascertained up to late last night.

At least a dozen fire engines and water trucks rushed to the scene as they fought to bring the blaze under control. But they were severely tested by the huge flames which rose high along the city’s industrial belt, at times with violent explosions inside the buildings.

“The whole of this place under fire. At least three warehouses under fire over there, and that is just based on how the thing look from out here so,” said a male employee, behind a long hiss as he spoke about a Christmas bonus that was scheduled to be paid in coming weeks.

“We don’t know what is going to happen now; is over here so I work,” he said, pointing to the rum company’s offices on the opposite side of Spanish Town Road. “But to the way how this fire look everybody is going to feel it. We don’t know what we going to hear tomorrow (today).”

The fire started about 6:00 pm in a section of the warehouse where wooden barrels used to store rum are repaired, according to a female security guard, who said she assisted employees in trying to extinguish the fire in its early stages.

She said the blaze, fuelled by the liquor — some of which workers said were being stored in the facility for more than 30 years — proved too much for herself and the handful of workers to handle, and quickly spread to other buildings.

“I was just about to go on patrol duty and all of a sudden I see the fire in the warehouse. About 10 of us tried to out it with the little extinguishers and water but it couldn’t stop, and is that time we call in the fire brigade,” said the woman, pointing to the bright flames which by then had towered above the buildings.

Hundreds of residents of the neighbouring Waterhouse community braved the sweltering heat and lined streets outside the burning premises to watch as firefighters, using cranes, attempted to confine the blaze.

Some of the residents, though untrained, used expletives as they gave ‘instructions’ on how firefighters could be more effective in fighting the blaze.

Police had to block off sections of the usually busy Spanish Town Road during the blaze, causing heavy traffic jams in both directions on the dual carriageway.

However, the operators of Highway 2000 later agreed to allow motorists free passage along the Portmore/Kingston leg of the high-speed expressway, which helped to clear the jam on Spanish Town Road.

If you’ve been wanting to see how the BlackBerry Bold 9700 stacks up against its BlackBerry brothers and sisters (you can fight in the comments to which is which! lol) then you’ll want to check out this one-take, no excuses video. I size up the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and from there we compare it to the BlackBerry Bold 9000, Curve 8900, Tour, Curve 8520, Pearl Flip, Storm2 and more…

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 really is an amazing little device. Components-wise, it represents the best of everything Research in Motion currently offers in a smartphone, and it packs it all into an extremly tight and lightweight package. The ultimate communication tool!

Source: Crackberry.com

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: August 26, 2009

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing — some of them ostentatiously.

Leif Harmsen, once a Facebook user, now crusades against it. Having dismissed his mother’s snap judgment of the site (“Facebook is the devil”), Harmsen now passionately agrees. He says, not entirely in jest, that he considers it a repressive regime akin to North Korea, and sells T-shirts with the words “Shut Your Facebook.” What especially galls him is the commercialization and corporate regulation of personal and social life. As Facebook endeavors to be the Web’s headquarters — to compete with Google, in other words, and to make money from the information it gathers — it’s inevitable that some people would come to view it as Big Brother.

“The more dependent we allow ourselves to become to something like Facebook — and Facebook does everything in its power to make you more dependent — the more Facebook can and does abuse us,” Harmsen explained by indignant e-mail. “It is not ‘your’ Facebook profile. It is Facebook’s profile about you.”

The disillusionment with Facebook has come in waves. An early faction lost faith in 2008, when Facebook’s beloved Scrabble application, Scrabulous, was pulled amid copyright issues. It was suddenly clear that Facebook was not just a social club but also an expanding force on the Web, beholden to corporate interests. A later group, Harmsen’s crowd, grew frustrated last winter when Facebook seemed to claim perpetual ownership of users’ contributions to the site. (Facebook later adjusted its membership contract, but it continues to integrate advertising, intellectual property and social life.) A third wave of dissenters appears to be bored with it, obscurely sore or just somehow creeped out.

My friend Alex joined four years ago at the suggestion of “the coolest guy on the planet,” she told me in an e-mail message. For a while, they cultivated a cool-planet online gang. But then Scrabulous was shut down, someone told her she was too old for Facebook, her teenage stepson seemed to be losing his life to it and she found the whole site crawling with mercenaries trying to sell books and movies. “If I am going to waste my time on the Internet,” she concluded, “it will be playing in online backgammon tournaments.”

Another friend, who didn’t want his name used, found that Facebook undermined his whole notion of online friendship. “It’s easy to think of your circle of ‘Friends’ as a coherent circle, clear and moated, when in fact the splay of overlap/network makes drip/action painting a better (visual) analogy.” Something happened to this drip painting that he won’t discuss. He said, “Postings that seem private can scatter and slip unpredictably into a sort of semipublic status.”

That friend was not the only Facebook dissenter who was reticent about specifics. Many seem to have just lost their appetite for it: they just stopped wanting to look at other people’s photos and résumés and updates, or have their own subject to scrutiny. Some ex-users seemed shaken, even heartbroken, by their breakups with Facebook. “I primarily left Facebook because I was wasting so much time on it,” my friend Caroline Harting told me by e-mail. “I felt fairly detached from my Facebook buddies because I rarely directly contacted them.” Instead, she felt as if she stalked them, spending hours a day looking at their pages without actually saying hello.

But then came the truly weird part: “Facebook was stalking me,” Harting wrote. One day, on another Web site, she responded to an invitation to rate a movie she saw. The next time she logged on to Facebook, there was a message acknowledging that she had made the rating. “I didn’t appreciate being monitored so closely,” she wrote. She quit.

Julie Klam, a writer and prolific and eloquent Facebook updater, said in her own e-mail message, “I have noticed the exodus, and I kind of feel like it’s kids getting tired of a new toy.” Klam, who still posts updates to Facebook but now prefers Twitter for professional networking, added, “Facebook is good for finding people, but by now the novelty of that has worn off, and everyone’s been found.” As of a few months ago, she told me, Facebook “felt dead.”

Is Facebook doomed to someday become an online ghost town, run by zombie users who never update their pages and packs of marketers picking at the corpses of social circles they once hoped to exploit? Sad, if so. Though maybe fated, like the demise of a college clique.

Source: The New York Times News Letter

LIME filed a $100-million lawsuit against Digicel on Monday, claiming that the Irish-owned telecom unfairly priced its landline-to-mobile rates by as much as $2.48 per minute below the rate it charges LIME to terminate its landline calls.

But the amount now being sought by the British-owned telecom is dwarfed by the $3.9-billion lawsuit it brought against Digicel earlier this year - a case which is scheduled to be heard on Friday - only days after the current action was filed.

LIME Jamaica's country manager, Geoff Houston makes a point at a press conference held yesterday at his company's head office. Listening in is Camille Facey, regional vice-president, legal regulatory and corporate affairs.

In that suit, LIME is claiming for the difference between payments per minute versus per second in respect of Fixed-to-Mobile (FTM) Interconnect Traffic. By LIME’s account, Digicel unilaterally changed the payment regime in 2003 in breach of the interconnection agreement.

Up to yesterday, the Business Observer was unable to get more details of the case to be heard on Friday, except that in the case, which will be heard in court chambers by Justice M McDonald-Bishop and clerk S Rainford, one party will argue for a stay of proceedings.

Now, LIME claims Digicel has set a much higher termination rate for LIME to pay when its landline customers call Digicel mobiles, which it says has squeezed margins and makes it difficult to compete.

“As things stand now, before LIME even looks to cover its own costs to set up a call from a landline to a Digicel mobile customer it has to cover Digicel’s termination charge, which depending on the time of day, may range from $6.48 per minute for a local peak time call, to $4.76 for a local off-peak call. It is therefore impossible for us to cover our costs and meet or beat Digicel’s $4 retail rate,” said LIME’s country manager Geoff Houston at a press conference held at the company head office in Kingston.

LIME claims the alleged breach started in January 2009.

In February, LIME said it filed a complaint with the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) but the lack of response by the regulator up to now ‘forced’ it to “invoke its rights under the Fair Trading Competition Act and has taken Digicel to Court in an effort to protect its landline customers from Digicel’s discriminatory practices.

FTC competition bureau chief, Kevin Harriott said that it was not unusual for cases such as these to continue over protracted periods but said that the FTC would not be able to make its determination until its investigation
was complete.

“Normally when we receive a complaint the decision taken is based on fact… it takes time to collect the facts,” Harriott said in response to Business Observer questions. “Therefore this limits how quickly we can respond. We can’t take a decision unless the facts support it one way or the other.”

“It is not uncommon across the world for cases like this to go on for two years.”

Since its liberalisation in 2001, the telecommunications industry has been characterised by legal wrangling in the courts and this latest action by LIME adds to at least 11 legal matters that remain unresolved up to October.

What’s more, Digicel also filed suit against LIME earlier this year. In that case they are claiming from a total of $1.65 billion in bad debt, which is eight per cent of the FTM retail rate, which has been approved by the OUR in LIME’s reference interconnect offers (RIOs) since 2001.

In a late response yesterday, Digicel’s described the suit as an act of desperation on the part of LIME, and expressed confidence that “the basis of the claim is a work of fantasy and entirely without merit”.

Digicel’s CEO, Mark Linehan said: “C&W/LIME should stop wasting our and the Court’s time and focus instead on its poorly served customer base and its next rebrand. Quite simply, having watched Digicel’s performance in the mobile arena over the last eight years, LIME is running scared now that the last remnants of its monopoly are under threat.”

Incidentally, Digicel Jamaica has eight cases against LIME compared to the three LIME now has against it.

Source:  Jamaica Observer