55 years of - you decide

Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router Cisco, West Virginia wasted $5M on enterprise-class gear. by Nate Anderson - Feb 25 2013, 11:40pm GMTST 258 Yes, this library has a Cisco 3945 router. Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town's public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It's housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an "extremely small facility with only one Internet connection." Which is why it's such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for "mid-size to large deployments," according to Cisco. In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) just released by the state's legislative auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million...

About 80,000 people in Yorkshire look set to hit by a “bedroom tax” when the Government’s controversial Welfare Reform Act comes into force this April. The under-occupancy charge will cut the amount of housing benefit available to households with one or more bedrooms classed as spare under the new rules. Its supporters say it is unfair for the taxpayer to subside extra rooms when there is a shortage of housing across the country. But its critics insist it will have a devastating impact on vulnerable tenants and local economies. Approximately two-thirds of people nationally who are hit by the cuts will either be disabled or caring for a disabled person. One of them, Cheryl Guillot, 48, from Holywell Green near Halifax, said she had been left “totally bewildered” by the situation. Former special constable Cheryl, who is a full-time carer for her disabled son Jordan, faces being forced out of her housing association three-bed bungalow where she has lived for the past 15 years. She said...

End the bankers’ tax dodge -- 24 hours left! We only have 24 hours before the crucial meeting in Brussels. Join here:  http://www.avaaz.org/en/bankers_pay_your_fair_share/?kogYPab Posted: 26 February 2013 Big banks are hiding billions in tax havens around the world. In just 24 hours, the European Parliament can push through a reform to make them pay  their fair share of tax on their already oversized profits -- but to win they need our support. Bankers are using complex accounting tricks to avoid paying tax like the rest of us, and they're not even required to tell us where their money is. But now the European Parliament wants to shine a light onto their tax avoidance. It's a no-brainer reform that expert economists widely support -- but  key governments including the UK and Germany are siding with rich bankers to kill the proposal.  Negotiations end in just 24 hours time, and allies in Parliament say that with massive public support, we can win this landmark reform to en...

Gypsies and Irish travellers fight bricks and mortar February 24, 2013 | Posted by: Toby Youell | Filed under: Features Pic: I am Rudy Flickr Hidden between a set of railways lines in Bow is a small caravan site. Lisa, 25, stands in the door of her caravan: “Families in tower blocks wouldn’t want their kids growing up on this site. It’s the same with us; we wouldn’t want our kids growing up there”. Her family will soon have to move out of the site to make way for a Crossrail shaft. But she is lucky.  Her family will soon to be able to move to another site. Thousands of Gypsies and Irish Travellers have been forced to leave caravans and move into bricks and mortar accommodation over the last decades. A minority with a centuries-old London heritage is having its culture silently displaced. Nobody keeps reliable figures but the London Gypsy and Traveller Unit estimate...

Gaslighting is a type of intimidation or psychological abuse where one person makes another doubt their own memory and perception… via thinklikeablackbelt.com

Neither projectbrainsaver nor hightechheadhelper is any form of organisation, company, profit making group, in fact anything other than an idea or way of looking at things regarding possible other uses of modern technology for personal benefit. Anyone can build any of these possibilities with the right building blocks available in today's market place. Thousands of people have added input into the project over the many years that it has been running. via sites.google.com

https://www.facebook.com/missing.child.alerts.uk Child Alerts UK central scotland police update Central Scotland Police would like to provide the accurate picture of our collective efforts to trace David O'Halloran in an effort to dispel various inaccuracies or address any questions which have been raised through this social medium. David went missing in the early hours of Friday January 18, but was not reported to police until his friends became concerned on Sunday January 20 and we have been searching for him since and continue to do so.  We have utilised our own expert search teams, university staff, Mountain Rescue, International Rescue, police helicopter, specialist search dogs and Coastguard to search out from where David was last seen. We have taken expert advice who recommended a 2km search radius from point last seen and as such, almost 6000 homes and businesses in Bridge of Allan, Cornton and Causewayhead have had their gardens checked. We extended our search to a ...

The good people of Swaffham liked their first turbine (at the Ecotech Centre) so much that their Town Council asked us to build another one. And when it hadn’t happened quickly enough for their liking they wrote to us to complain…..we kid you not. It tickled us, to be nagged by a council to build a windmill. We were of course happy to oblige, but these things take a little longer than we often hope. In this case the District Council stood in the way and forced an appeal, by public enquiry..! We have no idea why. Then they pulled out at the last minute. Crazy people. It’s a great example of two truisms of wind energy in the UK – firstly that people want wind energy and secondly that planners don’t reflect real public opinion with their decisions. It’s always been thus. Green electricity is the people’s choice – but the planning system is just plain undemocratic. via ecotricity.co.uk

A capsule filled with cannabis oil the size of a rice grain has turned Edith Neuts' life around. The 50-year-old woman was on an 18-pill-a-day cocktail to deal with constant pain, a heart condition, depression, anxiety and high blood pressure. "It's going on four months now. I've completely weaned myself off painkillers and off anti-depressants," said Neuts. "I am currently weaning myself off the anti-anxiety medication and I'm back to work full time." Neuts feels the proposed changes to the Medical Marijuana Access Regulations (MMAR) will send her back into a "non-life" because she won't be be able to afford the cannabis oil. Dave Van Kesteren, MP for Chatham-Kent Essex, said the MMAR program lacks checks and balances to ensure the criminal element isn't using the legalized grow-ops to distribute marijuana. "Health Canada is studying the effects of how this program has worked. They are looking at having g...

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/twitter-tumblr-pinterest/ Zendesk Security Breach Affects Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest BY  MAT HONAN 02.21.13 10:19 PM Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that allowed attackers into its system, where they could access data from three customers this week. Wired learned those three clients were Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. The San Francisco-based company announced the breach in a blog post published early Thursday night. Tumblr  notified affected users  in an email at approximately 6:35 p.m. PST; Twitter and Pinterest are expected to do so shortly. Zendesk declined to comment beyond its blog post, titled, appropriately, “ We’ve been hacked .” The post reads in part: We’ve become aware that a hacker accessed our system this week. As soon as we learned of the attack, we patched the vulnerability and closed the access that the hacker had. Our ongoing investigation in...

Options Peter Tatchell Say NO to Nigeria's "Jail the Gays" Bill. It proposes one of the most draconian homophobic laws in the world, harsher than the anti-gay bill in Uganda in some respects but without the death penalty. Support Nigerian LGBTIs in the Diaspora. READ & DONATE: http://bit.ly/12BrWx9 The anti-gay bill is coming back to the Nigerian parliament soon. Read the background to the Bill: http://bit.ly/Vz5CjA SIGN the AllOut petition: http://bit.ly/ZFBV1g via facebook.com

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http://qz.com/55699/59-percent-of-americas-tuna-isnt-actually-tuna/ It's not horse, but it'll do.  AP/Itsuo Inouye   Nonprofit ocean protection group Oceana took 1,215 samples of fish from across the United States and  genetically tested them  in order to bring us the following astonishing facts: 59% of the fish labeled “tuna” sold at restaurants and grocery stores in the US is not tuna. Sushi restaurants were far more likely to mislabel their fish than grocery stores or other restaurants. What’s for dinner at your local sushi joint? Pretty much anything but what’s on the menu. Oceana In Chicago, Austin, New York, and Washington DC, every single sushi restaurant sampled sold mislabeled tuna. 84% of fish samples labeled “white tuna” were actually escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable,  oily anal leakage . The only fish more likely to be misrepresented than tuna was snapper, which was mislabeled 87% of the time, and was in actuality any of six di...

One in three women will be a victim of violence – being raped, beaten or abused in her lifetime. In some parts of the world a girl is more likely to be raped than learn how to read. It's time to put a stop to this worldwide injustice. This March, the  UN's Commission on the Status of Women  will meet to discuss violence against women and girls. Britain's Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening , is  calling for action : "This year, the international community has a vital opportunity to tackle this issue once and for all. We owe it to girls and women everywhere to send a clear signal that the world stands with them." Lynne Featherstone  - the UK's champion for tackling worldwide violence against women - believes 2013 is a  once-in-a-lifetime opportunity  to make a real difference: "We must do everything in our power to defend the hard-gained progress on women's rights. We must ensure that the international community...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/wall-street-business-model_b_2665597.html Les Leopold Author, "How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour" (Wiley 2013) GET UPDATES FROM LES LEOPOLD   Like 17 Is Wall Street's Business Model Corrupt? Posted: 02/12/2013 4:37 pm Follow Jim Cramer  ,  The Bailouts  ,  Credit Rating Agencies  ,  Housing Bubble  ,  Insider Trading  , Raj Rajaratnam  ,  Too Big To Fail  ,  Cdos  ,  Libor Rate-Rigging Scandal  ,  Occupy Wall Street ,  Wallstreet  ,  Business News SHARE THIS STORY 19 36 5 Submit this story "Given the scope of the allegations to date, we are not talking simply about the occasional corrupt individual. We are talking about something verging on a corrupt business model." -- U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara,   NYT , May 27, 2011 As the evidence mounts, the raison d'être for Occupy Wall Street is proving correct. Much of high finance, it seems, is based on a "corr...