http://ow.ly/6pLxO

Article on law.com on the LTN webpage, in the corporate counsel section, written by Sue Reisinger.

This article discusses the trial criminal trial of Thaddeus M.S. Bereday, the ousted general counsel of WellCare Health Plans, along with four other former company execs. The trial has been postponed until next year due to the massive amount of eDiscovery that is being requested by the prosecutors.

The article describes the reason for the delay as follows, "Bereday's lawyer revealed that prosecutors possess millions of pages of electronic documents and company e-mails, as well as over 650 hours of recorded conversations -- presumably featuring the defendants -- taped by a cooperating witness.

The motion said the delay was needed "as a result of the complexity of the issues in this matter, the amount of discovery, and the existence of pending motions." Prosecutors agreed to the delay.

All the defendants said they need more time to process the materials and to resolve disputes over other discovery requests. One of those disputes, according to the motion, involves the defendants' request for materials from WellCare's own internal investigation."

As the article goes on to state, "In their motion, the defendants' lawyers said, "This case involves numerous complex issues concerning certain submissions made by WellCare ... The discovery in this case is massive."

Besides the tape recordings and electronic documents, the motion cites 760 boxes of hard copy documents seized during a 2007 government raid on WellCare's Tampa headquarters."

If your company is ever faced with such a situation, please keep in mind that this is the type of document production that SRM Legal is particularly adept at assisting with.

source : http://srmlegal.blogspot.com/2011/09/massive-discovery-delays-trial-of.html

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HTC
╚══════════╝

• The First mobile that used Android OS was "HTC Dream"

• HTC Dream:
  Nice qwerty keypad with touch screen.
  It was launched in 22 Oct 2008

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LG
╚═══════════╝

• LG First Android Phone /Smartphone = LG GW620 (Eve)

• Specification:

• OS: Android 1.5
• 3" Resistive Touchscreen
• 528 MHz Processor
• QWERTY Slide out Keyboard
• 5MP AF camera

Launched: it Was Launched in November 2009

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║ MotoRola:║
╚===========╝

• MotoRola's First Android phone is Motorola Cliq

• Cliq Specification:

• OS: Android v1.5 Cupcake
• Processor: 528MHz
• RAM: 256MB
• 3.1" Capacitive Touchscreen
• QWERTY Slide-Out Keyboard
• T-mobile's 3G phone
• Motoblur UI (first Phone)

launched: It Was Launched in October 2009

• Motorola 2nd Android Phone Featured its MotoBlur Ui is Motorola Charm

Motorola Charm:

• OS: Android 2.1 eclair
• Motorola Ui MotoBlur
• 720MHz Processor
• 256MB RAM
• 2.8" Capacitive Touchscreen

Launch: Aug 2010

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╔═══════════╗

Chinese
╚═══════════╝

WORLDS first Android smartphones with dual SIM card Supports

MyPhone A210 (chinese Company)
Launched : Oct 2010

Worlds First dual SIM Android phone of Cherry Mobile
Is Cherry Orbit

Launched: 21 March 2011

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╔═════════════╗

Samsung
╚═════════════╝

Samsung's first Android phone

• Samsung I7500 /Galaxy

Specification:

• OS : Android Donut 1.6 (v1.5 is original)
• 115 x 56 x 11.9 mm
• 8GB internal
• 528MHz Processor
• 128MB RAM
• 3.2" Touchscreen
• 5MP

Launched: 27 April 2009
(First Released On June 2009)

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╔══════════════════╗
Sony Ericsson
╚══════════════════╝

Sony Ericsson's first Android phone

• Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
  
  Specification:
• 1 GHz Processor
• 384MB RAM
• 4" capacitive Touchscreen
• OS: Andriod OS V1.6 donut (now Gingerbread v2.3)
• 8.1MP AF

Launched: it was first revealed on November 3, 2009
Then Officially it Was launched in 22 March - 15 August 2010 (Worldwide)

source: http://computerfunz.blogspot.com/

The positive correlation between incompetence and unethical conduct at companies is striking, for, theoretically at least, a person can be talented or smart and of questionable character. Of course, it could be that cutting corners is a survival strategy of people who are not competent. However, shirking seems to reflect a sordid character, which, like personality, is relatively constant throughout one’s life—though character flaws could manifest more when times are tough (as in when incompetence has eventuated in a dire balance sheet). One might investigate, moreover, whether a firm’s culture can become more tolerant of unethical conduct when the finances are going south—or do unethical cultures tend to be like fixtures in organizations irrespective of financial condition?

With regard to Bank of America (BOA) in 2011, I suspect that the bank’s culture contains tolerance for duplicity and cutting corners irrespective of the state of the balance sheet. After writing an essay on BOA, I heard from a U.S. veteran whose pay had decreased. Even though the market-value of his house had dropped, BOA refused to adjust the mortgage to reflect it. Moreover, the bank repeatedly rebuffed his attempts to modify his mortgage, informing him only that the house was in the foreclosure process. Considering the culpability of BOA and other banks in the mortgage crisis, the bank’s rigidity alone points to some squalid characters running the bank. At the very least, the refusal to modify (which, given the average foreclosure cost of $44,000, would be in the bank’s financial interest) evinces a selfishness that shirks responsibility.

So it should perhaps be no surprise that the attorney general of Nevada, Catherine Masto, asked a judge on August 30, 2011 to end Nevada’s participation in the settlement agreement with BOA so Nevada could sue the Bank. The attorney general accused the bank of repeatedly violating a broad loan modification agreement made in October 2008. According to the New York Times, she “contends that Bank of America raised interest rates on troubled borrowers when modifying their loans even though the bank had promised in the settlement to lower them. The bank also failed to provide loan modifications to qualified homeowners [such as the veteran] as required under the deal, improperly proceeded with foreclosures even as borrowers’ modification requests were pending [such as the veteran’s] and failed to meet the settlement’s 60-day requirement on granting new loan terms.” Particularly with regard to the higher rates, BOA may have been trying to profit at the expense of struggling homeowners. Such selfishness at the expense of others is sordid in itself—add the bank’s culpability in the mortgage mess and the bankers’ desire for gain seems downright pathological. It is this complex—an unethical perfect storm—which seems so perplexing to me.

When I’m even partially at fault, I don’t ignore it and try to get more from a victim whom I know is already suffering as a partial result of my greed and negligence. Adding insult to injury doesn’t begin to characterize the sordid character trait that gives the go-ahead to kicking a vet when he is down partially because of the owner of that trait.

BOA became responsible for Countrywide’s subprime-mortgages when the bank bought the mortgage servicer in 2008. BOA has significant obligations as a result to the bad loans and shoddy practices at Countrywide. U.S. Bancorp, the trustee of a $1.75 billion mortgage pool originated by Countrywide in 2005, sued to force Bank of America to buy back the underlying mortgages because they were made without proper documents and did not conform to underwriting standards. In the complaint, U.S. Bancorp alleges, “During the time period in which Countrywide originated the loans, it completely ignored its underwriting guidelines.” Bank of America is in no position to take advantage of struggling mortgage borrowers, given the bank’s responsibility that it took on when it purchased Countrywide for $4 billion. That the purchase had by mid-2011 already cost BOA more than $30 billion suggests that the incompetence-unethical nexus applies to the bank.

I suspect that the bankers at BOA are not only partial when it comes to their organization’s complicity in the first place and their continued responsibilities; the bank’s proposed $8.5 billion settlement with major mortgage investors, including BlackRock, Pimco and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, shows that the unwillingness to work with struggling homeowners is not reflected in a lack of interest in wealthy investors. At the very least, the unwillingness ought to go with those better able to withstand it. Even though both mortgage borrowers and investors are parties to transactions, I suspect that the bankers project undesirable qualities on the borrowers (and respectable qualities on the investors). As a result, the bankers’ respect is partial. In other words, the borrowers find themselves treated like second-class citizens while the investors find the bankers to be attentive to their needs. This differential is dogmatic (i.e., arbitrary) and, at root, psychological rather than based on the natures of the respective parties to the contracts. From a mortgage borrower’s standpoint, to be ignored (and gouged further) by bankers who have a complicity in the creation of the problem must surely be humiliating and enraging. The lack of accountability and the related asymmetry between TARP for the banks and the comparative lack of foreclosure relief (as well as some politicians’ sordid projections overlaid on the borrowers) must surely add to the frustration.

Beyond the judicial and public policy implications, I find myself shaking my head in utter disbelief concerning what must be the mentality of the managers at BOA. Simply how such a mentality could stand (and then have power!) is itself a quagmire. It may be as Nietzsche theorized; managers may in fact be weak yet driven to dominate nonetheless. Cruelty even for its own sake can be a manifestation of the instinct of the weak bird of prey. Least of all is this bird willing to face its own weakness; rather, it is jealous of the strong. For one thing, the strong are not continuously mindful of advantage, whereas the weak are obsessed with it (even though they do less well in terms of it). A manager’s “ruddy, fat hands” are ill-suited to the front of the table, and yet if the seat is for sale and the manager is driven to have it, he or she will try to convince the rest of us that it is a commodity that can be bought at some price rather than an honor that is reserved. There is in fact no honor in Bank of America. Sadly, this observation would hardly cause a ripple in such a culture where the desire to dominate in terms of gain is no doubt taken for virtue.

May the mighty trees of the forest that dominate the sunlight as though pushy hogs at the trough be felled by their own unbalanced weight so the tender plants below might take their rightful place in the sun above the deadwood. No longer beguiled by the towering bullies above, the slender trees would be freed up to grow quickly and evenly from a rich diet of rotting wood. Contrary to popular opinion, the bloated trees that are putrid at their core even while they are still standing are not too big to fall, and, indeed, the forest would be much better off—stronger—without the distended wood taking up the valuable real estate of sunlight. For those trees are not strong; they merely dominate, thanks in part to the sycophantic humans who prop them up using smaller but better trees below. This could easily be a description of the fauna on the mountain from which Nietzsche’s Zarathustra comes down to teach those fishermen below how to overcome even the force of their most intractable instincts (e.g., greed) in order to be freer and therefore stronger.

Click to add a question or comment on the mentality at Bank of America regarding its foreclosure practice.

Source:

Nelson Schwartz, “Number of Challenges Grows to Bank of America Settlement,” New York Times, August 31, 2011. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/homeowners-seek-to-block-bank-of-america-settlement/

Gretchen Morgenson, “Nevada Sees Violations of Mortgage Agreement,” New York Times, August 31, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/31/business/bank-of-america-accused-of-breaching-mortgage-accord.html

Source: http://thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2011/08/nietzsche-on-bank-of-america.html

Brainvision Inc. (Tokyo, Japan) and Caeleste (Antwerp, Belgium) have materialized their licence agreement on the design of ToF image sensors based on Caeleste’s patent US7564022. The design collaboration started in December 2010. An image from the first VGA resolution sensor now succesfully demonstrated:

The key advantage of Caeleste patented technology is said to reside in the strict usage of standard, mainstream CMOS technology, leading to lowest possible manufacturing cost. Brainvision and Stanley Electric (Tokyo, Japan) aim to serve the high volume applications such as automotive market and machine vision with Caeleste technology.

Caeleste patent relies on depletion field modulation to implement a fast change of the pixel sensitivity:

Source: http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2011/08/caeleste-and-brainvision-announce-tof.html

Thanks to thousands of scientists and scholars for progress in Cloud Computing area, over the time, this new trend of Cloud Computing will facilitate the task of developing any type of project where and when the user requires or needs to use.

Among the tasks the user can perform through Cloud Computing, we can find a vast array of applications that can be used, most of them free : video editing, office automation, image editing, from a huge range services offered and delivered through Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing and the End user

This type of “online software”, as popularly called by the general people, are constantly evolving to provide faster and better experience to be used. The large number of online tools based on Cloud Computing services that we find today offers us a fairly clear about the importance of technology companies are giving him the concept of Cloud Computing.

The purpose of this post is put in the hands of inexperienced users, a number of suggestions that will be very useful when starting to use the great Cloud Computing services. Here are the best examples of software that will be needed for a unique user experience while using Cloud Computing. Moreover, they will to help you fulfill your work quickly and efficiently.

The Web Browser for running Cloud Computing based Online Services

According to some experts to run these SaaS of Cloud Computing, one of the best options to consider is the popular browser Mozilla Firefox.

This browser, thanks to the abundance of all kinds of extensions to improve and expand its services, is the ideal candidate to begin the path of the use of cloud computing system.

Although as mentioned Firefox is the favorite in the event that required work from any location and from any device at hand, any browser can be used that can give guarantee the stability to run Cloud Computing services. Despite Opera is good browser, the recent versions has propensity to crashed when intense Cloud Computing instance in run through multiple tabs.

Operating System for using Cloud Computing Services

As for the OS, for the moment there is no objection that prevents us from working with Cloud Computing from our favorite OS, so long as it has the latest support updates are necessary to perform tasks in this field. However, personally I will suggest UNIX based OS for running serious works based on Cloud Computing, like Mac OS X or Linux. Among Mobile OS, Nokia’s mobile devices running Symbian OS or Apple devices running iOS, can do anything on Cloud Computing for as long you wish.

Internet Connection for Cloud Computing

This section is closely related to the volume of work which we are accustomed to perform on a daily basis.

Obviously if we wish to work exclusively with applications bundled with Cloud Computing Services, it is best to buy a good package with the fastest connection possible to ensure good data traffic without obstruction or cuts.

Storage for Cloud Computing

In order to work completely through the Cloud Computing platform, we need a storage space in which to keep our documents and papers so they can be accessed from wherever we are.

There are now many offerings in the market of its kind, offering lots of space capacity for free like Dropbox, an online storage system actually using the Cloud Computing, Google, one of the pioneering organizations in the concept of Cloud Computing, Google also offers its service Storage, complement rather than ideal if you use Google Docs.

http://ow.ly/6iDPv

Article by John Martin, appearing on law.com on the LTN blog, on the corporate counsel webpage.

This article discusses many of the compliance risks, and eDiscovery challenges that are caused by iPad usage.

As the author points out, using iPads come with certain responsibilities, "Rule 34 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is written broadly enough to cover new devices, such as iPads, that create, transmit, and preserve electronically stored information. As companies deploy more and different devices, dispersing their sources of ESI, the risk that preservation and collection efforts will fail to prevent spoliation and other e-discovery perils increases."

As a further challenge to corporate I.T. policies, the article states "The iPad's lean design and engaging user interface encourage users to draft, import, modify, and save business documents at a rate well beyond that of more traditional mobile devices. That phenomenon, coupled with the possibility of inconsistent or infrequent synchronization between iPads and the company network, increases the likelihood that unique data will reside on iPads."


An additional compliance risk is also created by iPad use, as the author states, "Employees who are free to add or delete their own iPad apps may unknowingly create legal and compliance risks. For example, an employee who deletes an app may unintentionally also delete all content related to that application, including user-created or downloaded content. To the extent that this application contains critical business data, or data subject to a litigation hold, its loss could carry serious consequences."

Hence it is clear that there are many reasons to address the use of iPads in the corporate environment. For those corporations that fail to so, the threat of spoliation sanctions looms large.

Source: http://srmlegal.blogspot.com/2011/09/e-discovery-and-compliance-risks-posed.html

Fullscreen mode wordpress is a cool feature!

I have recently used full screen mode wordpress feature more often than in the last weeks.

This function is considered as wordpress 3.2 new fetaure, which is at first, I did not really like to use it. (related: wordpress 3.3 new feature?)

But since I found many distractions while I am writing articles, I did give this button a try.

The result was great, cleaner, because you can write any posts in your blog or website with a full screen like writing in a clean paper, and helps the concentration or focus because you won’t see the sidebar or the top menu, basically, just your post box where you type.

Fullscreen Mode WordPress missing the Heading 1 2 3 button

When I write a post, I try to apply the importance of h1 h2 heading in my wordpress blog posts.

Therefore, I noticed that this paragraph, heading 1, heading 2, etc button is missing.

This button is a actually a pull down menu, to choose “paragraph” format, and heading tags.

For more clear, this screenshot below is the button that I meant.

The pull down menu which is missing

When you write a post, you can actually using the visual as well as the HTML tab, whichever you like.

It depends on a person’s preference, some bloggers will just disable the visual mode, those who know HTML coding good, and some bloggers who are mostly newbies, like myself, like the visual button in the post box.

I actually do mix of those functionalities, sometimes using visual sometimes using HTML tab, especially when I have to embed YouTube videos and Vimeo videos.

I need to embed those codes manually because I don’t use any video plugin in this blog.

Related posts on adding videos in a wp blog:

1. Add video to post

2. YouTube video plugin

3. Validate YouTube embedding code

4. Random videos in sidebar

How to add Heading 1 2 when you work with fullscreen mode wordpress fetaure?

Since when we are working in fullscreen mode wordpress feature, we will miss that button in the screenshot above, and you won’t find this link in the menu tab above, you might want to add it while you are in the fullscreen mode wordpress page, and not clicking the “exit fullscreen” button to add those heading tags, and back again to fullscreen, this can slow down our works.

You have to click this button to get a fullscreen mode

I hope this will be added in the next feature, more buttons to come in the fullscreen mode wordpress page, but I am quite happy already, because you can easily and very fast using keyboard shortcodes to add this heading tags.

Here is how:

1. I assume, you are in the fullscreenmode, you will see these buttons above your screen. (there is no paragraph and heading button).

2. To add that heading tag, you can simply highlight the sentence, and press CTRL+1 for heading 1.

CTRL+2 for heading 2, and CTRL+3 for heading 3.

The CTRL represents Control key in windows, Option in Mac, and STRG in German keyboard.

The numbers represent your number keys.

If you need some more help, you can click the help button with “question” mark on your post page when you are in a fullscreen mode wordpress post box.

Source: http://www.blog.web6.org/fullscreen-mode-wordpress-heading-1-2/