Is the Internet alone to blame for the recent events at our schools? No. Timothy McVeigh learned how to make bombs from books and the public library. So did the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynsky. The Internet just makes it easier to get this information. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were Internet savvy and had created web sites for personal use. They had also helped to create the Columbine High School web site. Information on these web sites contained information on making pipe bombs. Neither the parents, nor the school, took the responsibility of monitoring the content of these web sites. Why?

Are your children in the driver’s seat in your family on the “Information Super Highway?” Have you been avoiding learning about the Internet? Don’t know where to start? Overwhelmed with the prospect of learning? Too busy working to support your family? These are all valid justifications for not taking control of the driver’s seat, but it is your responsibility as a parent to supervise the use of your home computer.

The Internet is a wonderful invention! It’s the world’s biggest encyclopedia and a great information tool for the use of the entire family. Combine all the inventions of the telephone, the radio, the movies, the television, the personal computer, and all the public libraries all into one and you have described the Internet. Would you allow your children unlimited access to any of these types of media individually? Of course not.

Our home computer is no longer just a computer anymore. It is not a toy. It is not a babysitter. It can be a potential threat to your child as well as be the greatest learning tool since the history of time. The home computer has rapidly risen from being a glorified typewriter to do school assignments to a machine that brings the real world right into your home. Or worse yet, your child’s bedroom, if you have allowed a computer to be placed there. We recommend to all of our clients to place the personal computer in a public family viewing area and not to allow unlimited access by a child behind closed doors.

Did you know there is a record in your Internet browser that shows a history of sites visited that you can monitor to see Internet sites that your children have visited? If they are viewing places they shouldn’t, what can you do as a responsible parent to protect your children from accessing undesirable places on the Internet? Software packages such as Net Nanny and Cyber Patrol were invented so that parents can set access parameters to the Internet on their home computer.

Each of these programs designates an administrator (the parent) that can set control parameters. They have a pre-designed set of “keywords” such as sex, XXX, etc. that closes down the Internet browser if a site is accessed using any of those words. The parent can also specifically list certain web sites that cannot be accessed by their children. It is your responsibility as a parent to take control of your children’s access to the Internet.

E-mail accounts can also have parameters set so that e-mail containing certain “keywords” is automatically deleted upon arrival to the mailbox. A good Internet Service Provider (ISP) also utilizes “spam filtering” software that does not allow pornographic material to filter down to your mailbox. All of these efforts of parental control, however, require the parent to know how to use their computer and navigate the Internet.

However you choose to exercise parental control over your family computer, remember you are the parent, and it is not only your right, but your responsibility to take control of the driver’s seat on the Information Super Highway.

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What’s new? “The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new ‘Start Centre’, new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar,” according to OpenOffice.org. “A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features. Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.”

A nice list of features, together with screenshots, is here.

“Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.),” the group added. “This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.). ”

The new release is also Mac-friendly, running on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application, the developer group said.

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Ananda Shipyard and Shipways Ltd, a premier shipbuilding company, made the ship `Stella Maris’ at Ananda Shipyard in Sonargaon upazila of Narayanganj district. ASSL chairman Abdullahel Bari presided over the handing over ceremony at the Ananda Shipyard, while managing director of the group Afroza Bari also spoke.

Speaking as the chief guest, Zillur Rahman referred to the handing over of the ocean liner as a historic moment and said the government has attached top priority to shipbuilding sector considering its enormous potentially in the macroeconomic development.

The government believes in the public-private synchronisation to expand the industrial sector by upgrading infrastructure facilities, said the commerce adviser.

Industries secretary Nurul Amin, Danish ambassador to Bangladesh Einer Hebogaard Jensen, chairman of executive committee of Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd Mominul Islam Patwari, former vice-chancellor of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology MH Khan were present as special guests at the function.

Chairman of Stella Shipping of Denmark Jan Fabricius, managing director of Bank of Small Industries and Commerce AH Ekbal Hossain, and managing director of IBBL Fariduddin Ahmed were present as guest of honours.

Nurul Amin said the government had declared the shipbuilding sector as third foreign exchange earner while the sector has emerged as booming in recent years. Terming the occasion as `new history and new possibilities, Einer Hebogaard Jensen said with handing over of the seagoing ship the existing relationship between the two countries would be strengthened.

He underscored the need for green channel and bonded warehouse facilities in terms of export potential and creation of job opportunities in Bangladesh.

Mominul Islam Patwari said Bangladesh would be one of the most remarkable shipbuilders in near future.

Afroza Bari said, since its onset in 1985, ASSL has so far supplied 300 world-class ships and created jobs for 700 workers. ASSL sources said the group has received orders of Tk 1,500 crore for making of 21 vessels for Denmark, Germany and Mozambique.

Source: Bangladesh News Service

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Sarees are woven with one plain end, two decorative borders running along the length of the saree and one more end which continues the decoration. A petticoat and a blouse are used with a saree. Petticoat covers the lower body whereas a blouse forms the upper garment and a saree is then draped over the body.

Some sarees are very expensive whereas some are not so expensive and it all depends on the embroidery, decorative work and material used for the saree. A simple saree can be used in everyday life whereas an expensive saree can be used on special occasions like marriages, get-togethers and more. As it is very popular in different countries, different types of sarees and different draping styles are known. Almost every region has developed its own way of wearing a saree. Some of the different types of sarees are Banarasi, Chikan, Kantha, Jamdani whereas Nivi, Maharashtrian, Dravidian, Gond are some of the different draping styles.

All in all, a saree is a comfortable and graceful outfit that can be worn by women on different occasions. No other outfit can show the elegance and dignity as much as a saree can and that’s why it is one of most popular outfit.

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Its users around the world are translating Facebook’s visible framework into nearly two dozen languages — for free — aiding the company’s aggressive expansion to better serve the 60 percent of its 69 million users who live outside the United States.

The company says it’s using the wisdom of crowds to produce versions of site guidelines — especially terms specific to Facebook — that are in tune with local cultures.

“We thought it’d be cool,” said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif. “Our goal would be to hopefully have one day everybody on the planet on Facebook.”

Coolness aside, and many users are embracing the idea, other social networks aren’t “crowdsourcing” translation. The move is generating mounting criticism online, where some users question whether amateurs can produce good translations. Critics complain of sloppiness and skimping, even as Facebook says it is improving service in an innovative way.

The concept of collaborative translation is familiar in open-source programming communities. But Facebook’s effort — as it builds sites in Japanese, Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and Dutch to join versions in Spanish, French and German that launched this year — is among the highest-profile attempts to harness users’ energy to do work traditionally handled by professionals.

The Spanish-language version has taken a particular beating for grammatical, spelling and usage problems throughout.

Ana B. Torres, a 25-year-old professional translator in Madrid, Spain, called the translation “extremely poor,” citing “outrageous spelling mistakes” such as “ase” instead of “hace” (for “makes” or “does”) and usage of the word “lenguaje” for “language” rather than the correct “idioma.”

Other critics say Facebook just wants free labor.

Valentin Macias, 29, a Californian who teaches English in Seoul, South Korea, has volunteered in the past to translate for the nonprofit Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia but said he won’t do it for Facebook.

“(Wikipedia is) an altruistic, charitable, information-sharing, donation-supported cause,” Macias told The Associated Press in a Facebook message. “Facebook is not. Therefore, people should not be tricked into donating their time and energy to a multimillion-dollar company so that the company can make millions more — at least not without some type of compensation.”

Facebook points out that it has spent considerable resources building the translation program. Olivan said it’s not soaking users but including them in the growth of the network — and possibly attracting new ones.

“If the goal is to save money, we’re doing the wrong thing, because we are basically spending our most valuable asset, which is engineering time,” he said.

He said that Facebook relishes being different from competitors and that users are helping the company produce versions in numerous languages as quickly as possible.

Just one-fifth of the world’s Internet population actively manages profiles on a social network, said David Jones, vice president of global marketing for Friendster Inc., which has recently shifted its focus to capitalize on its strength in Southeast Asia.

“It’s still a bit of a land grab,” he said. “So there’s plenty of growth to be had in the world, and we’re focused on that, and certainly other social networks I’m sure are as well.”

Friendster recently launched a beta version in Vietnamese, adding to its lineup of versions in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian. It plans to keep introducing a new language every month or two.

Setting the pace, however, is industry leader MySpace. The News Corp. subsidiary has 200 million registered users worldwide and 29 country-specific and regional sites and more on the way.

Its global push, which began in early 2006, appears to be paying off. Between June 2006 and June 2007, its number visitors worldwide age 15 and older jumped 72 percent to 114.1 million, according to Internet research firm comScore Inc.

In the same period, however, Facebook’s global traffic surged 270 percent to 52.2 million users, according to comScore — even though it had yet to launch its first foreign-language site.

As it enters each market, MySpace hires a dedicated team, said Travis Katz, international managing director. Contractors perform the initial translation, which the local MySpace team tweaks to ensure it fits the market, he said.

“The translation in and of itself is not very expensive,” Katz said. “The thing that’s challenging is getting the cultural aspects right and making sure that the site is culturally relevant and doesn’t feel like an invader from Silicon Valley landed.”

Friendster’s Jones said his company also uses third-party translators.

“As interesting as it might be to get your users to chip in and help out on that, we could do it faster ourselves and very consistently, quite frankly, across the language, across the entire site,” Jones said.

More than 100,000 users have installed Facebook’s translation application. Nearly 10,000 helped translate the French, Spanish and German sites — the Spanish version in less than four weeks and the German one in two weeks.

The process involves translating a glossary of basic Facebook terms, translating text strings throughout the site, voting on each translation and then “testing and verification.”

Some users, like Murat Odabasi of London, are spending hours each day translating Facebook. Responsible for 14,910 winning words and 1,938 winning phrases, Odabasi held the No. 2 spot among 391 translators on the Turkish leaderboard as of Wednesday.

Odabasi, 24, a software developer and native Turkish speaker, said the volunteer arrangement is good for users as well as Facebook.

“We come up with the words and phrases that will … eventually become a part of the Turkish language itself,” he said in an e-mail in English. “It feels good to be creating something that will in time be seen and used by millions of people.”

Collaborative translation is an increasingly important tool for businesses, said Renato Beninatto with the Massachusetts consulting firm Common Sense Advisory. But he said companies may need professional services to finalize translations.

“The traditional wisdom is that if you have fewer translators, you generate a better product,” said Beninatto, also a spokesman for the Globalization & Localization Association.

If managed well, however, crowdsourcing can result in a good translation, he said.

Among the hottest debates so far has been over “poke” — Facebook’s term for giving someone a playful nudge. In Spanish, it became “dar un toque.” In French, “faire un signe.” And in German, “anstupsen.”

Japanese translators couldn’t find an equivalent so they decided to go with the original English.

Source: TOMOKO A. HOSAKA, Associated Press Writer

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The sale had been in the works for months as cash-strapped Ford sought money to fund its turnaround plan.

Tata will pay $2.3 billion for the British brands, but Ford will pay about $600 million into the Jaguar-Land Rover pension fund when the deal closes, Tata’s statement said.

Ford bought Jaguar for $2.5 billion in 1989 and Land Rover for $2.7 billion in 2000. But the Dearborn-based automaker has been struggling and wants to focus on its main brands.

Selling the companies at such a loss clearly shows buying them was a mistake for Ford, said Erich Merkle, vice president of auto industry forecasting for the consulting company IRN Inc. in Grand Rapids.

“How can you call it anything else?” he asked. “You have to cut your losses at some point. It’s been draining them of cash and resources.”

The net proceeds aren’t enough to rescue Ford’s finances, but the sale will allow the company to focus on its core Ford brands, Merkle said.

Tata should have the cash to rescue the brands and develop new products to better compete with luxury automakers such as BMW AG, Merkle said.

Tata said it expects no significant changes in the terms of employment for Jaguar and Land Rover’s 16,000 workers. It said the transfer of the brands would take place at the end of the second quarter.

The sale raises the Tata conglomerate’s profile on the world stage, said V.G. Ramakrishnan, the lead auto analyst with the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan India.

“It gives them a much better branding image in the global market,” Ramakrishnan said. “This is another important landmark step of showcasing that Indian companies are arriving on the global landscape. Many people will see this deal as the future of things to come — you will see more companies out of India acquiring global companies. They want to be seen as major global players.”

In England, some workers were upbeat about the change, but others worried about the future.

“People seem to be generally happy about the buyout. Tata has a reputation as a business which is going places and has ambition to be a major market force,” said Lee Betteridge, a 34-year-old Jaguar toolmaker.

But Paul Hoyte, 35, a Land Rover worker, said, “I am pleased I have kept my job. But for how long?”

Tata Motors built the first fully Indian-designed car. In contrast to the high prices that Jaguars and Land Rovers sell for, Tata recently announced plans to build a $2,500 car later this year. Jaguars in the U.S. have sticker prices starting around $50,000 and can cost nearly twice that amount.

Roger Maddison, an official with Unite, Jaguar and Land Rover’s main labor union, said the deal is good news for the automakers’ employees as well as those who work for parts suppliers.

“Unite has secured written guarantees for all five UK plants on staffing levels, employee terms and conditions, including pensions, and sourcing agreements. The sale ensures our members futures and we look forward to working with Tata,” Maddison said in a statement.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally said in a statement that the British brands are leaving Ford in good shape.

“Now, it is time for Ford to concentrate on integrating the Ford brand globally, as we implement our plan to create a strong Ford Motor Company that delivers profitable growth for all.”

Mulally has said Ford would invest the proceeds from the sale in quality and product development.

Tata said in its statement Ford will continue to supply engines, transmissions and other components “for differing periods.” Ford also will continue to provide environmental and other technologies as well as engineering support.

Tata Chairman Ratan N. Tata said his company will try to build on the brands’ heritage, keeping their identities intact. “We aim to support their growth, while holding true to our principles of allowing the management and employees to bring their experience and expertise to bear on the growth of the business,” he said in a statement.

Ford named Tata as the preferred bidder for the British automakers in January, essentially dismissing two other bids.

Cash-hungry Ford, which lost $12.6 billion in 2006 and $2.7 billion last year, has been looking to sell Jaguar and Land Rover for months.

It has mortgaged assets to continue operations and expects to burn up $12 billion to $14 billion until 2009, when it plans to return to sustained profitability.

Jaguar and Land Rover are strained by unfavorable exchange rates and high production costs in Britain.

Ford had hoped to turn Jaguar, which was founded in 1922, into a high-volume brand that could compete with BMW and Mercedes-Benz. But its entry-level X-Type sedan, introduced in 2001 to lure younger buyers, sold poorly and was slammed for its conservative styling. Jaguar’s U.S. sales were down 24 percent last year.

Land Rover, which was founded in 1948 — the year after India gained its independence from Britain — has fared better thanks to popular products such as the Range Rover Sport and LR2. Land Rover’s U.S. sales were up 4 percent last year. But unlike Jaguar, which has improved its quality rankings under Ford, Land Rover placed last in J.D. Power and Associates’ rankings of initial quality and dependability in 2007. The rankings measure problems per vehicle after 90 days and again after three years of ownership.

Tata Motors is part of Tata Group, India’s oldest and largest conglomerate. The family business is owned mostly by Tata-funded charitable trusts. A substantial portion of the group’s income is channeled into various philanthropies that have helped build some of the country’s finest institutions, including India’s first cancer hospital.

Tata companies are known for offering worker benefits that are rare in India, including pension and child care allowances.

Some experts believe the group still is too bloated. Ratan Tata concedes he has “not been very successful” at pruning the number of companies and downsizing staff, which currently totals about 290,000.

Among Tata’s holdings are steel makers and a consulting service that does software engineering and other work for western firms.

Ford shares slipped a penny to $5.99 in late morning trading Wednesday. They have traded in a 52-week range of $4.95 to $9.70.

Associated Press Writer Sam Dolnick in New Delhi and Auto Writer Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed to this report.

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