Facebook Murderer Given Life Sentence

No sentence, no punishment, can compensate for the loss of a loved one, but 17-year old Ashleigh Hall's friends and family may be able to rest a little easier knowing her killer must serve a minimum of 35 years in prison. 33-year old Peter Chapman, who befriended the teenage girl on Facebook by posing as a teenage boy, then raped and murdered her, was handed a life sentence after pleading guilty to the crime.

Chapman had a history of sexual assault stretching back to age 15. He was imprisoned for seven years for the brutal rape of two hookers in 1996. He initially denied any involvement in Hall's death, but later confessed to kidnapping, raping, and suffocating the girl, then dumping her body in a field.

Chapman invented the teenage boy he posed as on Facebook, then pretended to be the boy's father when he picked-up the 17-year old Hall. His license plate number had been in the system because he had failed to comply with proper sex offender registration requirements. When the number was connected to Hall's disappearance, Chapman was picked up and questioned.

Police admitted that, had Chapman not confessed, his vehicle probably would have been crushed and valuable evidence lost.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Murray Feiss Lighting

As an avid reader (and writer), I cannot stress just how important good lighting really is. Growing up, I often read, wrote, and even drew in relatively bad lighting. While I do not think this affected my eyesight or had any real negative impact on my health, it certainly was not easy. It was only when I got older that I realized just how important good lighting was... yes, it may be because I got older, but the point remains.

Of course, screwing in more lightbulbs is not exactly the solution - you want your home to be nice and presentable, and Murray Feiss lighting can provide just that. Check out their many styles and designs - you are sure to find something that works for your needs without compromising your design.

Internet a Fundamental Human Right

According to a BBC poll, four of five people, or over 85%, believe Internet access to be a "fundamental human right." The poll involved some 27,000 people from 26 different countries and at least 50% of those who believe that Internet access is a basic human right "strongly agreed" with the premise.

Also notable is that many in the Western world believe the government should regulate the Internet to some degree, while those in many Eastern countries (excepting China) believed otherwise. Most of the respondents said they believe the Internet provides them greater freedom and many said they felt it was so essential to their lives that they could not live without it.

The study also addressed people's concerns regarding Internet technology, most of which concerned fraud and the easy access of violent and disturbing materials.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Colleges Selling Fake Dope?

Online security firm, Imperva, has uncovered a complex link "piggybacking" hijack scheme involving online education sites and fake drugs. According to the firm, many UK-based academic sites using the .ac domain and php coding have been compromised by spammers selling fake prescription drugs. The scammers injected php code into the colleges' sites which redirect people searching for prescription drugs from the colleges' site to the spam sites which portend to offer them.

The scheme only works when a surfer comes from a Google search for related drug terms. By "piggybacking" on the academic institutions' URLs, the spammers ensure their sites appear high in the search engine. This also made it hard to discover the ruse, as the correct site appears whenever typed directly into the browser.

Because the spam sites are erected and removed so quickly, it's hard to know how many sites have been compromised by the hijackers, but experts estimate it's in the thousands.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Life Insurance Made Easy

Life insurance is an important facet of everyday life if you are 30 or older. You do not want to leave your family with the burden of your bills once you are gone and even though you may be in good health, who knows what Fate has in store for any of us?

LifeInsuranceAgency.com is an online life insurance "broker." They do not sell life insurance themselves; they simply connect you to agents and agencies in and around your area who offer affordable rates on the plans in which you are most interested. The whole process only takes a few minutes to complete, so why wait?

YouTube Adds Closed-Captioning

YouTube has added closed-captioning to its videos to facilitate the deaf and hard-of-hearing. In November of 2009, the site added this functionality in limited quantities to several partner sites. The success with those videos lead to the decision to roll-out this new feature across the site.

While the team working on the project warned the technology is not perfect, but advances in voice-recognition technology have made it feasible. "It is not a complete solution but it is a step on the way to the real solution," engineer, Ken Harrenstien, explained. Harrenstien, who has worked on this project for the last five years, has been deaf from birth.

Many have heaped praise on the team and the site. A school for the deaf made a video in which they signed their appreciation to YouTube, while one college spokesperson said he thinks this will allow their 500+ online courses to reach even more potential students.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Couple Raises Virtual Baby, Starves Real One to Death

A South Korean couple who had become addicted to the game, Prius Online, allowed their premature child to starve to death. Authorities say they only managed to feed their premature baby once a day - in-between 12-hour stretches at an Internet cafe. They were picked-up some five months after reporting their child dead and autopsy reports confirmed the baby had died from protracted malnourishment. A police officer working the case said the couple had become despondent after losing their jobs and sought to drown their sorrows in the online roleplaying game.

While the mother was only 25, the father was 41-years old! Perhaps this has more to do with cultural differences than anything else, but I find it hard to believe anyone can become "legally" addicted to either the Internet or a video game. So sorry. While many in the West, like myself, remain skeptical, several Eastern societies - including China - fervently believe in "Internet addiction." Many alleged sufferers have been sent to treatment camps where deaths have occurred.

I've frequently discussed how I do not actively play video games, specifically because I've known far too many people who literally wasted their lives on them, but these people are actual losers. They knew full-well what they were doing; they were not addicted to the extent that they needed to play, nor were they delusional to such a point that they believed this to be the case. They simply chose to skip work, let themselves go, and withdraw from normal society in order to play their stupid games. I've known people who did this with tabletop roleplaying games, as well.

A 41-year old man simply cannot be assumed not to know better than to let his infant child starve to death unless he is found to be a functional retard.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Technical Difficulties

We'll be back to normal posting later today, but I had some errands to run (and still have a few more). I have also been fighting with my new wireless router, as I'm having issues with streaming media on the laptop - selectively: Winamp doesn't work at all, yet Hulu and YouTube work perfectly. Really weird, if you ask me. I'll be reviewing the router sometime soon and am currently looking into the streaming media issue.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010