Bulletin Board

A tick clutched the scalp of Howard Rheingold's 2-year-old daughter. Rheingold's wife called the pediatrician, who was out. Howard logged onto the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a computer bulletin board. Before the pediatrician called back, Rheingold reports in "The Virtual Community" (Addison-Wesley, October 1993), he'd received the expert advice he needed -- from, no kidding, Flash Gordon, M.D.The WELL also plays a starring role in Rheingold's professional life. Asked to serve on a congressional advisory panel on "Communication Systems for an Information Age," he prepared for his first meeting by opening a "conference" (an electronic discussion)

A Cumberland man was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to 10 years in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release for his part in running a child pornography website, prosecutors said. George Sell, 70, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to transport child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland said in a statement Wednesday. From December 2006 through August 2008, Sell was the administrator of a website called the "Country Lounge" that was dedicated to trading child pornography images, the government said.

The county public school system is offering "The Chalkboard," an electronic bulletin board system for students and the community.Interested hackers should call 313-6832 and identify themselves as new users.An account number and password will be assigned.The system provides special interest areas (bulletin boards), private electronic mail capabilities and transfer capabilities for computer programs and long documents.Information: 313-6832.

A few weeks ago I noticed the bulletin board inside of the Village Square Café at Cross Keys. A welcomed addition to the neighborhood it is. Fewer and fewer bulletin boards are in the 'hood. They used to be at the front of the library and neighborhood grocery stores. No more.   Schneider's Hardware on Wyndhurst has for generations used the glass front door for neatly taped notices. An overflowing bulletin board sits at the back of Evergreen Café on Cold Spring Lane. The Children's Bookstore  on Deepdene Road has one at the front of the store.

As the worst urban rioting since the 1960s unfolded in Los Angeles, subscribers to the nation's online services pitched in with eyewitness accounts, local news updates and tips on which neighborhoods to avoid -- and which routes to take to safety.Like other online services, GEnie, which has about 300,000 subscribers nationwide, set up an electronic bulletin board Wednesday when the Rodney King verdict was returned. The bulletin board, which allows any subscribers to swap messages with other subscribers, has been swamped ever since, said Laura Staley, product manager for Rockville-based GEnie.

While Jim Maguire puts in a normal business day as a computer software consultant, a silent partner takes care of his home-based business: Atlantis On-Line Information System.Resting discreetly on the floor of a spare bedroom in his Columbia home, a Compaq 286 computer is host to phone calls from computer users who want to see what's happening on the Atlantis bulletin board."Welcome to Atlantis, 'The Wave of the Future,' " the Compaq's script says. After answering a few questions, callers are led to the main menu, which includes a Marketplace column with categories such as Computer Bits and a Features column, which includes a Post Office and forums for those interested in small businesses, personal finance, politics and entertainment.

The National Association of Securities Dealers Inc. says it must act to rid the securities industry of crooked brokers who specialize in selling stocks of small, thinly traded companies on the over-the-counter Bulletin Board stock market.These stocks are susceptible to price manipulation because they are subject to few regulations.Is it time to overhaul the Bulletin Board market, and crack down on bad brokers? How risky are these stocks?Andrew KandelChief, investor protection and securities bureau, New York attorney general's office.

Look for Homefront Journal -- a collection of information, local events and Marylanders' efforts around the Persian Gulf war -- daily in the Today section.Call them the "OR 12."They are a dozen people with two things in common: They are serving in the Persian Gulf war, and they have relatives who work in Johns Hopkins Hospital's general operating room.Their pictures are hanging on a yellow-beribboned bulletin board on the eighth floor of the hospital, an effort begun by one employee to lend support to co-workers who share her situation.

A Cumberland man was sentenced in federal court Wednesday to 10 years in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release for his part in running a child pornography website, prosecutors said. George Sell, 70, pleaded guilty in November to conspiring to transport child pornography, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland said in a statement Wednesday. From December 2006 through August 2008, Sell was the administrator of a website called the "Country Lounge" that was dedicated to trading child pornography images, the government said.

As a youngster, Baltimore attorney Peter Angelos recalled the other day, he was fascinated with The Sun's "old ticker" that blinked out breaking news in lights outside the newspaper's old Sun Square building at Baltimore and Charles streets.Angelos, who is renovating the former Hamburger's building at Charles and Fayette streets, the future home of the Johns Hopkins University Downtown Center, says he hopes to install a similar 24-hour message system on the building's facade.If it happens, it will be the first time in almost 50 years that Baltimoreans will be able to glance up, like New Yorkers habitually do in Times Square, to see public service announcements and news bulletins in flashing lights.

The New York investment firm that wants to invest in struggling First Mariner Bancorp said Thursday it was still committed to the deal that would provide much-needed capital for the bank. Howard Feinglass, a Baltimore native who heads Priam Capital, said his firm was "negotiating an extension to our agreement to invest in First Mariner. " "We are still fully committed to the deal," Feinglass said in a brief phone conversation. First Mariner faced a deadline Thursday to raise nearly $124 million or risk losing a cash infusion from Priam.

First Mariner Bancorp, locked in a fight for survival, suffered another setback Wednesday when its stock was delisted from the Nasdaq stock market. Starting Thursday, First Mariner shares will be traded on the over-the-counter bulletin board. The latest development comes as the company is trying to raise desperately needed capital to close a deal that would keep regulators at bay and the bank in business. The deal requires the Baltimore company to raise nearly $124 million by Thursday or risk losing a cash infusion from a New York investment firm.

Tim Sherman of Cub Hill writes: I fish at several locations in lower Gunpowder Falls State Park. It appears that anti-erosion measures have been taken to curb rain runoff near the parking area at Harford Road. I understand and applaud the effort. However, the conservation effort has made parking very dangerous. The width of the parking lot is so narrow that if you turn to back in, you have to go across two travel lanes. If you pull in, you have to back out into travel lanes. Anyone with a large SUV or extend cab pickup can forget about parking there.

Steelers linebacker LaMarr Woodley ruffled the feathers of Ravens fans last week when he told NFL Network that Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco would never win a Super Bowl “in his lifetime.” But Woodley’s veteran teammate Hines Ward refused to provide more bulletin board fodder when talking about Woodley’s claim. Appearing on NFL Network on Wednesday , Ward said the Ravens have a “great team” and they “can win with Flacco.” Ward wasn’t “going to put any bulletin board material out there,” but he said he understood where Woodley was coming from because you have to go into this heated rivalry expecting to beat the Ravens.

Hines Ward, quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, talked about the Steelers' competition in the AFC North - without mentioning the Ravens. "We're 2-0," Ward said. "Cincinnati and Cleveland are 0-2. They have to catch up to us. It is big. Everybody picked Cleveland as the team to beat. We came on the road and won up here. It speaks volumes for our team. ... We are the division champions from last year." (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ravensinsider)

Blame Joe Namath. He's the guy who started this whole thing. Namath famously guaranteed his upstart New York Jets would upset the massively favored Baltimore Colts in the third Super Bowl. You remember what happened. (Mr. Flip figures Namath must have made another guarantee somewhere along the way that didn't pan out. How else did Namath wind up selling pantyhose on television?) But Namath wasn't the end of it. Other guarantees followed. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. And now we've reached this point: Last week, we got a guarantee of victory over the New England Patriots by a relatively obscure member of the Pittsburgh Steelers, defensive back Anthony Smith.

A new electronic bulletin board service allows anyone with a computer and modem to scan a data base of more than 9,000 free maps and travel brochures. The service, Worldwide Brochures, is offered by Travel Companions in Detroit Lakes, Minn. To order brochures, users pay a $12 membership fee.The bulletin board number is (218) 847-3027. The membership fee is paid to Worldwide Brochures, 1227 Kenneth St., Detroit Lakes, Minn. 56501; (800) 852-6752.

In the Sykesville office of E.S.C.A.P.E. Ministries Inc., someone has tacked an interesting poem onto the bulletin board. It tells of the virtues of volunteers. It also jokingly states that those who volunteer on earth will be served in eternity.The usual park entrance fees apply. Information: 795-6043.

BEIJING - After a flood last month in northeast China killed more than 100 children, a Chinese reporter trying to unearth details about the tragedy ran into a familiar skepticism: Locals suspected he would never report that officials had covered up the government incompetence that led to many of the deaths. The journalist persuaded the locals to talk, and then found that they had been right to be skeptical. Even in carefully worded form, his dispatch for a government-owned newspaper was deemed too controversial.

Seventeen years after a federal court ruled that his church used undue influence to obtain more than $6 million from a donor, a Baltimore-based evangelist faces a new controversy in a different venue - the Internet. In recent months, former and current members of Baltimore's Greater Grace World Outreach have used an Internet bulletin board to air criticism and charges against the church's leadership and its aging founder, Pastor Carl H. Stevens Jr. The bulletin board, which has drawn more than 3,100 postings from as far away as India and Argentina, is among hundreds of Internet sites set up by dissident former church members to discredit or reform religious groups founded in recent decades, scholars say. Jean-Francois Mayer, author of six books on new religious movements, said the Web sites have made it increasingly difficult for leaders to quiet internal critics or control their public image.