Windows

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

To those who support "choice" at all costs: Read the grand jury report on Kermit Gosnell. He is the Philadelphia abortion doctor awaiting a verdict in his trial, where he is accused of murdering four babies allegedly born alive and killing 41-year-old refugee Karnamaya Mongar. The charges represent only a fraction of the horrors that went on at the Women's Medical Society clinic, according to the report, where hundreds of children died by "snipping" - his term for sticking scissors into the back of a baby's neck and cutting its spinal cord - and where women were routinely butchered in late-term abortions by untrained medical staff and doped up according to how much they could pay. Here are some lowlights from the report: •"A nineteen-year-old girl was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus.

With windows for their canvas, Parkville High students put their creative talents to work during the local business association's fourth annual window decorating contest. Their assignment at Hohne Pool and Spa offered them some of the largest glass spaces on Harford Road. They checked sketches, drawn in their classroom, and set to work on a blustery, cold afternoon. Standing in raised but empty flower beds, they could extend their brushes to the tops of the tall windows. The falling temperatures and gusting winds Thursday had Ed Pinder, a contest organizer, wondering if the Parkville students could complete the task.

Ravens linebacker Rolando McClain, who was originally scheduled to be at the City of Decatur (Ala.) Municipal Court tomorrow, has pleaded guilty to a window tint violation stemming from his arrest in January following a traffic stop. In exchange, the city has dismissed the charge of providing false information to police during the arrest. McClain, who signed an expletive on the citation rather than his real name, thus resulting in the providing false information charge, made an online payment of $186 to settle the fine and court costs and any other fees associated with this case.

Windows at several businesses in Bel Air - two banks and one restaurant - have been shot at over the past 10 days, town police say. Windows were shot at on Feb. 29 at NBRS Financial and PNC Bank, both in the 100 block of North Main Street, according to Bel Air police reports. On Sunday, a window at Friendly's in the 300 block of South Main Street was also shot at. The same day in the upper end of town, back in the 100 block of North Main Street, a front door at NBRS, was reported shot.

Few police officers carry light meters, so what they do when they spot a window on a car that appears to have been tinted too much? Maryland law is very specific: The amount of light transmitted through the glass cannot be less than 35 percent. But as with many issues, it can come down to a judgment call. And since this one can be quantified, if the officer is wrong, it should be a fairly easy ticket to get thrown out. But Ravens running back Ray Rice didn't get a ticket.

WASHINGTON -- In a case that echoes earlier fights over terms like "Light Beer" and "The Pill," the federal government has issued a preliminary decision denying Microsoft Corp. a trademark for the word "Windows" on its hugely successful computer program by that name.If it is upheld, the decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which Microsoft will appeal, would be a blow to the software giant. Microsoft dominates the market for programs that provide the basic instructions on IBM-compatible personal computers.

Vandals broke windows in nearly 30 vehicles in the Westminster area Friday and Saturday, city police reported. Investigators said the damage amounted to about $2,000.Officers said the vandals apparently drove around the city and randomly shattered windows.In one of the incidents, a resident of Wimert Avenue found a ball bearing inside her auto after a window was broken. She estimated the damage at $100.Seven of the vehicles vandalized over the weekend belonged to the state and were parked at various locations, police said.

Over the years, Microsoft has loaded PCs with programs that have nothing to do with Windows' main function as an operating system. Riffle through the Start menu and you'll find a word processor, a painting program, calculator, Web browser, music and video player, movie maker, sound editor and, of course, a solitaire game. Stroll through the software department in any big box retailer and you'll find more programs that Microsoft has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, Publisher, Works and even Age of Empires (one of the game industry's great simulation-exploration titles)

Vandals smashed the windows of several Anne Arundel County businesses late last week and over the weekend, police said.Managers of at least nine businesses along Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard and Crain and Ritchie highways in Glen Burnie reported that their windows had been shattered overnight Thursday by vandals who used pellet guns.Friday night, windows of five businesses along Fort Smallwood Road in Pasadena were shattered. It appeared the vandals might have used a slingshot or a pellet gun, police said.

In conjunction with the city's big War of 1812 Bicentennial Celebration May 3 to 5, Havre de Grace Main Street Inc. is sponsoring a storefront window display contest. Downtown business owners and owners of vacant storefronts are being urged to enter the contest, which carries $500 in total prizes. The theme is the commemoration of the attack on Havre de Grace by the marauding British, which occurred on May 3, 1813. Theme and period windows should be up no later than May 2 at 5 p.m., according to the Havre de Grace Main Street website, and extra points will be given for period dress of any contestant's staff.

A 22-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday night after leading Laurel Police on a chase as she threw items from her vehicle's window. Officers initially attempted to stop the vehicle, which had a suspended registration, around 8:30 p.m. in the 14100 block of Baltimore Avenue. The driver drove away and fled the police, and was seen throwing items out of the window; police recovered bags of cocaine and marijuana from the roadway. The driver eventually got out of the vehicle and ran, but police apprehended her in the 11600 block of South Laurel Drive.

A man jumped from a second-story window of an East Baltimore home that had caught fire Wednesday morning, escaping serious injury, according to the Baltimore Fire Department. Firefighters responded to the home in the 2200 block of E. Preston Street in the Broadway East neighborhood about 7:30 a.m. and found heavy smoke showing, said Capt. Roman Clark, a department spokesman. They discovered a fire in the basement had spread smoke through the home, and the man had jumped out the window to escape, Clark said.

As details continue to emerge about the killing of Reeva Steenkamp by the Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius, one fact appears to be certain: The man known as the "Blade Runner" did fire four bullets through a bathroom door in his South African home, killing his girlfriend. Thus, it might appear that this will be an open-and-shut case when Mr. Pistorius goes before a judge in a trial that will inevitably become a media spectacle in South Africa and beyond on the scale of the O.J. Simpson trial.

For artist Susan Yonkers, a Maryland Institute College of Art graduate and gardening enthusiast, and her craftsman husband, Bill, a large outdoor canvas was a prerequisite. So the couple found a single-family, ranch-style home on 2 acres in a relatively secluded spot off Mays Chapel Road in Baltimore County. "It's an oasis; a home for all seasons," said Susan Yonkers, 64, seated at her sunroom table and gazing out through wide windows into her backyard as birds gathered at one of her feeders and hopped on the granite stones of the landscaping.

A 25-year-old Woodlawn woman has been charged with arson, assault and destruction of property after allegedly setting fire to her own home Saturday morning, then kicking out the window of a police patrol car and assaulting an officer after her arrest, according to Baltimore County Police. Police initially responded to the home of Ashley Joy Davis, in the 1600 block of Langford Road, about 5:44 a.m. for a report of a suicidal person, but upon an initial investigation determined a simple assault had occurred at the residence, said Cpl. John Wachter, a police spokesman.

The Microsoft Corp. has come up with three new Windows products for people who have powerful personal computers, but who do not need all the power of conventional Windows business software.It sounds like a narrow field, but it really is not. Computer prices are coming down as fast as computer technology is advancing, with the result that many beginning computer users today are starting out with machines that have the minimum requirements to run Windows software: a 386SX microprocessor, a few megabytes of system memory and at least 40 megabytes of hard disk drive storage.

Even though I'm the only one who uses it, Windows makes me log on every time I turn on my computer. I understand there is a fix that eliminates my having to do that, but I can't find it. I recently upgraded from Windows 98 to XP Professional. Your question is among dozens of other issues about the various versions of Windows that can be resolved by downloading a utility called TweakUI. The software was created by Microsoft programmers, but the company does not support the utility. In your case, TweakUI includes a routine that will stop Windows from asking for passwords at login as it does by default.

Long before linebacker Ray Lewis decided it was his time to walk away from the hard-hitting game he had become the face of, teammate Terrell Suggs started to realize that time was running out. Not just for Lewis, but for himself and many of his teammates. Last season, as Suggs chased down quarterbacks in a bid for his first Lombardi Trophy, he spoke more than once about how the window to achieve that "football immortality" was slowly sliding shut. On Friday, as Lewis sat at his locker at the team's practice facility for possibly the last time, the only urgency Suggs showed was in escaping the locker room.

Chris and Jamie Swann's Baltimore townhouse off Key Highway features what many would consider a million-dollar view of the city's busy waterfront and beyond. That was reason enough for them to purchase the four-story brick home with rooftop deck in June 2011. "Chris and I fell in love with the views from our house," Jamie Swann said. "We looked at many units, and although the interior initially wasn't exactly what we wanted, we couldn't pass up our view of the harbor from every level.