Chris-Decker.com

So with this admittedly vague yet somehow telling criteria as my guide, I will accept Adam’s challenge and rank the “prestige level” of all 66 BCS schools (including Notre Dame) by dividing them into four tiers.

Kings:
Alabama, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Tennessee*, Texas and USC. * Tennessee is the lone school in the group that caused any hesitation. The Vols would have been a no-brainer 10 years ago, but they have fallen off the map a bit lately. In the end, I figured those 100 fans in Montana still know “Rocky Top,” the checkered end zones and that Peyton Manning went there.

Barons:
Auburn, Clemson, Colorado, Georgia, LSU*, Texas A&M, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Washington and Wisconsin. * While LSU is clearly a premier program right now, its big-picture tradition does not match those of the 13 kings. However, if the Tigers were to add another national title here in the next couple of years, they may well graduate to that group.

Knights:
Arizona State, Arkansas, Boston College, Cal, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas State, Maryland, Michigan State, Missouri, N.C. State, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, Oregon, Oregon State, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Stanford, Syracuse*, South Carolina, Texas Tech, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington State. * In normal times, Syracuse would qualify as one of the barons, but they’re just so darn bad and so irrelevant right now.
Peasants Arizona, Baylor, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Duke, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa State, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State, North Carolina, Northwestern, Rutgers*, South Florida*, Wake Forest and Vanderbilt. *

Rutgers is another program that could be on its way up a tier, and South Florida is here by default because it’s essentially a start-up.

There is one school intentionally missing from the list, and that’s because I have no idea where to put it: Louisville. History-wise, the Cardinals are peasants, but the program has completely reinvented itself over the past decade and now gets mentioned with the kings and barons. For now, we’ll just say: TBD.

Paterno’s decision? Every player on the roster must help to clean Beaver Stadium on Sunday mornings after home games. “Not just the kids that were involved, because we’re all in it together,” Paterno said. “This is a team embarrassment. I wouldn’t call it anything much other than that.”

Paterno also promised additional punishment, including potential suspensions, for those who played a role in the fight.

How many other head coaches, in this day and age, choose the less lenient path?

Of course, this might turn out to be a shrewd psychological move by Paterno.

Not only does the shared punishment encourage the Nittany Lions to be more accountable to each other off the field, it might provide a subtle nudge on Saturdays, too.

Penn State faces an arduous home schedule this fall — Notre Dame, Wisconsin and Ohio State among the opponents — and fans might be tempted to express any disappointments by leaving excess trash in the stands. But if the Nittany Lions play up to their considerable potential? Maybe the fans will leave their seats spotless and allow their heroes to save their energies for a Bowl Championship Series run.

IRS employees ignored security rules and turned over sensitive computer information to a caller posing as a technical support person, according to a government study.

Sixty-one of the 102 people who got the test calls, including managers and a contractor, complied with a request that the employee provide his or her user name and temporarily change his or her password to one the caller suggested, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, an office that does oversight of Internal Revenue Service.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who lives near Boston, has been quietly enjoying the attention.

“I’m stunned that it’s taken this long,” said Mr. Lyons, 46, when a reporter interrupted his vacation in Maine on Sunday to ask him about Fake Steve. “I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.”

Mr. Lyons writes and edits technology articles for Forbes and is the author of two works of fiction, most recently a 1998 novel, “Dog Days.” In October, Da Capo Press will publish his satirical novel written in the voice of the Fake Steve character, “Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.”

Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation. The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn’t focus on Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus - delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services - is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.

We have concluded that we should find a new, separate organizational setting for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.