An airline passenger rights advocate is accusing Delta Air Lines of hacking into her computer and e-mail accounts to sabotage her organization’s attempts to mandate basic services during flight delays.

Kate Hanni, a resident of California, is the founder of the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, an organization lobbying for federal laws that require airlines to provide bathroom access, clean air, and access to medical treatment when passengers are held up for hours on the tarmac. The legislation would also give passengers an option to exit the plane if they have been delayed on the tarmac for over three hours. Four versions of a “Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights of 2009″ are currently pending before Congress.

In a lawsuit filed in Houston, Texas on Tuesday, Hanni accuses the world’s largest airline carrier and an aviation consulting firm of conspiring to breach her computer and email in order to derail her lobbying efforts. She seeks a minimum of $11m in damages.

According to court documents, Hanni claims earlier this year she began exchanging emails with Frederick Foreman, an analyst with Virginia-based Metron Aviation who was researching US government airline surface delay data. During their correspondence, both swapped data and information about surface delays without explicit permission from Metron, of which Delta is a client.

Hanni said her PC and American Online email account were both accessed illegally this summer, with AOL confirming the email breach. Some of her data was copied to an unknown location, and other files were corrupted and rendered useless.

The plot thickens in Foreman’s affidavit. He claims that on September 25, 2009, Metron executives confronted him with “what appeared to be hacked and stolen email communications” between Hanni and himself, as well as two media contacts. The emails were sent from his private accounts on MSN and AOL and not sent through Metron’s internal email system, he claims.

Foreman states in his sworn affidavit that the executive informed him the emails were sent to the Metron from Delta and that the airline was “mad and upset” Hanni had been provided with the flight delay information. Foreman claims he tried to explain that the data was publicly available online from US government statistics, but was still fired and escorted off the premises.

When reached for comment, Delta flatly stated, “the allegation that we would hack an individual’s e-mail is absurd.”

Hanni claims Delta has a motive for seeking and destroying her data because if passenger rights bills are passed, airlines stand to lose over $40m in revenues in addition to millions more in accommodations for customers exiting planes during long delays. Currently, airlines are not restricted by law on how long planes can hold passengers on the tarmac.

Arhur Monderos is working in a company as antivirus software specialist and he runs his valuable blog where he helps you to choose best antivirus software for you computer.

If you have been using your laptop to play games or listen to music, you might be aware that the sound from a laptop typically sounds ‘tiny’. That is, it is nowhere near the audio quality of your Hi-Fi or TV. This article explores some ways in which you can boost your laptop audio for a better aural experience. You can play with the microphone jack, the headphone jack, as well as the line-in and line-out jacks.

1. Overview Most laptops come with a few connectivity options for audio. These include a microphone jack, headphone jack, as well as a line-in jack and line-out jack. We’ll take a look at each of these to understand how they can help improve your laptop audio experience.

2. Microphone Jack Your laptop should come with a microphone jack to record sounds. This is normally a woman connector on the laptop. This accepts a 1/8 inch mono-aural (i.e. single channel). Usually, you will want to connect a microphone that has an electric condenser plan – these are the finest types of microphones to connect.

3. Headphone Jack A headphone jack is really necessary for listening to music on your laptop. Most laptops are designed to admit a 1/8 inch or 3.5 mm headphone plug. This outputs an audio sign from your laptop thus you can enjoy movies and music from your laptop. Suitable headphones normally come with an impedance of 24 to 32 ohms. They can be directed to a set of external speakers (suitably amplified) to create the finest sound quality.

4. Line-in Jack Some laptops come with a line-in jack to allow you edit soundtracks or music. What happens is that the output of a portable audio device, tape recorder or stereo system is connected to your line-in jack. Some laptops also allow an external sound adapter to be connected via the USB port, instead of a line-in jack. You can then take in the audio and start using a software program to edit the sound.

5. Line-out Jack This is the reverse of a line-in jack. What happens here is that a sound signal is sent out from the laptop to an external device (with its own amplifier). An example would be a laptop output signal going to a music synthesizer.

Conclusion As you can see, there are a lot of ways you can boost laptop audio. You can connect manipulate sound by feeding it into a microphone jack, amplify sound by connecting a stereo system to the laptop or edit sound by using the line-in and line out jacks. If you’re interested in computer audio, you can pick up some good books on the topic and get yourself a high-end multimedia laptop. Until next time, good luck and happy computing!

Arhur Monderos is working in a company as antivirus software specialist and he runs his cool blog where he helps you to choose best antivirus software for you computer.

Travelling for a month in the Thailand southern and central islands, spending most of our time on the beach or underwater, we felt we need to get to know a bit of this country’s history and that is why we got to Ayutthaya.

The train’s journey from Bangkok took us only 1h but it was quite interesting as we sat opposite a Thai woman and her daughter which tried for the whole journey to talk to us (in Thai) leaving us exhausted to smile at her trying to explain that we would love to have a chat but we didn’t understand a thing of what she was saying and even when we took out our phrase book and pointed to her “sorry, I don’t understand” she was happy to carry on …. so why stopping her.

As usual, once arrived at the train station, we found ourselves surrounded once more by all taxi drivers but we decided to head on foot to see what would be our options. Just at the end of the small road opposite the train station, there was a ferry crossing the main river that encircles the heart of Ayutthaya and for only 4 THB dropped us to the other site.

After check in at the delightful Baan Lotus Guesthouse we determined to investigate the ruins of this World Heritage listed town (since1991) on two wheels: hiring a bicycle at just 30 THB each per daytime was absolutely the finest and more convenient way to enjoy a relaxing daytime zooming around the numerous historic sites, you only need to observe out not to bump into one of the few elephants taking tourists in and around the city.

There are thus numerous ruins to be seen in Ayutthaya which could sustain you occupied at least for a pair of days. We squeezed in our ‘tour de france’ several palaces generally within reach of the Grand Palace (included, called also the Ancient Palace), like the Wat Pra Si Sanphet, Wat Mahathat, Wat Ratchaburana, Wat Phra Ram, Wat Lokayasutharam (a big 42mt reclining Buddha) and few more, enough to absorb the history of this put and leave us some time to get our hands on some tasty bbq prawn and other delicious dishes at the local night market.

Definitely magical a visit to the ruins when the sun goes down, you will be amazed by the colours’ tone reflected by the sunset.

We were lucky to catch a glimpse of this 2mt long reptile (no idea how it is called) roaming around the ruins at Phra Ram Park.

Arhur Monderos is working in a company as antivirus software specialist and he runs his cool blog where he helps you to choose best antivirus software for you computer.