The NCAA sets up shop in Knoxville, what Donny Trump can't buy and bad news for "Heroes" fans

- The NCAA needed a new place to take up residence after wrapping up its business at USC and it appears Myles Brand and Co. have found that place in Knoxville, Tenn. Spending years all but camped out on the Southern Cal campus looking into violations in both the men’s basketball and football programs had to give the NCAA and its investigators a sense of purpose and a reliable constant in their lives. The investigation into the misdeeds of Reggie Bush, O.J. Mayo and Co. is now over, but the NCAA has a very similar mess on its hands at the University of Tennessee. The probe of the UT football program is well underway and centers around secondary recruiting violations that allegedly occurred under former coach Lane Kiffin. The football team has admitted to committing six secondary violations during Lane Kiffin's year as coach, including the reported appearances of “hostesses” at high school football games. But no one program should have to bear that burden on its own and in the spirit of solidarity, the UT men’s basketball program has thrust itself into the NCAA’s crosshairs with alleged recruiting violations of its own. NCAA representatives are looking into excessive telephone calls and the use of unauthorized phones to contact recruits, according to sources close to the investigation. The program was already entangled in a web of shady recruiting because of its involvement with Kansas freshman Josh Selby, whose eligibility is under review by the NCAA. Investigators from the NCAA have already met with Volunteers head coach Bruce Pearl and associate head coach Tony Jones, but Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton is refusing to comment on the investigation at this point. However, Hamilton hasn’t held off on administering his own brand of justice to Pearl. The charismatic coach will have his pay reduced by $1.5 million over five years and is prohibited from participating in off-campus recruiting for one year. Pearl himself admitted to university officials that he had provided incorrect information about the number of phone calls he and his staff had made to recruits. He addressed the violations at a news conference and conjured up a few tears as part of his explanation. "It's serious what we did," Pearl said. "The worst thing is how we handled it. I apologize from the bottom of my heart that I let everyone down. I let my family down, the university down, our fans down, and I let my players down. I have a responsibility to lead by example, and I expect more from myself, and so should you.” In addition to Pearl’s salary being slashed, assistants Tony Jones, Steve Forbes and Jason Shay will also have their salaries cut by 25 percent and be subjected to off-campus recruiting restrictions during the next year. To put a nice capper on a great week, the university also received a letter from the NCAA on Friday, notifying the Volunteers of an official investigation into the entire athletic department. Have a fun weekend, Knoxville………

- There are several different angles from which to view Donald Trump's offer to buy the lower Manhattan site where a Muslim group plans to build an Islamic community center, but so far the only one we seem to be hearing about is the one that paints Donny T. as a narcissistic egomaniac whose sole focus is keeping his name and face in the spotlight as much as possible. Trump made the offer in a supposed attempt to mediate the dispute over the controversial mosque and community center to be built two block from the former World Trade Center site, but the offered wasn’t exactly welcomed by the land’s current owners. Hisham Elzanaty, an investor in the property, said through his attorney that the offer is just a "pathetic" attempt to get publicity. Attorney Wolodymyr Starosolsky slammed Trump’s proposal as a self-serving sham and revealed that his client has received other offers, but has declined them. Oh, Elzanaty also doesn’t consider Trump’s offer to be a real one and plans to hold on to the property because its value is likely to increase going forward. Whether he’ll get more than the 25 percent above the amount he and the other current owners paid for it that Trump offered is hard to say, but given the controversy around the site, don’t rule it out. The final word on any sale is in the hands of Elzanaty, who owns more than 51 percent of the property. Under the terms of Trump’s offer, he would purchase to property with the guarantee that if a mosque is to be built, it will be located at least five blocks further from the World Trade Center site. The man who also unleashed one of the all-time great rip jobs of a public figure (his verbal murdering of Rosie O’Donnell several years ago) promised to pay cash for the site, with an immediate closing. Trump did not say what he would do with the property if he purchased it, but he did explain why he was making the offer. "I am making this offer as a resident of New York and citizen of the United States, not because I think the location is a spectacular one (because it is not), but because it will end a very serious, inflammatory and highly divisive situation that is destined, in my opinion, to only get worse," Trump wrote. "Hopefully, something good can happen!" Based on the response to his offer, that something good isn’t going to include the addition of the Park51 property to a Trump Group portfolio that includes a number of high-rises in Manhattan and casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Instead, it remains full-speed ahead for the proposed Islamic center that will include a prayer room, a performing arts center, gym, a swimming pool and other public spaces. So even though you have my unwavering support for life over your blast job on Rosie, Donald, it appears that not everyone is in our corner………

- Will the joys of being a PC owner never cease? As a Mac fan, I have no worries about the virus and worm-centric woes that so often beset users of Windows-based computers, but it certainly is fun mocking those people. The latest storm on the horizon for PC users is a new worm with the subject line of "Here you have" and "Just for you" that is built to exploit users' address books to rapidly spread via email. The worm has already snipered major corporate targets such as ABC, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Google and NASA. It features text offering supposed links to documents or adult movies, but the link actually points to a malicious program file that is disguised as a PDF file, hosted on the Internet. What appears to be a PDF is actually an .scr -- Windows screensaver -- file containing malicious code, and executing it installs a worm on the user's computer. The worm’s creator worked around the fact that screen saver files are blocked as attachments by Windows-based systems, which explains why this worm uses links. The impact of the worm has been substantial enough to warrant an incident report from the U.S. Computer Readiness Team (US CERT), which has warned that, "These attacks have the potential to prevent, at a minimum, the efficient operations of U.S. Government email systems." So what are the effects and symptoms that could tip off a user to the fact that their computer has been infected? Well, aside from realizing that they are a technologically deficient fool using the world’s worst operating system instead of a Mac, a user may see that his or her antivirus program have been disabled or have people from their address book question them about a bizarre email sent from their account. All it takes for a computer to become infected is opening the folder containing the malware on the target computer. While no one is certain what the worm’s greater purpose is, security experts believe that the overarching goal is stealing some sort of information from infected machines. Some of the malware components downloaded during the extract passwords from other applications on the PC, so those observations seem on point. Security experts recommend disabling network sharing, local network access and Internet access for infected computers and blocking all outbound traffic to domains and IP addresses involved in the attack to prevent the attack from downloading malware in the event that clueless users click the link. The one silver lining is that the original .scr file used in the attacks is no longer online, although variants of it could soon spring up…………

- Welcome back, caste system, I had forgotten you still existed! Yes, you are an outdated relic of the past, a dehumanizing structure placing people in social classes and not allowing them to rise up through those classes, but I still love you. And so it is with great joy that I report India’s intentions to hold a full count of its citizens and their castes, the country's first since 1931. The stamp of approval for this much-needed measure came from Prime minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet, which on Thursday approved proposals to hold the count separately next year after the ongoing general census is over. The central focus of the count will be quantifying low-caste groups called Other Backward Classes (OBCs), which a government-appointed commission in 1980 reported made up 52 percent of the population. India hasn’t conducted such a count since it was a colony under British rule, almost 80 years ago. Once it gained its independence in 1947, India selected only two of its most disadvantaged communities in its decennial population calculations instead of listing all of them from Hinduism's complex caste hierarchy. Right, because who can be bothered to fully count the lower classes? It’s jut a hassle that’s not worth anyone’s effort. So what has changed to bring about a count that actually bothers to count all of the people in the country? That would be increased pressure from regional political parties drawing support from the disenfranchised communities that have been excluded from previous counts. Advocates of the caste-based classifications say the exercise will help the downtrodden grab their legitimate piece of the pie, so to speak. It is worth pointing out that India's constitution outlaws discrimination on the basis of castes, which date back thousands of years. The government has actually undertaken numerous initiatives to elevate low-caste groups, including reservations in government jobs, but to no avail. As always, there are critics opposing the plan and those critics argue that a caste-based survey would jeopardize national integration. A campaign called Meri Jati Hindustani, translated as My Caste is Indian, contends on its Web site that "It is extremely distressing that now, after 60 years, the government appears to be inclined to revive the old British colonial practice of caste enumeration. Inclusion of caste in the census will cause deep fissures and divisions in the society, and weaken the sense of Indian nationhood.” And since when are we against reviving ugly parts of our past, hmm………..

- Umm, about that possible movie to bring a sense of closure to NBC’s canceled drama Heroes…..don’t count on it actually happening. After the once-popular series that saw a rapid decline of its ratings in its second, third and fourth seasons was officially canceled in the spring, fans held out hope that series creator Tim Kring and the network would come together for a two-hour made-for-TV movie to tie up loose ends and put a more satisfying capper on the series than Season 4’s so-so, open-ended finale left off with. It’s the same closure that fans of canceled cult favorites like Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars (fans like me) have held out for and as of yet, haven’t received. Unfortunately, it would seem that Heroes will meet the same fate because a source close to the show confirmed this week that NBC is not moving forward with a movie that would wrap up the series. Up ‘til now, there has always been talk about giving Kring a chance to help fans say goodbye to their favorite super-powered characters, but apparently the situation never made it beyond the point of talk. Hope for a movie was highest right after the series was canceled in May, but by June, Kring was already singing a less optimistic tune. “No decision has been made,” he said. “But the Heroes brand is an extremely broad premise. It was a premise about ordinary people, an undisclosed number of people all over the world, who were waking up to these extraordinary abilities. Any number of stories could happen around that. We never posited a single ending or a single premise. It wasn’t about getting off of an island or stopping something from happening. We told stories in volumes that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Those volumes could go on and on and on with many different characters. As a result, that Heroes universe is something that can be tapped into again in many ways.” At this point, Kring seems to be primarily focused on his next project – creating interactive content for Nokia. So maybe a series wrap-up could take place on the Web if NBC elects not to pursue such an endeavor. The relationship between Kring and the Peacock doesn’t seem all that positive anyhow, as he sold a script called III to the network for the 2010-11 season but it never moved past the development stage. Sorry for the bad news, fellow Heroes fans, but I don’t make the truth, I just relay it………