Founded in 1980, the Dallas Mavericks have won two division titles and one conference championship. According to Forbes Magazine, the Mavericks are the third most valuable basketball franchise in the United States, valued at approximately $463 million, surpassed only by the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers.[1]

The Celtics either dominated the league or played a large part in the playoffs in the late 1950s through the mid 1980s. After the death of their top draft pick Len Bias, just two days after the 1986 NBA Draft, the team fell into a steady decline, only making the playoffs four times from 1996 to 2007. The franchise has recently returned to prominence with the acquisition of power forward Kevin Garnett and shooting guard Ray Allen during the 2007 off-season. On June 17, 2008, the Boston Celtics won their 17th championship, beating the Los Angeles Lakers 4–2 in the 2008

The first PDA is considered to be the CASIO PF-3000 released in May 1983. GO Corp. was also pioneering in the field. The term was first used on January 7, 1992 by Apple Computer CEO John Sculley at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, referring to the Apple Newton..

In information technology, Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus standard to interface devices to a host computer. USB was designed to allow many peripherals to be connected using a single standardized interface socket and to improve the plug-and-play capabilities by allowing hot swapping, that is, by allowing devices to be connected and disconnected without rebooting the computer or turning off the device. Other convenient features include providing power to low-consumption devices without the need for an external power supply and allowing many devices to be used without requiring manufacturer specific, individual device drivers to be installed.

USB is intended to replace many legacy varieties of serial and parallel ports. USB can connect computer peripherals such as mice, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras, printers, personal media players, and flash drives. For many of those devices USB has become the standard connection method. USB was originally designed for personal computers, but it has become commonplace on other devices such as PDAs and video game consoles, and as a bridging power cord between a device and an AC adapter plugged into a wall plug for charging purposes. As of 2008, there are about 2 billion USB devices in the world.

The design of USB is standardized by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), an industry standards body incorporating leading companies from the computer and electronics industries. Notable members have included Agere (now merged with LSI Corporation), Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Intel, NEC, and Microsoft.

The story centers on John Coffey, an almost seven-foot tall black man who is convicted of raping and killing two small white girls. He is notable because of his size and also for his strange behavior. Besides John Coffey, there are two other prisoners on the cell block during the main period the book focuses on: Eduard Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist and murderer who is cowardly and weak-minded, and William Wharton, a wild and dangerous multiple murderer, determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Looking back, Paul also describes his experiences with a Washita Cherokee murderer named Arlen Bitterbuck, nicknamed “The Chief”, and Arthur Flanders, nicknamed “The Pres”, an insurance executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud. The story also features Mr. Jingles, an unnaturally intelligent mouse who appears early in the novel and befriends Delacroix. The mouse learns various tricks and appears to follow commands. Delacroix insists that the mouse whispers things in his ear.

Paul and the other guards are antagonized throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys aggravating the prisoners and tries to kill Mr. Jingles on more than one occasion. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the nephew of the governor. However, when he is offerred a place at the nearby Briar Ridge mental institution as a secretary, Paul thinks they have finally got rid of him. But Percy informs Paul and his colleagues that he is not going to leave until he is “put up front”–allowed to supervise an execution. Paul allows him to take charge over the execution of Eduard Delacroix. Percy is supposed to soak a sponge in saltwater and tuck it inside the electrode cap to be strapped onto Delacroix’s head (to draw the electricty to the brain to kill him faster and with less pain), but his resentment of the man leads him to omit this step. As a result, when the switch is thrown, the electric current causes Delacroix to catch fire and he suffers an agonizing death.

Over time, Paul realizes that there is something special about John Coffey, as it is revealed that he possesses mystical healing abilities. These powers heal Paul’s urinary tract infection and Mr. Jingle’s broken body after Percy Wetmore almost kills him. Paul also realizes that Coffey is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him, and all over the world. The guards (not including Percy) drug William Wharton and lock Percy into the padded restraint room. They then smuggle Coffey off the prison site and take him to the warden’s wife, where he manages to cure her deadly brain tumor using his magical abilities. When they return to The Mile, Percy is released from the restraint room and agrees to move to the Briar Ridge secretarial job straight away. However, as he is leaving, John Coffey passes the “disease” which he took out of the warden’s wife onto Percy. Percy goes mad and shoots Wharton to death, then falls into a comatose state from which he never recovers. He is later transferred to Briar Ridge, but as a patient rather than a secretary.

Although Paul eventually discovers that Coffey was innocent of the murders (which were, it turns out, the work of William Wharton), Coffey elects to die anyway to escape the cruelty of the world. Near the end of the book, it is revealed that those healed by Coffey gain an unnatural lifespan. In the end, Mr. Jingles lives to be 64 and dies of old age in Paul’s nursing home and Paul reveals to the reader how his wife died. Paul also states that he is 104 years old and wondering just how much longer he will live. The book ends with this quote:

“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.”