Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has issued an ultimatum to Occupy Boston Protesters: Leave by midnight, or the city will force you out.

The news comes just a day after a Suffolk Superior Court judge lifted a restraining order that kept the city from raiding the tent city at Dewey Square.

The ultimatum brings a likely end to the country’s longest-running occupation and sets up an equally likely late night conflict with Boston police today.

The Sacred Space tent at Occupy Boston, now the oldest Occupy encampment still standing in the United States. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

According to McIntyre, “the injunction is denied because, while Occupy Boston protesters may be exercising their expressive rights during the protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to seize and hold the land on which they sit.”

With visibility blocked by umbrellas and cameras, the general mood of the assembly was one of excitement and resolve rather than panic. Many reported that connections within the Boston Police Department said that no raid would take place last tonight. Ben Wish, a lawyer for Occupy Boston speaking at the General Assembly, assured those assembled that no police action will be taken immediately. But others, especially non-locals, sent different reports. @RyanRiceLA, for example, tweeted “#OccupyBoston has SWAT staging 4 raid” and @Occupy_PolicePolice wrote “ALERT! Spec Ops Staging in BOSTON NOW!”

The city stated clearly on Wednesday that no police action was imminent.

In the wake of the decision, a spokesperson for Mayor Thomas Menino’s office said:

“We are pleased with Judge McIntyre’s strong decision to repeal the restraining order that prohibited the City of Boston from removing the Occupy Boston camp at Dewey Square. We applaud the judge for clearly recognizing the City’s authority to protect all of our residents, including those currently at Dewey Square. Our first priority has always been and will always be to ensure the public’s health and safety. As outlined in the court proceeding and affirmed in the judge’s ruling, the conditions at Dewey Square have deteriorated significantly and pose very real health and safety risks. The city strongly encourages the Occupy movement to abide by the Rose Kennedy Greenway regulations and remove their tents and refrain from camping in that area. Today’s decision provides clarity surrounding Occupy Boston’s status at Dewey Square and the city will act appropriately to fulfill our duty to preserve the public’s peace and safety.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the National Lawyers Guild-Massachusetts Chapter released a statement which said, in part:

“We are disappointed with today’s decision and are reviewing the decision with our clients to determine all their options. The Occupy Boston community is making a significant contribution to national discussion of important issues – not merely through what protestors are saying, but their modeling of an alternative to what they see as imbalances and injustices in our society. Just because the court ruled today that the city can shut down the encampment at Dewey Square does not mean that it should. As city officials have repeatedly – and recently – stated, there is no immediate need to remove Occupy Boston from Dewey Square. If city officials decide, nonetheless, to do so, how they go about it also sends an important message. Occupy Boston has always been a peaceful political protest, aimed at drawing attention to the growing inequalities in our society. At a minimum, Boston city officials and the police must exercise restraint and respect with regard to the Occupy Movement and the concerned citizens it represents attention devoted to Occupy sites, and most articles, per journalistic custom, restate the Occupy position…With the exception of the heavy-handed removal of demonstrators from the Rose Kennedy Greenway early in the morning on Oct. 11, Boston has already become a model of respect for freedom of speech to other cities around the country, where Occupy encampments have been broken up with levels of force that have even shocked people who were not involved in the Occupy movement or sympathetic to its aims. Boston, as part of the long New England tradition of town meeting and grassroots democracy, has an important role to play again in how it responds to today’s decision. We believe that Boston can – and must – set an example for the entire nation in protecting the rights of Occupy Boston participants.”

A activist who is the principle maintainer of the Sign Tent at Occupy Boston and uses the name “Guy Sands” when talking to the press explained, “I feel, personally, based on what the mayor has put out consistently, that they’re going to act within the near future to remove Occupy Boston from Dewey Square for violations that they won’t let Occupy Boston remedy.”

He added: “I feel this ruling is somewhat confusing in that the violence towards occupy seems to be the rational used to say that the ‘public’ doesn’t understand the message and that the police reaction is why she judges that Occupy Boston is not expressive speech. I also think the statement in ruling ‘There is scant evidence of how the occupation began’ is foolish due to the sheer number of media articles based in fact, reporting the entire occupation. I also feel that due to the Mayor, police superintendent, fire marshal, and code inspector all making statements about removing Occupy Boston have spoken for themselves regardless of the Mayor’s statement today that there is no plan in place to remove Occupy Boston.”

Speaking at the rainy and muddy General Assembly, Occupy Boston lawyer Ben Wish said he will appeal Judge McIntyre’s decision today. When he mentioned the possibility that Occupy Boston protest might move to the Harbor Islands – the only legal campground within city limits – the crowd responded with laughter. Jeff Fueur of the National Lawyers Guild, speaking at the same assembly, reiterated Wish’s belief that no raid will occur immediately.

Fourteen schools in Boston need to shape up or ship out.

Superintendent Carol R. Johnson unveiled a five-year strategic plan for the Boston Public Schools, outlining new direction and priorities for “closing access and achievement gaps and graduating all BPS students from high school>”

"The days of business as usual are over," said Johnson. "If we intend to see all, not just some, of our schools become centers of excellence we must take bold and swift action. Every student in our city has the right to a high-quality education. I believe this plan is the road map that will lead us to new heights, where Boston can serve as a model for every urban school district in America."

Johnson identified 14 schools that are under-performing:

• William Blackstone Elementary School in the South End
• Paul Dever Elementary School in Dorchester
• Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School in Roxbury
• E. Greenwood K-8 School in Hyde Park
• Curtis Guild Elementary School in East Boston
• John P. Holland Elementary School in Dorchester
• John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Jamaica Plain
• William Monroe Trotter Elementary School in Dorchester
• Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury
• Maurice J. Tobin K-8 School in Roxbury
• Henry Dearborn Middle School in Roxbury
• Harbor Middle School in Dorchester
• The English High School in Jamaica Plain
• Odyssey High School in South Boston

Johnson wants to focus on strengthening teaching and leadership among school administrators, copying best practices at “working” schools and looking at ways to streamline services throughout the school district.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino, fresh off his re-election victory and a recent knee injury, sent a letter to the Boston School Committee in support of the Superintendent’s proposals.

"There may be some who will find it easier and safer to sit back, to stall — to use our stretched dollars as an excuse to postpone this critical work," Mayor Menino wrote. "To these people, I say time has run out. We can no longer wait to take action. From this day forward, we must collectively re-commit ourselves and pool our energies. With diminishing resources, it will be all the more important to think creatively and to rely on those measures that are cost effective, but reap big returns."

The Boston e-mail scandal shook city hall during this pivotal election season. Here at Blast, we’re pretty tech-minded. So we went to some e-mail experts for some technical analysis on this story.

We talked to Barracuda Networks, a California-based company best known for its spam and virus firewalls. The company also offers storage, backup and e-mail archiving solutions.

The controversy originated from a Boston Globe request to review e-mails from advisers to Mayor Thomas M. Menino. But city hall could only account for 18 e-mails sent or received in a six month period from Michael J. Kineavy, Menino’s Cabinet chief of policy and planning and one of his closest advisers. City hall acknowledged that Kineavy deletes his e-mails on a daily basis, which circumvents the city’s nightly backup process. The city has said Kineavy’s actions exploited a glitch in the backup process because he both deleted his messages from his inbox and cleared his deleted items folder.

Government officials’ e-mails are a matter of public record.

Kineavy has since taken an unpaid leave of absence. But could this all have been prevented?

After talking with Barracuda and doing some of our own research, it is clear that City Hall addressed the issue of preserving its e-mail messages incorrectly. Boston’s backup process is a poor solution for archiving e-mails, and it runs contrary to accepted best practices.

“Relying on users to save e-mails (i.e. ‘do the right thing’) and not delete e-mails is prone to failure as people can mistakes,” said Barracuda spokeswoman Kylie Heintz.

Having faith in traditional backup systems is not the right answer. Even without the “glitch” that allowed e-mails to be permanently deleted, the City of Boston’s approach to ensuring all e-mails are saved by backing up the e-mail system was not ideal.

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There is a functional difference between “archiving” and “backing up.”

Archiving is like storing e-mails in a filing cabinet in your office or an alphabetized library card catalog. Backup is like locking them all in a safe deposit box in the bank, behind a time-lock and a password that only the bank manager knows.

Backup systems typically compress all the files and messages into a single file — similar to “zipping” your photos so they take up less room on your hard drive. This creates another problem, because it’s more difficult to search inside these compressed files.

Even if Kineavy hadn’t deleted his e-mails, it still may have been difficult for the city to find, isolate and release his messages.

A backup process is routine, predictable and easy for an end-user to avoid. These processes rely on the end-user’s system. Products like the Barracuda Message Archiver and many of its competitors completely take the end-user out of the equation. An archiver is ideal in these situations, because these products save messages at the server level. Whenever an e-mail is sent or received by the server, the archiver takes it, copies it, saves it and makes a search-able index so that messages can be found later on.

Since public officials’ e-mails need to be saved, it is expected that they will need to be searched through at some point in time — like if a journalist requests copies of them. Backup systems are not designed with archiving in mind. The only way to access e-mails from backup systems is to restore the backup file and then manually search through the results. This is very time consuming, error prone and expensive.

Several cities in Massachusetts use hardware archiving solutions, and Heintz confirmed that some used Barracuda’s Message Archiver. None of the cities would go on the record for Blast, however, given the controversy surrounding e-mail

Boston’s backup script was a good solution for a disaster or system failure, but not necessarily the best solution for a public records request. Archiving is a superior method for public records requests.

“Organizations have needs for both” according to Aseem Asthana, Message Archiver Product Manager at Barracuda Networks. Backup is vital to organizations. If something happens to an e-mail server, or a natural disaster wipes the server out, a backup can be used to restore all the data present at the time of the backup. But pulling individual files is more difficult. Often, an information technology professional is required to restore individual files from a backup.

An archiver, as opposed to a backup, allows e-mails to be accessed readily and seamlessly.

Menino’s office did not respond to a request to comment on this story.

We acknowledge that Barracuda is a for-profit company. Its Message Archiver starts at $1,999, but it would cost about 10 times that for a model amped up to serve a major city like Boston.

But it would also have saved a few headaches and maybe prevented Boston’s E-mailgate scandal.

John M. Guilfoil of the Blast staff contributed to this report.

Clarification: We changed the sentence “A backup process is routine, predictable and avoidable.” to “A backup process is routine, predictable and easy for an end-user to avoid.”

Just when you thought the fashion world was nothing but tall, thin beauties and the glamorous life, it took a trip to the the library.

The Boston Public Library launched its Literacise exhibit on Saturday morning, inviting families to participate in the new trend. Mayor Thomas M. Menino was even in attendance to help with the ribbon cutting ceremony.

“It’s always great to be back at the library,” he said.

Literacise combines reading and exercising in an effort to develop more interest in reading for children. Irene Smalls, author of “Jonathan and His Mommy,” partnered with the BPL to put on the program. Her book became a large play area were the kids could read the story and follow along by bunny hopping, zigzagging and more, between the blown-up pages.

So what does child education have to do with fashion? Students from Lasell College’s Fashion Design and Production program were asked to design something based on a book.

Lasell junior Amanda Saladino circulated around the room with her model, Emmalyn Anderson, wearing a swimsuit inspired by Marcus Pfister’s “The Rainbow Fish.”

“Professor Mary Rupert brought this (project) too all the fashion students over the summer,” she said. Her final piece was made primarily from recycled newspaper, but also used paint, stained glass, shell and gold Lycra.

In a statement about her design, Saladino said, “As a child I found the book visually stimulating and was instinctively drawn towards the beauty and individuality of the Rainbow Fish. I considered him generous for giving away his scales and found it heartwarming that he gained friends through sharing.”

Though she added that as an adult she sees a more materialistic message in the story, the end result was heartwarming nonetheless. The suit got smiles from the children and Anderson was later accompanied by a pint-sized model in her own paper-made, fish scale inspired dress.

And so, Post-Boston Fashion Week reminded everyone that it’s not all glamour and guest lists – it’s about giving back to the city as well.

Photos: Brennan Degan for Blast. Licensing.

Most of us spent this past Fourth of July with friends, booze, barbecue and fireworks. The holiday is anchored by gluttonous celebration: stuffing your face with hot dogs and drinking the extra beer (or ten) is completely customary. As young people feverishly enjoyed our day off from work, rarely do we consider the deep historical meaning behind our partying.

Historic New England owns and operates 36 historic homes and landscapes spanning five states.

Carl Nold, President and CEO of the regional heritage organization, Historic New England, thinks that although we may not have considered it in depth this past Saturday, we should think about what the celebration was truly about.

“At a time when there are so many controversies around the world it is important to recognize how important our freedom is” he said in a recent interview with Blast.‚  “Too often we take that for granted, because it’s always been there. But it was hard fought.”

Nold runs an entire organization dedicated to bringing the people of New England an understanding of our history. It was founded 99 years ago to help preserve buildings that were being destroyed by rapid development.‚  Currently, they have 36 historic site museums in the five New England states, ranging from 17^th century buildings to the Walter Gropius house of 1938.‚  They have more than 1.2 million books in their library and archive as well as the largest collection of domestic items anywhere.

Finding history undyingly fascinating, Nold is bothered that people associate history with stodgy school lessons.

“History truly is everything that has happened even up to a minute ago” he said. “If you think of it that way, it becomes more personal.‚  It is about you and your life. It isn’t just out there in the past.”‚  Seeing history from this perspective, Nold urges young people to get more involved in learning about the past, especially in New England, where the foundations of this country were built. He sees an understanding of our history as not only beneficial but completely essential, especially in this trying economic time. “It can bring us a better understanding of why things are the way they are” he siad.

One interesting site to check out is the exhibit on New England kitchens at the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord, which chronicles the importance of kitchens in American culture, by exhibiting domestic items from the colonial times to the present.

You might not have been thinking of the Revolutionary War as you prepared your burgers for the grill last Saturday, but perhaps now you should revisit the kitchen, this time to learn something.

For more information about Historic New England visit their website at http://www.historicnewengland.org/ or follow them on twitter @HistoricNE.