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Comment Anyone remember Centralia?! (Score 3, Insightful) 309

God, I wish I had mod points for you.

I live about 15 miles away from TMI and I have for 20 years. I've never felt unsafe or felt like I was in danger. People seems to enjoy comparing TMI to being a potential Chernobyl, but there's simply no way that the two can even be compared.

On the other hand, head up to Centralia, PA where the whole town has been demolished because of a fire that has been running through the ignition of a natural, coal vein. A fire ignited some coal, and now the whole town has been abandoned, homes have been razed, there are very few buildings to speak of, there are dangerous leaks of carbon monoxide and other lethal gases, the ground has swelled and cracked from the heat, and this fire is expected to last 250 years.

Now ... how much nuclear power is involved with Centralia? Ummmm.... NONE! A natural resource (accidentally ignited by humans) has destroyed a town completely. Personally, I put Centralia on a higher level of "disaster" than I do TMI.

Comment Re:Orion slave girls (Score 1) 169

That's a great "fan" movie as well. (Actually, it's directed by Tim Russ and has a ton of Star Trek actors in it from all of the series.) And I love your handle. There aren't many people around anymore who understand "POKE 53280,0". :)
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Sued for Fraud, Abuse & Legal Sham (torrentfreak.com)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "It's been a rough week for the RIAA as massive layoffs are about to cost many employees their job. On top of that, the anti-piracy outfit is being sued in North Carolina for abusing the legal system for its war on piracy, civil conspiracy, deceptive trade practices, trespassing and computer fraud, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Moursy. Named along with the record companies as defendants on the counterclaims are Safenet (formerly known as MediaSentry) and the RIAA. This case first started out as 'LaFace Records v. Does 1-38' until the court required the RIAA to break it up into 38 separate cases, then it morphed into 'SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Doe'. Only after the RIAA finally got its 'expedited' discovery did it become SONY v. Moursy. And from the looks of things, it has a long, long way to go. The RIAA hasn't even filed its answer to the counterclaims, yet, but is making a motion to dismiss them on the grounds of legal insufficiency. Sound like a good investment of record company resources, anyone?"

Comment Trying to stop tourism? (Score 1) 734

Isn't this what a passport is for? Is the U.S. government actively trying to stop tourism? How is this supposed to be any safer than ... oh, I don't know .. highly porous borders to the north and south, not to mention two really large oceans on either side? The idiocy of a government trying to look as though it's protecting its citizens shows itself once again.

Comment Re:And (Score 5, Interesting) 299

Oh, you mean on the Comcast lines that were partially funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars that were given to Comcast (and others) to get the Internet infrastructure to reach as many people as possible? And now those lines that were funded by the public are to become new profit centers under the guise of "network management"? And you don't have a problem with that?

How about instead Comcast actually do what they were supposed to do and build capable infrastructure that has enough bandwidth for everyone to do anything?

Personally, I would love for the General Accounting Office to take a nice, close look at Comcast's finances to find out exactly where that taxpayer money went to. Looks more like it went into Comcast's advertising budget so that they could oversell their capacity instead of putting it into the hardware that could have prevented all of this in the first place.

Verizon has millions of miles of dark fibre and have said numerous times that they have plenty of bandwidth as it is. What's Comcast's excuse?
Government

Submission + - Help me fight the swiss dmca. (no-dmca.ch)

pyalot writes: "The swiss goverment has passed a law that would make it impossible to cirvumvent effective copy protection measures. I have created a page to inform and organize a resistance against this law. If we collect 50'000 signatures until the 24th of January however, we can force a national vote on this law. Help me in any way that you can fight this law. I was first made aware of this two days ago by this article on slashdot."
Communications

Submission + - More digging damage during Verizon installs

netbuzz writes: "These kinds of things happen to any company that digs a lot of trenches and drills a lot of holes in the sides of houses ... but they seem to be happening a lot more to Verizon than others as of late. A fire in Massachusetts, billowing smoke near Philadelphia, and now three gas leaks in Pennsylvania and yard full of raw sewage in, well, we don't really know where that one happened.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19487"
Security

Submission + - Texas A&M malware injector facing jail time (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: "Apparently his computer science degree didn't include a morals minor. The FBI today said a graduate of Texas A & M University was convicted of recklessly accessing and causing damage to the protected computer system of his former alma mater.Luis Castillo, 23, who graduated with a Bachelor's degree in computer science from Texas A & M University in December 2006, admitted to recklessly gaining unauthorized access to the University's network and capturing 133,000 student and employees Net ID's and passwords. As a result of the intrusions and injection of the malicious software by Castillo, the University incurred a loss of over $67,000 in its efforts to protect students and faculty from the illegal or fraudulent use of private account information, including the retrieval of the captured files. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19488"
Google

Submission + - Cops using Google Earth to find Marijuana (news.com)

mytrip writes: "When a Wisconsin man was arrested last October on suspicion of harvesting 18 pounds of marijuana, it was partly thanks to Google Earth.

The sheriff's deputies who pulled the man over found, in addition to what they estimated was at least $63,000 worth of pot, a GPS unit around his neck that was filled with a series of local coordinates, according to The Journal Times of Racine, Wis. After plugging those coordinates into Google Earth, the police were able to identify the location of several marijuana fields to which the man was allegedly connected.

While the cops would have been able to find the fields strictly based on the GPS coordinates, their use of Google Earth demonstrated just one way in which law enforcement agencies across the country and around the world are using the popular mapping service, both to fight crime and to offer valuable information to the public."

Nintendo

Submission + - Old people Wii themselves (quirkynews.co.uk)

angtang writes: Young-at-heart pensioners bored of bowls and bridge have started videogame competitions against each other at their retirement home. Senior citizens at the Sunrise Home in Birmingham have ditched their zimmerframes because they're hooked on the Nintendo Wii games console. Pensioners as old as 103 have been joining in the fun on the best-selling console, where gamers use a motion-sensitive controller to mimic sports like tennis, bowling, and boxing.

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