26387790
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Netflix appears to be down. I went to watch a streaming movie and couldn't log in any more. I tried changing my password to no avail — no password reset email was sent.
So I figured it was me, but I searched Twitter just to be sure. Sure enough, lots of other people are having the same problem.
Bankrupt finally?
24957148
submission
stevegee58 writes:
The financial blockade by financial firms like Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, and PayPal has finally caught up with Wikileaks.
Due to lack of funding Wikileaks has announced on its web site that they're temporarily ceasing publication.
23538688
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Last week's 5.9 earthquake that shook the mid-Atlantic states moved some nuclear waste casks at the North Anna nuke plant in Virginia. 25 of the casks, weighing 115 tons each and containing spent fuel rods, were shifted by 1 to 4 inches.
Luckily none of the containers were damaged.
23002166
submission
stevegee58 writes:
During trading today Apple briefly passed Exxon-Mobil as the largest S&P 500 company by market capitalization.
Kind of amazing when you think about it: a tech company actually larger than an oil company.
20044710
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Wind and ocean currents have pushed debris from the March 11 tsunami in Japan across the Pacific to the US west coast. Beach combers are now finding the leading edge of this debris field. It is estimated that the largest pieces of debris will arrive in a 1 to 3 year time frame.
19817348
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov was sentenced to 97 months in prison for stealing source code used in Goldman's high-frequency trading algorithms. Aleynikov was convicted late last year in Manhattan federal court.
16813918
submission
stevegee58 writes:
A former Fannie Mae contract programmer, Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, has been convicted of computer intrusion by a Federal jury.
On the day he was fired in 2008, Makwana planted a malicious script on one of the servers which was discovered days later by another engineer.
According to Federal officials, “The malicious code was designed to propagate throughout the network of computers and destroy all data, including financial, securities and mortgage information."
Sentencing is scheduled for December 8 where Makwana could receive 10 years in prison for the felony.
16628776
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Old zombies don't die, they just go to conventions.
Ever wonder who all those zombies really were and where they are now? The Wall Street Journal had a fun article about the zombie extras from Romero's original 1968 film, "Night of the Living Dead."
"Josephine Streiner, 92, is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She is also the oldest living ghoul from the 1968 horror classic "Night of the Living Dead."
...
To mark the film's 40th anniversary in 2008, she and the other zombies were invited to a Living Dead Festival in Evans City, Pa., where the movie was filmed, and met with fans from all over the country. It went so well, they gathered again last year. One loyal movie fan came from France."
16610174
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Slashdot readers may recall the case of a Maryland motorcyclist (Anthony Graber) arrested and charged with wiretapping violations (a felony) when he recorded his interaction with a Maryland State Trooper.
(http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/27/0212232/Facing-16-Years-In-Prison-For-Videotaping-Police)
Today, Judge Emory A Pitt threw out the wiretapping charges against Anthony Graber, leaving only his traffic violations to be decided on his October 12 trial date.
"The judge ruled that Maryland's wire tap law allows recording of both voice and sound in areas where privacy cannot be expected. He ruled that a police officer on a traffic stop has no expectation of privacy."
A happy day for freedom-loving Marylanders and Americans in general.
16477504
submission
stevegee58 writes:
I saw this article a few weeks ago and it didn't register until I saw a local news article about it.
I find this particularly disturbing because it's actual *bugs* not bacteria that are becoming resistant to our chemicals.
From the Yahoo article:
"Bedbugs, infesting U.S. households on a scale unseen in more than a half-century, have become largely resistant to common pesticides. As a result, some homeowners and exterminators are turning to more hazardous chemicals that can harm the central nervous system, irritate the skin and eyes or even cause cancer."
More recently, a book was returned to the Urbana, MD library and a staff member found bedbugs in it.
From the Frederick News Post:
"A case of bedbugs has left the book drop at the Urbana Regional Library closed since Friday.
Four to six of the insects were found Friday as library employees were sorting through some returned books, said Elizabeth Cromwell, community and corporate partnership manager with Frederick County Libraries."
15676906
submission
stevegee58 writes:
As if the Klingon opera described recently here at Slashdot weren't enough, here's an interesting offering for Shakespeare buffs:
The Washington Shakespeare Company (based in Arlington VA) will soon be performing selections from "Hamlet" and "Much Ado About Nothing" in Klingon.
15386748
submission
stevegee58 writes:
"North Korea appears to have added Facebook to other social networking sites it recently joined to ramp up its propaganda war against South Korea and the U.S."
I wonder what happens when you "poke" North Korea...
15004748
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famously known for his "series of tubes" description of the Internet, has apparently been killed in a plane crash in Alaska.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100810/ap_on_re_us/us_alaska_plane_crash
10940334
submission
stevegee58 writes:
My Google alert on privacy issues returned this tidbit today on reddit:
"QuipText is a service that lets iPhone users send picture messages to others over the internet. The service works by saving the image as a webpage on their server with its own unique URL and then texting the person in question the url. The only problem? They're only using 5 alphanumeric, noncase-sensitive characters for the URL, meaning it can be brute forced in a few seconds."
So all those naughties the users uploaded via this service were pawed through, lulled over and used for harassment of Facebook users.
