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Comment Re:Looks like ... (Score 3, Informative) 116

Timed release or whatever it's called. And the motorcycle part is just it: Motorcycles were forbidden there, but in none of her pictures was the motorcycle actually shown within the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, which was probably one of the first clues people had that the story of her taking a motorcycle through there alone was bogus. Second clue was when a Chernobyl travel-guide told she'd been on their tour group.
Now you might suggest its a conspiracy of them trying to cover up letting her in against rules, but Elena wrote on the site in response "I am being accused that it was more poetry in this story then reality. I partly accept this accusation, it still was more reality then poetry and it is why this site has millions of people visiting each month from the day when I put it online and I think I have right to say that people love it". If you go to the KiddOfSpeed website, you'll find a disclaimer from the person providing the hosting, "Regardless of what is true, this site has certainly made people think more about Chernobyl and this tragic disaster."
So it would seem the people with "vested interests" to accuse her of making up things include both herself and the person currently hosting the site.
Tours of the are have been available since 2002, and her website appeared in 2004. Wikipedia cites mainly Slashdot has having made the site famous. The site has ofcourse been changed numerous times since then with new pictures etc. Also Mary Mycio (who MAY have a vested interest in it) alleges many of the pictures are from books and different timeperiods.
So in short, yes Elena's KiddOfSpeed story was fantasy. The images were of Chernobyl, but staged and not what they purpoted to be. As it relates to THIS story, the "solitary woman on unauthorized exploration of forbidden area" has a chance of being a fantasy. Looking cursorily over the site it's hard to imagine those pics being from a public tour, though the lack of actual rocket engines on site makes it a remote possibility.

Comment Re:Looks like ... (Score 5, Interesting) 116

Elena aka KiddOfSpeed. They were bogus in that she took a guided tour and was not on a solitary motorcycle ride through the area as she had claimed on her site. In other words the photos weren't photoshopped, but everything else about it was fake. I was considering this possibility myself reading the headline; there must be guided tours into the Russian space-technology facilities as well. On the other hand it would not be hard to believe the facilities are not very secure or well guarded, and probably quite empty over the holidays.

Comment Re:Is it just me or epidemy of man made objs falls (Score 1) 121

While it's not quite "literally", add to that this, seen over much of central Europe on the Christmas eve. Curiously (and echoing somewhat the confusion on the other recent space-debris reports), news-outlets are following officials quoting it's either "99.9% certainly a meteorite" or the story about that having been the failed Meridian launch. Based on information from USSTRATCOM (ex NORAD) this was re-entry of the rocket stage from the successful ISS mission. Yet I don't think they've ever been quite this spectacular before!

Comment Re:COPV (Score 2) 192

Quick Googling now that I had time turned up this. It's the rocket body of the Soyuz SL-4 on TMA-22 mission that took US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to ISS on 16th November. Predicted re-entry location was in the sea south of Africa, but the predicted location isn't necessarily exact, plus there's several stages that would each break up across longer range. In any case it's certainly a good match for the vague "Mid November" reported.

Comment COPV (Score 5, Informative) 192

It's a COPV, see here or page 11 here. The wrapping has probably shielded it enough during the atmospheric re-entry and then ripped away, or it could be from lower altitude flight. In fact NASA and ESA have already studied this object, and most responsible news outlets have explained it along with the newsreport. The only real question is which mission or ship it is from, but unfortunately that might never be found out.

Comment Re:Where is your license mentioned? (Score 2) 240

If you take a quick look at the Drupal repository itself, you'll find the statement "Please note that all code which is committed into a Drupal repository must be covered under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or greater; the same as Drupal itself."
The only halfway interesting question out of this post seems to be, if you submit your work to a repository which requires all submissions to be GPL, will it be GPL even if you don't explictly declare it as such? I would assume not, as most high-profile GPL projects have been requiring signed GPL assignment papers from any major contributors.

This whole argument about the works license is, of course, mostly moot since obviously as the Drupal licensing FAQ http://drupal.org/licensing/faq puts it:
"Drupal modules and themes are a derivative work of Drupal. If you distribute them, you must do so under the terms of the GPL version 2 or later."

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