Terry Childs didn't have any criminal intent either, and he caused a lot less harm. Look where that got him... I no longer have any faith in the "justice" system.

My wife works at a Credit Union and gets these types of things all the time. There are a few things you can do.

1. Get a Bank or Credit Union that gives a damn. Investigate before you choose one. A good one will monitor your activity and shut it down and call you when something goes wonky (like charges from all over the place or charges from known fraudulent organizations). When it does go wrong a good one will either fix it quick or possibly give you provisional credit to get you buy until they do fix it.

2. Use a real Credit Card for most items and have the discipline to pay it off each month. Credit Cards are held to a higher standard than debit because it's *their* money and not *yours*. If you challenge a charge they have to credit you right away while they research it, and the burden of proof is on them. As a side benefit you might get mileage or an annual rebate.

3. Use your debit card for small ticket items -- lunch, gas, etc. Don't keep more than you're willing to lose in the account, a few hundred maybe.

Show me where it says anything remotely like that in the US Constitution. The only one covering your ass is you. They do have powers to regulate monopolies in interstate commerce, but until Verizon is declared one that doesn't apply.

Besides the above point, I wouldn't call it "intercontinental" because he didn't leave from a continent. He left from a plane 6500 feet above the continent. Hell, starting from that high you could probably sail an unpowered glider across the straight of gibraltar.

It doesn't have to come down to paranoia, it just means realizing that you're vulnerable. Realize that the power could go out at any time, for an extended period, and there's nothing you can do about it. Make minor preparations so that you can deal and you're good. If power means that much to you and you HAVE to have 100% availability, then pay to go the datacenter/hospital route. The electrical company does have an interest in getting you running again ASAP, so you don't need to be an island. It comes down to risk management and knowing which risks to take. That's really what life is about when you get down to it.

I was astonished to find that in WA state, many geek jobs are not exempt from OT. http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=296-128-535

"Supercomputer software models predict that swine flu will likely go pandemic sometime next week"

Source, please? Otherwise it's just more overblown panic-inducing hype. Neither the linked article, or the article it links to say this. In fact, the second article says "So far, we haven't even identified the incubation period or how long people are infectious," and if that's the case I don't see how any computer model could be accurate.

Welcome to last year...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/14/2138205

Resurrect would imply he's getting the original working again. This is more like a clone...

Great, now I've got a Computer version of Jursassic Park running around in my head.

That might work for 6 months of the year, but we get these things called summers... We can hit 100 degrees or more here in Washington State. Even Alaska gets warm in the summer (Fairbanks record high of 99F).