News of the Web

Random Interwebs News

Drunk Man Nearly Hit By *Two* Trains
Simple story. A drunk driver got his van stuck on some train tracks and then got out and stood staring vacantly while the oncoming train sped toward him. A Good Samaritan type pulled him off the track in time to prevent Train A from plowing into him, as it did his car... which Train B hit a few moments later, coming in the opposite direction, creating a big splashy fireball. Both trains were traveling at 60 mph.

The Darwin Awards are cheated once again.

Source: ABC Local 7 Chicago

I'm Sure He Cares, Too
A federal judge has reiterated that the Navy cannot use its high powered sonar in environmentally sensitive areas, due to the evidence that it explodes the ears of whales and so forth. After the last ruling, Bush signed a waiver saying, no matter what courts say, the Navy can, in fact, use the sonar however it pleases. The judge has sent a ruling back, noting that he does not, in fact, have the power to waive away the law like that.

Watch and see if he cares. The Navy, maybe. El Presidente? Nope.

Source: Raw Story

Political Prosecution Continues
So Governor Siegelman's saga continues, with the Bush administration putting the kybosh on a 60 minutes story about how, mysteriously, the one Democrat in a corruption probe was the only person to face prosecution, has been held without bail on appeal, has an obviously hostile judge, etc etc.

Honestly.

Source: Atlargely.com

Repairs
Repairs are beginning on the series of internet cables (now up to 4) severed by unknown causes around the Middle East, which is good. They're hoping to get a better idea what the problem is when they haul the severed slices up, naturally.

This whole situation is odd, especially as Egypt is now saying that it wasn't a ship anchor that caused their outage.. at least, no ship was supposed to be there.

Weeeeeird.

A lot of people have made some vaguely hysterical speculation about terrorism, or this being the first salvo in a US military campaign, but I'm not buying it. As terrorist acts go, these are remarkably non-terrorizing. It would seem to involve a lot of work, and isn't actually making much of an impact. If you want to terrorize people, you disrupt their daily lives with VIOLENCE, not inconvenience. Blow up marketplaces, shoot up a mosque, that sort of thing. Being briefly without Yahoo won't exactly make people try to destroy their government.

As for the US doing it, I don't see that either. The whole point of the internet design, as originally envisioned by the DARPA types in the Cold War, is that it can be quickly routed around damaged physical segments. Originally these were to be old-fashioned telephone exchanges in the continental US, so Washington could continue sending out commands to nuke the commies after they'd already reduced much of the country to a shimmering sea of green glass, but the core principles are the same.

Sure enough, after each cut, service is largely restored within a day. They just route to another cable.

Our military may be many things, but technologically they're not dumb. They know the strengths and weaknesses of the net design; if they wanted to, say, cripple it, they could take down some or all of the root servers that attach names to IP addresses for the whole world; all of them, every last one, is under the control of the US government, as a legacy of the era when we, you know, built the internet.

So we could do the same amount of damage with a flick of a switch and a thumb of our nose. Actually, a lot more damage. Why bother with this penny-ante stuff that mostly has affected countries with tech or financial industries in the area, like India and the rich Gulf Emirates?

Me, I lean toward possible organized crime. The Russkie mob has been known for years to threaten websites and companies with attacks on their electronic infrastructure to get protection money; these cables cost a ton to lay and a ton to repair, and the companies that own them have very, very deep pockets. You can't knock out a country's internet, or inspire blood-soaked terror with these stunts, but you could really affect some giant telco's bottom line... it'd be cheaper to pay off some eastern european tech-thugs than constant repair work, that's for sure.

But hey, just a theory. It could be Cthulhu for all we know.

Source: Raw Story

Burger Phone
So Juno, the big indie candidate for the Oscars this year, had a retro looking plastic burger telephone in the movie. Supposedly they even used it as a promotional gimmick when sending out their review copies. There has since been a spike in sales of the Burger phone.

Feh. Who needs landline phones anyway? They're a big hassle.

Source: It Was Raw Story but their archives page is impossible.
Actual Phone: