Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes with a bit from the Asbury Park Press: "'Devastated and wiped out by superstorm Sandy, Verizon has no plans to rebuild its copper-line telephone network in Mantoloking. Instead, Verizon says Mantoloking is the first town in New Jersey, and one of the few areas in the country, to have a new service called Verizon Voice Link. Essentially, it connects your home's wired and cordless telephones to the Verizon Wireless network.' So no copper or fiber to a fairly densely populated area. Comcast will now be the only voice/data option with copper to the area."

A 1-square-foot block of frozen urine crashed through Hans and Irene Schueler's roof this weekend, and they are pissed. The couple has asked air traffic controllers to leak details of flight movements over their home. So far the stream of information has been weak at best. One neighbor said, "They're lucky it didn't hit them, and they don't see why an airline should get away with it."

An Irish carpenter pleaded guilty to a series of strange crimes including robbing a Brisbane ticketing agency to feed his pet fish. Richard William O'Flynn admitted in court that he gave a note to a Brisbane Ticketek employee, which read: "Give me all the #@*! money from the till." When his clever note didn't work, he came back with a goldfish and explained that he needed the money to feed his fish. O'Flynn also tried to hold up a bakery with a decorative cake knife after ordering a "gay wedding cake" for him and his partner. It's a lot easier to go crazy if you jump in with both feet.

netbuzz brings us an update to a case we discussed earlier this month: "In a widely watched free-speech case, a New Jersey judge has upheld a blogger's right to criticize county officials anonymously. The contention of those officials was that the blogger is actually a former mayor/attorney being sued by the local government for malpractice. This comes less than a month after the Electronic Frontier Foundation began their legal efforts to shield the blogger, claiming that the subpoena for Google to release his identity was 'part of an unrelated and unauthorized campaign to embarrass or otherwise outmaneuver the Defendant.' Score one for the First Amendment."

wayward writes "Students at Pope John XIII, a Catholic high school, were told to take down their blogs from sites like Xanga and MySpace or face suspension. Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators. Not too surprisingly, free speech advocates got more than a little concerned.