Comment Invite please (Score 1) 1223
fizzog (gmail)
Many thanks!
Submission + - Exploding Lake Provides Electricity for Rwanda (discovery.com)
reillymj writes: There are three known "exploding lakes" in the world, where volcanic gases build up near the lake bottom until they suddenly fizz over, suffocating people with huge amounts of carbon dioxide. But the lakes also hold methane and one of them, Rwanda's Lake Kivu, is being actively tapped as a source of natural gas to fuel a power plant on the lake's shores. The government hopes that within two years, the plant will be covering a third of the country's needs. By siphoning off the gas, engineers simultaneously defuse a ticking time bomb in the lake and provide power to local communities.
Comment Re:Missing option (Score 1) 315
"Captain James Tiberius Kirk."
Captain James R. Kirk was at least as good in my opinion.
Unfortunately he died quite young.
(sound of crickets...)
Comment Re:Customer information sharing (Score 5, Informative) 526
"they would have to get that info from the card issuer"
No, not really.
I worked for a telephone services company some years ago and developed their customer information system. We would only get one of two possible pieces of information from a transaction: the telephone number they called a 1-900 number from, or the Credit card number they used if they called a 1-800 number.
We wanted to get the customer information so we could send them related advertising.
There are vendors out there that will supply all available subscriber information for a telephone number, and others that will provide all available information given a Credit Card number.
Telephone numbers are not super reliable as they can be re-used, but for 5 cents we would (about 60% of the time) get a result which would give us the subscriber name and address. For 20 cents we would get about a 90% match. We sent all phone numbers to the 5 cent vendor and for those that didn't get a result we would send them to the 20 cent vendor.
Credit Card numbers are quite reliable and for 1 dollar we would get *all* of the information on the card holder. This included name, address, age, spouse's name and age, children's names and ages, your income, and various demographic information for your neighbourhood.
Given that big box stores likely get thousands of 'Card only' purchases a day I am sure they also have similar agreements with vendors, or contract with 3rd parties to do it for them.
Slashdot Top Deals
The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out.
