Wiki on Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans

Wikipedia has an entry up for Hurricane Katrina, the category 5 hurricane that’s predicted to have a good chance of hitting the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

As the Wikipedia entry on New Orleans suggests, the world-famous town is especially vulnerable to storms as the entire city is located below sea level in a land area that acts like a large bowl, trapping water inside the city.

The city is protected by large rings of levees that keep the surrounding water at bay, while pumps remove any water brought in by storms. However, predictions of storm surges 26 feet higher than normal tides have resulted in a mandatory evacuation order to be issued.

AOL Fined $1.25 Million

ZDNET has an article up about AOL being fined $1.25 million dollars and ordered to change their cancellation policy by the state of New York due to the sheer numbers of complaints being filed by customers finding it difficult to cancel their service with the internet service provider.

It’s not difficult to find a horror story from friends and family who’ve used the service and then attempted to cancel, especially as high-speed broadband connections become more common. Many users have complaints about attempting to cancel, only to be lost in the byzantine process they’re thrown into by uncaring AOL customer service agents. Others claim that agents have outright refused to follow through on the cancellation requests, resulting in their accounts continuing to be charged despite repeated calls to the company.

Free Online Antivirus Scans

If you’re in need of a few free, online antivirus scanners, here’s a short list:

None of these are a replacement for a fully-resident antivirus program as they won’t actually prevent any virus from infecting your machine. However, they will help diagnose a slow-running unit for any possible virus problems.