• The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including “obscene” cartoons and drawings–or face fines of up to $300,000.
  That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user’s account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

Of the entire house, only two voted nay on the Act: Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia and Rep. presidential candidate, Ron Paul. No word as to why only two or just these two, but I’m sure that Ron Paul will be brought under the spotlight for his decision, being a presidential candidate and all.

Hit Continue Reading to learn more about the Bill and what it can mean to you and your privacy.

Two Buffalo Businessmen purchased the former Freezer Queen plant in November for $3 Million.

Their plans include:

• Conversion of the existing six-story, 272,000-square-foot food production and storage plant to condominiums, possibly adding two more floors to create luxury penthouse suites;

• A 250- to 400-room, five-star hotel tower, to be built on the tip of the mini-peninsula;

• A residential tower and townhouses on undeveloped areas of the property.

The Queen City team plans to move as “expeditiously” as possible with the hope of beginning the food plant-to-condo conversion by late spring. They are currently interviewing local and national architects for the project.

It sounds like a great plan, but with our local economy the way it is, and being the second poorest city in the country and all, is it really worth the investment or will it wind up another empty structure on the frozen tundra we call a waterfront?

Yesterday I proposed two different things one to keep the toll increase from happening and even cut the tolls in half.

#1 take the Canal system from them and make it a state funded stand alone entity that saves the thruway authority and toll payers $80 Million yearly. Also dedicated funds from the federal government like the $400 Million they should have received last year at the department of transportation be applied to the thruway system. That alone would cut the tolls in half. So in this one suggestion we see $480 million dollars in savings.

We’ve been wondering where the washed up soon to be Former Erie County Executive was going to land. Now its offifical:

Senator Alfonse D’Amato is pleased to officially announce that Erie County Executive Joel A. Giambra will be joining Park Strategies, LLC as a Managing Director effective January 1, 2008. Giambra will be heading up the firm’s new Buffalo office and will be focused on providing strategic advice to companies in the Western New York area.

“The problem of insecurity cannot be solved by spreading people out more thinly, trading the characteristics of the city for the suburbs.”
-Jane Jacobs

There have been a few violent assaults/rapes in and around UB North this semester, starting to instill in people that just because its not the city-doesn’t mean that you’re completely safe.

In fact-some of the areas on and around UB North could become havens for rapes and assaults simply through poor and anti-social design.

Vast VAST surface lots with poor to little lighting, massive single use structures and complexes, discouraged sidewalk activity etc etc…

The city of Buffalo has to deal with the “stop snitching” movement, but in UB north there isn’t even any one around to “snitch”. Its hard to believe that there aren’t more crimes like this occurring.

UB is working on its “UB2020? plan and with that should come some changes to the way UB North works as a mini-city of sorts. With much thought into making it mixed-use, well lit, pedestrian friendly and giving the place a sense of community…UB North can maintain its reputation as being the clean safe escape from the city campus.