On Monday, Verizon and Coinstar, which is Redbox‘s parent company, announced a partnership that will bring a service very similar to Netflix‘s to consumers. The companies will offer both a physical and streaming video platform that will be available online and on mobile devices.

While the news adds another player to the space for consumers to choose from, most people are talking about the impact of the unnamed Verizon/Redbox venture on Netflix. As we all know, Netflix had its share of problems last year when it hiked its prices. Many users even said they were discontinuing their service as a result.

However, Bryan Gonzalez, the Director of Social Entertainment Labs at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, told that, if Netflix keeps its focus on content, it would remain a competitor in the space. According to him, Redbox and Verizon’s venture will be a contender but will not likely kill Netflix.

Coinstar and Verizon said their service would be available at the second half of this year. Is this a service you’ll use?

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Daily Mail Hacked by TeaMp0isoN 07 Feb 2012 Yesterday Visitors to the Daily Mail's recipe pages had been confronted with a message left by hackers who defaced and disabled the site. British sensationalist newspaper the Daily Mail has been hit by hackers in support of the online movement Opcensorthis. News of the hack spread via Twitter and it seems to have happened late afternoon on Sunday, 5 February, and lasted for a couple of hours. A mirror link posted on the TeaMp0isoN Twitter gives those that missed it a look at what the hackers were promoting. "For years you've poisoned the mainstream media with your sensationalist, ultranationalist nonsense, continuing to inject reader's minds with anti- immigration and borderline racist propaganda," says the text on the deface web page.

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Fire at Moscow nuclear institute 05 Feb 2012 Fire broke out at a Moscow nuclear research centre housing a non-operational 60-year-old atomic reactor on Sunday, said officials. The fire broke out early on Sunday in a part of the Alikhanov Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in southwestern Moscow that contains a research collider, institute officials said in a statement on its website. There were no radiation sources in the area of the collider [?!?], which had been shut off on December 25, and no danger of a radiation leak, the statement said. Interfax cited a police source as saying fire brigades were denied access to the facility for "a long time" before being allowed in, but the institute said that was not the case.

Independent Media

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Plan developed to clean up highly radioactive Hanford spill 06 Feb 2012 Hanford officials have settled on a plan to clean up what may be the most highly radioactive spill at the nuclear reservation. It depends on calling back into service the 47-year-old, oversized hot cell where the spill occurred to protect workers from the radioactive cesium and strontium that leaked through the hot cell to the soil below. Radioactivity in the contaminated soil, which is about 1,000 feet from the Columbia River, has been measured at 8,900 rad per hour. Direct exposure for a few minutes would be fatal, according to Washington Closure.

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Terrorists 'R Us: US-made bomb killed Iran expert: Report 06 Feb 2012 The United States provided an anti-Iran terrorist group with the bomb used to assassinate Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan last month, a report has revealed. Two bombs were handed over to the Party for Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) in the Iraqi city of Arbil by the Americans, the Resalat daily reported on Monday. The first bomb killed Ahmadi Roshan, but the second one was discovered by intelligence and security personnel around Resalat Square in the capital Tehran, the report said. On January 11, Ahmadi Roshan was killed after a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car in Tehran.

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Obama orders freezing of Iran's property under U.S. jurisdiction 07 Feb 2012 The White House said on Monday that President Barack Obama has ordered the freezing of Iran's property under U.S. jurisdiction, including that of the country's central bank, as the U.S. and its allies are pressing hard over the Islamic republic's [alleged] controversial nuclear program. The property of persons determined to have links to those already under U.S. sanctions is ordered to be frozen as well.

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Iran to strike back if attacked 05 Feb 2012 Iran will strike back at any location from where attacks against it are mounted, Fars news agency quoted a senior military commander as saying Sunday. "Any location which is used by the enemy for raids against the Islamic republic will be targeted by the IRGC forces," Xinhua quoted Fars citing Hossein Salami, the deputy head of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). Salami made the remarks during IRGC's ongoing military drills near Iran's southern waters.

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NATO copter crashes in Afghanistan [What a shame!] 06 Feb 2012 Another helicopter operated by the US-led NATO military alliance has crashed in eastern Afghanistan, with no immediate reports of casualties. Although no deaths or injuries have been reported, NATO says it has transferred the troopers to a nearby military base. It remains unclear whether the copter was attacked by militants or crashed as a result of technical problems. The Taliban say they have shot down several aircraft and NATO choppers in different parts of Afghanistan over the past few months.

Background clip for MC for Feb 8th OTM shoot

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US scenario in Syria: Turkish incursion, Israeli invasion 06 Feb 2012 Informed sources have uncovered a US plot entailing a Turkish incursion and a full-scale Israeli strike to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The sources said aspects of the plan such as rejecting calls by Damascus for an Arab League meeting over the crisis in the country, recognizing of the Syrian opposition as the "legitimate" government of the country and granting them offices in Turkey to work against the Syrian government, have already been carried out. As part of the plan, Syrian embassies and consulates would be attacked in several countries and the diplomatic offices would be used as bases to inflict heavy blows on the Syrian government.

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US closes embassy in Syria, UK recalls ambassador 06 Feb 2012 The United States has shut its embassy in Syria. The announcement comes amid mounting reports of lethal government attacks. The UK has followed the suit, summoning their ambassador from Damascus. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says the British ambassador has been recalled from Syria for consultations. The UK Foreign Secretary pledged to increase pressure on the Syrian government through the UN and other bodies.

Media Clip for Feb 8 OTM show.

In his daily take, Thom explains how ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Counsel is leading America into a corporatocracy, which means that elected officials represent corporations instead of people. ALEC joins with CEOs and lawmakers a few times a year to draw up legislation approved by the corporations. Florida Republican State Representative, Rachel Bergen, proposed legislation to reduce corporate taxes. Bergen forgot to take out ALEC's mission statement located at the top of the legislation, showing that she took the model legislation proposed from ALEC and just passed it along to the state house.

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Loughner's stay at Missouri facility extended --Loughner undergoing forced medication 06 Feb 2012 The man suspected in the massacre outside of Tucson last year will likely remain held in a federal hospital in Missouri for at least four more months, a judge has ruled. Judge Larry Burns ordered that a hearing take place Monday in San Diego, where the judge is based, for defense attorneys and federal prosecutors to discuss the case. The order followed a doctor's finding that Loughner, who is undergoing forced medication, is still not mentally competent to stand trial. Loughner will not attend the hearing.

New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman has filed suit against the Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorganChase for deceptive and fraudulent use of a private database known as the mortgage electronic registration system. Schneiderman said, "the mortgage industry created MERS to allow financial institutions to evade county recording fees, avoid the need to publicly record mortgage transfers and facilitate the rapid sale and securitization of mortgages en masse."

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Truth, lies and Afghanistan --How military leaders have let us down --'From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.' By Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis 06 Feb 2012 I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army's Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces. What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. ...I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

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Record cargo delivered to Afghanistan in 2011 05 Feb 2012 Mobility airmen dropped a record amount of cargo last year in Afghanistan, delivering about 80 million pounds of supplies across the west Asian country. The annual record marks an increase of about 33 percent over 2010, when mobility airmen dropped about 60 million pounds of cargo to Afghanistan. "To put that in some historical perspective, in the Korean War we only dropped a little over 30 million pounds total," said Maj. Tom Lankford, Air Mobility Command Combat Tactics Branch chief and director of operations. "We nearly doubled that in 2010, and [this year] we dropped nearly 80 million pounds."