Real-World Computing
Earthquakes
Every earthquake around the world is monitored and recorded by a worldwide network of sensitive seismometers. Within a few hours, major earthquakes reported by the automatic network are evaluated by a human seismologist and posted on the Near Real Time Earthquake List.
The Near Real Time Earthquake List is also available via the finger protocol at quake@gldfs.cr.usgs.gov. However, this finger service is unavailable from many places on the Internet due to security filters on the USGS network (see here). The plain text format bulletin is available through HTTP.
There are also mailing lists run by the USGS to inform users of earthquake activity.