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Submission + - Should Slashdot Participate in the Reddit Blackout (reddit.com) 1

Submitted by Stoopiduk
Stoopiduk writes: Reddit is planning a Blackout January 18th from 8am–8pm EST (1300–0100 UTC) to protest against and educate about SOPA. Should Slashdot show solidarity and contribute to the day of action/education? Does the slashdot readership agree with SOPA?

Comment Re:Open the Door Jeopardy (Score 1) 147

by joeyadams (#38362934) Attached to: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Alex Trebek: Very good ... 'His death and subsequent disagreement of heir resulted in the Battle of Hastings.' *Ken Jennings rings in, opens the door and steps through it*
Ken Jennings: Um ... uh ... um ... I knew it a second ago.

Short-term memory? It's more like he'd forget the question... err, answer.

Submission + - France Outlaws Hashed Passwords (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Storing passwords as hashes instead of plain text is now illegal in France, according to a draconian new data retention law. According to the BBC, "[t]he law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers. This includes users' full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded." If the law survives a pending legal challenge by Google, Ebay and others, it may well keep some major services out of the country entirely.
Privacy

Submission + - Hackers Steal Kroger's Customer List (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Kroger, the nation's largest traditional grocery retailer with more than 338,000 associates, notified customers today of breach of the database that stores its customers' names and email addresses.

The company said incident occurred at Epsilon, the third-party vendor Kroger uses to manage its customer email database.

This breach follows several other similar breaches from email service providers including The American Honda Motor Co., MacDonald’s, and Walgreens.
Mars

Submission + - Was There a Natural Nuclear Blast on Mars? (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Ever wonder why the red planet is red?

About 180 million years ago, a planet-shattering yet naturally occurring nuclear reaction may have wiped out everything on Mars, sending a shockwave that turned the planet into dry sand.

Even more incredible: A natural nuclear reaction could have occurred on our own planet — and could happen again, said Dr. John Brandenburg, a senior propulsion scientist at Orbital Technologies Corp.

"The Martian surface is covered with a thin layer of radioactive substances including uranium, thorium and radioactive potassium — and this pattern radiates from a hot spot [on Mars],” Brandenburg said.
BSD

Submission + - pcc 1.0.0 released (ludd.ltu.se)

Submitted by joeyadams
joeyadams writes: Pcc, a BSD-licensed C99 compiler that aims to be "small, simple, fast and understandable", has finally made it to version 1.0. As OpenBSD-founder Theo de Raadt said way back in 2007, "This is just an attempt to see if something better [than GCC] can show up.".

Pcc is based on the Portable C Compiler written by Stephen C. Johnson in the mid-1970s, and is now being maintained by Anders Magnusson.
Japan

Submission + - Radiation Fiound In Groundwater At Fukushima Plant (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Radioactive material has been found in the groundwater near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Several news outlets noted that groundwater contamination was found in concentrations 10,000 times higher than the government standards. The substance is iodine-131, which decays quickly. It was found nearly 50 feet (15 meters) below one of the reactors, according to a statement from Tokyo Electric Power Corp. Thus far the groundwater has not entered any water supplies, officials said.

The Japanese Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency said that it was reserving judgment on the measurements, however, because TEPCO had made errors before. Earlier this week the company reported radiation levels millions of times greater than allowable limits, but revised that figure downward after it was discovered that the measurements were wrong.

Comment Backup vs Archive (Score 2) 135

by joeyadams (#35684538) Attached to: It's World Backup Day

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: the fundamental theorem of backups is:

Backups != Archives

When you create a backup (as opposed to an archive), do not rely on the backup to hold files you don't currently need. If you do, you'll amass several "backups" that you can't get rid of because they contain files you might need. Instead, put files you're tired of looking at in an *archive*.

This definition of "backup" implies that it is almost completely safe to destroy an old backup to make room for a new one. Or, better yet:

(cd "$HOME"; rsync -av --exclude-from="$HOME/list-of-huge-files" "$HOME" "/media/backup-disk/homedir")

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