Is that WE can design and build THEM. When they can do the same for self-aware protoplasmic humanoids, it might be time to become upset about silly "supremacy" issues, and not a moment before then. Till then, sit back and enjoy the music...

Indeed, I wasn't considering that possibility. Ah, logic...

While you are correct in noting that a beta emitter isn't necessarily harmless (and emphatically correct that the perjury is by far the bigger issue), I'd like to note that tritium, being an isotope of hydrogen, tends to escape straight up, very fast. Molecules of "normal" hydrogen are VERY light, and rise so fast when released that they can reach escape velocity, plus hydrogen is good at diffusing through containers. Thus, it's safe to conclude that the tritium in question bolted for the stratosphere at its first opportunity, and didn't hang around to endanger anyone. Alas, the same cannot be said of the plant management...

Consider the article's quoted claim of a 1A, 1V sample 1 inch long and the diameter of a human hair. This is plainly ridiculous.

Solar radiation intensity in near-Earth space is 1353 W/m^2 (on Earth, under all that atmosphere, it's more like 120 W/m^2). This represents the maximum possible energy input to a solar cell, of whatever design.

A human hair is about 0.001 inch in diameter, so a 1-inch piece held lengthwise covers an area of 0.001 in^2, or 6.45E-7 m^2. At the stated solar irradiance, that area will receive 873 uW of solar irradiance at MOST, in orbit, and rather less on Earth. Unless their solar cell has a 120,000% efficiency, they'll come up rather short on the 1-watt claim (1 V * 1 A = 1 W) in TFA.

I call Fuzzy Math, at least on that particular claim. The rest of their idea may well be good; let's hope the fellow who said this was misquoted, though...

lorem ipsum Slashdot's minimum-length filter is a silly ...

Eye-eye, sir!

If I understand the article correctly, the access application in effect ignores the entered password, and instead - probably as a result of miserable software design - uses a fixed-string password for the encryption/decryption. In that case, it's not so much a compromise as an own-goal by the fools who wrote and tested (?) the Windows access application. The encryption implementation itself is probably fine if it's given decent keys...

The ethical thing to do at this stage in the game is to drop a dime on'em. The sensible thing to do is to ensure that you still have an income afterwards. Count on the boss finding out and retaliating; whether that is illegal or not, factor that into your plans.

Not true. The boot PROM checksum dance does NOTHING to protect the TiVo code; it is intended to prevent anything EXCEPT the TiVo code from running. Bypass the checksum dance, and your TiVo will run the TiVo code exactly as before; thus, there's no "protection of a copyrighted work" being circumvented here. All that changes is that the (BTW, uncopyrightable) hardware will now run YOUR operating system of choice. Before tou argue that the checksum thingy protects the copyright on THAT code, let me point out that the "protection measure" is supposed to protect a specific copyrighted work, and cannot mean categorically locking out an entire class of works (i.e., everything EXCEPT code from a specific vendor). There's even a specific exception for compatibility, which this modification would fit into.

In this case, a German eco-thriller by Frank Schätzing entitled "Der Schwarm" (The Swarm), which features just such an attack, orchestrated by an intelligent marine species, (named the Yrr 'cause that randomly-typed letter sequence worked as well as any) that has decided to get rid of those messy, polluting land-dwellers, AKA us.

Next up: Swarms of highly-toxic white crabs invade the beaches of the US East Coast, while Canadian Orcas start dining on whale-watchers.