19686286
submission
Xenographic writes:
There's so much panic over Japan's nuclear power plant malfunctions that a lot of misinformation has started showing up in the media from people who don't know anything about BWR safety systems or even what a Sievert is. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been issuing detailed reports concerning the status of each of the reactors and the operations they're performing on each. Fukushima Daiichi has all six units shut down and everyone within 10km has been asked to evacuate. That's the same plant where the explosion took place, which experts believe to have been caused by built-up hydrogen. Also, before the explosion near unit 1, one worker, who was working on that same unit was accidentally exposed to 106.3mSv of radiation and hospitalized. Fukushima Daini currently has all four units shut down and everyone within 3km of it has been evacuated, while those within 10km are on standby. Kashiwazaki Kariwa is still up, with four of its seven units active and the other three undergoing regular inspections. Several other non-nuclear plants and power substations have been shut down as well. This leaves about 600k people in the area without power.
17684996
submission
Xenographic writes:
The EFF has compiled a list of good ways to protest the TSA's invasive searches. For example, you can directly complain to the TSA about inappropriate screening, take a survey the TSA is conducting about whether or not body scanning technology should be used, mail the DHS department of civil liberties, or write a letter to any of the addresses they give. Right now, they're promoting the idea that most people like the new searches, so if you don't, you might want to let them know.
17675436
submission
Xenographic writes:
Achievements have become so prevalent, you can even get one for having your 'baggage' handled by the TSA. Words fail me.
17674662
submission
Xenographic writes:
Over on NPR, there's a story about someone whose personal iPhone got remotely wiped by their employer. It was actually a mistake, but it was something of a surprise because they didn't believe they had given their employer any kind of access to do that. This may already be very familiar to Microsoft Exchange admins, but the problem was her iPhone's integration with MS Exchange automatically gives the server admin access to do remote wipes. All you have to do is configure the phone to receive email from an MS Exchange server and the server admin can wipe your phone at will. The phone isn't bricked, even though absolutely all of its data was wiped, because the data could be restored from backup, assuming that someone remembered to make one. But this also works on other devices like Blackberries, iPads and other smartphones that integrate with MS Exchange, so if you read your work email on your personal phone or tablet, you might want to make sure that you keep backups, just in case.
17661312
submission
Xenographic writes:
PJ has put up her analysis of the Novell acquisition and she refuses to mince words, saying that 'selling any patents to Microsoft is like selling your baby to a pedophile'. Less hyperbolically, she has found that some language in Novell's 8k, 'indicates to me that the consortium sees some relationship between the value of the patent sale and the merger with Attachmate.' Fortunately, 'Novell has released Linux under [the GPL] for some time, and so it provides Linux the only patent protection that Novell couldn't sell.'
Editors: Please fix that headline. There wasn't enough space.