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Staged Hack Causes Generator to Self-Destruct 258

An anonymous reader writes "It has been revealed that in a U.S. Department of Homeland Security exercise codenamed 'Aurora' conducted in March of this year, researchers were able to cause a power generator to self-destruct remotely via a hack which changed the operating cycle of the generator. 'Government sources said changes are being made to both computer software and physical hardware to protect power generating equipment. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it is conducting inspections to ensure all nuclear plants have made the fix. Industry experts also said the experiment shows large electric systems are vulnerable in ways not previously demonstrated.'"

Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone 838

Ant writes to tell us that Wired has an interesting look at the current standards of writing and the general decline of spelling and grammar in today's "comic book generation." The author blames many of the problems on instant or near-instant communications stating that the slang developed is essentially eroding our ability to formulate coherent thoughts in writing when called upon to do so.

Comment Customer password = 'wonttellya' (Score 1) 159

Back in 1997 when I was doing phone support for the ISP I'm working for, I had a customer calling us who had troubles with his mail account. It was monday afternoon and one of those days that would never end, I already had a lot of unfriendly customers on the phone that day and I was quite a bit bad mooded.

The conversation went like this:

Customer: "I'm having troubles with my mailbox"
Me: "OK, what's your username?"

Customer: <tells me his username>
Me: "OK, and what's your password?"

Customer: "Won't tell ya"
Me (getting upset): Now listen, how am I supposed to help you if you won't tell your @*#! password?! <angry>

Customer: "Sorry, you don't understand, my password _IS_ 'wonttellya'"
Me: <duh!!!>

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sHIFT hAPPENS

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