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Submission + - The Oatmeal Threatened With Lawsuit, Responds By Raising $50,000 For Charity (theoatmeal.com)

Submitted by kelarius
kelarius writes: The lawyers for image sharing website FunnyJunk.com sent a letter to Matthew Inman (the owner of theoatmeal.com) threatening a lawsuit and demanding $20,000 to make the whole thing go away. In response, Inman made a joke about trying to raise the $20,000 and donating it to the National Wildlife Fund and the American Cancer Society. Over the course of three hours, he has managed to raise over $50,000 and it appears that the amount is still going up.

Submission + - FunnyJunk steals The Oatmeal's cartoons, sends him $20K extortion demand (theoatmeal.com)

Submitted by Sarusa
Sarusa writes: From the Oatmeal: 'Almost exactly a year ago I published a blog post about my comics being stolen, re-hosted, and monetized on FunnyJunk's website. The owner of the site responded and some of the comics were taken down, He still had a ton of my comics hosted without credit, but the energy it would take to get him to take them down wasn't worth it. I thought the issue was done and over with so I let him be.

A few days ago I was served papers informing me that the owner of FunnyJunk is going to file a federal lawsuit against me unless I pay him $20,000 in damages.'

The text is not quite safe for work, as The Oatmeal rarely is, but well worth reading.

Comment Wrong Flame (Score 1) 161

by whitesea (#40239045) Attached to: Grad Student Wins Alan Alda's Flame Challenge

Finally! Now I can explain to my bosses what the Flame virus means! 11-year old is exactly the level of understanding we need.

RTFA and cry. This is the wrong flame!

First, everybody knows it's there. Then, it has been there for millennia. Finally, nobody is afraid of it.

What a disappointment.
News

Submission + - Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA official (homelandsecuritynet.com)

Submitted by
HSNnews
HSNnews writes: "www.homelandsecuritynet.com

A former top terrorism official at the CIA has warned that President Barack Obama’s controversial drone programme is far too indiscriminate in hitting targets and could lead to such political instability that it creates terrorist safe havens.

Obama’s increased use of drones to attack suspected Islamic militants inPakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen has become one of the most controversial aspects of his national security policy. He has launched at least 275 strikes in Pakistan alone; a rate of attack that is far higher than his predecessor George W Bush."

Submission + - FBI used FedEx to sneak Dotcom information out of New Zealand (stuff.co.nz) 1

Submitted by bpkiwi
bpkiwi writes: FBI agents, working with New Zealand police on the Megaupload case, took a copy of Kim Dotcom's hard drives and then immediately sneaked out of the police facility and FedEx'ed them back to the USA. Despite the fact that removal of evidence in this manner without official approval (and a chance for the defendant to challenge it) appears to be illegal, the New Zealand government is now left arguing on a technicality — that the law only covers 'physical' items.
Software

Submission + - How long to support for software?

Submitted by lucky4udanny
lucky4udanny writes: My client says that any software/website we develop for them should be supported with bug fixes forever with no further compensation. We have generally supported our work for 2 months to give the client adequate time for real-world testing, after which we charge by the hour for all support.

How long should a company fix bugs without compensation in software they developed? What is the industry convention?
Censorship

Submission + - Ham-fisted Music Trade Association Attacks Internet (Again) (techdirt.com)

Submitted by cpu6502
cpu6502 writes: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) CEO Cary Sherman wants big internet service corporations to block content he says is destroying a fossilized music industry. "Intermediaries like search engines would [negotiate] voluntary marketplace best practices to prevent directing users to sites that are dedicated to violating property rights." In other words, Sherman and the RIAA want Google to delist certain websites in Orwellian memory hole fashion. Sherman made his remarks before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing which is deciding if government should allow business to put FM receivers in the next generation of smart phones.

The RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) are in the business of stigmatizing file sharing as criminal behavior despite the fact much of the content is original and is not in violation of copyright law. MegaUpload.com and HotFile.com represent a "business model that cuts out the legacy gatekeepers" and allows alternative content producers to distribute their products to consumers without the burdensome intervention of a middleman.
The Internet

Submission + - NLRB: It's OK To Kibitz With Coworkers On Social Media (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Your employer won't like it, but they can't stop you from discussing working conditions and compensation with your coworkers on social media. In his most recent social media memo, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Lafe Solomon said that in 6 of the 7 employers' social media policies he reviewed, he found violations of Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, which allows employees to join labor unions and to discuss working conditions with each other."

Submission + - Copyright infringer tries to shut down reporting on her infringement. (atty4kids.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Further to the previous story on slashdot where attorney Candice Schwager threw threats to sue a photographer who reported a DMCA violation against her for infringing use of his photography; Candice has now made a DMCA threat of her own against Petapixel, a photography site that reported on her infringement. The kicker? She's sent the DMCA notice an apparent six times not to Petapixel's registrar or their hosting service, but to godaddy, her own registrar.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Why the GPL licensing cops are the good guys (infoworld.com)

Submitted by rtfa-troll
rtfa-troll writes: 'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched', says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' the expertly written article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code.
Security

Submission + - Is Flame a weapon of the US-led Cyberwar or just more Corporate Spyware? (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It is somewhat surprising that no commentators have made the connection between Flame and the dozens of commercially available spyware. The levels of sophistication between Flame and commercially available surveillance software are similar – the only difference being that Flame has the ability to replicate and infect other machines whereas surveillance software’s installation is normally targeted.

In fact, there is nothing to say that Flame was not actually installed or being used by the Governments of the countries involved to spy on their own citizens. The belief that Stuxnet was of Israeli or US origin was held on the basis that the programming skills required and funding for the development would have only been found in these countries. But as has been detailed on the Spyfiles site, the more general surveillance software is relatively inexpensive and can be bought “off-the-shelf”. So anyone could have been the originator, even private corporations.

Comment Re:Isn't this old news? (Score 1) 98

by whitesea (#40108783) Attached to: Researchers Can Generate RSA SecurID Random Numbers Flawlessly
The algorithm everybody is talking about is the old algorithm used in SecureID tokens before the vendor producing them bought RSA. When Security Dynamics bought RSA, they took their name as the name of the whole company, because it was such a venerated brand. After the old algorithm for the token could no longer be used, because everybody and their brother could easily generate the "unpredictable" SecureID values, they switched to AES-based approach, which has not been broken so far. RSA algorithm is a public key encryption/signature algorithm, which should be properly implemented, otherwise there exist many ways to break a raw or improper implementation. Hope this clears up confusion brought by the fact that RSA means so many different things these days.

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