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Patents

Beware the King of the Patent Trolls 286

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the lotta-fresh-air-under-the-bridge dept.
superapecommando writes "If you haven't heard of Intellectual Ventures, you may want to check this out. Set up by ex-Microsoftie Nathan Myhrvold, with investments from Microsoft among others, it is basically a patenting machine – filing and buying them in huge quantities. Note that it doesn't actually use these patents – except to threaten people with. In other words, Intellectual Ventures is a patent troll – or, rather the King of the Patent Trolls. So I was interested to come across this extremely positive blog post on the company. That it is so positive is hardly surprising, since the blog is called 'Tangible IP,' and subtitled 'ipVA's blog on adding value through intellectual property.' Nonetheless, it provides valuable insights into the mindset of fans of intellectual monopolies. Here's what it says about Intellectual Ventures: 'They are an invention house, and have adopted and reinvented leading edge patent strategies to create a portfolio of their own IP which, in its own, would be of high high worth.' They don't invent anything in the proper, deep sense of the word; they merely file and buy patents – with no intent of ever making stuff or solving real-life problems."
Media

RIAA Says "Don't Expect DRMed Music To Work Forever" 749

Posted by timothy
from the just-ask-what-and-whether-you're-buying-or-renting dept.
Oracle Goddess writes "Buying DRMed content, then having that content stop working later, is fair, writes Steven Metalitz, the lawyer who represents the MPAA, RIAA in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office. 'We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works.' In other words, if it stops working, too bad. Not surprisingly, Metalitz also strongly opposes any exemption that would allow users to legally strip DRM from content if a store goes dark and takes down its authentication servers."
Google

Google Reverses "Absurd" Mozilla Code Ban 201

Posted by kdawson
from the standing-athwart-history-yelling-"eof" dept.
Barence writes "Google has reversed its decision to ban projects created under the Mozilla Public License from being hosted on its Google Code site. Google banned the license in August, claiming it wanted to 'make a statement against open-source license proliferation' which it blamed for hindering the cross-pollination of code from one project to another. Chris DiBona, of Google's open source team, described its decision to ban the MPL as 'absurd,' citing the community's huge popularity." Jamie mentions that the issue was raised from the floor at OSCON at the Google Open Source Update panel, with DiBona on stage.
Encryption

Atari Founder Proclaims the End of Gaming Piracy 831

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the until-they-build-a-better-crack dept.
OMGZombies writes "Speaking on a conference held yesterday in New York, the Atari founder Nolan Bushnell said that a new stealth encryption chip called TPM will 'absolutely stop piracy of gameplay'. The chip is apparently being embedded on most of the new computer motherboards and is said to be 'uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords' though it won't stop movie or music piracy, since 'if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it.'"
Censorship

Yahoo caught censoring Open Source-> 5

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "Amanda Kerik responded to a problem that a user was having with their Windows machine that since they had to do a re-install they might as well install Ubuntu Linux.

She got a message back from Yahoo claiming that such a comment was in violation of its Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. It deleted her answer and warned her not to post anything like that again .."
Link to Original Source
Security

BT flaw puts broadband users at risk->

Submitted by
SecFreak
SecFreak writes "A flaw in a DSL home gateway could lead broadband users inadvertently to divulge personal information, according to a group of self-styled ethical hackers. In summary, if the victim visits our evil proof-of-concept webpage, his/her browser sends a HTTP request to the BT Home Hub's web interface. After this, the Home Hub starts a VoIP/telephone connection to the recipient's phone number specified in the exploit page. This is what the attack looks like: the victim's VoIP telephone starts ringing and shows an external call message on the LCD screen along with the recipient's phone number. However, what's interesting is that from the point of view of the victim, it looks like he/she is receiving a phone call from the number shown on the screen, but in fact he/she is calling that number! http://www.gnucitizen.org/blog/call-jacking http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141587-c,onlinesecurity/article.html"
Link to Original Source
First Person Shooters (Games)

Brazil bans Counter-Strike and Everquest

Submitted by
Oxygen
Oxygen writes "A judge in the Brazil has ruled that Counter-Strike and Everquest be banned in the country. Any shopkeeper who does not comply will be forced to pay a fine. This also goes for internet cafés and home computers.

From the article: "According to Procon, these games have to be deleted from every computer, otherwise the owner will have to pay a daily fine of almost $3,000 USD and may have his establishment being closed. In stores, all Counter-Strike and EverQuest copies have been removed from the shelves and sent to the Ministry of Justice."

I am not getting good vibes from this."
Operating Systems

Gentoo in Crisis, Robbins Offers Solution 259

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the back-in-the-saddle-again dept.
mrbadbar writes "Gentoo Linux founder Daniel Robbins says Gentoo's leadership is in crisis. 'the Gentoo Foundation's charter has been revoked for several weeks, which means that as of this moment the Gentoo Foundation no longer exists.' Robbins offers a solution: his return as President of the Gentoo Foundation. According to Robbins: 'If I return as President, I will preserve the not-for-profit aspect of Gentoo. Beyond this, you can expect everything to be very, very different than how things are today.'"
Microsoft

IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test 555

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the one-small-step-for-ie dept.
notamicrosoftlover writes to tell us Channel9 is reporting that Internet Explorer 8 has correctly rendered the Acid2 page in "standards mode". "With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle." There's also a video interview regarding IE8 development on Channel9."
Security

Dan Geer On Trusting PCs In Botnets 301

Posted by kdawson
from the as-far-as-i-can-throw-you dept.
walk*bound writes "In an essay published by ZDNet, security scientist Dan Geer has an interesting proposal for e-commerce sites to evaluate the trustworthiness of clients that try to connect. Assume that end users either always say 'Yes' or always say 'No' to security dialog boxes. Then make the decision one of two ways: 'When the user connects, ask whether they would like to use your extra special secure connection. If they say "Yes," then you presume that they always say "Yes" and thus they are so likely to be infected that you must not shake hands with them without some latex between you and them. In other words, you should immediately 0wn their machine for the duration of the transaction — by, say, stealing their keyboard away from their OS and attaching it to a special encrypting network stack all of which you make possible by sending a small, use-once rootkit down the wire at login time, just after they say "Yes."'"

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund. -- F. J. Raymond