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Submission + - UK ISPs to send non-threatening letters to pirates (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by echo-e
echo-e writes: A deal has been made between groups representing content creators and ISPs in the UK concerning how the ISPs should respond to suspected illegal file sharers. In short, the ISPs will send letters or emails with an "educational" rather than threatening tone, alerting users to legal alternatives. The rights holders will be notified of the number of such alerts that have been sent out, but only the ISPs will know the identity of the offenders. Only four of the UKs ISPs have agreed to the "Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme" so far, but the remaining ISPs are expected to join the programme at a later stage. The debate between rights holders and ISPs has raged on for years. This agreement falls short of the of the proposals put forward by the rights holders groups, but the ISPs have argued that it is not their responsibility to police users and that a legal process already exists for going after individuals.

Submission + - McAfee accused of McSlurping Open Source Vulnerability Database (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: Intel security subsidiary McAfee may be in hot water after it allegedly scraped thousands of records from the Open Source Vulnerability Database instead of paying for them. The slurp was said to be conducted using fast scripts that rapidly changed the user agent, and was launched after McAfee formally inquired about purchasing a license to the data. Law experts say site's copyright could be breached by individuals merely downloading the information in contravention to the site's policies, and did not require the data to be subsequently disseminated.

Submission + - The upcoming Windows 8.1 apocalypse 2

Submitted by arglebargle_xiv
arglebargle_xiv writes: As most people will have heard, Microsoft will end support for anyone who hasn't upgraded to Win8.1 Update 1 on May 8. What fewer people have heard is that large numbers of users can't install the 8.1 Update, with over a thousand messages in this one thread alone, and that's for tech geeks rather than home users who won't find out about this until their PC becomes orphaned on May 8. Check your Windows Update log, if you've got a "Failed" entry next to KB2919355 then your PC will also become orphaned after May 8.

Submission + - Oklahoma Moves To Discourage Solar and Wind Power

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Paul Monies reports at NewsOK that Oklahoma's legislature has passed a bill that allows regulated utilities to apply to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission to charge a higher base rate to customers who generate solar and wind energy and send their excess power back into the grid reversing a 1977 law that forbade utilities to charge extra to solar users. "Renewable energy fed back into the grid is ultimately doing utility companies a service," says John Aziz. "Solar generates in the daytime, when demand for electricity is highest, thereby alleviating pressure during peak demand."

The state’s major electric utilities backed the bill but couldn’t provide figures on how much customers already using distributed generation are getting subsidized by other customers. Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. and Public Service Co. of Oklahoma have about 1.3 million electric customers in the state. They have about 500 customers using distributed generation. Kathleen O’Shea, OG&E spokeswoman, said few distributed generation customers want to sever their ties to the grid. “If there’s something wrong with their panel or it’s really cloudy, they need our electricity, and it’s going to be there for them,” O’Shea said. “We just want to make sure they’re paying their fair amount of that maintenance cost.” The prospect of widespread adoption of rooftop solar worries many utilities. A report last year by the industry’s research group, the Edison Electric Institute, warns of the risks posed by rooftop solar (PDF). “When customers have the opportunity to reduce their use of a product or find another provider of such service, utility earnings growth is threatened,” the report said. “As this threat to growth becomes more evident, investors will become less attracted to investments in the utility sector.”

Submission + - Koch brothers get efficient bus system banned in Tennessee

Submitted by Andy R
Andy R writes: Just as the city of Nashville was prepared to invest in Bus Rapid Transit, an efficient bus system that has been found effective in other countries both in reducing cars on the road and stimulating economies, the state of Tennessee bans them. Why? Because the Koch brothers opposed it and twisted the arms of politicians they control. For a while I thought they were another left-wing bogie man, but this is downright corrupt.

Submission + - Taking humor to a Heartbleed'ing new level!

Submitted by fries
fries writes: It is not news that OpenBSD is ripping OpenSSL a new one, and with good cause. The code has torn the industry a new one in a multiple platform debut of the heartbleed saga. When you are having so much pain from the server updates and password resets, it is time to laugh. Head over to http://opensslrampage.org/ for your dose of humor as related to the latest OpenBSD efforts.

Submission + - Quality: Open Source vs. Proprietary (ciol.com)

Submitted by just_another_sean
just_another_sean writes: Coverity Inc., a Synopsys company, released the 2013Coverity Scan Open Source Report.
The report details the analysis of 750 million lines of open source software code through the Coverity Scan service and commercial usage of the Coverity Development Testing Platform, the largest sample size that the report has studied to date.

A few key points:

* Open source code quality surpasses proprietary code quality in C/C++ projects.

* Linux continues to be a benchmark for open source quality.

* C/C++ developers fixed more high-impact defects. Analysis found that developers contributing to open source Java projects are not fixing as many high-impact defects as developers contributing to open source C/C++ projects.

Submission + - Study Finds U.S. is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University have concluded, after extensive analysis of 1,779 policy issues, that the U.S. is in fact an oligarchy and not a democracy. What this means is that, although 'Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance', 'majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.' Their study (PDF), to be published in Perspectives on Politics, found that 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.'

Submission + - PayPal Giving Nonsense Answers about OpenSSL/Heartbleed Vulnerability

Submitted by Jammerwoch
Jammerwoch writes: In the process of verifying that my critical accounts had patched their OpenSSL implementation and re-issued their SSL certificate before changing my password, I noticed that PayPal had not addressed issue: not on their blog, in their support pages, or anywhere on my account page. I also noticed that their SSL certificate was issued in February of 2014, before the vulnerability was discovered. So I contacted support to ask if they had addressed the vulnerability. The first response I got was this:

"Your PayPal account details were not exposed at any time in the past and remain secure. You do not need to take any additional action to safeguard your information."

Undaunted, I replied, asking specifically if they were (or had ever) used one of the vulnerable versions of OpenSSL (1.0.1 through 1.0.1f). The response I received was amusing, to say the least:

"I assure you that your password is not compromised. We do not use an Open SSL in our servers. The SSL certificate that we are using is hyper encrypted and beyond the versions of the usual SSL certificate. It is not affected by the ongoing HeartBleed issue."

Well! Now I'm completely reassured, knowign that they don't use "the Open SSL", and that their certificate is "hyper encrypted".

Unimpressed.

Submission + - EPIC Fail, NASA has NO ISS plan for Russian Nyet (house.gov) 2

Submitted by Jay Tyler
Jay Tyler writes: NASA Administrator Mr. Bolden went before Congress. He again played the blame game with comments of "That's not my Job" and "I'm not responsible to the Media". The plain FACT is that NASA has no backup plan to deal with the Russian problem. A problem that was designed by the Administration, and excutated by Mr. Bolden requiring the US to pay 71millon dollars for a taxi seat to the ISS. If the Pirate Putin says Nyet to NASA we are screwed, we have no plan. Before Congress Mr. Bolden, begs, and exhorts, for over a Billon US taxpayer dollars for FY2015 with the HOPE, that one of the Commercial Crew companies might be able to launch astronauts maybe in 2017. Mr. Boldens fix is we have no plan!

Submission + - Yahoo DMARC implementation breaks most mailing lists

Submitted by pdclarry
pdclarry writes: On April 8 Yahoo implemented a new DMARC policy that essentially bars any Yahoo user from accessing mailing lists hosted anywhere except on Yahoo and Google. While Yahoo is the initiator, it also affects Comcast, ATT, Rogers, SBGlobal and several other ISPs. Internet Engineering Council expert John R. Levine, specialing in email infrastructure and spam filtering claimed in a post “Yahoo breaks every mailing list in the world including the IETF's.” on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) list.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is a two year old proposed standard previously discussed on Slashdot that is intended to curb email abuse, including spoofing an phishing. Unfortunately, as implemented by Yahoo, it claims most mailing list users as collateral damage. Messages posted to mailing lists (including listserv, mailman, majordomo, etc) by Yahoo subscribers are blocked when the list forwards them to other Yahoo (and other participating ISP's) subscribers. List members not using Yahoo or its partners are not affected and will receive posts from Yahoo users. And posts from non-Yahoo users are delivered to Yahoo members. So essentially those suffering the most are Yahoo's (comcast's, att's, etc) own customers. Hacker News has details about why DMARC has this affect on mailing lists. Their best proposed solution is to ban Yahoo email users from mailing lists and encourage them to switch to other ISPs. Unfortunately, it isn't just Yahoo, although they are getting the most attention.

Submission + - Theo De Raadt's Small Rant on OpenSSL (gmane.org) 1

Submitted by raides
raides writes: Theo De Raadt has been on a better roll as of late. Since his rant about FreeBSD plating catch up (here), he has something to say about OpenSSL. It is worth the 5 second read because it is how a few thousand of us feel about the whole thing and the stupidity that caused this panic. Enjoy

Submission + - The Blender Foundation is looking to make a 90 minute crowd funded movie. (blender.org)

Submitted by Adam T Wilk
Adam T Wilk writes: The Blender foundation who have made several short animations in the past are looking to build a 90 min movie with help from several animation studios around the world". It needs 500,000 euros to make it happen and as much advertising on the subject as possible. If you interested take look and perhaps give to the cause and see you name in the credits (or even more if you decide to go with the higher monthly payments)

Comment Re:Blender should file a Counter Claim against Son (Score 1) 306

> Sony claimed the Protected Work was *theirs*

That's the problem: Sony didn't claim anything. It was just some pattern matcher whithin the bowels of Google. Oops.

On the Sintel video from the BlenderFoundation account on YouTube:

This video contains content from Sony Pictures Movies & Shows, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.

That is an explicit claim associated with Sony Pictures Movies & Shows. To get that, Sony had to upload content to the YouTube content system saying "I own this content. Anyone matching it is in copyright violation."

Also, the content ID system does not support Creative Commons or similar license usage (can use with attribution, can/cannot monetize the content, etc.) and does not work with collaboration/team events on multiplayer games, podcasts or discussions.

Submission + - Blender Foundation's Sintel video taken down on Youtube for copyright violation (youtube.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As if the automated take downs on Youtube weren't already bad enough, today fans of the popular open source 3D software Blender were greeted by a copyright take down notice for their third open movie, Sintel, despite it being released under a creative commons license: "This video contains content from Sony Pictures Movies & Shows, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." It is believed that the take down was a result of Sony Electronics adding Sintel to their official 4k demo pool.

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