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Submission + - Sony plan to pull out of MPAA revealed (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Earthquake Retrofit
Earthquake Retrofit writes: The New York Times is reporting: "... Sony Pictures chairman Michael Lynton last month told industry colleagues of a plan to withdraw from the movie trade organization, according to people who have been briefed on the discussions. He cited the organization's slow response and lack of public support in the aftermath of the attack on Sony and its film “The Interview,” as well as longstanding concerns about the cost and efficacy of the group."

Submission + - With Insider Help, ID Theft Ring Stole $700,000 in Apple Gift Cards (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has indicted five people for using personal information stolen from around 200 people to fund the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Apple gift cards, which in turn were used to buy Apple products. 'Using stolen information to purchase Apple products is one of the most common schemes employed by cybercrime and identity theft rings today,' District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement. 'We see in case after case how all it takes is single insider at a company—in this instance, allegedly, a receptionist in a dentists’ office—to set an identity theft ring in motion, which then tries to monetize the stolen information by purchasing Apple goods for resale or personal use,' he said.

Submission + - DARPA issues $2mil Cyber Grand Challenge

Submitted by Papa Fett
Papa Fett writes: DARPA announced the Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC)--the first-ever tournament for fully automatic network defense systems. International teams will compete to build systems that reason about software flaws, formulate patches and deploy them on a network in real time. Teams would be scored against each other based on how capably their systems can protect hosts, scan the network for vulnerabilities, and maintain the correct function of software. The winning team would receive a cash prize of $2 million, with second place earning $1 million and third place taking home $750,000. If DARPA is as successful as they were with their Grand Challenge of self driving cars, according to The Register, "it's Brown trousers time for some in antivirus industry."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What's the best way to work on projects while travelling?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I really want to go travel the world with the money I've saved up at my day job, but I also want to grow as a developer in the process. This is a long-term engagement: 2-3 years or more depending on whether my software is successful. I'll probably be hopping from hostel to hostel at first, with a few weeks at each. How do I find a good work environment in these conditions? Do hostels generally have quiet areas where work could be done? Is it OK to get out your laptop and spend the day in a cafe in Europe, assuming you keep buying drinks? What about hackerspaces — are those common on the other side of the globe? (Apartments are an option for later on, but I'm concerned about losing the social atmosphere that's built in with the hostel lifestyle.)

I've never done anything like this before, but I'm really excited about the idea! Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Submission + - Jeremy Hammond of LulzSec Pleads Guilty to Stratfor Attack (salon.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: After facing thirty years to life imprisonment and pleading not guilty to charges last year, Jeremy Hammond has pleaded guilty to his alleged involvement in Anonymous' hacking of Stratfor. The self proclaimed hacktivist member of LulzSec who has compared himself to the late Aaron Swartz explained his reasoning in his plea: "Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline. During the past 15 months I have been relatively quiet about the specifics of my case as I worked with my lawyers to review the discovery and figure out the best legal strategy. There were numerous problems with the government’s case, including the credibility of FBI informant Hector Monsegur. However, because prosecutors stacked the charges with inflated damages figures, I was looking at a sentencing guideline range of over 30 years if I lost at trial. I have wonderful lawyers and an amazing community of people on the outside who support me. None of that changes the fact that I was likely to lose at trial. But, even if I was found not guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country. If I had won this trial I would likely have been shipped across the country to face new but similar charges in a different district. The process might have repeated indefinitely. Ultimately I decided that the most practical route was to accept this plea with a maximum of a ten year sentence and immunity from prosecution in every federal court. Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites. Those others included military and police equipment suppliers, private intelligence and information security firms, and law enforcement agencies. I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right."

Submission + - Transform any Unity project into a relativistic playground with OpenRelativity (mit.edu)

Submitted by schirra
schirra writes: The MIT Game Lab has just released the graphics/physics engine from its popular game "A Slower Speed of Light" as an open-source project, allowing anyone to play around with the effects of special relativity using Unity3D. While the hope is that game developers and educators will use OpenRelativity to develop new kinds of relativistic games and simulations, that shouldn't stop those with a casual interest from playing around with these wicked cool effects. For the physics inclined, these effects include Lorentz contraction, time dilation, Doppler shift, and the searchlight effect--though a PhD in theoretical physics isn't required to enjoy or use the project.

Submission + - BSA Study Demonstrates Open Source's Economic Advantage (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: The fundamental premise of the latest BSA study — that licensed proprietary software is better in many ways than pirated copies — actually applies to open source software even more strongly, with the added virtues that the software is free to try, to use and to modify. That means the potential economic impact of free software is also even greater than that offered by both licensed and unlicensed proprietary software. It's yet another reason for governments around the world to promote the use of open source in their countries by everyone at every level.

Comment Re:A classic example... (Score 5, Informative) 419

by Hello Kitty (#38507898) Attached to: PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade

Yeah, I gotta quit wading around in the Twitter during meetings. Not can I now not find the original hoax-claim, I'm seeing the Kotaku article indicating that it's just so, so, so much better than a hoax -- yeah, really at a loss as to how this could get better. But I am willing to wait and see, yeah.
The Internet

Submission + - Internet Water Army on the march (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by kermidge
kermidge writes: From the Physics arXiv Blog — Undercover Researchers Expose Chinese Internet Water Army

Apparently there's money to be made through posting in China. One wonders to what extent this happens elsewhere.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Comments & Moderation Improvements Under Way 21

Journal by vroom
While reading through your responses to the reader survey from a couple months ago a couple things were clear. You both love & hate comments. You love the insightfulness of our readers, you hate trolls, and there are a number of things currently getting in the way from you being able to navigate through discussions as easily as you might like to.

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Businesses

Submission + - 88 Year Old Scientist Hassled by DEA (mercurynews.com) 1

Submitted by Calibax
Calibax writes: 30 years ago Bob Wallace and his partner came up with a product to help hikers, flood victims and others purify water. Wallace, now 88 years old, packs his product by hand in his garage, stores it in his backyard shed and sells it for $6.50.

Recently, the DEA has been hassling him because his product uses crystalline iodine. He has been refused a license to purchase the iodine because it can be used in the production of crystal meth, and as a result he is now out of business.

A DEA spokesman describes this as "collateral damage" not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals.

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