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Submission + - Stuxnet/Flame/Duqu uses GPL code: release it! (crysys.hu)

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes: "It seems the authors of Stuxnet/Duqu/Flame used the LZO library, which is straight-up GPL. And so, someone has asked the US government to release the code under the GPL. (Other code uses various permissive licenses. As works of the US
federal government, the rest is of course public domain.) Perhaps the author could enlist the SFLC to send a copyright notice to the US government..."

Submission + - Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore Business Machines, dies at age 83 (forbes.com)

Submitted by LoTonah
LoTonah writes: Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore Business Machines and later, the owner of Atari, died Easter Sunday. He was 83. He undoubtedly changed the computing landscape by bringing low cost computers to millions of people, and he started a price war that saw dozens of large companies leave the market. He also took a bankrupt Atari and managed to wring almost another decade out of it. The 6502 microprocessor would have withered on the vine if it weren't for Tramiel's support. Could anyone else have done all of that?
Microsoft

Submission + - CEO of tuCloud dares Microsoft to Sue his New Company (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "Word from arstechnica is that OnLive, a service provided that seems to totally flout Microsoft licensing and offers iPad users a Microsoft Desktop for free (or a beefier one for $5) isn't being sued by Microsoft as this blog quotes: "We are actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario." The people who are angry include Guise Bule, CEO of tuCloud. He accuses Microsoft of playing favorites with OnLive—whose CEO is a former Microsoft executive—while regularly auditing license compliance for companies like tuCloud that provide legitimate virtual desktop services. Bule is so mad that he says he is forming an entirely new company called DesktopsOnDemand to provide a service identical to OnLive's, complete with licensing violations, and dare Microsoft to take him to court. Bule hopes to force Microsoft into lifting restrictions on virtual desktop licensing that he says inhibit growth in the virtual desktop industry, and seem to apply to everyone except OnLive."
Politics

Submission + - 8200+ Strong, Researchers Demand Journals To Open Access (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "Academic research is behind bars and an online boycott by 8,209 researchers (and counting) is seeking to set it freewell, more free than it has been. The boycott targets Elsevier, the publisher of popular journals like Cell and The Lancet, for its aggressive business practices, but opposition was electrified by Elsevier’s backing of a Congressional bill titled the Research Works Act (RWA). Though lesser known than the other high-profile, privacy-related bills SOPA and PIPA, the act was slated to reverse the Open Access Policy enacted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 that granted the public free access to any article derived from NIH-funded research."

Submission + - Instant messaging with neutrinos (scienceblog.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of scientists has for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos – nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light. The message was sent through 240 meters of stone and said simply, "Neutrino." "Using neutrinos, it would be possible to communicate between any two points on Earth without using satellites or cables," said lead researcher Dan Stancil. "Neutrino communication systems would be much more complicated than today's systems, but may have important strategic uses."
Medicine

Submission + - Thousands of side-effects from mixing meds revealed (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: An algorithm designed by US scientists to trawl through a plethora of drug interactions has yielded thousands of previously unknown side effects caused by taking drugs in combination (http://www.nature.com/news/drug-data-reveal-sneaky-side-effects-1.10220). The work provides a way to sort through the hundreds of thousands of 'adverse events' reported to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) each year.
The researchers developed an algorithm that would match data from each drug-exposed patient to a nonexposed control patient with the same condition. The approach automatically corrected for several known sources of bias, including those linked to gender, age and disease.
The team then used this method to compile a database of 1,332 drugs and possible side effects that were not listed on the labels for those drugs. The algorithm came up with an average of 329 previously unknown adverse events for each drug — far surpassing the average of 69 side effects listed on most drug labels.
Government

Submission + - $10,000 Prize for Connecting Businesses with Government Data (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by
InsertCleverUsername
InsertCleverUsername writes: "The Department of Commerce has announced a $10,000 contest for developers making apps to utilize Commerce and other publicly available data and information to support American businesses. Developers must use at least one Department of Commerce dataset to create an application that assists businesses and/or improves the service delivery of Business.USA.gov to the business community. Developers may choose any platform. A list of developer-friendly data sets can be found on the Business Data and Tools page of Data.gov."
Entertainment

Submission + - Video Games: Goods or Services? (ign.com)

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes: From IGN: "The current understanding of games as a service is quite a complicated issue, and something of a legal grey-area. So to understand it better I contacted Jas Purewal, a games lawyer at the UK law firm Osborne-Clarke, and the writer of gamerlaw.co.uk. Initially, Jas explained the nuances of how videogames have come to be considered a service:

'The legal position is unclear whether games are legally classified as "goods" or "services". If we're talking about boxed-product games, there's a good argument the physical boxed product is a "good", but we don't know definitively if the software on it, or more generally software which is digitally distributed, is a good or a service. In the absence of a definitive legal answer, software and games companies have generally treated software itself as a service – which means treating games like World of Warcraft as well as platforms like Steam or Xbox LIVE as a service.'"
China

Submission + - China Stops Genetically Engineered Rice (the-diplomat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China’s State Council has released a proposal for a grain law that establishes legislation restricting research, field trials, production, sale, import and export of genetically engineered grain seeds, the first initiative in the world that deals with GE food legislation at state law level.

Monsanto had tried and failed to commercialize GE wheat in Canada. Now they were hoping China would become the first guinea pig, opening the gate to genetic experiments with staple crops.
Government

Submission + - Wikileaks and Anonymous Join Forces to Reveal How Dumb Our Intelligence Is (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "The most recent bombshell of confidential documents dropped by infamous watchdog organization Wikileaks is already looking to have an enormous impact on our understanding of government security practices. Specifically, intimate details on the long-suspected fact that the U.S. has been paying a whole lot of money to have private corporations spy on citizens, activists and other groups and individuals on their ever-expanding, McCarthy-style naughty list. But perhaps more importantly, the docs demonstrate something very interesting about the nature of U.S. government intelligence: They haven’t really got much of it."
Canada

Submission + - Universities agree to email monitoring for copyright agency (cautbulletin.ca) 1

Submitted by fish waffle
fish waffle writes: The universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have signed a deal with Access Copyright that allows for surveillance of faculty correspondence, defines e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, and imposes an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student to pay for it all.

Access Copyright is a licensing agency historically used by most universities in Canada to give them blanket permission to reproduce copyrighted works, largely to address photocopying concerns that may extend beyond basic fair-use. Since the expiration of this agreement, and with recognition that many academic uses do not require copyright permissions or payments or are already covered under vendor-specific agreements, Canadian academic institutions have been united in opposing continuation of the agreement with the agency. Access Copyright has countered with a proposal for increased fees, and expansion of the definition of copyright to include linking and the need for online surveillance. In a strange breaking of ranks, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto have capitulated and signed agreements that basically accede to the licensing agency's demands.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers bulletin provides detailed background on the issue.
Privacy

Submission + - FOIA Request Shows Which Printer Companies Cooperated With U.S. Government (scribd.com)

Submitted by
Dave_Minsky
Dave_Minsky writes: "The U.S. Secret Service responded to a FOIA request on Monday that reveals the names of the printer companies that cooperate with the government to identify and track potential counterfeiters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed in 2005 that the U.S. Secret Service was in cahoots with selected laser printer companies to identify and track printer paper using tiny microscopic dots encoded into the paper.

The tiny, yellow dots--less than a millimeter each--are printed in a pattern over each page and are only viewable with a blue light, a magnifying glass or a microscope. The pattern of dots is encodes identifiable information including printer model, and time and location where the document was printed."
Your Rights Online

Second Life & WoW Terrorist Training Camps? 292

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-gotta-be-kidding-me dept.
Tech.Luver writes "theinquirer reports that 'Aussie Security experts claim that Second Life and online games such as World of Warcraft are being used to train terrorists. Apparently there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups in Second Life and they use the site for recruiting and training. This is on top of the Second Life Liberation Army.""

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