eldavojohn writes "I found a brief blog by Marc Fleury on something that seems to almost be an oxymoron — what you need to legally protect in Open Source Software. The short of it is that you should trademark your name and brand it. Which might explain Xen's stance on the use of the brand 'Xen'. Another short blog notes that you should also maintain control of your distribution channels. Fleury also states this interesting tidbit on protecting intellectual property in OSS, 'Short of filing patents, there isn't much you can do in OSS. Let's face it the IP is there for everyone to see. If you are in a mode where a lot of the value is the code itself then open sourcing under GPL or equivalent reciprocal license may be a good choice for you. At least you will make sure that ISV's that re-use your license get in contact with you and many of them will pursue dual-licensing, a strategy that is known to work to monetize an OSS user base (mySQL).' Is there anything else you should take measures to protect in open source software? Is it possible to maintain control of a project under the GPL or are you constantly faced with forks?"

Valve's rekindling of the passions of PC gamers continues to get some attention today, as RPS writer John Walker sits down with Gabe Newell for a chat and Escapist author Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) went a-visiting in their Bellvue offices. He has a travelogue from the trip up on the site, showing an interesting side of both the company and the commentator. "One of the things I've always wondered about in Valve games is the credits, in that very little seems to get credited, if you catch my drift. The names of all the people involved always simply roll past in alphabetical order with no job titles or details of any kind. The reason for this, as I'm learning, is that no one at Valve has any specific title. Part of that is because of something called the Cabal System. When a job needs done or a problem needs solving, or an issue has come up in one of the hundreds of play test sessions Valve games undergo, a group of bods with random assortments of skills from all over the spectrum of game design are brought together to bounce solutions off each other and argue their merit."

juct writes "The long-standing suspicion that the anonymizing network TOR is abused to catch sensitive data by Chinese, Russian, and American government agencies as well as hacking groups gets new support. Members of the Teamfurry community found TOR exit-nodes which only forward unencrypted versions of certain protocols. These peculiar configurations invite speculation as to why they are set up in this way. Another tor exit node has been caught doing MITM attacks using fake SSL certificates."

Enon writes "eEye Digital Security has discovered 14 vulnerabilities in the FLAC file format that affect a huge range of media players on every supported operating system (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Unix, BSD, Solaris, and even some hardware players are vulnerable). Heise points out a number of vulnerable apps that use the open source libavcodec audio codec library, which in turn relies on the flawed libFLAC library. These vulnerabilities could allow a person of ill will to trojanize FLAC files that could compromise your computer if they are played on a vulnerable media player. eEye worked with US-CERT to notify vulnerable vendors."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what has been termed the ''RIAA's worst nightmare', the Free Software Foundation has announced that it is coming to the aid of the victims of RIAA lawsuits, by establishing an Expert Witness Defense Fund to assist defendants in RIAA cases. The purpose of the fund is 'to help provide computer expert witnesses to combat RIAA's ongoing lawsuits, and to defend against the RIAA's attempt to redefine copyright law.' The funds will be used to pay fees and/or expenses of technical expert witnesses, forensic examiners, and other technical consultants assisting individuals named as defendants in non-commercial, peer-to-peer file sharing cases brought by the RIAA, EMI, SONY BMG, Vivendi Universal, and Warner Bros. Records, and their affiliated companies, such as Interscope, Arista, UMG, Fonovisa, Motown, Atlantic, Priority, and others."

To go along with its recent hardware survey, Valve has released stats from Half-Life 2: Episode Two . The page notes the most common achievements, as well as the deadliest places in the game. Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog spells out a few of the results for us: "The median completion time hits at exactly five hours, with some noteworthy variance between four and seven hours. Average play session time logged was 27 minutes. The average number of deaths spikes significantly at two specific maps during the final two levels with an average of 11 deaths per section, as well; and looking at the topographical maps at some very specific locations on the maps as well. 73.1 percent of users playing were doing so with Direct X 9.0 SM3, and 72.6 percent played the game on medium."

rabiddeity writes "If you're planning to visit Japan sometime in the near future, you should be aware of the welcome you'll get. Last year, Japan's parliament passed a measure requiring foreigners to submit their fingerprints when entering the country. The measures, which apply to all foreigners over 16 regardless of visa status, take effect tomorrow. The worst part: the fingerprints are stored in a national database for an "unspecified time", and will be made available to both domestic police and foreign governments."

Mpegged writes "The popular DivX video codec will soon be supported on the PlayStation 3 via a future firmware update. DivX CEO Kevin Hell also hinted that support is coming to the 360 as well. 'During the SMid Cap conference call with investment firm JP Morgan, Hell was asked if the recent deal that will see DivX codecs shipped with new versions of Microsoft's standalone Media Center Extenders means that such support will also be arriving on the Xbox 360. "Yes!" was his immediate reply, although he quickly qualified that confirmation with a disclaimer that the deal was still in the negotiation process and had not yet been finalized.'"

slashdotLIKES writes "CoolTechZone.com columnist Gundeep Hora has a new column up that discusses why Apple should acquire AMD and how both companies would be a good fit for each other. From the article, "After private equity groups, let's look at a more strategic acquisition. For that, Apple is the best bet. Yes, I know it sounds way too radical to be taken seriously. However, Apple could drop Intel altogether and adopt AMD for its Macintosh PCs. Sure, the transition is going to take sometime, and it would probably make Apple announce a brand new line of PCs. However, it will be well worth it. We know Steve Jobs is ruthless when it comes to making interesting deals with powerful companies. This makes AMD a perfect match. Obviously Intel isn't going to be too delighted, but other companies don't bother Jobs. We all know he's the type of executive who crafts deals on his own terms. If Intel wants to be associated with Apple, then they won't really have much of a choice."