Archive for January, 2009

The Department of Labor recently published final regulations that make significant changes to the rules implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The final set of related regulations went into effect Jan. 16, and includes several changes that affect both employers and employees.

* Changes to the six definitions of “serious health condition” that make an employee eligible for paid leave.

* Changes to the medical certification process that increase privacy protection.

* Changes to the requirements for employer notification.

* Clarification of the rules for light duty assignments, waiver of claims, gaps in employment, and National Guard or Reserves service.

A more complete description of the changes and links to the complete text of the final regulations are available at the US Department of Labor web site.

Information provided by John Hedtke:

“This is information on a free webinar on the basics of trademark law by Kevin Houchin, a lawyer who’s a member of SpeakerSite.com. It looks like something that will be of interest to some STC members. There’s a discussion of one of the areas where business, branding, creativity, and law overlap.

Feel free to distribute this to your chapters or anyone else.”

Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurial Authors. January 20 at 3 PM Eastern

We sometimes complain about the difficulty of moving legacy documentation online. For a bit of perspective, read this Washington Post article:

Smithsonian Confronts the Digital Age – washingtonpost.com.

Suddenly, an 80-page tutorial (or even an 800 page software manual) no longer seems so daunting.

Comments?

A nasty bit of malware, which exploits a Windows security flaw that Microsoft issued a patch for in October, 2008, has started spreading again. The latest mutation of the Downadup botnet worm (also known as Kido and Conficker) bypasses Microsoft’s patch by spreading through infected removable media (flash drives, portable hard drives, CDs and DVDs) rather than attacking through external network ports.

Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, is quoted on eWeek.com: "During 2008 we've seen a huge uprise in the amount of malware that was replicated via Windows' AutoRun functionality…and they are successful in getting onto networks from the inside. So what I think is likely happening is that infected USB sticks are being brought into corporate networks, infecting one workstation, [from] which in turn [the malware] starts to spread across the LAN."

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As new variants of this worm are identified, Microsoft updates its Malicious Software Removal Tool. The lastest update was provided in January.

It’s a dangerous world. Be careful out there.