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Ars Technica |
In annual tradition, advertisers cowed by NFL trademark bullying
Every year in late January or early February, two teams take to the field to play a football game that's watched by tens of millions of Americans. And every year, businesses launch ad campaigns to sell a variety of products—televisions, pizzas, soda—in conjunction with the game. And the overwhelming majority of these businesses avoid calling it the "Super Bowl."
Why? They're afraid of getting sued by the National Football League, which holds the trademark for the term and polices it...
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Week in Apple: post-Macworld|iWorld edition
This week, we wrapped up our coverage of the 2012 Macworld|iWorld conference in San Francisco just as Apple issued an update to Final Cut Pro X and gave the AirPort Utility an iOS makeover. Additionally, Tim Cook offered some strong words in response to doubts about Apple's attitude toward worker conditions in China, Neil Young recounted stories about Steve Jobs working towards higher-quality music downloads, and more. Need a recap? You're in the right place.
Rethinking iPhone UI and getting th...
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Week in Gaming: Misleading game trailers, Online Passes and cat MMOs
This week, an animated trailer for an imaginary Zelda game got us wondering why exactly games often can't live up to the thrilling scenes we're shown in pre-release videos. We also looked at the slow redefinition of what an Online Pass can be used for, examined the legality of blocking used games sales, and spent a massively-multiplayer hour as a cat.
Madden NFL and Tecmo Bowl both agree that the Giants are going to win the Super Bowl this weekend. Personally, I'm rooting for stadium collapse. ...
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Week in tech: acting out over ACTA, Firefox 10, and a new KDE tablet
Kindle Fire dwarfs other Android tablets in market share after just three months: After three months, the Kindle Fire has an equal share of the Android tablet market with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and has already outstripped the Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer, and Acer Iconia Tab.
Firefox 10 arrives with new dev tools and full-screen API: Mozilla has released version 10 of the Firefox Web browser. The update includes improved development tools and a new API for displaying page elements in fullscr...
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Week in science, with unusual amounts of insanity
It was a crazy week for science. Normally, when we say that, we mean there was a lot of important news going on; this week, some of the actual stories involved a fair degree of nuttiness. These included an overt attempt to inject religion into science classes and a theory that attempts to explain everything without even bothering to deal with most of the fundamental particles identified by physics. Still, there was some good science, including a very selective graphene membrane and some bacte...
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Kelihos botnet remains very much dead after all
A spam botnet brought down four months ago, which was once capable of pumping out almost four billion spam messages a day, remains very much dead, two of the companies behind the takedown said.
That determination, announced late Friday by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab representatives, contradicted published reports, including one from Ars, that claimed the network of infected computers had been resurrected. There's no evidence that control of Kelihos, which also went by the name Hlux, has ret...
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LibreOffice stats: 400 total contributors, thousands of code commits every month
The Document Foundation (TDF), which launched in 2010 to develop LibreOffice, has published statistics that illustrate the project's rapid growth. Approximately 400 total developers have contributed code to the project. The number of contributors who are active each month generally ranges from 50 to over 100.
LibreOffice is a community-driven fork of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office suite. The project started after Oracle's acquisition of Sun with the aim of offering a better governance model an...
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Indiana backing away from bill allowing creation "science" into classrooms
Earlier this week, we reported on efforts by an Indiana state legislator who was interested in getting creationism inserted into the state's science classrooms. He managed to get a modified bill, one that was less sectarian but still overtly promoted religion, passed by the state's Senate. Yesterday, however, the leader of the Indiana House voiced unease about having the state wade into an area that the Supreme Court has declared an unconstitutional promotion of religion.
Many similar b...
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FDA whistleblowers say government retaliated with spyware
A group of former FDA scientists who spoke out against the agency's allegedly flawed device-approval process are suing the feds for intercepting Gmail and Yahoo Mail messages by installing spy programs on their work computers. Although the computers were owned by the government, the plaintiffs say they were explicitly granted the right to use them for personal purposes.
Back in January 2009, nine scientists known as the "FDA Nine" anonymously wrote to the leader of then President-elect Barack ...
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Apple updates iBooks Author EULA to clarify restriction on format, not content
Apple updated iBooks Author to version 1.0.1 on Friday afternoon, the only change being an update to the software's controversial end user license agreement. The updated EULA now specifically only applies distribution restrictions to the interactive .ibooks format files generated by the app.
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Study of deadly flu sparks debate amidst fears of new pandemic
The 2009 flu pandemic, although not especially deadly, revealed just how quickly a new influenza virus could elude surveillance and spread internationally. It also left health experts eying the disease that many fear could cause the next pandemic: H5N1, the avian flu. According to World Health Organization standards, that virus is phenomenally deadly, killing about half the people that contract it. So far, however, almost all the known cases came from people who were in direct contact with p...
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"I was punched in the face": Kim Dotcom says police used excessive force in raid
Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom (read our in-depth profile) was denied bail on Thursday by a New Zealand court. Dotcom insisted that he had no desire to flee the country and merely wanted to be with his pregnant wife and their three young children. But US attorneys argued the Dotcom posed a severe flight risk, and the court rejected Dotcom's bail request.
In court testimony, Dotcom described the dramatic raid on his home by law enforcement. Dotcom told the court that he didn't know the people invadi...
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Refurbished Motorola Xooms came with private data from previous owners
Motorola facilitated the sale of a bunch of refurbished Xoom tablets with former owners' data still on them, the company announced in a press release Friday. The Xooms were part of a deal on flash sale site woot.com last fall, and of the thousands sold, 100 were shipped out to new owners with information the previous owners had left on them, including passwords, account information, photos, and documents.
The Motorola Xoom captured a narrow share of the market following its launch in February ...
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ACTA on the edge in Europe? Poland suspends ratification, Greece gets hacked
Anger at last month's decision by the European Union and 22 of its member states to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has led to widespread protests, hacked Web sites, and legislators backing away from the treaty.
The anti-ACTA protests that saw Polish politicians don Guy Fawkes masks in parliament have borne fruit. After experiencing a considerable backlash in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has suspended ratification of the controversial agreement, acknowledging that the ...
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Boom to bust: THQ's "revolutionary" uDraw now filling warehouse shelves
Back in the long-ago days of the 2010 holiday season, it looked like THQ had a hit on its hands with its out-of-left-field uDraw Game Tablet, a slate-like controller that used a stylus to let players draw on the TV. The company sold 1.7 million of them to Wii owners by early 2011, beating expectations and leading some to speculate that the uDraw might be the biggest game control revolution this side of the Kinect.
Buoyed by the initial success, THQ quickly cranked out uDraw tablets for the Xbox...
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iPhone, iPad injunction lifted in Germany, but Apple still faces iCloud action
Apple will be able to sell its iPad 2 with 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 via its online store in Germany after all, thanks to a temporary extension courtesy of a German court. As noted by the BBC, an appeals court lifted the ban on certain iOS devices just after Apple was forced to remove them from its German online store earlier on Friday. Still, not all is going Apple's way, as a Mannheim Regional Court also ruled on Friday that Apple had infringed upon a patent owned by Motorola that allows de...
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Anonymous pokes fate bear, leaks FBI conference call about Anonymous
Anonymous has begun taunting its police pursuers in ever-more aggressive ways, upping the ante today by releasing an internal FBI conference call in which agents from across the country and police in the UK share status updates on their investigations of the group—and reveal that major new action is coming soon.
Much of the call is taken up by a UK investigator from the Metropolitan Police who comes across as eager to curry favor with the FBI. The biggest way this is being done? UK inve...
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Ars Technica |
How to watch the Super Bowl on the biggest and littlest screens
For the first time, the NFL is providing live streaming video of the Super Bowl, both on Web browsers and through a smartphone application. Now you'll have any number of viewing options and combinations: sit in front of an HDTV with a laptop or tablet to gain DVR controls and extra camera angles not available on the main NBC feed. If you can't get to a TV or browser (or if someone is blocking your view at the local watering hole) just whip out your smartphone and watch the game in miniature...
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Ars Technica |
Ars and nature.com at the American Museum of Natural History: good stuff
For nearly a year now, Ars has worked with nature.com to organize a monthly panel discussion called Science Online NYC. We're pleased to announce that, in February, we'll also be working with the American Museum of Natural History to organize a special program entitled "Beyond a Trend: Enhancing Science Communication with Social Media," which will be part of the global Social Media Week.
The panel will discuss how people who have communicated science in traditional outlets&...
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Ars Technica |
Hands-on with Node.js support in Komodo IDE 7
ActiveState has released a major new version of the Komodo integrated development environment (IDE). The update, which is called Komodo 7, introduces several useful new features and support for additional programming languages.
Komodo is a high-end commercial development tool for programmers who work with scripting languages such as Python and Ruby. It's especially well-suited for developing large-scale Web applications. It supports code completion and breakpoint debugging for a relatively broa...
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Mozilla developing Web push notification system for Firefox
Mozilla is developing a push notification system for the Firefox Web browser. It will allow users to receive notifications from websites without having to keep those sites open in their browser. The system will also be able to relay push notifications to mobile devices.
The project is part of Mozilla's broader effort to ensure that the Web is a competitive platform that can match the capabilities of native applications. Introducing support for push notifications will help to close the gap, beca...
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AMD sets out its plans for 2013, hints at a possible ARM future
AMD today laid out its plans for the next couple of years at its Financial Analyst Day. The plans are a mix of familiar and logical extensions of the company's current products, but contained some more surprising elements: specifically, AMD opened the door to future processors that include ARM CPUs.
The underlying themes to AMD's plans are faster iteration—a GPU-like 18-24 months between CPU designs, compared to the current 3 or more years—achieved by moving away from custom designs...
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The route to a Kindle owner's heart goes through the wallet
A customer satisfaction survey of Kindle Fire owners shows that while the vast majority are satisfied with their purchase, it is mainly the low price fueling their happiness. ChangeWave Research asked a sample of new Kindle Fire owners how they were enjoying their device so far; slightly more than half reported being "very satisfied," and 59 percent said the $199 price of the Kindle Fire was what they liked best about it.
The survey asked 254 people who had recently acquired a Kindle Fire what ...
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Ars Technica |
Book Review: The Infinity Puzzle
The Infinity Puzzle sounds like one of those wooden gadgets that you can play with for a few minutes before wanting to hurl it across the room in frustration, but the infinity puzzle of this book's title actually refers to a mathematical quandary that stumped particle physicists for the first half of last century. The story of how physics moved beyond this roadblock has now been told by Frank Close, a distinguished theoretical physicist as well as a very apt storyteller.
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EFF ready to sue if "innocent customers" can't get Megaupload data back
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today officially asked all parties involved in the Megaupload criminal case to refrain from deleting any data stored on servers once leased by the file-hosting service—and it suggested it was willing to sue over the matter.
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At long last, malware scanning comes to Google's Android Market
Google engineers have unveiled a cloud-based service that scours the Android Market for malicious smartphone apps.
Bouncer, as the scanner is called, automatically checks each title in the Google app bazaar to make sure it doesn't match signatures of known malware, Hiroshi Lockheimer, vice president of Android Engineering, told Ars. It also looks for clues that apps contain surreptitiously abusive behavior by running them through a system that simulates an Android device. The scan happens when ...
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Ars Technica |
Leaked Windows Phone 8 vid: Windows 8 kernel and integration, multiple cores
Windows Phone 8 will be based on the same kernel as Windows 8, and will support multicore processors, NFC, and full device encryption according to a leaked video seen by PocketNow. This in turn inspired Paul Thurrott to reveal a little more about the software too. In the video intended only for internal consumption by Microsoft and its partners, Joe Belfiore, director of the Windows Phone program, describes the extensive features that Windows Phone 8, codenamed "Apollo," will contain.
Addressin...
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Feds seize 307 sports-related domains in advance of Super Bowl
Federal authorities said Thursday they had seized and shuttered 307 domains, 16 allegedly engaged in unauthorized live sports streaming and the remainder accused of selling fake professional sports merchandise, including National Football League paraphernalia.
The seizure, the biggest to date under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown known as Operation in Our Sites, (PDF) brings the total to more than 650 domains shuttered since the program began in June of 2010. The latest seizure...
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Oklahoma lawmaker proposes tax on "violent" video games (and Ultimate Card Games)
When the US Supreme Court decided last year to extend full First Amendment protections to video games, many likely thought that was the last word on potential legal assaults on the medium. That's not the case though, as an Oklahoma lawmaker has now proposed a special tax to be focused on "violent video games."
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Tim Cook: Apple donated $50 million to hospitals, $50 million to Project(RED)
Apple has reportedly donated $50 million to Stanford University hospitals as part of its recent philanthropic strategy shift. The numbers were revealed during Apple's recent Town Hall meeting with employees, according to sources speaking to The Verge, with $25 million each going to a new main hospital building and a new children's hospital.
Apple often holds Town Hall meetings following major announcements or at the end of a particularly successful quarter in order to bring employees up to spe...
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Affirmative action for women in math contests boosts participation without dropping results
Despite advances in many areas, women are still underrepresented in the upper levels of corporations, electoral politics, and some scientific research fields. This lack of parity is all the more striking because, in much of the developed world, women's educational achievements have surpassed those of men. (In 2009 in the United States, 57 percent of currently enrolled students were female, a trend that has been fairly stable over several decades.) This imbalance has been ascribed to two factors:...
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Apple now third largest mobile phone vendor as feature phones fade
The mobile phone industry continues its march toward smartphone dominance as consumer interest in feature phones wanes, according to market research firm IDC. Record sales of Apple's iPhone in the fourth quarter pushed the company into third place among all mobile phone vendors, up from fifth place last year. Samsung's strong smartphone sales kept it in second place, but edged it closer in marketshare to the declining long-time market leader, Nokia.
The overall mobile market grew just 6.1 perce...
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VeriSign, maintainer of net's DNS, warns it was repeatedly hacked
VeriSign, the company that manages a key internet database for routing traffic to websites and email addresses, exposed private information after being hacked on multiple occasions in 2010, the company quietly disclosed late last year.
While executives with the Reston, Virginia company said they don't believe servers that maintain the DNS (domain name system) were breached, they couldn't rule out the possibility. They also warned that they couldn't guarantee steps taken to remediate the breach ...
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Final Fantasy XIII-2: better than the last one, but not by much
Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes place three years after Final Fantasy XIII. Vanille, Fang, Snow and Lightning are gone; either dead, encased in crystal or disappeared to unknown adventures. Serah Farron, Lightning's sister and Snow's fiancé, hides her pain while teaching the children of New Bodhum and helping her friends in NORA. Images of Lightning engaged in an epic battle haunt her dreams, but she knows her sister is gone forever.
What happened to Final Fantasy? The elaborate narrative and groun...
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Problems with the OS X 10.7.3 update? Combo updater to the rescue
There's a reason many of us here at Ars wait a few days (or in some cases, weeks) after an OS update before installing it: reports of problems after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7.3 have begun multiplying since its release on Wednesday afternoon. But don't worry—you don't have to wait for Apple to issue a fix, as reinstalling with the 10.7.3 Combo updater seems to take care of the various upgrade issues.
The most prominent problem that some users are running into appears to involve a bizarre ...
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Google Docs offline comes to Android, but no editing allowed
Google keeps taking tiny steps toward creating a full-fledged document creation and editing experience to users of computers and mobile devices. Recently, Google unveiled an HTML5-powered app for the Chrome browser that lets you read documents offline—but not edit them. Yesterday, Google brought the same offline viewing capability to Docs for Android, but again without the ability to edit documents and then sync the changes once an Internet connection is reestablished.
Once you've update...
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Researchers develop a frequency comb that can untangle the extreme ultraviolet spectrum
Performing atomic, molecular, and optical measurements at high precision requires very precisely calibrated optical equipment. One method for achieving precision, which won its developers the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics, is known as a frequency comb. These combs create a clear series of evenly-spaced spectral lines that can be put to a variety of uses. Until now, frequency combs have been confined to visible light frequencies, but new developments have extended their usefulness into the extreme ...
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Microsoft touts plugin-free web, offers desktop fallback for Flash lovers
Microsoft's new version of Internet Explorer has barred browser plugins in the Metro environment. But Microsoft has revealed a method that plugin-dependent websites can use to leap over Metro's walls and reach the green fields of the conventional Windows desktop, where Flash is still allowed to roam free.
The relevance of proprietary browser plugins is declining as standards-based Web technologies mature. Native Web technologies don't yet supply complete functional equivalence with the capabili...
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Ars Technica |
Beyond ACTA: next secret copyright agreement negotiated this week—in Hollywood
One of the worst parts of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was its ridiculous secrecy, under which it was easy for negotiators and industry reps to see draft text, but impossible for the public to do so except through leaks. Thankfully, those leaks showed just how bad ACTA was going to be for the Internet, and public pressure helped remove the worst provisions.
But the basic approach to doing deals didn't die, and it's back again this week as negotiators meet in Hollywood to discu...
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Ars Technica |
Post-IPO, Facebook will have to make privacy investigations public
When it comes to information privacy concerns, Facebook already has a bullseye on its back. That won't change now that Facebook is going public in its highly anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO). But disclosure rules affecting publicly traded companies may force Facebook to reveal privacy-related investigations that it otherwise might have kept secret.
Facebook won't face any new regulations or government oversight specifically related to privacy, according to the experts who spoke to...
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Ars Technica |
Shoe on the other foot: RIAA wants to scrap anti-piracy OPEN Act
The Recording Industry Association of America found itself in an unusual position this week: opposing an anti-piracy bill that's gaining momentum in Congress.
"The OPEN Act does nothing" to stop online infringement and "may even make the problem worse," the industry group says in a statement it is circulating on Capitol Hill this week. "It does not establish a workable framework, standards, or remedies. It is not supported by those it purports to protect."
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It's official: Facebook files for $5 billion IPO
Facebook is hoping investors will "like" the social network just as much as its users already do. Following a series of rumors that have multiplied in recent weeks, Facebook filed for Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission at a value of $5 billion.
The impending IPO has been widely expected among investors and tech circles for some time, with the earliest rumors going back for years. Some expected the company to raise upwards of $100 billion (yes,...
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Ars Technica |
Apple Store employee reportedly being spied on via iMessage bug
The "iMessage bug" that causes text, video, and picture messages to go to the wrong phone has reportedly hit an Apple Store employee, and allegedly without his knowledge. According to a story over at Gizmodo, the staff of that site has been "spying" on the texts sent by someone who appears to work at an Apple Store thanks to the help of a reader whose son recently had his iPhone fixed by a store Genius. The employee's text messages sent to and from his friends now appear to be going to the reade...
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Ars Technica |
Mac OS X 10.7.3 hits Software Update along with Safari 5.1.3
Apple has released a new update for Mac OS X Lion, version 10.7.3. The update's release notes indicate that it's a relatively minor bump, with myriad bug fixes for things like smart card logins, printing Word documents using markup, WiFi connection issues, and more. The operating system update also comes bundled with a small version bump for Safari, which is now at version 5.1.3.
In addition to the aforementioned bugs, the 10.7.3 update addresses an issue when authenticating to an SMB DFS share...
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Double Fine Happy Action Theater redefines what a Kinect "game" can be
Calling Double Fine Happy Action Theater (DFHAT) a game might not marry well with many people's definition of what a game is. A game usually has clearly stated goals and strictly defined rules that describe how you could fail to reach those goals. In DFHAT, on the other hand, it's literally impossible to either win or fail in any of 18 myraid scenes, which each use the Kinect 3D camera to transform your living room in various ways.
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Impeach Obama for bribery? Anti-ACTA spin reaches new lows
Given easy access to the Internet, the source of so much information, one might expect that Internet activists would be the best informed on the facts. But the continuing recent debate over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) reminds us that, even in the Internet age, truth is a quick casualty of war.
We debunked a few of the most common canards about ACTA earlier this week, but the rhetorical temperature has since been raised even further. It's worth clearing the air on a few more i...
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2001 all over again: Internet Explorer 6 share grows (and Chrome falls)
It may be 2012, but apparently someone hasn't got the message. Internet Explorer's share of the desktop browser market grew in January, and most of that growth was due to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 6 only runs on one supported operating system, Windows XP, and that too gained market share last month.
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My life as a cat: an hour with Terry Cavanagh's ChatChat MMO
The instructions underneath VVVVVV creator Terry Cavanagh's new browser-based MMO ChatChat simply read: "be a cat." These instructions also describe a dream I held between the ages of 5 and 7, so I'm eager to finally see if my dreams were realistic. Below is a short, diary-style description of my first hour as a cat.
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Ars Technica |
Meet our new Security Editor and help shape our coverage
Welcome, readers, to our expanded security section. As the newly christened Security Editor here, I'll be directing coverage of hackers, botnets, encryption, electronic warfare, and similar topics.
A little about me: I've been using computers since 1986 when, as a dyslexic English major, I learned of a nifty thing called spell checkers. I graduated from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism ten years later and have been chronicling the influential personalities and seminal events in techn...
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Microsoft vows to fix "broken" Hyper-V code submitted to OpenStack project
In October 2010, Microsoft started working toward making the OpenStack open source project compatible with Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software. The project now seems to be hitting a snag—much as Microsoft's submission of Hyper-V drivers to the Linux kernel once did—but Microsoft says it is committed to making good on its OpenStack promises just as it did with Hyper-V and Linux.
OpenStack, a framework for creating infrastructure-as-a-service cloud networks from pools of virt...
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Apple was working on higher quality music and hardware, says rocker
According to rocker Neil Young, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was working on a project to bring higher-quality music to the masses. In an interview during the D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, Young said he was collaborating with Jobs on the project before his death, though not much progress has been made since then.
Young is particularly sensitive about the fact that most music today comes in the form of highly compressed AAC or MP3 formats. "My goal is to try and rescue the art for...
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Converting light to sound in cold quantum systems
Oscillators lie at the core of many precision quantum experiments. The oscillations can exist in atomic clocks used for accurate timing, laser and masers, or a variety of other devices, but the regular cycling of quantum oscillators play an essential role in modern science and engineering. However, most uses have been confined to the electromagnetic regime, where the vibrations exhibit as photons; the quantum states of mechanical oscillators, where the vibrations are sound waves, have proven mor...
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"What we do is good": Pirate Bay lashes out as Swedish lawsuit finally ends
The Swedish lawsuit against four of The Pirate Bay's previous administrators concluded today as the country's Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal. Jail sentences and fines against the group now become final.
Back in April 2009, the District Court found Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and their financial backer Carl Lundstrom guilty of aiding copyright infringement. Each man was sentenced to year in prison, and the four shared a 30 million kroner (US$4.5 million) f...
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Engineered E. coli produce biofuel from seaweed
Biofuels may hold the key to reducing our dependence on foreign oil and cutting down on our greenhouse gas emissions. Ethanol is currently the biofuel of choice, with almost all gasoline bought at the pump in the United States containing 10 percent ethanol. Right now, though, most ethanol comes from corn and sugarcane, and there are concerns that growing our fuel from these crops could drive up food prices (“food versus fuel”).
Biofuels made from macroalgae, aka seaweed, avoid ...
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Asian economic powerhouses are also broadband slowpokes
The Akamai State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2011 is out, and as usual, it is full of interesting data about global broadband developments. Many observers read the survey to get updates on the nations with the fastest broadband speeds and greatest high speed Internet penetration. But what caught our eye this time around was the extent to which two of the world's most important nations, India and China, lag in advanced broadband adoption.
The Akamai report puts particular focu...
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PlayStation boss Kazuo Hirai becomes president of Sony
Kazuo Hirai has been
named as President and CEO of Sony Corporation. He will take
the role on 1 April, and replace Howard Stringer in both roles.
Howard Stringer will become chairman of the board of directors
in June, when Yotaro Kobayashi retires. Hirai is also expected to
be appointed to the board in June.
Hirai, 51, is currently Sony's executive deputy president and
chairman of the company's Computer Entertainment (SCE)—or
PlayStation—arm.
He joined the firm in 1984 at Sony Mu...
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Indiana Senate passes bill putting religion in science class
Yesterday, after almost no debate, the Indiana State Senate approved a bill that would allow its schools to teach the origin stories of various religions when a class touches on the origin of life. It now moves on to the state's House, where one of its cosponsors is currently the Speaker of the House. Although the bill as written could be used to create a comparative religion class, its sponsor, Senator Dennis Kruse, has made it clear that he hopes to see it foster the teaching of creationism...
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Review: Republic Wireless and its $19/month cell service
Republic Wireless is an upstart taking on some of the biggest behemoths in American industry—the major cell carriers—armed with WiFi as its main weapon. Republic keeps costs low by encouraging the use of WiFi on cell phones, though customers can still access 3G voice and data services, if needed. Though the service has some drawbacks, including a high startup cost, the previously limited service no longer has formal limits on usage, and it could pose a serious challenge to the standa...
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Ars Technica |
"Slain" Kelihos botnet still spams from beyond the grave
A botnet capable of delivering almost four billion spam messages per day has been confirmed resurrected—more than four months after Microsoft celebrated its untimely demise.
Researchers with Kaspersky Lab reported on Tuesday that Kelihos, a peer-to-peer botnet that also goes by the name Hlux, continues to spew spam in a variety of languages. A new version of the underlying malware appeared as early as September 28, 2011, a day after Microsoft took credit for disrupting the rogue network b...
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Ars Technica |
Linux kernel chief exits SUSE, takes vendor-neutral oversight role
Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the Linux kernel's stable branch and the Linux driver project, is leaving his position with SUSE to join the Linux Foundation in a full-time fellowship role. Kroah-Hartman will now have more time to oversee kernel development and work with the Linux community, while leaving aside the responsibility of working for a vendor. (The SUSE Linux project was owned by Novell, and now Attachmate.)
"There were no direct conflicts working for SUSE, as the people there und...
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Ars Technica |
Megaupload's hosting company teams up with EFF to identify legal files
Carpathia Hosting, the Virginia company that owns more than 600 servers previously leased by Megaupload, today joined forces with the EFF to collect the stories of legitimate users who want access to their now-inaccessible files stored with the defunct file-locker.
The new site, megaretrieval.com, hopes to hear from the "multitude of innocent users who stored legitimate, non-infringing files on the cloud-storage service were left with no means to access their data." EFF can't promise that the d...
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Ars Technica |
Parcel Gamer wants to share used game profits with publishers
At the heart of the great used game debate are legitimate fears—on both sides of the divide. Gamers are worried about their right to buy and sell games they legally bought without technological hindrance or lost content. Publishers are afraid new game sales are unsustainable when cheaper, functionally identical used versions are available mere days after release. Meanwhile, major retailer GameStop rakes in what's estimated to be billions of dollars from the used game market.
Is there...
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Ars Technica |
Barnes & Noble faces setback in Microsoft antitrust complaint
Microsoft may have scored an early victory in its legal tussle with Barnes & Noble. The two companies are engaged in parallel battles, one via the Department of Justice, another via United States International Trade Commission. In March 2011, Microsoft accused Barnes & Noble of patent infringement with its NOOK and NOOK Color products; in retaliation, Barnes & Noble made a broad complaint claiming that Microsoft is being an abusive monopoly and that the patents are in any case irrele...
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Ars Technica |
Samsung in hot water with EU over 3G FRAND patent lawsuits
The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it has begun a formal investigation into Samsung's strategy of using FRAND-encumbered patents related to 3G wireless networking standards in lawsuits. The announcement comes after the Commission began a preliminary inquiry into the matter last November and several courts in the EU have struck down Samsung's attempts to use the patents against Apple.
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Ars Technica |
Resignations, fallout from recent bizarre scientific publications
The strange paper that made its way from an obscure journal called Life to headlines at a number of ostensible news sites has continued to make waves this week. As we noted in our update to the story, Case Western Reserve University not only removed the press release from its site, but is now undertaking a review of how press releases are handled by that office. Presumably, they'll consider mechanisms that will allow a press officer to exercise some judgement before acceding to a request by a ...
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Ars Technica |
New tactic in mass file-sharing lawsuit: just insult the EFF
An old legal aphorism says, "If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table." After reading the latest salvo in the P2P porn copyright wars, it's clear that some poor table has been abused horrifically.
The craziness comes from the most recent filing in a Hard Drive Productions case against nearly 1,500 "Doe" defendants accused of sharing one of the company's films online. The case, filed in DC, fol...
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Ars Technica |
En Masse sees most foreigners as security risk to N. American TERA servers
MMO operators are faced with a constant battle with hackers, gold farmers, and other exploiters, working tirelessly to identify and ban them before they can ruin the experience for honest players. But En Masse, the North American publisher of upcoming MMO TERA has announced a much simpler plan for stopping ne'er-do-wells from getting into its North American servers—simply block large swathes of the world from playing on its servers.
Read the comme...
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Ars Technica |
Fake Windows updater targets government contractors, stealing sensitive data
Two security companies today released a joint report describing an ongoing series of attacks against government contractors that have been occurring since at least early 2009. According to the vendors Seculert and Zscaler, attackers are sending firms phishing e-mails with fake invitations to conferences, often in the form of PDF files that exploit flaws in Adobe Reader. The file installs what the vendors call an "MSUpdater" Trojan that poses as a legitimate Windows Update process. In reality, th...
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Ars Technica |
Browett seen as bad for Apple thanks to Dixons' poor reputation
John Browett, CEO of Dixons Retail, whom Apple plans to appoint as its senior vice president of its retail operations in April, may be a poor choice to succeed Apple's former SVP Ron Johnson if customer service, clean stores, and great products are still priorities for the company. Numerous readers have let Ars know that they feel Dixons' stores are messy, staffed with clueless salespeople, and sell low-quality goods. Because of this, some consumers worry that the new hire may be a harbinger of ...
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Ars Technica |
Firefox 10 arrives with new dev tools and full-screen API
Mozilla has officially released Firefox 10. The new version of the open source Web browser includes a handful of improvements and new features. The browser's built-in tools for Web developers got a particularly significant boost in this release. The new version also offers better support for a number of Web standards.
Firefox's developers decided last year to transition the browser to a time-based, six-week release cycle. The new release management strategy ensures that performance improvements...
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Ars Technica |
Teen Anal Nightmare P2P lawyer charged with felony (Updated)
The saga of West Virginia's homegrown P2P porn lawyer appears headed to a strange, sad end after felony charges were filed against him in state court.
Lawyer Kenneth J. Ford of Martinsville, West Virginia filed more than 22,000 "John Doe" lawsuits in 2010 against people across the country, accusing them of downloading super-raunchy films like Teen Anal Nightmare 2 and Juicy White Anal Booty 4 from the Internet.
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Ars Technica |
AVSEQ: Engaging gem-matching fails to mesh with trippy musical visualizations
AVSEQ (pronounced ay-vee-seck, I'm told) stands for Audiovisual Sequencer, putting it in a class of abstract, interactive audiovisual experiments that runs from Simon all the way through and past Electroplankton. It's a tough game to evaluate as a whole, though, because the "audiovisual" portion and the "sequencer" portion, both interesting in their own right, fail to mesh together in a satisfying way and each seem to actively work against the enjoyment of the other.
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Ars Technica |
"Mobile Device Privacy Act" would prevent secret smartphone monitoring
Recent controversy sparked by the installation of monitoring software on millions of smartphones has led US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) to propose a requirement that carriers and phone makers inform consumers about the presence of monitoring software and gain their "express consent" before collecting and transmitting information from phones.
The controversy started a couple months back when a developer publicized the widespread use of Carrier IQ software, which phone manufacturers and carriers u...
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Ars Technica |
Apple retail has a new boss: Dixons head John Browett
Apple announced early Tuesday morning that it has found a replacement for Ron Johnson, the former senior vice president of retail that started Apple's successful foray in to brick and mortar sales in 2001. John Browett, former CEO of European electronics retailer Dixons Retail, will become Apple's new SVP of retail beginning in April.
Johnson was originally hired from Target in 2000 to jumpstart Apple's retail initiative. Though highly criticized at the time, Apple's retail strategy has been cr...
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Ars Technica |
Apple issues second update to Final Cut Pro X to appease video pros (Updated)
Apple has issued another update to its video editing software Final Cut Pro X, which the company describes as "significant" despite the relatively minor version number bump (v.10.0.3). The three major features that Apple is touting as part of this update are multicam editing capabilities, advanced chroma keying, and improved XML support for "a richer interchange with third party apps and plug-ins that support the fast growing Final Cut Pro X ecosystem." The update is free to all current users th...
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Ars Technica |
Researchers boycott publisher; will they embrace instant publishing?
Many scientists were miffed by the introduction of the Research Works Act, which would roll back the US government's open access policy for research it funds. Some of that annoyance was directed toward the commercial publishers that were supporting the bill. That, combined with a series of grievances about the pricing policies of one publisher, Elsevier, has now led a number of scientists to start a boycott—they won't publish in or review for journals from that publisher.
At the moment,...
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Ars Technica |
Red Hat developer explains open source color calibration hardware
Color management has historically been a weak area for the Linux desktop, but the situation is rapidly improving. Support for desktop-wide color management is being facilitated by projects like KDE's Oyranos and the GNOME Color Manager.
Red Hat developer Richard Hughes, who started implementing the GNOME Color Manager in 2009, launched a small company last year to sell an open source colorimeter--a hardware device that is used to perform color calibration. The Linux-compatible device, which is ...
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Ars Technica |
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, PayPal go after phishers with new e-mail authentication effort
Major e-mail providers, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! are teaming up with PayPal, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more, to implement a new system for authenticating e-mail senders to try to prevent the sending of fradulent spam and phishing messages.
The protocol that powers e-mail, SMTP, dates back to a more trusting era; a time when the only people who sent you e-mails were people you wanted to send you e-mails. SMTP servers are willing to accept pretty much any e-mail destined for a mailbo...
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Ars Technica |
Apple gives AirPort Utility an iOS makeover, supports iCloud
Apple released two AirPort-related software updates Monday afternoon. AirPort Utility 6.0 is a new, Lion-only version of the software to set up and configure Apple's base stations. An updated AirPort firmware adds compatibility with iCloud-based accounts for connecting to home computers using Back to My Mac.
AirPort Utility 6.0 adopts the graphical interface used in the iOS version of AirPort Utility. Your AirPort devices are displayed in a graphical hierarchy, with a dot signaling if the devic...
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Ars Technica |
Macworld|iWorld 2012 completes post-Apple transition to "iFan event"
For 2012, the long-lived Macworld Expo changed its branding to "Macworld|iWorld" and began billing the conference as the "ultimate iFan event." The annual show, which has been running continuously for the last 27 years, has had a bit of a rocky transition since Apple announced in 2009 that it would no longer attend. Though the show no longer features Apple keynote presentations and some of the larger vendors like Microsoft and Adobe haven't had a significant show floor presence for a few years n...
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Ars Technica |
New Google reference doc shows comparison of Dart and JavaScript
Google has published documentation that illustrates how traditional JavaScript syntax compares to that of its new Dart programming language. The page, which they call the Dart Synonym app, shows JavaScript syntax examples side-by-side with the equivalent Dart code.
Google developed Dart with the hope that it will eventually serve as a replacement for JavaScript. The new language, which was announced last year, is designed to work better with static analysis tools and be more conducive to optimi...
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Ars Technica |
Why game trailers are sometimes more thrilling than the games themselves
Like thousands of others, I was incredibly impressed with this fake, animated trailer for an imaginary, Wind Waker-inspired Legend of Zelda game. The short video manages to capture the series' feeling of epic adventure and thrilling action in an entirely new and exciting way. Yet the more I watched the trailer and really thought about how it would translate to an actual game experience, the more I realized that this is just another example of a passive film doing things in a way that would be di...
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Ars Technica |
Office 15 enters "Technical Preview," beta coming this summer
Microsoft has announced that the Technical Preview Program for the software suite codenamed "Office 15" has started. This represents the first time that the company will start to receive customer feedback on the software from a select group of NDA-covered testers.
Redmond is describing Office 15 as the Office team's "most ambitious undertaking yet." In addition to the standard desktop software, Microsoft will be simultaneously updating server software, including SharePoint, Lync, and Exchange, ...
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Ars Technica |
Hackers put hijacked Web views up for sale for webfraud
In the latest twist on website exploits for profit, Web hackers have begun to turn sites they've exploited into sources of fraudulent Web traffic for anyone willing to pay. By using inline frames (iframes) injected into the HTML of a website, they can redirect visitors to the site to anywhere on the Web.
The site, which has been cited both by RSA's security blog and SC Magazine, is operated by a Russia-based group of hackers who, much in the fashion of Amazon, created the capability for their ow...
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Ars Technica |
New KDE tablet to liberate Linux enthusiasts from walled garden
KDE developer Aaron Seigo has announced a new upcoming tablet computer, called the Spark, that will ship with KDE's Plasma environment. The device, which has a seven-inch display and a 1GHz ARM CPU, will sell for €200 ($262). Underneath the shiny KDE surface, the Spark reportedly runs Mer, a community-driven fork of the Linux-based MeeGo platform. Seigo says that the device will be open and that users will be able to install custom firmware.
Although the Spark's hardware specifications aren't...
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Ars Technica |
As Anonymous protests, Internet drowns in inaccurate anti-ACTA arguments
After the Internet's decisive victory over the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this month, online activists have been looking for their next target, and a growing number of them have chosen the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was signed by the EU last week. Indeed, the renewed focus on ACTA even led a group of Polish politicians to hold paper Guy Fawkes masks—the symbol of Anonymous—over their faces in protest at the way ACTA has been pushed through. In the US, over ...
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Ars Technica |
Family data plans may finally arrive from Verizon
Verizon may be preparing to launch shared data plans, according to a post on Engadget and some speculative phrasing on the company's recent earnings call. The "account level data plans" would give customers a chunk of data that could be shared among multiple devices, similar to family plans for minutes and text messages.
Minutes and text messages have been shareable among family plan members on Verizon and other carriers for years now, where customers pay a base charge and then around $10 for ...
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Ars Technica |
New membrane can block helium, yet allow water to flow freely
Membranes and barriers are
used all the time in industrial and lab settings, and you may even have a few of them around the home. They can help keep
materials apart that need to be
separated, or can selectively allow certain materials to mix while holding others back. Graphene, the two-dimensional hexagonal lattice of carbon, is thought to be completely impermeable
to all gases and liquids. That would obviously make it an extremely effective barrier film. Creating sufficient quantities of p...
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Ars Technica |
Is it legal to stop people from selling their used games?
Recent stories about potential technical efforts to limit the future playability of used games, as well as commercial efforts to limit the content included with used copies, got us wondering: is it actually legal to hinder someone from reselling a game (or piece of a game) that they legally bought in the first place?
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Ars Technica |
Schneider Optics ups "iPhonography" ante with iPro lens system
Schneider Optics, part of the German lens maker Schneider Kreuznach, has launched a new interchangeable lens system for the iPhone 4 and 4S. Called iPro, the new system is available now with a wide-angle and fisheye lens, along with a tough aluminum case and storage system that doubles as a handle and tripod mount. Company representatives recently showed Ars a pre-production prototype of an additional 2x telephoto lens at Macworld|iWorld 2012, which will be launching soon as well.
The...
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Ars Technica |
Android Trojans downloaded by millions, still on Android Market
Symantec last week identified 13 new malicious applications on the Android Market, saying the combined download figures—reportedly up to 5 million—make it "the highest distribution of any malware identified so far this year." The applications use Android.Counterclank, which Symantec says is "a bot-like threat that can receive commands to carry out certain actions, as well as steal information from the device."
We found six of the apps from three publishers still appearing on the An...
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Ars Technica |
Ocean acidification already well beyond natural variability
Trends can be difficult to detect in real-world data, and the noisier the data, the tougher the task becomes. A longer time series can help limit the impact of noise, but these can be difficult to come by. Verifying the human alteration of ocean chemistry requires tackling challenges like these.Ocean acidification entails a decrease in the pH of ocean water as the carbonate that buffers it is consumed. That carbonate does more than just maintain pH, though. Lots of marine organisms, from plan...
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Ars Technica |
Feds: Megaupload user files may be deleted starting Thursday
The US Attorney's Office leading the prosecution of Megaupload founder Kim Dotocm and his associates has told the court that the companies hosting Megaupload data might begin deleting data on February 2, according to an AP report."The execution of those search warrants [on the servers] has now been completed," said the government letter. "The United States copied selected Mega Servers and copied selected data from some of the other Mega Servers, but did not remove any of the Mega Servers fro...
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Ars Technica |
Pro-government hactivists deface Al Jazeera coverage of Syrian violence
The Al Jazeera English website was attacked and defaced on January 29 by hackers supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Targeting the news organization's "Syria Live Blog," which has been providing ongoing coverage of the Arab League's observer mission to Syria and developments in the ongoing unrest in the country, the hacker group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army posted pro-Assad and pro-Syrian government images to the site.
The relationship of the Syrian Electronic Army to th...
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Ars Technica |
Kindle Fire dwarfs other Android tablets in market share after just three months
The Kindle Fire is crushing standard Android tablets in market share after only three months, according to data collected by Flurry Analytics. Measured in application sessions on Android from November 2011 to January 2012, the Kindle Fire went from a 3 percent market share to 36 percent, while the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a brand that has been on sale for over two years, dropped from 64 percent market share to 36 percent.
According to Amazon, over 4 million Kindle Fires were sold in the month of De...
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Ars Technica |
LandingZone to ease docking for MacBook Air
A former Apple engineer and a few entrepreneurs leveraged Kickstarter funding to produce a clever new MacBook Air docking solution called LandingZone, which we were able to check out at this year's Macworld|iWorld conference The extremely compact dock adds extra ports to your MacBook Air and makes moving from desktop to mobile configuration as simple as sliding a lever. The good news is the first version of the device is shipping soon, but unfortunately it does have limitations when used wi...
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Ars Technica |
Rethinking iPhone UI and getting things done with Clear to-do app
If managing your to-do lists is taking up more time and effort than you spend actually getting things done, a new iPhone app coming from developers Phill Ryu and Milen Dzhumerov, designer David Lanham, and publisher Realmac Software might be the perfect solution. Tossing most iPhone UI conventions out the window along with any religious adherence to GTD principles, the upcoming Clear app is designed to eliminate the friction and complexity of adhering to systems like GTD and be as easy to use as...
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Ars Technica |
Week in Apple: Lion Server at home, iPhones in the executive washroom
In the last week, Apple announced that it had yet another record quarter, a dedicated Ars reader reviewed Lion Server for home use, and we went hands-on with iBooks 2. But wait, there's more! We also discussed some of the objections to Apple's iBooks Author EULA, whether it makes sense for the Apple TV to gain DVR capabilities, and more. Need to catch up? You've come to the right place.
Is Lion Server suitable for home use? Ars investigates: Apple bills OS X Lion Server as a product for "everyo...
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Ars Technica |
Week in tech: Kim Dotcom gets his wish, achieves instant fame
Big Content strikes back after a week of anti-SOPA protests, getting the US government to take down Megaupload and its bizarre founder, Kim Dotcom. Megaupload dominated the news in the week after the takedown, but our top stories in tech also include in depths look at how Amazon and Google handle "big data" and $25 Linux box that "outperforms the iPhone 4S GPU."
As an eleventh story bonus, we feature the word "wombat" in a headline. Here's your week in tech.
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Web video framework company publishes State of HTML5 Video document
As Flash's ubiquity begins to erode, standards-based Web technologies are going to become the path forward for developers who want to offer a user experience that works across all screens. The HTML5 video element is already widely supported in modern Web browsers, but the capabilities and codecs that are available differ between implementations.
A new State of HTML5 Video document offers some clarity by painting a clear picture of the current status of standards-based video across the spectrum...
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In annual tradition, advertisers cowed by NFL trademark...
