referral's: 03/02/10

EU adopts "Internet freedom" provision on Internet cut-offs
Posted: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:35:00 UTC

For weeks, the major governing institutions of the European Union have been locked in a battle over three-strikes laws, Internet disconnections, and the appropriate role of judges in the process. Just after midnight last night, the deadlock was broken and all parties agreed to a new "Internet freedom provision" that reinforces the presumption of innocence, the right to privacy, and the right to judicial review under any Internet sanctions.
The Internet freedom provision was the final sticking point for the massive Telecoms Package, a body of reform laws that will give national regulators greater authority to pass network neutrality rules, will allow mobile and landline telephone users to change operators in a single day while keeping their old numbers, and requires the mandatory notification of consumers when their personal data has been breached.

Bill could kill ISP safe harbor in cases of financial fraud
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:34:00 UTC

In the wake of the collapse of many a 401k and a Ponzi scheme or three, it's no surprise that a bill called the Investor Protection Act of 2009 has attracted significant support in Congress. In 60 sections over 113 pages, the Act clarifies existing legislation and provides new oversight powers to the Securities Exchange Commission. But, buried on page 92, there's language that would remove the safe harbor protections that keep ISPs from being liable for information transmitted over their networks, at least when that information involves a specific form of financial fraud.
The bill, HR 3817, was introduced in October, and it recently was approved by the relevant Committee on a 41 to 28 vote, which should send it along to the full House for consideration. Most of the bill involves a laundry list of provisions intended to improve the policing of investments, via things like increased whistleblower protections and the ability to reject binding arbitration for disputes. An Investor Advisory Committee would be established, and the SEC would gain additional surveillance authorities.

PC Modern Warfare 2: it's much worse than you thought
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:48:00 UTC

Infinity Ward needs to realize that talking to people in the PC community does not end well for the buzz around its game. The lack of dedicated servers was "announced" during an interview with a gaming podcast, and the interviewers were stunned into silence when they were basically told their community, as they knew it, was dead. They would have to learn to adapt to Infinity Ward controlling all aspects of the servers, or move onto another game.
More recently, Best Buy hosted an online chat between gamers and Mackey McCandlish and Ryan Lastimosa from Infinity Ward. The floor was open for questions, and the pair systematically crushed any hope that the PC version of the game would even attempt to make gamers happy, or allow for what the community has been taking for granted for years. We're going to take a look at some of the more telling questions from this session, and give our thoughts on why this is bad, bad news.

Why I use Tripit to organize my travel plans
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:10:00 UTC

Let's face it: sometimes planning travel can be a pain in the butt. Not only that, but actually going through with them—getting to the airport at the right time, catching your connecting flight at the right time, getting to the right hotel, etc.—can be equally frustrating if all your information is scattered across different e-mail accounts on different computers. Who here has sat down the night before you're supposed to leave (or an hour before—we know you people exist) and think "So, what time do I leave again, and where am I staying?" I'm no power traveler, but as someone who has flown either for business or pleasure six times this year with three more trips to go, I'm getting frazzled just writing about it.
Sure, some travel sites are making it easier to keep track of the things you have booked. You can log into Travelocity or Orbitz to check up on your itinerary—assuming you booked your entire itinerary there, or that you even remember you booked your flight there in the first place. And even then, that doesn't address the maps you might need to generate (even if only on your phone) when you get there. You may think these people don't exist, but not only do they exist among our readership, they exist within the Ars staff as well. Clearly, travel can be quite an affair to the too-busy person.
That's why I started using a service called Tripit. Launched in 2006, Tripit's entire goal is to simplify the process of organizing and going through with your travel plans, and in doing so it has saved my sanity.

A close look at the new antitrust allegations against Intel
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:03:00 UTC

Intel has been fighting a vicious antitrust battle in Europe for years, is battling AMD in US court, and now New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has opened up an American front in the Intel war by filing an antitrust suit against the chipmaker. The allegations in the suit will be old hat to veteran PC market watchers, because there's almost nothing in the 87-page filing that Intel hasn't been accused of at least once over the past decade, either openly as part of the EU proceedings, in the course of AMD's antitrust lawsuit, or discretely in the form of gossip at industry conferences.
The complaint itself is actually a good read—it's not dry at all, and it provides a great introduction to how the PC market actually works for those who don't follow it. In fact, if you read this filing, you'll know more than 90 percent of those who mouth off online about computers. But for those who don't want to read the whole thing, here's the CliffsNotes version (via Jane Austen).

Google aims to "connect" users with shared interests
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:55:00 UTC

Google is improving its service aimed at providing websites with social networking features by making it easier for users with shared interests to connect with one another. The company has announced a number of new features for its Google Friend Connect that center on collecting and utilizing information about a site users' interests.
The new features start off with a several ways to poll users for information about their particular interests. From your Friend Connect account, you can create a poll to ask your users site-relevant questions about what they are into. Then, you can have users answer the poll when they sign in to your site, via a poll gadget embedded in the site, or using the Friend Connect API. These interests are linked to users' profiles, and other users can use the information to find those with similar interests to, well, connect.

Red Hat takes on VMware with server virtualization solution
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:13:00 UTC

Red Hat expanded its virtualization product portfolio this week with the launch of its Enterprise Virtualization for Servers platform. The company touts it as an end-to-end solution which includes management tools and a bare-metal standalone hypervisor that can run both Windows and Linux guest operating systems.
Red Hat aimed to become a major player in the virtualization market last year when it acquired Qumranet, the company behind the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM). Following the acquisition, Red Hat began transitioning its virtualization strategy towards KVM and away from Citrix's Xen. KVM has strong backing from the upstream Linux kernel development community, making it a natural choice for Red Hat. The company has invested considerable resources to boost KVM's capabilities and has built robust management tools around the technology. KVM was practically the centerpiece in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4, which was officially released in September.

$400 for a 360 AND PS3? Walmart pre-empts Black Friday
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:31:00 UTC

We're edging closer to Black Friday, the magic shopping day where people literally kill and die over low prices on all manner of things they don't need. Expect long lines at stores, advertisements leaked online, and at least a few trampled grandmas thrown into the mix. Walmart seems to be doing something new to avoid this trend, however, by offering some pretty tasty deals in the weeks leading up to Black Friday. It starts this weekend, with an impressive deal for gamers.

Developers stealing from developers: an App Store tale
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:20:00 UTC

If you are Paul Haddad of TapBots, LLC, it isn't unusual to get requests for contract work. When your applications are as eye-catching and functional as his, you garner attention. So when he received an e-mail earlier this month with a subject line of "I'm interested in Tapbots," it didn't really come as much of a surprise. What was surprising was the message content.
This prospective client wasn't looking to hire TapBots for any development work, they were looking for confirmation that a development firm out of India did the coding on ConvertBot, a popular TapBots application. The client had found Trucid, the supposed coders of ConvertBot, on the Rentacoder.com website, a virtual cork board where companies can hang their business cards. Trucid quoted a sum of $2,400 for an application similar to ConvertBot. The only problem? TapBots designs and writes all of its applications entirely in house.

Are new rumors of an NVIDIA x86 CPU plausible?
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:19:00 UTC

It's the NVIDIA rumor that won't die: no, not the one where the GPU maker buys tiny VIA, but the other one, where it jumps feet-first into competition with both Intel and AMD by producing an x86 processor of its own. The idea has cropped up again in an analyst note from Doug Freedman of Broadpoint AmTech, in which Freedman claims that NVIDIA has been hiring former Transmeta engineers to work on a secret x86 processor that will appear sooner rather than later. In the note seen by the EE Times, Freedman emphasizes that NVIDIA not will take on Intel's Core i5/i7 lineup. Rather, the company's plan is to it attack the mid-range to low-end market, possibly competing with AMD in the value segment.

Cable modem hacking expert indicted on fraud charges
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:58:00 UTC

Ryan Harris—known by the alias DerEngel—is an expert on cable modem hacking, an art that he describes at length in a 2006 instructional guide that was published by No Starch Press. He runs a small company that sells unlocked cable modems with custom firmware and provides instructional material that explains how to manipulate the devices in various ways.
Although there are plenty of valid reasons for users to want complete access to their network hardware, cable modem hacking can also be used to circumvent ISP-imposed bandwidth caps and obtain free service through MAC address spoofing. In an apparent crackdown on cable modem hacking, law enforcers have brought criminal charges against Harris, accusing him of wire fraud and computer fraud. The basis for these charges, says the indictment, is that Harris aided and abetted others in accessing a protected computer without authorization with the intent to defraud.

Beatles For Sale—for 25¢ a track. But is it legal?
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:04:00 UTC

Every time Apple holds a new event, the speculation begins: will this announcement be the one in which The Beatles' music (legally) comes to the Internet? But it turns out that Apple was beaten to the punch by BlueBeat.com, which on October 30 began streaming unlimited plays from The Beatles' catalog (including the new remastered albums) and selling tracks for a quarter each.
It's at this point that you're probably asking yourself, "Self, who exactly is behind BlueBeat.com? I've never heard of it." It's true that BlueBeat.com is not well known as a music streaming destination, but you might know more than you suspect about the company behind it; Media Rights Technologies made waves back in 2007 when it sent cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Radio, and Apple, demanding that the companies adopt its proprietary streamripper protection software, X1 SeCure Recording Control.

Hands on: Firefox 3.6 beta supports Personas, fullscreen video
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:13:03 UTC

Mozilla announced the availability of the first Firefox 3.6 beta last week. Firefox 3.6, codenamed Namoroka, is an incremental update that introduces a handful of new features, enhanced performance, and some noteworthy improvements to Web standards support. The final version of Firefox 3.6 could be released next year.
We first looked at Firefox 3.6 in August when we tested the first alpha release. It has some excellent performance improvements under the hood that will boost JavaScript execution speed. Firefox 3.6 also brings some nice CSS enhancements, including support for some useful non-standard features like WebKit's gradients.

European Union eyes "digital dividend" after DTV transition
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:18:00 UTC

In the next three years, most of the European Union's member nations will make the analog-to-digital television switch. Now the organization is looking to the future with new plans to develop the spectrum left available by the move. The EU's PR department hasn't quite decided which catchphrase to use to describe this windfall, toggling between "digital dividend" and "digital bonus" in various press releases and reports. But it's clear that the Union wants to get the post-analog spectrum goodies show on the road, with visions of trans-European 4G mobile wireless dancing in everyone's heads, and EU economists anticipating up to €50 billion in economic growth thanks to the boon.
But, warned Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, "Europe will only make the most of the digital dividend if we work together on a common plan." She called on EU members to "speed up the move to digital TV and to make it happen by 1 January 2012."

Diablo for loners: the story behind indie-hit Torchlight
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:44:00 UTC

Sometimes it seems like your friends list on Steam is completely taken over by a game, and right now PC gamers are enamored with a new, $20 take on the Diablo formula called Torchlight. This is a game with bright, attractive graphics, enough looting to satisfy fans of new equipment and weaponry, and... no multiplayer? Ars Technica caught up with Wonder Russell, the "Minister of Culture" for Runic Games, to explore what makes this game so special.

Judge hits Beatles MP3 seller with restraining order
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:41:00 UTC

The wheels of justice don't always turn slowly. Only two days after music label EMI asked a federal judge to stop BlueBeat.com from selling The Beatles' newly remastered albums online at a quarter a track, the judge has agreed—and suggests that he's just as confused about what BlueBeat is doing as everyone else is.
Judge John Walter took a look at both parties' initial claims and decided to issue a temporary restraining order against BlueBeat and its parent company, Media Rights Technologies. In his discussion, the judge had trouble believing that BlueBeat was selling "entirely different sound recording[s] than that copyrighted by Plaintiffs"—sound recordings apparently generated by "psycho-acoustic simulation."

Resurrecting Newton to do away with dark matter
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:48:00 UTC

It was 1687 when Issac Newton first published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in which he first described his universal law of gravitation—the inverse square law that we are all taught in middle school science class. Nearly 230 years passed before Newton's law was dethroned by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, a theory of gravity that reconciled Newton's work with Einstein's own theory of special relativity. In contrast to Newton's long reign, it only took a few short years until some new astronomical observations suggested something about general relativity might be off.
During the twentieth century, observations of galactic clusters (and, later, individual stars within galaxies) revealed that large-scale astronomical objects were rotating too fast for the amount of light-emitting matter the galaxies appeared to contain. In 1933, Fritz Zwicky first described the missing matter as a 'dark matter' that did not interact with electromagnetic radiation. There remains a profound distaste for dark matter in some circles, and an alternative explanation for this was introduced in 1981 by Mordehai Milgrom, who postulated that Newtonian gravity can explain the discrepancies provided it does not act linearly on all scales.

Warner Video shows Hollywood doesn't need HDTV blocking
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:11:00 UTC

The trade press is praising Warner Home Video for its innovative approach to cable releases. Even before launching Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Observe and Report on DVD, Warner deployed them on video-on-demand throughout the Atlanta, Georgia couch potato market. "It's the first test by a major studio in releasing a film on VOD before DVD," notes Videobusiness.com. Plus Warner has been experimenting with simultaneous VoD/DVD premieres since 2007, releasing The Astronaut Farmer on both platforms in July of that year.

Bizarre legal defense after EMI sues over Beatles MP3 sales
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:59:00 UTC

Update

A federal judge has issued a restraining order against BlueBeat.com and its parent company

Original story

When the news broke earlier this week that the so-famous-you've-never-heard-of-it BlueBeat.com was both streaming and selling The Beatles remasters—and for 25¢ a track—we speculated that an entertainingly weird legal theory was at the root of this behavior.
We just had no idea how weird it was.

Does the RIAA let defaulters off the hook?
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:20:00 UTC

The Recording Industry Association of America wants accused file-swappers to know that not responding to a federal copyright infringement complaint is a bad idea.
When we last looked into this issue just over a month ago, we found something surprising: the only two Americans who took their file-sharing lawsuits all the way to a jury verdict owed far, far more money per song at the end of the trial then if they had never shown up to court in the first place. Those who defaulted eventually found themselves on the hook for $750 per song—the smallest amount of statutory damages possible—and they saved themselves months of stress. Those who fought all the way through trial racked up plenty of legal fees in addition to a pair of outrageous judgments.

New tool seeks to block rootkits by protecting their targets
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:34:00 UTC

In recent years, malware authors have developed increasingly sophisticated rootkits that burrow into the operating system itself, modifying basic filesystem and process management code in a way that ensures they are essentially invisible to anyone using the machine: no files visible, no processes apparent. While some progress has been made in detecting when a rootkit has compromised a system, preemptively blocking an attack has remained challenging, since the malware relies on important system functions. A team of computer scientists have now described a tool, called Hook Safe, that uses virtualization to preempt rootkits by moving and protecting the kernel functions that they target.
Rootkits burrow their way into an operating system's kernel using a process called hooking. The services provided by a kernel—file system and hardware access, memory management, etc.—are accessible through callable functions. The kernel keeps track of where the functions reside in memory using pointers, which contain the address in memory of the function. Hooking involves replacing a legitimate function pointer with one provided by malware. So, for example, the malware might replace (or hook) a file system function with one that behaves perfectly normally except when it comes to the areas of the filesystem where the malware lives; in that case, it returns information that suggests the files aren't there. Any software that uses the kernel for filesystem access will never know the rootkit is present.

Record labels keep blaming P2P, but it's a hard sell
Posted: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:15:00 UTC

In response to a new survey suggesting that P2P file-swapping might not be harming music sales, music's international trade group IFPI today put out a statement. "The net effect of illegal file-sharing in the UK and elsewhere has been to reduce legitimate sales," IFPI asserts. "This is why spending on recorded music has fallen every year since illegal file-sharing began to become widespread."
In other words, P2P file-sharing is the main cause of the revenue decline and the (very real) job losses in the recorded music business. It's a strong assertion, but it's not necessarily accepted outside the music industry. And we're not talking about the usual copyrighters, or groups like EFF, or Pirate Party backers; complaints about P2P have failed to convince even people like the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding.

Dragon Age launch fails: some can't play, others no DLC
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:25:00 UTC

EA and Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins launched yesterday, and PC gamers rejoiced at having another tactical Bioware RPG to sink their teeth into. With digital distribution platforms like Steam and Impulse becoming more popular, it's no surprise that many gamers decided to buy their copy of the game online. The problem? EA and Bioware require you to sign into their own websites, with their own accounts and login information, to allow you to access the bonus content from your purchase. That process, it seems, is broken for many users.
If you bought the game via Impulse? Your problems might be much, much worse.

The Web may have won, but Gopher tunnels on
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:15:18 UTC

gopher n. 1. Any of various short tailed, burrowing mammals of the family Geomyidae, of North America. 2. (Amer. colloq.) Native or inhabitant of Minnesota: the Gopher State. 3. (Amer. colloq.) One who runs errands, does odd-jobs, fetches or delivers documents for office staff. 4. (computer tech.) software following a simple protocol for burrowing through a TCP/IP internet.
-From RFC 1436 describing Gopher
Minnesota is not a proud place—how else to explain the fact that it voluntarily bills itself the "Gopher State" and has as its main university mascot an appallingly bucktoothed rodent known as a "golden gopher"?

Big Content: Using "moral panics" to change copyright law
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:31:06 UTC

William Patry might not look from the outside like a man with a fire in his belly. A copyright lawyer for 27 years, Patry has written one of two definitive accounts of US copyright law (all 5,500 pages of Patry on Copyright can be yours for the low, low price of only $1,589). He served as a key counsel to the House of Representatives and is currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Internet behemoth Google—and if you ascribe his personal views to his employer, Patry will visit your house in the night and throw copies of Patry on Copyright through your largest windows. Trust me.
In short, he's an established and highly successful lawyer whose bio hardly makes him sound like a bomb-thrower. But, when freed from the shackles of legal writing, Patry can lob hand grenades with the best of them.

Killing innocents: a Marine's take on Modern Warfare 2 leak
Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:28:00 UTC

Last week, some footage leaked from the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Though it has since been taken down—with Activision claiming "copyright infringement"—the short video left a lasting impression. It depicted Russian terrorists gunning down what appeared to be innocent civilians in an airport. What made this scenario so shocking was that it wasn't a cut-scene, instead the player was actually controlling the carnage, forced to shoot civilians to proceed. You, as the player, will be given the opportunity to put noncombatants in the crosshairs and pull the trigger.

Unsurprisingly, the leak has garnered its fair share of controversy, with voices shouting out both for and against the scene in Infinity Ward's game. Some say it's a sign of the maturation of the medium. Others say it's tasteless. Ars decided to get the opinion of someone with a unique perspective: a former US Marine.

DNA sequencing part 2: ligases and PCR
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:40:00 UTC

In our last installment on DNA sequencing, we brought you up to speed on the Sanger method of sequencing (named after its dual-Nobel-winning inventor, Fred Sanger), which was state-of-the-art around the time of the completion of the human genome. That was about five years ago. During a visit last month to the Broad Institute, which does genome sequencing, my hosts made it clear that, while Sanger sequencing still had its uses, the action had already moved elsewhere. The Broad had recently eliminated a number of its Sanger machines, and the remainder weren't even active on the day I was there.
The new technologies that are driving the old machines out to pasture rely on a range of tricks to shrink down the amount of DNA that's required for a sequencing reaction, in at least one case dropping it to a single molecule. Although the approaches they take are quite different, all of them rely on some combination of two key biochemical reactions: DNA ligation, and Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR. So, before we dive into the actual sequencing technology, we'll allot some time to explaining both of those. Conveniently, our initial article on DNA sequencing provided a helpful introduction.

Judge refuses to block lawsuit over patenting genetic tests
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:29:00 UTC

In May, the ACLU announced that it was suing to invalidate a patent that covers testing for genetic variants associated with breast cancer. The suit targeted Myriad Genetics, which licenses the patent, and the University of Utah officials that licensed it to them, but also targets the US Patent and Trademark Office, which allowed this form of gene patent in the first place. In a move that surprised no one, each of the three defendants filed motions to have the case against them thrown out. The judge overseeing the case, Robert Sweet, has now dismissed these motions, allowing the case to go forward.
Our earlier coverage described the scientific background of the case in detail. In brief, researchers at the University of Utah identified two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, that are mutated in many families that have high incidences of breast and ovarian cancer. The University patented the use of this information for medical testing, and has licensed the patents to Myriad Genetics. The company has since attempted to prevent academic researchers that sequenced these genes in the course of their research from revealing the implications of the results to their patients.

Ballad of Gay Tony a gutsy, exciting end to Liberty City
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:33:00 UTC

The retail release of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City is a weird beast. A standalone disc with both the "Lost and the Damned" and the "Ballad of Gay Tony" expansions that doesn't require Grand Theft Auto IV, this is a $40 way to play both episodes without the hassle of downloading them from Xbox Live.
After playing both games for a number of hours, it's apparent what Microsoft paid for when it "bought" this exclusive content for the Xbox 360. The Grand Theft Auto games feature some incredible storytelling, but more than that we see just how the work put into creating the world of Grand Theft Auto IV has paid off. Releasing two expansions to take advantage of the work done on the front end, creating the miles of streets that make up the city, may seem like a money-grab, but the amount of work put into giving each episode its own character and flow shows that this isn't just a cheap cash-in.

Intel Microserver latest to crowded physicalization party
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:37:00 UTC

Our recent look at the idea of using ARM processors to pack large numbers of low-power, high-density Web servers into very little physical space generated quite a bit of interest, and it seems that a lot of people are thinking along these lines. Indeed, every time we cover the so-called "physicalization" fad—i.e., placing multiple tiny systems in a rack unit, instead of running multiple virtual machines on a single 1U system—we get a fresh wave of feedback on just how seriously datacenter builders are taking this idea.

You win some, you lose some: a review of Apple's Magic Mouse
Posted: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:40:00 UTC

I may be in a minority at the Ars Orbiting HQ, but I've been a big fan of the Apple Mouse (formerly known as the Mighty Mouse) since its introduction. I like the styling and the mouse's functionality, and unlike some of my relatives, I can remember that something different will happen if I click with my finger on the right side of the mouse. Of course, the Apple Mouse has its drawbacks, the chief of which is the tendency of the scrolling orb to get gummed up with palm cheese and stop working correctly.
When Apple announced the Magic Mouse, the feature list intrigued me, especially the gestures. Since getting my MacBook Air, I've become a big fan of the three-fingered swipe for navigation when surfing. So Apple's move to bring that functionality to its mouse lineup made ordering one an easy decision. I placed my order the day the Magic Mouse was announced, and it arrived this past Friday.

Diablo for loners: the story behind indie-hit Torchlight
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:44:00 UTC

Sometimes it seems like your friends list on Steam is completely taken over by a game, and right now PC gamers are enamored with a new, $20 take on the Diablo formula called Torchlight. This is a game with bright, attractive graphics, enough looting to satisfy fans of new equipment and weaponry, and... no multiplayer? Ars Technica caught up with Wonder Russell, the "Minister of Culture" for Runic Games, to explore what makes this game so special.

Getting developing world data with Android and Open Data Kit
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:07:00 UTC

In the developed world, getting real-time data can be a simple matter: simply carry whatever sensor is required, get the data, and then plug into the local network—you're set. Things aren't so simple in the developing world, where there may not even be a power source available, much less specialized hardware or a network. To help field workers obtain the information they need and integrate it into a data collection system, computer science researchers at the University of Washington have developed the Open Data Kit, which includes server software for aggregation and management, developer tools to create forms, and client software that runs on the Android platform.
The development team has published a brief description of the system in the IEEE's Compute magazine. In it, they describe a variety of factors that have made cell phones and, in particular, Android a compelling solution for gathering information in the developing world. To begin with, cellular service is often the only reliable means of communications in many countries, meaning data can be sent in for analysis in real time. Even when it's not, however, Android phones are able to communicate over WiFi or a USB cable to a desktop computer.

Students suspended for racy slumber party pics, file lawsuit
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:32:00 UTC

The line between online and offline life continues to blur as yet another lawsuit is being brought against a school that punished students over pictures posted to an online social media website. Two sophomore girls at Churubusco High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana were banned from extracurricular activities after sexually suggestive pictures posted to MySpace during summer vacation ended up in the hands of school officials. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the girls, claiming that the punishment went too far by violating the students' free speech rights and resulted in their "humiliation" as they were forced to apologize to an all-male coaches board.
The photos in question were taken at a sleepover with friends during summer vacation. In the photos, the girls were wearing lingerie and "pretending to kiss or lick a large multi-colored novelty lollipop shaped phallus," according to the complaint. None of the photos or captions made any reference whatsoever to Churubusco High School. Obviously the two girls didn't want everyone to see the pictures, so they posted them with the privacy controls set so only friends could see them. However, the photos were copied and eventually ended up on the desk of Austin Couch, the school's principal.

Radio astronomers seeking open-spectrum national parks
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:04:00 UTC

Readers of Ars will undoubtedly be familiar with some of the battles over spectrum allocation for wireless devices and services. As the number of wireless devices and their bandwidth requirements continue an apparently inexorable climb, the fight over who should get which chunk of the radio spectrum has generally played out between big business and public interests. One group that hasn't generally appeared to be taking part in the scrum is the science community, but that's not for lack of interest—the radio spectrum is used for both astronomy and the monitoring of the environment on Earth. Now, a report by the National Academies of Science calls for a greater role for science in spectrum allocation.
The intersection of radio communications and radio astronomy has a rich history—the radiation remnant of the big bang, for example, was discovered accidentally when researchers at Bell Labs noticed that a microwave receiver picked up persistent interference. Radio telescopes have since been used to explore everything from the behavior of neutron stars to the presence of organic molecules in distant dust clouds. Unfortunately, researchers have been compelled to build them in ever more remote locations, due to the interference that arises closer to population centers. As the report notes, however, even those are coming under threat from everything from cell phone signals to aircraft and satellite transmissions.

P2P users may be music industry's best friend after all
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:39:56 UTC

I haven't been a P2P user for nearly a decade now, but there was a shining moment back in graduate school when Napster's bounty of music looked shiny and irresistible. Though discovery tools were primitive, Napster made it simple enough to find bands that one liked, then to browse the music collection of those who also liked said band. In this way I discovered The Jayhawks and dove deeper into Radiohead—which at the time I knew only as the band who had done "Creep" some years before.
Those downloads made no money for the artists, but that exposure turned me into a huge fan of both groups and it wasn't long before I spent my afternoons scavenging the used CD shops of Chapel Hill to find more of the incredible music I was discovering. Used CDs didn't generate money for the artists, either, but they at least had the twin advantages of legality and sound quality.

Playing Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks brings back memories
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:00:00 UTC

Some of my fondest memories of Christmas involve playing with my our family's model trains. It doesn't seem very exciting now, but the way the train simply moved on its circular track and with the ability to speed it up, to stop it, or to keep it going at a good pace was very calming. Playing Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks at a Nintendo press event a few days ago took me right back there. Not a bad thing to remind gamers of, even the adults in the audience.

Legislation seeks to deal with growing piles of e-waste
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 UTC

Despite the rise of planned obsolescence, manufacturers have continued to push products onto the market with little thought as to what happens to them when they are no longer useful to their owners. A new bill that's currently active in the Senate would help the United States develop new methods to deal with the growing sea of electronic waste, including research on disposal methods as well as recycling-conscious product design that would help the US get up to speed with other nations that are already moving on the issue.
Electronic waste, or "e-waste," has been a concern for nearly two decades now, especially in terms of environmental and public health. The toxicity of materials used in electronics in particular is a big issue, from flame retardants to good old poisonous lead. According to the bill, the EPA estimates that "over 2 billion computers, televisions, wireless devices, printers, gaming systems, and other devices have been sold since 1980." Couple that with 67 percent of these people hoarding dead gadgets, unaware that there are restrictions on disposal methods, and there's a serious problem to deal with.

Little, big, and green: a biography of the solid-state disk
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:30:17 UTC

Faster and dramatically more power-efficient than rotating magnetic media, solid-state disks (SSDs) are one of the longest-awaited and most eagerly anticipated technologies in the past two decades of computing. The theoretical underpinnings of mass storage with no moving parts have been with us for decades, but the improvements that have put solid-state in economic and technological reach of ever larger segments of the storage market have been slow in coming. As the tipping point draws nearer with ever-increasing momentum, let's take a look back at the long journey to the practical SSD, and a look forward at the likely future progress of this technology.

Playing Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks brings back memories
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:00:00 UTC

Some of my fondest memories of Christmas involve playing with my our family's model trains. It doesn't seem very exciting now, but the way the train simply moved on its circular track and with the ability to speed it up, to stop it, or to keep it going at a good pace was very calming. Playing Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks at a Nintendo press event a few days ago took me right back there. Not a bad thing to remind gamers of, even the adults in the audience.

Legislation seeks to deal with growing piles of e-waste
Posted: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 UTC

Despite the rise of planned obsolescence, manufacturers have continued to push products onto the market with little thought as to what happens to them when they are no longer useful to their owners. A new bill that's currently active in the Senate would help the United States develop new methods to deal with the growing sea of electronic waste, including research on disposal methods as well as recycling-conscious product design that would help the US get up to speed with other nations that are already moving on the issue.
Electronic waste, or "e-waste," has been a concern for nearly two decades now, especially in terms of environmental and public health. The toxicity of materials used in electronics in particular is a big issue, from flame retardants to good old poisonous lead. According to the bill, the EPA estimates that "over 2 billion computers, televisions, wireless devices, printers, gaming systems, and other devices have been sold since 1980." Couple that with 67 percent of these people hoarding dead gadgets, unaware that there are restrictions on disposal methods, and there's a serious problem to deal with.

Did Congress really give the FCC power to protect the 'Net?
Posted: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:00:00 UTC

With the release of the Federal Communications Commission's new Internet nondiscrimination proposals (that is, network neutrality), one vexing question continues to vex. Does the FCC have the legal authority to regulate access to the 'Net? The issue came up again this week, and not just because of the net neutrality proceeding; Comcast, which is suing the FCC for its sanctions against the ISP for last year's P2P throttling, told a federal court hearing the case that the answer is no.

A crustacean eye that rivals the best optical equipment
Posted: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:00:00 UTC

A recurring theme in biomimetic technology is that, pretty much whatever device we design, something in nature outperforms it in some way. This view has been reinforced with a recent Nature Photonics paper that takes a look at the optical performance of a Stomatopod crustacean's eye. In this case, the researchers weren't interested in color discrimination or sensitivity; rather, they wanted to find out just how good the mantis shrimp's polarization optics were.
Stomatopod crustaceans are able to sense the difference between left circular polarized and right circular polarized light. Doing so requires some rather specialized optical elements that are not too difficult to make, but are really hard to make with high quality. And it's not for lack of trying, as we use this sort of equipment for imaging, spectroscopy, communication, and reading and writing optical media.
The mantis shrimp's ability to consistently sense the difference piqued some researchers' interest, leading them to take apart the wee crustacean's eye and examine the optical properties of particular cells, called the R8 cells.

Week in gaming: New DSi, Google Wave, Modern Warfare 2
Posted: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:00:00 UTC

This week we explore the role-playing potential of Google Wave, play New Super Mario Bros. Wii, explain why PC gamers care about dedicated servers, and learn how to be a (fake) DJ. This is what gamers were talking about this week.
Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D: What happens when you give geeks a new way to communicate? We see how we can use it to play games. Jon Stokes explores the art of using Google Wave to play Dungeons and Dragons, making this officially the geekiest, not to mention most popular, stories of the week

Week in Apple: ZFS going bye-bye, Apple TV 3.0, and more
Posted: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:00:00 UTC

Boo! This week's top Apple news recapped the drama over ZFS on the Mac, what's wrong with Psystar's latest EFI tool, the new Apple TV software, and more. If you need to catch up, you've found the right place.
Apple abandons ZFS on Mac OS X project over licensing issues: If there was any remaining doubt about ZFS support in OS X, Apple officially killed it last Friday. Licensing concerns ultimately may have doomed the project, but open source developers still hope to keep the dream of ZFS on Mac OS X alive. Meanwhile, Apple is hiring filesystem engineers of its own.
Psystar's $50 hackintosh tool not all it's cracked up to be: Giving Psystar $50 buys you repackaged open source software but doesn't guarantee a fully-functional hackintosh. Rebel EFI appears to be just another attempt to profit from others' work.

Week in Microsoft: Windows 7 reviewed, crapware-free PCs
Posted: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:00:00 UTC

Let's look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:
Hasta la Vista, baby: Ars reviews Windows 7: With much fanfare and even a few parties, Windows 7 has arrived. In this extensive review, Ars dives deep into Microsoft's new OS offering to see what's new, what's still the same, and whether it's worth upgrading.
Microsoft selling crapware-free PCs in its stores: The computers at Microsoft Stores don't have the crapware that Windows PCs typically come with, but they still have an assortment of Microsoft and Adobe software. Most controversially, they include Windows Live Essentials and Microsoft Security Essentials.

Week in tech: getting fast fiber in your town, quantum gravity, Mozilla Raindrop
Posted: Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:00:00 UTC

Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own. ISPs may not act for years on local complaints about slow Internet—but when a town rolls out its own solution, it's amazing how fast the incumbents can deploy fiber, cut prices, and run to the legislature.
What a photon it was: a 31GeV gamma ray picked up by the orbiting Fermi Telescope. Because of the timing of its arrival, an entire class of quantum gravity models suddenly seems unlikely. More data of this sort may be coming soon, as scientists have now confirmed the oldest supernova yet detected, dating from just 630 million years after the big bang.

House, Senate get separate bills to kill net neutrality
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:50:00 UTC

Real argument about "network neutrality" is fascinating stuff, provocative and well worth anyone's time if they care about the Internet. Unfortunately, Congress isn't great at having intelligent arguments, and net neutrality is rapidly on its way to becoming the latest victim of the Sound Bite Wars.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have each introduced an anti-net neutrality bill into their respective chambers. McCain's is known as the "Internet Freedom Act of 2009," but Blackburn's is billed as (seriously) the "Real Stimulus Act of 2009" (PDF).

Adobe pushes Flash and PDF for open government, misses irony
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:58:00 UTC

The Obama administration has made transparency and public access to government information a high priority. Adobe is attempting to capitalize on initiatives to make government information more accessible while promoting its technologies, such as Flash and PDF, as cornerstones for implementing open access. However, these technologies are actually an impediment to making information truly accessible.
Adobe has set up its "Adobe Opens Up" website to promote the use of Adobe technologies to achieve the goal of "opening up Washington," as well as highlighting ways in which federal, state, and local governments have implemented these technologies. While we agree that making information available in common formats, like PDF, is one helpful piece of this puzzle, we can't help but notice how the entire site—designed in Flash—is practically inaccessible.

Norway consumer groups sets sights on Kindle, e-book tie-in
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:10:00 UTC

Norway's Consumer Council, Forbrukerrådet, made a name for itself back in 2006 by going after Apple's iTunes Store with a vengeance. Now, it's eyeing Amazon and has expressed concerns about the Kindle's terms of service—some of which will sound familiar from the iTunes saga.
In a critique published on its website, Council head Hans Marius Graasvold said that the fine print in the Kindle's contract violated several provisions of Norwegian consumer protection law. For one thing, it establishes a bond between the content that a person buys and their Kindle—much as Apple used DRM for years to tie iTunes and the iPod.

Studios launch Epix high-def, on-demand movies site
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:01:00 Z

Epix, the new HD television channel and on-demand Internet service, is going live this weekend on its first network: Verizon's FiOS. If you're not a subscriber, though, Ars has 200 30-day epixhd.com passes to give away—the perfect way to test the service's 720p streaming on new films like Cloverfield, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Iron Man.

Epix has an unusual business model. When we first described it, the idea was that Hollywood studios MGM, Paramount, and Lionsgate would join forces and put their not-yet-on-DVD movies onto a new TV channel called Epix. In addition, people who subscribed to both a TV service and an Internet service from a partner (like Verizon) could then access epixhd.com for on-demand 720p streaming to their computers at any time. Epix hoped to set itself apart from the pay-TV pack by convincing operators to roll its offering into their standard channel lineups rather than breaking it out as a separate fee.

Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:22:00 Z

The Arizona state Supreme Court has ruled that the metadata attached to public records is itself public, and cannot be withheld in response to a public records request. Such a ruling on file metadata may not seem like a huge win for open government advocates, but it definitely is, given that metadata has unmasked more than one lobbyist's effort to influence Congress.

In the Arizona case, a police officer had been demoted in 2006 after reporting "serious police misconduct" to his superiors. He suspected that the demotion was done in retaliation for his blowing the whistle on his fellow officers, so he requested and obtained copies of his performance reports from the department. Thinking that perhaps the negative performance reports had been created after the fact and then backdated, he then demanded access to the file metadata for those reports, in order to find out who had written them and when.

Intel's SSD firmware brings speed boost, mass death (again)
Posted: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:33:00 Z

Intel's new firmware and toolkit for its new X25 line of solid state disks (SSDs) delivered a massive improvement in their already blisteringly fast performance this week, with increased write speed and a near-elimination of usage-induced performance degradation. The update also included support for the Windows 7 "trim" feature, which will boost SSD's speed and lifespan. So with a 40 percent performance boost and extra Windows 7 goodness, what's not to like about this update? Try data corruption, which some users have reported, causing the update to be pulled not long after it was released. This latest in Intel's uninterrupted streak of firmware foibles will probably be resolved as quickly as the prior two, but it may fuel ongoing doubt about the stability of the SSD as a reliable storage device.

DoD: military needs to think harder about using open source
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:50:00 Z

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration, the Deputy CIO of the Department of Defense, has authored a memo for the Department of Defense that outlines the technical and logistical advantages of adopting open source software within the military. It includes a guidance document that aims to clarify how and when open source software can be deployed and selected.
We have been following the DoD's growing open source enthusiasm for several years. One of the most visible early examples is the DoD's Open Technology Development roadmap, which was published in 2006 and articulated the need for the government to stop treating software code as a physical product. It encouraged broader adoption of open standards and open source, citing advantages like cost reduction and increased operational agility. In 2008, the National Defense Authorization Act included language that, for the first time, instructed the DoD to favor open source software in certain areas like unmanned aerial vehicle development. Earlier this year, the DoD launched its open source project hosting repository and collaboration site, called Forge.mil.

Teaching the controversy: the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is live!
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:45:00 Z

While 360 gamers have been enjoying their demo for a day or so now, PC gamers saw their demo pushed back so Valve could tighten up the game. After customers who preloaded the demo downloaded a new version and waited until early Wednesday evening, they were finally able to play.
We've been devouring the first two missions of the Parish campaign for the past few hours, and we have our verdict: this is a polished, much-improved zombie-killing experience. Let's take a look at some of the things you can expect when you play the demo, and how the game has been updated to provide more depth.

Stackable memory advance brings flash-killer closer to market
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:20:00 Z

Intel is just one of the semiconductor companies that has been working on phase-change memory (PCM) for the past few years, and now the chipmaker and its collaborator, Numonyx, have hit on a way to increase PCM densities by stacking memory arrays on top of one another. They've demonstrated at 64Mbit memory using the stacking technique, which they plan to describe in a paper at the forthcoming IEDM conference.
PCM, which combines the speed of DRAM and the non-volatility of flash memory, has been the subject of much excitement since it was first proposed in the 70s. The basic idea behind the technology is that each memory cell consists of a small chunk of a special alloy that changes its physical characteristics and electrical properties (i.e., it changes phase) in response to how it is heated and cooled. The alloy's temperature is manipulated by injecting an electrical current into it, and the applied voltage level and timing of the injection determine which phase it ends up in.

Google Voice: we're not serving "high-cost destinations"
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:47:00

Google has told the Federal Communications Commission that its Google Voice feature maintains a small list of do-not-transfer numbers that lead to certain "high-cost destinations." The explanation comes in response to an inquiry letter that the FCC sent to Google on October 9, and that was widely perceived as a response to complaints about the service from AT&T.

Ubuntu 9.10 brings web sync, faster bootup, GNOME 2.28
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:26:00

The Ubuntu Linux distribution has received a major update today. The new version, Ubuntu 9.10, will introduce several significant new features and will deliver the latest version of the GNOME desktop environment and other applications.
This is the eleventh release of Ubuntu since the project's inception five years ago. The distribution has achieved an unprecedented level of popularity in the Linux desktop ecosystem and has attracted a considerable audience. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, touts the new release as its best yet and says that the latest improvements will take the Ubuntu user experience to the next level.

Modern Warfare 2: the case for the dedicated server
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:08:00

Last week, when Infinity Ward revealed it was dropping dedicated servers from the PC build of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in favor of a new matchmaking infrastructure called IWNET, it was like someone sucker-punched the PC gaming community. The reaction was both immediate and loud: forums erupted with angry posts, and a petition asking Infinity Ward to rethink its decision quickly surpassed 150,000 signatures.
So far, the developer seems to be ignoring the complaints of its PC audience. This isn't whining, however. Digging below the surface reveals that those who are asking Infinity Ward not to do away with the dedicated servers entirely are not simply scared of change. Instead, they want the PC gaming experience to be as enjoyable as possible for the entire community, something they say isn't possible without control of the servers.

Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:15:00 Z

The ease with which information can be spread through the Internet has exacerbated tensions among those who pay for, conduct, and publish scientific research. Many journals still require subscription or per-article payments for access to the research they publish, which often leaves the public, who funds a significant percentage of the research, on the wrong side of a pay wall. So far, however, there's been little evidence that the public has been interested enough in research to engage in the sort of widespread file-sharing that plague other content industries. But a new study suggests that may just be because nobody's looked very carefully.
The study, which was spotted by TechDirt, appears in an open-access journal, so anyone can read its entire contents. It describes the sharing of over 5,000 research papers on a site frequented by medical professionals, and the formal community rules that governed the exchange.

After net neutrality, will we need "Google neutrality?"
Posted: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:22:00 Z

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has mounted a recent push to turn network neutrality "principles" into official regulations—and in doing so has stirred up the net neutrality hornet's nest once again. The issues involved are thorny when you wade deep into the weeds, but consumer-level support for network neutrality seems largely driven by simple principle: AT&T should not be "speeding up" websites with deep pockets, leaving everyone else to languish in the slow lane.
This was famously what AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre wanted to do back in 2005 when he declared that Internet companies would not be able to "use my pipes free." The scheme that he envisioned was a basic bit of price discrimination; charge extra fees to those who could afford to pay in order to maximize profits.

Widespread availability of online video means less P2P use
Posted: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:25:00 Z

P2P use is down this year, possibly thanks to the growing availability of online video. Network equipment provider Sandvine observed these two trends in its "2009 Global Broadband Phenomena" report (via Broadband Reports), noting that there was a "dramatic increase" in realtime video consumption while users are moving away from bulk downloads that they can't consume right now. While this doesn't mean P2P is dead just yet, it reflects a shifting user focus as more content providers give people what they want the legal way.
"Realtime entertainment traffic"—which includes video and audio streaming, Flash media, and other various webcasts—grew to more than 26 percent in 2009, according to Sandvine. This reflected a 12.6 percent growth, or a near doubling of the numbers from last year. YouTube, of course, remains a top destination for those looking for video entertainment, and North Americans consume the most videos (per subscriber) globally. Europeans, however, consume the most YouTube minutes out of any region.

D&D On Google Wave -- Jon Stokes at the Opposable Thumbs blog relates his experience using Google Wave as a platform for Dungeons and Dragons — the true test of success for any new communications technology. A post at Spirits of Eden lists some of Wave's strengths for gaming. Quoting: "The few games I'm following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions ('table talk'), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn't be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them. The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who's added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts."Read more ...

Los Angeles Goes Google Apps With Microsoft Cash -- Dan Jones writes "The Los Angeles City Council has approved a US$7.25 million, five-year deal with Google in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. Interestingly, just over $1.5 million for the project will come from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the City and Microsoft (Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit by six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software). The city will migrate from Novell GroupWise e-mail servers. For security, Google will provide a new separate data environment called 'GovCloud' to store both applications and data in a completely segregated environment that will only be used by public agencies. This GovCloud would be encrypted and 'physically and logically segregated' from Google's standard applications. Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?"Read more ...

New Threats Against Pirate Bay Owners -- "The Pirate Bay should be closed, and if it isn't, two of the founders will each have to pay a fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor (US$71,500), according to a verdict in the Stockholm District Court. This time it's Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg who are in the court's crosshairs. They have been forced to shut down the site or pay the fine. The court has stated that the site will have to remain closed unless Neij and Warg are exonerated on another similar case they're involved in, which is now on appeal."Read more ...

Mozilla Releases SeaMonkey 2.0 -- "Often forgotten, but the independent open source spirit lives strong in the once Mozilla project — now SeaMonkey. Version 2.0 is finally out and rivals Firefox with similar features but integrated email with a small footprint." The Register has a short piece on the 2.0 release, which mentions that SeaMonkey is now based on Firefox 3.5.4. Stephen Shankland lists some of the features in a handy bullet-point style, too. I'm using the new release right now; it's crashed once — but only once — in several hours of use.Read more ...

Hulu Blocks International Access Via Witopia -- "It's human nature that people always want what they can't have — which is why there's so much interest around the world in accessing the US-only Hulu site. Hulu offers a range of television shows for streaming, including Family Guy, The Daily Show and House along with a few full length movies. ... If you're outside the US, the easiest method for accessing Hulu that many people are discussing online, is using a US-based VPN, which tricks Hulu into thinking their computer is within the US. Initially Hulu started cracking down on free VPN services such as Hotspot Shield, but now it's turned its attention to Witopia — which costs $40 or $US60 per year but offers a faster, more secure and more reliable service than its free competitors. Initially Witopia's LA gateway remained unaffected, but now Hulu has blocked this as well."Read more ...

Fixing Bugs, But Bypassing the Source Code -- "Martin Rinard, a professor of computer science at MIT, is unabashed about the ultimate goal of his group's research: 'delivering an immortal, invulnerable program.' In work presented this month at the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles in Big Sky, MT, his group has developed software that can find and fix certain types of software bugs within a matter of minutes." Interestingly, this software doesn't need access to the source code of the target program.Read more ...

The Internet Turns 40, For a Second Time -- "Some date the dawn of the net to September 12, 1969, when a team of engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) connected the first two machines on the first node of ARPAnet, the US Department of Defense-funded network that eventually morphed into the modern interwebs. But others — including Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who led that engineering team — peg the birthday to October 29, when the first message was sent between the remote nodes. 'That's the day,' Kleinrock tells The Reg, 'the internet uttered its first words.' ...A 50kbps AT&T pipe connected the UCLA and SRI nodes, and the first message sent was the word 'log' — or at least that was the idea. UCLA would send the 'log' and SRI would respond with 'in.' But after UCLA typed the 'l' and the 'o,' the 'g' caused a memory overflow on the SRI IMP. ... 'So the first message was "Lo," as in "Lo and Behold,"' Kleinrock says. 'We couldn't have asked for a better message — and we didn't plan it.'"Read more ...

Nintendo Announces DSi XL -- "This morning, Nintendo announced the third upgrade to the DS family, the DSi LL (or DSi XL). It will be released in Japan on November 21, one year after the DSi debuted, for ¥20,000 (approx. $220). The LL's main improvement is the size of its screens, which have been increased from 3.25" to 4.2" with a moderate increase to the size of the chassis. The device also includes a much bigger stylus, which looks to be the size of a ballpoint pen, and battery life has reportedly been increased to five hours at maximum screen brightness."Read more ...

How To Enter Equations Quickly In Class? -- "I'm a university student, and I like to take notes on my (non-tablet) computer whenever possible, so it's easier to sort, categorize, and search through them later. Trouble is, I'm going into higher and higher math classes, and typing "f_X(x) = integral(-infinity, infinity, f(x,y) dy)" just isn't cutting it anymore: I need a way to get real-looking equations into my notes. I'm not particular about the details, the only requirement is that I need to keep up with the lecture, so it has to be fast, fast, fast. Straight LaTeX is way too slow, and Microsoft's Equation Editor isn't even worth mentioning. The platform is not a concern (I'm on a MacBook Pro and can run either Windows or Ubuntu in a virtual box if need be), but the less of a hit to battery life, the better. I've looked at several dedicated equation editing programs, but none of them, or their reviews, make any mention of speed. I've even thought about investing in a low-end Wacom tablet (does anyone know if there are ultra-cheap graphics tablets designed for non-artists?), but I figured I'd see if anyone at Slashdot has a better solution."Read more ...

New Improvements On the Attacks On WPA/TKIP -- "Two weeks ago, improvements to the previously reported attack on WPA/TKIP, were presented at the NorSec Conference in Oslo, Norway. In their paper coined 'An Improved Attack on TKIP,' Finn Michael Halvorsen and Olav Haugen describe the improvements, which enable an attacker to inject larger, maliciously crafted packets into a WPA/TKIP protected network, thus opening the probabilities for new and more sophisticated attacks against the well-established wireless security protocol."Read more ...

Who Installs the Most Crapware? -- "PC Pro has done a thorough test of the software bundled by nine of the leading laptop manufacturers to find out who installs the most crapware on their PCs. Manufacturers such as Acer add as much as two minutes to their boot times by stuffing their machines full of bundled software, with own-brand proprietary software being the worst offender. HP's bundled apps, meanwhile, have a memory footprint of more than 1GB. PC Pro has also reviewed three pieces of software which promise to remove rubbish from your PC — with mixed results."Read more ...

Bad Driving May Have Genetic Basis -- "Bad drivers may in part have their genes to blame, suggests a new study by UC Irvine neuroscientists. People with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent worse on a driving test than people without it — and a follow-up test a few days later yielded similar results. About 30 percent of Americans have the variant. 'These people make more errors from the get-go, and they forget more of what they learned after time away,' said Dr. Steven Cramer, neurology associate professor and senior author of the study published recently in the journal Cerebral Cortex."Read more ...

Intergalactic Race Shows That Einstein Still Rules -- "The NY Times reports that after a journey of 7.3 billion light-years, a race between gamma rays ranging from 31 billion electron volts to 10,000 electron volts, a factor of more than a million, in a burst from an exploding star, have arrived within nine-tenths of a second of each other. A detector on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope confirmed Einstein’s proclamation in his 1905 theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant and independent of its color, energy, direction or how you yourself are moving. Some theorists had suggested that space on very small scales has a granular structure that would speed some light waves faster than others — in short, that relativity could break down on the smallest scales. Until now such quantum gravity theories have been untestable because ordinarily you would have to see details as small as the so-called Planck length, which is vastly smaller than an atom — to test these theories in order to discern the bumpiness of space."Read more ...

John Hodgman On the Coming Geek Culture -- "Famous writer and minor television personality John Hodgman posits the end of the culture of Jockdom in favor of a cultural reverence for engineers, scientists and Slashdot readers: 'Jockdom is very noble. It's not deliberative. It's certainly the best way to win wars. It's the best way to motivate teams of people to fulfill a goal — not just war, but getting things done. The most important way to motivate a factory floor. But as you know, we're not as much of a manufacturing society as we were before. China and other big industrial nations are rewarding their nerds and technicians rather than creating a culture that makes fun of them — it would be wise for us to embrace the book-smart as much as our culture has traditionally embraced the street-smart, the jock-smart. I'm not saying nerds must have their revenge; I'm just saying the time for wedgies is at an end.'"Read more ...

Thermonuclear Reactor To Use Coconut Shells -- "A key component of a $10 billion nuclear fusion plant is vintage 2002 Indonesian coconut-shell charcoal. After a 20-year search, German researchers discovered that the coconut-shell charcoal is the best medium for 'adsorbing' waste byproducts sucked out of the thermonuclear reactor's vacuum chamber. In what will be the first fusion power facility that's commercially viable, magnetic fields will heat hydrogen isotopes to over 150 million degrees Centigrade. (Essentially, the super-hot plasma creates artificial stars.) As the article points out, 'It's not quite a Starship warp drive, but it does harness the power of the sun.'"Read more ...

Telco Sues City For Plan To Roll Out Own Broadband -- 'MaximumPC is featuring an article about one broadband provider's decision to sue the city of Monticello, Minnesota after residents passed a referendum to roll out their own fiber optic system. TDS Telecommunications had earlier denied the city's request for the company to provide fiber optic service. During the ensuing legal battle, which prevented the citizens from following through with their plans, TDS Telecommunications took the opportunity to roll out a fiber system.'Read more ...

Speech-to-Speech Translator Developed For iPhone -- "Dr. Dobbs reports that Alex Waibel, professor of computer science and language technologies at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed an iPhone application that turns the iPhone into a translator that converts English speech into Spanish, or vice versa. Users simply speak a sentence or two at a time into the iPhone and the iPhone will respond with an audible translation. 'Jibbigo's software runs on the iPhone itself, so it doesn't need to be connected to the Web to access a distant server,' says Waibel. Waibel is a leader in speech-to-speech translation and multimodal speech interfaces, creating the first real-time, speech-to-speech translator for English, German and Japanese. 'Automated speech translation is an expensive proposition that has been supported primarily by large government grants,' says Waibel. 'But our sponsors are impatient to see this technology become more widely available and we, as researchers, are eager to find new revenues that will help us extend this technology to more of the 6,000 languages now spoken worldwide.'"Read more ...

Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough -- "Xerox announced a new silver ink that it's calling a breakthrough in printable electronics, a leading-edge concept that's generated a lot of discussion but few actual products to date. Why? Precisely because of the issues that Xerox claims to have addressed. In concept, printable electronics is just what it sounds like: using a printer, basically an inkjet, to print electronic circuits. If this can be done reliably, electronic devices can be printed for far less than current methods cost. One can also print the devices on a variety of new materials. The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic, to paper and cardboard, to fabric."Read more ...

Physics Rebel Aims To Shake Up the Video Game World -- "Physicist Shahriar Afshar is famous as the designer of the 'Afshar Experiment,' a study first described in 2004 that called into question Neils Bohr's observation that it's impossible to observe light's wave-like properties and its particle-like properties at the same time. Not surprisingly, the idea met with widespread resistance in the physics community. While he waits for the controversy to settle down, Afshar himself is taking a detour into the video game world. He's now the president and CTO of Immerz, a Cambridge, MA-based startup building an 'acousto-haptic' interface that drapes over a gamer's shoulders and turns video game sound into (literally) chest-pounding vibrations. Xconomy was allowed to test the device, and has the full story behind Afshar's unusual journey and the company's hopes for enhancing PC and console gamers' experience of action/adventure/first-person-shooter titles."Read more ...

The Monrovian Analog Blogger -- "Motherboard.TV reports, 'In Monrovia, Liberia, there’s a guy taking the matter of a lopsided, state-run media and reshaping it into a free-of-charge, independent news-aggregator—all accomplished with dry-erase board and couple markers. (Sorry, internet!) Each morning, at 10:45 AM, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up and heads down to his bulletin board to post the day’s news, culling together a slate of stories his countrymen might otherwise never see. Grateful readers line up in droves, on foot and in cars, to read these updates, in what has been described as the country's — and probably the world's — only analog blog.'"Read more ...

Amazon Patents Changing Authors' Words -- "To exist or not to exist: that is the query. That's what the famous Hamlet soliloquy might look like if subjected to Amazon's newly-patented System and Method for Marking Content, which calls for 'programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content,' including 'books, short stories, product reviews, book or movie reviews, news articles, editorial articles, technical papers, scholastic papers, and so on' in an effort to uniquely identify customers who redistribute material. In its description of the 'invention,' Amazon also touts the use of 'alternative misspellings for selected words' as a way to provide 'evidence of copyright infringement in a legal action.' After all, anti-piracy measures should trump kids' ability to spell correctly, shouldn't they?"Read more ...

Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students -- "It's an article of faith: the United States needs more native-born students in science and other technical fields. But a new paper by sociologists at the Urban Institute and Rutgers University contradicts the notion of a shrinking supply of native-born talent in the United States. In fact, the supply has actually remained steady over the past 30 years, the researchers conclude, while the highest-performing students in the pipeline are opting out of science and engineering in greater numbers than in the past, suggesting that the threat to American economic competitiveness comes not from inadequate science training in school and college but from a lack of incentives that would make science and technology careers attractive. Cranking out even more science graduates, according to the researchers, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students."Read more ...

Russia Develops Spaceship With Nuclear Engine -- "The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos has developed a design for a piloted spacecraft powered by a nuclear engine, the head of the agency said on Wednesday. 'The project is aimed at implementing large-scale space exploration programs,' Anatoly Perminov said at a meeting of the commission on the modernization of the Russian economy. He added that the development of Megawatt-class nuclear space power systems (MCNSPS) for manned spacecraft was crucial for Russia if the country wanted to maintain a competitive edge in the space race, including the exploration of the Moon and Mars."Read more ...

ARM Stealthily Rising As a Low-End Contender -- "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister examines how the ongoing rise of netbooks, decline of desktops, and the smartphone explosion are reconfiguring the processor market, putting Intel's Atom processor on a clear collision course with ARM. And here, on the low end of computing, Intel may have finally met its match. Thanks to a unique licensing model, ARM will ship an estimated 90 chips per second this year, and the catalog of OSes and apps available for ARM has been growing for decades, including several complete Linux distributions such as Google's Android OS and Chrome OS when it ships. 'One thing ARM doesn't have, however, is Windows,' McAllister writes, something that could ultimately stymie ARM's plans to compete on the low end of the netbook market. And yet Intel's bet on Windows and its x86 compatibility appeal among developers could backfire, McAllister writes. In the end, it's all about performance. Thus far, Intel has yet to demonstrate a model with power characteristics comparable to those of the current generation of ARM chips, which are fast proving their ability to handle high-performance applications."Read more ...

Sequoia To Publish Source Code For Voting Machines -- "Voting machine maker Sequoia announced on Tuesday that they plan to release the source code for their new optical-scan voting machine. The source code will be released in November for public review. The company claims the announcement is unrelated to the recent release of the source code for a prototype voting machine by the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation. According to a VP quoted in the press release, 'Security through obfuscation and secrecy is not security.'"Read more ...

Intel Pulls SSD Firmware Day After Release -- "Intel has pulled a firmware upgrade it released on Monday for its X25-M consumer solid-state drives after users complained that the software caused crashes. The company on Monday made available a software package called SSD Toolbox to monitor and manage the performance and health of X25-M SSDs on systems running Windows 7. The package included a firmware upgrade and software called SSD Optimizer that included diagnostic tools to help keep the Intel SSD running at high performance. 'We have been contacted by users with issues with the 34-nanometer Intel SSD firmware upgrade and are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware link while we investigate,' an Intel spokesman said in an e-mail. The spokesman declined to comment on when the company would issue updated firmware."Read more ...

Court Orders the Pirate Bay To Delete Torrents - "A Dutch court ruled today that The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of torrents linking to copyrighted works. The list is to be provided by BREIN (similair to the RIAA, in Holland), and is similar to the earlier ruling against Mininova. The defendants are given three months to comply, if not, they will face penalties of 5,000 euros ($7,500) per person, per day."

Google To Take On iTunes? - 'Multiple sources say Google is preparing to launch Google Audio. According to people familiar with the matter, Google has been securing content from record companies. Is Google about to go head-to-head with Apple's iTunes?'

Google Partners With Twitter For Search - "According to the Google blog, it has partnered up with Twitter to bring tweets into its search results in the next few months. While this is exciting news, how the feature is going to present itself is a huge question. Indiblogger presents a comprehensive list of how it should be. From the article, the points discussed are: relevance of tweets with the search term, twitter and Google advertising, even a Google-Twitter API."

Some Users Say Win7 Wants To Remove iTunes, Google Toolbar - "Due to a strike with the UK's postal system, people in Great Britain are getting copies of Windows 7 early and have already posted their experiences about the install process. Some have an easy time but others post installs taking 3 hours including Windows asking them to remove iTunes and Google toolbar prior to installation." The article indicates that many of these early users, though, are having better luck.

Engineers Tell How Feedback Shaped Windows 7 - "Ars Technica took the time to talk to three members of the Windows 7 product development and planning team to find out how user feedback impacted the latest version of Windows. There's some market speak you'll have to wade through, but overall it gives a solid picture regarding the development of a Windows release."

Yahoo Offered Lap Dances At Hack Event - ""Yahoo's latest embarrassment seems like a sign that the company is just trying too hard to be cool. The latest debacle is earning the company some additional publicity. After Yahoo hosted Taiwan Open Hack Day, a special event for engineers and developers that was held last weekend, a series of photos found their way onto the internet — as ill-thought out decisions often do. Yahoo offered lap dances to the attendees of the hack event. Since the pictures have come out the company has decided to apologize."

Nokia Sues Apple For Patent Infringement In iPhone - "Engadget (amongst many others) reports that Nokia is suing Apple because the iPhone infringes on 10 Nokia patents related to GSM, UTMS and WiFi. While the press release doesn't contain much detail, it does state that Apple didn't agree to 'appropriate terms for Nokia's intellectual property,' which sounds like there have been negotiations about those patents."

Amazon Hobbles Features For International Kindle - "Amazon has stripped several key features out of the international edition of the Kindle, PC Pro has discovered. Newspapers and magazines are delivered without any photos, and the web browser has been disabled, presumably because Amazon doesn't want to foot the data bill. There's also a 40% premium on books bought via the Amazon store. 'International customers do pay a higher price for their books than US customers due to higher operating costs outside of the US,' an Amazon spokesperson confessed."

Mozilla Messaging Unveils Raindrop - "Mozilla Messaging has just unveiled a Mozilla Labs project, Raindrop, an experiment with Open Messaging on the Open Web. Raindrop uses couchdb as a storage engine and to serve the HTML/CSS/Javascript application itself, while the back-end is primarily written in Python. Although it is early days yet, the concept that you own your data may be what sets this apart from Google Wave."

HTC Finally Releases Hero Source Code - "After months of prodding by developers, HTC has finally released the long-requested Android source code for the HTC Hero. This follows up on a recent report on Slashdot concerning device manufacturer HTC's perceived stonewalling over releasing source code for the device after repeated attempts to initially obtain source were met with vague responses."

Are Game Publishers a Necessary Evil, Or Just Necessary? - An editorial at GameSetWatch examines whether game publishers really deserve all the flak they get from gamers and developers alike. While some questionable decisions can certainly be laid at their feet, they're also responsible for making a lot of good game projects happen. Quoting: "The trouble comes when the money and the creativity appear to be at odds. ... Developers and publishers often have a curious relationship. The best analogy I can think of is that of parent and child. The publisher or parent thinks it knows best, because it's been there before (shipped more games), and because 'it's my money, so you'll live by my rules.' The developer — or child — is rebellious, and thinks it has all the answers. In many ways, it does know more than the parent, and is closer to what's innovative, but maybe hasn't figured out how to hone that energy yet"

Dutch Gov't Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls - "The law in the Netherlands says that intercepted phone calls between attorneys and their clients must be destroyed. But the Dutch government has been keeping under wraps for years that no one has the foggiest clue how to delete them (Google translation). Now, an email (PDF) from the National Police Services Agency (KLPD) has surfaced, revealing that the working of the technology in question is a NetApp trade secret. The Dutch police are now trying to get their Israeli supplier Verint to tell them how to delete tapped calls and comply with the law. Meanwhile, attorneys in the Netherlands remain afraid to use their phones."

Nigerian "Scam Police" Shut Down 800 Web Sites - "Nigerian police in what is named Operation 'Eagle Claw' have shut down 800 scam web sites, and arrested members of 18 syndicates behind the fraudulent scam sites. Reports on Breitbart.com and Pointblank give details on the busts. The investigation was done in cooperation with Microsoft, to help develop smart technology software capable of detecting fraudulent emails. From Breitbart 'When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed "Eagle Claw," should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.'"

NCSU's Fingernail-Size Chip Can Hold 1TB - "Engineers from North Carolina State University have created a new fingernail-size chip that can hold 1 trillion bytes (a terabyte) of data. They said their nanostructured Ni-MgO system can store up to 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, 'far exceeding the storage capacities of today's computer memory systems.' Using the process of selective doping, in which an impurity is added to a material whose properties consequently change, the engineers worked at nanoscale and added metal nickel to magnesium oxide, a ceramic. The resulting material contained clusters of nickel atoms no bigger than 10 square nanometers — a pinhead has a diameter of 1 million nanometers. The discovery represents a 90% size reduction compared with today's techniques, and an advancement that could boost computer storage capacity. 'Instead of making a chip that stores 20 gigabytes, you have one that can handle one terabyte, or 50 times more data,' said the team's leader, Jagdish 'Jay' Narayan, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at the university."

IBM's Answer To Windows 7 Is Ubuntu Linux - "It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore. Today IBM announced an extension of its Microsoft-Free PC effort together with Canonical Ubuntu Linux. This is the same thing that was announced a few weeks back for Africa (a program that began a year ago), and now it's available in the US. The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper."

NVIDIA Driver Developer Discusses Linux Graphics - "Andy Ritger, who leads the NVIDIA UNIX Graphics Team responsible for creating drivers on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris, has answered many questions at Phoronix about the state of Linux graphics, gaming, and drivers. Ritger shares some interesting facts, such as: the Linux graphics driver download rate is 0.5% that of their Windows driver downloads at NVIDIA.com; how the Nouveau developers are doing an incredible job; creating an AMD-like open-source strategy at NVIDIA would be time intensive and unlikely; and development problems for the Linux platform. Also commented on are new features that may come to their Linux driver within the next twelve months." Like all stories at Phoronix, in common with most other hardware review sites, this one is arbitrarily and maddeningly spread

Apple Blurs the Server Line With Mac Mini Server - "Today Apple announced several new hardware offerings, including a new Mac mini, their (almost-literally) pint-sized desktop computer. In a bizarre twist, they are now also offering a Mac mini with Mac OS X Server bundled in, along with a two hard drives somehow stuffed into the tiny package. Undoubtedly, many in the IT community will scoff at the thought of calling such a device a 'server.' However, with the robust capabilities of Snow Leopard Server (a true, if highly GUI-fied, UNIX server), it seems likely to find a niche in small businesses and even enthusiasts' homes. The almost completely guided setup process means that people can set up relatively sophisticated services without the assistance of someone who actually knows what they are doing. What the results will be in terms of security, etc. will be... interesting to watch as they develop." El Reg has a good roundup article of the many announcements; the multi-touch Magic Mouse is right up there on the techno-lust-inspiration scale.

MySQL Cofounder Says Oracle Should Sell Database To a Neutral 3d Party - "Oracle should resolve antitrust concerns over its acquisition of Sun Microsystems by selling open-source database MySQL to a suitable third party, its cofounder and creator Michael 'Monty' Widenius said in a blog post on Monday. Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun is currently being held up by an investigation by the European Commission. The Commission's main concern seems to be MySQL, which was acquired by Sun in January 2008 for $1 billion. A takeover by the world's leading proprietary database company of the world's leading open source database company compels the regulator to closely examine the effects on the European market, according to remarks made by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes last month. The key objective by Widenius is to find a home outside Oracle for MySQL, where the database can be developed and compete with existing products, including Oracle's, according to Florian Mueller, a former MySQL shareholder who is currently working with Monty Program AB on this matter."

Sneak Preview of New OpenOffice 3.2 - 'The last developer milestone (DEV300m60) of OpenOffice.org has been released. The next version of OpenOffice.org 3.2 has more than 42 features and 167 enhancements . The final version is expected to be available at the end of November 2009. Many companies have contributed to this version, like RedHat, RedFlag and IBM, making OpenOffice more stable and useful. I couldn't stop myself from seeing new features and enjoying them. So I downloaded the DEV300m60 version. After playing with it for many days I could say that OpenOffice developers have done very good work in it. Well done!"

50+ Android Phones Expected In Near Future - "It's not even a year ago that the HTC Dream G1 became the first Android enabled phone to be released publicly (on October 22nd, 2008) and now we have listed more than 50 Android phones expected in the near future." Of the 51 phones on this list, 12 (from nine manufacturers) are currently available.

Deadline Scheduling Proposed For the Linux Kernel - "At the last Real-Time Linux Workshop, held in September in Dresden, there was a lot of discussion about the possibility of enhancing real-time capabilities of Linux by adding a new scheduling class to the Linux kernel. According to most kernel developers, this new scheduling class should be based on the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) real-time algorithm. The first draft of the scheduling class was called 'SCHED_EDF,' and it was proposed and discussed on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) just before the workshop. Recently, a second version of the scheduling class (called 'SCHED_DEADLINE,' to meet the request of some kernel developers) was proposed. Moreover, the code has been moved to a public git repository on Gitorius. The implementation is part of a FP7 European project called ACTORS, and financially supported by the European commission. More details are available."

Robot Controlled By Human Brain Cells - "There's a new experiment from the British researchers who created a robot controlled by cultured rat neurons. They're now using a line of human brain neurons to control robots. The neurons are placed onto a multi-electrode dish that registers the neurons' electric signals. 'Every time the robot nears an object, the electrodes generate signals to stimulate the brain. In response, the brain's output is used to drive the wheels of the robot left and right so that it avoids hitting objects. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer — its sole means of control is from its own brain.'"

Google Envisions 10 Million Servers - "Google never says how many servers are running in its data centers. But a recent presentation by a Google engineer shows that the company is preparing to manage as many as 10 million servers in the future. At this month's ACM conference on large-scale computing, Google's Jeff Dean said he's working on a storage and computation system called Spanner, which will automatically allocate resources across data centers, and be designed for a scale of 1 million to 10 million machines. One goal: to dynamically shift workloads to capture cheaper bandwidth and power. Dean's presentation (PDF) is online."

How Do You Manage Dev/Test/Production Environments? - "I am a n00b system administrator for a small web development company that builds and hosts OSS CMSes on a few LAMP servers (mostly Drupal). I've written a few scripts that check out dev/test/production environments from our repository, so web developers can access the site they're working on from a URL (ex: site1.developer.example.com). Developers also get FTP access and MySQL access (through phpMyAdmin). Additional scripts check in files to the repository and move files/DBs through the different environments. I'm finding as our company grows (we currently host 50+ sites) it is cumbersome to manage all sites by hacking away at the command prompt. I would like to find a solution with a relatively easy-to-use user interface that provisions dev/test/live environments. The Aegir project is a close fit, but is only for Drupal sites and still under heavy development. Another option is to completely rewrite the scripts (or hire someone to do it for me), but I would much rather use something OSS so I can give back to the community. How have fellow slashdotters managed this process, what systems/scripts have you used, and what advice do you have?"

A Look At How Far PC Gaming Has Come - "Doom's legacy is still being felt today in fact and it's a fair bet that you can take any shooter off a shelf, from America’s Army to Zeno Clash, examine it, and list a dozen things that those games owe to Doom. Things like the wobble of the guns and the on-screen feedback that tells you which direction you are being shot from — these were things that id Software invented. On the other hand, from a story perspective, Doom was absolutely rubbish. You start in a room, no idea what’s going on and you are surrounded by demons. You have to read the manual and supporting media to get a grip on it all — something modern games would get heavily slated for doing. Yet the idea that plot was optional caught on and the same flaw was replicated in other games of the era, such as Quake and (to a lesser extent) Duke Nukem 3D. There were years and years where the lessons of early story-driven games were forgotten and all anyone really cared about was having as many sprites or polygons as possible."

125 Years of Longitude 0 0' 00" At Greenwich - "This week marks the 125th anniversary of the International Meridian Conference, which determined that the prime meridian (i.e., longitude 0 0' 00") would travel through Greenwich, UK. One of the reasons that Greenwich was agreed upon 'was that 72% of the world's shipping already depended on sea charts that used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian.' Sandford Fleming's proposal of a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the center of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian, was rejected / not voted on, as it was felt to be outside the purview of the conference."

Plagiarism-Detection Software Confirms Shakespeare Play - mi tips us that software intended to help essay graders detect plagiarism has been used to attribute to Shakespeare — with high probability — a hitherto unattributed play, 'The Reign of Edward III.' It seems that the work was co-authored by Shakespeare and another playwright of the time, Thomas Kyd. "With a program called Pl@giarism, Vickers detected 200 strings of three or more words in 'Edward III' that matched phrases in Shakespeare's other works. Usually, works by two different authors will only have about 20 matching strings."

Sequoia Voting Systems Source Code Released - Mokurai sends a heads-up about Sequoia Voting Systems, which seems to have inadvertently released the SQL code for its voting databases. The existence of such code appears to violate Federal voting law: "Sequoia blew it on a public records response. ... They appear... to have just vandalized the data as valid databases by stripping the MS-SQL header data off, assuming that would stop us cold. They were wrong. The Linux 'strings' command was able to peel it apart. Nedit was able to digest 800-MB text files. What was revealed was thousands of lines of MS-SQL source code that appears to control or at least influence the logical flow of the election, in violation of a bunch of clauses in the FEC voting system rulebook banning interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks of voting system code." The code is all available for study or download, "the first time the innards of a US voting system can be downloaded and discussed publicly with no NDAs or court-ordered secrecy," notes Jim March of the Election Defense Alliance. Dig in and analyze.

AT&T Suggests To 300K Employees To Lobby the FCC - Several readers sent in the news that AT&T's top lobbyist sent a letter to all 300,000 employees urging them to give feedback to the FCC as it gears up for rulemaking on net neutrality. He even supplied talking points approved by the PR department. The lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, suggested that employees use their personal email accounts when they weigh in with the FCC. Pro-net-neutrality group Free Press has now likened Cicconi's letter to astroturfing: "Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion."

The Kindle Killer Arrives - "Sleek, stylish and runs the Android OS. What's not to like about Barnes and Noble's new e-book reader? Despite the odd name, the Nook looks like an eBook reader that would actually be a worthwhile investment. Best feature? The ability to loan e-books you have downloaded to other Nook owners. The reader, named the 'Nook,' looks a lot like Amazon's white plastic e-book, only instead of the chiclet-keyboard there is a color multi-touch screen, to be used as both a keyboard or to browse books, cover-flow style. The machine runs Google's Android OS, will have wireless capability from an unspecified carrier, and comes in at the same $260 as the now rather old-fashioned-looking Kindle." Here is the B&N Nook site, which is still not visible on their front page and has a few non-working links. (Nook.com isn't set up yet.) Their comparison page takes dead aim at the Kindle. Among the advantages in the Nook's column: Wi-Fi, expandable memory via microSD, MP3 player, and PDF compatibility. (But remember the cautionary note B&N struck six years back when they got out of the e-book business.)

Windows 7 Released Early In UK : "UK customers have been reporting that they received their copies of Windows 7 in the mail today. Currently the British postal service is threatening industrial action over pay, and planned walkouts may result in Windows 7 not being delivered on its release date. It is understood that Microsoft has agreed to let some retailers send out copies early to avoid disappointment, and to make the UK the first country in the world to have Windows 7 in customers' hands."

No Dedicated Servers For CoD: Modern Warfare 2 - "Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling (aka fourzerotwo), in an interview with BashandSlash.com on October 17th, announced that one of the mainstays of PC multiplayer gaming, dedicated servers, won't be in IW's upcoming sequel to Call of Duty 4. Instead, players will use the unknown 'IW Net' for matchmaking purposes. No dedicated servers means no player mods, no player maps, no organized competitive play, no clan servers, etc., and strips away what makes PC gaming different from console gaming. Many vocal gamers have canceled their pre-orders, and a petition to reverse this decision is already past 86,000 signatures."

Apple, Others Hit With Lawsuit On Ethernet Patents - "A Texas company has targeted a number of technology companies, including Apple, in a new lawsuit regarding a handful of computer networking patents issued in the 1990s. ... 3Com Corporation was granted four patents from 1994 to 1998 pertaining to network adapters. Two deal with the automatic initiation of data transmission, and one addresses 'host indication optimization.' ... The company's Web site states that U.S. Ethernet Innovations was founded 'to continue 3Com Corporation's successful licensing program related to a portfolio of foundational patents in Ethernet technology.' A press release from the company states that it is the 'owner of the fundamental Ethernet technology developed and sold by 3Com Corporation in the 1990s,' suggesting it purchased the patents. ... In addition to Apple, the lawsuit names Acer, ASUS, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett Packard, Sony, and Toshiba as defendants."

Microsoft May Be Inflating SharePoint Stats - "Taking a page out of McDonalds 'billions and billions served,' Microsoft says it reaps $1.3 billion a year from more than 100 million users of its SharePoint collab app. But some suggest that the figures are consciously inflated by Microsoft sales tactics in order to boost the appearance of momentum for the platform, reports Computerworld. A recent survey suggests that less than a fourth of users licensed for SharePoint actually use it. SharePoint particularly lags as a platform for Web sites, according to the same survey, a situation Microsoft hopes to fix with the upcoming SharePoint 2010."

What Desktop Search Engine For a Shared Volume? - 'Searching data on a shared volume is tedious. If I try to use a Windows desktop search engine on a volume with hundreds of gigabytes the indexing process takes days and the search results are slow and unsatisfying. I'm thinking of an agent that runs on the server that regularly indexes and talks to the desktop machines running the search interface. How do you integrate your desktop search application with your remote file server without forcing each desktop to index the hundred gigabyte volume on its own?'

Google Voice Mails Found In Public Search Engine - "Google Voice Mails have been discovered in Google's search engine, providing audio files, names, and phone number as if you were logged in and checking your own voice mail. Some appear to be test messages, while others are clearly not. Google has since disabled indexing of voice mails outside your own website."

Xbox 360 Update Will Lock Out Unauthorized Storage - "The other shoe has dropped on the upcoming preview program for the next Xbox 360 update and it's going to cost you. In a post on the Major Nelson blog, Xbox's Larry Hryb reveals that this next update will lock-out unauthorized storage devices. As blogger Peter Smith reminds us, 'the Xbox 360 comes in two (currently) SKUs, one with a hard drive, and one without. The drive-less Xbox 360 Arcade unit is cheap ($199) but to realistically use it, you'll need to buy a "Memory Unit" (basically a proprietary USB stick) or an Xbox hard drive.... A 512 MB Microsoft branded Memory Unit goes for $29.99 at BestBuy.com. A 2 GB third party Memory Unit from Datel goes for $39.99, and the Datel unit is expandable using microSD cards....If you bought the Datel and it's full of data, between now and the launch of the new update you're going to have to run out and buy 4 of the Microsoft units at $29.99 each, or more likely, pick up the $99.99 60GB Live Starter Pack for Xbox 360.'"

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