Your life will some day end; ACTA will live on
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) isn't just another secret treaty—it's a way of life. If ACTA passes in anything like its current form, it will create an entirely new international secretariat to administer and extend the agreement.
Knowledge Ecology International got its hands on more of the leaked ACTA text this week, including a chapter on "Institutional Arrangements" that has not leaked before. The chapter makes clear that ACTA will be far more than a standard trade agreement; it appears to be nothing less than an attempt to make a new international institution that will handle some of the duties of groups like the WTO and WIPO.
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Google reportedly to part ways with China on April 10
April 10: General Robert E. Lee's last address to Confederate troops, the Titanic's departure from Southampton, England, my friend Jake's birthday, and now, Google's rumored pull-out date in China. The company is preparing to announce its decision as soon as March 22, according to an anonymous source speaking to the China Business News, though it likely won't be the end of the company's operations in the region.
The newspaper's source, quoted by Bloomberg, said that Google's Chinese staff will find out what their options are on March 22 as well. Previously, Google had told them that they could either move to the US to work at Google's headquarters or that they could work for Google's Asia-Pacific business.
Chinese officials have been warning Google's partners to continue censoring search results in the event that the company decides to either open the floodgates on taboo topics or pull out altogether. Though some believe Google has already begun to let some results leak through, it seems as if the official decision has not yet been made.
Google will continue its Asia-Pacific operations, even if Google.cn ends up going away.
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Mozilla Labs builds add-on to bring address book to Firefox
Firefox's flexible XUL framework and sophisticated add-on system offer a rich platform for enhancing browser functionality. Mozilla Labs takes advantage of this capability as it experiments with new concepts for augmenting Web interaction. Some of the latest experiments to emerge from Mozilla Labs aim to make contacts and identity a core part of the browser.
Mozilla has announced the availability of an experimental new add-on for Firefox that is designed to import information about the user's contacts from a variety of Web services and other sources. The add-on makes contact details easily accessible to the user and can also selectively supply it to remote Web applications. The initial implementation can import data from Gmail, Twitter, and the local system address book on OS X. It can optionally use the Gravatar service to find contact avatars.
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IE9, standards, and why Acid3 isn't the priority
Microsoft's development direction of Internet Explorer 9 is unambiguous: implementing HTML5 Web standards is the name of the game, with the intent of letting developers use the "same markup" to work everywhere. As IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said at MIX10 this week, "We love HTML5 so much we actually want it to work."
Redmond is targeting real-world applications based on real-world data. For example, every single JavaScript and DOM API used by the top 7,000 websites was recorded. IE9 will deliver support for every API used by those sites.
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iPhone will be first mobile device to fall at Pwn2Own 2010
The fourth annual Pwn2Own contest—which takes place at the CanSecWest security conference every year—kicks off next week. Like last year, 2010's contest will offer security experts and hackers the chance to "pwn" a number of mobile platforms in addition to various browser/OS combinations. Though no mobile devices were successfully hacked last year, expectations are high that the iPhone will go down in this year's contest.
"With all the recent research on mobile phone security being presented worldwide, these devices are quickly becoming a ripe target," wrote Aaron Portnoy, security researcher at TippingPoint and Pwn2Own contest organizer. "First to fall: the iPhone."
Mac OS X security expert Charlie Miller, known for his past exploits of Safari and discovery of a possible arbitrary code execution exploit for the iPhone, is also confident that the iPhone will go down this year. "Someone I know quite well says they have an exploit for it and plan on using it," he said recently during a chat with Kapersky Labs' ThreatPost. "From an exploitation perspective, iPhone is no harder than [Mac] OS X now that Snow Leopard has data execution protection," Miller explained.
However, Miller plans to stick to Safari, which he successfully attacked the last two years, netting him thousands in cash and two MacBooks. "There isn't as much exposed code on the iPhone," he said. "The easy to exploit bugs I know about happen to live in the code that Safari has but Mobile Safari doesn't," mostly due to Mobile Safari's lack of support for Java, Flash, and other third-party plugins.
Also, Miller said, "in real life the iPhone is harder because you can't just execute a shell. You have to write your return-oriented payload to do all your dirty work, which can be a pain."
Miller said that attacking Safari this year will be harder than last year, since Snow Leopard has DEP and Safari sandboxes plug-ins in separate processes. However, he noted that Snow Leopard's incomplete support for address space layout randomization still leaves the Safari and Mac OS X combination open to vulnerabilities.
This year, contestants will have a chance to nab a laptop and a $10,000 cash prize for demonstrating exploits for IE8, Firefox 3, and Google Chrome 4 running under Windows 7, or Safari 4 running on Mac OS X 10.6. Contestants that successfully hack an iPhone 3GS, BlackBerry Bold 9700, a Nokia E62, or a Motorola Droid will get to keep the device as well as $15,000 in cash.
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Aliens in the garden: the secret origin of Plants vs. Zombies
It goes without saying that we love Plants vs. Zombies here at Ars Technica, especially the pocket-sized iPhone version of the game that was just released. If you haven't played it, you can download the free demo here and even get 10 percent off if you decide to buy the full game. It's a bizarre, funny, and addictive strategy title with a quirky art style, but the most surprising thing about it is that it was originally supposed to be an entirely different game.
What many gamers don't realize is that Plants vs. Zombies started out as a sequel to Insaniquarium, a strategy game that involves growing an aquarium's population while simultaneously protecting the fishes from an alien invasion. PopCap recently shared some original concept sketches for with us, and the evolution from sequel to fully original title is fascinating.
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Here's your chance to play StarCraft 2 this weekend
It's Friday, and if you're like me there is some question of what game you're going to play over the weekend. Or maybe you're looking forward to playing with your children or spending time with your wife? You should scuttle any plan you have of going outside into the daystar, because we have something very special to give away.
You see, Blizzard has invited us to, well, invite a friend to the StarCraft 2 beta. I could slam that code on eBay and make a few hundred dollars, but instead I am choosing to share it with you. Why? Because you're my friends, right?
Here's how you win: simply send an e-mail to giveaways@arstechnica.com with the subject line "Beta rush kekekekeke," and inside answer a simple question: Why couldn't I go to visit Blizzard to play the single player portion of the game when Ars Technica was invited to do so?
We'll choose one e-mail at random, and check it for the correct answer. If it's incorrect, we'll simply draw again.
We hope everyone is having a good Friday, and we hope to see you online this weekend!
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Amazon threatens more publishers with freeze-out over prices
Earlier this year, Amazon found itself in a showdown over e-book pricing with publisher Macmillan, which wanted the ability to set pricing for its works. Amazon initially pulled all of Macmillan's titles off its virtual shelves but, a few days later, conceded there was little it could do—Macmillan's works went back on sale, and Amazon apparently gave up on trying to force its prices on the company. Despite that rousing lack of success, reports are now indicating that several other publishers may get the same treatment, as Amazon is threatening to stop selling their works as well.
Indications of an ongoing fight between Amazon and book publishers were apparent almost as soon as the Macmillan matter was settled. Amazon had been purchasing e-books from publishers at a wholesale rate, which allowed it to set the retail prices; rumor had it that the company was selling works at a loss in order to push Kindle sales. Publishers, which have an obvious interest in keeping prices for their work higher, were certainly not pleased with this approach.
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feature: How Amsterdam was wired for open access fiber
The city of Amsterdam has been involved for several years in building Citynet, a partnership between the city and two private investors to wire 40,000 Amsterdam buildings with fiber. And it's not just fiber, it's open access fiber—any ISP can sign up to use the infrastructure and deliver ultra-fast Internet access.
In 2008, the European Union ruled that the city's involvement in the project was in fact legal, and that it was not improperly interfering in the market.
We asked Herman Wagter, CEO of the company that built Citynet fiber project, to talk about how he got the job done, and to explain the challenges of rolling out fiber in a densely crowded European city.
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Microsoft starts to talk SP1 for Windows 7, Server 2008 R2
Microsoft began to talk about Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 today, though the company wasn't yet ready to announce a beta or release timeline for the service pack. Rumors pegged SP1 beta for arrival this month. For Windows Server 2008 R2, the company revealed two new features that directly affect Microsoft's desktop virtualization platform: Microsoft Dynamic Memory and Microsoft RemoteFX.
For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates: mostly hotfixes already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 will, however, feature an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Microsoft says it will be giving more detailed information regarding SP1 over the next several months.
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The NBP and ISP competition: this fight's just beginning
For a plan that puts "competition" as its number one goal, the National Broadband Plan is remarkably light on policies that will produce much of it in the wireline space. Talk of competition is everywhere, but all suggestions are remarkably general or terribly banal: "more data collection" and "future policy reviews" are everywhere. Suggestions about how such reviews should turn out is lacking.
But the reviews will still be held, and at some point the consensus-building NBP will devolve into ugly battles of wholesale access, special access (middle-mile connections), and ISP disclosure. The FCC commissioners know it, and they're already gearing up for the fights ahead.
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Microsoft removes VM hardware requirements, improves XP mode
Microsoft made a slew of virtualization announcements today, affecting both current and future products. Arguably the most important tidbit is that the company has removed the virtualization layer's hardware requirements for the XP Mode available in Windows 7. Those already running XP Mode don't need to bother updating since they already have it working, but users who were unsure of their PC hardware can grab the update and try out XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate. The update is available for Windows 7 32-bit (3.7MB) and Windows 7 64-bit (4.1MB).
Microsoft has been criticized for complicating things by having XP Mode only work on processors that supported either Intel's VT or AMD's AMD-V. This requirement was troublesome and confusing, as many Intel owners weren't sure if their CPU supported hardware virtualization, and if it did, whether it was turned on in the BIOS. Now that problem has been eliminated, removing a barrier to the adoption of Windows 7 among small and mid-size businesses that still cling to Windows XP.
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150,000 take FCC broadband speed test in first week
The FCC has had it with ISPs. For more than a decade, the agency has relied on ISP reports to get a picture of broadband speeds and availability in the US, and the results have been uniformly terrible. The ISPs don't want to report numbers detailed enough to be useful, so the feds finally dropped a pile of cash on the table last year to do some proper broadband mapping.
Last week, the FCC went a step further, rolling out tools for Android, the iPhone, and the Web that enable users to test—and, crucially, to report—their broadband speeds. In addition, it decided to fund a third-party measurement company that will use hardware devices to test actual line speeds in tens of thousands of US homes. It's all about the data, and the FCC is determined to get it one way or another.
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Unitasking in a sandbox: Windows Phone 7 Series' philosophy
Windows Mobile 6.x can multitask, and it can run applications written in native code. Windows Phone 7 Series can do neither of these things. The reasons are not philosophical, however: Microsoft has no problem with either concept per se. They're practical.
The hardware is powerful enough. The underlying operating system, Windows CE 6, can multitask just fine. The built-in applications also have multitasking capabilities—mobile IE will, for example, continue to download pages in the background, and the Zune application will play music in the background. Where multitasking is absent is with third-party software. Though this has been expected for weeks, it's only with the release of the development documentation that positive official confirmation has arrived: any time the Start hardware button is pressed (which returns the phone to the Start screen), the current third-party application is suspended (and liable to be terminated if the OS deems it necessary).
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Apple Stores still selling screen protectors, but not for long
Reports have been swirling that Apple plans to ban screen protectors from its brick and mortar retail stores, but for the time being, the items seem to be plentiful throughout many store locations. Several Apple Stores we contacted Thursday afternoon assured Ars that there were currently "plenty" of screen protectors in stock, and did not indicate that this would change anytime soon. (One sales associate went as far as listing off all the variations that were in stock.) None of the outlets mentioned anything about the impending ban or removing the product from inventory in the future.
Rumors of Apple’s supposed ban started Wednesday when iLounge reported that several companies had been informed that, starting in May, Apple would no longer carry screen protectors in their retail stores. According to iLounge's sources, stand-alone solutions as well as those bundled with cases will eventually be removed.
There were so many pundit theories about what could have sparked the decision that iLounge wrote a follow-up article to address them. The conspiracy theorists came up with all kinds of reasons: Apple is making room for iPad accessories, Apple wants you to ruin your phone so you have to buy another, the iPhone is too classy for a flimsy piece of plastic, etc. Our personal favorite theory was that Apple might be planning a new product or technology that doesn’t work properly with the film applied. iLounge even got an e-mail from an Apple Store employee, suggesting that the ban might be due to the difficulty in applying the protective layer. Apparently, this employee's store barred employees from doing this for customers some time ago.
In our experiences here at Ars, the iPhone screen is extremely hard to scratch, though some of us have admittedly had much better luck than others. It seems much more likely that an iPhone screen will crack due to a fall than it will develop noticeable scratch. In that case, no amount of thin, flimsy, plastic is going to save your device from that.
What Apple is up to is really anyone's guess. We would like to think that Apple is coming out with its own line of overpriced iPhone screen protectors, but it's more likely they are just more trouble than they're worth for Apple. Screen protectors may still be available at Apple Stores, but probably not for long. Don't worry—you can get the exact same thing for your iPhone from places like Best Buy, Fry's, and almost any other outlet that sells iPhone accessories.
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Years late, Universal cuts CD prices to combat poor sales
Sales of digital downloads have not been enough to make up for the decline of CD sales since its peak in 2000. Universal Music Group plans to soften the fall of CD sales by dropping prices across the board, to a maximum of $10.
The company plans to test lower prices beginning next month and continuing throughout 2010. Nearly all of UMG's CDs will priced between $6 and $10. UMG is hoping that increased volume will make up for the price drop, and the company plans to create more higher-priced "deluxe" versions for more hardcore fans.
"We think [the new pricing program] will really bring new life into the physical format," Universal Music Group Distribution president and CEO Jim Urie told Billboard.
Retailers have been clamoring for lower retails prices, with many believing that $10 is the magic number to spur sales. (I'll admit, I rarely buy a physical CD for more than $10 these days). A recent test from Trans World Entertainment showed that a $9.99 price point doubled CD sales in over 100 of its stores.
Forrester analyst Mark Mulligan thinks labels may have to consider pushing prices as low as $5 to further slow the decline of CD sales. "The CD is a dying music product format, but it has some life left in it because downloads haven't generated the format replacement they were expected to," he wrote. "With all previous music formats the successor format was firmly in the ascendancy by the time its predecessor was in terminal decline."
However, digital downloads won't ever generate format replacement. Music on CDs is already in digital format—if you own the CD already, there's no benefit in "replacing" it with a digital download. Furthermore, it will be hard to justify spending $10 on a compressed digital download over $6 for an actual physical disc that can be ripped into iTunes or any other media software in a matter of minutes, and can be done using lossless encoding (if so desired).
iTunes LP, thought by the record labels to help save the digital album from succumbing to single track downloads, isn't making much of a splash with consumers, either.
Effectively, what UMG is doing—and what other labels will do if they also decide that lowering prices will prop up dying CD sales—is giving consumers the expectation that albums should cost even less than $9.99. Because once consumers become accustomed to getting a whole album in physical form for $6, you'll have a much harder time convincing them to buy downloaded albums for more money later. Lowering prices on CDs will increase sales in the short term—good for labels because CD sales still account for about 65 percent of their revenue—but it will only slow its demise, and slow the uptake of digital as a primary format.
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feature: Smoking guns, dark secrets aplenty in YouTube-Viacom filings
Court documents in the $1 billion lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube were unsealed today, finally shedding some light on key questions: did Viacom have "smoking gun" evidence that YouTube was deliberately profiting from 62,637 Viacom clips that were watched more than 507 million times on the site? Was Google aware of the copyright infringement problems when it purchased YouTube in 2006? Were YouTube's own founders involved in uploading unauthorized materials?
On all three counts, Viacom says yes—and it offers up a host of e-mails to prove it:
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HTC: we're ready for a big fight with Apple
Apple both publicly and privately warned smartphone makers that it wouldn't tolerate its intellectual property being infringed upon, and the company made its first move against Taiwan-based HTC earlier this month with a federal lawsuit and a complaint to the International Trade Commission. HTC says it doesn't plan to give up without a fight.
"HTC disagrees with Apple's actions and will fully defend itself," HTC Corporation CEO Peter Chou said in a statement. "HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible."
HTC cited the company's numerous firsts to market as proof of its innovation, including selling the first Windows Mobile smartphone in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008. (It also lays claim to the "first gesture-based smartphone" released in June 2007, but that's also the same month that Apple released the original iPhone.) It also noted that Fast Company and MIT Technology Review have both recently named HTC as one of the top innovative companies globally.
The company is confident that its own patent portfolio will prove useful in its defense. "We've been in business since 1997 and a pioneer in the smart phone space," HTC America VP Jason Mackenzie told Forbes. "We absolutely have our share of patents."
However, Deutsche Banks analyst Chris Whitmore noted recently that Apple has amassed a much larger patent portfolio than HTC, or even Google, whose Andriod operating system is believed to be the real target of Apple's legal ire. Since 2000, Apple has been awarded over 3,000 patents, compared to Google's 316 and HTC's 58. Prior to the launch of the iPhone, HTC actually filed zero patents with USPTO. Sheer numbers don't guarantee a slam dunk for Apple, but they do certainly give Apple a much larger cache of ammunition to draw from.
Many have criticized Apple for "competition by litigation" by filing complaints against HTC, but as The New York Times recently reported, lawsuits are not at all uncommon in the mobile space. Apple believes it has a right and duty to protect its own innovations, apparently just as other companies in the mobile market do. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said earlier this month.
Furthermore, Microsoft VP and deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said the lawsuits are merely a sign that the modern smartphone market is still in its early stages, and that this particular lawsuit won't stifle innovation as some believe. "The smartphone market is still in a nascent state; much innovation still lies ahead in this field," he wrote in an analysis of Apple's patent litigation. "In all nascent technology markets, there is a period early where IP rights will be sorted out."
Unless Apple and HTC come to an out-of-court settlement, we could be waiting until at least 2012 to hear a decision from either the ITC or US district court on the matter.
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Android set-top box may be coming to a living room near you
Google is looking to take the Android operating system to the big screen—the one in your living room, anyway. The company has partnered with Intel and Sony in order to bring a more interactive viewing experience to the TV in the form of (you guessed it) set-top boxes. The idea behind it is giving users the ability to seamlessly switch between Web apps and video entertainment, though there's already plenty of competition in this space. Or is there?
According to the New York Times, Google plans to treat this platform in the same way it treats Android for Mobile—it will open the platform to developers "within the next couple of months" and products could hit the shelves sometime this summer. That means third-party apps could show up on TV just as easily as they do on our mobile phones, from Twitter apps to games to Wikipedia browsing and more. It also means, however, that there's potential for an overflow of apps to be available (hello iPhone App Store).
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Report: Xbox 360 to gain support for USB storage
The Xbox 360 all but requires a hard drive to download games, patches, movies. Indeed, all the features of a modern console can become very dependent on having large amounts of memory. Microsoft has long required users to buy expensive and proprietary memory devices and hard drives, but documentation obtained by Joystiq shows that you may soon be able to use your own USB storage on the device.
It's still not a perfect solution. If the data here is to be believed, and Joystiq is claiming it has been verified by two sources, you'll be able to use up to two devices, and up to 16GB of storage on each one. That means you'll max out at 32GB of storage, but you can use that storage for anything that you'd use the hard drive for. "USB storage devices may, however, have far greater memory capacity than [memory units] (at the date of writing, the largest MU is 512 MB), and may therefore support previously infeasible operations—such as installation of a full disc-based title," the documentation says.
Joystiq guesses that with rumors and images of a slimmed down motherboard floating around the Internet, we may soon see a version of the system without slots for memory units at all. Whatever happens in the future, USB storage has become cheap; this news may cause a newfound interest in the Xbox 360 Arcade hardware.
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